One Shot Sequel to First Meld and First Kiss
"Am I being selfish?" I ask Liara's sitting, curled up on my couch on the Normandy. I'm still in my gear. It had been a rough mission.
Dr. Chakwas will come up in a few to check my wounds. I asked her to come up, because I'm pretty sure I took a bad hit and don't want anyone to know it, but Liara. Of course she shows up and doesn't give a crap. She was there on the field with me. So she knows that I took a hit that's a little too much.
She hasn't moved toward me yet, instead she's pouring a drink and takes a shot. She looks up at me, eyes widening a bit.
"Selfish?" she asks me. "About what? You saved my butt out there. Are you okay? Don't lie to me, Charlie. You wouldn't have asked me to call Chakwas."
"No, I'm not okay. Will you help me out of my gear?" I ask her. She sprints to me and starts removing pieces of it. At my side, she feels the blood. I grimace as her fingers graze the wound, soaking through one of my favorite t-shirts.
"Oh, Shepard," she says. She takes off her black jacket, the one I like and presses it against the wound. "Hold it there, hard." She removes the other pieces.
"What I mean is, putting you through all this…Maybe, I should let you go," I say feeling a little fuzzy. My knees start to give and she catches me. Her strength surprises me as she slides me on the bed. She presses the jacket harder into my side and I gasp.
Chakwas enters the room.
"We'll talk about this later and no, even if you 'let' me go, I wouldn't let you go." Her voice is like hard Krogan steel.
"I don't understand why we can't take care of this in the medbay—" Chakwas eyes widen. "We should really be in the medbay." She pulls the jacket away and begins to work, commanding Liara to do certain things.
Chakwas stays for two hours before Liara and her help the me down to her office. I finally agreed to go down there after she's assures me I'm going to be fine. I sleep the night down there with Liara, holding my hand.
When Chakwas leaves, Liara even makes me scoot over and we fall asleep wrapped around each other. She kisses me where my nose had been broken and my lip busted. My face is painfully swollen and purple around my eye. Resting against her shoulder is the best part after a bad fight.
"Liara, I was serious before," I say, before she can fall asleep. "What if something happens to me again? I don't want to hurt you anymore."
"Shepard." She sighs. "I know what I said before, but the thing is— I can't quit you. I love you. Even if we didn't act on our feelings, they wouldn't change. If something happened to you, I'd still be utterly crushed. If you stopped letting me go on missions with you I'd probably kill you with my bare hands."
"You sound like your father," I tease her. She stiffens and I laugh, coughing hard and painfully. Her touch turns gentle again. Holding me until the coughing spell passes.
"You're a pest, you know it?" she demands. "But I love you."
Her fingers find a scar from when Cerebus used me as their puppet. It peaks out from the bandages below the apex of my ribs. It was like a tiny crater in my stomach now, a crevice and her finger fit into it as she strokes it gently.
Sometimes, I feel so ugly next to her. She gets cut up and bruised, but something about her biotic power and 1,000 year lifespan let her heal faster and I'd yet to see an Asari with a scar. I'd collected enough for the both of us in my lifetime to fill her future lifespan.
"What are thinking about, Shepard?" she asks me. My hand's on hers now.
"Nothing good," I reply, trying to tease her, but failing. My voice cracks and she places her hand on my cheek and kisses me.
"What is it?" she asks me again. "You don't like when I touch your scars? When we make love you don't seem to mind?"
"It's in the meld and they don't seem so bad in the meld," I tell her. "You're just so perfect. These are going to stay on my face, forever unless I get surgery. That scar, you're touching isn't going away ever. Even Cerebus couldn't get rid of it. My teeth aren't coming back in that I lost. This is me, Liara and it'll probably just get worse."
She smiles at me again, gentle, and kisses my cheek again.
"Such a vain species, you humans. How many times do I have to tell you, Asari don't care about how their significant others look? Isn't my father an example of that? His mother fell in love with a Krogan. Goddess, he's probably why I fell in love with you. Benezia fell in love her, I guess. I don't know. It doesn't matter. We love who we love. I'm not leaving you Shepard. I won't leave again."
I look at her and wonder if it's true. In a way, I feel she left me back on Ilium to be the Shadow Broker and later, she didn't visit me for months when I was kept on earth by the Alliance for trial. Part of me knows she will grow tired of me when I get old and wrinkly and too messed up, but right now…she's the only good thing in my life and like she said I can't quit her.
Her kisses are so gentle over the scars and the cuts. Her fingers go back to the worst scar on my stomach. Her other arm tucks around me so we are flush. Her in nothing but her Asari shirt— sleeveless, and loose pants, and me in my bandages and sweatpants.
"It doesn't matter how much I feed you," she says. "You never gain any weight."
"I could have warned you," I tell her with a laugh. "The most I've gained was back on earth when I was by myself doing nothing but cleaning and boxing. Most of it was muscle. I kind of went back to being my scrappy self when I started this mission. Doesn't take long to lose weight for me. Whether I'm eating or not…I'm lucky to have you to worry about me."
"That's all I do most of the time," she says, eyes distant. "When I'm not being the Shadow Broker." My hands are back over hers as she plays with the scar. "I like it, Shepard. I think scars are sexy." Oh, it's so hard not tease her about that. I look at her amused.
"It feels funny. I don't have the feeling back, so it just tingles," I tell her. I can tell that makes her want to do something, but Chakwas was very blunt about what activity we could do and that's sleeping.