Disclaimer: I own nothing. This is outside of the universe of my other stories, but it's a short idea that wouldn't let me go until I wrote it. Angst ahoy!
I was the one who had died.
I didn't expect you to haunt me.
A planet's bronze rings are the gentle slope of your hips.
Your lips are river banks, swollen and plump with a summer flood.
That mouth. Oh, that mouth.
A set of peaks and a valley against the horizon is its divot – that little bow in your upper lip, sweet and salty with pooled sweat that I can still taste. In the night, I still try to trace it with my tongue.
An outcropping of rock against the desert, large and dark against the backdrop of waving sand, is your tightly coiled hair, nestled into the nape of your neck.
I was jealous of that hair, that it were my hands brushing against your tawny skin, that it were my fingers tightly coiled around your flesh, pressing you closer to me.
In my mind, you were warm and soft.
I was right.
In my mind, you still are.
Miranda's talking again.
As she leans forward, her hair becomes untucked from behind her ear, falling into her face. I realize that I've never seen you with your hair in anything but that bun.
Yours must be longer than Miranda's. I'd like to think of it as cascading in rolling waves across your strong shoulders, the tips just teasing that delicious little indent in the small of your back.
I think your hair is probably the same color as hers, though – deep brown with shimmers of auburn, sparkling and rich, like the ground powder of a fine coffee. And almost as aromatic.
I lean forward, entranced with the hint of something warm and tropical – coconut? – that radiates from her, with the way the dull lights of the SR-2 can dance and reflect off the surface of her hair with each slight flick of her head or stretch of alabaster skin.
I think your hair would be less mirror-like, for some reason; Miranda always seems sparkling and blue to me, even when she's not actively biotic.
She stiffens now, detecting my change in proximity. I cover, leaning back to run a hand down my face, shielding my expression. I wonder if she knows – if she knows that I do that because I'm haunted by you.
She probably does.
She doesn't seem to mind.
Who said anything about love?
I am a solider, not a scientist. Someone far smarter than I am was talking to me about temporal mechanics and quantum physics one day. Nothing sticks with me except the theory he told me about time.
I imagine every decision I've ever made in my life branching out across a giant map, full of threads and branches. I chose one course, but alternate realities theoretically exist within my paths not taken. It is a tapestry of opportunities not expressed, as tangled and knotted as I think your hair could be.
It is my life how it could have been.
It is always about you.
In one reality, I am the farmer my father always wanted me to be, checking the height of my crops with the old man by my side. You wait in the doorway, watching us. You're more maternal than I would have expected you to be.
In another reality, I have taken a wife – Sandara, my first girlfriend – and we have children. They are sandy, but dull. I crave your darkness in them. We live next door to my parents, and my brothers and sisters live close-by. I see them all often, and we're perfectly happy.
But my tongue moves reflexively.
I want more. I want to taste you.
It will hurt Sandara, I know. But I do.
And I choose to let it happen.
In most, I am aboard the Normandy. I find myself retracing the more linear decisions I have made in my career, wondering if a different response in a conversation or a different course of action would cause me to still be alive, to still be with you.
Garrus believes this line of thinking is perverse, and Tali complains that the theoretical applications of it give her a headache. Both of them express annoyance, and tell me that I'm still alive.
But my soul echoes, and my mind is restless.
Neither of them can understand how I find it comforting, why I want to know if this way of thinking about time is true.
Because in all of those realities, you are my course – even in this one.
It is always about you.
You are the knots in my tapestry's threads. You are what gives me color.
In all of these realities, I am uncoiling your hair and teasing my fingers through the thick, sweet-smelling coffee strands. I am tracing the outline of your lips with my tongue and tasting your slightly salty flesh. I am brushing my hands over your hips, rubbing my thumbs over the bones, sinking my fingers into the fleshy knot where your legs join your sides. I am anchoring myself around your neck, drawing your closer to me, letting me claim you. And my mouth brushes against the crease in your thighs. And your mouth –
Oh, you are mine, whether you realize it or not. I think sometimes that you probably do.
I see you again when I least expect it.
Your hair is down and cropped, shorter than I had imagined, into an angular cut. Your eyelids are dark with make-up that is foreign to my visions of you.
Even your lips seem different somehow.
Your eyes are marked with new creases in your tanned skin – and I wonder if I was the cause of that. But those eyes are still soft and dark, as expressive as always. I think it's the only part of you that hasn't changed.
And your gaze studies my form before flickering over to the woman at my side, at Miranda.
And I realize that your hair has become the same as hers.
And I wonder if you've been haunted too.
I want to tell you about deserts.
About rocks and streams.
About a planet's rings.
I want to tell you about time.
I will weave a tapestry today.
You will take my threads and make my knots.
And it will be about you.