The dark void of space is expanding at 74.2 ±3.6 kilometers per second per megaparsec. Black. Endless. Speckled with stars, with galaxies, with rivers and clouds of particles and gasses. The numbers of space are incomprehensible, and the ideas are even more ludicrous to imagine, but spending years in space can disperse the insignificance of simply existing.

Twisting his fingers, Kaidan levels the plane of Shepard's stomach, following the rows of ribs stretched under the flesh, the scars like houndstooth, feeling the breath in the rise and fall of Shepard's chest, knowing there's life, that the man is living, exists. In all the times he has felt small, unimportant, a speck of organ devoured in the depths of the universe, Kaidan knows he has this intimacy to bring him back, to complete him. Shepard is all he needs, here, together, in a claustrophobic little room with no windows, unable to see the murky horizon looming beyond.

Sometimes, Kaidan wonders what led him to this point, what seemingly simple choicesallowed him to be here, right here, right now, kneading Shepard's thigh below his palm, drinking the warmth pooling out from the familiar body. What set of coordinated birth moons were in position to get him here, what mutilations did he bear that set him on this course, what mystic energy radiating off an unseen supernova placed him in the Citadel, on Normandy? It's surreal, and it makes Kaidan sick to try to place understanding where there is none, and the only thing he can come up with is fate, it's fate, destiny, all pre-ordained and coded in their existence because how the hell could something so amazing be an act of coincidence?

Shepard asks, "Are you crying?" quietly in the dark, and Kaidan doesn't say anything at all because he's not sure how to explain the clenched throat, turning stomach, and overwhelming geometry of life when he thinks about the two of them together. Alone. Two organisms with consciences floating together in the largest onyx sea ever to be. So many have lived and died, born under the fiery, plasmatic rays of a distant sun and withered away on the cold beaches of an undiscovered moon.

Here they are, Shepard and himself, breathing, feeling, living, loving.

Kaidan isn't certain what is more terrifying, space or love, but he is thankful of Shepard's presence, the way Shepard pulls him closer regardless of their extended silence. Kaidan inhales the other man's scent, human and alive, masculine, but with no trace of their previous reality on Earth, a reality he never even experienced. Now, Shepard is only metallic and sterile, like him he thinks, like what he's familiar with, man-made, the smell of hardened armor, burning wires, plastic or something like it. Kaidan wonders when they all lost their humanity, wonders if he even had "humanity" to begin with. (And what do others do when they don't have an anchor like he has Shepard, someone to return and ground the experience of being purely human?)

"Time," Kaidan breathes, "how much time do you think we have?"

Shepard doesn't answer, and, for a moment, Kaidan is worried there will be no answer at all. Perhaps Shepard has fled from him already, died already. Finally, Shepard whispers, "Forever."

Even in the cataclysmic field of limitless space where numbers are high yet mean absolutely nothing at all, where stars are shaped and die over an eternity, where alien civilizations are built and destroyed in a day, they have forever.