My third fill for Rosenkow's Spiritual Shrios Summer challenge!
Prompt word: "CARESS" - Challenge link: blog/view/rosenkow/648829521965006848
I wanted a happy ending for these lovebirds, so pardon my AU. If I can find the motivation, I'd like to expand on how they got here.
The soft chill of night air filtered through the open window in their shared flat as Shepard stepped out of the bathroom on sore, aching feet. Fresh from a cold shower, shoulders dropped with fatigue, she managed a smile at him across the room.
Thane looked up from his reading. "Siha, how are you feeling?"
"Exhausted," she said with a yawn.
She looked it, too. Ever since the war had ended, combat seemed to always take a heavier toll on her body. Her armor powered her through in the field, but in their private quarters, she carried herself on tired legs, fresh bruises peeking out from beneath her shirtsleeves. He would kiss them away if he could.
Thane stood and guided her into his arms. "Come to bed with me. I think you've earned a good rest."
Their flat - if it could even be called a flat - was barebones, no better than any military dormitory she's ever stayed in. White walls, cold floor tiles, and almost no décor to speak of. It was clean, at least. Six months since the war had ended, humanity had made little to no progress reclaiming the comforts they'd enjoyed before the reapers. Still, some inspired soldier had managed to requisition an old bed that was bigger than the standard issue Alliance bunk size - a gift for the legend herself, and her partner. He eased her down onto the sheets with steady arms.
"It's too quiet in here," Shepard groaned as she laid down.
"I'm sure the Alliance would be willing to relocate us to one of the orbital stations," he said, undressing before joining her in bed.
She made an annoyed sound. "They need me here."
It was mostly true. The alliance was still uncovering disorganized pockets of reaper forces, most of them in the underground byways of urban centers. It's what she spent her days doing. Strapping on the same old armor and delving into close quarters to fight cannibals, brutes, and whatever other monsters lurked in the dark.
He wanted so badly for her to rest, but she wouldn't have it. The three months she spent held up in the field hospital were agony for her, and not simply because she was in pain. That restless mind, her patchwork cybernetic body giving her inhuman reserves of energy that her organic parts simply couldn't keep pace with. Even the Alliance had tried to offer her diplomatic work - something she had laughed off. "Come back when you're ready to let me do my job."
Still, Shepard found planetside silence deafening. Sleep was harder to claim without the white noise of a cruiser. She talked often of the thrumming of engines on ships she'd lived on for most of her life. Thane himself rather enjoyed the quiet sounds of Earth, but it didn't much matter to him where they were. As long as she came home to him at night.
"What will you do once the ground work is complete?" he said, settling in beside her.
"I can't fucking wait," came her muffled response, face stuffed into a pillow. "Maybe then we can get back into space. Help with the Citadel reclamation." She turned to look at him then, squinting against the light on his nightstand. "If that's okay with you."
"My love," he said, switching off the light and kissing her forehead, "I would follow you to the edge of the world if you'll have me."
She swatted at him weakly. "You're sickeningly sweet."
Thane's face contorted in an exaggerated frown, but his voice betrayed his mirth. "I make you sick?"
She rolled her eyes. "You know what I mean."
"I love you too, Siha," he chuckled, and gathered her into his arms.
Indeed it had taken him a little while to get used to living with humans and their ample use of sarcasm, but he did understand her. By now he had long since stopped using his translator. Earth was becoming more familiar to him by the day, and he was surprised to find so many humans eager for his help. That he wasn't Alliance didn't seem important when so much needed doing. When he refused to leave her hospital bedside, they busied him with menial tasks around the infirmary and he was surprised to find he enjoyed the small role he had in healing the injured. Most of all, he thanked Arashu each and every day for her unbelievable blessing, to have Shepard here, curling into his chest, safe, warm, and whole.
She wriggled against him, humming quietly as she found a more favorable position with her knee over his and her face in the warm velvety frill of his neck. Soft breaths rolled over him and he trilled in response, the sound vibrating in his chest. They fit together so seamlessly that he could never be sure if she teased him like this deliberately or simply out of comfort, but warmth of her breath over his throat made his body stir in irresponsible ways, considering her state of fatigue. With some amount of guilt, he shifted away from her.
She reacted, her arm tightened about his waist to press him close and this time she did it on purpose, gentle lips kissing his throat once, then twice with an open mouth, with a small hum of satisfaction. Her intentions were loud and clear.
"I thought you were exhausted," he mused into her hair.
Ambient light from outside spilled through their open window and illuminated her in the dreamy shades of nighttime. Her eyes were closed, body tucked tight against him. Like holding the entire world in his arms, he swelled with adoration.
"I can't sleep," she mumbled. "If you aren't too tired..." Her voice trailed off, her statement finishing with telling hand trailing across his hip, straying close to the sensitive scales below his abdomen.
"Mm," he pretended to consider, knowing exactly what she wanted. "I may be able to help. What do you require?" It would be a cold day in hell when he was too tired for her.
She kissed his neck again, her palm flattening against the small of his back and dragging it slowly over his backside.
"Touch me," she whispered.
Warmth bloomed in his chest, the heat of desire washing over him.
"It would be my pleasure," he rumbled.
Slowly, he pushed her shorts off her hips and eased her on to her back. Eyes closed, licking her lips in contented anticipation, he watched her chest rise and fall with each contented breath. Hands slid across her belly, easing her t-shirt up over her head and she accommodated him, rising just enough to pull it off and flicking it lazily on to the other side of the bed. Relaxed as he'd ever seen, her undressed body laid before him, dotted with scars and stories he knew so well.
He pulled himself over her, meeting her lips in an unhurried kiss. She stretched against him, warming beneath his body, hands wandering across the defined lines of his shoulders and spine as though she knew his stripes by memory alone.
He gathered her breasts together from where they rolled to her sides and gazed up at her face as he kissed the deliciously soft valley between them.
Thumbs running over each hardening peak, he watched her expression as he teased her if only just to see the gleaming edges of her teeth drawing her lower lip into her mouth. Her eyelashes fluttered as he squeezed her flesh gently, closing his lips over first one nipple, then the other. She arched up to meet his eager tongue, heavy breaths rushing from her lungs as though the pressure of his hands drove the air from her body. Beneath him, he could feel her core flex with each flick of his tongue and twist of his fingers
"Fuck," she moaned. He couldn't help but watch her, eyes closed, lips parted, chest heaving against his hands as he stoked her lust from a smolder to an irresistible flame.
His gentle mouth began to work its way down across the hard plane of her abdomen. Beneath the scent of standard issue soap, he could smell the salt of her skin, pausing to place an appreciative kiss atop her mound before his hands curled around the juncture of her hips. Her breathing was ragged as his thumbs parted her eager, heated flesh for his appreciation. The first time they'd done this he'd had to talk her down from her insecurities. The memory made him feel possessive, nearly angered by the notion that some other man had turned down privilege of knowing her this way. Thane let his breath ghost over her glistening center, thumbs dragging firmly up and down her folds just to hear her moan for him. The urge to tease her was irresistible.
It was with a knowing smirk that he finally bent his mouth to her, tasting her earthy, salty flesh - her hitched gasps like music to his ears. She told him once that he put human lovers to shame, and he was proud - perhaps the only man in existence who pried the secrets of her pleasure straight from her lips. He knew exactly how to touch her simply because he'd asked. The sounds she made when he laved his tongue over her clit were low and resounding reminders of how painfully hard he was in his shorts.
Her fingertips trailed along his sensitive jaw, feeling him work as he ate her greedily. "Don't stop," she whispered.
He grinned against her flesh, teasing her entrance with two fused fingers, pushing slowly inside her heat only to brush against her center and slip out, again and again. Patiently, he devoured her, walking her closer to the edge one searing second at a time until her head was thrown back, her spine arched off the bed, fingers trembling against his scalp. He loved this. Every time he went down on her his mind trailed over every single time previous - recalling the exact intonation of her voice, the press of her hands, the way she tensed her thighs as she neared the peak of her pleasure. By now, he could tell precisely when to set her off.
He edged her for a few seconds longer. She was close, so close.
She came with a shout, her clutching fingers carefully telegraphing how long he could continue to draw out her climax before she trembled and sagged, clenching her oversensitive flesh away from his hungry mouth.
"Holy shit, Thane," she gasped, heaving for breath and sprawling against the mattress. He climbed atop her and she kissed him without hesitation and he growled - he couldn't deny he found it irrefutably erotic how she cleaned the taste of herself off his lips. Clumsy hands fumbled at his shorts, stroking his burning length, urging him to bring it to her lips. Maybe another night - he thought. Right now he burned to bury himself inside her.
He felt her tense in anticipation, her eyes cracked open and gleaming in the moonlight, slowly blinking up at him with a look so unguarded he could have wept. She guided him to her slick entrance and he slowly pushed inside, groaning as her hungry, supple flesh tempted him into her scorching depths and at last, he hilted inside her.
He set a languid pace, cradling her hips in his hands, searching for the perfect angle to make her see the stars she missed so dearly behind her closed eyes. With her core hypersensitive in the glow of her climax, she clutched at him desperately, nails digging into the scales of his back with such force he thought for sure they would be discolored before long. He didn't care. Becoming one with her, seeing her completely blissed out by each roll of his hips and knowing he could make her feel this way made him shake with wanting. He covered her with his body, ravishing her lips against pleasured cries that came so resoundingly he was sure to hear "who was getting lucky last night?" in the morning. He belonged to her - this night and as many nights as she wanted him. She made him delirious in her pleasure. Her body demanded his release.
Held within her wanting arms, he finally succumbed with a hoarse, drawn out cry. For seconds he was infinite, a whirlwind of white hot ecstasy fraying him apart until he found his sweetest end in her embrace. And then there was nothing but her and the caress of crisp, evening air wafting over him. A gift from the earth to bless their joining.
He shivered with the aftershocks. Soft hands trailed down his back. He didn't know how long they remained before separating.
In the afterglow, memories overtook him easily. Vivid remembrances of Irikah and Shepard tumbled together and he slipped in and out of them like the rolling of coastal waters. It was difficult to rationalize how he could deserve either of them, what he could have done to earn the love of the fierce and cosmic women who touched his heart. But as Shepard's breathing slowed from heavy to peaceful beside him, his doubts were pushed aside. Arashu herself had sent him a divine protector, and he would not refuse her gifts.
"You're the best," she murmured against him, and he could hear the daze of sleep trailing her gentle voice. Just a sigh of breath as she tucked her head against his chest and whispered:
"I love you."
Thanks for reading! I'm zet-sway on tumblr 〜(꒪꒳꒪)〜 have a great day!