When Thane came to, Shepard was scrutinizing the wall in front of the sofa, onto which she had projected a number of color swatches from her omnitool. It was another moment with her that made him double-take as he tried to discern her line of thinking. His effort was not assisted by the sight of her bare shoulders in a tank top, and the muscles that rippled beneath her soft, dark skin as she flicked color palettes here and there.

"Are you planning to paint the walls, Amondi?" he asked, voice croaking as his body adjusted to consciousness again. More and more it seemed he could spend half the day sleeping and wake not feeling as if he had rested at all.

"I am," she replied firmly, exiling several colors with a few decisive swipes of her finger. "Everything is gray in here, it feels like an Alliance mess hall!" She scowled and brought up a few additional colors, then moved several around into a new order. The wall was a mosaic of warm browns or shades of orange and yellow, with the occasional green or red thrown in.

"You're only in port a few days," Thane pointed out, sitting up. His loose, equally gray t-shirt slouched off one shoulder and he pulled it up. "Do you really want to spend it on home improvements?"

"Yes!" Shepard turned to him with the kind of intensity that sent cadets scurrying like bugs. Thane had known her long enough to know it was just her way, and not indicative of any mood. She removed the omnitool and set it down on the coffee table so the colors remained cast against his white-gray wall. "Look at these." Grabbing his empty water glass from the table, she marched to the kitchen to refill it. Thane did not have the heart to break this habit by reminding her that drell did not need to hydrate so much as humans. Instead, he obediently took a small sip when she returned with the glass, and rearranged a few of her color swatches.

"Why these colors?" he asked, tapping a pale yellow for a preview of how it would look covering the entire room.

"I don't know, I just opened an app and grabbed a few," she said, tucking a foot underneath her. It was possible no thought had gone into it, but Thane tended to doubt it. Then it was likely sentimentality had motivated her decision; that was usually what kept Shepard quiet about things.

They were all warm colors, he noted. Warm, dry—desert colors. He tapped a vivid blood orange and the room changed color. The timer on the preview began to tick down from three minutes.

Shepard's foot was bouncing.

"I don't know," he said at last. "Why don't you choose something?" He'd rarely given the décor of the apartment much thought. He was not likely to be in it long, and most of his thoughts were consumed with Kolyat or Shepard, with little room for anything else.

"It's your place," she said.

"Let it be something you chose," he suggested. "Leave your mark on it." He wouldn't mind an apartment with a color selected by his beloved.

Rather than take the lead as was usually her wont (it was hard to leave the commander behind, even when she wanted to), Shepard deflated and sank back against the sofa back, her eyes squeezing shut.

"How's neon pink sound?" she said, but there was little energy and less bite in the quip.

Thane reached out and brushed a loose wisp of hair back from her face. Slowly, her eyes peeked open. In his chest, there was an aching wholly unrelated to the slow decay of his lungs. By the look in Shepard's eyes he knew he was gifting her a pain with which he was already familiar, and there was no small sting of guilt in his heart for it. Had he not done a selfish thing, by encouraging her feelings, indulging his own? Was it not cruel, to make her love a dying man?

"It would not be my first choice," he said.

Shepard snorted and straightened up, reaching to play again with the order of the swatches. The timer on the blood orange hit zero and the walls returned to the standard pale gray.

"This one is nice," he said, reaching out to select a brown mid-tone, something labeled "Spicy Cinnamon Smash." The stretch of the reach made something twinge in the muscles of his chest and he coughed quietly.

"Yeah?" said Shepard. "They've got uh…recommended accents for that…" She frowned at the omnitool app, and Thane couldn't help but chuckle at the sight of her face so serious she might have been reading official Alliance war reports.

"I never knew you were so keen on home decoration," he said. Shepard's gaze snapped over to him, not missing the faint taunting in that remark.

"Just watch me," she said. "How hard can it be to match some damn colors?" She flipped through a few of her own choosing, and Thane made low noises of disapproval as she previewed them. "Oh, now you have an opinion?" she griped, switching back to the "recommended" accent choices, which suited much better.

"Well now that I'm looking at them…"

Shepard let out a put-upon sigh coupled with a groan and tried again to pass the omnitool off to him.

"Alright Mister Better Home and Gardens, you have a go." In a manner not at all placating, Thane began to play around with the colors, and realized he'd been giving it more attention than he thought when the weight of Shepard's head on his shoulder surprised him. His fingers stilled on the omnitool's display.

He wished he had the words to tell her it was alright to be upset. That it was okay to talk about it; that she wouldn't hurt him by admitting it. But he couldn't imagine finding a way to get that out. Already, Shepard was trying to move away, as though embarrassed by this brief display of weakness, and Thane quickly reached out and put a hand on the side of her head to keep her there.

"What do you think about this?" he asked, choosing a sandy color that promptly ricocheted around the room's projected molding when he activated the preview.

Shepard grunted and shrugged.

"I thought you were the one invested in this project," Thane said. Shepard shifted, tensed briefly, but didn't speak. Instead, she turned her face more into the crook of his neck, and Thane put the omnitool aside to embrace her. "I'm sorry," he said, although he wasn't entirely sure for what he was apologizing, only that Shepard was in distress and so some sort of apology seemed warranted.

"I told you to cut that out," Shepard muttered, a tremulous, breathy note in her voice that would have once shocked him to hear. She did a remarkable job of appearing entirely unshakable in the face of allies and enemies alike. Thane knew he was one of only a handful to see otherwise, alongside a select few of her crewmates. "Don't apologize for things you can't control."

"But I am sorry for it, even if I can't control it," he said.

"It's not your responsibility," she argued. "You can't take responsibility for this."

"I am always sorry when you are in pain, Amondi." Shepard fell silent, one hand grabbing at the front of his shirt, and he tightened his arms around her. She was always so wonderfully warm and he relished the feeling of it against his cool scales. She made an excellent cuddling partner, even if she was too restless to pull it off for long.

"Did you and Kolyat go see Blasto 6?" After a long pause, this was what she said, her face still pressed against his collarbone.

"…no, we ended up seeing something else." Kolyat's taste in films was…well. Thane had not been sorry to escape Blasto 6, but he was not sure the replacement had been much better.

"…do you want to see it?" Shepard lifted her head. "Should be available online now." Thane's fingers trailed over her temple.

"Don't we have to finish with the walls first?" he asked. "There's a whole selection of patterns available on this tab…" Shepard sighed.

"You don't need to do that."

"If I'm going to redo the walls, I should do it right," Thane insisted. He tapped one of the patterns and frowned. "Oh, no. Not that." Quickly he erased the stripes from the walls. Shepard scrutinized him a moment, most likely deciding if she were being mollified, and if she cared enough to object. The answer to one or the other must have been no, because she settled in against his side and observed the patterns on the omnitool from half over his shoulder.

"What about that one?" she asked, pointing.

"If I were looking to live inside an Afterlife replica, I would have redecorated some time ago," Thane replied, flipping past the pattern of alternating asari and human silhouettes. Shepard snickered and rested her chin on his shoulder. The exhale of her breath was warm against his neck. He threw a scalloped pattern up on the walls and Shepard hummed.

"That's not bad," she said.

"I think we should look at a few more," he disagreed, turning the preview off. Shepard settled back in and after a pause, said:

"Are you trying to get out of Blasto 6?" Thane did not reply. Shepard bumped his shoulder. "Thane! You don't want to see Blasto?" He could hear her grinning.

"It hasn't been at the top of my to-do list," he said.

"But we saw Blasto 5 together!" Thane did not reply. "Thane!" He turned to see her eyes squinting with amusement. With Cerberus' implants, it was often hard to read Shepard's eyes, but the human brow ridge did a great deal to make their faces expressive, so Thane was usually able to extrapolate. This time, though, it showed through even her modifications. "You said it was 'a very fine afternoon,'" she recalled.

"And it was."

"But you didn't like the movie!"

"I never said it was the movie that made the afternoon worthwhile," he pointed out, and put a hand over hers. Shepard glanced away, as she often did when he spoke overtly about his feelings for her.

"Okay, okay."

"…do you really want to watch it?" he asked.

"Hell yeah, the last one was hilarious," she said. Thane sighed wearily as he set aside the omnitool.

"I am afraid you and Kolyat may have some things in common…"