That should've been the end of it. He'd made good on the flirting. They'd had a mutually enjoyable night. Fascination over.

Except it wasn't.

She hadn't said anything the morning after. The only sign that she acknowledged what happened was a touch to the bite mark he'd left (oops) and a burning glare as she flicked her hair forward to cover it. The mark was faint but undeniable once you did notice it. Like he was now, two days later, at the fuel reactor on Cyone. The top of it peeked out from under the neck of her armour.

He tracked her movements as she walked around talking to Captain Riley and his people. No one paid attention to James, sitting on a crate with his rifle in his lap and his helmet obscuring most of his face. He would be hiding behind his breather plate too, except armour-recycled air was stifling. He avoided it when he could.

This feeling that'd lodged itself in his chest was worse than before. He moved to rub his chest and caught himself, instead pretending to check the seals on his helmet. The flirting that had come naturally now got tangled in his brain before ever reaching his lips. It was easier and safer if he stuck with barely talking at all.

Shepard finished her intel gathering and walked over to him, her helmet under her arm. Her expression wasn't open—Shepard was never an open book—but she looked neither hostile nor in business mode. He would've preferred either of those to this ambiguity. As she got closer, he gripped his rifle tighter, whether as a shield or just so he wouldn't reach out to touch her, he didn't know.

'Do I have something on my face?' she asked. 'You've been watching me all day.'

'No, ma'am,' he said. 'Just waiting for orders.'

Something he didn't recognise crossed her face before it smoothed into the Commander Shepard expression she usually wore on a mission. She slipped on her helmet, hiding everything but her eyes.

When she spoke again, there was a hint of frost that wasn't usually there. 'I'm on point. Watch my six. Garrus has the high ground.'

He frowned. 'But you always take the high ground.'

'Do we have a problem, Lieutenant?'

James's attention snagged on Garrus, who was fully suited up and pressing buttons at a terminal but who had stilled at those words and looked at them. Goddammit. She'd spoken on the open comm line once her helmet had sealed her in.

He tapped the button on his helmet that would close the tinted breather plate. He could keep his voice level, but he knew better than to pretend he could keep his face neutral.

'No, ma'am,' he repeated.

Once the reaper troops were cleared from the fuel reactor and they were heading back to the Normandy, he closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep. On a mission, he could hide behind his helmet. In the shuttle there'd be questions if he kept the helmet on, and he couldn't mask what would surely be on his face if he had to stare at her for twenty minutes. When they returned to the ship, she dropped her weapons on his bench for cleaning and entered the elevator alone. Once again, her gaze landed on him, but this time he looked away, heart stuttering.

She started to avoid him. Or maybe he avoided her. Either way, it made him more restless than when he was simply tongue-tied around her. That look he didn't recognise kept replaying in his brain too.

Five days after Cyone (not that he was counting) and the night Shepard blew up the ardat-yakshi monastery, insomnia found him at his punching bag at 0200. Sweat dripped down his skin and his muscles ached but his mind was no more settled. He thought he was hallucinating when he turned to grab his drink bottle and Shepard was standing behind him, except if he were hallucinating then surely she'd be naked already. He couldn't help the rake of his gaze over the curves of her breasts and her waist and her hips.

She waved her hand at the mats that someone had set up earlier and neglected to put away. 'Wanna dance?'

He took a deep draw of his drink and didn't miss the way her eyes sharpened when he licked water off his lips.

'Sure, Lola,' was all he trusted himself to say, because this was a charade, an excuse, and neither would ever acknowledge that aloud.

They did spar, for about 10 minutes, enough for adrenaline to heighten their lust, and then she was on her knees and he was fucking her mouth, exactly as he'd imagined the last time they'd sparred. Her hair was silk, bunched in his hands, and her tongue did wicked things that had him taut and coming down her throat in less time than he'd have liked. On the mats, they took their pleasure in silence, swallowing each other's moans and cries with kisses until they'd sated whatever this pull between them was.

It happened again and again after that, in an empty hangar bay or coming as a summons to her cabin or the apartment Anderson left her on the Citadel. James committed to memory every detail of these stolen moments when he had Shepard the woman. She'd never concede a weakness but she always came to him when something rattled her cage. The Shepard he had in short snatches bore the weight of a galaxy and demanded to escape into mindless pleasure, sometimes sweet and sometimes not.

But it was only ever fleeting.

Commander Shepard was a different beast, all hard edges and spikes, sarcasm and frowns. They'd returned to their casual banter, their flirting and the occasional scolding. This whole thing would've been easier if she were Commander Shepard all the time. That way, each time she left him, be it by walking off or rolling away from him in bed—the silent signal that he should leave—maybe a piece of his heart wouldn't chip off and go with her.

James focused on installing an upgraded stability damper on his Vindicator. Anything to keep his hands busy and his mind off Shepard down on Rannoch without him. Now that they were good again, having to sit in orbit felt like he was being punished. Intellectually, he knew that was loco. A planet full of geth should have techy people like Tali and Garrus going with her. It wasn't like storming the dreadnought.

'Shuttle incoming,' announced EDI, and the bay doors opened onto the blackness of space.

Even though he'd seen this hundreds of times, his stomach still dropped at the thought that it was just a thin kinetic barrier that kept the atmosphere in. If the barrier ever failed, he'd be sucked into space and wouldn't survive long enough for someone to get him before he died. Like everyone else, he took cover in the sheltered alcoves as the shuttle roared into the ship, blowing heat and dust everywhere. The shuttle brought in with it the slightly metallic burnt-steak smell of space.

James was the first to leave the alcove and return to his station, but he didn't return to work. He leaned a hip against the bench, arms crossed over his chest while he waited for the shuttle doors to slide open. When they did, Shepard jumped out and she was all fury. She stalked toward him, and he prided himself on not taking a step back at the murder in her eyes. He quirked a questioning eyebrow. Not just murder but sorrow. She unclipped her weapons and shoved them at him before making her usual beeline for the elevator. Her hands flexed as if she wanted to punch something but she just stepped into the elevator, keeping her back to them all while the doors closed.

The metallic clang of Garrus's boots pulled his attention to the turian now heading towards him. Exhaustion kept his mandibles tight against his jaw. James wasn't an expert at reading turian expressions yet, but he at least knew that one.

'What happened?' James asked, setting Shepard's weapons down on his bench.

'Legion sacrificed himself to upload his reaper code to the geth neural network.'

James stared at him. 'You're gonna have to speak plainer than that, Scars.'

Garrus's mandibles fluttered and he rolled his eyes. That was the other look James recognised—exasperation. A roll of the eyes was pretty universal. 'Legion's dead. The geth have true intelligence. Their war with the quarians is over.'

Legion. James didn't really know the geth, but Shepard had called him a friend. This was a cage-rattler for sure. He'd been Garrus's friend too though, which might account for the downturn of the turian's shoulders.

'I'm sorry,' said James.

'Don't get all sappy on me, Jimmy,' Garrus replied, but he quirked a small smile of thanks too.

James returned to work, setting aside his modification to clean Shepard's weapons and wait for her summons. When it hit the night cycle and no one had seen Shepard since she'd stormed off, Cortez gave him a look that saw and said too much. James was pretty sure no one knew what he and Shepard got up to, but Cortez had been his friend for long enough that if anyone could figure it out then it was him. You had to watch out for the silent ones.

Once James was off duty, he found himself stepping out of the elevator onto the captain's deck. He shouldn't be here. He should wait for her to tell him to come up, as per usual, but worry nibbled at him. Shepard's door was locked, and he paused. His abuela would say it was a sign from God for him to return to his bunk. Except his traitorous feet wouldn't move.

The holograph on the door flickered from red to green, and the door opened before he had a chance to retreat. She wasn't standing in front of him, so he assumed that EDI had told her he was out there and that Shepard wanted him to come in. EDI was the other one you had to watch out for, but he never believed he'd get away with hiding anything from her ever. He stepped over the threshold, and the door closed and locked again. The lights were dim but not dark enough for sleep. He found Shepard on the couch, a mostly finished bottle of whiskey on the table and the top of her BDUs already half undone. He tried and only partially succeeded in keeping himself from admiring the exposed V of pale skin.

'This looks healthy,' he said, waving to the lights and the bottle as he hopped down the stairs to come stand in front of the coffee table.

She took a slow sip of the amber liquid, watching him with hooded eyes over the rim of her glass, before she said with a slight slur, 'You don't get to lecture me on drinking in the dark.'

'I do it in the dark, but I still do it with other people.'

She leaned forward and fumbled for a second glass from a shelf under the table. She held it out for him and motioned with her chin for him to sit. He hesitated. This wasn't how it worked when they were alone. They didn't sit around and drink and talk like they did when others were around. It had a kind of intimacy that didn't mesh with being sent on his way after sex.

'Sit down or get out,' she said.

He should get out, except the same part of him that'd sent him up to check on her whispered at him to stay.

He sat.

James poured himself less whiskey than he usually would. He got two sips in before she knocked back the rest of her glass and climbed into his lap. Her kiss was bruising. He knew this kind of desperation. He was kissing a Shepard whose mind wasn't here at all. He could have been anybody, and that hurt.

His cock twitched as she dragged a hand across it, but he turned his head to the side and asked, 'Shepard, what are you doing?'

'Don't talk,' she said, drunken hands fumbling with his belt.

He didn't want it like this. The realisation was an omniblade to the gut. He didn't want to be a glorified dildo. He knew that this wasn't going anywhere, but any other time they were together Shepard saw him and wanted to lose herself in what he could do to her body.

James caught her wrists. She leaned back but didn't immediately get off him.

'You lost a friend today,' he said.

For a split second he glimpsed her hopelessness and then she threw her emotional barrier back up. She was Commander Shepard, in control.

'I don't want to talk about it,' she said.

He eyed the bottle of whiskey. 'You probably should.'

'Let me rephrase that: I don't want to talk to you about it.'

He stared at her, her wrists still caught in his. He knew he was never going to have Shepard the way he wanted, but he liked to think they were at least friends. Her eyes narrowed, and he dumped her off his lap. James stood, needing to get away from the heat and the smell of her.

'Whatever, Commander. Sit here and drink alone in the dark instead of talking to someone who—'

'Who what? You're just a distraction, Vega.' She snatched up the bottle on the table and gulped the last of the alcohol down while he was too frozen by her words to move. It was one thing to think it but another to hear it. She slammed the bottle down on the table and glared at him. 'What we do is no different from downing a bottle of whiskey, and I think I'm over whiskey. You're dismissed.'

He should never have come up here.