AN: Wow, thank you everyone for all the alerts! :) I'm glad people are enjoying the story. As a reward, here's chapter two ;)
Day Two
-A-
Staff Lieutenant Alexis Shepard rubbed her eyes sleepily, sunlight bombarding her face in a mildly pleasant yet annoying fashion. She hadn't slept this well in... well, ever, if she was going to be honest with herself. Certainly not since Mindoir, and definitely not after Elysium, though part of the reason for both incidents was the decidedly loud ringing in her ears from all of the orbital strikes and buildings blowing up around her. Surviving Mindoir had been dumb luck combined with something that passed for decent enough instincts to keep her ass moving in a general 'away from the city' direction. While her survival instincts had told her to get her ass out of the city on Elysium, her military instincts had told her to hold the fucking line until Alliance reinforcements arrived and put a stop to the sheer number of missiles bombarding her general location and generally freaking out the civilians she'd managed to gather and form into some semblance of a squad, slightly increasing their chances that they just might survive long enough to see another day.
During the commendation ceremony when she'd been handed the Star of Terra, she'd been downright grateful that the ringing in her ears prevented her from having to listen to the droning speeches from stuffy Admirals that barely knew her name, let alone why she deserved the damned medal they were giving her. Later, when she'd tossed on her bed for what felt like the millionth time that night, the ringing had just seemed rude, nevermind the fact that it prevented her from hearing the rather exuberant sounds coming from the apartment next to hers.
Both incidents had left her with enough material to form truly brutal nightmares that prevented her from sleeping more than three hours at any given time without bolting awake, some half-formed sentence on her lips. Which, all things considered, she was ok with because taking a walk in the middle of 'night' while on tour was a good time to think.
This thinking though was just as a good, if not better than previous examples of the activity. She could lay here all day, savoring the warmth of the blankets, remembering the incredible night she'd just experienced with the incredible 'Captain Apollo.'
If she'd known what being with a biotic truly entailed, she would have made more of an effort to seek one out prior to this, not that she'd actively sought out men to date or have three day, passion filled flings with in the first place. Though something told her it was more about him and less about the amazing biotic prowess he'd demonstrated.
He probably killed on the field with that kind of accuracy and control, not to mention his undeniable feel for rhythm. For a tiny second, she wished that they were on the same posting, if only so she could see him employ his accuracy, control, and rhythm against the various baddies that dared to impede him from completing his mission. She had a feeling that when he was in armor and in the thick of things, he was officially in his element.
No surprise then that he didn't compromise on the military thing.
She'd given up trying to date years ago, despite only being 25 and told repeatedly by her friends that she had plenty of time to find that one, amazing guy who would completely rock her world, and not just in a physical sense. Some guy who was just gonna come along one day and the idea that he was 'the one' would slap her stupid in the face within days of meeting him, complete with weak knees, gibbering, and excessive thoughts of his qualities.
Yeah, right. And the batarians had 'accidentally' hit Elysium with their missiles, bullets, and otherwise offensive cargo.
Having officially lain in bed for no less than ten minutes without once opening her eyes or doing anything that could remotely be mistaken for responsible, she realized that she was in the bed by herself, the shower wasn't running, and she couldn't hear any of the typical sounds humans made as they moved around. Despite the fact that her senses told her she was currently alone in the shared hotel room, she was decently sure that he hadn't split and run, because it didn't seem like something that he would do. Her brain tried to rationalize the fact that she'd only known him less than a day, therefore it had every right to denounce his character until he returned and explained himself, until the worst most uptight drill sergeant accepted his supplied reasons as sufficient evidence that he was not, in fact, a jerk. Some other part of her won the argument, insisting that up till this moment he'd displayed uncharacteristic chivalry, honor, and awesomeness (especially in bed, though significantly less chivalry was employed there coupled with significantly more awesome). So for now, she was content to wait, lazily wrapped in the soft linen sheets, 'cause damned if she was going to get up on time while on shore leave.
Trident didn't seem like a place for slavers to hit for a raid, considering it was 95% ocean. Probably why (and how he'd guessed it, she'd never know) the largest circle on her dartboard had been labelled 'Trident,' while all the others had been labelled 'stay at Arcturus, because you're fucking jinxed.'
A soft hiss greeted her ears, and was soon accompanied by the tell-tale footsteps of bare-feet. She was unable to resist the smile that blossomed on her lips. If she wasn't so busy feeling all warm and fuzzy that he'd returned, her brain might have muttered darkly about being wrong this time. Instead, she peeked open an eye and was greeted with the most amazing sight: a tray piled with enough food to feed a small army, a small coffee pot with two cups, and Apollo's soft, almost timid smile as she sat up, the sheet falling away from her bare form.
He sat the tray down in between them, folded himself onto the bed across from her, and poured her a cup of coffee.
"Is it impolite to drink first, then kiss you for being amazing?"
He handed her the cup of coffee and she pulled it to her face and closed her eyes. "Not at all," he replied. "Though to be sure, we can consult the big book of regs."
"Section D-15, subsection 147-a: standard protocol for displays of appreciation."
"No, 147-a is how to deal with belligerently drunk krogan on genophage day. You want 146-a."
She grinned deviously at him. "I'm sure some things carry over."
He arched an eyebrow at that, and she successfully resisted the sudden urge to fling the tray of food to the side, throw both their cups of coffee to the ground, and pounce him, because it wasn't fair for a man to look that good just arching an eyebrow. Something from her thoughts must have flashed over her face, because he smirked at her and said, "I'd suggest gently lifting the tray of food instead of flinging it, despite how much fun that would be."
"You're killing me."
"Just minor torturing. Nothing that would cause death."
God, he was amazing.
This time she didn't resist the urge to pounce him, though she did it in a far more delicate fashion, ensuring that she didn't upset either the tray of delicious food or their respective cups of coffee. She plopped herself right in his lap, smiled happily at him, and retrieved a muffin from the unscathed tray. "How's this for torture?"
He flushed a light pink, which she found endearing and so planted a soft kiss on his lips.
"It's pretty effective, but as long as there's a reward at the end, it's worth it."
She almost gave him his reward on the spot, but her stomach chose that moment to growl traitorously. He smiled at her, removed the muffin from her hands, and raised it to her lips. She met his eyes with a small smile and took a small bite. His amber eyes flashed darkly and she wiggled further down onto his lap. A husky noise escaped his throat and he wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her even closer.
She abandoned the muffin and their empty cups fell to the floor. His clothes soon joined the cups in their exile, and she lost herself in him. Strong arms wrapped around her, situating her on him with her knees on either side of his hips. One hand rested in the small curve of her back, guiding her as she gripped his shoulders, tilting her head back. Pleasure flooded through her like liquid warmth, setting fire to her soul. His other hand tangled in her hair and her name crossed his lips as they climaxed together in a soft whisper, almost like a prayer, lips brushing the tender spot of her neck.
A while later as she lay on top of him, listening to his heartbeat while he lightly stroked her back, she mused that if there was such a thing as bliss, she was pretty sure she'd found it right here, next to him. She was once against startled by how right this felt, how completely not weird it was to feel this close to someone she'd known all of eighteen hours.
She'd definitely gotten to know him.
She was only slightly concerned that this had felt more like making love and less like having a really good time, and brushed it off as an overpowering sexual attraction because he was a god in bed.
She sighed contentedly as his fingers brushed against the back of her neck, right below the base of her implant. She'd noticed last night that his was a different make from hers, which meant he was probably an L2. For one thing, his implant was flush against his skin, whereas hers protruded ever so slightly, almost as if a metallic bouncy ball had been installed at the base of neck. Shortly after the 'rescue' on Mindoir, she'd displayed biotic aptitude in a spectacular shouting match with some desk-jockey who wanted to push her immediately into foster care, nevermind the fact that she'd just lost her entire family along with everyone she knew and really just needed someone to talk to. His face had turned a vibrant shade of purple, then blanched white as a sheet when she'd flared. The small act had startled the shit out of both of them.
The Alliance moved her to a government boarding school after that incident, and she'd gotten one good, smug look at the red-faced jackass before being relocated. By the time they'd gotten around to implanting her, the L3's were solidly on the market and L2's with severe side effects were being retrofitted.
She'd suspected he was older than she was, but the implant served as confirmation that he was at least three years older. The L2's had been shut down alongside BAaT.
Aw hell, if he was an L2, there was a high chance that he'd been at BAaT. She shuddered at the idea of being in that hell-hole, and counted herself lucky that she'd been a colony kid. Well, lucky insofar as BAaT was concerned. The horror stories at the boarding school had been the stuff of nightmares.
She raised her head and looked up at him with a tender expression, her eyes sad. His hand tightened on her shoulder and she dropped a kiss on his before enveloping him in a hug.
This time, she purposefully made love to him, gently caressing him as he moved inside her while ignoring inner protests that she if she wasn't careful she'd find herself getting attached, because for the tiniest fraction of a second when she'd looked up at him, he'd had a haunted expression deep in his amber eyes. Right now, she didn't care. She wanted him to know she didn't think he was a freak just because he sported different hardware. She kept a slow, deliberate pace, measured by their breaths, staring deep into his eyes as they slowly, gently came.
He rested his forehead against hers, shaky breath dancing across her lips, and crushed her in a hug. She wrapped her arms around him and held him tight, tucking his head beneath hers, limbs entangled. She lost track of time as they laid there, gently massaging the back of his neck because she'd heard horrific stories of some L2's suffering from horrendous migraines simply because of how the implant rested against the nerves. Whether or not he did didn't matter, because the soft nuzzling accompanied by said massaging was wonderful. Not for a new gun and the latest omni-tool would she should give this up.
He slid up her body and came to rest on his side, one hand splayed on her hip while the other supported his head just above the pillow. She rotated to meet him, resting her hand on his chest, and they lay there like that for a while, simply looking at each other.
A niggling worry that she was veering towards the path of making herself into a giant fool whispered in the back of mind, but she shut the voice down with a firm stomp of a metaphorical boot. The hand moved up her side and came to rest just behind her ear, gently stroking her hair. She briefly wondered if this technically counted as breaking their informal third rule of 'no strings attached' because if she had her way right now, they'd stay on this bed and live out the rest of their lives.
Well, she qualified silently to herself, as long as she still got to go outside and shoot things, because she wasn't willing to compromise on the military thing either.
"We should think about maybe vacating this room in favor of sandier, sunnier locations." His fingers trailed a thoughtful pattern over the fantastically gruesome scar she'd earned from a particularly nasty piece of shrapnel when a missile blew up a skyscraper less than fifty meters away from her position and she'd thrown a young boy who couldn't have been older than 15 behind her. The resulting shockwave had knocked her on her ass, but only after a shard of broken metal scored a lucky hit as she'd prioritized shielding her face and the boy from the explosion. Skyscraper, one; Shepard, zero.
Fortunately she'd scrounged a tube of medigel from the smoking remnants of a clinic prior to that mess and quickly applied copious amounts of the goo to the wound, talked the kid down through his freak out session while compartmentalizing and filing away her own, then directed him on the how to's of field dressing a wound so she wouldn't bleed out and leave them both screwed.
Not long after that, she'd found a location where civilians were holed up, dropped the kid off, ensured the perimeter was as secure as it could be when shit was blowing up in every direction, and left to complete her mission objective: secure the comm tower and get communications back online. Secondary mission objective was to figure out why the goddamn GARDIAN's weren't firing and, if possible, get them firing. Preferably at the batarians on automated defense controls, though manual fire would work just as well so long as there were enough capable personnel to run them.
She hated relying on civilians, but beggars couldn't be choosers. Worst case scenario, she'd have to give a 30 second crash course on how to not blow yourself up while operating the GARDIAN control board.
She wasn't entirely clear on when she'd sustained that injury. The memories of Elysium were jumbled into a series of small fragments. Some parts she remembered with perfect clarity. Like when she'd managed to secure the comm tower against the batarians and get the communications grid back online. Slavers had already infiltrated the lower levels, killed all the personnel (or caged them), and locked out the network. She'd blown her amp in the process of taking back the tower when no fewer than fifteen batarians cornered her someone's office and shot the hell out of it, effectively leaving her no choice but to fling one biotic attack after another because her ammo block had run out. She remembered a white-hot searing pain before she blacked out. Fortunately, all hostiles were neutralized. When she'd woken up, she removed the faulty device, swallowed another freak out session, and cleaned the dead batarians of their ammo supply.
Good thing she'd already started down the special forces path and ranked as an N3 during the Blitz and therefore didn't have to rely solely on her biotics. She'd still sustained two bullet wounds (neither serious, though her brain argued at the time that any puncturing wound was fucking serious and she should really rethink her line of work) and one stab wound from a lucky throw of a dagger before she made it the network control room.
If he kept looking, he'd find the two small circles on her right thigh from the bullets, and a two inch slit on her lower back, just above her kidney from the knife.
"Shrapnel," she provided.
He frowned and drew his finger up the full length of the jagged white line before pressing a kiss against it.
She wanted to tell him how she got it, but that would definitely violate the first rule: no full names. And saying, 'Hey, remember the Blitz? 'Course you do, every Alliance soldier knows about the Blitz and that Alex Shepard held the fucking line. With all those buildings blowing up around me, I was bound to get hit by something. Really, it's amazing I don't have more shrapnel wounds than I do.' She could have kicked herself right now, because really, what was the problem with him knowing her whole name?
...Aside from the fact that she'd set the rule in the first place specifically so they wouldn't get attached. Hindsight was a bitch, because she realized names didn't matter. If her heart wanted to get attached, it damn well would regardless of whether or not it knew his name.
"Shower?" she asked.
His dark eyes slid up from examining the scar to her eyes, and he smiled. "Shower."
-A-
"I thought L3's were supposed to spike lower than L2's," Apollo grunted from across from her.
She could feel his biotic energy rippling around him, flaring to compete with hers. Honestly, she was practically at her own limit and thought she'd been struggling to keep up with him. She couldn't believe she'd agreed to this.
"Yeah, well, you know what they say about dynamite," she frowned as her tower toppled over, fortunately away from the sand castle she was attempting to construct. The urge to use her hands was overpowering. She wasn't any good with micro and was now woefully paying the price. Unless it helped to blow shit up in exceedingly creative fashions, she ignored the micro applications of biotics. She could pick stuff up just fine, but manipulating fields to gently form the delicate shapes of sand castles with the fickle material was hard.
"Stay the fuck away from it?" he supplied. She shot him a withering glare but he only smiled and leaned back on his heels. "What do you say we call this a tie?"
Alexis examined the two sand castles. Fuck, if he wanted to call it a tie, she'd let him because his sand castle was a hell of a lot nicer than hers. She winced at her dumpy one and promised herself that she'd put more of an effort into practicing smaller field manipulations. "Deal."
With a sweep of her hand she obliterated both castles, which caused him to laugh. In a surge of belligerence, she scooped a giant ball of sand and dumped it over him. That should teach him to laugh at her.
Her grin had only just started to spread across her lips when her world was suddenly inverted and she went flying straight into him and the giant ball of sand. Goddamn he was good! Well, hell if she was gonna go down without a fight.
She shoved him down into the sand with a push as more fell around them from her giant ball. He grunted and recaptured her in a pull and wriggled her beneath him. She found herself unceremoniously trapped and so did the only thing that came to mind: buried both of them in a ton of sand. She might not be good with micro, but lifting and manipulating large objects was something she did exceedingly well.
The sand exploded away from them and she blinked up at him and had a fraction of a second to register his devious smirk before his lips met hers in a hungry kiss.
She counted that as a tie, too.
Before they gave any onlookers an altogether different kind of show, he broke off the kiss. She sighed regretfully and wished she could tell what he was thinking as she examined the slight furrow of his brow, the almost unnoticeable downturn to his mouth, and the way his eyes didn't quite meet hers. They were shrouded in mystery, and she wanted to unravel their secrets.
"This would have gone great with your castle," he said, digging his hand behind her. He revealed a flat, semi-transparent sea-shell that looked almost like a large clamshell from Earth. It rippled in waves of blue and green, reflecting translucently in the sunlight.
"I think you're mistaken," she replied as she accepted the proffered gift. She ran her fingers along the ridges. "It's way too beautiful for my castle. The villagers would have revolted, wondering which kingdom I'd pissed off to acquire something so nice. Within days, my head would be on a pike, the monarchy would be destroyed, and the treasonous bastards would have set up a democracy. My name would be used to frighten small children into their beds."
"'Alexis' doesn't exactly invoke terror," he mused. "Besides, my kingdom would make a public announcement that the shell was a gift of friendship, and your insubordinate villagers would believe me since my castle was actually cool looking."
"Your castle was destroyed. Viciously. And with much glee."
He shook his head sagely. "After we signed a peace treaty, too."
"No wonder the treasonous bastards put my head on a pike. I can't be trusted."
"In that case, let this stand as a monument to the terrible tragedy that has befallen us."
She raised the seashell to her eyes. She could almost make out his expression behind the ripples of blue and green, but he was still mostly a dark shadow through the material. She smiled at him, watching the light play through the shell as she twisted it back and forth. It glittered.
"Have you ever gone sailing?" she asked him, peering through the seashell.
He rolled off her and pulled her up. "A few times, yeah."
Her eyes gleamed as she looked at him, the excitement evident in her expectant smile. "We should take advantage of this spectacular weather and go sailing."
He reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "You're going to want to pull your hair back, then."
Of all the days to leave her hair-ties back in the room. Well, there was no way she was walking back just for a circular band. She improvised with her blue scarf and tied her hair up. She briefly wondered if the long tails on either side of her makeshift ponytail would get in her face, but ultimately decided it didn't matter. "Done."
Forty-five minutes and one sail-boat rental later, they were out on the open waters. Apollo had done his best to give her quick instructions on how to handle the sailboat, and she'd done her best to pay attention, which was rather difficult considering that when he started talking seriously about the ins and outs of sailing, he'd been so adorable that thoughts of tearing off his clothes and kissing him furiously kept intruding. She was pretty sure he'd caught onto what she was thinking, because he'd blushed a light pink which only served to make him more adorable, if that was possible, but kept on instructing. Somehow, she'd learned enough for him to let her handle the navigation until he realized that she was a particularly adventurous sort of crazy.
She'd tried to see just how small of an eight she could make.
After much wrestling, he'd taken back control, set the sails for a gentler ride, and pulled her onto his lap. She was content to sit there, even if it meant not doing crazy-ass maneuvers, because he was warm. She could live with that so long as she got to continue sitting in this spot with his arms wrapped around her in this delicious fashion.
It'd been a long time since she felt genuinely safe. As the sun began to set in the distance, she closed her eyes and just let herself be. For the first time since she was sixteen, she realized she didn't just feel safe, she felt as if she belonged, in the truest sense of the word.
He brushed his hand against her cheek and rotated her ever so slightly, and ever so gently, to face him.
This, she decided as she gazed into his warm amber eyes, was bliss.
He pressed a soft kiss against her lips, tender in the way his tongue grazed lightly against hers, warm in the way he held her. His free hand hooked around the small of her back, slipping beneath her shirt. He slowly undressed her, removing each garment reverently, as if what he might find underneath was the most precious thing in the world. She stripped him with the same care, kissing each limb as it was revealed, before sliding up next to him. Her lips met his with a soft embrace that was no less passion-filled for the slow rhythm in which they kissed each other.
He seemed content to simply trace every aspect of her curves with his hands, and she was content to let him. She'd never felt more like a goddess than she did now, feeling his powerful, rough hands memorize every tiny part of her body. When he finally lowered her to the deck and they made love once more, she realized she'd very much broken the foundation of the third rule, wanted nothing more than to break the first rule, and could not even conceive of breaking the second rule.
His name crossed her lips multiple times as he moved within her, and she buried her face in his neck as she peaked anew. His arms pulled her impossibly closer, holding her flush against him, where she belonged.
The whole day, she'd gotten it wrong. It wasn't sitting in his lap, staring deep into his amber eyes, or laying his chest while he stroked gentle lines up and down her back, listening to his heartbeat that had been bliss.
He was.