Chapter 3: Crumble

Shepard spun and landed a kick to the punching bag. The chains suspending the bag from the ceiling creaked as she continued her onslaught of fists, knees, elbows, and shins. She circled the punching bag to look through the floor-to-ceiling windows separating the boxing room from the cardio room. James's glistening face glared at the computer tracking his progress on the rowing machine. His muscles bulged with each heave of the handlebar. If he pulled any harder, he might break the machine.

He flicked his gaze toward her and she paused her boxing to raise an eyebrow at him. He looked back at the computer. She shook her head and punched the bag one last time. A grown man was giving her the silent treatment.

She turned away from both the punching bag and the window to retrieve her water bottle.

Maybe she should have waited for another opportunity to contact Liara. She sat on the side of the raised boxing ring, sipping her water. Her eyes narrowed as she watched James. No, there was no guarantee that there'd be another opportunity.

James' gaze shifted to her again and she leaned back against the ropes, crossing one arm over her chest. His smooth movements degenerated into jerky yanks of the handlebar.

Three days of this attitude. Shepard was tempted to find out how much longer he could last, but then she'd be lonely. Anderson wasn't always available, which left her attorney to talk to, and she was less interesting than Shepard's wall. She scrunched up her face. She was going to have to apologise.

Shepard adjusted her fingerless grappling gloves, taking the time to stomp on her pride, and left the room.

"I need a sparring partner," she said as she sat on a rowing machine next to him.

"Plenty of other marines here," he said between gulps of air.

"Great. When I'm done with you, I'll beat them too."

James kept his eyes fixed on the computer. "Reverse psychology doesn't work on me."

Shepard snorted. "That's not reverse psychology. Reverse psychology is when I say you're too bulky to be a real threat to my enhanced strength, speed, endurance, and flexibility."

"Then why spar at all?"

"Amusement," she said as she turned off his computer.

He placed the handle back on its cradle and glared at her. She rolled her eyes.

"Fine," he said and shot to his feet.

James strode to the boxing room with Shepard trailing after him. He started wrapping his hands with the gym's borrowed equipment, using his teeth when he needed to pull the bindings tight. When Shepard moved to help him, he turned away.

Her stomach felt like she'd eaten something bad this morning. Give her a gun and an enemy and she was great at confrontation. This kind of confrontation made her want to turn tail and run. She retreated from his personal space, occupying herself with stretching and shaking out her muscles.

Two minutes later, he pulled his gloves on and walked over to her. She held out her fist and he touched it with his own before pulling back like she had scale-itch.

"I should apologise," she said as they circled each other.

He snorted. "Really?"

Shepard bit the inside of her cheek to stop herself from telling him to shut up. "Yes. I shouldn't have used your cousin's omnitool. It was wrong. I'm sorry."

"I thought I'd see the Consort's blue ass before having the Commander Shepard saying sorry to me."

"Hey, I've apologised–"

He threw a punch. Shepard ducked her head behind her arms. James dropped to his knees and wrapped his arms around her thighs. A spin of his body to the side and Shepard fell to the mats. He lay across her, his shoulder crushing her cheek into her teeth and pushing her head to the side.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. She shouldn't have fallen for that.

With a shift of her hips and a shove, Shepard wrenched herself out from under his shoulder and wrapped her legs around his waist. James's forearm pressed against her neck. His first mistake.

"Not bad," said Shepard, voice strangled from the pressure on her throat.

James eased the pressure. His second mistake. "Varsity wrestling."

"Cute," said Shepard. She smiled but didn't let it reach her eyes. "This is hand-to-hand, though—pins don't count."

Shepard dragged his unguarded arm off her throat. She clasped it as she executed a turn of her body so James's arm and head were trapped between her legs. He tried to yank his arm out of her grip but she clutched against her chest. Shepard could read the realisation that he had lost in the set of his jaw and the creases around his eyes.

She pushed her hips up. He struggled for two seconds before tapping her leg.

Shepard let go and rolled away before climbing to her feet. She held out her hand to James but he ignored it and got to his feet himself. He shook out his elbow, glowering at the ground.

"As I was saying," she said, dropping her hand to her side. "I've apologised to you before."

"Wrong," he said, halting his movements so he could fix her with a stare that would have made most drop their gaze. "I've said sorry to you lots of times, but you're the bigger pendeja here, and you've never said sorry."

That can't be right. There must have been a time she apologised, even offhandedly. She couldn't remember any of those times, but she was sure they existed.

"Are we done here?" James asked.

"No."

She jabbed with her right hand and it connected with his chin. His head snapped to the side. One arm came up to block her left hook even as he dropped to wrap his arms around her thighs. Shepard, prepared this time, sprawled her legs out behind her. His arms caught her about the waist instead. Undeterred, he picked her up. Her legs wrapped around his waist to stop him from getting too dominant a position. He slammed her back onto the mats.

Her ribs felt like they were crushing her lungs. She gasped for air as she linked her hands behind his neck and clamped her arms to her side. He fought her arms and legs, trying to sit up. The extra padding on the gloves—meant to make sparring less painful—scraped against the bare skin of her arms as he tried to wriggle his hands into the little gaps between them.

The muscles in her arms burned from the effort of keeping him close. Despite her enhanced strength, James was a beast. She let go of his neck and he sat up as far as her legs would let him. He was going to try to pass her guard. Before he could twist his body to the side and create space between her legs, she grabbed his elbow with one hand and the collar of his shirt with the other. A shift of her weight, the proper placement of her feet on the mat and his body, and she flipped them over.

She sat on his stomach, a low mount. James defended himself by pushing his forearms against her hips, trying to dislodge her, but she scooped his elbows out of her way, inching up his chest by pushing her knees up under his arms. She got high enough to be sitting on his diaphragm and dropped down, pressing her belly into his chest to keep his upper back on the floor even as his hips rose up to try and buck her off.

James shoved against her chest with his arm and Shepard reared up, grabbing his arm and pulling it across her chest. She dropped down again, trapping his arm between his neck and her chest. The hand that had trapped his arm between them scooped under his head and grabbed the bicep of her other arm. His breath rasped in her ear, his neck squeezed against his arm as Shepard ratcheted her arms tighter. She dismounted, dropping her hips to the floor and moving clockwise. He tried to move with her but Shepard was faster. As the angle between the bodies increased, Shepard was cutting off the bloodflow to his brain.

He tapped her arm.

Shepard let go and sat up, crossing her legs and looking down at his prone form. She bit her lip to stop herself from laughing at his red face gulping down air.

"I almost had you at the beginning," he said, the scowl on his face verging on a pout.

Shepard snorted. This almost felt normal.

"No, you didn't." Shepard rested her elbows on her knees as her breathing returned to normal. "I thought you did varsity wrestling."

"That was a long time ago."

"I can tell. You were reacting, only thinking about your next move, not the fifth or tenth one down the line that would get me where you want."

James rolled his eyes. "A lesson from you on planning and consequences."

Shepard sat up straight and looked away. And just like that, the thirty seconds of ease between them evaporated. She ran a hand through her hair and sighed. Apparently her apology wasn't enough. What else did he want? For her to fall at his feet and beg forgiveness? Shout from the rooftops that she was wrong? Turn back time?

"I needed concrete evidence to give the Alliance to prove that the Reapers are a real threat. The Shadow Broker is the only one who can do that."

"Oh, that's okay then. I've always wanted my baby cousin to be on the radar of an organisation with a private army."

Shepard stood and walked away from him before she kicked him. "I don't think you want an explanation. You want to stay angry."

She heard him clamber to his feet behind her. She spun to face him. He frowned, his gaze going from her tense shoulders to her balled fists. She must look like she was expecting to get hit. She swallowed the lump in her throat and forced herself to relax. He shook his head but kept his distance and muttered something in Spanish under his breath.

"I'm angry because your apology is bullshit," he said. "You don't care that you could have put my family in danger. I think you're just sorry you got caught, and that's why you're still justifying yourself."

Shepard opened her mouth and shut it again. He was right. She saw her opportunity and she took it, knowing it would anger him. If he hadn't found out, she would never have told him—another addition to the long list of things she kept from him.

"I don't think you get how relationships work," said James. "There are no superior officers, putting family in danger is not collateral damage, and anything more important than what you had for breakfast is not classified information."

Shepard pursed her lips. She didn't need a lecture on how relationships worked. The secrecy was for his own good, he was just too stubborn to see it from her point of view. Too stubborn and too infuriating.

"You are the last person who can lecture me about not opening up, James."

The pulse of biotics coiled around the nodes in her body. She stalked toward him until she was sure he could feel the buzz of eezo radiating from her. Even though her nose only came up to his chin, she refused to tip her head up at him.

"Where was that Collector attack that took little eight-year-old April?" asked Shepard, hands on her hips. James narrowed his eyes and his nostrils flared at his sharp intake of breath. A little voice inside her head tried to tell her she was being cruel. She ignored it. "How did you get that scar on your side? Why were you really on Omega? Why don't you talk about your family?"

The pumping music of the gym filled the silence between them.

The door opened. Neither of them broke their stare. The intruder got one foot in the door before Shepard flicked a glowing hand at them. A throw field pushed the intruder out the room again and the door slid shut. The tiny release of energy was enough to take the edge off her biotic build-up, and the interruption was enough to break the impasse.

"You can't expect honesty when you won't give it," said James.

Anderson had said as much to her after James had stormed off the other day. Coming from James, though, the words were so hypocritical she couldn't help a snort of derision.

"I wasn't brought back to be a girlfriend. I was brought back to fight the Reapers." She wished she could put space between them, wished she could look away from the hurt and anger that rolled across James's face, but Shepard would die before she was the first to back down. "I told you in the safehouse that I came with baggage. I told you to walk away if you couldn't deal with it."

James let out a frustrated growl, rubbing his hands over his head. She thought he might turn away and walk off, giving her the space she wanted without her needing to move, but he didn't.

"It's not your 'baggage' I can't deal with, Shepard." He flung his arms out, talking with his hands as much as his voice. "It's how everything has to be done your way, when you want it, and fuck anyone else. I know you're not a saint, but you crossed a line."

"If I had to, I'd cross it again."

James huffed a mirthless laugh. "And that's how I know that you don't mean it when you say you're sorry. I don't trust you anymore." His gaze darted over her face, both of them silent while he searched for whatever he was looking for. His shoulders slumped and he sighed. "I'm done, Shepard."

Shepard's head tilted to the side, confused as to what he was done with…

Oh.

The music and the smell of sweat and the people who passed by the windows faded as she stared at James, her eyebrows drawn together and her lips parted as if she was going to say something—except no words came out her mouth. No words even entered her head. Hell, she'd forgotten how to breathe.

Her chest burned, partly from holding her breath and partly from the pain that stung fiercer than her anger could numb. She licked her dry lips, buying time as she tried to gather the tattered remains of her dignity. She shut out those green eyes that seemed to be begging for her to fight him. She shut out that scarred face with those lips that had stopped her from revenge killing again, that had whispered sweet nothings, and that had wheedled their way past her defences just to rip her apart from the inside.

"Then I guess your babysitting services are done too, Lieutenant," she said, forcing the hard Commander Shepard tone into her voice. "I expect your transfer request to be on Anderson's desk by the time I see him this afternoon."

She turned and stalked to the door.

"You can't give me ord–" The rest of his sentence was cut off by the door closing behind her.

A/N: Sorry about the long delay between updates! The next chapter will absolutely not take two months to finish ;) Thanks dismalniece for your patience and quick betaing! 3