Nothing happened.
And that was a good thing, Steve told himself. They needed their downtime, their rest and relaxation. At least, up to a point they did.
He'd seen some of the guys get stir crazy plenty of times; he'd seen their faces when they realized what was going on outside of Piccadilly, too. When they realized how much they'd lost but also when they realized how quickly people were bringing it back together again. They wanted their scars to stay and mean something, only it couldn't be raw flesh and open wounds all the time. Nobody could live like that.
And Steve had tried.
To say that healing was part of the process of being healed almost seemed too obvious—except that it was the one thing most people couldn't wrap their heads around. They couldn't forget what they'd been through or what they'd lost. They had to keep pointing to it, pointing it out.
They didn't want pretty. Raw was what they knew.
Kaidan was doing okay, that place between fine and good, a stopover along the way. Steve was the one who kept saying he needed some fresh air—because providing excuses was what you did if you wanted to help out. Whether or not the lie was as obvious as it felt didn't matter so long as nobody called him on it.
And Kaidan didn't, wouldn't do it. Whether or not he was grateful…
That was something else.
Vega didn't allow it, but Kaidan took the walks without protest, levering himself out of bed in the early afternoon. He moved slow but steady, one foot in front of the other, just like he was supposed to. They widened their radius each time, walking in broad sweeps around the neighborhood. The sunlight felt good even if the air didn't feel clean.
One time they passed Vega helping out—where else?—at the orphanage, surrounded by kids, doing his dinosaur thing.
'He does that a lot,' Steve said. Like he had to explain it; like it was his place or his right or even his pleasure.
But something about watching the kids play together made Kaidan's face get tight, especially around the cheekbones, not so much around the mouth. His skin didn't look like it fit anymore, more bruise than flesh, so they didn't stay long.
Knowing what it was that was up and not being able to fix it—Steve spent more time with his hands balled into fists than he liked, or jiggling his knee when he was sitting. Preoccupied was part of it, seeing what needed to be done and thinking about it instead of making it happen, because it wasn't that simple.
Some things got busted. Some weren't meant to fly again.
Most of the more easily repurposed scrap metal had gone into ground transport, which just wasn't the same. Steve felt comfortable behind the wheel no matter what, but he'd seen so many generations of IFVs at this point that he was starting to agree with Vega, of all people, about the merits of the M29 Grizzly.
It was what it was.
'Gotcha something,' Vega said, stepping in, while Steve was doing something else.
Not just anything. He was messing with the aquarium VI. It didn't have to be fixed; there wasn't an aquarium to put it in. But that didn't mean it had to be broken, either. At least it wasn't waterlogged, stinking of mildew.
'…Whoa, whoa,' Vega added. 'You can look but you can't touch, Esteban. Hands off the merchandise.'
Yeah, Steve thought. That's the story of my life right now. 'So you just want to keep lugging this hunk of junk around with you everywhere?' he asked instead.
Vega shrugged, holding something so close to the chest Steve couldn't figure out what it was. 'I'm not a fish person. They're always staring atcha. Gives me the willies.'
Like he didn't enjoy the attention.
Steve smiled anyway.
'Okay,' he said. 'Fair enough.'
'Anyway, if it ain't broke, don't fix it,' Vega added, conveniently ignoring the part where it was broken. He nudged the Normandy replica aside to make room on the table, then put his goods down.
They were groceries.
Needless to say, it was unexpectedly domestic.
'I know how you feel about my cooking, Esteban,' Vega said. 'And me? I'm just tired of eating the same shit day in and day out.'
'Yeah.' Steve watched as Vega pulled out a hot-plate next, old and about as busted as the aquarium VI looked, but a hundred times as useful—if it did work. 'You're a growing boy with a healthy appetite. I know.'
'Heh.' Vega found their power strip, messing with it for a few seconds, trying to get it to respond. From zero-eighteen hundred to zero-nineteen hundred, everybody was using, and there was only so much electric to go around. Then, the buzzing started; Vega only had to hit the thing twice, which for him, for them, had to be a record of some sort.
'You're a whiz,' Steve said. 'Of course, you couldn't have asked me to take care of that for you or anything. It's not as though I'm good at it, right?'
'How about you just sit there and look pretty?' Vega replied. 'Relax or something—if you even know how.'
'Coming from you, Vega, that's really something.' Steve didn't grab the only chair in the room. Sitting on Vega's bed was…an option, but not surprisingly he hadn't made it that morning, and Steve wasn't at a place yet where he felt like doing that for him every day: running his hands over the sheet that was still warm, the pillow that had a big dark dip in the center. And he shouldn't be at that place, ever; Steve didn't want it and Vega didn't want it. If he did something like that, it'd have to be for a different reason.
But Vega's bed wasn't warm right now. It might've been safe. Steve's other options were limited; he couldn't lean against Vega's table—something Vega'd picked up and repurposed, something that used to be worth so much more than its current uses, although it did match the ship model.
If you squinted halfway to closing your eyes, that is.
Steve didn't bother. He'd already looked at things from every angle while trying to resolve them into shapes that made more sense than they ever would, and eventually he sat down on the edge of Vega's cot, elbows on his knees, thumb tucked against thumb. It was hard beneath him, cutting into the backs of his thighs.
'I'd return the favor someday,' he said, 'but cooking isn't exactly one of my…talents.'
'This ain't about that.' Vega tapped the hotplate, testing to see if it was hot enough yet. It sizzled against his finger and he brought it to his mouth, sucking on it and saying damn but not saying ow. 'Shit. Little bastard gets hot.' It clattered up on the table, along with a frying pan and something like a spatula.
'Okay,' Steve said. 'What is it about?'
'Nothin' but the huevos, Esteban,' Vega replied.
If it were any other day—BD, Allers's operation was calling it; Before the Decision—then Steve could've brought himself to believe it. What was a little home-cooking between two friends? But back on the Normandy there were all the supplies they needed right there; all Steve had to do was order something extra on the acquisitions form, if Vega gave him enough of a head's up in advance for him to sneak it on.
The first time, Steve expected them to come out burnt and too nasty to eat. I can fix that turned into James kicking something until it sputtered to life again; You wanna see my moves always ended up with somebody in the medical bay, Dr. Chakwas looking reasonably put-out; and there was no reason why It's time for you to try my famous huevos rancheros wouldn't end up the same way, with Steve scraping them out to the Commander's hamster when nobody was looking.
Back then, it was easy. Now, it was more than ten times as complicated. Steve had to wonder where Vega got the eggs, how he managed to get that hot plate, where the pan and spatula came from—whether it was on loan or his to keep. These things mattered, small as they were, because they were the only things people had to sort out anymore, the only things they could understand.
Something shiny like oil hit the pan. It sizzled. It didn't smell so great but Vega was cracking eggs, small as they were, straight on top.
'You like 'em nice and hot, right, Esteban?' Vega asked.
It was classic Vega. He couldn't say a damn thing without making it into innuendo; the problem was that he didn't realize he was doing it half the time, and figuring out which half was which demanded instincts in top-condition, honed and polished and ready to see some action.
'You know I do,' Steve replied.
Vega chuckled, his back to Steve as he bent over the hot-plate. 'Well too bad, 'cause I don't have any salsa. Gonna have to make do with this bottle of Tabasco and some jerky instead of the tortillas.' He shook his head at that, the tattoo on the side of his neck straining, then relaxing, then straining again. 'Whatever. I'll improvise. I like improvising.'
You can't kick huevos into being huevos rancheros, Vega, Steve thought, but didn't say it. Actually, at the moment, it kind of felt like he could.
The smell was better than what Steve was usually met with for dinner—a big screaming nothing, taste that hit in the back of the throat instead of on the tip of the tongue, food that had to be washed down or else you realized how close you were to choking on it. This had flavor, and whether it was good or bad didn't matter so much as the fact that it was different.
Also, Vega never burned his eggs.
That was something Steve appreciated more than the eggs themselves.
It wasn't about the ingredients; it was about what you could do with them. Steve watched and Vega cooked. Halfway through the frying process, he used a plate to cover the frying pan, right after splashing some water inside from a thermos. Steve could still hear everything cooking underneath, muted and sizzling and spitting as it steamed and fried at the same time. Vega rubbed the back of his neck, hooking a finger into the collar and tugging it a couple of times, over a line of sweat.
The light in the room was dim, extra electricity mostly shunted to powering the hot-plate. As long as they didn't take up more than their faire share, Steve couldn't find it in himself to feel guilty. It was too warm, sure, but it was the first time they'd felt that way since…
Since. It didn't need clarification.
'If you aren't careful, everybody's going to want a piece of that action,' Steve said.
'Story of my life, Esteban.' Vega let his collar snap back against his throat. When he turned—only a half-turn to glance over his shoulder, but still—Steve realized they were looking at each other.
In months of bad moments and dangerous ones, never the good kind of dangerous, anticipation being more about what could go wrong and what more they could lose and remembering everything they'd already lost than it was about hope anymore, it was a really good moment. Private, but not lonely—and not hiding from anything, either. Vega had a look on his face Steve didn't recognize, a face he did recognize, a face he wouldn't stop seeing for the rest of his life. However long that was, it was that ability to remember that stuck with him.
And they needed that: something to lean on, something to lean back. It wasn't reliance. It was trust.
It was surprising. At the same time, it wasn't.
'Damn,' Vega said, but it didn't have its usual whatevers—its shields, mostly for deflection, only absorbing impact some of the time. 'They're just eggs, all right? You don't gotta look at me like that about 'em.'
'Nothing but the huevos, Mr. Vega,' Steve agreed.
Vega blinked. He was close to being surprised—and maybe close to grinning, all in a split-second shift.
'Not just any huevos, though,' he said.
'Yeah. I guess you could say they're pretty special ones,' Steve replied.
That, and the whole rest of the bloc was going to be jealous once they smelled it. They all shared space, noise, frustration, lights-out hours, curfews—but this was something they couldn't get in on automatically. Steve's stomach flipped over when Vega checked how the eggs were doing, when he turned off the hot plate and said, 'Blew my load on everything else. Don't have any more plates. Sooo… We're gonna have to eat it right out of the pan. Nothin' too fancy.'
'I thought you didn't like sharing,' Steve said.
'Forks are one thing. I don't mean anything by it.' Vega ran his palm over his head, from the nape of his neck up to the sort-of Mohawk in the front, not enough to make it messy. Steve imagined doing the same thing with his own hands and it wasn't the first time he'd pictured it, but his thumb was only pressed into the soft web of flesh between his fingers, rubbing the little reminder of a pulse that kept even time over there.
'Uh-huh,' Steve said. 'Come on, admit it—you're just making the rules up as you go along.'
'Who said there were rules?' Vega asked. 'I didn't hear anything about rules. And if I did, I wasn't listening.'
So there, he might have said. Steve pinched the same skin between his fingers, enough to serve as another reminder—before Vega served the eggs.
They didn't look the way Steve remembered them. Not much did. When Vega caught sight of them, lifting a brow and snorting some air from a flared nostril, Steve knew he was thinking the same thing. They weren't about to lie about it, but Steve couldn't help bowing his head and chuckling.
'You laughing at my huevos, Esteban?' Vega asked.
'No,' Steve said. 'I'm laughing at the two people about to eat them.'
Vega—probably because he couldn't decide if this was more insulting or less—couldn't find the right reaction. Steve's words caught him before he bristled, before he took offense. And then the time was in the past, the cue already missed.
Nothing happened.
The sauce was hot enough that it made Steve's eyes prickle close to something like tears; he had to wipe his forehead with the back of his hand and pinch the bridge of his nose instead of the vulnerable spot between his thumb and forefinger to clear his head. Even Vega coughed after his first bite, clapping himself on his chest, pounding something free. He was still sweating, but it wasn't for the usual reason—a work-out that lasted too long—and Steve didn't have a towel to pass him. Steve was sweating too. He tried Vega's technique for it, tugging at the front of his shirt, the top button of his collar already undone, and cool air shifted down the front of his chest where it was on its way to being too-warm.
'It's good,' Steve said. 'I think it's trying to finish what the reapers didn't, but… It's good.'
'Just good?' Vega asked, and it felt like a challenge.
Steve thought about kissing him—right now, after all this time, only it wasn't that long, not when you put it into perspective. Both of them were a lot older than they'd known each other, after all. And no part of it was more than a speck of dust in somebody's eye.
But there was a balance, something going on. The question of whether or not Vega was ready. When a guy did things half and half then obviously you couldn't trust which half was serious and which was fucking around—aimless, directionless, pointless. Lonely.
They could do this. It was so damn easy to get things wrong.
Steve rubbed his thigh with his palm. For once, Vega was watching him, low in the shadows—without blinking too hard.
Maybe it was just the eggs, but he was starting to look serious.
'Hey,' Kaidan said, from over by the hole in the wall, leaning against it with his good arm. Steve was reminded of what they all had to lean on, of what they didn't. 'I thought I smelled… Something burning, actually. I guess I was wrong. Don't let me interrupt.'
'What you smelled—that's just Vega's cooking,' Steve said. He'd looked up already, and when he looked back, Vega was scraping his eggs around in the pan, shoveling another bite into his mouth, staring at them with the same expression. So it could've been the eggs. It really could've been. 'It looks worse than it smells, but it tastes better than both.'
'We got extra, if you want some,' Vega added. 'Come on. I'll deal you in, just like old times.'
'Yeah,' Kaidan said, taking a step into the room. 'Just like old times.'
It wasn't, Steve thought. Not at all.
But that was okay, too.