This does make some minor reference to my previous piece We Never Change. You won't be lost if you haven't read it, but it might help. Also, I'm rating this T for now, just to be safe, though the rating may bump up with later chapter(s).

And, as always: This is Bioware's sandbox; I'm just playing in it.

Kaidan slumped back against the wall next to his door and slowly let it bear his weight to the floor. Slowly was good. Slowly meant less headswimming. When he finally ended in a graceless heap with his legs sprawled out in front of him, he took a slow, deep breath and let his head fall back against the wall. His head lolled in the direction of his bed. His bed was still so far away and this particular spot of floor felt pretty good right now. And this particular wall was nice and supportive enough to sleep against.

Headlights raced by outside his window, and he winced at the sudden brightness. The glare reflected off the glass of the old-fashioned picture frame he kept next to his bed, sparkling straight into his eyes with little pinpricks of light that sent small spots of color exploding across his vision long after the car had passed by.

He frowned at his bedside table. Shepard. This was all her fault. Really. If she'd just actually replied to his e-mail instead of sending her version of a care package, if she'd just told him that her idea of "fighting to save" him involved another suicide mission, if she'd just talked to him, then maybe this would have been easier to handle, to wrap his head around. If she'd told him about the Omega-4 instead of letting him find out through back channels, he might not have needed to go out and get himself good and hammered after he'd run out of actual productive things to do that kept his mind off of her and where she was and if she was ever coming back and who was watching her six if he wasn't and could he trust whoever it was to do it as well as he would have.

Well, that wasn't entirely true. It wasn't like he'd intended to get drunk. Not really. He had just meant to have a drink or two, be in a place that was just loud enough to drown out the concern, the fear, that was eating at him but not loud enough to trigger a migraine. And then one drink had turned to two, had turned to three, and kept going until the turian behind the bar had actually cut him off. After he couldn't even walk to the door of the bar without running into two tables and a patron he could have sworn had materialized directly from the floor to trip him on purpose, he'd been forced to call Vasquez and Edelbrecht to get him home.

Thankfully they'd known him long enough that, while he was pretty damned sure they were shocked to see him drunk, they wouldn't hold it against him in the morning. He thought.

Another car zipped by and the glare off the picture frame seemed even brighter this time. Apparently sleeping against this wall wasn't going to work after all.

Kaidan sucked in a breath and braced his palms flat against the wall next to his hips and slowly pushed himself back to his feet. The walk to his bed took longer than it really should have and he nearly fell flat on his face twice, but he did manage it, hauling one knee up onto the mattress and then tipping forward and trying to avoid falling too quickly because his room was still spinning around him and that just wasn't fair. His room was a filthy cheater. Kaidan caught himself on his hands and let his head hang forward because it was too heavy to really hold upright anymore. He sank down to his elbows and then pushed himself over onto his back. His stomach roiled, deciding it really didn't like this position too much, and so he kicked back onto his side, somehow flopping even further over than he'd intended and laying with his face pressed into his pillow. Despite the fact that he was very nearly laying on his stomach, the nausea eased. Much better.

A third car raced by and this time, from this angle, the reflection wasn't so bad. A fourth followed immediately afterward, and Kaidan grunted into his pillow. His room was a filthy cheater and all those cars were aiding and abetting it. Normally he would have closed the curtains by now so he could get some decent sleep, but the window was all the way over there and if he closed his eyes his head didn't swim quite so badly and he could actually ignore the feeling of the floor spinning independently underneath him.

Another car went by and this time there was a horn. Inconsiderate bastards. Some people were trying to sleep off a long, hard night of worrying about their girlfriends' lives thankyouverymuch, and it was damned near impossible to actually sleep with all those lights and all that noise. Kaidan opened his eyes just a crack and glanced at the drawing on his bedside table. Or tried to. It wasn't holding still enough for him to really look at - it was wavering like he was looking at it from underwater and if vision could actually be thick, this certainly was. He heard a funny little whimpering noise and realized a very hazy, disconnected moment later that he'd been the one to make it. Her leaving him like this again just wasn't fair.

Before he could really make a conscious decision about it, Kaidan had activated his omni-tool and his fingers were fumbling at the display, trying to initiate the comm protocols. Even through the drunken fog, he knew it was a mostly fruitless endeavor: there was no way she would answer his call. She was still on the other side of the Omega-4. Or dead. His stomach lurched again. No. Not dead. Not again. He just needed to hear her voice. Just for the few seconds it would take to listen to the all-too brief recording that said she wasn't taking calls at present and please leave a message.

The comm protocols finally flashed to life, and he only had to punch two more buttons, her personal number still the first one on his speed dial even after everything, even after all this time, even though he hadn't called it just to hear her voice in almost a year. He punched those two buttons and watched the lights blink across his omni-tool as the comm protocols on his tool tried to connect with hers. After a few moments of silence, her voice washed over him for the first time since Horizon.

"This is Amanda Shepard. Sorry I can't take your call at the moment, but leave a message and I'll get back to you as soon as I can."

The indicator to leave a message beeped and he terminated the call and immediately called back. The lights blinked again, and then silence, and then her voice again. He called back a third time, watched the lights blink in their pretty little sequence, breathed through the silence, and then very nearly tumbled off his bed.

"What?" Shepard snapped across the comm, her voice thick. Oh dear God it was actually her. "Whoever you are, this had better be important."

"Shepard?" It came out as little more than a whisper. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Shepard?" Silence was the only response. Kaidan frowned. His omni-tool had apparently taken to conspiring with his room in the "filthy cheater" category. Either that or his brain had. He reached up and rubbed at his amp with two fingers. He didn't like the implications of that one, come to think of it.

"Kaidan?" Her voice was clearer, softer, and he closed his eyes, reveling in the sound.

"Hey, 'Manda," he grinned, burrowing into his pillow.

"'Manda'? Kaidan, what are you - Why are you-"

"You're kind of cute when you don't know what to say. I ever tell you that?" He swallowed a hiccup before continuing. "I should have. There's a lot I should've said, you know."

"You're drunk," Shepard said, sounding a little incredulous, and it was so obviously not a question that he wanted to laugh in response. It came out like a snort.

"'S your fault. Why didn't you call me? And don't try that 'I was dead' thing again. Only works once. Especially when you're not dead." Realization dawned slowly through the fog of alcohol, and he paused, opening his eyes to frown at the drawing of her he kept next to his bed. "Why didn't you call me when you got back, either?" Some sort of soft rustling noise came over the comm link. His heart thudded double time in his ears. "Amanda?"

"I'm still here, Kaidan," Shepard said gently. "I'm just getting out of bed."

"You were in bed?" The thought that she'd been lying in bed, remembering how soft and gentle she looked when she slept, sent a flush of warmth through him.

"Blowing up the Collectors' base and making a supposedly impossible relay jump not once but twice does tend to take a lot out of a girl." Kaidan could hear the smile in her voice, and a noise of appreciation rumbled in his chest. She was always so pretty when she smiled. Well, she was pretty all the time. But she was really pretty when she smiled. "Not to mention telling your terrorist boss to take a long walk out of a short airlock. And stealing his very fancy, very expensive ship right out from under his nose while you're at it."

"Been a little busy, then," he murmured into his sheets, his head pleasantly warm and fuzzy as he laid there and enjoyed just listening to her.

"Just a little," she said with a gentle, easy chuckle. "But somewhere between telling my boss off and stealing his ship, I did try to call you."

Kaidan scowled at his drawing of Shepard. He wasn't so drunk that he would have forgotten something like that. He'd been waiting for a call from her for weeks. "You did?"

"Mm-hm. When you didn't accept the comm-link, I sent you an e-mail and decided to get some sleep. I just assumed you were on an assignment or something." Kaidan poked at his omni-tool's interface, being deliberately slow and careful so that he didn't accidentally terminate the call. He called up his e-mail program and...oh. There it was. He tried to focus on the too-tiny print, accidentally crossing his eyes in the process. He screwed his eyes shut and pressed his thumb and forefinger against his eyelids. He opened his eyes and tried to read the timestamp a second time and finally succeeded. She'd sent the e-mail when he'd been approximately four drinks in. He thought. Might have been six. He couldn't be certain, and they'd all sort of blended together after the third anyway. But it had definitely pinged in when he'd been at the bar.

"Kaidan?" Shepard sounded worried. Kaidan cringed. He hated making her sound that way.

"Yeah," he finally said. "I'm here. Sorry. Was just," he sucked in a breath, trying to alleviate the pressure building in his chest, "looking at something."

"By 'something' you mean your e-mail, don't you?"

"No," he said immediately, hotly, before his room spun precariously again and he was forced to screw his eyes shut and press his face into the pillow to shut it out.

"No?"

"Yes," he admitted into his pillow.

"Sorry, Kaidan. Having a little trouble hearing you." He could hear her grinning again. His heart stuttered out a funny little rhythm in response and the pleasant fuzz enveloped his thoughts again. Kaidan wasn't quite ready to declare her in cahoots with his room and the cars and his omni-tool, but he was close. It was still patently Not Fair, though. "It's coming through a bit muffled on this end."

"Yes," he muttered as he rolled over onto his back. His stomach roiled again in protest, but he didn't care.

"Hey, Kaidan?" And her voice was all sweet and soft and low and tender and just a little bit husky and just like it used to be on those stolen nights in her bunk, when she would curl up next to him, both of them sweat-slick and sated and content, and they would talk, her head on his chest and her fingers splayed across his ribs and his hand sliding down her back, just enjoying the feel of each other. He closed his eyes and savored that sound.

"Hm."

"Did you read it?"

"Read what?"

"The e-mail I sent you."

"Oh. No," he admitted. "I'm a little," he hiccupped once, swallowed a second, "little too drunk for that right now."

Shepard chuckled, a rich, warm sound that made everything, just for a moment, feel right. "I should have guessed that," she said, and that warmth was still in her voice, spreading through him faster than any whiskey ever had.

"Yeah," he agreed, grinning, "you prob'ly should have."

Shepard only gave an amused-sounding little hum in response.

The silence stretched after that, and he almost nodded off, content to imagine her just sitting there enjoying the silence with him. He wondered what she looked like now. In the sleep-haze that settled over him, Shepard looked like she had on the SR1 - decked out in her soft Alliance blue running shorts and a little black N7 tank. The image wavered and shifted and she was wearing one of his shirts instead.

"What're you wearing?" Kaidan heard himself ask, and he could feel the grin tugging at the corner of his mouth.

"What am I wearing? Are you trying to - I mean - Really, Kaidan?" And his grin twisted into a full-fledged scowl. Did she really think he would try that? Now? Where would she even get that - oh.

"No. No I'm not. I just..." He licked his lips and rubbed a hand across his throbbing forehead, looking for the right words, because it wasn't like that. "Just wanna know what you look like right now."

"What I look like?" Shepard repeated, and she didn't sound annoyed anymore, and that loosened the knot in his gut a fraction. "A little worse for wear. But," she said, her voice low and throaty and taking on that husky, conspiratorial tone again, "the tank top and running shorts I have on are practically new, so I'd say I come out looking 'passable'."

That made him grin. That was his girl. "Where are you? When're you coming home?" The words had tumbled out before he could stop them, and he cursed himself. "The Citadel," he corrected, screwing his eyes shut and pressing the heel of his hand against his forehead. "When're you coming back to the Citadel?"

"I'll, uh, I'll actually be there in roughly - Oh damn it," she muttered, "I've got no idea what time it is. Edie," she said, a bit louder, and Kaidan frowned, even as her increase in volume made him wince. Edie? Who the hell was Edie? "how long before we reach the Citadel?"

"We will reach the Citadel in approximately fifteen hours, twelve minutes, Shepard," a second, smooth female voice came over the comm-link. His stomach pitted out and roiled all at the same time. He gulped in a breath and held it, trying to swallow back the bile. Shepard had been in bed and she wasn't alone.

"Sorry, Shepard," Kaidan managed to spit out, thick though it might have been. He fumbled at his omni-tool's interface, hoping he could work the functions to terminate the call quickly enough. "I didn't mean to interrupt anything."

"Kaidan-" Shepard started.

"I'll let you go." Kaidan jabbed at his interface.

"Kaidan," Shepard repeated. She was still on the line? What in the - howwas she - he wasn't so drunk that he had missed the button completely, he knew that much. He'd hit something. He stared at his interface, trying to figure out what he'd actually done. And promptly flopped his forearm over his eyes. All he'd done was close his e-mail inbox. Stupid e-mail program subroutine. Stupid Shepard telling him she'd sent him an e-mail he hadn't seen. Stupid Kaidan, while he was at it, forgetting to close out of the program once he'd seen the e-mail in his inbox.

"Yes, Shepard?" he said slowly, deliberately, trying to keep his voice absolutely neutral.

"You aren't interrupting." And his heart did that little stuttering rhythm thing again, and his stomach did that pitting-flippy thing again and that was it. She was definitely conspiring with his room and the cars that were still zipping by outside his window and his omni-tool.

"But-"

"I'm alone. It's just - It's complicated." He frowned at that, opening his mouth to speak, but Shepard rushed on before he could, "It's not what you think. That was my ship."

"You mean a VI?"

"You could say that," she answered. A dodge? From her? He took a breath, intending to call her on it, but nearly belched instead. "Look," she continued on, "I'll be there in fifteen hours, give or take. I'd really like to see you, if you feel up to it by then."

His stomach flipped.

"I'd really like that," he responded, and he iknew he was grinning like a fool, but he didn't care.

"Okay," Shepard breathed, and he was pretty damn sure she was smiling, too. "I'll message you when we get docking clearance, tell you what bay they send us to."

He flopped back over onto his stomach and dropped his wrist onto the pillow right next to his mouth.

"Sounds good," he said. "I'll be waiting for it."

She made one of those happy little humming, purring-type noises. "I'll try not to keep you waiting too long."