#yeah okay so i actually bit a chunk out of a soap bar

[insteadoflight]

the soap

bar on my desk looks like candy, and i wonder if 

lately i’ve been feeling happy, in a way where the emotion isn’t a bubble about to pop and slam me hard into concrete but rather a swell of a wave, bringing me to sea, and when i’m riding it i forget drowning is imminent. 

i am riding the wave and i feel alive and--

nothing, nothing, nothing can stop me and 

i can bite it, and it is very soft,

drowning

is not as bad as a crash into asphalt, since there is no pain, no breaking bones. just slow drifting, surrounded by bubbles and salt and fading sunlight. 

and my teeth leave an imprint, and why not bite through the whole thing?

[infiltraitor-n7]

After Alchera, herons and hamsters

I | II | III | IV | V | VI | VII | VIII | VIV | X | XI |  ao3

Here is a sliver of time, snicked from the shockingly small amount they had been given, that he could never shake the feeling that he hadn’t hoarded properly, that he had wasted, seconds spilling over the edges as he carelessly assumed seconds would turn into minutes into hours into months into years into the rest of their lives, as if time were a rifle with an endless clip—

Watching a vid, blue light flickering across the white walls, under a blanket even though they were both sweating, slick skin sticky where they pressed into each other. The sharp planes of her shoulder were hard under his cheek, but she absently ran her fingers through his hair and he didn’t want to move in case she came back to herself and stopped. The hamster, toted around with Shepard anytime she knew she’d be on shore leave, huddled in its wheel, framed by the window.

The marines on the screen encountered the enemy on foot and one performed a particularly graceful move that broke her opponent’s neck, the snap vivid through the speakers. Shepard made a happy, satisfied sound.

They had worked out a deal: for every action vid Shepard wanted to watch, they watched one of Kaidan’s soap operas. He never understood why someone whose job it was to kill would want to watch actors pretend to do it in their downtime.

“It’s soothing to see the fake,” she had said.

“The fake?”

“Yeah, when they do something impossible, that would never actually work in life, but the music is swelling and everyone is good looking and the good guys win.”

“So good guys winning is fake?”

“Oh yeah.”

“We’re the good guys, Shepard,” he had said, and she had looked at him with that expression he could never read.

“You’re a good guy,” she had finally said, curling her palm around the back of his neck.

“So I’m not gonna win, huh?”

“S’why I’m here. To make sure you do anyway.”

He had stared at her, but she had just turned back to watching, making pleased noises every time the bullets found their mark.

He had worried that she would be bored watching his soaps, but she seemed to take as much satisfaction from watching the characters break each other with words as she did when they used weapons.

“That was fucking clever,” she had said, after a particularly well-played villain machination that ended with the love interest turning their back on their true love.

“I thought you liked seeing the good guys win?” he had asked.

“Yeah but it’s a soap, right? There will be a happily-ever-after, but it doesn’t mean shit unless our couple goes through some shit.”

He had snorted, and the music had swelled.

Now, in this remembered sliver of time, she suddenly jerked, as if she had seen something in her periphery (even when she was resting, she was watching), and she sat up, neck stretching as her eyes searched for the movement. He made a little sound, a hitched breath of complaint, and he reached for her but she said, “Look,” and he looked.

A heron sat perched on the balcony railing on the other side of the window.

They watched in silence, the vid paused, as the large bird tilted its head, as its wings shifted, as the moon’s reflection from the water dappled across its hunched form.

“I’ve never seen one in real life,” she whispered.

“There are a lot around here. The orchard is in the middle of a wild bird refuge,” he murmured back.

“That fucker is majestic.”

“You think that until you hear it squawk. Their calls are not exactly pretty.”

“Don’t ruin the illusion, Alenko.”

The hamster in the window must have finally seen the bird then, because it started running frantically, the clattering of the wheel spinning shattering the silence. The heron lifted, flapped, and sailed out into the dark.

“Good job, Captain Ham. If that had been a frag grenade, you’d be dead,” she informed the hamster.

“At least you get to keep your illusions for a while longer,” he said.

She reached out and picked up her beer bottle, offering him a swig. “Let’s drink to that.” She smiled, and pulled him down onto her shoulder again, rough fingers dragging through his wild hair as gunfire filled the room again.

Now, standing in her apartment on Arcturus, Kaidan wonders if the hamster’s frantic, futile running hadn’t been some kind of metaphor, as his heart thuds in the silence. In his mind he fingers that sliver of time, bracing for the inevitable cut as he traces the moment’s contours. He steps cautiously, as if the place is rigged with trip mines, but then jerks to a halt as he notices that the small space doesn’t smell like her— but why would it, when she hadn’t been in this apartment in months, in over a year maybe. The air filtration system had probably sucked all scent of her from the confined space and been pumping in neutral, recycled oxygen through all those seconds minutes hours days he had spent with her across the galaxy.

He had gone to her attorney, and he had learned that she had left him everything, somewhere between their gunfights and careening across distant planets, Wrex blowing chunks in the back of the Mako, between their frenzied fucking in the downtimes and their laughter in the canteen as Ash and Garrus arm-wrestled and Tali recorded for posterity and credits changed hands as bets were won and lost. Somewhere in between she had written a will and he knows now that her betting wasn’t just for laughs— when she scored at the casinos, she’d set aside sums for investment, and she had a fat pile of financial assets that she had never touched because she was busy saving the galaxy instead of spending credits.

He stands now, in her private space that doesn’t smell like her, hands loose at his sides, wondering about all the things he’ll never know about her. He knew that she had grown up poor on Mindoir. Maybe that’s why she had been so careful with all of her careless winnings— that reckless compulsion to win, tempered with the fear-propelled need to save the results.

He shakes his head. He doesn’t know why he has come here. He has no plans to empty the apartment, and he has no plans to live in it. The attorney had given him the access codes per Shep’s will, and he had avoided even thinking about them. But today he woke up and found himself standing in front of the door, his arm lifted so that his omni-tool could do its thing. He had stopped, chest shuddering as terror began to garrote him. People swept past, going about their normal unfucked lives, and he struggled to look normal while his throat choked itself. He called Ishida.

“Kaidan.” His shrink squinted at him through the vidscreen.

“Hiya.”

“You look like shit, what happened?” He tilted his head, and Kaidan knew he was looking at what was behind him, his clever mind ticking through possibilities.

“I’m at Shep’s apartment.”

Ishida just waited.

“I’m scared,” Kaidan cleared his throat.

“Of what?”

“Dunno.”

“I’ll wait.”

“Yeah.” Kaidan rubbed the back of his neck. He watched Ishida watching him, and felt the terror slowly bleed out of him. After a few minutes, he could think straight. “I guess I was afraid of how much it’s going to hurt to step inside there and see all of her things, and,” he paused, breathed. He made a little flailing gesture, but of course Ishida couldn’t see it— the movement  just waved the vidscreen around. He continued. “See all these bits of her that I never knew about while she was alive. See her things when she hadn’t prepared for me to see them, you know? Like I’m trespassing, or something.”

“But it’s not her apartment anymore. It’s yours,” Ishida said.

“Yeah, but—”

“She must have wanted you to see what was in there. She wouldn’t have left it to you if she hadn’t.”

Kaidan didn’t respond. He thought about Shepard saying that she was always prepared to— he blinked. That she was always prepared to die. At any moment. That it was just her job.

“Okay.”

“Do you want me to meet you there? I know your ass is all alone out here, so if you need someone to be with you, I can take the time out of my exceedingly busy schedule to hold your hand,” Ishida said evenly. Kaidan snorted. Somehow he had gotten used to how his therapist said the rudest things in the most genteel tone of voice.

“No. It’s fine.” He took a deep breath. “I can do this. Thanks, Doc.”

“I know you can,” Ishida said, and then promptly disconnected.

Kaidan squared his shoulders, and entered the apartment.

Now, he shakes his head again. He inhales deeply, but it just smells like Arcturus always smells. He is surprised to see the place is filled with plants. Vines and ferns and cacti and some little bushes with delicate little flowers blooming. She must have some sort of automatic hydration system, because he knows no one has been in here since before her death. He had no idea she had any interest in botany. He drifts further into the apartment, notices how the plants are pretty much the only decoration so far. No art. No personal knick knacks. Just a riot of green, and dishes strewn across the kitchen counter. The lack of Shepardness after all that fear of falling apart in her personal space is almost like a punch to his solar plexus. He sags and moves towards the bedroom.

As he turns, he spots a pile of clothing stacked sloppily in the corner. He blinks, then almost breaks his knee against the coffee table in his frantic scramble to reach it.

“Fuck,” he chokes, hopping a little as he grabs the first garment his hands touch and shoves his face in it.

He gasps and hears himself laughing, shrilly. The hoodie stinks. Like cigarettes . He pauses. Sniffs again. Like cigarettes and… tequila? But also, underneath, like her. She never smelled like flowers, or fruit. She just smelled like her. Skin and sweat and gun oil and coffee. He is laughing because of course her dirty clothes reek of some shitty bar and of course they’re piled in the corner and thank the universe or the Goddess or whoever else that she was such a reckless slob sometimes because now he is pulling the hoodie over his head and it is stretching painfully across his broad shoulders but he’s surrounded by Shepard’s smell and he can almost feel her lying beside him on the floor, hungover as hell, both their mouths dry and horrible with morning breath, and her laughing in his face anyway, throwing an arm around his waist and saying, “Fuck it’s too early.”

“Really, if you think about it, time as we measure it planetside has no meaning in space,” he would say. “No early, no late.”

“Bullshit. It’s too fucking early for you to be philosophical. I have a headache that makes me sympathize with your biotic ass headaches and I don’t like sympathizing,” she groaned.

“Uh, the proper term is migraines, and no matter how crazy you’ve partied in the past, you have no idea how bad they are,” he placed his index finger on her nose and tapped. “No. Idea.”

“Not. Helping,” she bit out, tapping his belly with her knuckles before sloppily kissing him.

Now, he knows he would probably look unhinged if anyone were watching, but he drags the rest of the clothing back into the living area and spreads the pieces around himself. He bunches up a pair of her cargo pants and lays his head on them, curls in on himself right there on floor, arms around his knees, and he breathes, and breathes, and breathes.

He slips into sleep.

He dreams he is watching a flock of herons in space from the Normandy’s deck, wings eclipsing swathes of stars. He is confused because he has never seen herons fly together; they are always alone, perched gracefully at the edge of the water, their grating calls wrecking the peaceful view. Shepard is there, but for some reason her hair is shorn, her neck exposed, and he wants to run his fingers up the soft down on the back of her head—he reaches to fist his hand in the longer tufts on top and pull her back to kiss her, but she twists away and begins to unbolt the window, one bolt at a time, each chunk of metal hitting the deck like seconds ticking on an antique clock. He realizes she’s going to detach the window and dive in among the birds out there in the vacuum, and there is nothing he can do to stop her but he doesn’t know why. All he can hear is a hamster wheel spinning and the bolts striking the floor, one after another.

He jerks awake, and his back hurts, because he is on the floor. He is crying again, arms and legs flung out, his shoulders aching from the stretch and reminding him how hunched over he has held his body for months. He clutches at the sweatshirt and yanks it up to his nose and inhales, and the reasons behind the bar stench soaking the fabric make him cry harder, because he wonders now, even if she hadn’t died over Alchera, maybe he would have lost her in another way— to red sand, to the bottom of a glass, to her own twitchy fingers and filthy mouth and fragile neck and reckless disregard for her own safety. He can’t believe himself, how many seconds minutes hours days months he wasted believing that the time they had was an infinity clip, that he had all the time in the universe to learn all the things he didn’t know about her, instead of exploiting each ticking moment like the digits counting down on a time bomb. He hates every nanosecond he spent not looking, not asking, not demanding, not licking, not inhaling. The regret is crushing the meat of his heart, the self-loathing drenching him like an oil spill. His shrink said to just feel it. So he feels it. He keeps the hoodie’s neckline pulled up over his nose, like an oxygen mask, as his breaths come hard and ragged, and he lets his body throb with the missing of Shepard.

Eventually, in time, the time he burns through so carelessly, he stops crying—the inside of the sweatshirt is slick with his snot and tears. He sits up. He gathers the clothes he had spread all around himself and takes them to the little washing unit and puts them inside and hits the button before he can change his mind. He keeps the damp and now truly disgusting hoodie on as he turns to face the empty apartment, to begin sifting through the layers of Shepard’s life, a clumsy archaeologist amidst the ruins of her abandoned things.

[dharkness-bdbrw-blog]

The Creeper

Zo: ~The taxi drove through a neighborhood of houses that I’d never even known existed here in Caldwell. I stared out the window like a frickin tourist, craning my neck this way and that to take in all the sights.~ Are you sure we are going the right way? ~The cab driver assured me that we were going straight to the address that I’d given him.~ Ooookay then… ~I stayed silent but felt the nervous butterflies rolling in my stomach. Why would anyone who lived in a house like this want to hire out to some part time agency? They usually had a full staff of servants all to themselves. The car stopped at the end of the lane and I looked out to see a huge, older style mansion, complete with a security gate. This couldn’t be right. I looked down at my clothes and groaned. This job wasn’t going to last long, I just knew it. First impressions were everything and I was screaming club whore right now. Well, I better just face the music and get this over with. It might be a short trip. I could see me calling a cab to get the hell out of here real soon. But I couldn’t make this guy wait for me because I didn’t know how long I would be. I paid him from some of the money that Dhark had left on the counter for me. That man was just too sweet. Too good to be true, if I was being honest with myself. There was something wrong with him. It was just how my luck played out. I’d find out later that he was some kind of criminal that just got out of doing hard time or something like that. I shrugged to myself and pulled up my big girl panties. No sense worrying about shit that hadn’t happened yet. I taught myself that one a long time ago. With a near constant run of bad luck that always plagued me, I learned to live in the present. I straightened my outfit as best I could and walked up to the intercom box next to the security gate. I hit the call button and waited nervously, shifting from one foot to the other. ‘Yes?’ An impatient voice came over the speaker. I touched the button and leaned in probably further than I needed to for them to hear me.~ I think you are expecting me? I’m from the maid service. My name is… ~I didn’t get a chance to tell them my name. There was a loud buzzing sound and I heard the lock disengage.~ Well okay then. ~I grabbed the bars and tugged them open.~ My name is Mary Frickin Poppins. The evil version of the Disney one. I’m actually here to kill you all while you sleep. ~I laughed to myself and sashayed my little ass on up the gigantic driveway. ‘Fuck these assholes’ was already firmly in my head and I planned on keeping it there. Attitude was everything and I would be damned if these people made me less than awesome simply because they had money. I held my head high as I walked up the steps. I reached for the overly large knocker but didn’t need to bother because the door swung open in front of me. ‘Welcome.’ The stuffy butler guy that answered the door clearly was not actually in the welcoming mood. His eyes said everything that his mouth didn’t. He viewed me as something like gum that stuck on the bottom of your shoe. He sniffed the air as if I stank to high heavens and then immediately turned his back on me. Rude! ‘In there is a proper uniform. Change quickly. There is much work to be done.’ He pointed to a side room that looked more like a closet. Hell, it probably was. Asshole! I tucked in the urge to punch the old man out and went into the room silently, though I had to bite my lip to do it. ~

~I looked at myself in the mirror, turning this way and that. This was what they called a uniform! It looked like the super slutty version of a french maid’s outfit. The kind that you would buy for Halloween if you were a whore. It pushed up my boobs and set them on full display while leaving my ass practically hanging in the breeze. Don’t get me wrong, I looked good. I looked damn good but that didn’t mean that I wanted to prance around like this. Maybe for Dhark I would… The thought had me blushing. I nearly had a wardrobe malfunction when there came a knock at the door. I squeaked and tucked the girls back inside, yanking and pulling at this ridiculous get up to encourage it to cover more of the goods. ‘I trust you are properly attired.’ It was the old butler guy again. I stuck my tongue out at the closed door.~ If that’s what you want to call this skimpy outfit… ~I sucked it up and opened the door. I got a quick once over and then he nodded. As if I needed his stamp of approval. ‘I will take you to the library.’ He handed me a feather duster, to complete the stupidity of my costume, and turned to leave. ‘There are many books that require frequent dusting. There is a ladder on the side that will slide around to the higher shelves.’~ Okay then… ~A ladder?! Was he fucking serious? There was no way in hell I was climbing anything in this stupid get up. He stopped in front of an open door and motioned me through it. The first thing that I noticed was the fireplace at the far end. A fire was crackling away even though it was really too hot for something like that to be necessary. I turned to say something about it and found that the butler was gone. Fuck it. I shrugged and went to work dusting the books nearest me. The room was large and lined floor to ceiling with tons of old books. I didn’t even stop to read the titles after the first few that were clearly in a different language that hurt my head to even look at. ‘You ARE a lovely one…’ I’m not even ashamed to say that I let out a scream and dropped my duster. Holy shit, there was some creepy dude sitting in a chair by the fire. How the hell had I missed him before? He looked to be in his late forties, with gray around the temples. There might have been a time when he was attractive but he’d clearly let his body go to pot. ‘Go on. Pick it up.’ It took me a minute to realize that he was referring to the duster. Hells. I’d dropped the damn thing. This equated to something like dropping the soap in prison. I just knew it did. There was no good way to pick up the stupid thing. Even bending at the knees, I would still end up flashing something. I scowled at the offending object and turned my side to the stranger. Bend at the knees, keep your back straight, you can do this. No tits and ass are going to flash this creeping creeper. I suddenly remembered the call to my boss. Yeah, okay, it was falling into place now. I was the newbie who called in late to work so let’s send her to the icky man’s house cause he wants to get his voyeur on. Nasty. And my boss was going to hear an earful. I had half a mind to walk out right then and there but something stubborn in me said that I could finish the night’s work. I turned my back to him and continued my work, oddly aware of his eyes burning into me. Then he was suddenly behind me. A movement so quick and quiet that I would have never seen it coming. I screamed out as he pushed me against the shelves. Something sharp nicked my neck and I felt his tongue slide over the spot. ‘You are not entirely human. Are you?’ I didn’t give a shit what the hell he was blabbering about. I grabbed the biggest, thickest book I could find and swung it over my shoulder to smack him right upside the head. That got him off of me, quick fast. I spun around and clocked him again, this time on the bottom of the chin. His head flew back and I could tell he bit off a large chunk of his own tongue because his mouth was bloody. I wasted no time getting the hell out of there. I ran like the wind, pausing only long enough to grab my purse on the way out the door.~ #TheCreeper #BDBRW