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Veetor’s anxious.
But then, Veetor is always anxious. It’s something Kal’s come to expect and plan for, but sometimes it will burst, go supernova and descend on them both. Lots of pacing in their cramped little prefab on the homeworld, the boots of his enviro-suit clicking against the metal floors as he mutters to himself, makes notes on his omni-tool. Usually, Kal can bring him down, but today he seems particularly worked up, and doesn’t seem eager to explain way.
“Veetor—”
More mutterings. Kal catches a word here and there — dark matter, reapers, blue light — but it’s all nonsense until Veetor turns and says —
“We should both be dead.”
Kal flinches. “What?”
“Statistically. The probably of us both being here, like this, alive—” He starts pacing again. Kal’s starting to get a little tired of it, but he doesn’t like to put his hands on Veetor without letting him know he’s doing it, so he sits at the little kitchen table and waits for it to end.
Eventually, Veetor sits across from him.
“...Sorry,” he says, sounding like he’s coming back to himself.
“Don’t be.” Kal’s shoulder twitches with his old injury — he got absolutely wrecked on Palaven during the war. Making it back alive hadn’t been the expectation, so he gets why Veetor might consider him an anomaly.
“I had therapy today. I…” Veetor puts his head in his hands. Through the dark purple of his visor, Kal can see his eyes are closed. He rarely gets a chance to look at Veetor’s face, but he knows if he could, those sharp cheeks would be wet with tears.
For a moment Kal considers popping the seal of his own helmet, but he’s only a month on immuno-therapies, and the prefab hasn’t been deconned since he got back home. If he survived the Reaper War only to get taken down by infection, Admiral Zorah would never forgive him.
“Vee.” Kal reaches out and pries one hand from Veetor’s face, covering it with his own. “It’s okay. You never have to apologize for trying to get better.” Stars know I’m still working on it.
Veetor gives a weak laugh. It’s a rare thing, and Kal collects each one, a little jewel all his own. He lifts Veetor’s hand to the mouthpiece of his helmet. Veetor’s eyes open behind his visor.
“I’m glad you’re alive,” he says. “I don’t…I didn’t mean to imply—”
“You didn’t. I didn’t take it that way. I know what you mean,” Kal adds. “Against all odds, right?”
Veetor nods. “Against all odds.”
For a moment, they sit like that — suspended in clothed intimacy, watching the other one live, breathe, exist from the other side of a plastic table that never sits right. Outside, the Rannoch sun is going down, and the noises of creatures Kal only ever heard about in stories echo into the dusk. Veetor likes to take walks around this time, to look at the critters and collect them.
When Kal offers to go with him, Veetor makes an excited noise and hands him a few plastic containers. They go out into the brush and peer into the night, the sandy ground illuminated by the lights on their helmets.
“One of the human scientists says they have landscapes like this on earth. Beautiful deserts filled with strange creatures. Scor-pions,” he says slowly, sounding out the English word. It doesn’t translate to anything Kal understands.
“Cac-tus,” Veetor says. “J-Joshua tree.” He bends down and gathers a very large insect with purple wings into a container. “One of the geth told me they have all the old quarian names for these creatures in the archives.”
Kal nods. He doesn’t love that Veetor works so closely with the geth these days, but he knows it’s just an old soldier’s thoughts. Things are different now. The geth and the quarians live in harmony as best they can. Quarians have a homeworld. Just the other day, they retired the last ship in the flotilla.
Kal didn’t cry. Not even a little.
“Kal?” Veetor takes his hand. “Are you alright?’
“Hm?” Kal looks at him. “Oh, yeah,” he says. “I’m just fine.”
Veetor smiles. “Okay. I’m ready to go back.”
“I’m right behind you,” Kal says, and follows him home.
When Kal first returned to the flotilla after surviving his mission on Palaven, Veetor was there.
There was a war on, and even though it was all hands on deck, Veetor wasn’t a soldier, and there wasn’t a sensible soul on the flotilla that could have argued against that. They put him in the med bay, cleaning up after the doctors, bringing water to patients, reading to them when he had the energy.
Kal was in quarantine for days with infection — everyone swore he was going to die from it. Real shame, he thought. Reegars were military folk. They didn’t die from fucking illness. Kal remembers the first few days — delirious with fever, he begged for someone to kill him. All his men had died — how had he survived?
It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair.
It wasn’t fair.
When he came out of the illness, he was placed on bedrest in a corner of the med bay, a heavy curtain drawn around him. He couldn’t see anything out of it, but he could hear the sounds of people dying. His people and the geth had finally ended their centuries long war, but there was still fighting, still a war for the survival of their galaxy. Kal laid away for hours, breathing clean air in his medical suit, listening to the sounds of soldiers dying. He slept when he could. He drank and ate what they gave him.
And then, Veetor came.
He pushed aside the curtain and was the first familiar thing Kal had seen since he’d gotten back. He didn’t even know Veetor that well, but they’d stood together at Tali’Zorah’s trial.
“Hello, sergeant.” Veetor set a tray on the bedside table. “How are you today?”
“I’m…good. Veetor, what are you doing here?”
“Helping,” Veetor said.
“...Right.”
“I’m not fit for fighting,” Veetor explained. “I’m no use to anyone. Even here, I’m not especially helpful, but I’m doing my best.”
“I’m sure you’re doing fine,” Kal said.
“...Well. Thank you. I appreciate that.” He tucked the now empty tray under his arm. “The doctor thinks you should walk today. If you’d like, we can do that together.”
“I don’t see why not.” Kal had been walking on his own the last few days, albeit slowly. Sometimes he needed a walker, or someone’s arm when he got tired, but it hadn’t been a complete disaster. Veetor stood to the side as Kal got himself out of bed and stood on shaky legs. After a moment, when he felt like he could take a few steps, he nodded. “Okay. Let’s go.”
Veetor walked alongside him, and they meandered out of the med bay and through the halls of the ship. Kal couldn’t be sure where they were, and Veetor didn’t really seem to know much. He also didn’t talk, which was…nice, honestly. Kal didn’t have much to say.
When they went as far as Kal could handle and turned around, Veetor helped him back into bed.
“They say when this is over, we will all have homes on the homeworld.”
Kal looked up sharply. “...Will we?”
Veetor nodded. “That is what Tali’Zorah told me. I trust her.”
Kal watched Veetor walk away.
“Yeah,” he said. “So do I.”
Their home on the homeworld isn’t much. The prefab is small, but it has what they need. Kal and Veetor began their time on Rannoch as roommates. Back then, they each had a cramped room and shared the kitchen and living space. Now, they share a room and a bed and the second room is for all of Veetor’s plants and creatures. It’s typical for most quarians cohabitating together to go down to the one-room model, but Kal suspects their continued living here is a perk of nearly dying in the war and being friends with one of the people in charge.
So Veetor gets his plant room, and Kal doesn’t have to sleep alone at night.
After they get in from their walk, Veetor goes to put his new acquisitions into their tanks while Kal makes something for dinner.
Behind him, Veetor asks quietly, “...Could we eat without helmets tonight?”
Kal turns, surprised. “Of course.”
Veetor nods and closes the door to his plant room. He goes to the panel on the wall and initiates the decon sequence. It takes a few moments, and it always makes the place smell a little off for a while, but the first moments after releasing the seal on his helmet and breathing in the clean air of their home are worth it.
And it’s worth it, too, when he can see Veetor properly.
The pale blue of his skin shows the veins beneath, in contrast to Kal’s darker purple. Kal loses himself, for a moment, and admires the elegant column of Veetor’s neck, rising up to his jaw. Quarian biology is as strange to Kal as probably anyone else. He recalls the surprise he felt the first time he took off his helmet in front of a mirror — seeing the glow of his eyes beyond the obscurity of a visor, the flat of his nose, the ridges across the top of his head — he knew what he looked like, but it had all been so blurry for so long. The enviro-suits made quarians all look the same, but beneath, they were as varied as humans.
Kal forces himself to look back at their dinner. Without helmets, they can eat easier. He doesn’t have to chop the fresh produce as fine, or turn their grain into a slurry. He makes a simple grain and vegetable dish, seasoned the way Veetor prefers (though Kal finds it a bit spicy for his own tastes), and plates it when he’s done.
Veetor cooked when they first came here. Kal never had to cook a damn thing in his life, surviving on rations and dextro-shakes the way any good marine should. But Veetor delighted in the strange fruits and vegetables that had grown on Rannoch uninterrupted in their absence, and he learned to prepare them. He eats the meal Kal sets in front of him joyfully, complimenting the flavor.
“You’ve become very proficient at this,” he says.
“That’s…thank you.” Kal never knows what to do with Veetor’s compliments. He gives them away so freely. Veetor never harps on his frustration. He says what he feels and moves on, leaving Kal to either catch up or agonize into the night.
Kal prefers to keep pace.
They chat idly through their meal. Veetor works in a lab a few days at a time, while Kal oversees security for the docks. It keeps them busy — an idle mind creates unwelcome scenarios — and gives them room apart. The first few months they were planetside, before things changed, Kal thought he was going to wring Veetor’s neck. Veetor was so different than he is now, so unwilling to speak — Kal didn’t know it was because he needed space, needed to walk and gather his thoughts and just be separate. The work now is good for them, even if they still go to bed together each night.
Kal watches Veetor talk about soil samples and remembers —
What if you grow tired of me?
I won’t. I couldn’t.
What if you are wrong? What if I bother and bore you?
Then we’ll bother and bore each other.
He wasn’t wrong. Soil is boring. Veetor’s excitement isn’t.
The first time they were together, Kal came so hard he saw galaxies. He didn’t want to admit to Veetor that he had used his Nerve Stim Pro a grand total of three times in his life, mostly when he was a lot younger. There just wasn’t…time.
Veetor was practiced with it. He’d apparently had several partners, but no one in the last few years before the war. He laid in bed with Kal and stroked down his chest until his breathing calmed. They were still months out from the immuno-therapies, it would be ages before Kal had the privilege of seeing Veetor’s smile, of touching the bare skin of his hand.
This was more than enough, he thought.
He still appreciates those moments. More often than not, they remain in their suits. Neither possessed a terribly strong sex drive in the first place, but when the mood strikes, a Nerve Stim Pro does the trick.
Kal still appreciates this, of course. He still appreciates Veetor straddling his waist, gripping his lips and feeling his cock growing stiff at the sight of him. Carefully he drags a thumb along Veetor’s slit and it comes away wet. Veetor gasps above him, nodding as Kal takes his cock in hand and runs the ridged tip against him.
“Please, Kal.”
Kal obliges. He has always been good at doing as he’s told.
He fills Veetor in a few strokes, and they each go still at the bare intensity of the moment. This is only the third or fourth time they’ve made love this way. Kal is still learning the edges and angles of Veetor’s body, as alien to him as it would be any other species in the galaxy. He admires it. Cherishes it. Watches as Veetor looks down at him, making his own observations.
“You always watch me like a lab specimen,” Kal says.
“I am…observing, I suppose.” Veetor moves, lifting himself up before dropping down and taking Kal’s cock again. He opens his mouth to speak, but cuts himself off with a moan, head tipped back and exposing that gorgeous neck again.
Kal dreams about that neck. About kissing it, pressing his teeth into it, leaving it bruised. Veetor doesn’t like pain, but he likes when Kal presses a little too hard into his hips, or digs his teeth into his shoulder just enough.
A little mark. A secret. Just between them.
Veetor moves faster and the moment he does, Kal knows it’s nearly over. He hardly ever lasts this way, his body still adjusting to so much sensation. But stars, is it worth it. It’s worth the sudden rush as his climax hits, as he comes with a shout and a jerk of his hips. Veetor is close, too. Kal can feel the way his muscles pull, his rhythm stutters.
“Kal—” he says, and falls onto his cock one last time, hands splayed over his chest as he comes with a rush and a gasp.
He melts. Sinks down into Kal’s arms and Kal holds him close and catches his breath, closing his eyes and taking in the last few seconds. He’ll use this, another time, with the Nerve Stim.
Above him, Veetor hums. “That was nice.”
“It was.”
Outside, Rannoch is alive, the sounds of the night permeating their moment. Eventually, Veetor wriggles free and coaxes Kal into a decon shower. Even with the therapies and the prefabs, there’s still a chance of infection. Either of them could have a sniffle come morning, but to Kal, it’s worth it.
When they’re done, they dress and crawl into bed together, Veetor settling into the crook of Kal’s arm and sighing happily.
Kal thinks about what he said — how they shouldn’t be alive.
“Veetor.”
“Hm?”
“I’m glad we’re alive.” Veetor goes stiff in his arms, but Kal quickly says, “You were right earlier. We—at least, I—shouldn’t be here. Doesn’t make sense.”
Veetor relaxes. “...Statistically, yes.”
“But I am. We are. We’re here.”
Veetor nods. “And you like that?”
Kal puts a finger under his chin — their faces are still bare to one another, so Kal drinks in Veetor’s pale blue skin in the moonlight streaming through the window and admires the soft glow of his eyes and captures his lips in a long slow kiss.
“Yes,” he says. “More than anything.”
“Except me,” Veetor says, preening. Just a bit.
Kal chuckles. “Yeah. Except you.”