#ch: asher shepard-alenko

[shadowglens]

OC SHIPS & KIDS ➵ a collection of my grandchildren

tagged by @radlurk, ty emily xx! tagging @fenharel, @noonvvraith, @eisner, @chuckhansen, @jmcolt & anyone else who’d like to. if you’ve already done this once, feel free to ignore or go for a round two!

[shadowglens]

86 for noa/kaidan? 🥺

86. "I love waking up next to you." || ~1000 words || READ ON AO3

Their bedroom smelt of petrichor and baby powder when Noa woke at 2am.

The bed shifted under her as she twisted towards the sound of Asher stirring, the static of rain against the roof thundering through the room. A soft blue glow washed over the bassinet shoved beside the bed and Noa smiled with a huff, despite the late hour and chill wind sweeping through the open window in the corner, at the writhing form of Asher in his swaddle.

She hadn’t been asleep anyway, had been lying staring at the ceiling while absently picking at an old, silvered scar that ran along the inside of her forearm. Kaidan was spread beside her, three quarters of their blankets draped over him after he’d tugged them from her during the night – a bona fide thief if she’d ever seen one. A crack of lightening had illuminated their little yard through the darkness, and Asher had woken, whether in spite of or with the storm she wasn’t sure.

“Come here, little man,” Noa whispered, gently lifting him into her arms. The angle was awkward enough that she once would have winced at the way her ribs caught but the injury was far enough in the past that it didn’t bother her anymore. Asher barely cracked open his eyes, instead scrunching his face in a way that looked almost painful as he squirmed in his swaddle again.

Shifting to sit back against their headboard with Asher cradled between her arms and knees was almost second nature at this point. He took to the bottle with little resistance, only a few gurgled cries echoing through the room before he realised what the object held before his face was. The little sharks on his swaddle glowed silver like her forearm every time lightning struck outside. The storm didn’t seem to bother Asher as much as it did his mother.

This routine, of waking and feeding and waking, was both foreign and familiar to Noa. The lack of sleep was an old friend to her, insomniac that she was, but the love and affection that soaked every moment of her existence that she shared with the bundle of wrinkles and gurgles and shark-printed pyjamas was an entirely new beast for her to tackle.

Never had she held anything as breakable and innocent as Asher. Her hands were meant for bearing weapons of mass destruction, for cradling the galaxy despite the way it burned – she worried, even now, that she would taint his pure skin with the blood stains and scorch marks on her palms. His tanned skin was so untouched by the world, his fingers so pure where they clutched at the bottle.

She could stare at him and his innocence forever. Her son. Her son. What a strange, wonderful concept.

“All good?”

Noa turned, careful not to jostle Asher from his ever-important task of eating, to see Kaidan staring up at her from his pillow. His hair fell haphazardly across his forehead, curls indignant against the humidity of the storm raging outside. The squint of his eyes was a near mirror of the face Asher had made mere moments before and Noa’s heart ached at the sight.

She just nodded at Kaidan, indulging in her still-warm heart by freeing a hand and brushing some curls from his face. “Morning.”

“Yeah,” he whispered, a lopsided smile stretching his jaw as he stared at her and Asher in turn. “Did the rain wake him?”

“I think his stomach did.”

Kaidan rolled onto his back, blankets tangling around his waist and legs as soft laughter bubbled up his throat. Noa smiled as he dragged a hand over his face, tousling the curls she’d just brushed aside. “Can’t blame him for that, I guess.”

Noa wiped at Asher’s lips with a cloth as he spat up excess formula. Even with his hands securely tucked against his small chest, she could feel him trying to settle back into a comfortable position against her thighs. In the twenty minutes it had taken for him to drink his fill, the cybernetic connection at her hip had begun to ache a little. She reminded herself to find a better position tomorrow night.

“There we go,” she muttered as she burped him, even if the process took longer because of his sleep-addled state. “Good job, little man.”

Asher was well and truly asleep by the time she leant over to place him back in his bassinet. His skin was so soft when she ran her thumb along his forehead, the inklings of dark hair starting to grow from his scalp. More lightening cracked, painting them in silver and blue. She could feel as Kaidan snaked a hand out to rub at the exposed scarring along her bare torso.

“Come here,” he mumbled, as sleep addled as their son.

Noa let him pull her back towards him on the bed, smiling through the gloom. “Kaidan . . .”

“Don’t Kaidan me. You are not getting out of this bed until the sun has risen.”

His threat was dampened by the way he couldn’t keep his eyes open. “That trick doesn’t work anymore, old man.”

“Yeah well, can’t blame me for trying.”

Noa shifted to lay on her back again, this time with Kaidan pressed against her side. He stared at her through half lidded eyes from his pillow. The rain continued to rattle against the roof, the sound of water splashing in Bruno’s likely-overflowing water bowl echoing in from the yard. Despite the early hour and miserable weather, Noa could already hear the tell-tale song of birds in the air.

A yawn cracked open Kaidan’s jaw. “Just try, for me? I like waking up to the sunrise and you.”

“No promises.”

Kaidan stretched to plant a kiss on her shoulder, apparently deciding he’d won. Her skin tingled with ozone and love. Asher gurgled in his sleep beside the bed, by far the loudest sleeper of the three of them, which was saying something considering the soft snores that had already started to slip from Kaidan. Noa tugged back a few sheets that he’d stolen earlier, stared at the ceiling, and resolved herself to at least try and get some more sleep before the sun started inching through the curtains or Asher stirred again.

She had a fair idea which would happen first.

Noa couldn’t find it in her battered, stitched-back-together heart to mind.

[shadowglens]

noa sees how much it burdens asher to grow up with her as his mum (and kaidan as his dad tbh), and it wrecks her to think about him suffering because of her successes 🤡

[shadowglens]

i can’t stop thinking about my shenko kid