#man don't you just hate when those pesky kett are such cockblockers

[ellebeebee]

Seachange

Part Three/Nine

Part One || Part Two

After the couch incident, things get awkward between Liam and Mira.  He doesn’t know how to fix it, and plus he can’t get any traction on his efforts to make connections with the angara.  Liam is just having A Very Bad Time.

4339 words, Liam x f!Ryder, teen rating

AO3

-

At first, he thought he was imagining things.

After Havaarl, there was a lot to do to prep for Voeld and rescuing the Moshae.  So, yeah, maybe she didn’t have as much time to unwind on his couch with him, some vid playing in the background while they worked on reports and emails.  Maybe her avoiding the cargo bay and haunting the ops table almost around the clock was just anxiety about making nice with the angara.  Maybe the way she was too… careful about the way she looked at him and spoke to him, handling each word and glance as if he were a mother-in-law or something-- maybe it was a side-effect of the job.

But he knew better.

He wasn’t imagining things, as much as he wished he were, and this all started a week ago the day after the couch hook-up.

Liam suppressed a heavy sigh.  Wouldn’t matter much anyway; he knew that the rest of the crew was already used to him being the loudest, most obnoxious bunkmate anyways.

Around him, the Tempest’s crew drifted on their own dreams during the dark quiet of the ship’s sleep cycle.  He had a bottom bunk.  Switched with Gil once the engineer complained he was worried Liam would toss and thrash himself over the side of the top.  It was stupid; not once in his life had he ever fallen off the edge of a bed in the middle of the night.  It had to be some sort of thing like how you can get so used to a sleep schedule that you wake up on time even without an alarm.  Your body knows its edges, its limits.

Except apparently he doesn’t know where his boundaries are, ‘cause he’d clearly crossed one with Mira.

Liam kicked off his sheet.  The ship’s sanitized and cool air hit his bare chest, tickled his leg hair.  He only wore shorts to bed; he couldn’t stand the feeling of constriction with anything more.  His feet hit the chilly metal floor.  As he stood he glanced at Gil in the bed above him: the guy was a terribly light sleeper.  And the spawn of Satan, apparently, because he got up at, like, 0400.  On purpose.

Liam scratched at his chest idly, and pulled out the chair to the desk, grabbing his datapad.

...sure their data would be helpful, but there’s no reason to believe we can’t reach the same conclusions independently.  In any case, our reserves are too precious right now to spread out to…

...offer seems well-intended, but forgive us if we are not eager to enter hasty agreements with…

...all very well, but you seem to have very little concrete support in your offers…

...hard truth is, we can’t stick our neck out for a people who are clearly endangered; an investment without security…

“Investment without security” has got to be his favorite way yet for saying, hey, we really just don’t give a fuck about those other guys.

Shit, what was with people?  Seriously, what the actual fuck?  Okay, maybe the angara weren’t expecting a hundred thousand (not even that, though, with the missing arks) new aliens to come knocking on their doors, but, hey, hello?  Nice, not-attacking-them people on the verge of starvation?  And, yeah, maybe things were spread really, really thin in the Initiative.  Like, layer of oil slick thin.  Even so, they had to make overtures to the angara.  They had to prove they were going to be good neighbors.  They had to prove themselves worth establishing an alliance with.  How the hell did anyone expect to push through the kett problem, and all the Remnant shit, otherwise?

Fuck.  It was just the same old shit, new galaxy.

Oh, some fuckwad with an EMP and an agenda wiped out power and water for an entire city district and you need emergency rations for civs?  Here, let me just make you jump through legal hoops for it.  Oh, this colony hit by slavers needs upgraded tech and defenses?  Sorry, they’re actually unsanctioned squatters, so they’ll have to fend for themselves.  Let us slap some fines on them for illegal occupation while we’re at it.

Oh, you’re a little kid that can’t help but get worked up at what may seem like dumb shit.  We’ll just label you a troublemaker, an idiot.  Ignore you.

Liam smashed at his eye sockets with the heels of his palms.

The glow of the crew quarter’s screens slipped through the cracks between his fingers, the light of the ship’s diagnostics, real time data.  It was blue and harsh and neon.  Brought angry tears to the back of his throat.

He was letting his head get away from him, he knew, but that didn’t change the fact that he was drowning in things that mattered.  These things mattered.  His concerns were legitimate (goddamit, they were), so he was struggling so hard to not blow up.

He could talk to Lexi.  He could, but sometimes that was just too impersonal.  Like, yeah, Lexi would sympathize, but she was trained to.  She was trained to fix him, not the problems he was looking at.

There was Jaal, but the guy was still skittish about them.  Especially when you brought up something deeper than how do I call you a shit in Shelesh.  And that just fed the fire Liam wanted to put out.

He could run through the options all he wanted, but he knew exactly what he wanted right now.

He wanted to go to the hatch of the Pathfinder’s quarters, knock, and spill his guts to Mira.  He didn’t even want to touch her-- actually, no, that was a lie.  Yeah, he really wanted to touch her again.  Submerge himself again in her smell and the warmth of her arms.  Watch her again like that, released from her everyday bullshit.  Watch her release him from his own head.

But, even more than that--

He wanted her to be his friend again.

Not this weird no-man’s-land of not really friends, nowhere near lovers.  Not even strangers, new acquaintances.  Because he was good at that: making something good out of a ‘just met.’

This?  Fuck no, he was no good at figuring out what the hell to do to fix a relationship he’d obviously pushed too far, too soon.

Just.

Fuck.

-

Liam woke up with about three hours of consecutive shut-eye, a very angry and empty stomach, and a new determination to make the best of things.

Okay, so he was hitting some roadblocks with the angara contacts thing.  No big deal.  It was to be expected, really.  First contact was always bumpy at, y’know, first.  Hence, the ‘First Contact War.’  And the Krogan Rebellions.  He needed to be patient.  Yeah, yeah, ‘patient’ ‘Liam Kosta’ was an oxymoron but whatever.  He’d deal.  He had to.

Secondly, he and Mira had agreed to not let what happened get in the way of the mission.  But not to shelf the ‘them’ thing just yet.  Apparently, she still found it awkward, so he’d just make an extra effort to reestablish the friendliness between them.  Make it easier.  Hopefully.

So he spent the morning banging around the tech lab.  He sent a mail to Mira asking her to meet him there, and tried not to take too personally when she didn’t show for almost an hour.

When she did turn up, she found him sitting at the work table, surrounded by various bits of armor.  And in his hands: her breast plate.  Which he was staring at.  Right between, the, y’know.  Breasts.

At the open hatchway Mira cleared her throat.  Liam jumped.  She was gazing at him with raised brows, and he realized what it must look like.  He coughed and put it down slowly.  He grinned at her.  Normal.  Totally normal.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey���” she said.  And she did that thing she’d been doing ever since… y’know: she automatically looked down, remembered herself, and looked up with a smile.  Except it wasn’t that broad, full-lipped smile that curled at the corners just so.  Her smile was tight now, anxious.  Professional.

Liam stifled his own nerves to swivel on his stool toward her.

“I’ve been thinking,” he stated, a tad too loud and too carefully. “Voeld.  Cold as a witch’s tit, right?”

Her eyes shifted back to the breast plate he’d put down. ‘Tit.’  Goddamit, how did he keep doing this?  How?  It was a wonder he didn’t report to Lexi daily, no hourly, for his own foot lodged down his esophagus.

“That’s what they’ve told us,” Mira said with that weird smile again. “Jaal gave us some data with more specifics.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Liam agreed quickly.  He waved at the neon holoscreens arrayed around his bench. “I’ve been looking at that.  Nomad’s got good environmental controls, but we won’t be sitting in it all the time.  I thought I’d go over everyone’s armor and run some tests.  See how the thermoregulators are functioning.”

She nodded her head, tucked brown curls behind her ears.  He tried not to think about taking that dark amber shell between his teeth.

“Good idea,” she told him. “You… started on mine?”

“Uhm,” he started, glancing down at her upgraded and modded Initiative-issue plates sitting around him on the bench on crates. “Uh, yeah.  I mean, priorities?  I-- because you’re guaranteed to have your boots in the snow right?  Not-- uhm.”

And she was looking at him, waiting for his mouth to stop spewing.

He tried again, “So, I’ve been running tests!  This Nexus stuff isn’t bad, but it could always use help.  Am I clear to tinker a little?”

“Sure,” she said, shifting on her feet and still smiling stiffly. “Anything else?”

“Well…” he paused. “Whose armor should I, y’know, prioritize after yours?”

“Definitely Jaal’s.  If he’ll let you.  Do the angara even need it, though?  He said they don’t feel temps like we do.”

“Yeah, something about their electricity thing.”

“Yeah,” she agreed.  And paused.  She paused for a significant moment, a hand rubbing at an arm as if already imagining the bite of the wind and ice ahead of them.

“Uhm,” she continued, “Talk to Jaal about his armor situation.  And.  Uh… yours?  If you’re feeling up to it.”

Liam’s stomach did weird things.  Flipped about and made him simultaneously want to be ill and fly about like a damn budgie.  So dumb, to be this moved over something as simple (and routine!) as getting put in the field at her side.  Stupid, but he couldn’t help the grin that spread over his face.

“Blowing up kett heads?  Daring rescue of a damsel?  Pathfinder, you shouldn’t have.”

He was grinning at her, his tone light and playful.  He fully expected the mood to transfer.  Lighten the weirdness.  But Mira just stared at him with an inscrutable something going on behind her dark eyes.  The laughter dissolved on his tongue.  Shit, what was she thinking?  He wanted to know.  Badly.  He hated this not knowing and distance between them.  It was just… he thought they’d gotten close, that they were apart of each other, if even just a little bit.  And not just because of the sex.

“Just make sure you’re ready?” Mira said, expression unreadable. “And keep me informed about your work?”

Liam swallowed, nodded.

The tech lab door hissed quietly as she left.

-

He spent the day blaring music in his ears, running cold-temp stress tests on armor, and trying not to get worked up by the occasional unhelpful e-mail dropping into his mailbox.  And trying not to get overwhelmed by pessimism for both his professional (or “professional” in the opinions of others) and his personal life.

After staring at the data feeds he’d produced for so long that it all started to blur into a mess of neon blue hieroglyphs, he passed out.  Didn’t even register Jaal coming in to sleep in his cot in the lab’s corner.

Liam woke with a start at about 0500.  And woke Jaal, too.  Guy was still wound up around all these aliens, sleeping light.  Liam apologized for intruding in his space and left.

He wandered down to the galley and made the first pot of coffee.  Stuff wasn’t great, but it was growing on him.  Maybe eventually the scientists would figure out how to grow actual beans?  Maybe.

“Is that coffee I smell?”

He looked up.  Lexi stood in the hatchway, smiling at him for once.  She mostly made that ‘Kosta you are an idiot that makes my life difficult’ face at him.

“Fresh from the fabrication machines,” he told her, giving her a cheers gesture with his mug.

Ignoring his quip, she shook her head and went to the coffee maker. “Bless you.”

Watching her select a mug from a cabinet and pour from the carafe, Liam commented, “You’re up early.”

She glanced at him. “That’s what I should be saying.  I’m always up at this hour.  You aren’t.”

He shifted in his seat at the galley table and smiled over his mug, waiting for her to take her coffee and move on.  But she paused in the hatchway.

“Liam?” Lexi asked, head slightly tilted. “Are you having trouble sleeping?”

Her tone is that soft one, the doctory-can-I-help-you one.  And her eyes rove over him, picking up on his waxy, tired skin and inwardly-bowed posture.  He wanted some glib and funny defense to roll off his tongue, but nothing was coming to mind.  And maybe he didn’t really want to be deflective all that much.  Liam put down his mug.

“You got a minute?” he asked.

Lexi pulled out a chair across from him. “Of course.”

She rested her mug on the aluminum tabletop and leaned a little forward, all compassionate eyes and full attention.  It made him squirm a little, but no pain, no gain, right?

“Still not making much progress with the angara connections,” he told her. “And, yeah, I know it’s not all my responsibility--” Which he didn’t really believe and Lexi’s expression seemed to know that he didn’t either, “--but then, whose is it, then?  Someone has to start this.”

He fiddled with his mug and the doctor waited patiently. “It just seems like no one gives a shit, and I can’t understand it.”

Lexi propped her chin on a hand. “Liam, have you considered that your asking is worthwhile in itself?  I know you want real results yesterday, but that’s not exactly realistic, is it?  However, the fact that you’re passionate about establishing strong ties between the Initiative and the angara-- that speaks volumes.  And not just to me.  But to all the people saying ‘no’ to you right now.”

He shrugged. “Well, if they’re hearing, they’re still saying no.  What good is it if nothing actually comes from me shouting my bloody head off?”

“Liam,” she said, and her tone shifted to make him look up into her eyes. “I think you don’t hear this enough, but you are inspiring.  We will always need people like you.  Who care and are passionate and work so hard to make things better.  All of us on this ship need that.  Everyone out there--” She gestured vaguely at the hull. “Them too.  Even if they don’t realize it.”

He smiled a little at her, and felt the persistent tightness in his chest shift.

“Umm, another thing…” he coughed.

Lexi paused with her mug hovering, a brow raised.  And the look she gave him, eyes carefully attentive, made him think she knew exactly what ‘other thing’ he was about to bring up.  Well, whatever.  He didn’t care if the whole crew knew about his romantic misadventures (which they probably did), but he wasn’t sure how she felt.

“I think I’ve really screwed things up with Mira,” he told her. “I mean, we… y’know.  And we agreed to not let it interfere with everything.  But it just seems like she’s just… finding it awkward and weird, and I don’t know what to do.  Like, should I just leave?”

Lexi’s eyes widened. “Let’s not be too hasty here.  I’ve noticed some increased tension between you two, but I don’t think it’s gotten to the point of reassignment.  Whatever’s going on sounds like some failure of communication, because I know you both care for and value each other.  I wouldn’t be too pushy in trying to ‘fix’ it, though.  Let’s just relax, Liam.  Let her work out whatever she’s trying to work out. But make yourself available if she wants to talk.”

Liam snort with a self-deprecating grin. “Be patient?”

She gave him a look. “I know how you so hate to hear that, but yes.”

He laughed awkwardly. “Uh, yeah.  I got it.  Stop being an idiot, Kosta.”

“No,” Lexi stated firmly. “You’re not an idiot.  You just care a lot.”

He went in for a sip of coffee because heat was rising in his face, and he had a hard time taking stuff like that.  Lexi smiled and patted his hand.  And left, claiming something something kett dna synthesis something.

Liam spent a few more minutes in the quiet galley nursing his first mug of the day.

Turns out, new beginnings were a shitload work.  Who knew?

-

Voeld was colder than a witch’s tit.

It was kind of sad really: how fast he and Mira would jump from the warm and orange spheres of warmth around the Resistance heaters.  The modifications he made to their suit’s thermoregulators helped.  It was a tricky thing to set the sensors to a hair trigger in dangerously low temps, set off the little eezo drives to work at a furious pace.  And then to set a protocol to conserve power once temps endurable for their physical layers of ceramic and insulation were reached.

Blah blah blah, but it was still cold as hell.

Not moving made it worse.

That’s why it kinda sucked that they were camped out in the Nomad parked on a cliff overlooking a kett encampment, waiting to ambush a squad scheduled to land.  At least, according to an intercepted comm SAM had picked up on.  It had only been a half hour, but Liam’s teeth were chattering and his bits were trying to crawl back up into him.  He half hoped that Mira would just give up on popping the heads of this particular squad of kett and head back to Techixx or the Resistance base or, please baby Jesus, the Nexus and its deliciously artificial spring humidity.

But Mira just silently shivered beside him in the driver’s seat, eyes behind the bluish plexi of her helmet rapt upon the scattering of kett ground vehicles and empty storage containers below.  Recon.  Endless stores of patience and all that, goddamit.

Behind them, Jaal delicately snored.  His immunity to the stabbiness of the ass-eating cold was becoming increasingly irritating to Liam.

“How’s your suit?” he asked her.

She glanced at him.  He couldn’t see her mouth behind the breather unit of his helmet, but he could see in the tightness around her eyes that her smile still hadn’t improved.  They’d reached Voeld a few days after he talked to Lexi, and Liam had done his best to keep up his friendliness whenever their paths crossed on the Tempest.  But he didn’t go hunting her down, gave her her space.  Maybe it helped?  Shit, he didn’t know.

“It’s a big improvement,” Mira told him, voice tight and high with cold.

He forced down the comment that wanted to roll of his tongue, pointing out how she was obviously still freezing.  Space, space he told himself.

Jaal whistled through his nose shrilly.

Liam snorted, bit his lip.  A long pause.  And he couldn’t help it; it was too fucking cold and he’d been too damn tense for too long.  He began to laugh.  It built until he was helpless with giggles, his side painful with sharp stitches.  Beside him, Mira caught his amusement.  She was laughing, doing that thing where she covers her grin with a hand.  Even though she had her helmet on, and even though it was really a crime against the universe at large to hide a smile like that.

Mira shook her head, inhaling sharply to recover. “How can he do that?  Just.  Sleep.  In this cold.”

Liam coughed. “I dunno.  Maybe he’s dead.”

She slapped at his shoulder.  Lightly, in that playful and completely not-serious scolding way she hadn’t done in forever.

“Don’t say that!” she told him. “That’s just what we need.  Oh, sorry, Evfra, we somehow managed to get your man killed, but you’ll still trust us, right?”

Liam chuckled. “Oh, sorry, Evfra, that thing about saving the Moshae?  Yeah, screwed it up.  You’ll still give us resources and seeds and shit, right?”

“I’m not playing this game,” Mira stated, turning back to the front view of the Nomad.

It gave him a good look at her profile, at the way her eyes crinkled in amusement.

Below them, down the steep vivid blue plunge of the cliff face, the kett camp showed zero signs of movement.  None.  Not even a little ankle-biting wraith spawn.  God, it was goddam cold.  The sky above hung heavy and thick with ice and snow, visibly hard with menace and gray.  But if he could take that little huff of lightness and happiness she made-- if he could just take that little morsel and run with it, he could perhaps believe that things would take a turn for the better.  That the next time he synced up with the Tempest’s QE comms, a friendly response to his overtures would be waiting.  That not everything was shit.

“Liam…” Mira said softly.  She was looking very hard out the forward window.  If he hadn’t been hanging on to her every gesture and word, he might have thought she hadn’t said anything.

She cleared her throat and looked at him.  Her dark eyes flickered over him, their depths saying a ‘talk’ was coming.

He made himself relax, loosen his shoulders, and turned to meet her gaze.

“Yeah,” he said.  Sort of a question, and sort of an acknowledgment.  Yeah, he knew.

“I--” she started. “I know things have been, like, weird.  It’s my fault, I’m sorry--”

She shook her head to stop him from denying it; he kept quiet but made a mental note to give back that ‘sorry’ as unnecessary.

“I tried my best to keep things like they were, to be professional about it.  But I suck, obviously.”

Another note to his mental list to refute.

Mira paused, her helmet’s breather filtering her sigh as slight and breezy. “I just-- I dunno.  I didn’t expect things to progress, y’know.  Like that.”

And her gaze flickered, uncertain.  He wanted very badly to interject and reassure her, but she quickly started again as if afraid that she’d lose her momentum:

“And I know I said I was good with things.  That we wouldn’t let this become a big deal or interfere with the mission.  I know I said that, but I-- crap, I guess I’m just-- immature or whatever.  I don’t know.”

She inhaled sharply.  Exhaled.  And she looked him in the eye, a lot of things contained in her gaze and all of them making him sweat and making his pulse jump and his throat tighten.

“I just really like you, Liam Kosta.  I really, really, really, really like you.”

Aw shit, how could she just punch him, full-force, right in the gut like that?  Just impale his heart with her words and stare him down.  Brutal.  Merciless.  Blood-thirsty.

And she just kept going, a rolling stone of feelings and words killing him, “And I’m not trying to pressure you or anything.  I’m not expecting a reply or a commitment or whatever.  I just-- things have been so weird and I owed it to you to just spit it out already, and I’m sorry that I’ve been kind of a jerk--”

“Mira,” Liam stated.

She paused.  Waited and watched him warily.

He shifted. “Can I hug you?”

She blinked at him.  Whatever she’d been expecting, it probably had not been that.  Her brows scrunched, and the muscles around her eyes (those freckled cheeks) worked over a myriad of emotions.  Tentatively, she nodded.

Liam reached across the Nomad’s front console.  It was weird, hugging in full armor.  Stuff banging and clacking about, hard edges digging in uncomfortably.  You had to be careful not to snag on a toggle or hook or something.  And it did not spark the same sort of warmth and closeness you got with the touch of soft cloth and real flesh.

But it was one of the best hugs he’d ever had, breathing in the incredibly cold and sanitized air from his suit’s filters and gripping onto multiple layers of ceramic.  Because underneath it all was her and she liked him.

That’s all he needed.

The two of them stayed like that for a long time.  His arm folded over her back and feeling the rise and fall of her calming heart.  The transferred vibrations of her breath in the crook of his collarbone.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

She shook her head, a subtle shift into his shoulder. “Can you just do me a favor?  Don’t call me Pathfinder.”

He paused. “I can do that.”

Jaal cleared his throat. “I hate to interrupt a lovely and very important moment, but the kett shuttle is incoming.”

Liam and Mira jumped apart as if shocked.  They both coughed and lunged for their guns.

“Uh, good call, buddy,” Liam remarked, totally natural.

“Hmm,” Jaal hummed with a thread of amusement.  Ass.

In the rush of gearing up in the awkwardly small space-- elbows colliding and harried requests for scatter grenades and ammo from the back-- Liam caught her eye.

“Mira--” he started.

She shook her head, “Later.  Don’t worry, Liam.  I get it.”

He wanted to stop her, tell her, no, she didn’t-- but there were rounds waiting be burned and targets to burn them on.

‘Patient’ Liam Kosta?

Well.

Who the hell knows?