Chapter Text
Shepard was actively avoiding him; there was no other way around it. At first, he welcomed the quiet, the space. The first day after the “incident”, he dreaded even leaving his room and coming face to face with the other man, the sheer awkwardness of the situation proving more terrifying than actual lethal threats he had to deal with in the past.
Sex was never something he focused on, if anything, sexual urges were just one of the many pesky needs a human body suffered from. He became a soldier during his teenage years, and he had been one since then. And he was good at it. Violence was his life; his weapons and armor the only companions he could trust. Sex left you vulnerable, intimacy even more so. He had seen it time and time again, how letting your guard down resulted in leaving yourself open to sabotage. It was a weakness; one he tried to purge.
People were messy, chaotic, untrustworthy. Too much trouble to bother himself with. Their only worth was measured by their skills and usefulness to the cause. Once they outlived those, they were dealt with. Leng did not delude himself into thinking he was somehow above those simple rules. If anything, The Illusive Man showed too much leniency toward him, and he knew he lived on borrowed time. He had failed several times in the past, not often, but enough to have someone like the illustrious leader of Cerberus be perfectly within his rights to deem the former assassin unsatisfactory as an asset. It drove Leng to push himself even more. He understood what being useless entailed.
There was only the next mission. The next victory, the next crucial data, the next assassination target. If his body could have functioned without it, he would have passed on the moments of rest in between each assignment. Always more. Harder. Riskier. Faster. He had to prove that the Illusive Man’s expectations were not misplaced. Downtime made him jittery, skittish. How could a weapon know rest? Every minute spent doing nothing was a minute lost, during which the old ghosts of his past failures slowly came to taunt him. He had no hobbies, no friends, no lovers to fill up the void, to distract himself with.
The reaper enhancements were a blessing, pushing his body past the usual mortal limits. He did not need to waste time waiting around for his fragile, slow organic shell to put itself together before he could spring back into action. There was no opportunity for him to gradually go mad as the hours passed, with nothing to do, his own thoughts suffocating him. Those few months before the end, before the fall of Cerberus, were his happiest. Everything was as it should have been. The world made sense, he was at his peak efficiency, all failings of flesh having been stripped away, leaving only a tool ready to bring about the next step in humanity’s evolution. And then Shepard and his colorful band of aliens had to fuck it all up.
The old anger easily crawled back to the surface. Everything was always Shepard’s fault. How could a single individual have this much of an impact? Especially one with such humble origins? The man was just one of the many orphaned no-names scrambling to survive in one of the countless slums on Earth, before joining the military. A street kid. A street rat, with a penchant for biotics.
He sighed in frustration, running a hand through his long hair. “Your owner is an asshole. A meddling nuisance,” he announced to the fish in the aquarium. With no company, and nothing better to do, aside from the daily routine he was forced to follow, he took to watching the colorful, dumb creatures. He even named some of them, which proved his point of how lame his life these days was. Not being one of them creative types, and honestly, already feeling horrified he stooped this low, he simply called some of the more distinct ones by gun names. A fish could be named after a worse thing than the M-55 Argus or the Typhoon, he figured.
The fish swam happily around in their luxurious abode, not a care in the world. A large artificial coral reef housed many of them, and various kinds of seaweed and aquatic flora evoked the feeling of picture-perfect tranquility. An automatic feeder made sure they lived their meaningless existences in abundance, and paired with the tiny cleaning robot, their owner’s presence was not required at all.
Bored, the brunette stood up and approached the huge fishtank. His fingers gently tapped the glass, causing some of the fish to flee and scatter. Was he reduced to the equivalent of a dumb, pet fish? By the time he woke up each day, the apartment was sparkly clean, and meals were left in the fridge for his consumption. He tried staying up longer and longer, at first out of simple curiosity, than out of desperate spite to catch the other man, when he so obviously did not want to be seen.
Somehow, the prison cell was easier to endure. It was predictable. Nothing waited for him out there, and if he had managed to escape on his own, uncertainty awaited him. He had spent the cold, empty years fantasizing about his possible options, but all were vague. Leng needed a structure, a powerful leader he could then devote himself to. With his past, anything legitimate was out of the question, and most illegal operations were a mess. But with Shepard alive… It was as if a new spark had been lit within him. He had an adversary. Someone who saw him as an individual, someone who did not think of him only as of a concept. The Cerberus assassin. No, Shepard hated him, Kai Leng, specifically. It was glorious.
Of course he was still mortified about what happened, but it had been over a week ago. The presence of another human outweighed the embarrassment he still felt. Anything was better than talking to fish and staring at walls. He wanted, needed Shepard’s attention and presence, now that he knew the man was around. Almost wistfully, he observed the angry red marks on his neck, the proof of the other man’s existence and their violent confrontation, fade away as the days passed.
The commander spent five years of his life planning the assassin’s escape, and then he just bailed? Leng just had to make the idiotic Specter understand the whole nonsense was unintentional, and get them to move past this, so they could return to their usual bickering. Didn’t the man claim he was only fixing Leng to fight him? That showed long-term dedication.
The former operative was still not at his best certainly, but he would kill for a good fight. An outlet was needed for all the nervous energy and violence accumulating inside of him, and hitting the punchbag harder during his solo training sessions did not scratch the itch. He tried disobeying more often, tried getting a few hits on the furnishing and equipment within the house, since then at least a reaction would always come. No matter where Shepard was, or whatever he was doing at the time, he was ready to stop Leng from wreaking havoc. It became almost comforting. Somewhat.
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The dreams were a surprise. An unwelcome one. He used to dream of blood, of death, of past assignments. Familiar scenes. These days, he dreamt of strong arms. Of hands circling his throat, squeezing, before cupping his face, and slowly moving upward. Of fingers sliding into his hair. Those same thick fingers then tugging on the long, silky strands to the point of pain. And worse than that, he would unintentionally imagine the familiar hands sliding lower instead, a light, steady pressure moving across his chest, before they drifted down the planes of his stomach, and lower still.
Thankfully, it was not a nightly occurrence, but he still woke up hard and aching, slick with sweat, and utterly mortified on more than one occasion. Worst were the cases when he would blearily wake up rocking against the mattress below him, still not fully aware, disoriented. It felt so good, so warm, and oftentimes, he would be close to finishing too. But then the reality set in. Never before had he resorted to using cold water to shower, when warm one was available, as often as he did here.
He tried to not think about Shepard possibly seeing him like this, with whatever monitoring equipment the other man used in making sure Leng wasn’t breaking something or skipping out on his training routine and eating.
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Shepard came back with no fanfare, no signs pointing to his return. It had been almost three weeks since the ill-fated shaving incident. The brunette was caught completely off-guard and nearly tripped over his feet when he noticed the shape of the other man on the sofa, sitting there like nothing had happened. The initial overwhelming wave of euphoria that swept over Leng nearly made him vomit. He was horrified. He was ecstatic. Disgusted with himself; giddy at finally having another presence near him. The whiplash of emotions felt paralyzing.
The brunette wanted to prod, to ask, to provoke, now that Shepard was back, but the nauseating fear of chasing the man away accidentally once more kept him subdued. At least looking wasn’t forbidden, he hoped. He catalogued every inch of the other man’s face and body, trying to discern if anything was different, where the man had been these past few weeks, anything that would point to some sort of a clue about his time away.
Fully ignoring Leng, the blond sat on the sofa without giving a single sign of acknowledgement, his personal datapad already firmly in hand. His clothes were slightly rumpled and dusty, but not out of the ordinary. The usual wear and tear. He must have gotten his doze of nightly sleep elsewhere, as he seemed fresh and alert. The man’s impressive muscles visibly moved under the too tight shirt he wore at even the slightest shift of his body. The pants were not exactly well-fitted either, as they fought for survival, clinging obscenely to the man’s thick, muscled thighs. To be fair, some of Cerberus’ own uniforms were probably also too revealing, too tightly clinging to their own bodies, so he could not exactly question Shepard’s choice of attire. He could feel his own face heating up, as he did not seem able to tear his eyes away from the blond’s impressive physique.
His not-so-careful examination did not seem to go unnoticed, as the commander grew even tenser with each passing second. Leng was surprised the datapad did not crack under the other man’s crushing grip. Shepard refused to react otherwise and instead continued to resolutely read whatever he was reading, scowling all the while. Leng knew he was possibly being too weird, staring like that, but he could not help himself. Shepard really came back; he was not hallucinating the man into existence.
Unexpectedly, Shepard whipped his head around, and glared at Leng, clearly irritated. Maybe he was expecting another argument, another instance of the brunette lashing out, but his sudden, concentrated attention startled Kai Leng into hastily turning away. The former assassin grabbed the food he originally came into the kitchen for, and with heart beating rapidly in his chest, retreated into his room. He could feel the commander’s confused gaze burning a hole into the back of his skull all the while.