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He doesn’t agree to help Sloane. He doesn’t
not
agree either, yet he still finds himself headed out into the ass end of nowhere, Badlands, Kadara, to meet up with her and, more interestingly, the Charlatan. Now
that’s
a person he’s been dying to meet for months since he first touched down on this godforsaken planet. Not that he cares much for the Charlatan’s agenda versus Sloane’s, and he’s done his absolute damndest to make sure he’s never had to pick a side, but he does prefer to have a face to a name if he’s going to do any sort of business with someone. Even the damn Archon has been helpful in that way.
At this point, he prefers the Archon to the Charlatan, though. At least the Archon has always been upfront about who he is and what his intentions are. They’re not good intentions, and frankly Scott has some very important errands to go run that he
should
be taking care of on that subject, but the reveal of the Charlatan was just too good an opportunity to pass up. But this? Somehow for all he thought he’d known Reyes, all the hours they’d lain next to each other after hours of passion, all the drinks they’d shared, and scrapes they’d been in, Scott just...hadn’t seen it. Hadn’t? Or hadn’t wanted to?
That’s a question he brushes to the back of his mind, a question that will only distract him from what’s going on in front of him which is—
“A duel. You and me. Right now. Winner takes Kadara Port.”
—and the blood freezes in Scott’s veins. He knows Reyes, knows he always has a few good exit strategies and wouldn’t have suggested the meeting if he didn’t have two aces up his sleeve and one in his back pocket, just in case, but still, the thought that Sloane could get lucky, that she might hurt Reyes, might
kill
him...that’s more than Scott can bear. Even with this betrayal of trust weighing heavy on his mind, he can’t stomach the idea of losing Reyes for good. The times he has to say goodbye as the Tempest heads off to another corner of the galaxy to stitch it together before it falls apart are hard enough. Forever is just unfathomable.
So he doesn’t intervene against the sniper though it rankles him, a front-line soldier, to allow someone other than Reyes to take the shot. But just because Scott would never do something like that, would never ask one of his crew to kill someone for him, doesn’t mean that this isn’t exactly Reyes’s style. And that head-over-heels feeling he gets when he looks at Reyes hasn’t gone away, hasn’t even faded. He’s just as in love as he was the night they shared that bottle of whiskey on the roofs of Kadara Port after fleeing Sloane’s party, hand-in-hand.
That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t still hurt that Reyes hadn’t trusted him enough to tell him, and it doesn’t mean he’s not going to have to do some soul-searching after this (or at least think about doing some soul-searching...that was always more Sara’s thing). But what really hurts is the knowledge that, even though he knew Reyes couldn’t be trusted fully,
knew
this deeply, he did anyway.
So when he asks Reyes, “Why didn’t you trust me?” as they head for the cave exit, what he really means is, “Why didn’t you trust me like I trusted you?”
He’s not sure what answer he’s looking for. Reyes stops ahead of him, and Scott slows, finally halting somewhat farther away than he normally would. He rolls his shoulders under his armor, brushing a hand over the pistol at his thigh more out of an unconscious reflex from years in the field than any concern he might be in danger. Reyes isn’t a danger. Not to him. This is also something that he knows deeply.
Reyes turns, leading with his head, and stalks around Scott in a half circle. It’s a move designed to frighten, to make Scott feel like a prey animal, to what? make him
want
to run away from Reyes? Scott stands his ground stubbornly, turns with Reyes to make it more of a dance than a tactic, disrupting any advantage Reyes may have sought from it. The light from the cave mouth is bright against his eyes and he squints against it, trying to keep his eyes focused on Reyes as he stops again, his head hung just slightly, and looks up at Scott.
Scott has never seen Reyes look more vulnerable. Even unclothed and thrusting into him or lying on his side in Scott’s bed aboard the Tempest, Reyes never looks
naked.
Not like this. His face is serious, those lips straight for once instead of curving into his trademark smirk that’s as good as armor, eyebrows drawn together and down over his eyes, the brown of them soft and fragile. They match his voice when he speaks.
“I liked the way you looked at me. I was afraid that would change.”
Finally they both turn far enough that they’re facing each other head on. The silence in the cave now is deafening, and Scott wishes for the roar of a battle, the thrum of his biotics in his ears and under his skin, for something straightforward to handle instead of this complicated emotional mess he’s got twisting around between his ears. So he does something he’s never done before: he lies to Reyes.
“Nothing’s changed.”
He figures...he can be forgiven, in time. It’s not as though Reyes really has any ground to stand on if he chooses to be offended by it later when Scott tells him. And he still finds Reyes to be completely distracting, everything considered, his mouth going dry with anticipation as Reyes advances on him, and he jerks in surprise when his back hits a stone wall instead of empty air. His spatial awareness is usually much better than this. But Reyes is there, one hand caging him against the stone, and Scott licks his lips, his mind quieting.
“You have bad taste in men,” Reyes breathes, pressing up against Scott’s armor. That can’t be comfortable, but Reyes doesn’t look like he cares as he kisses Scott with intent, his other hand slipping down against Scott’s side to where the armor is thinnest and he knows Scott can feel the pressure.
“The worst,” Scott agrees, truthful, as Reyes breaks the kiss, whining as Reyes moves over to kiss down the exposed skin of his neck, lifting and angling his chin obediently at the unspoken command. His head hits the cave wall. His eyes, no longer shaded by Reyes as they had been a moment ago, narrow at the light from the entrance. His team is waiting there, Drack and Vetra, the two he could be most assured wouldn’t breathe a word about what happened if things went sideways at the Charlatan meeting. In a way they had, though he hadn’t foreseen the unique circumstances of Sloane’s death. And now he, the Pathfinder, the one person tasked with finding everyone a home in Heleus and defeating the enemy arrayed against them, is pinned against a wall by Kadara’s new de facto leader after having been complicit in the murder of the old one.
What would they make of this?
That thought chills him and he squirms in the trap of Reyes’s body, an arm to one side, Reyes’s kisses to the other. The smuggler freezes and drops his arm, and Scott slides out from under him. To nearly anyone else, Reyes’s face would be unreadable, but Scott has learned his expressions, been
allowed
to learn them, and he can see clear as anything the hurt that twists behind the blank mask. He swallows and looks at the ground he can see past Reyes’s shoulder.
“I have to go.”
Reyes smiles but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Of course, Pathfinder. You are a busy man. As it would happen, I too have some business to attend tonight. Until later.”
Scott just nods, not trusting himself to answer the question in Reyes’s last words, and fair runs out of the cave, his biotics flaring as he hits the entrance, carrying him in a long jump to where he parked the Nomad. He wrenches the driver side door open, slams it shut, and waits for Drack and Vetra to finish giving each other a Look and climb in. Neither of them say a word to him. Even SAM is silent until his return to the Tempest, only speaking up to acknowledge the lock Scott requests on the door to his quarters.
“No calls either. And mute that damn email notification sound.”
SAM complies without a word, and Scott stands behind his couch, wedged up against the not-glass of the viewport, staring down at the planet. It's standard procedure to pull into orbit once the Pathfinder is aboard, and while that was annoying when he had Reyes over occasionally (though it had also made for some spectacular vertical sex against the viewport), Scott finds that the distance now between them is comforting. It puts him and the Tempest in a place of plausible deniability too, away from Kadara Port while Reyes’s coup goes down. He should take them out of the system, go chase down one or another of those leads people keep handing him, clear his head.
He punches the window with all the raw strength at his disposal, but not backed up by the sizable force of his biotics, briefly entertaining the image of his body flying through the not-glass and into the vacuum of space were he to do so, there to freeze and be forgotten. He huffs and stares at the point where his hand connects with the window. Not likely forgotten. More likely recovered and thawed and resuscitated, if possible, made to continue with his father-given mission whether he likes it or not, or simply memorialized on the Nexus if they can’t bring him back, his coordinates above Kadara turned into a spot for pilgrimages. Reyes would probably welcome all the additional traffic.
And just like that, Scott’s thoughts track back around to the infuriating, frustrating, and frustratingly beautiful smuggler. He’s three seconds from telling SAM to order Kallo to break orbit and go back to the Nexus. At a time like this, he could use the easy empathy and strong hugs of his sister. But something catches his eye: a small shuttle headed directly for the Tempest. He turns his back to the window. He doesn’t want to see it, doesn’t want the chance of seeing who’s piloting or who might be riding shotgun. His teeth clench and he focuses on bringing his breathing, suddenly erratic, back under control. No matter who that shuttle brings, it won’t do for the Pathfinder to be anything less than utterly composed.
A loud banging on the doors to his quarters tell him everything he needs to know about who it is. Scott doesn’t move.
“Open the door, Pathfinder!” Reyes calls, pounding on the doors some more. Scott forces his jaw apart as the grinding of his teeth sparks a headache behind his eyes. Perfect. He exhales slowly, heavily, and closes his eyes.
“No.” He doesn’t speak very loud but knows that SAM will carry his voice out to Reyes. Having an AI tethered to his brain and body is useful sometimes. He spins back to lean his forehead against the window, lifting one hand to press it, fingers spread, against the not-glass next to his face. He can’t even feel the cold of space.
“Please, Ryder. Open the door. We should talk.”
Ah, so he’s been upgraded to last name status. He supposes that’s a good sign of Reyes’s seriousness. It’s the name the man most often uses for him. “Pathfinder” is restricted to moments of extreme teasing, extreme displeasure, or extreme domination. Scott’s stomach flips at those memories and he sneers at himself, so easily swayed.
“Don’t you have a port to take over?”
Reyes takes long enough to answer that Scott thinks he’s gone back to his shuttle. Long enough that he’s pulled himself away from the window, crawled over the couch, and is standing smack in the middle of his quarters before he hears anything.
“It is over.”
A short answer. Reyes is sounding more serious by the moment. Scott tugs on the long sleeves of his shirt, pulling them over his hands and fisting the ends in his fingers.
“Hope you didn’t come for a congratulations, Charlatan. You’ll leave disappointed.” He crosses his arms, hunching his shoulders and turning in place. He’s not sure what to do with himself now that he doesn’t have the window to lean against and just twirls in a few full circles before he stops and faces the door.
“I...did not want to do this through a door, Scott, but I will if that is your wish.”
Unbidden, SAM displays an image against the door of Reyes standing on the other side, his hands loose at his sides, head bowed. At the end of the hallway, Scott can see Vetra’s fringe, Drack’s hump, and Liam’s hair. And if the three of them are there, the rest of his crew is either behind them or down in the cargo bay, likely with a visual feed provided by SAM, the traitor. His lips twitch, just a bit, and he takes pity on Reyes.
“Open the door, SAM. And cut the feed in the cargo bay.”
He can hear the chorus of disappointed groans when the doors whoosh open in Reyes’s startled face.
“Get in,” he says, gesturing vaguely at his quarters. “Lock the doors again, SAM.” The AI complies as soon as Reyes has stepped over the threshold, nearly clipping his heels, and if Scott didn’t know better, he’d say the AI was having some antagonistic feelings toward Reyes. SAM has grown by leaps and bounds since the first time Scott met him, and though he's fairly certain there's a long way yet for the AI to go in terms of true sentience, sometimes he wonders.
Reyes stops a few feet into Scott's quarters and looks around, shaking out his hands. It's a typical move when he's trying to build up his bluster, and Scott lifts his lip in a scowl, turning from Reyes and stalking over to his desk. He picks up the model Nomad sitting in pieces there, examining it with unfocused eyes before he puts it back and fists his hands.
“Why?” If he tilts his head just right he can see Reyes out of the corner of his eye. He hasn't moved from that spot just inside the door.
“I liked—”
“Yeah, the way I looked at you, I remember.” He sighs and leans back against his desk, facing Reyes once more. “Doesn't answer the question. I want to know why you didn't trust me, not why you were afraid to tell me.”
“Ryder—Scott, I...I wanted to tell you.”
Scott just blinks at him. Reyes sighs and looks out the viewport that dominates the front of Scott’s quarters. He swallows and licks his lips, breathing in and out a few times before speaking again.
“I could not risk the security of the mission by telling you. Communications are easy to hack, and by the time I knew you were back on Kadara, Sloane had already spoken to you.”
“Bullshit,” Scott bites out. “Something like that? You were planning it for a while, laying the groundwork for weeks, months even. You wanna tell me there isn’t a single time I docked here and we,” he gestures angrily at the bed, “that you couldn’t bring it up? The Tempest is the most secure place on that sinkhole, when it’s there. So that’s not it. Try again.”
Reyes’s gaze drifts over to the bed, his eyebrows drawing down, mouth twisting like someone punched him. His lips part slightly, and he drags his eyes away.
“Before you swing and miss on the next pitch,” Scott says levelly, clearing his throat to get Reyes’s attention, not like he doesn’t already have it, “consider that you have but three strikes. And then you’re out.”
In happier times, the old-Earth metaphor would have made Reyes laugh, would have been delivered by Scott with smiling eyes, without serious intent. But Reyes can see it in the tense lines of the Pathfinder’s body as he stands there, propped against his desk: he’s deathly serious. If Reyes Vidal doesn’t tell the full truth for the first time in a very, very long time, he’ll lose the best thing to ever happen to him. To Kadara. To Andromeda. But honestly? Fuck Andromeda and fuck Kadara if they end up costing him this man.
“It was simpler when you did not trust me, was it not?” Scott huffs and Reyes gives him a small, self-deprecating smile. “You did not trust me because I was a liar and a smuggler and only out for myself, and I did not trust you because too many men have turned out to be as base as their natures, especially those given power. But we worked well together despite that. And you do not have to trust someone to sleep with him. You merely have to know that he is not going to stab you in the back while you fuck.”
Where this is going, Scott doesn’t know, but he lets Reyes talk. Everything rings true so far, at least, so he’s willing to let him ramble if it will eventually end up at the answers he seeks. He watches as Reyes turns from him to go stand at the window, in near the same spot he himself had been in earlier. Scott stretches his hands out from the fists they’d been in, extending the fingers then curling them in a vague parody of biotic exercises, forming the shapes that help him direct his powers without sending the biotic energy actually skittering down his arms and out his hands. That would be a pretty big disaster. He’s pretty sure he could break the Tempest if he tried hard enough. The raw power he has at his disposal nearly outstrips Cora’s own considerable talents, and she’d been sent to train with Asari commandos. So he doesn’t do anything, though he can feel lightning tickling at the base of his neck around his implant, responding to his heightened emotional stress.
“So I thought, this I can do. I can flirt and flatter this important man when he visits; I can insinuate myself with him, keep eyes and ears on his activities, his comings and goings. And it was even easy for a time. You are not a difficult man to be around, Scott, especially not when you are undressing me with your eyes.” The attempt at humor falls flat. Reyes doesn't even turn from the window to deliver the joke, and Scott can hear the lack of a smile in his tone. It's like he knows he's expected to deliver witty one-liners occasionally and is just trying to maintain his image, even though it's just the two of them. He's been doing it for so long that Scott wonders how much Reyes is aware of it at this point.
“Being invited to your bed was just another, easier way of keeping tabs on you. And a way for me to feel good about myself. It is not every man who can order the Pathfinder to his knees, after all.” This time Scott does hear something in Reyes’s voice, something wry and bitter and disappointed. “But there was something so...intoxicating about being with you. I found myself looking forward to your visits and dreading your departures. I missed the look you got right before a fight, the way you would touch my hand when we drank.” Reyes’s hands twitch toward each other, the fingertips of one reaching out for the back of the other, as if to recreate the sensation, but they fall apart before they get close enough.
“Perhaps, I thought, I am simply enamored of him and it will fade in time. But over all the time and distance we spent apart, it refused to do so. Indeed it grew stronger, and I knew, that night we spent on the roofs, I knew what it was.” Reyes turns to face Scott, his eyes shining and wide, face open. Scott can’t breathe.
“I am in love with you, Pathfinder. Ryder...Scott. Every fiber of my being adores you, despite my warnings not to. It is an inconvenient thing, loving a man whose every day may be his last.”
“You lied to me because you love me?” Scott echoes slowly, one eyebrow climbing.
“Is that so difficult to believe? You yourself have done so.” Reyes mirrors his expression and Scott scowls and crosses his arms.
“Why?” he asks again.
He can feel the distance between them, feels it slowly beginning to shrink though neither of them moves. It’s that look on Reyes’s face, the one that says that Scott holds all of who Reyes is in the palm of his hand and can do whatever he wants with him. For a look that Scott usually sees as Reyes is approaching orgasm, it is remarkably devoid of sensuality now. It makes him nervous.
“I lied to you to protect you. I knew you wanted nothing to do with the faction struggle on Kadara; I was trying to keep you out of it. Had I realized Sloane intended to drag you along...I would have told you.”
Scott snorts lightly. “And what if she hadn’t? Would you ever have told me afterward? I can’t imagine you’ll step into the spotlight now.”
“Naturally not. Keema will be the face of Kadara Port. And I—cannot say. It would be nice to believe that I would have told you, but we both know that may not have been the case.” Reyes shrugs but the motion is stiff and doesn’t brush off the statement like he intends. “Does it truly matter? Does it give you any of the answers you are looking for?”
Scott stares at his toes, crossing his ankles first one way then the other, listening to the whisper of his pants as they move. Lexi has warned him about going barefoot around the ship but he can’t help it. She won’t let him get tetanus anyway, even if it is his own damn fault for stepping on something. Shoes and socks just have never been extremely comfortable for him, and since the Tempest is as close to a home as he’s likely to get for a while, he refuses to put on footwear while aboard. If he has to wear plated armor boots while he’s away on missions, he sure as hell won’t wear socks on his ship.
Finally he sighs. “I don’t know.”
Reyes nods, like he understands, and maybe he does. He takes a small step forward, toward Scott. “What is it you are looking for?”
“Other than the truth?”
Reyes gestures like that part’s obvious, and Scott exhales shortly through his nose, looking up at Reyes.
“I don't know,” Scott says again. “I'd settle for just that right now.” He presses his lips together for a moment before continuing. “I do believe you. What you said.”
Somehow Reyes looks both terrified and relieved at that, stepping one foot back as if to keep himself from falling over. He places one hand on the back of the couch and doesn’t meet Scott’s eyes. “So, what now?”
What indeed? If he’s honest with himself, and he usually is, he hadn’t fully expected Reyes to actually tell him the truth, or at least something that sounds close enough to the truth to count. His mind’s eye had pictured him forcefully ejecting Reyes into the hallway and closing the doors before ordering Drack and Vetra to escort him back to his shuttle and off the Tempest. Now that he’s still here, and more effectively at Scott’s mercy than he has been at any other point in their relationship, Scott realizes he has absolutely no idea about what should come next.
There’s a part of him, the small, impulsive side that he usually keeps tamped down, that just wishes for Reyes to stop looking so beaten, to stand up straight and beat
Scott
instead...and then fuck him thoroughly until he can’t form words or coherent thoughts. That part of him doesn’t want to be in control of the situation anymore, wants to cede it to Reyes the way things usually proceed when the two of them are alone in his quarters.
Most of the rest of him doesn’t want to be in control anymore either. He’s tired, exhausted by the day’s events and subsequent emotional landslide, and he doesn’t want to have to handle it. The headache behind his eyes has been slowly filling his head, throbbing behind his temples and at the base of his skull. He raises one hand to dig his fingers in there, avoiding touching the implant and its built-up charge. He’ll need to discharge that soon, he knows, but it might be a little rude to simply walk out on Reyes to go to the Nomad room and send a few pulses toward the rover, bless its armor-covered hide. That and his crew is out there, lurking, waiting for any opening to pounce. Drack and Vetra, especially, had been concerned on the drive back; they'd seen the change in him before and after he set foot in that cave and the contrast was stark.
“Is there anything else I should know?” His voice sounds thin, noticeably weary, projecting his weakness out into the room, and Reyes picks up on it, frowning, moving forward another step.
“I am sorry. I never meant to hurt you.”
Scott nods then drops his head again, the strain of keeping it up finally taking a toll on him. When will this day end?
“SAM, what time is it?”
“It is 4:27 pm, Nexus Standard Time, Pathfinder. Local time at Kadara Port is 1:42 am.”
Scott groans and raises his other hand to cover his face. So this day
has
ended and it’s already a new one. That would explain things. He knows the date on the Nexus, or knew it when they docked, so his biological clock has been operating on that system even while he pushed his body to follow the local time, which meant staying awake longer when they docked in the wee hours of the morning. He’s been up for...he doesn’t want to do the math, but it’s closing on two or three days straight now. Even for a man with his stamina, it’s enough.
When he drags his hand down his face to let it drop back to his side, Reyes is standing not two steps from his feet. He jerks a little in surprise: if Reyes can sneak up on him, he’s
past
his limits, not pushing them. Shit. He really needs to pass out, at least for a few hours, but again, with Reyes in his quarters, he can’t do anything but stand there and wait for him to leave. He blinks up at Reyes, a suggestion forming on his lips, and finds the smuggler’s eyes boring into his, hooded with concern.
“You need to sleep, Scott.”
“Concerned for my welfare, Reyes?” He laughs, perhaps a little hysterically, and tries to focus on getting his feet back under him instead of stretched in front.
“Always.”
Scott pauses his efforts to stare at Reyes, again closer to him. Reyes holds out his hands and Scott takes them without hesitation, allowing himself to be pulled up to standing. They blink at each other for a minute, breathing the same space, noses inches from touching, Reyes’s brown eyes searching Scott’s ice blue ones for something. Scott doesn’t know if he finds what he was looking for because he leans forward, relying on Reyes to catch him as he nearly topples over. Reyes does, breaking their hands apart to wrap one arm around Scott’s waist, the other settling lightly on his hip.
“Reyes,” Scott breathes, and then he’s kissing him, flinging his arms around Reyes’s back, pulling him close. He’s not sure who moans, if it’s Reyes or himself or both, but Reyes tightens his grip, his fingers digging into Scott’s hip. Now it
is
Scott who whines, his knees nearly buckling as he presses closer still, licking across Reyes’s upper lip, begging entrance. But Reyes’s mouth stays stubbornly shut, as though he’s giving the matter serious consideration. He moves backward a step, tugging Scott with him though he needn’t have bothered, really, as Scott goes willingly, loathe to let any space come between them again. They cross the floor that way, joined at the lips, Reyes slowly inching them until at last his legs hit the side of Scott’s bed. He turns, laying Scott down on the mattress and kneeling above him, breaking the kiss to get them farther up the bed so Scott’s legs aren’t hanging off.
The Pathfinder’s eyes are closed and his breathing so deep and even that Reyes believes him asleep already until one blue eye cracks open, looking up at Reyes as he fusses with the covers, trying to tuck them around Scott.
“Love you too,” Scott murmurs, wiggling forward until he can rest his forehead against Reyes’s chest. He hums and drapes an arm over Reyes’s side. “Not sure I forgive you yet, though.”
Reyes stills beside him, wrapping his arms protectively around the galaxy’s greatest hope and forgoing the blankets. “I always knew you were a smart man.”
Scott huffs lightly as the thump of Reyes’s beating heart and the hum of the Tempest’s engines begin to drag him down to sleep. There's more to talk about later, farther to go into the whys, but for now it's enough,
this
is enough. One of Reyes’s hands cards into Scott's hair, massaging his scalp gently, and Scott drifts off, safe and content.