Destrudo
My fic for Spectre Requisitions 2025, for the lovely @keriweird.
Rating: Explicit
Pairing: Zaeed Massani/Nonbinary Shepard
Words: 9508
Tags: Mission fic, heist, trans Zaeed, rough sex, strap you can feel
Read on AO3
Summary: Zaeed Massani is still holding on to many things: his grudges, his wounds, and his independence. He's not about to let his new Cerberus contract stand in the way of a good payout. When his new boss elbows their way into one of his freelance jobs, Zaeed tests his old habits against new desires.
Excerpt:
What does it feel like to die? For a man of his professional accomplishment, Zaeed does not actually ponder the question often. As long as the pocket ends up heavier than the heart—he’s always saying some bullshit like that. But lately, it’s begun to trouble his mind again, ever since he pressed his thumb to that contract, ever since he wound up on this ghost ship. He tries to maintain a semblance of control down here in the cargo hold. He keeps his private console running, his line to the criminal marketplace of the Terminus systems. He keeps his personal weapons in order, even though the lieutenant upstairs says there's company stock aplenty. On every seventh day, he stands here with his knickers down and fills his own intramuscular injector. Still, thoughts he had long buried are bidden back to his mind by some external force. He can feel it sinking through the decks above him like a leak. What does it feel like to die? Zaeed can describe it still. The twinkling ring in your ears, fuzz at the end of your nerves and dark wool closing in around the edges of your consciousness. The last fight of your life against such softness, a hard man like him could never have been ready for it. It's a feeling you spend the rest of your life trying to forget, if you can wrap your head around that paradox. Zaeed turns the volume on his radio up to a distracting level and waves the UV wand over his exposed haunch, then fishes for a cigarette with his non-sterile hand. He overbusies himself in his private moments these days, tries to avoid the whisper in the walls. What does it feel like to be reborn? Not fucking great when you do it the hard way. A basement surgeon reconstructing the cheekbone of an animal he’d never seen before, pallid lights slowly burning his good eye, some alien drip that made his veins itch and his sweat stink. Doc had given him a shot that made his immune system fast and his pulse faster, then sent him on his way. When Zaeed had come back the next day with a busted stitch, the clinic had been emptied out and his former comrades were prowling the alley. What he would have given for two years of bed-rest. It's not that he thinks of himself as some kind of miracle. Hang around Omega long enough and you'll meet plenty of risen bastards. It helps you to establish some perspective on these nagging questions. What matters is the next step. He breathes, a deep lungful of heavy tar cloud, and presses the injector. The needle prick barely tickles his ass, but maybe he always had a thick hide. What does it feel like to live again? Zaeed catalogued every feeling, measured its return, trying to remember how much he'd ever felt to begin with. And he's done a lot of measuring, for all the good it's done him. Every rush of adrenaline or spike of dopamine or flash in his loins is a merely a test of life, a fraction of something that he'll only hold onto for good once he's made his bloody peace.
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