First Name Basis
My contribution to the sci-fi round of @daficswap! For @nyctalis, featuring her and @noctvrnis‘ OC, Lloyd Trevelyan.
Mass Effect 2 AU, in which Commander Lloyd of the Normandy SR2 and Cerberus crew member Dorian Pavus finally decide there might be more to their relationship than playful banter...
Approx 3000 words. Contains fluff, humour, and a little alone time... (pretty much SFW though) <3
“Dorian, how’s the IES?”
“Doing well enough, as far as concealing a giant tub of metal hurtling through the vacuum of space goes.”
Lloyd sighed, but couldn’t quite fight off the smile that crept across his face as he glanced back towards the dark-haired man. Dorian, their resident Biotic Researcher – who also just happened to be both a biotic and a researcher - was leaning forward, peering at one of the many monitors that lined the hub. The orange glow of the screen warmed his skin, and those keen grey eyes flicked back and forth, reading measurements and system reports with the ease of a politician scanning headlines for mention of his own name.
“Funny,” Dorian continued, straightening up and placing his hands on his hips, still distracted by the on-screen analytics, “how no one is alarmed by the fact that our entire stealth system could be foiled by someone looking out the window. Quite the oversight, yes?”
“I don’t know,” Lloyd replied, purposely drawing out the words in an effort to tease. “Not many out here bother to stop and enjoy the view. We humans seem more ah… concerned with that.”
Dorian looked over his shoulder, brow arched, and the intent behind Lloyd’s comment was made all too clear by his line of sight, which was fixated firmly on the curves of Dorian’s posterior. In Lloyd’s defense, the standard issue uniform left very little to the imagination for everyone aboard the Normandy SR2. Part of Lloyd assumed it was some kind of Cerberus conspiracy; a way to test the crew’s ability to maintain eye-contact with one another during conversations. A true trial by fire if ever there was one, considering how quickly Dorian had nudged his way to the front of Lloyd’s mind despite his reservations. It was always the little things; a quip here, a gesture there. Observations missed by the rest of the crew. Dorian had a kind of presence that demanded attention, but also deserved it. He was bright in more ways than one, and Lloyd often found himself simply listening with a half-drawn smile as the man talked about his research with more passion than a krogan waiting to undertake the Rite.
“Well, happy to be of service,” Dorian replied offhandedly, although the smirk on his face led Lloyd to believe that distraction had been a part of his plan from the very start. “And here I thought you’d never be able to see past my employer.”
The suddenness of the comment caught Lloyd off-guard, and he stared at Dorian for a long moment, not quite sure of what to say. It was true enough, really. The Illusive Man had placed him in a situation that was leagues away from ideal, but at the same time, it was Cerberus that had kept him alive. The organisation he had spent so long thwarting had given him a second chance at life, even if much of that chance revolved around his compliance with a plan that remained half veiled in secrecy. But more than anything, he hated being commanded around the galaxy like a dog trapped in a perpetual game of fetch with a ball he could neither see nor catch.
But he also hated that he’d made that dislike so obvious to someone he was finding more and more alluring with each passing day.
“You know I’m no fan of Cerberus or the Illusive Man,” Lloyd said. He reached up, cracking his knuckles absently as he continued to talk beneath that quartz-grey stare. “But it’s… different. Somehow. Your boss is pretty much what I expected, but you? Miranda? Jacob?” He shook his head, letting out a tight, frustrated sigh. “It would have made things a lot less confusing if you’d all been a merry bunch of assholes, you know. So… thanks for that.”
Responding with a laugh, Dorian folded his arms and cocked his head to the side, regarding Lloyd with a fetching mixture of curiosity and amusement. “Why, anything to keep it interesting! But to set your mind at ease, I am willing to don a dark cloak and twirl my mustache more often. Perhaps even throw in a villainous monologue here and there, provided you make it worth my while.”
“Worth your while, huh?” Lloyd caught on to those last few words faster than he’d ever caught on to anything in his life. “So a trade, then?”
“Naturally.” Dorian pressed his fingertips to his chest in an emphatic gesture of hurt. “Surely you don’t believe I would go to such lengths for nothing. I am a busy man, you know.” He punctuated his words with a sweep of his palm towards the row of monitors. “These screens won’t read themselves.”
“I’m pretty sure we have an AI for that.”
“Oh come now, we all know EDI is about two miss-clicks away from dooming us all to a life of robotic servitude.”
“I heard that,” responded a disembodied female voice, wringing a laugh out of both Dorian and Lloyd as they stood facing each other in the corridor.
“Ah, I mean no disrespect, of course,” Dorian added hastily, raising his hands in front of him as if to fend off a disagreeable varren. “Although I imagine listening to our beloved pilot wax-poetic at you would require a resolve of steel.”
“Partially correct. My core is approximately 18.98% steel, 28.1% titanium, 8.75% alu—”
“—Yes, thank you EDI,” Lloyd interrupted quickly, a smile still tugging incessantly at the corner of his lips. The AI seemed to accept his words as a polite dismissal – a fact that Lloyd found both intriguing and alarming – and ceased to respond further. Meeting Dorian’s gaze, they both raised their brows in unison, then succumbed to the urge to chuckle at the awkwardness of the exchange.
“It’s strange, knowing that you’re being watched all the time,” Lloyd noted quietly, although he doubted the volume of his voice would make much difference in the matter.
“A mite uncomfortable, agreed.” Dorian paused thoughtfully, then wet his lips with his tongue. The movement was almost subconscious, but spoke to a measure of nervousness that hovered behind the next words he spoke. “Perhaps we could... continue our conversation elsewhere? Surely there is a place aboard this ship with even a scant amount of privacy.”
Just as Lloyd opened his mouth to reply, EDI’s voice sounded again, buzzing from the nearby intercoms.
“The areas I do not monitor include: all bathrooms and showers, crew sleeping quarters, the Commander’s private—”
“— That’ll do,” Lloyd declared, and he smirked, gesturing down the corridor towards the elevator. “Shall we, then?”
Dorian’s mouth slid into a pleased smile of his own, the expression leaving Lloyd strangely breathless, as though his uniform was suddenly too tight around the neck.
“Indeed, we shall.”
“Well, I am certainly glad you care more about your crew than your fish.”
Lloyd grimaced, reaching up to rub his neck awkwardly. He was sweating slightly, his shoulder-length brown hair damp against the back of his moving hand. It had nothing to do with the temperature of the Normandy, which EDI maintained at a perfectly comfortable level unless she was teaching Joker a lesson in consequences. Rather, it had to do with his company, and the fact that they, for what felt like the first time, were truly alone.
“Yeah, I probably shouldn’t have got those,” he admitted sheepishly, eying the colourful array of upside-down bodies bobbing near the top of the tank. “By the time I drag myself up here the only thing on my mind is passing out on the bed.”
“Indeed, only to be woken up by alarms, no doubt,” Dorian noted. “Feeding fish is quite a low priority, I imagine, under such trying circumstances.”
Lloyd snorted in agreement at that, turning away from the tank. Dorian had already moved on, wandering the space of his private quarters like a curator admiring a new exhibit. His footsteps rang softly off the metallic floor, rhythmic and soothing in a manner that was unique to him in a way Lloyd couldn’t quite explain. Pausing, Dorian leaned forward to examine an empty frame on Lloyd’s desk.
“Quite the odd choice,” he mused, picking it up and turning towards Lloyd, holding it in the air pointedly. “I take it there is no deep significance to the empty frame, yes? Or at least, I certainly hope there isn’t, lest I fulfill your expectations of all Cerberus members being... what was it? A merry bunch of assholes?”
Lloyd laughed, strolling over to stand just behind him. “No, no meaning,” he said with a smile at Dorian’s artful backpedaling. “I just haven’t really found something to fill it yet.” He paused thoughtfully, then nodded back towards the tank. “I don’t suppose a picture of dead fish would fit the room’s décor, would it?”
“If you wished to kill the mood as well, then by all means.” Dorian chuckled, shaking his head as he replaced the frame on the table with the soft clink of metal on metal. “Although, and forgive me for saying so, you hardly strike me as the type to invite someone to your quarters for no reason, Commander.”
“Lloyd.”
The comment seemed to catch Dorian by surprise. He turned, regarding Lloyd for a time, as if leafing through a thousand-page manual on protocol in his mind, hunting for the appropriate response. Then, with just as much enthusiasm, he seemed to mentally toss the tome aside and straightened, meeting the Commander’s green eyes as he did so. They held one another’s gaze in a way that would have made more sense had it been accompanied by a firm hand-shake. Instead a few feet of empty air separated them, and Lloyd became acutely aware of it. Acutely aware of his increasing desire to breach it in a single purposeful step.
“... Lloyd,” Dorian repeated eventually, slowly, as if testing the word and finding its shape pleasing on his tongue. His lips curved into a smile that was surprisingly soft, and Lloyd found his heart hurrying to applaud its presence with a flurry of eager beating. Dorian continued, and while he kept his tone relatively light, there was a hesitance that trailed the words like a late-afternoon shadow. “I... take it that is a privilege reserved for these more private occasions?”
Ah. Lloyd’s first instinct was to raise his brows in surprise, but he knew better than to take offense at the comment. After all, they both held very specific roles aboard the ship, and Dorian’s hesitation was by no means a personal sleight. But at the same time, Lloyd sensed his response had the potential to rip apart whatever was building between them like wet paper in careless fingers. A part of him wanted to take a moment to weigh up his options. To think things through, utilising the full capacity of his already clever mind to find the right answer. The answer Dorian wanted to hear.
Instead, he found his lips moving before he even had a chance to consult his brain for input.
“Reserved? No. Not at all.” Betrayed by his own rogue mouth, Lloyd had little choice but to commit to its obvious implication. He smiled and stepped forward, closing some of the distance between them, aware that Dorian was caught between him and the table that housed the empty frame. Knowing this, he did not push too far, and left more than enough room for a hasty apology regarding misread intentions to slide between them should it desire. “I think it would suit us both to be on first name basis with each other, don’t you think?”
Dorian watched him, but made no attempt to move away. He stood with the back of his thighs against the table’s edge, the few inches of height Lloyd had over him inviting him to tilt his head up ever so slightly to meet him eye-to-eye. Something burned between them. Something that had been ignited the first time Dorian had introduced himself, and smouldered ever since like the embers of a fire that had never been properly extinguished. The urge to reach out and run his thumb along the curve of Dorian’s lips was near overwhelming, but Lloyd fought against it, hesitant to rush things despite the long months they had spent at each other’s side.
“Yes, I imagine it would,” Dorian agreed in a voice quieted by reverence as opposed to timidity. “I just... well, I never thought…”
“Never thought…?” Lloyd prompted, his voice also hushed the way a whispered message is often replied to with the same level of secrecy. The corner of Dorian’s lips twitched upwards into the rueful smile of a man used to expecting the worst even when on the verge of being pleasantly surprised.
“Your situation is far from ideal, Comm— ah, Lloyd. In truth, I didn’t believe you would ever see me as anything but a puppet, same as you saw yourself.” He glanced away with a surprisingly bitter chuckle. “Perhaps I am, in a way. Dancing along to music that is familiar but not necessarily right. It is hard to say, when you have spent majority of your life free of outside perspective…”
He trailed off in mute surprise as Lloyd raised his hand, curling his finger beneath Dorian’s chin and coaxing his gaze up from where it had slipped towards the floor. Grey eyes met green, and for a heart-stopping moment Lloyd feared he had miss-stepped. But… no. It wasn’t fear in Dorian’s eyes, despite the way they had widened slightly at the gentleness of the gesture. His pupils were dark and inviting, watching him with the unwavering stare of a hawk uncertain if it was hungry or curious, before deciding it was a mixture of both. Feeling his heart beating in the base of his throat, Lloyd leaned in, Dorian’s gaze tugging on him with a force as irresistible as gravity. When their lips finally met, the hesitance melted away in a matter of seconds, the product of months of flirtation. Weeks of idle touches. Days of lingering stares on uniformed backs.
Hours spent lying in an empty bed knowing exactly what was missing.
Dorian made a soft sound – something between a hum and a moan – and slid his hands up Lloyd’s back in an effort to drawn him closer. Hardly in need of further encouragement, Lloyd leaned forward, running his hands along the line of Dorian’s waist until his palms were planted flat against the table to either side of his hips. Pinned in the most willing way possible, Dorian responded by rising onto his toes and seating himself on the desk’s surface, spreading his legs to allow Lloyd to press in closer, which he did without a moment’s hesitation.
Pressed close as they were, aware of heat and breath and tight standard-issue fabric, it would have been impossible for them to part of their own accord. Free will abandoned Lloyd and he watched it go with the glee of an off-duty soldier waving sunnily at the on-duty patrol. Dorian, too, shivered beneath his touch, wrapping his legs around his waist for balance and other purposes. Intertwined and still caught in a cloud of disbelief, the pair clashed teeth in shock when the intercom suddenly blared to life, a voice rushing to fill the space once reserved for the sound of tongues testing new and enticing waters.
“Commander? Uh, Commander, are you there?”
“I swear to…” Lloyd growled hoarsely, tipping his head forward to rest against Dorian’s shoulder, uncaring of the light sheen of sweat that had gathered on his brow. He felt the man chuckle then tap him pointedly on the upper arm, urging him to speak. “What, Joker?” Lloyd answered finally, his voice firm and clipped despite the jelly-like consistency of his knees.
“Well, our pal the Illusive Man is trying to get hold of you. Please don’t leave me here to make small talk again. Pretty sure he already wants me dead, and I get the impression he doesn’t really care how good a pilot I am.”
“The probability of that being true is approximately 85%,” came EDI’s voice, distant as it was picked up by Joker’s headset, “based on tone analysis of your last conversation.”
“Yeah, thanks EDI. I feel much better now.”
Groaning quietly, Lloyd drew away from Dorian with the reluctance of a man leaving the warmth of a hot spring to face a blizzard. But he caught sight of an understanding – if not slightly breathless – smile, and swept forward once more to claim another deep, throat-rumbling kiss from the man who was finally so close it was maddening.
“I’ll… I’ll be right there, Joker,” Lloyd responded with a half-drawn gasp. He was rewarded by a low chuckle from Dorian and an extended pause from the intercom.
“Uh… is this a bad time? Like, I mean, not that I’m suggesting you’re—”
“—Joker,” Dorian interrupted languidly, rolling his eyes and tilting his face towards the intercom. “Kindly shut up, if you please. He said he would be right there, did he not?”
Stunned silence followed, lending the surprised expression on Lloyd’s face even more weight as he stared at Dorian.
Huh. He had just assumed…
“I ah, hope that wasn’t too forward of me,” Dorian said, smirking slightly as he reached up to card his fingers through Lloyd’s loose brown hair. “You did say we were not restricted to privacy, after all.”
Lloyd let the momentary surprise melt into a chuckle as he leaned into Dorian’s touch. “Hmm... so I did.”
“A-Ah, I… right. Okay then…” Joker cleared his throat theatrically, as though about to deliver a toast at a friend’s wedding. “Look, I’ll be the first to say it’s about time, but could you maybe… I don’t know… wait a week?”
Frowning, Lloyd angled himself back towards the intercom, hands still on Dorian’s waist. “What? Why?”
“I… might have had a bet going with Garrus.”
“I have already informed the turian of his winnings.”
“Are you seri—?! Ugh… thanks EDI. You’re a real pal, you know that?”
“You are welcome, Jeff.”
Dorian laughed, to Lloyd’s surprise, then leaned forward to press his lips close to his ear. His breath wafted over the sensitive skin, sending a fleet of shivers sailing down Lloyd’s spine. “Go on, then. I’ll be here when you are done.”
Groaning in a mixture of want and frustration, Lloyd closed his eyes and nodded tightly, willing his heart to steady itself in preparation for a far less pleasing interaction with a very different member of Cerberus.
“God, I hope so,” he growled, then reluctantly drew away, reaching up to comb unsteady fingers through his tousled hair. A quiet buzzing was the only sound that filled the air for a moment, then Joker’s quiet, sheepish voice wandered awkwardly into the semi-silence.
“Yeah… I’m just gonna hang up now.”
