Chapter Text
Shepard was thinking about Kaidan’s ass.
That was usually what he thought about—whenever there was time to think. He didn’t get too many chances to do that lately—but then again, when had he ever?
If it wasn’t a visiting off-world kingpin riding Shepard into the ground, then it was a ballbusting training officer looking to do the same thing. After dealing with the former for years, the latter didn’t seem so tough. Just a different kind of tough, with a different set of rules and, okay, maybe less wiggle room.
Shepard’s shoulders ached, along with a host of muscles he’d always known were there, down his sides and around his back, his thighs and his calves. But hot showers were a regular thing, mealtime hours designated and everything, enough proteins to keep a guy’s stomach full all the way through the night—no matter how hard he was being exercised, no matter how rough he was being ridden.
And not being hungry all the time gave Shepard just enough space to think about other things, more than the training courses or the target practice or sweet-talking somebody in charge into looking the other way when he snuck out past curfew.
It gave him room to think about Kaidan’s ass.
Shepard didn’t look for him in the mess hall—not outright, anyway. If he was there and Shepard caught his eye across a few square heads, they could chalk it up to accident or whatever, and Kaidan could blink and look away when Shepard grinned at him. It was easy enough to pick him out from a crowd because of the way he kept his hair, easy enough for Shepard to let his fingers twitch when he thought about the last time it’d been mussed up, then grab a pile of protein packs and stuff them on his tray, keeping those twitchy fingers busy.
Without a weapon in reach at all times, Shepard had to hold onto other stuff instead. And it turned out he was good at hand-to-hand combat practice—especially the duckand dodge parts of the exercise.
Shepard finished his dinner the way it tasted the best: fast and alone. All the guys in the hall with pedigrees sat together and they weren’t fun for talking to, anyway; listening to them crack jokes about turians reminded Shepard of where he’d come from, not where he was going. Finch would’ve fit right in with that crowd, big shoulders and sloppy hands and everything, at least until they started bragging about their summer vacation homes off-world.
Then, he would’ve tried to scam ‘em blind.
Good old Finch. Sometimes—when Shepard wasn’t thinking about Kaidan’s ass—he wondered how he was doing and the rest of the Reds. Never leave a man behind, all the training regulations said. That was number one, only there wasn’t room for questions, nobody to ask if the principles were the same.
Shepard cracked his neck, sliding his tray back into place on his way out of the mess. Curfew was in twenty and they had an early day tomorrow, doing situation training marathons until, one by one, they screwed up and dropped out, leaving only one last man standing.
The night after it’d been Kaidan on top, Shepard found them a spot—a situation room with a lock-code he’d cracked, easy—for a little privacy. There wasn’t much of that in the dorms and maybe the situation room didn’t have the best view of the bay, but there was a slide switcher for holo-projectors to imitate different environments, and Shepard liked to get there early, picking out the night sky from Palaven or the sunrise on Mars.
He never asked Kaidan to do that sort of stuff, even though he was smart and the skills might’ve been good to develop. Cracking codes, breaking and entering—that came naturally to Shepard, and if someone’s fingerprints were gonna be left on the keypad, they might as well be his, not somebody with a mom and dad who’d be disappointed in them if they ever found out about it.
Shepard checked all the angles, up and down the hall, three o’clock and nine o’clock, then punched in the code and slipped inside.
It was dark and quiet, just the way he liked it. Shepard wasn’t Kaidan—he didn’t have a head full of fancy implants that needed safeguarding against every knock and rattle—but some of Kaidan’s habits for keeping comfortable were starting to rub off on him. Looking for a quiet place to think had been the first trick he’d picked up; Shepard hadn’t even realized how much he needed his own space to get back to at the end of the day until he didn’t have it anymore.
Living with the same guys you fought beside was supposed to breed loyalty—or at the very least some kind of unity among the raw recruits. Shepard guessed it was harder to leave a guy in the field when you knew what toothpaste he used, or what kind of protein she always grabbed first at breakfast.
He was good at those details from a lifetime of living off them. When the littlest change in a turf-gang leader’s habits meant walking into an ambush, you learned to read a stranger fast.
It wasn’t that big of a deal. Not really. One of the staff lieutenants thought it was fun to play memory games with him, gossip about which training sergeants had lactose allergies but couldn’t stay away from the ice cream, that sort of thing.
Seemed kinda pointless to Shepard, but whatever kept him in good standing with the blues. He just needed to make it through marine training and then he could stop looking over his shoulder.
That was the plan, anyway. But Shepard knew better than anybody how easy something like that could cross wires and fuck up.
There were a few new simulations programmed into the system this time, like someone out there thought Shepard’s romantic interludes could use some extra juice. There was a nightscape of Illium, cars zipping between the lit-up buildings, almost like a private star system unto itself—but there was also a Thessian garden, with crawling green vines and a decorative fountain set into the middle.
Shepard didn’t have a clue what either of those had to do with combat. Probably something about how the enemy could strike anywhere—or maybe a lesson on avoiding terrain destruction when there could be civilians nearby.
The Alliance-grade training rifles were bigger than the pistols Shepard was used to working with and the Kessler IIIs were way better than any of the second-hand goods Shepard had been packing with the Reds. He could still feel the weight of one of the new weapons in his arms, lifting it, sighting his target in the cross-hairs—an invisible menace in-between the skyscrapers, just past a narrow side-alley, under a flashing neon awning. Danger was all around at all times, hostiles threatening civilians, batarian slaving gangs pumping live rounds into the crowd, and Shepard measured each angle he’d use to avoid ricochet, only break a few full glass windows while taking down the enemy, that sort of thing. If this’d been a real training run, there’d be holographic citizens—turians and asari, cops and families and NCOs—all around him. It’d be just like a real city anywhere and the only difference from the streets he knew was that you could find a few more aliens off-world.
It wasn’t flight simulation, which most of the guys preferred, but actually, Shepard liked these rooms better. Crates littered the area for cover and he ducked down behind one, feeling the cold press of his dog tags against his chest, between the light cotton of his Alliance t-shirt and his bare skin.
When he popped back up to take his invisible mark with his invisible Kessler, his target was Kaidan Alenko, not a vorcha showing too many teeth.
‘If I’m interrupting something…’ Kaidan began, and Shepard whipped his hand back, rubbing the freshly-buzzed hair at the bottom of his head instead, offering Kaidan a half-salute in greeting.
‘Just getting a little extra practice in,’ Shepard replied. ‘Never can be too prepared, like Anderson always says.’
Kaidan picked his way past a few of the empty crates, one of them scorched at the corner from a routine session in teaching a bunch of green kids how not to blow themselves up with a frag grenade. Shepard could still hear the ringing in his ears for days after the first one went off—more powerful than anything Finch had mixed up from the right pinched ingredients for a job. Deadly. Contained. Hot as hell.
Just like Kaidan in that t-shirt, Shepard thought. All the hard training suited him, muscles Shepard’s fingers knew better than the ones on his own body—no matter how much they ached, no matter how often they reminded him they were there and he was using them way too much lately.
Shepard sat, one elbow on his thigh, wiping his palm against his fatigues. Kaidan glanced over his shoulder to see the Illium cityscape behind them, face lit up by the glow of the lights.
It wasn’t like looking at him in darkness and starshine, but it was close.
‘So,’ Shepard said. ‘Hey.’
‘Hey,’ Kaidan replied.
He took his time closing the final distance between them and that was always the part Shepard liked best, if only because he also hated it the most. Waiting was the worst; waiting was the greatest. Kaidan making him wait—whether he knew he was doing it or it came naturally to him—was the only way Shepard would take it, biting his lower lip when their knees finally bumped, waiting for Kaidan to look down at him.
‘What was it this time?’ Kaidan asked.
‘Vorcha.’ Shepard snaked his hand to the small of Kaidan’s back, a touch that made Kaidan catch his breath—then lose it again. Shepard saw the quick rise of his chest and the equally quick fall and imagined the skittering of his pulse, thinking about how he was the one who did that, on and off field-practice. ‘They were threatening civilian livelihood. What else could I do?’
‘Remind me not to travel to Illium with you anytime soon,’ Kaidan said, but Shepard could hear—and feel—the small grin in his voice.
Shepard grinned back, Kaidan’s lips twitching as he pressed them together and finally, finally looked Shepard’s way.
‘We could always spend a romantic night in a garden on Thessia, if killing imaginary vorcha together isn’t your thing,’ Shepard added. ‘You just didn’t like our picnic on the desert sands of Tuchanka last time, so I figured something like this’d be more your style.’
‘Tuchanka’s a bombshell,’ Kaidan said. ‘And before you say anything—it’s not the good kind, either.’
‘I dunno.’ They were too close for Shepard to do his usual thing, pacing around Kaidan like an asari vanguard taking in her unlikely prey. He made do with what he had, drawing Kaidan down, nose rubbing along his hairline to his temple. He smelled like whatever products he used to keep his hair in regulation form—he hadn’t cut it down, and Shepard was grateful for that, though he had enough sense to keep his mouth shut about it. Whenever he complimented someone, for some reason, they always ended up feeling offended. ‘Think there’s something kinda beautiful about the way it keeps on ticking—not many places could after that kind of nuclear detonation.’
‘So that’s your idea of romantic,’ Kaidan said. He was studying the Illium horizon, looking for vorcha or maybe something more elusive. But it was just a holo-image, projected on a bunch of rounded white walls. ‘Total annihilation, then seeing what grows back from the ashes.’
‘Yeah,’ Shepard replied. ‘That sounds about right.’
They’d been drilled in close combat for weeks. Shepard knew how to fall without injuring anything vital, and he knew how to take down an opponent without killing the romance, too. It was easy work to flip Kaidan over his hip, rolling them so they’d land flat against the practice mats.
It was Kaidan who added his own private flair to the landing, throwing out a biotic wave that took them down gently.
And here Shepard had been planning to show off his skills—kinda hard to do when you were messing around with a biotic who always had to take precautions.
Dating, someone like Kaidan might’ve said. Dating a biotic who always had to take precautions. But there hadn’t been any actual dates, so using that word seemed too close to wishful thinking on someone’s part.
‘I see how it is.’ Kaidan’s skin rippled with the aftereffects of the biotics, dark blue light lingering in his eyes. Shepard could feel the kinetic barriers tickling his skin. ‘This isn’t a picnic. It’s an ambush.’
‘Can’t it be both?’ Shepard asked.
Complicated definitions for two complicated people. Shepard felt heat in his belly and between his legs, like one of those carry-the-rocket-flare runs they’d done a week back, slogging through simulated weather scenarios—Noveria cold was the worst, blasts of icy wind hitting them from all sides, Shepard tucked around his rocket flare to keep it safe. He got it to the rendezvous point and lit it, watching it burst high above the training grounds, then sizzle out while the sprinklers shut off.
That always happened when he was close to Kaidan. Or when he was thinking about Kaidan, or when Kaidan was across the room, or when Kaidan was too far away to locate. It happened when Shepard was sleeping and when he was sneaking out, anything but sleep on his mind, but it was more intense now than ever, bodies pressed together, Shepard’s lips right above Kaidan’s mouth.
Kaidan didn’t blink. He must’ve seen something in Shepard’s eyes because his sparked with more than kinetic barrier reflection, and then they started kissing, right there in front of Illium.
Well—sort of.
Kaidan’s mouth tasted like toothpaste; he was totally the type. He always brushed his teeth before they met up and it was stuff like that, the way he shivered when his t-shirt rode up over his belly, the way his nipples got hard right away even without simulated Noveria snowstorms to help, that made Shepard want to kiss him harder, until his lips were swollen. Shepard did, slipping him some tongue, a hand between his legs while the mat squeaked softly beneath them.
Kaidan was hard, too. Knowing it, feeling it, was about as satisfying as getting that rocket flare to point, maybe more. It burned just as bright and just as hot, and lasted a little bit longer, tasting just as sweet.
Kaidan’s eyes had fallen shut by the time Shepard moved on to his jaw—clean-shaven, smelling fresh, like soap. Shepard bit Kaidan’s ear and his pulse and got under his belt like breaking a lock code; he had more practice with that, but at least it made his fingers quick and careful. Not subtle, but then, who needed to be?
Not Shepard. Not when Kaidan arched up after his touch and Shepard rubbed him through his briefs. It was always something between them, extra training or sore muscles or the ribs Shepard kept breaking, the bruises down his side from the blows he took in order to deflect the ones that counted.
It all went out of his head when he was between Kaidan’s legs, his splayed knees, touching him the way he’d been thinking about all day.
Eventually, it was gonna grind to a halt. Shepard was gonna show up to their place and flip the switch, choose a setting, snipe imaginary hostiles for an hour or so, until he realized Kaidan wasn’t coming.
It wasn’t Alliance training that kept Shepard two steps ahead of present conditions—it was street experience, figuring out what was around each corner before turning down that way or not.
Shepard rubbed a little faster, maybe too fast. Kaidan moaned, then cut the noise off with the back of his hand and came into Shepard’s fingers. Shepard watched his face, lips parted instead of pressed together, hand falling away from his mouth, until he had to look somewhere else.
One of the signs switched over, bathing them in pink light instead of blue. Shepard blinked, and it was all the time Kaidan needed to flip them over, redefining the odds and their positions, pinning Shepard’s back to the mat.
Shepard could get used to that. He already had, and the thought was just as dangerous as Kaidan’s hands on him, jerking him off so damn easily.
‘That was…really romantic,’ Kaidan said, still bent over Shepard’s chest, braced one-handed at his side. His wrist bumped one of the old bruises and Shepard didn’t flinch, although that didn’t mean he couldn’t feel it all through his right flank.
‘I could take you to a movie.’ Shepard blinked up at the sign above them, advertising the latest box-office hit. Alliance sure did love their pointless details. ‘How do you feel about The 840-Year-Old Virgin? It’s playing right now; maybe we can still make the show at nineteen-hundred.’
‘Pretty sure the movie’s supposed to come first and the other things after,’ Kaidan replied.
‘You asking me out, Kaidan?’ Shepard asked.
Maybe it was too much.
Sure enough, Kaidan shifted, eyes flicking to the simulated city around them. He was trying not to make a face, but Shepard caught him at it anyway, big brown eyes halfway to rolling skyward. Shepard thought about feeling guilty, then didn’t bother.
Kaidan was a big boy. He knew what he’d signed himself up for.
‘I don’t think we get shore leave until we’ve earned it,’ Kaidan said. Despite his reaction, recoil like a pistol overheating in Shepard’s hand, he hadn’t bothered to pull away. There was something warm in his gaze, a laziness in his muscles that said he’d let his guard down, even if the topic had gone fraught with field mines. ‘Besides, you…really can’t do something like that in a movie theater.’
‘See, now that just sounds like a challenge,’ Shepard said. He’d been thinking about working another angle—such as surprise that Kaidan might think he couldn’t behave himself in a dark room with no one to make them jump and salute. But this was more fun. He wriggled his hips, just to remind Kaidan he might’ve been down but he wasn’t out. Not by a long shot. ‘I bet people do it all the time.’
‘That’s not the best reason you’ve come up with to do something.’ Kaidan looked like he was thinking about kissing again, so Shepard made the decision for him, straining the sore muscle in his neck to close the distance between them.
Apparently, reprogramming the simulation room for the night didn’t count as a date. Which Shepard had known all along—but knowing something and hearing it fresh from Kaidan’s lips were two different things.
He didn’t have to think all that hard to know which he preferred, either.
No matter the battle, Kaidan’s mouth won every time.
‘We’d better get back,’ Shepard said, nipping at Kaidan’s lower lip so he’d feel it a couple hours down the road. ‘I don’t want anyone thinking I’m a bad influence on you, Private Alenko.’
‘Too late,’ Kaidan said.
Shepard pulled away to do his fly back up, then headed for the projector, flipping the switch off. It was dark in the room, quiet and their little secret, but it was more like the movie after it’d ended, not before it was about to start.
‘See you around, private,’ Shepard added, waiting for Kaidan to head out first, then bringing up the rear, a position that—at least—afforded him a pretty decent view, if not a distinct tactical advantage.
*