Hey everyone! This is my first bit of fluffy one-shot that I'm publishing ever. The inspiration for this showed up when I was watching the History channel at 2AM. There's this badass show called "The Universe" and one of the season 3 episodes is about sex in space and how the human race will be able to procreate during a coming space age. This episode is easily found on Youtube. Just search for "The Universe Sex in Space."
The entire time I'm watching this episode, I'm thinking to myself, "these people obviously haven't played Mass Effect!" Of course, we don't have gravity on our space ships yet, but the Normandy does. And so this one-shot is born. What on earth would the Normandy crew think of that episode today?
Ashley sat in her room aboard her beloved Normandy. She looked at the twinkling stars as she tossed aside a datapad, having just finished the last of her Spectre reports. With a sigh she folded her arms and brought up the browser on her omni-tool, deciding that it would be a good opportunity to just sit and watch a movie while the Normandy was on its way back to the Citadel.
By now, she'd seen damn near every new Blasto movie and all of the latest releases after going from meeting to meeting and planet to planet. Besides, she could spend only so much time in the ship's gym and armory. She scrolled from genre to genre.
Classics? No, seen 'em all, she thought.
A comedy couldn't hurt. Not in the mood. Joker provides enough entertainment anyway.
There were a ton of new action movies. I've got enough action in my life and half the human heroes look like an even more ripped version of Shepard. Besides, I get the real thing naked on a regular basis.
Old science. What the hell is that? Ashley opened up the genre menu to find a bunch of old science documentaries from the twenty and twenty-first centuries. Some she recognized, like Carl Sagan or the infamous "Miracle of Life." She laughed at the stories of how people would talk about how students loathed the day they were forced to watch that film. But Ashley knew how babies were made and moved on.
Then one, very to the point, title caught Ashley's attention. "Sex in Space" was the title. She lifted an eyebrow, not having thought of sex in space being an issue. Curious, she started the documentary.
It started out with people professing the need to procreate in space in order to preserve the human race. Looks like we fixed that problem pretty well, she thought, reminding herself of the night she spent with Shepard back on the SR1. Ashley and Shepard were trying to preserve the human race, sure, but sneaking into the captain's quarters of a commandeered military ship could have ended up as more of a hindrance than help. Their approach to humanity's imminent destruction required more guns than steamy regulation-breaking nights.
Then Michio Kaku brought up a problem that Ashley never really had to deal with, "The number one enemy of sex in space is Issac Newton's laws of motion. The third law of motion: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. If you push against something, it pushes against you." She snickered.
Oh yes, she thought. He most certainly pushes back sometimes. When Ashley came back to the Normandy, Shepard told EDI to grant Ashley permanent access to his quarters; she decided to utilize that privilege to its full extent. Most days, she'd lounge on the sofa in his quarters since she would finish her day's business before Shepard was done with whatever he'd have to deal with in the war room. Ashley could tell how the day had gone just by the sound of how his feet were hitting the floor. Sometimes they were upbeat with a fast pace, on bad days she could hear them drag against the floor as he moved to his bed to pass out. As the war progressed, his feet dragged more.
On days like those, she'd stand up and turn the corner before he'd clear the stairs from his little office space. He was never surprised to see her, but the change in his facial expression told her that Shepard was glad that she was waiting for him. He'd fall into her arms in an exhausted embrace.
She'd hold the exhausted Shepard in her arms and walk him up against the fish tank. He closed his eyes with a relieved smile as Ashley held him against the glass wall and made a brief glance at yet another dead fish that floated to the top of the tank. She grinned, stifling a laugh at Shepard's negligence of his fish. But Ashley couldn't blame him. There were more important things to worry about than a fish tank. She made a mental note to buy that automatic fish-feeder she saw on the Citadel and soon made quick work of tickling his neck with soft kisses.
"The four male astronauts described a depleted sex drive that correlated with low testosterone levels." The documentary blamed the lack of testosterone on the radiation that people were no longer sheltered from when in space. After a while, all ships protected their inhabitants from the radiation and there was plenty of testosterone downstairs in the gym. Most of it was probably Vega's.
In her day and age, keeping a sex drive in space was no issue. He'd arch his neck when she'd breathe softly right under his ear. Ashley wouldn't allow him to return the gestures, slapping his hands away when they moved to her chest. Before he knew what had happened, she'd pin one of his arms against the glass. He wrapped his free arm around her waist, relishing in the closeness and Ashley's willingness to take charge. He hoisted her up a little, making Ashley lose her footing and he spun her around, switching positions with her. He'd take his chance to thank her for the kind gestures while she was pinned against the fish tank, leaving kisses on her soft lips as she traced the glowing scars on his cheeks with her fingertips.
Back to Ashley's moment alone in her room, the program continued. A woman named Vanna Bonta, an enthusiast for fixing this gravitational issue, made it her life's work to figure out how to make these things work in space. She used her husband as a means to test her inventions that would keep couples together in a zero-g environment. One was a suit that could attach to another's suit and allowed more than enough flexibility for intimacy. They'd frantically open up their suits and fly towards each other, attaching the suits to each other upon impact. To her, it looked incredibly silly.
Ashley continued to laugh, despite knowing that it was a serious matter back in the day, but she kept imagining herself in one of those suits attached to Shepard. Those most certainly would not have been standard-issue garments in the military.
And instead of fretting over what to wear, Ashley's only worry over clothes during intimate moments is when she's tearing them off. Ashley would let out a ragged breath as his chapped lips (another sign of a stressful day) moved down her neck. Shepard contended with Ashley arching her back in pleasure when he found her suit's zipper and slowly pulled it down to give him more skin to kiss. He placed a series of tickling kisses between her breasts.
Laughing with joyful desire, Ashley grabbed his hand and joined him in pulling the zipper further down. She interrupted his kisses as she greedily pushed him to arms length, unbuttoning the grand officer's regalia that he regularly wore, ultimately tossing his jacket aside and pulled his shirt up from the confines of his belt and over his head.
Ashley's train of thought came to a screeching halt when she heard a woman in the documentary exclaim, "You could break a penis!" Another burst of giggling like a junior high school student escaped Ashley. With great enthusiasm, the woman continued, with great detail, about the dangers of sex without gravity.
An amused voice said from behind her, "I give up." Ashley stopped and promptly turned around to find a grinning Shepard leaned against a wall in his perfect officer's regalia. "What the hell are you watching?" She paused the video.
"Well, uhm..." She hunched her shoulders, a little embarrassed. "How much of that did you hear?"
"Something about velcro space suits and..." He chuckled. "Breaking very valuable items."
She put her hand on her face, her voice stifled a little by her hand when she said, "Oh my gosh." He walked around the sofa to sit down next to her. Instinctively, she leaned into him.
She could feel his breath on her neck. "Getting any ideas?"
"Oh hell no. We don't have velcro suits!"
"We can improvise," he insisted in a husky voice. She sat up to straddle his lap, holding on to each of his arms with a devious grin on her face. "I'll do it, too." He reached over to her hips with Ashley's hands still on him.
"You're bluffing!" she challenged. He mirrored Ashley's grin. The glow of his scars cooled as she traced them as she usually did. They both sat quietly for a minute, playing with each other's hair and engaging in brief, but sweet, kisses.
"EDI," he said to break the silence.
"Yes, Commander," EDI replied through the speakers.
"Disable the gravity control for this room," he ordered. Ashley gave him a wide-eyed look of disbelief. He replied to her with a wink.
Without skipping a beat, EDI inquired, "Are you sure, Commander?"
"Yep." He was wearing a huge grin, clearly enjoying Ashley's reaction. Ashley shook her head at him, realizing that he was quite serious and loving it.
"Yes, Commander." EDI began to count down from ten. Shepard took Ashley's hands and interlaced their fingers.
"I swear, if this whole escapade doesn't kill you I will," she emptily threatened. He just laughed and braced himself for gravity's departure.
"Three, two, one," EDI announced. "Gravity disabled." Ashley began to gently float away from his lap, her long hair leading the way above her. The datapads and couch cushions floated up with her, with the rest of the furniture being bolted down to the floor. He only needed to push gently away from the floor with his foot to meet her up in the air. With Ashley moving much more slowly than he was, Shepard's face softly, but quite ungracefully, collided with hers. The laws of physics kicked in and they flew apart, stopped only by their intertwined fingers.
"Let go," he told her. They relinquished in their grasp and floated apart. Ashley waved her arms out in front of her, as if she were swimming through the recycled air, and made her way to the wall. Shepard made it to the ceiling and watched Ashley push against the wall and zoom to the other side of the room, passing right under him with her belly up, allowing them to lock eyes for a brief moment. He angled himself to follow her; jumping off and scooping her up with one arm and bouncing them away from the wall that they were flying towards.
As they glided through the room, Ashley cautiously closed in on Shepard's lips... less chapped this time, and thus she assumed that today went better. He returned the kiss as they plummeted together towards the floor in front of the large observation window.
"Enable gravity, EDI," he ordered. Gravity returned the second they hit the floor, with Ashley on top, smashing into Shepard. They could hear the sound of cushions and datapads falling down with them.
They remained on the floor for a few minutes just holding each other and uncontrollably laughing to the point of tears.
"I don't think that we're quite ready for more zero-g experiments in the ship," Ashley concluded. She rolled off of him and lounged on her side, looking at him.
He agreed, "I enjoy my onboard gravity." Shepard stood up and offered his hand to Ashley; she took it and he pulled her up. His hand moved around behind her. "I think that we'd better utilize it while we can."
Ashley grabbed his jacket, like she'd done a dozen times over since she rejoined the team, and walked him back to the sofa, pulling him down to sit. She moved her hands up to his broad shoulders and he held Ashley by her hips, brining her back to sit down on him.
"Promise not to break anything?" he asked.
"Oh, no promises, Skipper."