A/N: It's that time of year again; yes...er, winter! Have a lovely Winter-related celebration!
How the Shepard Stole Christmas
Shepard tried to hide her delight as she clapped her hands childishly at the sight in front of her. Such a rare and beautiful sight only happened once a year, and you never knew if you'd see it again, really. It was always best to savour every little movement that could melt even the most concrete hearts.
She giggled again as the polyster-clad Santa on her desk wiggled his hips from side to side, his little plastic sunglasses adding to the "cool" vibe he had going on despite his red braces. All of a sudden, the merry little music that accompanied the machine started to grind into a halted, demonic version of itself. As the figure grinded to a halt, poppy Christmas tunes obviously from decades ago sounded from somewhere outside her door.
Growling in annoyance and stuffing the Santa under her desk guiltily (wires and all), Shepard heaved herself from her warm chair, already having an inkling of what might be the cause. The door whooshed open, and Shepard placed her hands on the would-be frame.
"ASHLEY!" She yelled, one hand coming to rest on her hip. A commotion could be heard from the Mess.
The young woman appeared in front of her, her face a mix of mischief and shame as her back straightened into a more professional stance.
"Commander," she breathed, the word both a greeting and a question.
"What is the meaning of this?" Shepard gestured into the air, as if the music physically hung there, poking into her eyes and ears unapologetically. Ashley supressed a smirk.
"It's Christmas, ma'am. Birth of Jesus Christ, ma'am." She said it as if still in basic training. Shepard raised one of her eyebrows. "Damn, Williams, you've got to be the only person alive who still sees it that way."
Ashley let her face fall into an expression of mock confusion. "So does that mean I can keep the music?" Her professional manner ceased. Shepard sighed, an ear pricking up to listen to what was playing. After a few seconds, her face scrumpled into an expression at the lyrics much like a child forced to eat broccoli.
"What, was he so cheap he had to give her a heart for Christmas? Maybe that's why she gave it away." Shepard tried to retreat back into her room after this, but Ashley piped up.
"You know that's not what it means, Commander!" She winked. Shepard glowered at her scathingly.
"Why can't you have any good songs, like...like Blue Christmas!" Shepard grinned at the thought of it, but Ashley looked blank. Shock flooded the pit of Shepard's stomach.
"Blue Christmas? You know...Elvis?" She offered, at which Ashley still looked blank. "You 've never heard of Elvis?" After a few moments of silence, Shepard groaned and shot a "nevermind" in her direction.
For the first time in the past few moments, Shepard noticed that, of all people, Kaidan Alenko had been watching their conversation as if it was a tennis match, an amused expression on his face. Shepard turned to face him, somewhat scathingly still, her arms folding across her chest.
"I've heard of Elvis," he attempted, his voice weak. A look of delight flooded the commander's face as she took a few steps towards the man to be in comfortable earshot.
"Thank God!" Shepard laughed. She realised she had no idea what to say next, and dreaded the silence about to fall, companionable or not. Noticing this, Ashley smirked.
"Shepard!" She yelled, now quite far away from the pair. Shepard had been about a quarter of the way through a "yeah" when something collided with her face.
"Mistletoe it!" The gunnery-chief laughed, quickly making an escape. After having the plant collide with her face, Shepard had made the attractive facial expression of one trying to rid their mouth of potentially poisonous berries. After this, she looked up at a heavily blushing Kaidan and made her exscuses to retire to her quarters, carefully shuffling around tables and terminals as she went.
**
The next morning, Shepard woke up to blissful silence. No cheesy Christmas pop songs, and Ashley seemed to have taken her meds. As she dressed silently, she realised that she was eternally grateful that she wasn't roughing it on the streets with the Reds anymore in the bitter winter months, even after all these years. Paticipating in a gang in snow was a complete bitch, especially if there was nowhere to squat that night. Waking up in snow was a less than magical feeling, opposed to that of looking out one's window to find it had snowed overnight.
Shepard spied the miserable-looking Santa, still stuck in half-boogie under the desk. Ashley must have unplugged the little guy when looking for a place for her archaic music player.
Strangely, the door to Shepard's room that morning refused to whoosh open in its usual way. It opened sluggishly, as if hung over on spiked eggnog. Shepard let out a flat, confused noise.
Something green and spikey dug into the woman's head, her arms flying out comically as she immediately slipped into Commander mode. Realising it was a tree, she let her guard weaken. The thing refused to move out of her path, no matter how much she made its top end sway.
"Goddammit!" She growled.
Wild laughter came from the other side of the forest, shoving the thicket roughly aside let her see the offender; Ashley was sitting at the Mess' table, trying to seem innocent whilst eating her cereal. Bizarrely, Joker was seated opposite the woman, his crutches leaning against the side of his chair. Both were turned to face an angry Shepard, who, after reaching the other side, rather angrily heaved the tree over towards Kaidan's currently unoccupied terminal. A bauble or two had flew off and collided with her head. She let out an "ow" afterwards, inspecting her fingers for spiky pine needles. Ashley and Joker's laughter built almost faster than her newfound hatred of the holiday period.
"That was not funny," she barked at them, their laughter still threatening her crashing mood. Ashley's hand slammed onto the table in front of her, emphasising her laughter.
"Oh, bah humbug, Shepard!" She chortled. The commander glared, mentally wondering if she could fire a certain two people out of the airlock without getting court-martialed. Firing one last glare in the tree's direction, Shepard retreated once more to her quarters to tackle the mountain of paperwork she had to deal with.
Hearing the door close behind her, she felt safe enough to pull out her dancing Santa, placing him gingerly on the desk in front of her. The little guy now agreed to dance, and the woman's mood lifted greatly when she saw his little hips shimmy in triumph. However, the music that had accompanied his jig had completely died. Shepard huffed at this.
The laughter outside began to die away as Shepard switched on her terminal and almost subconciously signed into her private messaging account.
She blinked at a message there. It was apparently from Ashley, and the subject read as "Is this what you meant?"
The time showed that it had been sent an hour or so after Shepard retreated from the Mistletoe event with her tail between her legs.
With a grimace, Shepard clicked the message like a computer nerd fearing a virus. It was a simple text-based message, and an attachment.
"Yo Shep,
This the guy ya meant? Not really very Christmassy is it? Kind of makes a person want to shoot themselves with their shiny new M-15 Vindicator, not check the roof for reindeer hoofprints. I don't know how we'd do that, anyway. Now here, if this'll cheer you up and make you stay outside your room when things just start getting good, keep it and cherish it or whatever you boss ladies do. Found it on the extranet, completely legally of course. Anyway, sorry 'bout the mistletoe.
Ashley.
P.S 'Blooo, bloo, bloooo...Christmas'"
Shepard frowned the whole way through the message, until she double-clicked the attachment. Delight like that of which the dancing Santa inspired flooded her face, and she clapped her hands together heavily as the notes of a familiar crooner filled the space around her.
She reached her hands behind her head and started the ritual of relaxation by taking the band out that held her brown hair up. She let the strands fall across the shoulders of her protocol blue casualwear, enjoying the feeling for once as she mouthed along to the song. The little Santa boogied away to the song on her desk. Without noticing, Shepard had started to sway gently along to the song in the chair she now lay back very casually in, her feet resting on the edge of the desk near the dancing machine.
Fright lurched into her stomach when her door sounded open, cursing herself in that split second before she span around for not locking it. There stood a very confused-looking Kaidan. It seemed he had planned to walk in with a grin on his face at hearing the music, but said grin had faded into a look of confusion at her current state.
Shepard automatically flew off her chair, spinning herself around to face him and to hide the dancing Santa that still whirred mechanically behind her. Kaidan gulped visibly as the door closed behind him.
"I...heard the music," he began, his voice dry. "Glad to hear someone had gotten rid of the glittery crap."
The King still crooned behind her as her hands clasped the cold desk behind her as she fought for words to say to the man. He took a few steps towards her, confusion fading and a grin replacing it.
Shepard was like a deer caught in the headlights at someone catching her in a moment of vulnerability, even as he extended his hand to her. At first, she thought he was reaching to grab the dancing Santa to ridicule her with, but then she realised what he really meant. Shepard felt her cheeks burn before she could stop it. He seemed strangely confident around her for once.
Had she been lucid, she would have made a joke about too much eggnog, but she found herself unable to do anything other than take the man's hand.
"You'll find your feet at the end of your legs, if you want to move them." Kaidan chuckled throatily. Together, they gently swayed to the music, concentrating more on the closeness of flesh and their solid gaze.
Shepard wished inwardly for Ashley to throw some mistletoe right now as she gingerly lowered her head onto his chest, as if it may burn her to touch him closely, even though she could feel the delicious and almost alien heat radiating from his body. It was a remarkable feeling for both of them.
"Not bad for someone who's spent their life roughing it on the streets, huh?" She had found her voice again. Kaidan chuckled once more.
"Could say that about a lot of things...ma'am."
Shepard adjusted her head and scowled at him for a moment.
He took this as the most appropriate time to kiss her, and once again she was caught off guard. Kaidan ran his hands through her hair, savouring it being around her face for one rare moment. After deepening their kiss, Shepard decided to return to their dancing almost nonchalantly. She realised angrily that Elvis had decided now was a fantastic time to trill his last "blue, blue, blue Christmas."
"Song's over." She muttered breathlessly, Kaidan nodding in response.
"S'not a very long song. We could always hit replay?" He suggested. Shepard grinned mischieviously at the idea and gazed up at him in a spine-tingling way. She broke away from him and sauntered over to her terminal.
"Merry freaking Christmas, then."