Flowers
Kaidan stared at the display, reading the latest lurid text transmission of unknown origin. It was certainly very... imaginative. Turning off the terminal with a wave of his hand, he glanced back at Shepard, she was snapping a high explosive mod to the detonator on her grenade belt.
"I'm glad I never tried to send you any love letters." She didn't answer, instead laying the grenades alongside the rest of her heavily modded weaponry before hefting her armor case onto the table. Kaidan swept his fingers through his hair, pausing to scratch the back of his neck. "You don't think this is all a little excessive?"
"Remember the last time I had a secret admirer?" Shepard asked, stripping down with brusque efficiency. Her shirt went flying past him, landing magnificently short of the bed. Her trousers followed, on a significantly shorter trajectory.
"Okay, you have a point there. But think this through: whoever he is, this guy seems to have given you plenty of warning; not going is a perfectly viable option." The commander shot him a withering glare, and Kaidan immediately leapt to his feet. "Right. I'll get Liara; we'll meet you in the airlock."
-o-o-o-
The rendezvous point was in a neglected corner of the Upper Wards... not abandoned, but easy to overlook and eerily quiet in the middle of the so-called night. A dead-end alley, square against a bulkhead and shadowed by overhangs on either side, it seemed to be a forgotten architectural oversight.
"This is a little suspicious," Kaidan admitted.
"No cover to speak of; no easy vantage points from the street; no good escape routes." Shepard sighed, thinking aloud, "Not a good place to get pinned down in." She looked to Kaidan and nodded towards the alley. "Surveillance?"
Pulling up his omni-tool, Kaidan ran a cursory survey of the area, followed by a more in depth scan.
"Nothing," he reported, shaking his head at the display. "At all."
Shepard studied the alley for several long moments, shoulders slumping under the weight of her decision.
"All right," she said. "Liara."
Having stood by patiently, Liara instantly perked up from the rearguard. "Yes, Commander?"
"I want you up on that street there," Shepard pointed to one of the overhangs. "Kaidan, take the opposite side. That should give enough coverage in case this is a trap."
"I'd rather find something a little closer than that," Kaidan remarked, glancing up and down the open corridor to no avail.
"There's nothing on this level that wouldn't be a tip off." Shepard summoned forth her omni-tool, booting a kinetic barrier algorithm. "Besides, if there is a fight, I think the two of you would be more useful out of danger and raining hellfire from above."
"Can I say that this plan feels unnecessarily reckless?"
The omni-tool shimmered closed. "Noted."
Kaidan reached for her shoulder, then thought better of it. His hand ghosted down her arm until he could entwine her fingers with his own; he squeezed gently. "Be careful."
"If I can survive a Reaper falling on me, I can sure as hell survive a creep in a dark alley." There was a challenge in her eyes as she met his gaze; it softened, and she squeezed his hand back. "But I will."
They left her alone, and she took up position in the alley, pistol drawn, back to the wall. That was comfortable at least. At length, the implant in her ear crackled.
"In position," Kaidan informed her over the comm. "I hope you know what you're doing, Shepard."
A moment later, Liara checked in. "As am... do I."
From her best-defensible corner, she glanced up, but could see neither of them. The time in the final letter she had received was hours yet. Now, all she had to do was wait.
Ten minutes past when the letter said – so much for cautious planning – a man peeked around the corner of the wall. Shepard immediately drew a bead, incredulous as she recognized him. Ignorant or foolhardy, he grinned widely upon seeing her.
"Oh, good, I wasn't sure you'd make it."
"What're you doing here?" Shepard asked before her mind caught up with her mouth. She put the pieces together, simultaneously thunderstruck as the man in front of her explained himself. Her aim never wavered from his unarmored chest.
"It's me, Conrad Verner," he said, strutting forward and confident as you please. He kept his arms at an odd angle behind his back. "I sent you the letters."
"Stop," Shepard intoned flatly, "walking towards me. Hands where I can see them."
Conrad stopped, pouting. "But that would ruin the surprise!"
"Conrad, in my line of work, surprises are generally a bad thing and end with the people I care about getting killed. So: Hands. Now. Please."
"Oh," Conrad chuckled amiably. "I hadn't thought of that. Here!"
In one fast, fluid motion – too fast, for Shepard's liking – he showed his hands; in one he held a heart-shaped box, and in the other a stunningly extravagant bouquet of flowers. The soldier flicked her eyes from the man's face to his bounty. "Mind telling me what all this is about?"
"These are for you. I wanted to give you something for St. Valentine's Day!"
It took Shepard a moment to register what he was even talking about. "I thought you were married."
"I am," Conrad explained, "But I thought – and my wife would agree – that saving the galaxy is hard, lonely work. So I figured I'd arrange to meet with you and tell you how much you're appreciated, which is a lot by the way."
"Okay, fine. That's... very nice," Shepard managed, relaxing her stance if not her guard. "Now, why the hell would you want to meet me all the way down here?"
"I knew you'd appreciate a little excitement. Secret meetings in dark alleys... it's extreme," Conrad made a hand gesture Shepard was unfamiliar with, but it seemed benign enough. The snickering in her earpiece, she was less inclined to forgive. "Cool, huh?"
"And nobody put you up to this?" she pressed, as part of her was still waiting on the inevitable ambush.
"Nope." Conrad beamed. "It was all my idea." He held out the flowers and the heart-shaped candy box, and Shepard holstered her weapon to take them, adrenaline wearing thin and being replaced with utter bafflement. "I should go. My transport leaves in about an hour, and you know how travel can be. See you again later!"
"Yeah, uh... thanks."
"Bye!"
"Goodbye."
Shepard stood, stunned. She stared at the flowers as though they were carnivorous.
"That wasn't so bad," Kaidan said. When she didn't answer, he asked, "You okay?"
"I'm fine," Shepard replied, terse.
"Want us to come down?"
"Negative... I, uh... I'm heading back, meet me on the way."
"Copy."
She stood a while longer before shaking it off and backtracking the way she'd come. Liara caught up with her on the street, while Kaidan was waiting for them at the elevator to the Presidium.
"No poison or kidnapping this time," Kaidan mused.
"That's true," Liara agreed. "And a good thing."
Shepard huffed, tossing the bouquet over her shoulder at Liara and slapping Kaidan with the box of candy. Unburdened, she crossed her arms and waited for the elevator to reach its destination. "So I'm paranoid. Laugh all you want."
-o-o-o-
By the time they reached the Normandy airlock and were waiting on decontamination, Shepard had relaxed a touch, or so Kaidan imagined.
"Hey, Shepard?"
"What?"
"What he said back there... about saving the galaxy being... hard, lonely work... is any of that true?"
Shepard shrugged, considering a bit. "Hard, sometimes. Lonely," she graced him with the subtlest of smiles, "not at all."
Returning the smile, Kaidan reached out to caress her cheek, only to jerk his hand back as the Normandy's VI announced the end of the decontamination process and the airlock simultaneously slid open.
"Excuse me," Liara squeaked, cradling her flowers as she slipped between them.
Some days, the galaxy could have expert timing.
Working Title: Prompt 11
Prompt: "Kaidan or Shepard is/are trying to find a way to spend Valentine's day together and alone. Follow one of them (or both of them) for a bit, where, no matter how hard they try, nothing goes right."
Noteworthy: So... again, not quite the prompt. Alas.
Disambiguation: For what it's worth, I wrote most of this while high on sleep deprivation. If anything doesn't make sense, I apologize. XD
Published: February 7th, 2011, on the KAAS Prompt Project.
Derivative work of material © BioWare, Electronic Arts.