Sometime between ME1 and ME2. The SSV Normandy has been on patrol for geth in the Terminus system for weeks, searching for any resistance or signs that the Reaper threat is not over.
"How long do you think we can keep this a secret?" Kaidan whispers to the darkness. His short nails are scratching across her bare back, she writhes beneath them. Her muscles pull sinuously under his palms and Kaidan feels sated happiness. Shepard hums sleepily. He leans down to press his lips to one of her sweaty shoulders, across a shoulder blade and to the middle of her spine. He tastes salt and smells himself on her.
"As long as we need to. It's not anyone's business except our own." Shepard replies and rolls onto her back, her front now revealed to him. Kaidan skims his lips over one of her peaks, mouthing slowly upwards and bends his head to kiss her pink lips. She twines her arms around his neck, deepening their embrace. They have spent all sleep cycle together in her bed and still he wants more. The stolen hours they have never feels like enough. His eyes are dry and droopy though, they have to be up and in-command in three hours.
He doesn't know if they should be having this affair, only that it feels right to him. In quiet moments, sometimes when he's with the rest of the marine detail, he starts to feel a creep of guilt. They are smashing regulations, cutting into their sworn oaths with every stolen kiss and every clandestine embrace. His name on her lips as she comes could be the nail in the coffin of their careers.
Technically they are a crime together, a secret mutiny against authority. Maybe they are a smaller indiscretion than stealing a prototype warship, but still, it is enough to land them in the Alliance brig.
Kaidan wishes he knew before how good indiscretion felt. As her tongue gently probes his mouth, he thinks maybe it's not the lack of responsibility giving him this heady rush, maybe it's just Shepard. His hands skim over her flat belly, up to her breasts and he nudges her legs apart with his knee, rolling on top of her in a swift movement.
She pulls away from the kiss to moan brokenly. "Kaidan, we can't go again. I won't be able to walk right tomorrow and I won't be the one to explain why."
Kaidan laughs into her neck. "I know, it's just-"
"It's just…I'm simply irresistible, right?"
"That's right. You found out my dirty little secret. I'm a sucker for pretty blue eyes."
"Ooh." Shepard exhales. "You charmer, you. You know…" Shepard's thin and elegant fingers dart over his hip, inching close to his length teasingly. "I think if anyone asks, I'll say I pulled a muscle doing a rep."
Kaidan sucks in a breath between his teeth when she reaches her target. "Best plan I ever heard."
They don't sleep for a long time that night, lost in each other.
In the morning, he leaves Shepard sleeping and dashes barefoot to the sleeper pods when he thinks the coast is clear, jumpy at being caught.
He's almost there when-
"Nice night for a little stroll to the commander's cabin?" Wrex laughs drolly at Kaidan's struck form, he's paused mid-step eyeing the krogan with embarrassment.
Kaidan coughs. "Um. I was just checking out…her console for her. You know how she likes to wreck the boot-up."
"Oh yeah. I hear she likes to wreck it, alright. Boy, you can drop the act. She comes to breakfast every morning reeking of you."
"Oh." Heat floods Kaidan's face.
"Ba ha!" Wrex laughs. "Nothing to be ashamed of, whelp! Only way to beat the Genophage, practice, practice. If she were krogan, you'd be neglecting your duty."
"Uh…Wrex, humans don't have the Genophage. We're not trying to…you know."
"I know that, you pyjak! I'm just saying: you should get a move on with that. Heh. You all live such short lives and you waste it on boring paperwork and strange societal rules. Humans, I'll never understand you."
"Yes well, that's the thing. Rules." Kaidan runs a hand through his messy hair and wishes he'd just stayed in with the sleeping Shepard. "Just um…don't go spreading it around."
"Don't worry, Alenko. Anyone asks and I say you were in that pod all night sleeping like a baby varren."
"Thanks." Kaidan nods awkwardly and starts to creep to his pod, face still burning.
"You owe me a bottle of ryncol though." Wrex calls after him.
"Done, Wrex. Whatever, just…just keep it under your hat."
"I don't wear a hat." Wrex drawls.
"Oh, you know what I mean!" Kaidan slams his sleeper pod shut, mortified.
Shepard takes Kaidan and Tali down to the next planet on their list with geth activity four hours later and Kaidan half wishes she'd taken Garrus instead of him. She's in an absolutely foul mood, when he tries to help her suit up, she snaps at him and slaps his hands away.
He has absolutely no idea what he's done this time, and hopefully puts it down to her lack of sleep. He doesn't think in the space of time he's last seen her that he could have done something to piss her off. Though it's hard to tell with Shepard sometimes, her temper is notorious. But usually it's directed elsewhere, not at Kaidan.
They take out a small geth camp; it looks like it served as a base of some kind. There are dragon's teeth spikes like the ones on Eden Prime scattered about, and most disturbingly: husks still impaled on them.
The geth contingent left behind is so weak and strangely disorganized that it only takes about ten minutes to clear them. Tali and Kaidan Overload their shields and Shepard rips them apart with biotics.
Afterward they take stock of the base, gathering what little intel they can. Kaidan watches Shepard examine the spikes, she kicks one with a booted foot in anger.
"Stupid geth. This is sick what they do." She spits.
"I know, Shepard." Tali says. "The geth are soulless and unfeeling, they deserve to be wiped out like the mistakes they are."
Kaidan doesn't mention that the quarians are the ones who made them that way. Tali is his friend, and it's really none of his business. He's just here to protect the innocent from the harm that the geth wrought. Kaidan remembers Shepard's broken arm from the Citadel and his grip tightens on his rifle.
There's a sudden metallic screech, the spike is lowering and a husk crawls off it. It snarls at Shepard. She raises her hand and Pulls, the husk floats harmlessly and Tali's shotgun tears into it with a crack.
Kaidan relaxes his stance again, lowering his omni-tool and cancelling the cryo-blast he had readied.
He half pays attention, concentrating on scanning the atmosphere for any interesting things that would entice the geth to this particular abandoned world. It has a low oxygen concentration, fine for the short term, but would eventually lead to sickness in humans. Shepard had ordered them all to wear helmets on this mission.
It's because he is focused on his omni-tool results that he first misses Shepard leaning over the husk's remains, examining it. Her sudden lurch to her knees and Tali's cry of "Shepard!" whips his head around.
Her hands are in the dirt and she's heaving into her helmet. Kaidan panics, was she hit and he didn't notice?
"Shepard!" He's over at her side in a flash searching for injuries. "What's wrong? Are you ok?"
She doesn't answer. Over her suits comm, she sounds choked, like she's…vomiting.
Her hands are scrambling at her breather helmet, fumbling at the catches.
"No, Shepard. Leave it-" He tries to stop her but she already has it off. He's right, she is vomiting. The remains of their sugary cereal breakfast spill out of her helmet to the dirt next to the husk's ruined body. It's all down her chin, and front of her armor. Shepard's gasping now, hit with the low oxygen content.
Kaidan swears. He can't do anything to clean her face up; his armored hands won't allow him to wipe it away.
Instead, he forces her to put her helmet back on, as much she protests, it's better than her suffocating to death.
She eventually stops retching and groans. "Oh. Should not have looked so closely at that body."
"Yeah, Shepard. My, err, shotgun did some damage." Tali says.
Kaidan glances distractedly at the husk, more focused on Shepard's wellbeing. One of its arms is blown off, circuitry and tendons protruding. It's grisly but that has never bothered Shepard before.
Kaidan curses himself for making her stay up so late last night. It's not healthy and he shouldn't have been so selfish.
"Shepard, we should head back and get you cleaned up. There's nothing of interest here. It's like the geth were hiding out." He reaches under her arm to pull her gently to her feet, dirt sticking to the rear of her armor. Unable to stop himself, even in front of Tali, he brushes it down, cleaning the blue and white jumpsuit.
"Thanks." She mutters. Kaidan can tell she's embarrassed at her display but he doesn't blame her for losing her breakfast. The first time he had seen a husk he hadn't stopped shaking for a day.
Back on the ship he sees her slip off to the locker room and he follows, locking the door behind them.
She's stripping off her smelly, splattered armor and shoving it into the armor sanitizer for cleaning. Without saying anything Kaidan helps her, and she lets him. He goes further once he has the hard pieces and ablative weave off, pulling her sweaty singlet and skintight pants off as well.
"Shit, Kaidan. I lost it down there." She's bright red, and won't quite meet his eyes.
"Go hop in the shower and I'll tell you a story." Shepard nods, and naked, she shuffles to the shower. Kaidan strips his own armor and clothes and joins her.
As he starts to shampoo her hair for her, he speaks. "The first time I killed a man-" Shepard opens her mouth and he cuts off what he knows she'll say. "Not Vyrnnus, I mean really meant to kill a man. I put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger. I was twenty-three and green and he was an enemy combatant. I think he was a merc. Anyway, I had no choice and he was scum. But that didn't mean I didn't spend the next week unable to eat a thing."
"You didn't spew your guts up into your own helmet." Shepard glares at him through the soap bubbles slipping down her face, Kaidan smiles and massages her hair under the shower stream.
"No, that's true. Because wow, that's really gross, Shep." Shepard barks a laugh at him and punches him lightly in the stomach. "But I think I lost five kilos and had nightmares."
"I know. It happens. It just doesn't happen to me, usually."
"You're human, just like me or anyone else." He says as he traces the soap across her stomach, lightly cleaning her.
Shepard sighs and leans against him, shutting her eyes tiredly. "I wish I was a robot or something. Or you know, perfect."
"Shepard, you are perfect to me. Vomit and all."
"Even when I snap at you when I don't mean to?" She mumbles into his chest.
"Especially then."
Kaidan hugs her under the warm stream and thinks that their little indiscretion is the best thing to ever happen to him.