Takes place relatively early in ME1, after Feros.
A blue planet revolves slowly below them; Kaidan doesn't even know its name.
It's beautiful and remote and it just seems to drive Shepard more nuts with frustration. He hears her voice cursing the blue sphere, he thinks she might be casting dire aspersions on its mother and her relations with a vorcha. He decides to give her a wide berth while she's ranting like this, although deep down he finds her temper endearing and knows that she's only joking in that strange way of hers.
The Normandy is resting in the planet's azure orbit, quiet – a sleeping eagle.
He's troubleshooting with a tech in the bank of seats before the cockpit. The damn firing algorithms have been malfunctioning, sending off tiny heat signatures that could cause the state-of-the-art stealth systems to be rendered useless.
Shepard has them hovering over the planet, discharging the drive core, while they work on the systems.
She's been clucking over them like a mother hen all day, grilling Joker in the cockpit on when the systems will be back online. Kaidan can hear her raised voice, she's not angry at the pilot though, just anxious.
"Hey LT! Get your butt in here, I've got a question," she calls to him. Kaidan's face heats at her irreverence but he jogs into the cockpit with an, "Aye, ma'am."
"Joker says that the algorithm is all out of whack because someone messed up the calibration code." Shepard's arms are crossed over her chest and she worries at her bottom lip with her teeth.
"Now, he could have just told me that Saren waltzed in and pissed on the console and I would probably have believed him because I know sweet fuck all about this. But I'm inclined to trust him this time. Can you help out here?" She asks, gesturing to the spread of orange holographic screens, Normandy's schematics dripping down them in lines of code.
"Yeah, ma'am that looks like the results we've been getting out there too. Here, I'll show you," he says.
Kaidan slides into the co-pilot seat and she sidles close beside him. The position puts her uncomfortably close to him, she's not even aware that if Kaidan turns his head just so, his eye line is directly level with her chest, impressively encased by the figure-hugging blue shirt.
Kaidan swallows hard and tries to think about calibrations. She leans over further, just accidentally brushing his shoulder with a one soft mound and his mind has a mini-meltdown.
This was so not why he joined the Alliance. They had rules against torture, he thinks a little desperately.
"Um. S-so you see here?" He stammers, pointing to an errant line. She squints her eyes at it. "A line of code was inputted incorrectly, and it's propagated through the whole targeting matrix throwing the whole thing off every time we arm the guns."
Joker nods from his precious pilot's throne. "Yeah. Every time we want to fire it's like stripping, painting us in neon glitter and parading us through the middle of the Presidium with 'Ride of the Valkyries' playing. It'll take hours to fix."
"Aw shit." She sighs; she's on a tight schedule. He knows the Council is putting a lot of unfair pressure on her to deal with Saren and his geth.
"Yes, ma'am," he nods agreeing with her annoyance.
She bites on her thumb, Kaidan notes with a pang that the nail is ragged. "An extra pair of hands help?" She asks.
"Sure." Joker pipes up, glancing away from his screen at her. "Won't really hurt anyway, unless it's the tech that messed up in the first place. Alenko and I can do it mostly from here, but someone needs to get on the console by the guns."
"I'll get Garrus." She claps her hands together, rejuvenated by Joker's confidence in their ability to fix it. "Hang tight. I'll be right back."
"Hanging tight, ma'am." Kaidan makes a tiny joke with her, mock gripping his seat tightly. She smirks at him, amused. And he is so not terribly pleased with himself.
Of course not. That would be ridiculous to have his whole day automatically brightened because she smiled at his crappy joke.
She walks away and he also does not follow the sway of her hips as she heads down to the shuttle bay. Kaidan thinks she has really nice hips. Not that he would ever be looking. No, he just happened to glance that way.
"Holy shit." Joker exclaims.
Kaidan looks up, alarmed at the pilot. He hopes Joker hasn't made another code error that will make Shepard chew her other nails. "What?"
Joker laughs instead, crowing with delight. "Williams was right about you! I can't believe I didn't listen to her!"
"What?" He says again, confused with whatever he's done to put that self-satisfied smile on Joker's face.
"Don't 'what' me, all innocent-like. You like her! Admit it!" He demands. Kaidan's heart beats a little faster. Had he been caught watching her?
"Of course I like her." He deflects. "She's a fine officer."
"Oh no, no. Don't play coy, Alenko. I'm talking you like her. You want to know her in the biblical way. You want to test out that N7 stamina. You want to run your hands over those-"
Kaidan feels a little spark of anger at Joker. "Hey now. Show some respect," he censures. "And you're wrong. That's ridiculous. Fraternization is against regulations."
"Ha! Is that why you're going red right now?"
Kaidan desperately wills his face to not betray him. "I am not."
"Are too," the pilot fires back childishly.
"Am not."
"Are too."
Kaidan huffs, "I'm not doing this with you, Joker."
He thinks this might have been a small taste of what growing up with a brother would be like. He had always wished his parents had more children, so he wouldn't have had to play alone. After the eezo accident, after all the doctor's appointments and the nights he could hear his mother and father screaming at each other over blame for the accident, they hadn't wanted to risk more children. Back then, the effects of eezo on reproduction weren't well understood. They had been afraid of birth defects.
Kaidan thinks if he ever has kids, that he doesn't want them to be alone.
But right now, with Joker, he is rapidly revising that thought. Maybe having a little brother isn't all it's cracked up to be.
"Well, well, well." Joker is still laughing in the maddeningly annoying way.
Kaidan wants to yank that hat off his head and hit him with it, but the pilot continues his ribbing.
"You've finally met your match. This is perfect. She's got you tripping all over yourself!"
Kaidan squirms in his seat, hyper-aware of his every movement.
"I thought when we picked you up from Arcturus, you were one of those career dudes, all 'yes sir, no sir, ten-huts!'" The pilot throws him a sloppy salute and a grumpy mockery of Kaidan's serious expression.
"But you're an actual human being who apparently just wants to get in her pants, really badly."
"Joker!" He barks. "Please don't speak about her like that. Even if...even if I liked her. I wouldn't-"
"Oh my god." Joker's green eyes widen in mock horror. Or maybe it's real horror..."It gets worse. You don't wanna just bone her." He sounds almost scandalized and if Kaidan could escape from the cockpit he would. He'd just crawl back to his console by Shepard's cabin and pretend not to exist.
Joker won't stop talking though. "Because I don't really blame you there. There's something about her big blue eyes, y'know? She's not a bombshell but she's got that smouldering vulnerability and passion thing going and holy shit I think I'm talking myself into thinking about boning her myself and this just got weird."
He throws the pilot a scathing look, pretending to tap away at his console without really seeing it.
"Are you done?" Kaidan growls at the flight lieutenant.
His stomach is doing flip-flops now; he can feel his face glowing from the blood in his cheeks. Joker's right: Shepard is a small, lithe bundle of passion and vulnerability and smirks and winks and just that right note of teasing and kindness that makes him want to ask her out to dinner.
If she was a civilian...
He would have already set up a second date, if she would have him. He thinks she might have liked to go ice skating, something fun.
"No." Joker rebuffs Kaidan's attempt at deflection flatly. "This is wonderful. Look at you! I finally have something over you."
"Joker...even if I was going to go there, which I won't because it is wrong, she's my CO." He tries to reason with him, tries to get him to drop the highly embarrassing conversation. "Even if I was, I-I um don't think a woman like that wants some old soldier, a defective biotic."
Kaidan rubs his neck, uncomfortable. It's true; Shepard is so bright and colorful. Next to her he feels like...the most boring guy in the galaxy. And worse, he doesn't feel like she'd want to sit with him as a migraine pounded over him. She deserves to be with someone young and whole and vibrant like her. Someone she wouldn't have to bear the burdens he has.
Joker waves him off, as if those reasons are inconsequential. "Oh man. You should give it a go sometime on shore leave or when you're not serving together anymore. She's been eyeing you off too, y'know. You actually think she pressed up against you accidentally before?"
"Of course it was an accident. She's-"
"She's into you, man. Don't be naive, I didn't see her getting all cozy with me."
Kaidan looks at him disbelievingly.
"Don't look at me like that. You'd be surprised. Ladies dig the 'soulful soldier with a heart of gold' thing."
"Joker." Kaidan gapes. "You did not just say that to me."
Where did Joker come up with that crap?
"Ok, ok." Joker winces, realizing how stupid he sounds. "Ash said that, I just thought it sounded good. She gossips. I listen. We're a team."
"Uh huh." Kaidan raises an eyebrow sternly. "Well, just keep your scuttlebutt to yourself. Shepard doesn't need the rumors."
"More like you don't want me to embarrass you in front of her."
"That too. So shut it will you?"
"No promises, buddy." Joker turns back to his work, swiping a data stream across to Kaidan. "I like you looking all human like the rest of us slobs."
"I never pretended to not be human, Joker."
"No, but you had this whole 'cold, keep to yourself' vibe. I'm just messin' with you, you know?" Joker sends him a furtive side look, perhaps realizing he might have taken his teasing too far.
"Yeah." Kaidan wants to get a little bit of his own teasing in, sweet revenge. "So how about you and Ash?"
"Oh no." Joker coughs. "Not going there. There's regs, man."
"There is."
"Besides, I'm carefully plotting how to steal Shepard away from you. I'll wedge my way between that crackling sexual tension somehow."
Kaidan actually laughs this time, picturing him and Shepard in an embrace and Joker physically wedging himself between them. Then he wishes he hadn't imagined embracing Shepard, because there lays a path of ruin and folly.
"Very funny. We don't have," he almost whispers, dropping his voice so no techs in the hallway can hear, "sexual tension."
"I thought we did this like two seconds ago?" The pilot rolls his eyes. "I sense some major sparkage between you two. I was just about to kick Shepard out of the ship to discharge over the planet too. She was smokin' hot for you."
"'Sparkage' isn't even a word. If you don't shut up, I'm telling Shepard the server and folder you stashed your porn on and she'll delete it all." He replies, injecting a dangerous note of warning into his voice.
Joker holds up his hands, defeated and surrendered. "Too far, man. Too far. But, shutting up now."
"Good."
It's good he does, because Shepard chooses to bound back into the room three minutes later. Kaidan tries not to linger his gaze on her, but he's too self-conscious with Joker there and thinks he just makes it more obvious.
"Alright!" She chirps, breathless and cheered up now that the Normandy's issue is being sorted out. "Got Garrus on the job. Kaidan, you're relieved of your other duties for the rest of the day. I want you and Joker to fix this."
"Aye, aye, ma'am." He nods.
"Right, well." She rubs her hands together eagerly, eyes a bright, happy blue. He can't help smiling at her and she smiles back. "I'm gonna go get some chow. Pressly has the deck. Comm me if there's any problems."
"Right, Shepard."
She turns to leave but stops for a moment. "Oh and Joker?"
"Yeah?"
"You wanna 'steal' me? Better shave that beard and dial back the sarcasm and fetish porn a notch. Then we'll talk business."
Kaidan's heart actually stops, and he withers in his chair. He considers, for a crazy moment, blowing the Normandy's windows out biotically and jumping for freedom, vacuum of space be damned. Joker splutters beside him, whipping around in his chair.
Shepard just smiles saucily, tapping her ear. "You left the comm on. My earpiece was still tuned in. Smooth move, guys. Catch ya later."
She jauntily walks away to get her lunch from the mess. This time, he blatantly watches her hips sway and so does Joker.
Kaidan grits his teeth. "Joker, I'm going to kill you."
The pilot sighs, meeting his furious glare. "Alenko, I'm going to kill myself."