Before Virmire, but after all the other missions.
The fight is just another way we make love.
The chase of our quarry drives us forward, to that elusive more, always wanting and needing. There's the thrum of blood through our veins, a feral grin that says 'you are mine.' There's the thrill of two warm, hard bodies colliding, a weight bearing down as we scuffle on the ground, grinding and rolling.
There's the battle for advantage, for the higher ground. The Rules of Engagement break down at this level. We probe weaknesses, learning where it hurts, where we can touch, where the most damage is done. Sometimes, we fake submission. Other times, our souls bay for dominance. They have both existed since the birth of humanity and will continue to the end of humanity.
The fight is just another way we make love.
"Shepard, are you sure about this?" Kaidan says as he worriedly tapes his hands. Shepard grins at him and just continues to stretch her limbs. He notes with a low spark of arousal that she's quite flexible, bending and stretching. Her yoga pants mold to her ass like a second skin. Joker's eyes had nearly fallen out of his head at the sight.
Kaidan is glad he can't come to watch them spar. Shepard had specifically timed it so they could do this in peace without voyeurs. They are both off-duty, a few hours of down-time before their sleep cycle. Wrex is scoffing dinner down, Garrus occupied with calibrating partnered Joker. Ash is sleeping and Pressly has the deck. Tali is in the engine room, as usual nattering away with Adams. The cargo bay is empty except for them and the bright padded blue mats she has laid on the floor.
"Kaidan, it's fine." She soothes. "We're not using weapons. And I promise not to punch you in the face, and break that nice nose of yours."
"Yeah well, thanks for that." He says sarcastically, Shepard rolls her eyes at him. "But this is biotics sparring; I wouldn't call that not using a weapon."
"No, it's better, see?" Her eyes brighten in excitement. "As long as we don't throw one another across the room, it'll be really interesting. Come on, tell me that you've never wondered what it's like to spar with an equal, or as close as you'll ever get to one not on the battlefield?"
"I've sparred before, Shep," he responds gently. "At Brain Camp…they made us."
A blush creeps up her high cheekbones and she stammers. "O-oh. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't even think-"
"No, it's fine." Kaidan rushes to reassure her, he didn't mean to make her feel bad. "I just don't want to hurt you.
"Kaidan, you're incapable of that." She crosses over to him and places her hand on his shoulder. "I trust you."
"And I trust you." He reaches up to place his palm over her grip on his shoulder and she smiles. "Ok, you're right. This could be fun."
Shepard dances away from him, skipping onto the mat and he follows.
"Alright." She places her hands on her hips and puts on her big bad Commander voice. "Rules: No drawing blood, stay on the mat, biotics allowed but um I guess…gentler than usual."
"Ok." He shrugs in agreement. "Winning terms?"
"Shoulders held on mat for two consecutive minutes. Whoever successfully pins the other, by whatever means, wins."
Something that he hasn't heard for years pops into Kaidan's thoughts and he can't help muttering them under his breath. "Qui audet adipiscitur."
Shepard hears it and quirks one dark eyebrow in amusement. "I have no clue what the fuck you just said, LT."
His face flushes. "Sorry, it's just an old saying my Pa used to tell me, when I was a kid. Er, I was a little…shy and well, it means 'who dares, wins.'"
"'Who dares, wins." She repeats back to him, tasting the words, her forehead crinkling in thought. "I like that. Yeah, we'll go with that." She nods firmly, beaming. Kaidan has the sneaking suspicion that phrase will make its way into a rousing speech at some stage, or something she will throw back at him whenever he disagrees with one of her wild flights of fancy.
"Ready?" He asks.
"Ready."
Kaidan stands still, waiting for her to make the first move. She's impulsive and too brash sometimes. He's confident she will strike first and he will be ready.
She doesn't disappoint.
Shepard thrusts her hand in a sharp jab, and pulsar of blue energy flies towards him in milliseconds.
Kaidan breathes, using his infamous calm and gathers energy in his palm. He reaches out to bat it aside as it careens at him. She'd tried to pull him off his feet; if it had connected he would be flying across the mat into her waiting body.
Shepard smirks. She had expected he'd do that. Quick as a flash she launches herself across the mat to him, dodging out of his grapple that he uses to try and grab her by the shoulders.
She drives her weight into his torso to try and knock him over. Kaidan's breath is knocked out of him slightly but he plants his bare feet and holds firm.
She's grossly miscalculated how much he weighs relative to her. She's used to taking down mercs, and slavers, not other Alliance soldiers who have had the same recruitment gene therapy as her. Even with her N7 commando training he is still as physically strong as her, and outweighs her too much.
Without adjusting her mass artificially or getting a good grip on him, there is no way she can take him down with his feet planted so widely.
Shepard wasn't built for brute force, for hand-to-hand combat. For all her foul mouth and protest otherwise, she's an elegant, small woman. The very model of an Adept used to getting her way with gravity wells, not fists.
Kaidan grabs her waist, hands scrabbling under her shirt at her stomach and uses his grip to roll them both onto the floor.
Her breath puffs out of her in an 'oomph' as they hit the floor, but she's quick and slippery and he loses his opportunity to pin her when she uses his own momentum against him to roll and straddle his waist, leaving him on the bottom.
Luckily for Kaidan's ego, she's in all the wrong position to force his shoulders to the mat, and he keeps them off it. She puffs in exertion on top of him, thighs on other side of his stomach.
He feels himself stir at the heat at the apex of her thighs; he can feel it through her thin black yoga pants, through his singlet covering his stomach. Unconsciously, his hips buck against hers and she grins wickedly.
"God. It's hot in here." Still sitting on top of him she pulls her loose t-shirt over her head.
Kaidan gulps.
She has a sports bra on underneath, tightly fitting, modest and plain black with twin N7 red stripes down the sides but in that moment it's terribly erotic to him. Her stomach is flat and lightly muscled; her alabaster, freckle-specked skin looks silky smooth and glistening with sweat. He longs to reach out and taste her skin. More than that he wants to…
No. She's tricking him. This is all a clever ploy to overcome his defenses. A ploy that was definitely working, but nonetheless, Kaidan did not want to lose.
Wrenching his attention away from her, he shifts, starting to roll them easily. Shepard catches on to the fact that she hasn't tricked him and alarm at her precarious position on the floor trickles over her face.
She flares bright blue, her eyes lighting up electric cobalt and Kaidan feels a sudden heaviness on him, stopping his plan to pin her. She now feels like she weighs like Wrex, a ton pressing down when before he felt he could have picked her up and lifted her no problem.
"Nice trick, Shepard." He gasps.
"I aim to please, LT." She places her two hands beside his head and leans over him, studying his face. Her chest is tantalizing in front of him and she knows what she's doing.
He's sure Shepard would fight dirty any day to get what she wants.
"I can play that game too, Commander." Kaidan flares too and with a burst of blue and a twitch of his free hand a Singularity springs into life just behind her.
She yelps a little bit in surprise as it lifts her off him and in seconds he's back on his feet. A Singularity wouldn't hold her for long, of course, she waves her hand and negates it with her own gravitational forces, but he's now back on equal footing and she's lost her advantage.
She bounces on her the balls of her feet, shaking her shoulders and shifting into a fighting stance, fists up. She flicks her sweaty, messy hair out of her faces and Kaidan wishes she wouldn't. She looks wild and fierce and bedroom-mussed. He likes her looking like that.
"You crafty, naughty man, Kaidan Alenko. I didn't know you could make them." She gestures to the spot where his Singularity used to be.
In a fit of pique, or perhaps a display of force to him, she flicks a mini black hole off to the side of the mat. It twirls and spins, making the shuttle bay echo with the strange sound of biotics and wrenching of Einstein's ideas, smashing the general theory of relativity.
Kaidan has never found the disregard for the rules of science so hot.
"Got to have some secrets, right, Shepard?" He smiles and she barks a laugh. "No, I'm not that good at them, not like you. But in a pinch they come in handy."
"Mmm hmm."
She's wary of getting close to him now; the lesson learned that he won't go down easy. They circle each other like a hungry lion and lioness fighting over a kill.
Sweat trickles down Kaidan's back soaking his shirt and he decides to follow her lead and throw his soft blue singlet into the corner too. Two can play dirty. Shepard's eyes crinkle in amusement and he watches her wet her lips repeatedly with her tongue.
"Man. I have the best job in the galaxy." Kaidan can just make out her mutter under her breath.
He wants this over now; he wants to be closer to her. Adrenaline is surging through him, like electricity in a circuit; he is bright, lit and ready. The world moves slower, he can just see the shimmer of her eyes, that blue he can never quite name from day to day, that cobalt mockery. Her hair is glowing, the blue cargo lights glinting off dark chocolate strands.
She's sweaty and her face is blotchy with heated color and her is mouth twisted in a playful snarl and he thinks that he would trade all the supermodels and vid stars in the world for just one night with her. Just one night to find out what it's like to be inside her, to touch and kiss her freely and find out if it would ever be as perfect as he imagines, if it would even approach the happiness he feels now with her, just talking and fighting and joking with Shepard.
He knows though, he has to know: that it would be all that and more.
He can feel his stomach muscles contract and his biceps tighten in readiness. He can make out Shepard's nipples from her sweat soaked sports bra and he loses his control a little, heedless of the danger she poses to their little sparring competition.
He's on her too quickly, and throws her to the floor with his weight making sure to reach his hands behind her back as she falls and distribute his weight not to fall on top of her. She tries to use the lower center of gravity in her hips to throw him over her shoulder, but he compensates for that, his mind working battle-fast. Then, he adjusts, quickly pressing his hips into hers, moving his full weight to bear on top of her, chests pressed together. Her breasts heave against him, her breath panting wetly on his neck and shoulder.
She's gasping in surprise at his sudden attack, half laughing ruefully at him getting the jump on her. He was lucky.
"1…2…3." He counts under his breath. She starts to buck against him again, knowing that she is minutes away from losing. It's no use. Even if she adjusted her mass, in this position he would just make himself heavier too, and it would be a lot of effort for no gain.
Her fingers twitch as if she was going to mimic him from earlier and form the physical mnemonic for a Singularity but he grabs her hands and holds them still above her head.
"I got you. Yield." He demands.
"Make me." She challenges. Always challenging, that's Shepard all over. Her eyes are sparkling and she's breathless.
Kaidan has never wanted someone as badly or painfully before. Blood is rushing from his head at a dizzying pace and she has to feel how hard he is against her. Judging by the way she chooses to squirm into him, she does.
He presses his forehead to hers and groans a little. "Shep, you should stop doing that."
"Why? I like it." She pouts. Somehow, Kaidan thinks he has won their physical battle but lost the war.
"Because…"
She blinks at him, all wide eyed and mock innocence. "Because why?"
"You know why."
"This is why." She breathes and closes the distance to his mouth. He doesn't respond for a moment, torn with indecision, but the feel of her wet hot tongue has him parting his lips to meet it with his own. She's so pliable beneath him, so soft and hot and responsive. Kaidan wants to fuck her on the floor right here, her under him on the sweaty mats. His grip tightens on the hands he holds pinned to the mat above her head and she strains her breasts against him trying to wiggle her encouragement.
Their cinch becomes more heated as she grinds her hips into his cock, struggling to satisfy herself. Kaidan, for a heady moment, imagines he can feel her wetness through her pants but he is sure that's his desire talking. He is having his own private war, between his duty and desire. They shouldn't be doing this, it is dangerous and wrong.
If only she would remove her tongue from his mouth for a moment he could think properly.
There's a clatter, someone in the engine room has dropped a tool and they come back from the edge of pleasure. She stops kissing him and he rolls off her to lie flat on his back on the mat. There's nothing he can do for his erection, he just hopes no one walks in for a while lest he have some awkward explaining to do.
Beside him Shepard stretches out beside him too, flat on her own back.
"Fuck." She murmurs.
"Yeah." He agrees, breathless.
"Let's call it a draw?"
"Sure, Shepard. For now."
"I can live with that. Look you lay here and die for a while. I'm going to have a cold shower, LT."
She saunters off a little awkwardly, roughly shoving her shirt back on and he is at least satisfied that she is just as sexually frustrated as him.
Kaidan lies there at her advice, throbbing with desire and prays that she can get Saren quickly to get that shore leave.
He thinks if they don't get one soon, he might just have a little stroke from rapid blood movement.
Still, he can't wipe the smile from his face. He has never been a blood-thirsty man, but sparring with Shepard is the most fun he has had in years.