I was thinking about what to get my custom M!Shep for his birthday, and decided the best gift I could ever give him was making out with Kaidan for the first time. 😀 I’m thoughtful like that. Fic and pic under the cut. Sorry for the length, mobile users! At least it’s SFW!

The date had gone well. Perfectly, even. And these days, Shepard considered “perfect” to mean that something hadn’t exploded in front of, or around them. It was all relative. But even he had to admit that he might not have even noticed an explosion in his distraction. Not a little one, at least. Because it was a date. An actual, real, total I’m-asking-you-on-a-date, date. And Kaidan had said yes.

Well, he’d actually said, “you serious, Commander?” And when Shepard was sure his expression had mirrored pure worry and embarrassment, Kaidan had put a hand on his arm and amended his previous comment to say, “yeah! Yes. Absolutely. I uh, thought you’d never ask, to be honest.” And that had made everything right again because Kaidan had come around to say exactly what Shepard had been predicting. Not so much the words, but  the warmth with a dash of fluster and more than a pinch of excitement.

Now here they were in a small cafe tucked into the Wards, knees bumping awkwardly under the table and both of them sipping coffee that neither of them could taste due to mutual engrossment in their own thoughts. The most profound of which being, how in the hell did we end up here? Literally, they’d ended up there because the only other safe bet for human food consumption was Apollo’s, and that was far too public for a first date consisting of Commander Shepard and Major Alenko. Neither of them cared to alert the press about being shier than teenagers when facing down the barrel of a first date.

What the fuck is so gourmet about this coffee? Shepard wondered.

Did I accidentally order an Americano, cause this shit tastes like water, Kaidan was thinking.

“We should go,” Shepard said suddenly, snapping Kaidan’s russet gaze to his cerulean stare.

The smile he was given in return to his statement, too loud and harsh in his own ears, was a wry twist of the lips from Kaidan. Quick and gone, leaving Shepard to breathe out slowly and focus entirely on his companion’s mouth. This time he thought that their knees bumped on purpose. “Yeah,” Kaidan said. “We should.”

Back to the Normandy. Shepard was counting his steps as they went, trailing Kaidan, otherwise he would have lost his cool well before it was socially acceptable to do so. Somewhere in the one hundreds, Kaidan’s arm swung back as he walked and their knuckles brushed. And with lightning reflexes that had saved their bacon a million times, the biotic didn’t waste the contact. Before his left foot had even stepped forward again, he’d hooked their pointer fingers together loosely. Shepard marveled at how he’d done it without even looking back. A small shock of static pinched the nerves at the tip of his finger and he wasn’t sure if it was the L2 buildup or his imagination. But it felt real as it climbed up his arm to settle somewhere in his chest. Maybe, just maybe, Kaidan was feeling exactly what he was. Fuck the Citadel for being so big.

The elevator doors closed behind them, and that was when Shepard realized, too late, that Kaidan was planning on taking point for this one.

But he upset the balance too quickly, and instead of a sexy turn, Shepard found himself slightly flung forward, hips bumping into Kaidan’s, causing the biotic to step back and destabilize his own equilibrium. That in turn had him sitting down hard on the handrail with a teeth-clacking grunt. Thrown to the mercy of gravity and fate. Just like they’d always been. Shepard chuckled. Kaidan swallowed hard, glanced up. His pupils were huge. Ah. Shepard shifted his knee, but not before noticing that the major was getting hard.

So he did the only thing that came to mind. He pressed himself forward into Kaidan’s unstable orbit and kissed him on his lips. Instantly he tasted the gourmet coffee finally with an earth, Kaidan-y finish. It took a minute to reorganize and rally after that. Kaidan’s head wasn’t tilted quite enough. Shepard’s mouth opened too fast. He gasped a little when the major’s hands touched his face, ice cold when he’d expected them to be warm. But the thing about expectations was that they sucked. Reality was better without them. It made it easier for Shepard to find the even ground. Heads at the right angle. Tongue slipping gently into Kaidan’s mouth until he was pulling away to suck in a breath of longing, not pulling away because it was too messy and awkward.

Getting to the Captain’s Cabin had been an adventure of hands unwilling to stop touching unfamiliar skin. Omni-tools made an appearance for the airlock, though the second Kaidan managed to unlock the door, Shepard keyed in the same code and it re-locked. After that minor frustration, Kaidan decided to let the commander do the commanding, though Shepard allowed the major to guide them forward and stumbling to the interior elevator.

By the time their destination was secure, uniform shirts were hopelessly wrinkled and hair was decidedly un-Alliance standard. Shepard craved for more, so much more, but they’d only had coffee, and Kaidan was still calling him “Commander.” They hadn’t reached that stage of the battle plan yet. So they sat on the leather sofa instead, no lights save the fish tank. Whiskey to chase away the last lingering strings of first date discomfort, and besides that, something for Shepard to focus on besides his hard on.

It could have been minutes or hours later when Kaidan broke the silence. “So, I was wondering. Why today of all days? I mean, we’ve known each other a long time and shore leave’s hardly half-over.”

“You were expecting me to wait until the end?”

This time the grin didn’t disappear. “You’re a last minute sort of guy, Shepard.”

He shrugged, more uncomfortable with a lie than with the truth, so he swallowed his pride and said, “I’m not usually sentimental, but it’s my birthday today, so I figured…” He trailed off while Kaidan stared, his eyebrows leaving their state of perpetual concern to one of unguarded surprise.

“You never told anyone about it?”

“No. Look, I don’t have any good memories of my birthday so I don’t like to make a thing of it, but this year… this time… I figured I might give it a try.” He didn’t know what he was going for with those words, but when he glanced back up at Kaidan, he realized that he’d said precisely what he should have.

This time the hand that touched his face was warm. Very warm. “Happy Birthday, Ianto.”