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The door slid open and Shepard walked in with a determined look on his face that made Kaidan more curious than concerned. Shepard paused just long enough to make sure no one else was in there and that Kaidan wasn’t already talking to someone before he hit the lock on the door and was walking around the couch to join him.
Kaidan did get a strange satisfaction when Shepard moved to sit down and hesitated again when he noticed that Kaidan had slipped his shoes off so he could sit with his legs crossed and his feet tucked under his legs, something he rarely did outside of Shepard’s cabin and apartment. But he’d had a bad flare up on a migraine the night before, brief but intense, and his temperature regulation was still all over the place so his feet had felt like they were freezing and this helped.
Throwing Shepard was a nice bonus, especially since he hadn’t been really expecting Shepard to stop by the observation deck, not for a few more hours anyway.
What wasn’t completely unexpected was Shepard reaching into his hoodie pocket and pulling out two of Kaidan’s nutrient bars and handing them over to him. Kaidan took them with a fond smile.
Shepard took it as some sort of relationship responsibility to make sure Kaidan had food handy. It was sweet, really.
“What do you think about me calling you ‘babe’?” Shepard asked as Kaidan set the bars on the armrest beside him. He wasn’t going to ruin any conversation with Shepard by choking one of those down when he’d eaten a few hours ago.
Also, apparently this was going to be a conversation where he just needed to go with the flow until Shepard reached the question he wanted to ask.
Because there was absolutely no way Shepard actually wanted to call him that. He knew Kaidan better than that.
“I think on a scale from one to charging a Reaper armed with nothing but an untested targeting laser, it’s a solid summoning a thresher maw to take out a Reaper.”
Shepard frowned at him in a way that was almost a scowl. “Why is that on the scale? That was Wrex’s idea. Or maybe it was Eve’s. They got a little evasive about clarifying who actually came up with the idea. I even told them it was crazy.”
“That’s why it ranks in the middle. You still went along with it with very little attempt to find an alternative the way Liara tells it.”
“I think I’m still calling foul on that.”
“You’re threatening me with a pet name. One that I really don’t get the appeal of.”
“What about baby?”
Kaidan rolled his eyes excessively so Shepard was sure to see it even from his profile angle of Kaidan’s face.
“One letter does not improve my opinion, Shepard,” he deadpanned.
“Sweetie? Honey? Darling? Handsome? Beau? Dear? Love?”
“Did you search common pet names for couples before walking in here or something?”
“No, not right before I walked in.”
Kaidan almost broke and laughed. But ultimately, he really didn’t want to do anything to encourage whatever this was.
“Come on, there’s gotta be something.”
“‘Kaidan’ has served me pretty well so far.”
“Come on, I’m being serious.”
“So am I. Mostly. I really don’t like pet names. It works for plenty of other people and good for them. It’s just not for me. I don’t really have a specific reason for it. It just never appealed to me. Maybe it’s too long being called anything but my name and most of it not being flattering. Maybe it’s just being too used to military and hearing my last name and rank more than anything. Maybe it’s just that my parents didn’t really do it so I didn’t pick up on it as being a normal thing. Why are you suddenly bringing it up now?”
“James mentioned you had the privacy screen up on your bunk last night.”
It was something basic that Chakwas had made sure she found and got for him once he’d returned to the Normandy, a semi-solid partition that wrapped around his bunk that was made of a material that blocked out a decent amount of light and sound. The bunk he had was already in the very back of the crew’s quarters and this helped him even more when the migraines weren’t bad enough to go to the med bay. He’d considered putting it up all the time so it wasn’t an obvious sign of when he was flaring but when he was fine it bothered him to have everything around him muffled so he just tolerated people knowing he wasn’t at his best.
“Okay?” Kaidan didn’t see how that made this conversation happen.
“People are getting used to you not sleeping down here as often so when I stopped by the shuttle bay, he led with mentioning you. Like he was assuming I needed to be pulled out of a bad mood even though we hadn’t even talked about you spending last night up with me. He worded it like ‘Ghost was out last night, had his leave-me-alone-wall up and everything’. You let him call you that.”
Kaidan grimaced at a few aspects of that information dump but stuck with what was obviously the main point. “‘Let’ is a strong word. First of all, no one else gets on him for his nicknames so it’d just set me apart if I got on him about it. Second, if I told him to stop, he’d only stop saying it to my face. So, it’s just easier to tolerate it. What you’re talking about is hardly the same thing.”
“How so?”
“I know you. You’d be good about keeping it between the two of us for a while but then we’d be hanging out with the others casually and it’d slip out and I’d never hear the end of it. Joker, Vega, and Garrus already have enough ammunition because sexual vulgarity gets to me.”
Shepard’s expression went fond. “I love that you went with that term and not ‘innuendo’.”
“Shepard, you’re giving me whiplash with this conversation and neck injuries are highly discouraged for any biotic,” Kaidan said and refused to hear the hint of complaint in his tone despite how he was mostly maintaining his deadpan.
Shepard didn’t answer. Instead he moved a little closer and reached out for Kaidan, taking hold of his thigh and then he pulled at Kaidan’s leg to turn him towards him before pulling Kaidan’s foot onto his lap and then reaching back for the other one. Kaidan didn’t refuse the maneuvering but he also didn’t cooperate as much as he could have.
He was still just going with the flow here.
Shepard took a loose hold of Kaidan’s ankle as he spoke again. “You don’t mind me doing something like that, just moving you around, bringing you closer so I can touch you.”
“No, I don’t mind it,” Kaidan felt like it was important to confirm that as true.
“And of course I’m the only one that gets to kiss you and have sex with you and anything in between.”
“Of course.”
“So I wanted something else just between us. I like the idea of having something only I get to call you. But I don’t want it to be something you don’t like. I figured if I threw enough things out there, something would sound right.”
That was such a quintessentially Shepard approach.
“I thought I had something with ‘Kaid’ but apparently not.”
Kaidan frowned in confusion. “When did you call me ‘Kaid’?”
Shepard’s eyes met his, surprised. “You don’t remember?” Kaidan shook his head. “When you had that migraine about a week ago and I helped you get to the med bay because it passed some threshold that you still haven’t specified to me.”
Kaidan didn’t so much ignore the displeasure at the end of Shepard’s statement as he just wasn’t paying attention to that anymore.
It must have been a bad one to have his absolutely least favorite symptom kick in. It was one of the symptoms that had gotten worse after Mars.
“I don’t remember, Shepard,” he said, his voice softening simply because he knew Shepard would feel bad.
“What? You don’t remember migraines?”
“Sometimes when the symptoms are extreme enough. I’ll sort of remember if I’d needed to make a priority and something to focus on, like if it hit and I needed to cover some distance to where I needed to get to, but I’ll lose track of anything external. Or my ears were ringing bad that time and I didn’t hear it.
“I’ve told you that I have a lot of gaps concerning Mars. Not an uncommon amount considering how the implant and my brain were damaged. But the long-term has meant that some of my migraine symptoms shifted. Keeping track of them is why I’ve maintained contact with Michel. She’s kept up making adjustments to the permanent treatment I’m on based on what I report to her. Anyway, one of the symptoms that got shifted was my memory getting spotty through migraines.”
Shepard let his head drop against the back of the couch with a heavy sigh. “One of these days I’m going to tie you down and demand you to just answer questions about your headaches and migraines until I’m satisfied I know enough about them to know what to do about them.”
“Ignoring that first part for the sake of our relationship, I’ve told you that for most of them there isn’t actually anything to do about them. It’s just a waiting game for them to pass.”
“How about not expecting you to remember everything that happens when one hits? That was something I was doing and it led to how this conversation went down.”
“Fair enough,” Kaidan conceded. It was a way there was just enough difference in how they thought where Shepard considered more actions as an option than Kaidan did.
Also, Kaidan just generally shut people out concerning the complications of being an L2 and Shepard wasn’t standing for that anymore now that their relationship had changed. Kaidan didn’t think that was wrong but old habits were hard to break and he still needed prodding.
Shepard took a more secure hold of Kaidan’s ankle and tugged at him to pull him closer and Kaidan let his flat expression break as he finally reached over to put the datapad in his hand on the floor next to his shoes and let himself be pulled far enough that he could relax his head on the armrest with his legs extended over Shepard’s thighs and Shepard stretched out along Kaidan’s side, placing his left elbow on the armrest beside Kaidan’s head to prop himself up over Kaidan.
“You didn’t shut down ‘Kaid’,” he noted as his right hand settled on Kaidan’s hip.
Kaidan smiled. “It is just part of my name, which is a decent improvement over what James decided on.”
Shepard leaned down and nipped at Kaidan’s jaw. “Maybe just answer me and not turn the conversation back to another guy when we’re like this.”
“I know I mentioned I considered the options you walked in with today to be threats. And I don’t care that you locked the door. This is about as far as anything gets in here. So stop tugging at my shirt.”
Shepard was now trailing kisses along Kaidan’s neck but he at least laid his hand flat on Kaidan’s side again. “You had your shoes off sitting on a couch. I usually see that in my cabin and apartment. Excuse me for making some connections to that being private for us.”
“And as long as you at least try to keep calling me ‘Kaid’ between us, I’m fine with it. Just don’t expect me to be trying out anything to call you.”
He felt Shepard smile against him. “You seem to be the only person who knows my first name. It’s close enough.” Shepard’s voice softened when he continued. “You had a migraine last night, right? How’d you actually sleep?”
“I’m fine. It was a quick one, only lasted about an hour and then I was able to sleep so I didn’t miss out too much.” Kaidan was going to stop there but then he reminded himself that Shepard had just remarked about Kaidan telling him all about his migraines. “When they’re fast like that, it still takes me a while to get back to normal. Usually, like right now, it makes my body temperature not regulate right. I was trying to warm my feet up.”
“You usually run a slightly higher temperature as a biotic, right?”
“Yeah. It’s embarrassing for me to say as a Canadian and considering I’ve spent so much time off planet, but I don’t handle cold very well.”
“Don’t set me up like that right now.”
Kaidan rolled his eyes. “It’s been one day, Shepard. Just because we’re together now, it hardly means I’m looking for everything to become about sex.”
“I’m not trying. I actually think I’m making a valiant effort at holding myself back. You only spend about half the nights with me and I don’t nag you for more. And I’m only half-heartedly trying to mark up your neck right now instead of committing to it.”
“Don’t you dare leave a mark, Shepard.” He hesitated, momentarily conflicted as he realized how he actually felt about the idea of Shepard’s mouth working some marks into his skin and struggling to just say it. He really had to push himself to continue. “Not anything outside of my uniform lines, anyway.”
Shepard lifted himself back up and he looked at Kaidan intently, like he was making sure Kaidan was being serious.
Then he just asked, “You’re serious about that?”
Kaidan felt his face heat up. “I don’t mind you leaving marks behind as long as my uniform covers them up.”
They probably should have figured all this out when they got together. It should have at least come up when they started having sex. It sometimes felt like they were really stumbling their way through this relationship and they were only working out because they were both the same amount of lost.
“Can we please take this up to my cabin, Kaid?” Shepard asked, maintaining eye contact. “The ship won’t fall apart if we’re unavailable for an hour or two.”
“If it does, it’s because you just jinxed it.” Before Shepard could complain about his response, Kaidan reached up and cupped his hand around the back of Shepard’s head and lifted himself enough to touch their foreheads together. “I like it. Kaid. As long as you’re the one saying it. Keep it up, John.”
Shepard rushed forward to kiss him and Kaidan liked that he could get that strong reaction from Shepard, that he could be the one responsible for Commander Shepard to lose his composure and just…want.
Kaidan was tempted to let Shepard just continue as he quickly became interested in the touches and pressure John was pressing into his skin but he still ended up collecting himself enough to get them to make the trip up to Shepard’s cabin for the privacy it guaranteed them.
He didn’t mind people knowing about their relationship but that didn’t mean he wanted people to know about their relationship. He’d never be able to hold a conversation with any of the crew ever again if he ever found out they’d seen him being intimate with John.
Kaidan also needed to just dive into the deep end of innuendos so they didn’t get to him so much to be said. He needed to take away some of the ammunition his friends that used that approach to tease him. It was only fair that he made them work for it when it was his love life that was providing the source of entertainment.