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“And, open your eyes!”
She’d been planning this for weeks. Years, if she was really honest. She’d had the first notion of it being a possible idea back on the SR1.
Not actually on the SR1, obviously. The logistics would have been a nightmare and Adams probably would have killed her. Not to mention Joker. And probably Anderson, if he found out. Which, of course, he would’ve. And then there’d be the Alliance brass discharging her, probably via the airlock, if they’d seen what she’d done to a brand-new, top-of-the-line warship.
No.
Probably best that it had taken this long to get here.
She’d had to call in a couple of very weird favours and throw her spectre credentials about a bit to get the place all to themselves for the whole afternoon, but it was worth it for the look on his face when he did, finally, open his eyes.
“Is that…”
She nodded.
“You did…”
She nodded again.
He was still stood there, staring out at the empty rink, ice gleaming mirror smooth under the lights. If she’d known that this was all it took to render him completely speechless, she’d have tried to do it earlier.
“Is that… okay?” she asked.
Finally he turned towards her, eyes alight with something she hadn’t seen in years. Probably not since the SR1, if she was honest. Like there wasn’t a galactic war happening outside, like there weren’t planets on fire and trillions of people out there needing their help. Like he’d forgotten all of that.
Which, if she was honest, was kind of the point.
They were both running on fumes. The whole crew was. That whole ‘planets on fire’ shit wasn’t just stressful for her alone. Everyone needed a distraction.
The Normandy had been docked for a day or so for a couple of necessary repairs and upgrades, and she’d kicked the entire crew out onto the Citadel to get some rest. She highly doubted they were all following her orders – she’d seen Garrus heading towards the turian refugees and she was fairly sure Liara had snuck back aboard to her computers when Shepard wasn’t looking – but hell, maybe that was their version of recuperation.
She began getting a little concerned that he still hadn’t answered.
“Kaidan?”
Her equilibrium suddenly went sideways as he swept her off her feet, spinning her round before he kissed her. When he finally set her back down, she was thoroughly dizzy.
“I’ll take that as a thank you?” she said, keeping hold of his arm. To support him, obviously.
“Thank you.” He kissed her again and then paused, glancing back out at the ice. “We can skate?”
“Would be pretty mean of me to bring you all the way out here just to look at the ice.”
If it were even possible, his smile grew even brighter.
Keeping a tight hold of his arm, she dragged him over to the benches surrounding the rink. It had been difficult sneaking away that morning to get everything set up without him realising that there was stuff to set up, but it too was worth it for the look on his face.
“Skates, snacks, and hot chocolate,” she announced, producing each from the large hamper with a flourish.
“Hot chocolate? Not coffee?”
She bit her lip just a little. Had she got it wrong?
“Back on Noveria, you wanted hot chocolate,” she said, trying not to sound as nervous as she felt. “You said that when you were surrounded by ice, you always wanted hot chocolate. And then you said you missed skating.”
“You remembered that? You did all this for me?”
She grinned, all nerves melting away. “Hey, I wouldn’t say I wasn’t getting anything out of this deal. I’ve never been skating before.”
“They don’t cover ice skating in N-school?” he asked, teasing. “What happens if you’re stranded on an ice planet or have to go undercover at the Winter Olympics?”
She couldn’t help but laugh at the image of herself in one of those sparkly costumes. It was either that or punch him for the insult.
“I can’t think of any conditions my boots can’t handle, and… in what kind of situation do you see me having to go undercover as an Olympic skater?”
He gave her a long look that made her seriously reconsider the ‘not punching him’ thing, and then smirked. “I can think of a few. Maybe you should…”
She cut him off with a hand across his mouth. “Believe me, there is no good way you could finish that sentence.”
He pressed a kiss against the palm of her hand, his eyes molten.
It was probably not the best idea to do what she wanted to do right now. She’d probably have to call in a favour with Liara to get all the evidence of that erased. No, she needed to save those favours for more important things.
Distractions. More distractions were needed.
Releasing him, she picked up the skates. “How about we stop wasting time and actually get these on?”
Smirking, he took them from her and sat down on the bench to undo his boots. “Sure they’ll fit?”
“I do know your boot size, Alenko. Give me a little credit.”
“Hey, just saying. Skates are tricky. Mom still hasn’t let me live down the winter I needed new boots twice. My feet were growing too fast for her to keep up with.”
The image couldn’t help but make her smile. She put on her own skates, shaking a little as she tried to stand up. She knew she should have tried them out properly that morning when she made the last arrangements, but there just hadn’t been time.
“Take it easy,” Kaidan said, checking her boots and then standing up effortlessly beside her. “Get your balance first. Then we can get out on the ice.”
Suddenly, the expanse of the rink seemed both empty and vast. She really hadn’t thought out this bit of the experience. The look on Kaidan’s face when she revealed her plot, the special hot chocolate, the presumably… grateful reaction that would come after: that she’d spent a lot of time thinking about. The actual practical skating bit of it… not so much.
But before she knew it, he was stepping onto the ice, wobbling a little as he got his balance on the slippery surface.
“I thought you were a pro?” she teased him, trying to buy herself a little extra time before she had to go out there herself.
“Hey, give me a minute. I’m used to hockey skates, not figure skates.”
“There are different kinds?”
He started laughing, clearly at the horrified look on her face. Why did these things have to be so damn complicated?
“It doesn’t matter, Shepard, seriously. Hey, come on. I promise I won’t let you fall on your ass.”
She glared at him, but stepped carefully down onto the ice. “Who says I’m gonna fall on my ass?”
“You forget, Shep, I’ve seen you ‘dance’.”
She could almost hear the air quotes around the word.
“Very funny.”
He looked almost unbearably pleased with himself. “I thought so. You going to let go of the side any time soon?”
Looking down, she was surprised to see she still had a two-handed, white-knuckled grip on the railing around the edge of the rink. She shrugged, trying to project her usual careless nonchalance.
“I’m good here.”
“Come on.” He skated over, effortlessly now, and held out his hands. “Trust me?”
Damn him. There were two ways he could have got her to try, and he had to pick that one. She wished he’d dared her. That would have been easier to refuse.
“Drop me on my ass and I’ll have you on KP duty for the rest of the war,” she warned him, her smile less certain than she would have liked it to be.
He gave her a lazy salute and then held out his hand again. “Yes, ma’am.”
“You know, technically you outrank me now.”
“Only in the military sense of the word. In all other aspects…”
They were veering into dangerous waters again. More distraction time. She let go of the railing, reaching out to take his hands. He grinned at her.
“There you go, that’s better. Keep your knees slightly bent, and lean forwards. Just a little. Yeah, just like that.” He began to skate backwards, pulling her with him. “Try moving your feet? One, then the other.”
It took a good full lap of the huge rink for her to get the hang of it even at that incredibly slow pace. Rhythm had never been her strong suit, as he well knew. Unless there was a weapon involved, of course. You could probably do some fairly fatal damage with a skate, but it wasn’t quite the same thing. She was sure he must be either bored out of his brain or laughing internally at how terrible she was. But he just kept smiling at her.
“Want to try a bit more freedom?” he asked.
She didn’t. She really, really didn’t. What she wanted was the nice, stable floor of the side-lines and a really large shot of espresso. Give her a good pair of boots and solid ground beneath them any day of the week. But she was determined not to let him down. So…
“Sure.”
He let go of one of her hands, circling neatly around so that he was stood beside her instead of in front.
“Why are you glaring at me?”
She hadn’t realised she was. But… “You make that look easy.”
He grinned again. “If you’d been skating almost since you could walk, you’d make it look easy too.”
“How almost?”
“Got my first pair of skates when I was two years old.”
“Two?”
“Canada,” he said, like that explained anything at all. It didn’t. It really didn’t.
He pushed off again, slower even than they’d been going before, letting her get used to balancing on her own. It was driving her crazy.
“Can we go any faster?” she asked.
He was watching her, a smirk playing around just the very corners of his lips. “If you like. Go on. You set the pace. I’ll try to keep up.”
Damn him.
She pushed off, as hard as she could, hoping that that they’d skim off across the ice like she’d seen in the few vids she had definitely not watched years ago in the original preparation for this. Naturally, of course, what actually happened was that her skate caught in the ice and she lost her balance in the most dramatic way possible.
When she opened her eyes, however, she was not sprawled on the slippery, freezing ice, but mostly over Kaidan’s warm, sweater-covered chest.
“Ouch,” he said, mock-pathetically.
She punched him in the arm. Very, very lightly. “KP duty. Rest of the war.”
“Huh?”
“That was the deal.”
His hand, which had been safely on her shoulder, skimmed down over her back and squeezed. “I think you’ll find your ass is completely fine. Mine, on the other hand…”
She pulled back onto her knees, helping him do the same. Then, of course, she took the opportunity to cop a feel of her own. “You’re good. Still perfect.”
“Perfect?”
He was teasing her again, damn him.
“Give it up, you know you have the best ass in the Alliance.”
Then she kissed him, just for good measure.
“Right,” he said after she released him, eyes a little dazed. “Ready to try that again?”
Damn. She was hoping the tumble on the ice had put him off teaching her.
“Isn’t it time for hot chocolate yet?”
He gave her that chiding look, pulling her back to her feet.
“It’s like riding a horse. If you give up the first time you fall, you’ll never get back on. And… you’ve never been horse-riding either, have you?”
She shook her head, keeping hold of his arms. He pulled her closer.
“How about a bike?”
“Never really had much call for one.”
“What have you ridden?”
Well, if he was going to walk into that one…
She simply raised an eyebrow and smirked.
“Not sure that counts, Shep,” he said. “You’ve never fallen off me.”
They were fast getting into dangerous territory again.
“I think I’ve got the hang of moving forward,” she said, sliding backwards so there was just a little safe distance between them. “Can’t we do something a bit more interesting?”
“Want to try it by yourself? Maybe take it a bit easier this time?”
No. Not even slightly.
“Sure.”
He let go of her entirely, skating backward in front of her at the same glacial pace that they’d been going before she got it into her head to go fast. Not quite out of reach, but far enough that she had space to move in any direction she liked.
“Not going to show off for me?” she asked, starting to follow him. (Carefully. She didn’t want to end up on her ass for real this time.)
“You want me to?”
She nodded. The point of this afternoon hadn’t really been for him to teach her to skate, even if it was a nice side bonus. He grinned, skating away a little and zipping around the ice with visible delight.
“Pity we don’t have any hockey gear,” he mused a little while later, coming back towards her. “Then I could really show you. Next time.”
“Next time?” she laughed. “You think there’s going to be a next time?”
He grinned. “Sure. Next time we’re back on Earth, I’ll take you to the rink near my parents’ place, where I used to play.”
The thought that maybe the rink had been destroyed by the Reapers, that maybe they’d never make it back to Earth again, except to inspect whatever burnt out wreckage the alien machines had left behind, didn’t seem to have crossed his mind. She was determined it wouldn’t have to.
Not this afternoon, anyway.
“What position did you play?” she asked.
“You know hockey positions?” He sounded proud, if a little sceptical.
She shrugged. “I wouldn’t say I’m an expert, but I’ve learned a few things since we watched that game back on the SR1.”
He laughed. “Damn, I’d forgotten about that. I thought Ash was going to choke on her popcorn when you called it a hockey pitch.”
“In my defence…”
“What?”
“I was messing with you. Mostly. I’m not that stupid.”
“Good to know.”
“So, come on, you haven’t answered my question. What did you play?”
“Guess.”
“Huh?”
“Come on, guess. If you know so much.”
“Well… you do love your armour. Goalie?”
“Close,” he admitted, grinning. “Defence.”
“Not much has changed, huh?”
His grin softened. “Not the important things.”
He let her catch up with him, reaching out to take her hand.
“Want to try something more fun?”
… that turned out to be wishful thinking.
The first spin went fine. Well, even. Almost better than when they’d tried it on solid ground, messing about after the Battle of the Citadel gala all that time ago. The second… not so much.
She wasn’t entirely sure what happened, if she’d tripped over her own feet or his, or they’d hit a particularly slippery and treacherous bit of ice, but one moment they were standing upright, and the next he was once again flat on his back on the ice, with her sprawled across his chest.
For the second time that afternoon.
The chest beneath her cheek began to shake. She lifted her head, looking down at Kaidan trying and utterly failing to contain his laughter. She punched him (very lightly) in the arm.
“What’s so funny?”
It took him a few moments to respond, his laughter getting the better of him.
“Sorry! It’s just… I was thinking about getting you horizontal again. And then this. It just wasn’t quite what I had in mind.”
“Horizontal?”
He looked up at her, laughter fading, that molten look back in his eyes. “Hmm. Horizontal, vertical, perpendicular… I’m quite easy on the details.”
Damn him.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, his face clouding with concern at the look on her face.
“There was a plan, Kaidan. I had a plan. There was going to be skating and a picnic and hot chocolate…”
“Sounds like an excellent plan,” he interrupted.
“But now I literally can’t think about anything other than getting you some place where I can rip all your clothes off. Biotically, if necessary.”
She could almost see the thought processes firing in his brain.
“Biotically?” he asked.
“I’ve been working on my fine motor skills. I reckon I could do it.”
He didn’t even waste time helping her to her feet, just throwing her over his shoulder in order to get back to the edge of the rink as quickly as possible.
“Guessing here isn’t an appropriate place.”
For her own sake, she ignored the little touch of hopefulness in his voice, shaking her head.
“Race you back to the ship?”
She nodded, grinning back at him. “You’re on.”