Chapter Text
“Commander?” Samantha asked, fingers poised over her console. Surely she must have misheard what Shepard had said. Head tilted to the side, brow furrowed, she waited for the other woman to clarify.
“I said I waxed the floor, so grab your fluffy socks.” She waved a hand downwards, and Sam followed its movements, which brought her to the realisation that the Commander wasn’t wearing shoes. She worked hard to stifle the laughter that bubbled up inside her at the implications. This certainly wasn’t regulation, but if she’d learnt anything during her time aboard the Normandy, it was that Commander Shepard had a relaxed attitude towards rules. They had a war to fight, Shepard had said. They had to steal their moments of happiness where they could.
Truth be told, this relationship between them, if she could even use that word, felt like one long stolen moment. The kind of thing that happened to other people; women like Commander Shepard didn’t fall in love with ordinary colony girls like Samantha, no matter how bright or intelligent or downright competent she might be. Shepard was in a league of her own.
(One time, during a quick shared shower, Samantha had expressed her doubts. Shepard had just laughed, though the sound had lacked its usual humour. Leaned in against Sam’s ear so that her words brushed against her skin. I was an ordinary colony girl, too.
And Samantha knew, had known about the Commander’s past well before they met, but until that moment, she had not known. Sam would never be the stuff of legends, but when she was with Shepard, she felt like she could be.)
And all of that, all of those considerations, and Samantha was falling for Shepard anyway. With the glint in Shepard’s eye, she realised she might be falling in more way that one. Sam kept her tone light when she responded, feigning disinterest. Teasing. “I thought that only worked with floorboards?” she answered, casting a doubtful look at the Commander’s own fuzzy socks before glancing back up at Shepard’s face. Her eyes were bright with mischief and for a moment, Samantha didn’t see Commander Shepard, the grizzled war hero. She just saw… her.
“Well, the cargo hold’s freshly cleaned and we won’t know if we don’t try, will we?” It was Shepard’s personal motto, from the galaxy-saving, world-ending stuff down to the very ordinary minutiae of her being. Samantha laughed.
“Be that as it may, I don’t have any fuzzy socks, I’m afraid.” She hadn’t meant to sound so genuinely put out by the fact, but she found that she was. “I’m rather jealous.”
“I know,” Shepard said, reaching into one of her pockets to retrieve a package. “So I got you these while I was down on the Citadel.”
Sam accepted the present from Shepard’s outstretched hands, knowing what she’d find even before she removed the wrapping. A pair of her fuzzy socks, just for her. The way they felt under her fingertips are the way her heart felt in that moment: soft, warm, protective. “You shouldn’t have. I mean, it was so thoughtful of you–” She forced herself to stop before she started babbling. When words failed other people, they tended to stop coming entirely. Sam had the opposite problem. She did her best to simplify her gratitude. “Thank you.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Shepard said. “They were reasonably priced.” Samantha frowned at the dig against her toothbrush. “Besides,” Shepard continued, “how will we know who’s really better at sock-‘n’-slide if I didn’t even the playing field?”
Samantha wanted to protest, to tell Shepard that it wasn’t even a real game, or if it was, that almost certainly wasn’t its name. But she could never resist a challenge. She gripped her new socks tightly in one fist as she narrowed her eyes.
“You’re on, Commander.”