Work Text:
The day he met Commander Shepard, Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko could not stop sneezing.
As soon as they shook hands, moments after Captain Anderson had introduced them to one another, Kaidan promptly turned around and sneezed into his elbow.
Shepard didn’t miss a beat. “Bless you. Allergic to me, Lieutenant?”
Kaidan went along with it and chuckled, wishing to conceal his embarrassment. He didn’t want to make a fool of himself in front of a commanding officer, let alone a commander with credentials like Shepard’s. A lasting impression was what he hoped for, one involving something other than his nose.
Unfortunately, luck was not on Kaidan’s side. The sneezing became more like a phenomenon, a law of nature itself, rather than a isolated incident. For the rest of the day following their introduction, Kaidan suffered from relentless cold-like symptoms. He wrote it off as nothing more than a virus, but whenever he and Shepard would cross paths again the symptoms would worsen—his nose itched, his eyes watered, and he waited anxiously until they parted ways so that he could sneeze in peace. He had little choice but to keep all their subsequent meetings brief.
The cycle continued for the rest of the week before Kaidan admitted to himself that he was experiencing some sort of persistent allergic reaction, and then went to the med bay to ask Doctor Chakwas for medication.
Naturally, the doctor was skeptical. “Allergies?”
Kaidan nodded. “That’s what it seems like, Doc.”
“What could you possibly be allergic to all the way up here?” she asked incredulously.
Kaidan hadn’t the slightest idea what to tell her. Her certainly couldn’t tell her that he thought he was allergic to their commander, but nonetheless she prescribed him the pills, also giving him a dose right then and there.
The symptoms subsided within minutes, but he put the pills to the test later that day when he stopped Shepard for brief conversation at the CIC. To his relief, he was able to get through the entire encounter without so much as a sniffle.
So long as he remembered to take an allergy pill every morning, Kaidan never had to worry about sneezing around Shepard ever again. Nonetheless, it occasionally made him wonder; was he genuinely allergic to Shepard, or had it all been mere coincidence? Perhaps he had he developed an allergy to something on the ship? He just didn’t know. Chakwas suggested he go see an allergy specialist, but Kaidan knew it would be months before he had the chance to do so.
A few weeks later, however, Kaidan finally received his answer.
He sighed as he made his way across the ship, slightly annoyed with himself. In the midst of filing reports, getting everything ready for their newest mission with the commander now solely in charge of the ship, he ran into a few details he couldn’t quite remember from his last assignment with Shepard. Wanting to confirm, he decided to venture to her quarters. It would be nice to see her, but he only wished that he had a better reason than boring paperwork to pay her a visit.
Many reminded him that he was bad at hiding his budding attraction to her. “The whole crew knows,” his fellow shipmates would say to tease him. “Hell, the whole damn galaxy knows.” He would never deny their accusations, but he certainly couldn’t admit they were correct, either, especially with Shepard running the show on the Normandy. Among the entire crew, she was now the highest on the chain of command, a position that came with even more expectations and responsibilities than they already had from the Alliance. Fraternization was just one of many, but would nonetheless come with terrible consequences.
He would also never admit just how gorgeous he thought Shepard was, even in uniform, her hair pulled up in a tight bun, or in a full set of armor with a helmet that shielded everything but her eyes. Kaidan loved seeing her when she was able to let loose, though, when she wore jeans and plain tees and walked around the ship with her hair down. Shepard may have been an important member of the Alliance, with everyone counting on her to buckle down and save the galaxy, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t look damn good doing it.
When at last he approached her door, Kaidan pressed the intercom button on the keypad right outside.
“Who is it?” Shepard’s voice asked from the speaker.
“Lieutenant Alenko, ma’am,” Kaidan replied.
“Ah, Lieutenant! Come on in.”
Kaidan smiled as he pressed a different button and the doors slid open.
“Sorry to disturb you, Commander, but I—”
He paused in the doorway, eyes widening slightly in surprise.
Shepard met his gaze and smiled at him from her desk. She was dressed comfortably, wearing a set of black cotton pajamas, her hair braided over her right shoulder, and she looked beautiful. Yet that wasn’t what shocked Kaidan to the point of immobility.
In her lap, a small grey tabby cat with white markings slept peacefully. Sitting on top of her desk was another cat, long and elegant with black fur and piercing green eyes that stared directly into Kaidan’s golden-brown ones.
Cats. Shepard had cats. On the ship.
Kaidan was allergic to cats.
All at once, everything started to make sense, but Kaidan simply couldn’t believe his eyes. His allergy to cats was a detail he never bothered to include in his medical forms, being an issue he assumed could be left behind on Earth. He always figured that space would be the last place he would ever encounter feline dander…
“Hey there,” she greeted pleasantly, motioning for him to come inside. “Guess my secret’s out, huh?”
Kaidan entered her quarters, barely registering the sound of the doors shutting swiftly behind him.
“I hope you won’t mind keeping it a secret, will you?” she asked hopefully.
Kaidan nodded dumbly, not at all sure how to respond.
“Okay, good. I know I’m, uh, breaking some pretty serious rules here.” Shepard laughed nervously. “So, what can I help you with, Lieutenant? Is everything okay?”
“Sorry, it’s just—I had a question—um, sorry, hold on a—” Quickly turning around, Kaidan lifted his arm and sneezed into his elbow.
Shit, he thought. He had forgotten to take an allergy pill in the morning.
Concern entered Shepard’s gaze, soon followed by a moment of realization. “Oh! Wait a second, Lieutenant, I… are you allergic to cats?”
Sighing, Kaidan nodded again. “I am, yes.”
Shepard hid her face in her hands, embarrassed. “Oh my gosh, you really were allergic to me in a way.”
Kaidan sniffed a few times before he chuckled. “It does explain it. But I’m relieved to know it was just these two and not actually you.”
“Three, actually,” she corrected. Noting his confusion at her response, Shepard pointed to her bed. To Kaidan’s astonishment, curled up against the pillows was the third cat in question, a Siamese cat with the sleepiest blue eyes he’d ever seen.
“Three,” he repeated. “Jesus, Shepard, how did you sneak three cats onto the Normandy?”
He didn’t mean to speak to her so informally, but he was still so surprised he didn’t know how else to react.
Shepard laughed again and nodded sheepishly. “When I was asked to join the Normandy, Anderson let me bring them aboard as long as I didn’t tell anyone else about them… They were my bargaining chips, if you will. I wouldn’t join the mission if they couldn’t come with me.”
Kaidan snorted.
“None of you had listed a cat allergy in your medical records,” Shepard continued, “but I guess cat’s aren’t something you expect to see all too often here in space.”
Kaidan couldn’t withhold a laugh now. “No, ma’am, definitely not.”
“They stay in here for the most part, but I let them run around and explore this area of the ship at night, when everyone’s asleep,” she explained.
“And no on else has ever seen them? Even after all this… ” Kaidan trailed off as yet another sneeze interrupted him. “Time.”
Shepard looked sad. “Oh, shit, Kaidan, I’m really sorry. Will this be a problem?”
“No, no of course not,” he replied. He smiled, mostly to reassure her, but also because she had used his first name to address him instead of his rank. “The symptoms go away with a little antihistamine.”
“Really? Are you sure that’s enough?”
He nodded. “I’m fine. I like cats, their fur just doesn’t like me.”
Shepard smiled in relief. “That’s good to hear. I just couldn’t leave them at home in someone else’s care, you know? I didn’t know how long this assignment would take and I’d just miss them too much.”
Kaidan was unable to hide the amusement in his expression. “You really like cats, don’t you, Shepard?”
“More than I like most people. They’re much better company than the council, for instance.”
“Hmm. Can’t argue with you there.”