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She’s caught in the sheen of fluorescent lights with sheets rocking up just above her hips (it's so fucking hot, she tells him later and she thrashes like a disgruntled child) she has one scar that litters the left side of her rib cage.
It’s the small moments, the ones where they’re all not playing hot potato with the galaxy in their hands, the ones where his heartbeat can steady into the right rhythm with hers and she can sleep without nightmares. These are the moments that make all the years worthwhile.
This was Shepard in all her entirety. Perfection to him was in the embodiment of a small lithe woman who smiles with crinkles in her eyes, grumbles when there's no more of the cherry flavoured energy bars, and stares at him with flaring eyes-
Kaidan doesn't like to stay in her cabin for the night— he’s not sure if he should. She never comments on his leave the next morning, but she never asks him to stay either. She's still Jane Shepard, he's still Kaidan Alenko, and they both have duty that means so much more than anyone really wants to believe.
He attempts to find his boxers wherever they had been thrown (you know for such an empty cabin I lose a lot of stuff here, he says one night) Shepard slowly stirs when he accidentally bumps his knee against her desk, half lidded, her eyelashes flutter and her breasts shift almost a little too delightfully for his haste to leave.
She smiles at him, and in the drunken steeps of half-consciousness her rasp voice pierces the constant buzzing of static in the air, her body hinges a blue tint from her fish tank.
"Major of my heart," she tells him with that soft flirty tone that gives him shivers and he's pretty sure he melts right there.
The world doesn't spin as fast as Kaidan really thinks it does, it moves slow and steady the way Shepard takes him and leads him with calloused hands and heated stares. Maybe that's the way it's always been, he just hasn't noticed it 'till now.