#jediwalkerw

They’d spent four hours in a skycar to get here, in spite of all of Kaidan’s arguments for why it was a bad idea. Shepard hasn’t learned yet that when Kaidan’s mother makes a plan, you don’t alter the plan. And the plan had been she would take the high-speed rail from Toronto to Vancouver and find her own way to the orchard. It was her plan. Sam’s idea to surprise her at the station was doomed to failure, no matter how noble his intentions.

Of course, the fact he wanted to do it so badly is more than Kaidan’s heart can stand, but that doesn’t change the laws of the universe. Or his mother.  

“You can’t surprise my mother,” Kaidan tried to tell him. “It doesn’t work. Trust me.”

“It’ll work,” Sam insisted, back when he was naïve and optimistic.

Shepard, so accustomed to the galaxy getting out of his way whenever he it wanted to, doesn’t understand the opposing force that is Lora Alenko. Or blizzards.

“I flew a Mako through a mass relay and we really can’t figure out how to keep the trains running in snow?” Shepard demands.

“Apparently,” Kaidan says, suppressing a sigh. The sigh would not help matters.

The red lights on the arrival sign flicker, then change. Sam straightens, hopeful, until the word Cancelled appears.

“Son of a bitch,” he swears, throwing an arm in the air. “Fuck this holiday bullshit.” A few people look in his direction, including a kid wearing a red and green knit cap who can’t be more than ten. He grips his mother’s hand, eyes widening with recognition.

Chagrin creeps over Shepard’s face. He clears his throat and offers the kid a salute, before dragging Kaidan further away from the crowd.

“First,” he says, before Kaidan can open his mouth. “Don’t say it. Second, now what do we do?”

“We go home,” Kaidan says gently. “She’ll get here when she gets here. It’s fine.”

“No it isn’t.” Shepard runs a hand over his scalp and continues pacing. More people start looking their way, so Kaidan takes him by the hand and leads him outside, where the snow continues falling even thicker than before. At this point, just getting themselves home is going to be interesting.

Sam continues muttering under his breath as they walk, jingle bell tinkling merrily. Kaidan puts a hand on his arm, tightening until he stops.

“Hey,” Kaidan says.

Shepard turns his glare skyward, as though he has half a mind to out-temper the storm. Wouldn’t be the first time. He’d ground Noveria’s snow right under his heel. Of course, that time he’d had an armored tank with an eezo core. Surely he can’t do the same with a skycar.

…surely.

“This was supposed to go right,” Sam says in defeat.

Kaidan brushes away the snow collecting on Shepard’s shoulder, hiding a smile at the sight of flakes melting on his head. He’d spent so much time joking about making them both wear Santa hats he hadn’t thought to grab real hats.

“First lesson about holidays,” Kaidan says with a chuckle. “Nothing ever goes according to plan. Kind of like you.”

Sam exhales, warm breath dissipating into steam. He runs a gloved finger down Kaidan’s cheek, channeling some of his intensity into one of those looks that never fails to make him weak at the knees.

“Sam,” Kaidan says, meeting his gaze. “Talk to me. What’s going on? You’ve been a man on a mission for weeks. It’s supposed to be something you – something we – enjoy.”

His expression twists in a way that makes Kaidan’s heart ache. “You’re…my family. Your mom…is now my family. Holidays are important to you.” He hesitates. “And I kind of wanted it to be important to me.”

Kaidan gazes at him, too many thoughts swirling in his head to give voice to any of them. So he leans in and kisses him, softly at first, then more insistently as Sam wraps an arm around his neck and pulls him flush. For the thousandth time, Kaidan wonders how two people fit so perfectly together.

When Kaidan finally pulls away Sam sighs, blinking away flakes of snow.

“Then let’s go home,” Kaidan says. “And I promise, when she gets here? We’ll make it important to all of us.”

Kaidan takes his hand as they walk back towards the skycar. Just for the hell of it, he sticks his tongue out to catch a snowflake, persisting until Sam laughs and tugs him close.

It’s late by the time they make it back to the orchard. The strings of Christmas lights Sam had hung meticulously over the front bushes twinkle merrily, but to their surprise the house itself blazes with light.

Sam’s hand reaches for a sidearm he no longer carries, suspicion in his eyes. “Did you leave the lights on?”

“Nope,” Kaidan says, hiding a smile as he gets out of the skycar.

“Then what the—”

Kaidan chuckles. “You are not the only person who can bully the universe, Sam.”

When they walk in the house Kaidan’s mother sits on the couch with a glass of wine, feet up and adorned with a pair of candy cane slippers, fire roaring merrily in the fireplace. When she gets to her feet, she wears a knit red sweater emblazoned with a green Christmas tree that lights up with omnitool powered lights.

“There you are!” she exclaims as they stamp snow off their boots. “Where the hell have you been?”

Kaidan grins and crosses the room to sweep her up in a hug.

“We…went to get you,” Sam says, giving her a baffled look. “How did you get here? Your train was cancelled.”

“Aunt Li had some last-minute things she needed to take care of, and I saw the weather, so I took an earlier train.”

“I told you,” Kaidan says. “You can’t surprise her.”  

“You tried to surprise me?” she asks, genuinely touched.

Kaidan steps aside and she opens her arms expectantly, waggling her fingers until Sam steps sheepishly into them. She leans in and murmurs in his ear, “Good luck with that.”

Sam narrows his eyes, but holds her tight. “Challenge accepted.”

Oh boy. This is not what Kaidan had in mind when he vowed to make new Christmas traditions.

“I missed my boys,” she says, taking Sam’s cheeks in both hands. “And I wasn’t going to miss our first Christmas.”

Sam nods, speechless for once when she lets him go.

“Sam went all out,” Kaidan says with a smile. “You should see the meal he’s got planned for tomorrow.”  

She raises an eyebrow.

“Catered,” Sam says swiftly.

She grins. “I can’t wait.”

She goes into the kitchen to dig up two more wine glasses. When she returns, she hands one to each of them and grabs the bottle she’d already opened to fill them.

She picks up her own glass and raises it. “To our new family.”

Sam and Kaidan echo the toast, though Sam’s voice wavers.

They drink. Sam shuffles his feet. Kaidan knows the look on his face. The soldier’s been put away again, but the part of him who believes he has to earn his place – even with his own family – still hasn’t been laid to rest yet.

Kaidan’s working on that.    

“So,” Sam says slowly. “I’m, um. Not sure what happens now. I’m not…good at this.”

Kaidan’s mother loops Sam’s arm around her shoulder and walks him over to the couch, where a pile of blankets wait. “Now we cuddle up in front of the fire and get warm, because it’s freezing outside and someone I know hates being cold.”

A smile creeps across Sam’s face. “It’s not so bad. When you’ve got the right company.”

Outside, the snow keeps falling. Inside, the fire flickers and pops.    

“So is this what it’s like?” Sam murmurs, tugging a blanket across the three of them as they settle on the couch and finding Kaidan’s hand underneath it. As soon as he’s situated, Kaidan’s mother drops a Santa hat on his head.

Bear with me here while I ramble on for a bit to explain things (this is as much to help me out as to explain to you! lol)

Caleb is demisexual and bisexual.

Back in his teens, he had a girlfriend, Ciara (also a member of the Reds). They were together for less than a year, though, and shortly after they broke up, she ends up killed in the Reds war vs. the Greystones; one of the many people Caleb has lost in his life over the years. He and Moira, another Red, get together once or twice, but mostly they're just friends (after Ned's murder, Caleb doesn't go back to Old Neddy's anymore, so she sometimes lets him stay at her place). This last for about a year until Athair smuggles him out of Ireland for his own safety after the Reds lose control of Shannon to the Greystones.

Over the years that follow, no one really interests him sexually or romantically - partly because the interest just isn't there, and partly because he's afraid to let anyone too close because he knows just how easily they can be lost. As if to back this up, he loses his entire unit on Akuze - people he's come to care about as 'family' - and as you can imagine, it only reinforces that idea.

HOWEVER, as a literal end result of Akuze, he meets Kaidan who is part of the rescue team sent in. From that point on, they become friends, like he and Coats. They meet up periodically, have drinks, sit around talking, pull out the deck of cards to have Caleb do readings and such, etc. They even meet up unexpectedly when Caleb is on an N7 mission and Kaidan ends up helping Caleb and Rosa out in the process. (Can you say VERY SLOW BURN?)

So, by the end of ME1, Caleb figures out, okay, he's got feelings, but he says nothing. We all know how devastating Alchera is (and it is for both of them), but Mars is a double edged sword for Caleb because all of a sudden the shoe is on the other foot, so to speak; his past history with people he's close to comes rushing back to haunt him, but he finally acknowledges to himself that he loves Kaidan. What's he to do???

Well, my dork of an Irishman does what he always does: he clams up and keeps it to himself. However, by this point, Kaidan is starting to read his tells and eventually there is a sort of confrontation and they both work their way past the problems and end up 'together'.

Now, 'together' is even more frightening to Caleb (mostly because of the fear of losing Kaidan - they ARE in a war, right? He's a bit surprised (considering how he was raised) that it doesn't bother him that Kaidan is a man; Caleb just knows by this point that they are 'meant to be' and to be honest, that is probably the easiest part of the entire relationship for him) because 1) he's admitted to himself he has feelings, 2) there's a WAR ON and Kaidan could die (see also: Mars and Akuze and what happened to the Reds), and 3) what do I do if I lose him when he means so much more to me than anyone else EVER?

That being said... the actual headcanon part to all of this is: they agree to a relationship where they move it forward very slowly with Caleb determining when they move on to whatever 'next step' that he wants when he wants to. Kaidan has no issue with that at all. So, most of their relationship during the war when they sleep together, they literally are just sleeping together in the same bed. Kissing and snuggling/cuddling is easy enough for Caleb to accept (and that will always be a thing for them, even later in life), and certainly having Kaidan there with him as they sleep makes it easier for him to sleep, but actual 'sex' between them doesn't happen until much later in their relationship.

Now, I know you know of a scene I have planned for them late in ME3 after the Leviathan mission, and that will still be included in their story (I think), but I may be changing it up a little bit to reflect some of this new information that he's given me.