4/16/16 A/N: This was prompted by this ask on tumblr about what turns my Shepard on. I claimed she could be turned on by a glass of milk. I honestly had no intention of going to this place, but my brain (and these two) decided otherwise. I hope you like it! It'll be the first long thing I'm posting.

It takes place after Apollo's but before Omega. There is a fair amount of made up sciencey stuff about digestion & dextro foods, but let's not focus too much on that. It's not canon for this pair either, but it is still them! So I guess that's what they call a crack fic? (I'm so new to this!)

She moaned as his callused hand ran over her stomach. Felt teeth lightly nibbling at her neck.

"Kaidan," she whispered as his hand dipped under her panties and she felt him vibrate with a satisfied chuckle.

Parting her legs, his fingers traveled even lower, "Don't stop," she murmured, turning her head to find his mouth-

"Shepard?"

"Nooooo," she groaned, cracking an eye open, the dream fading fast.

"Shepard," EDI continued, "it is 0630, you requested to be woken up well in advance of departure today. We are set to disembark in 90 minutes."

"Thank you, EDI," she replied tersely, irritated at the AI's poor timing.

Lying flat on her back, she stared at the cabin's ceiling. The sheets next to her were frustratingly empty and cold. Kaidan still refused to share her cabin or bed and maintained that the Starboard Observation Lounge was the place for him until they could figure things out.

It hadn't been too long since they'd reconciled at Apollo's and since then she'd been craving his touch, his presence more than ever. Just like that day however, he'd been content to let her wait.

"Fucking steak," she muttered, slapping the cold covers.

Reluctantly, she rolled over and put her feet on the cool metal floor. Better now than never, she thought, getting up to shower and dress for the day.

I

Most of the crew was milling around the mess and common area when she got downstairs. Everyone knew that they'd be leaving soon and wanted to get a little bit of food and maybe quiet conversation in before they left.

Tali and Garrus were chatting pleasantly next to the coffee machine, but stopped talking and turned at her approach.

"Morning," Tali's lilting voice lifted her spirits a bit.

"Good morning," she replied back, opening the cabinet to grab a clean mug. She stood tiptoe on one foot and scrabbled at the ceramic handles at the edge of the shelf.

"Need some help?" Garrus asked, reaching over her head to pull one down.

"Thanks. I'm still confused as to why they're up so high, but I guess it works."

"Well, I usually put them away and to me they're at the perfect height. I never thought about how it'd be from down there," the turian towered above her and knew it, "if you decided to help out with the ship chores some more you could put them anywhere you wanted."

"Dammit, Garrus," she punched him playfully, "way to call me out in front of my crew!"

It was all a show. Everyone knew that she pulled her own weight around the Normandy doing other things, often forsaking her own wellbeing to do so. She didn't mind the ribbing in the least. It was fun to joke with a friend at the start of the day.

Sniffing the liquid in the pot, she pulled a face, "I hate this instant shit. It does the job, but it's not nearly as good as old fashioned boiled bean water. I'll just have to doctor it up some to make it even slightly palatable."

Tali scoffed, "You think that's bad? What about us? We're stuck with this dexto slurry. It's terrible!"

Io eyeballed the slurry in question. Most Alliance ships didn't have quarians or turians aboard, so the means by which Tali and Garrus got their nutrition wasn't the most appetizing. The dextro slurry arrived in large bags that wiggled like a ravager's sack when poked. Even worse, you had to stab the bag with a nozzle to dispense it.

Tali was swirling the thick liquid around in her glass.

"Honestly? That doesn't look too bad. Kinda reminds me of a melted milkshake."

"What's that?" Garrus questioned.

"Well, you take ice cream, which is frozen cream and sugar, some other stuff, and milk. Then blend it all together. It's a treat of sorts, very sweet. When it starts melting down, it looks like that."

"I promise you, this is no treat," Tali's voice was serious and unamused.

"I bet it's not nearly as terrible as this," she raised the pot and mug up for emphasis.

"Nothing is as bad as dextro slurry, Shepard," Garrus warned.

"Doubt it. Here," she shoved her mug into Tali's face, nearly knocking into her mask, "let me try some."

"But Io, it can make you really sick," Tali said.

"I've got cybernetics, built from the ground up and all that, I'm sure I can take some dextro slurry," she bravely claimed.

Tali sighed, shrugged, and poured a generous splash into her mug, "Don't say I didn't warn you."

"You're just scared I'm going to be right-" her train of thought stopped short. She could feel him before she saw him.

Turning, pot and mug in hand, she watched as he easily greeted and joked with the crew mates he passed. Then, he looked towards her and she couldn't help but catch her breath as he smiled warmly, eyes crinkling at the corners.

"Good morning," he hummed, coming as close to her as he dared, "beautiful," he whispered under his breath.

"Morning," she smiled, blushing and breathing him in. A faint hint of eezo followed him everywhere.

Garrus made an almost inaudible sound from the back of his throat.

"You gonna drink that?" he motioned with his chin to the pot and mug in her hands.

"Oh," she got flustered, "yeah, uh, you want something too?"

"I do."

She handed him her mug and turned to grab a new one out of the cabinet.

Peering closely down in to its depths, he asked, "Is this?"

"Dextro slurry?" Garrus answered, "Yes, Io here was going on and on about how your coffee is worse than dextro slurry. I'm pretty sure a bet or dare of some sort was instigated."

"Because I know nothing is as bad as this coffee."

"Io, this can kill you," Kaidan said, concerned.

"I'll be fiiiine," she turned and handed him the empty mug, "I'm just going to take a sip, you know to settle things."

"It. Can. Kill. You," Tali and Kaidan said in unison.

"Karin," she yelled across the common area, the doctor stopped, mid-sentence and looked over to her, "Will dextro slurry kill me?"

Dr. Chakwas nodded in apology to the private she had been talking to and walked over, "Well, not necessarily-"

"See!" and without further ado, she grabbed the mug from Kaidan's grip and took a large gulp. There were at least one or two gasps while her head was tilted back, she was sure of it.

The thick liquid rolled down her throat, coating it, just like a milkshake.

"It's not that bad," she narrated, "kind of a light flavor, nutty, with a hint something I can't quite put my finger on."

"You? You, like it?" Garrus' mandibles flared in surprise.

"Yeah, it's fine. I don't know what you're complaining about."

Tali and Garrus exchanged a look between them. Their disbelief was apparent.

"You think that has a light flavor?" Tali pushed.

"Yeah, it's nothing. Very light. Not bad. Why?"

"I find it to have the most overpowering, slap me over the head, disgusting flavor. EVER." Tali swirled the slurry in her glass more, as if she didn't believe that Io had taken a drink of the same thing.

"Maybe our taste buds are different?" Io shrugged, and took another sip.

"Don't," Kaidan tried to stop her, but it was too late.

"What are taste buds?" Tali asked.

"Uhh…" Dr. Chakwas tried to start, but that's when it hit her.

"Oh, ouch," the pain was sharp and she grabbed her side, "that's…unexpected."

It was like someone had kicked her in the guts.

Dr. Chakwas sighed, "Major, can you bring her to the med-bay for me? This shouldn't take long."

She groaned as another cramp shot through her. Kaidan picked her up and said, "Sure are a lot of talk, aren't you?"

"Shut up," she moaned into his chest, "Oh…" she grabbed his shirt, the fabric twisting under her grip.

"Set her down, Major."

She felt the cool med-bay table beneath her. Curled up on her side, she made a horrific sound as her insides rolled.

"Here," a hand with some pills and a glass of water appeared in front of her eyes.

"That's it?" Sitting up shakily, she took the pills from Chakwas and swallowed them down, fighting back bile as the water hit her stomach.

"That's it. It's a cocktail of drugs meant to neutralize the ingredients in dextro foods that are toxic to humans and that can make us sick. Ideally you'd take them before you ate something dextro without any side effects. It takes much longer if you ingest the pills afterwards."

"Dr. Chakwas?" EDI piped in, sounding concerned.

"Yes, EDI?"

"Will the Commander's sudden illness delay departure? We are scheduled with C-Sec to take off in 10 minutes."

"No, EDI, it won't delay it. She should be better in an hour or two."

"Thank you, Doctor."

Kaidan spoke up then, "So she'll be ok? I mean, there's nothing else to do except wait right?"

"Nothing right now, she'll just get the meds to start working. She'll be very uncomfortable until then, but she'll be fine."

"Ok good to know," he nodded and then said to her, "Serves you right. You know that none of us actually asked that you try it. You did that all on your own."

"Uuggghhhh," she curled into a ball, "dammit, Alenko…"

"Io, just let it takes it's course, I'll be back to check on you later."

As she lay on the cold table, she watched as Tali kept swirling her glass, the dextro slurry coating the sides and running around the edge in a satisfying wave…if she didn't feel so sick she'd…

"Ouch!" the cramp shot through her.

"Goddamn dextro slurry," she muttered, holding her middle tighter.

I

She had fallen into a fitful sleep as the drugs started to kick in. She dreamed of Kaidan again, a vivid, near hallucinatory thing involving dextro slurry but when she awoke about an hour later, she barely remembered anything about it except for the swirl of the liquid in a glass.

Swinging her legs to the ground, she shakily stood and then found her footing. Her stomach had quieted and outside of the vestiges of the smell of her sweat and feeling of embarrassment, it was as if the whole thing didn't happen.

Shrugging and straightening herself out, she exited the med-bay and made her way up to the CIC.

I

A few days had passed since her incident. No one dared mention it, but she knew that jokes were being made at her expense. It didn't faze her too much. Any chance to get someone to laugh right now was Ok in her book.

The thing was, she couldn't get the damn slurry out of her head. Every morning now, she watched Tali like a hawk. It was something to do with the way the quarian moved the glass. She found it hypnotizing and several times she had to be snapped out of it because her mind would begin to drift.

On top of that new obsession, she and Kaidan had barely had any time alone and she was getting restless. The night before last, he had found her in the shuttle bay and they had quickly darted behind a stack of crates, fumbling at the fastenings on each other's uniform. Kaidan had been wonderful and in charge, forcefully spinning and pinning her against the wall, pushing her pants down haphazardly. Their hands were so urgent and their need so great when he had entered her it lacked the finesse or tenderness both of them enjoyed so much. The whole incident took less than 5 minutes. Neither one of them had time to let their biotics build, and while briefly satisfied, her desire for him had flared again when she crawled into her lonely bed.

EDI had yet to call her this morning to wake up, but it didn't matter, she had been counting the stars above her head for an hour now and she was no closer to falling back to sleep. Kicking off her covers, she rolled over and pulled on a pair of sweats.

"EDI?"

"Yes, Shepard?"

"Is Kar-Dr. Chakwas up?"

"She is."

"Ok, thanks."

She padded over to the elevator and punched the button. Leaning against the wall, she sighed as she focused in on the thought that she had been entertaining for several days now. Maybe it could work. Maybe.

Dr. Chakwas was running through her morning checklist in the med-bay when she entered.

"Good morning, Commander. Everything all right?"

Nodding, she leaned against one of the examination tables, "Karin, I have a question. I'm coming to you because I've known you a helluva long time and I know you won't judge me."

The other woman raised an eyebrow and swung the chair at her desk around before she sat down.

"So, I uh, I've been interested in trying out the slurry again and I was hoping you could supply me with some more of those pills? You said that it'd be fine for humans if we, I, took them beforehand, right?"

"Well, yes. I don't recommend you do it often, but if you wanted to have some slurry once in a blue moon, I don't think that there would be any issues physically."

Nodding, she felt a little glow of excitement bloom in her belly, "So, do you think I can grab some from you then?"

Dr. Chakwas quirked an eyebrow and said, "Do I want to know?"

Io shook her head and then looked at Chakwas dead in the eyes, "Probably not?"

"Kaidan?"

She rubbed the back of her neck self-consciously and said, "I don't what it is but way that damn stuff moves is, something. I think I gotta do this thing or else I fear I won't be able to let it go."

Chakwas, stood calmly and walked over to her store of meds, "Here," she said, handing Io five pills, "You take three because the toxins will have more of an effect on you, but owing to the Major's size, he'll only need to take two. Pop them 15 minutes beforehand, ok?"

"Ok. Thanks," she pocketed the pills and headed out of the med-bay.

Karin called out to her as she left, "Have fun, Commander."