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Shared Tastes	By : NakedOwlMan Category: +M through R > Mass Effect Views: 25716 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: Mass Effect and all the characters in it are owned by people that are not me. I have not made a cent off this work of fiction

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"Got a minute to talk, chief?"

Ashley Williams couldn't hold back the smile that came to her face as she turned to face her commanding officer. "Hey, Skipper. Yeah, I'm not too busy. What's up?"

She had served under quite a few commanders in her time, some of them for very long and aggravatingly boring assignments. And yet, after only a few weeks since she'd transferred to the Normandy, she'd never felt as comfortable with one of them as she did with Commander Alexandra Shepard.

Not that the others were much competition for the Hero of the Skyllian Blitz, though. Despite her exemplary training results and willingness to do whatever it took to make herself useful, most of her previous superior officers looked at her arrival as an insult from the Alliance brass. "If they're giving me the Williams girl," they figured, "I must be on Command's shit list for some reason." And even though many of them ended up valuing her service by the end, and shook her hand with genuine respect when she would inevitably leave for another dead-end posting, Ash had never felt truly welcome in any of her squads until now.

Shepard was different. From the first moment Ashley had been officially transferred to the Normandy, the commander had done everything she could to make Ash feel at home. Shepard paid frequent visits down to the lower decks, and although she usually stopped and chatted with all the aliens first, Shepard always set aside the most time to talk to Ashley. Asking about her family, discussing previous postings. And as far as Ash could tell, it wasn't the obligatory "gotta pretend like I'm interested in my team to keep morale up" bullshit she was used to. Shepard seemed genuinely interested in her. And even if Shepard was just really good at putting on the act, Ash felt like there was a real connection forming between her and the commander.

So when Shepard stopped by to talk, Ashley didn't hesitate to put aside what she was doing.

"Just wanted to make sure you were adjusting to things on the Normandy," Shepard said, her tone pleasantly conversational.

It was one of the things Ashley had come to admire about the veteran soldier, the way she could switch gears almost without effort. A few days ago Ash, Kaidan and Shepard had been battling their way through the mines on Therum. As they had fired on the geth, Shepard had been a level-headed and firm commander, displaying all the same tactical expertise and hard-earned experience that had saved Elysium. It was one thing to read stories about the heroic Commander Shepard; it was quite another to see her in action. From that day on, as they led Dr. T'Soni out of the mines to safety, Ashley knew without a doubt that she would follow this woman into hell itself, and trust that she'd bring them all back alive.

But as soon as they were back on the ship, the stern and hard-nosed commander went away, and Shepard turned back into the genial and friendly woman who had welcomed her onto the Normandy with a warm smile and a pat on the back. With the things Shepard had seen in her service history, Ash wouldn't have been surprised if she had been one of those types who couldn't turn it off. Who treated her underlings like tools to achieve a goal, rather than flesh-and-blood people. But Shepard wasn't like that at all, and Ashley respected the hell out of her for it.

"I'm good, Shepard," Ashley said. "Gotta say, after cooling my heels on Eden Prime guarding a bunch of eggheads and farmers, it's nice to see some action for once."

"Be careful what you wish for. I have a feeling there'll be a lot more fights ahead of us before we manage to track down Saren."

Ashley squared her shoulders. "No worries, skipper. This is what I've been training for since I signed up. I'm not going to bug out on you just because things get a little hairy."

"I never doubted you for a second," Shepard said, and the certainty in her voice gave Ash a thrill down her spine. "But I wasn't just talking about adjusting to the fighting. This is your first shipboard posting, isn't it?"

Ash nodded. "Applied for postings all the time, but always got rejected." Bitterly, she added, "Silly me, I just kept putting down the wrong last name on all the application forms."
"Well, their loss. Reason I ask, though... I know a lot of marines, especially first-timers, have a hard time getting used to being on a ship for extended periods of time. Weeks, sometimes months of isolation, seeing the same thing every damn day. Just wanted to make sure you weren't going stir crazy or anything."

"You pretty much described my last assignment, skipper," Ash said with a wry chuckle. "Up until the geth hit, Eden Prime was about as interesting as a rotating 12-hour shift staring at a brick wall."

Shepard shrugged her shoulders slightly. "Still, there are certain luxuries to a ground assignment you don't get with working in space. Decent meals, room to stretch your legs..." She gave Ashley a crooked smile. "And on those lonely nights, off duty with nothing else to do... those eggheads and farmers must have been good for more than just guarding, right?"

"Shepard!" Ashley exclaimed in surprise, glancing around the lower decks to see if anyone else was paying attention to the suddenly racy conversation. "What exactly are you suggesting, ma'am?" she asked, putting a faux-posh tone in her voice. "I'll have you know that, as a proper lady, I would never dream of doing something as... vulgar as that! And even if I did take some studly young colonist behind the barracks and rob him of his innocence, I'll have you know that I firmly intend to go back after this mission is over and make him an honest man!"

"Uh huh," Shepard deadpanned, and Ashley couldn't hold back her laughter.

"Can't believe this. Here I am with one of the great heroes of the Alliance, a goddamn legend, and we're talking about one-night stands," Ashley said after stifling her chuckles.

Shepard gave her that wicked, crooked smile again. "Legends have urges, just like anybody else. Lesson I learned on my first shipboard assignment actually. I was..." Shepard suddenly looked hesitant. "Nah, I shouldn't tell this story. Might be too obscene for your tender ears."

"Oh, no, you don't!" Ashley chided Shepard as she started to turn away. "You don't tease something like that and not follow through. Come on, I already fessed up about my late-night romp with Adam the sexy farmhand. Give me all the details."

"Well, like I said, it was my first shipboard assignment," Shepard said, moving to Ash's side to lean against the workbench next to her. "I'll never forget how excited I was about it. After waiting so long to finally get a chance to prove myself, this was it. No more training exercises, no more boring garrison work. I was serving the Alliance the way I always knew I could. And not only that, but I was serving under a true, bona-fide hero of the Alliance."

"Captain Anderson?"

Shepard shook her head. "No, this was before Anderson. My commander before him." A far-off look came to Shepard's face, the memory she was recalling obviously a pleasant one. "God, I'll never forget stepping onto the ship for the first time and reporting for duty. It's one thing to read about the battle, listen to the old news reports and study their tactics during training. But when you actually find yourself in the presence of one of your heroes, see them up close and personal for the first time... it was awe-inspiring."

"Shepard, I'm not hearing the obscene part of this little story of yours," Ashley gently chided. "Unless... don't tell me you..." Ashley started to say, then saw the look in Shepard's eyes and gasped. "You didn't? The great Commander Shepard, breaking fraternization regs on her very first assignment? Really, skipper! I am shocked and appalled!" Ashley put a tone of mock outrage in her voice.

"I know, I'm a terrible soldier," Shepard said, gazing down at the floor with an overacted look of shame on her face. "A total disgrace to the Star of Terra."

Ashley patted Shepard on the shoulder. "Well, I'll forgive you, if you give me all the juicy details."

"Really, it wasn't like I set out to sleep with my commanding officer," Shepard said. "I was only a year out of the Academy, and yeah, all those regulations about messing around with your superiors were still fresh in my mind. But the more I worked with Captain Savanta, the more I knew that..."
The sound of the name made Ash's eyes go wide. "Hold on a second," she interrupted. "Captain Savanta, the one who served under Admiral Drescher during the First Contact War?"

Shepard nodded. "That's the one."

Ashley struggled to process this. "Captain Maria Savanta?" When Shepard nodded, Ashley put a hand to her forehead. "Wow, Shepard, I just... not that there's anything wrong with it, but I didn't know you were..."

Ash's discomfort seemed to amuse Shepard. "I'm not. Or at least, I wasn't until I met her. Hell, when I started serving with Captain Savanta, I'd only been with two men in my life before that, and never with a woman. So at first, when I started having these... feelings about her, I just chalked it up as hero worship. Told myself that the excitement I felt every time we locked eyes was just the thrill of working with someone I looked up to and admired. The thought of me and her actually doing something like that... it was the last thing I would have ever considered."

"So... what changed your mind?" Ashley asked. Admittedly, she was a bit less interested in this story now that there was no mature-but-still-ruggedly-handsome male officer involved, but she didn't want to seem like a prude, and cut Shepard off in the middle of a story she obviously wanted to tell.

"It wasn't really any one particular thing that happened," Shepard said, gazing off into the distance as she reminisced. "Hell, even when gossip got back to me that the captain was a lesbian, it still didn't dawn on me at first that what I was feeling was more than just a mentor/student bond. But about a month into my assignment, was when I had the first dream." Ash was surprised to see Shepard blush a little. "Never forget how embarrassed I was when Lieutenant Barnes shook me awake, told me I'd been moaning 'Maria' in my sleep for the past half hour."

Ash found it hard to picture the hero of Elysium being embarrassed. Or picture her with another woman, doing... no, that was one image she definitely shouldn't linger on. "So, you made a move on her then?" she asked quickly.

"Are you kidding?" Shepard exclaimed incredulously. "I would have never had the nerve to do something like that! When I finally figured out that I was attracted to the captain, I could barely even look at her without getting all... flittery. Whenever she was around, I would spend half the time denying that I could possibly feel that way about another woman, and the other half fantasizing about the things I would let her do to me if she ever got me alone."

Dammit, there it was again. Ash found herself regretting watching those vids about Captain Maria Savanta and her heroics during the First Contact War. As a result, she knew Savanta's face (and body) well enough to vividly picture her and Shepard stripping down and...

"Eventually," Shepard said, and Ashley banished the erotic image out of her mind, "it got to the point where it was affecting my duties, and Maria finally noticed. She called me to her cabin, and asked me flat out. 'Do you want me, Shepard?' She was so up-front about it, so bold, that I didn't even stop to think before I told her. 'Yes,' I said. 'Yes, I want you, Maria.' And I'll never forget what she said to me after that."

Glancing around the ship to see if anyone was listening, Shepard shifted on the workbench, leaning in close to Ashley to speak the next words in a low, throaty voice. "'We only get tonight, Shepard. Tomorrow morning I'll be your commander, and you'll be my subordinate. I won't treat you differently than another other soldier under my command, and I'll expect you to serve to the best of your ability. But just for tonight... forget about ranks. There are no protocols in this cabin tonight, no regulations to break. Tonight we're not soldiers. We're two women who desperately need to be with each other, and just get one night to satisfy as many of our desires as we can. If that's an acceptable arrangement, then take off your uniform and come over to my bed.'"
Letting out a deep sigh, Shepard stared up at the ceiling with a contented smile. "And what happened after that was... well, I won't go into all the juicy details. But I will say this: I've been with a couple of men since Maria, and it's been alright. But no matter how skilled they are, no man can ever quite touch you the way another woman can. Find just the right spot to hit to make every nerve in your body feel like it's firing off at once. The things we did that night, all the ways that she made me..."

Snapping out of her memories, Shepard looked a little sheepish as she came back to reality. "Anyway, all I'm trying to say is that heroes are human beings, just like anybody else. We've got our flaws, our weaknesses like anyone else. So I don't want you to ever feel intimidated by me, think that you can't come to me with anything."

Pushing away from the workbench, Shepard gave Ashley an open-mouthed smile. "So, if you ever have something to discuss with me, or need anything at all... my cabin door is always open if you want me."

"If I want..." Ashley stammered, taking a second to gather her wits and make a coherent response. "O... of course, Shepard. I appreciate that. Um... I should... get back to work on this rifle. But thanks for stopping by."

"Anytime, chief," Shepard said, turning to walk casually away from the flustered marine.

As she made her way towards the lift, Shepard reminisced about her encounter with Captain Savanta. The story she had told Ash was true... mostly. Maria had indeed asked Shepard "Do you want me?" that night. But it hadn't been asked in the blunt, gruff way she had related it to Ash, but in a nervous, almost trembling voice. When Shepard had confidently responded in the affirmative, Maria had begun stammering something about regulations, and how Shepard would have to transfer off of the ship before her distracting presence caused Maria to make a poor judgment call.

And that was when Shepard had moved in close to Maria, and told her to forget about ranks. That there would be no protocols in Maria's cabin that night, no regulations to break. Tomorrow, they would be back to being commander and subordinate. But tonight, they weren't soldiers. They were two women who desperately needed to be with each other.

It was a damn good speech. Shepard had been proud of herself for coming up with it so quickly at the time.

In the end, though, it turned out to only rank about fourth or fifth on the list of skillful acts she pulled off with her tongue that night.
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