Sad + Fluff = 💙

Sad + Fluff = 💙

Sparrow

For @dinchenrockt, who imagined Sam and Kaidan having pancakes on a nice day. I just added a little drama, because this is Sam we're talking about. Read on Ao3

The second batch of pancakes is starting to bubble when Kaidan’s skin tingles in the presence of Shepard’s biotic field. Shepard himself peers at Kaidan suspiciously from behind the archway into the kitchen, like he’s doing recon and Kaidan is an unknown element.

 “Hey, you,” Kaidan says with an amused smile. “Good morning.”

“It is morning by my standards. It is ass o’clock by your standards. Why are you awake?”

Kaidan gestures towards the open window, where sunrise hasn’t quite surrendered to daytime and some enterprising birds are getting a jump on things. “It’s a beautiful morning. Thought I’d spoil you with a nice breakfast.” 

Technically true, on both counts, even if it doesn’t really answer the question. Shepard narrows his eyes, perhaps suspecting there’s more to it, but Kaidan heads off further questions by plucking a piece of bacon off a plate and holding it up.

“Burnt it just for you.”

Shepard makes an interested sound and fully enters the kitchen, snatching the Distraction Bacon and popping it in his mouth. Bacon shouldn’t crunch like that unless it’s in a salad, but relationships require compromise.

“So, bacon. Pancakes.”

“Bacon in the pancakes. With bacon garnish.”

“Fancy.”

“Also blueberries,” Kaidan says, gesturing to a bowl. “And, uh, I was going to make some eggs but I accidentally just made more pancakes.”

“True to your nature.” He kisses Kaidan on the temple. “I’ll get plates.”

“One step ahead of you. We’re eating outside.”

Another suspicious look.

“It’s nice outside, remember?”

“I will concede it is tolerable outside, because I love you. But breakfast made, table set, and it’s what time? How long have you been up?”

Kaidan shrugs a nonchalant shoulder. “I said I wanted to spoil you.”

Still not an answer, but he hands Shepard the blueberries to give him something else to focus on and flips the remaining pancakes onto a platter, next to the pile of bacon, all nestled onto a blue and yellow tray that had been gathering dust in the back of a curio until Kaidan stumbled upon it last week looking for decorative pitcher his mother had asked about. After flipping the griddle off, he leads them to the front porch and sets the trays down on the small table next to the porch swing.

Shepard observes the spread. “Orange juice. Cloth napkins. The ‘good’ silverware. By the way, I still do not understand the silverware hierarchy.”

“My mother will happily show you next time she visits.”

Shepard snickers as he takes a seat. “Well, whatever. You pulled out all the stops. You are spoiling me.”

Kaidan makes a pleased sound as they fill their plates. They’re the same blue and yellow as the platter, with a sunflower in the center and a painted band around the edges. He’d forgotten about them completely until finding the platter. His father used to break them out when they had big breakfasts in the summer. He traces a chip in the paint. Where had they even come from in the first place? His mother? Were they just inherited with the house when his mother took it over from Kaidan’s grandparents? He’d never asked. Maybe she knows.

“Look at all this burnt bacon, just for me,” Shepard says, with a soft smile.

“Just for you.”

No reason to mention that it got burned because Kaidan was too locked in his own head to notice until he damn near set off the smoke detector.

But the pancakes are good, quite frankly. The blueberries are ripe, picked from the bushes out behind the barn just yesterday. The breeze is cool but not cold, the sun pooling at the edge of the porch steps, warm and waiting.

A far cry from the days that weren’t beautiful.

He releases a long breath and forces his mind back to the present, where Shepard is drowning his pancakes in maple syrup because moderation is not a concept he has ever developed a relationship with.

Echo whinnies from the field down the hill, head raised, ears pricked, looking right at them, as though now that she’s noticed their presence she’s offended she wasn’t invited to breakfast.

“Later,” Shepard hollers back at her. “I’m getting spoiled.”

Kaidan rests an elbow on the table – his mother would be so aghast – and chuckles into his hand.

When had he stopped getting up in the mornings for those breakfasts his father cooked? Breakfast had been his forte. The only way he outshined Kaidan’s mother in the kitchen. But that last summer before BAaT he’d stopped getting out of bed for them.

Should have gotten out of bed.

Shepard’s eye is on him again, as he saws into his pancakes and fails to spear a piece of bacon along with his next bite because it’s so brittle it just breaks under the tines of his fork. Once he’s subdued the bacon he nudges Kaidan’s knee.

“You’re awfully quiet for someone who just put out such a magnificent spread.”

Kaidan waggles an eyebrow. “Resting on my laurels.”

Shepard knee stays at rest against his, and Kaidan leans a little more into it. The weight of it, the presence is…reassuring.

The sparrow that wings in from the roof and alights on Shepard’s stack of pancakes is less reassuring.

Read the rest on Ao3