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The crew is mostly divided into two camps: those too keyed up by their ordeal to rest and those so exhausted by it that they're sound asleep right now.
Shepard can't sleep. The night is rich with a slip-through-her-fingers quality that has her feeling too present in her own skin, and she recognizes that she often feels that way after a good fight. Maybe it's just the glow of satisfaction after surviving the highest of adrenaline highs. Against some truly fucking awful odds, they saved her captive crew. They defeated a creature that will fuel nightmares for years to come. Her team survived.
So did she, but that's probably a murkier accomplishment. Defying death was something she always did very well... until she didn't.
It's the chime from her door that makes her clear her thoughts, packing away all the what-ifs and mental replays of the day's battle, and she leans back in her chair, turning around to face her visitor. "Come in."
The door slides open and Garrus steps in, dressed down but otherwise looking just as alert. "I hope I'm not interrupting anything." The door closes behind him.
About twenty-four hours ago they were naked together, comparing anatomy and working as a very different kind of team in search of the perfect position, the perfect angle, the perfect friction: human-turian relations at their finest. "Not at all. I was just thinking I could use some company." Rising to her feet, she gestures him further into the room and toward the couch. "Make yourself at home, Garrus."
"No wine this time," he points out, a shade away from apology, and sits down as invited.
"That's a shame," she says, a huff of laughter in her voice. She sits down a friendly distance away from him. "Actually, I have a bottle stashed in the closet."
"Do you?" He sounds genuinely interested.
"I do. New Azul, an Earth brand I found at the Citadel. I was saving it for--" Pausing for a second, she smiles with a hint of self-consciousness and shrugs. "I don't know. The opportune moment? Something to celebrate?"
"I know the feeling."
"Well, if you're feeling brave I'll open it. Today is worth celebrating." Why not? They won't reach Ilium before morning, and while it may only be a matter of time before the Illusive Man sends operatives to repossess the ship it probably won't happen overnight.
"Shepard," Garrus laughs, mandibles flaring, "after the last day or two I'm feeling a lot more than brave. Besides," he adds, with what she swears would be an arched eyebrow if he had any, "I got a... ah, gift from Mordin."
A gift from Mordin? That could be anything. "Don't tell me it's an illustrated guide to human anatomy."
His hesitation betrays his surprise. "Not this time." Reaching into a pocket, he removes a very small plastic tube, capped, and holds it up so she can see a light green powder inside it. "Experimental, he tells me, but if it works as expected I can swallow it, then go with you to your favorite bar and have you introduce me to all of your favorite drinks from Earth without worrying about the possibility of an allergic reaction."
She shakes her head in disbelief. "Where the hell does he find the time. I guess the important thing is he gets results." Sitting forward, she nods toward the tube in his hand. "How long does it last? Any possible side effects?"
"At least a few hours. Maybe longer. The only side effect he mentioned is the potential for headaches after use."
Pushing herself off the couch, she smiles at him. "That's equally true if we drink too much." She walks across the room to open her wardrobe, and standing on her toes she pulls out a bottle with a blue-green tint and a sleek black-and-blue label. Once she's close enough to the couch again she holds it out for his inspection. "If I'd known you were coming I'd have raided the mess for wine glasses."
His gloved hand brushes hers as he takes the bottle, looking it over with idle curiosity. "You think wine glasses were a Cerberus priority?"
"Can't put anything past the Illusive Man."
"No," he agrees. "We definitely can't."
"I've got a cup in the bathroom. You want it or the bottle?"
"It's your bottle. I'll take the cup."
It seems fair. She disappears into the bathroom just long enough to grab the cup, then returns to her seat on the couch. She puts the cup down on the table in front of Garrus, and he hands over the bottle, allowing her the honors. She makes quick work of opening it and pouring a generous helping into his cup while he empties his little plastic vial of powder into his mouth and swallows it down.
"Thanks, Shepard." He picks up the cup.
"Any time," she assures him, feeling another smile tug at her lips, and she clinks the bottle against the borrowed cup before she takes a drink straight from the source.
New Azul. It fills her mouth with its familiar spice-tinged warmth, almost bitter until the last note, which hints at the sweetness of strawberries. She relishes the mouthful, watching Garrus for his reaction.
"Not bad at all," he finally says after swallowing, following the judgment up with another drink.
She follows suit and has a little more wine before putting the bottle down where they can both easily reach it. "Glad to hear it. It'd suck if you wasted that powder on a wine you didn't like."
"It may... suck even more," he points out, adopting a similar tone, "if it doesn't work." As if daring his body to disapprove, he has another generous drink. Then he shifts in his seat, getting more comfortable on the couch. "But we'll find out."
"Just say the word and I'll have Dr. Chakwas in here looking you over." It's a sincere offer, but she can't stop herself from smiling.
The quirk of his mandibles suggests that he's just as amused. "With any luck we can avoid that."
Turning to fully face him, she tucks her legs under her. "You're looking a little more relaxed tonight."
After a sip of wine, he nods. "I'm good under pressure, but not having a suicide mission hanging over my head helps." He leans against the back of the couch. "There was definitely a point during my adventures on Omega when I started to feel more at ease in full armor. At first we were -- I was -- unexpected, unknown, underestimated. No one took me for such a threat initially and I benefited from it, but all that changed."
"It changed dramatically."
The plates around his mouth shift, something like a smile. "I didn't realize suiting up would become such a tough habit to break, but somehow the Normandy feels more like home than Omega ever did."
"I'd hope so." She reaches for the bottle again. "What about your visor? I rarely see you take it off."
"And once was last night," he acknowledges. "Just another habit. Between C-Sec duties on the Citadel and making enemies on Omega, I never knew what could happen. I take it off to sleep, of course. I think I've mentioned that it's highly customized."
"I remember you mentioning that."
"It helps me cross that line from being a great sniper to being deadly at any distance in any weather in any environment against a variety of enemies. One of its many charms is its ability to detect fluctuations in the heart rates and breathing patterns of those in my line of sight. That only works with Council races, but I've gotten a lot of use out of it."
Impressed, she shakes her head. "That sounds great. You know," she adds with a smirk, "I've got a birthday coming up soon..."
He stops short, laughing. "I'll try to keep that in mind." After a few seconds he tips his head to one side, growing more serious. "I know I took some time to think about the whole... inter-species proposition, but one of the times you dropped in on me I closed the door behind you to make sure we had some privacy -- or at least the illusion of it -- and that one simple act had an effect on your heart rate that I didn't expect."
Her first instinct is to feel vaguely embarrassed, called out, but all her heartbeat would've betrayed was the fact that her interest was genuine. Today, she reminds herself, is one day too late to feel weird about any of it. "I think it's okay if we just call it sex, Garrus."
He nods without hesitation. "It does sound much better that way."
So there it is. The word 'sex' has crept into the conversation already. She wouldn't have bet on them coasting along quite this quickly, but she doesn't know what she expected. When she opens her mouth again her voice is a little lower, a little more personal, than she intends for it to be. "You had me worried for a minute today."
It's the first verbal acknowledgment she's made of the close encounter he had with a bullet on the Collector ship. She just remembers seeing him flinch, hearing herself suck in a breath, and running toward him to check him out. His shields had been woefully depleted, but his armor held up against the heavy graze of the offending bullet. In the moment all she'd been able to do was pat his arm in relieved confirmation, one soldier to another in enemy territory: you're okay, we're okay, we have to keep moving.
Sitting beside him, sharing wine, her knee inches away from brushing his leg... well, it's a hell of a lot more personal.
She likes to think she reads expressions pretty well, but she's not quite as confident with her reading of turian features as she is with humans. They just aren't as expressive. She does know Garrus, though, and she likes the way he meets her eyes. There's an easy frankness there and also a sense of... she doesn't know, maybe curiosity? Whatever it is, he can't or simply isn't trying to hide it.
Something about it is incredibly heady.
"I know."
(She did run to him, she reminds herself, but the truth is she would've checked out any member of the team that took a hit.)
"I'd apologize," he goes on, candid, "but we were all putting our lives on the line."
She smiles, almost to herself, her lips against the rim of the wine bottle, but then she takes a drink. "You did everything you were supposed to and you did it exceptionally well, so I don't want an apology. I just want you to know."
"Consider me informed." He's still watching her closely, even as he tastes his wine again. After, he leans forward and rests his cup on the table. "And for the sake of transparency I'll say I really don't want Cerberus to have to bring you back again."
They wouldn't. Not now. "Garrus, you silver-tongued devil," she jokes. "I bet you say that to all your commanding officers."
It startles a rasp of laughter out of him. "Definitely not. But you should know, Shepard, that your preferred method of blowing off steam may be my favorite."
Sly, she slants her eyes at him. "Did you come here to seduce me?"
And she keeps thinking turians are less expressive; if only she had a camera. Surprise registers on his face again, caught off guard. "No." He shakes his head, a little too quickly. "No, that's not what I'm here for. It... crossed my mind," he admits more slowly, resting his cup on the table, and that confession lodges in her mind, more gratifying than she could've expected. "I won't lie about that. But that's more of a--"
As she listens, the pit of her stomach goes pleasantly taut.
"A daydream," he continues. "An idle thought. Something much nicer to think about than all the crap we saw in the Collector Base. But not exactly my intention." He shrugs, and there's something almost helpless about it. "I'm here because I wanted to spend time with you right now, however that time is spent."
It seems like a great opportunity to scoot closer to him, to once again place her fingertips on the scarred side of his face. The scar tissue feels a little like lace under her fingers, stiff and oddly intricate but not tough, certainly softer than the rest of his face.
"Tell the truth, Shepard," he urges, voice lowering to tease. "The scars really do turn you on."
A grin spreads across her face. "I like them." Her own scars she's not so sure about, if she's honest, but other people's are a very different story. Her fingers play along the damaged plates on the side of his face. "These tell the story of Omega's infamous Archangel. A real bad ass, I hear. Took a rocket to the face and didn't even blink."
Garrus's laugh sounds more intimate than usual. "A rocket in the face will make anybody blink."
"Tell that to Archangel." Her grin widens, and her hand moves to his shoulder. "If you can find him."
"I hear he's dead."
"Eh," she shrugs, gesturing casually with the wine bottle in the hand not attached to him. "That's what they said about me too."
You were dead, she reminds herself, definitively dead, and she's sure the same thing has to cross his mind as well -- how could it not? -- but instead of voicing it he reaches to his shoulder and takes her hand in his.
"They should see you now."
Inching toward him, she aims her lips for a spot near his mouth, on the scarred side.
It's weird to kiss a turian. They're just not made the same way: the plated face, the mandibles, the predatory rows of pointed teeth. She mentally defines an area of his face around his mouth as his lips, but there aren't any to speak of. Weird doesn't mean bad, though, and as long as Garrus is a willing participant the instinct to kiss is one she won't even try to deny.
His lack of lips doesn't keep him from responding to her attention. The first time she'd kissed him, just a day ago, it was feather-light, barely a brush against his face, and it was though she'd given him a little jolt, an inarguable reminder that even if he was going about it in an awkward way she was interested.
It was a strange line to walk at the time: uncertainty only gave way to urgency, and yes, she'd needed it, she'd wanted him, and it could've been the last chance either of them would have, but they were about to take the fight to the Collectors. Neither of them was going to drop dead -- not on a ship equipped with Dr. Chakwas's know-how, their state-of-the-art med lab filled with Cerberus technology, and Mordin's big beautiful brain -- but there was still a certain amount of caution involved. Lives depended on them being at their best. Today is a different story, and if she hits Ilium with a bad case of hives after this she thinks she could live with it.
Once there's a fraction of space between them again he clears his throat. This tentativeness he's showing, it's something she never expected from him before she broached this subject. It kind of fascinates her. There's an undeniable thrill in being the reason someone so confident can't quite seem to find his bearings.
"Got any steam left to blow off?"
Her question prompts a less-than-subtle flare of his mandibles, and this time she suspects it's all desire. "Absolutely."
It's all she needs to hear. "Me too." Leaning forward, she puts her bottle down on the table again and rises onto her knees on the couch, hands now free to pull her shirt over her head. "About two years of it."
Once again he has her back, hands quickly rising to assist, and a low hum escapes him when she moves to straddle his lap. "There were a few kinks in the process that I'm sure we can work out this time," he adds, like it's all totally rational, completely logical, maybe even all in the name of science. Mordin would appreciate that. "You humans sometimes say that practice makes perfect."
As she pulls her shirt off, her hair falls into her eyes, a stray lock sticking in the corner of her mouth. "Your dedication is admirable."
He gently brushes the hair out of her face, but his eyes are intent, wanting. "Die for the cause. It's right there in the turian anthem."
Lifting his arms long enough for her to tug his shirt up and off, he doesn't complain when she tosses it behind her. The naked turian form looks a little like a sculpture in a museum, especially the back ridge of his carapace. His arms -- like his legs -- are sinewy and strong, and more sensitive skin is obvious under the chin and around the base of his neck. There's more under his wrists, above his hips, in places that won't be hidden by his clothes for much longer.
She takes a moment to tuck her hand under his chin, fingers neatly slipped between his mandibles. "And you thought you were a bad example of your species."
This time the kiss is entirely his doing: his back straightening, his shoulders at attention, his face eagerly tilting to meet hers. His mouth presses against her lips, an open invitation, and it makes an appreciative laugh flutter in her throat.
She has no idea if Garrus is attractive by turian standards, but she knows she likes him. She likes him a hell of a lot, and tonight she'll do her best to wear him out.