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They were just friends, until they weren't, but even then she ran away from whatever they turned into as if it were barbed and poisonous. She'd call him up to her quarters, and sometimes it really was just to have a drink and shoot the shit. And other times, she pulled him into her bed and could forget for just a moment that Arcturus was waiting for her, likely with a trial and a far from honorable discharge and (likely) shackles. Even then, it wasn't anything too fancy. No song and dance, no wooing. It was sex. Utilitarian, by the books, black and white, whatever you wanted to call it. He made her come, and she'd make him come, and then they would go about their days. It happened so many times that Shepard found it normal. Garrus did too— or, if he didn't, he didn't say a damn thing.
When they were back on the Normandy together, Earth and Palaven both in flames, it was more of the same. And that was a comfort to Shepard. They could pick up right where they left off— except they left off in her bed, but now they were migrating. On the couch, on top of her desk, in her shower, in his shower, his bed, his console; and once very quickly in the starboard lounge, locking the door after his fingers squeezed her thigh beneath the table during a particularly heated game of Skyllian Five. She won, of course, in more way than one.
All the while, every now and again, the topic would breach. What are we? Every time she could smell it in the air, she shut it down immediately. She knew why, but if she allowed herself to linger on it, she thought all of that control that was already barely hanging on by a thread would snap. They didn't have the time, it was selfish of them to try for something real while the galaxy was getting destroyed one relay system after another, she couldn't let her focus slip. You name it, Shepard thought it. Of course, there were the objections she feared just a bit more than the other. That he would be the one to turn her down, that to him it was always just about sex, that she was good for a distraction and nothing more. Every time it crossed her mind, she would dig her fingernails into her palms until it would bruise, and even then she didn't stop. It was a Pavlovian response to anything resembling an emotional conversation, and she liked it just fine.
Still, she couldn't ignore Vakarian. In the Kodiak, she'd bark orders from the cockpit, all the while acutely aware that he was standing directly next to her, and if Cortez banked hard to port her arm would brush against his. On that awful geth dreadnought, he always insisted that she would take a ladder first, and— well, she couldn't really tell with the way turians helmets were, but she could swear that he would watch her legs just a bit too long, and it made her stomach feel like it needed to eject everything sloshing around. And in that awful lab on Mahavid, where the researchers were walking around like empty husks, he put his hand on her shoulder. Bad vibe to these guys. For the next ten minutes, her shoulder burned, and she actually convinced herself that maybe after all this time she had developed an allergy to Garrus. After they were back on the Normandy, she stripped her armor off and studied herself in the mirror. No scorch mark, no rash, no burn. Just a shoulder, that he touched in the middle of a mission surrounded by potential hostiles, which is something he had never done before in the three years they'd known each other.
And then she woke up on the floor, not in a mech anymore, coughing out water and probably in the midst of a brain aneurysm, and there he was. One hand supporting her neck, the other one scanning her body with his tool. His voice was sharp and precise, like it always was, but twinged with a bit of hysterics that she had never heard before. She said she was fine. And he glared at her, openly. Never do that again. She swore she didn't see him take a breath the rest of the ride back up to the Normandy.
Dr. Chakwas gave her a look over. Hypothermia, sprained ribs, migraine. Pneumonia if she pushed it. She demanded Shepard stay in bed for at least a full cycle, even going as far as to program EDI to snitch on her if she left her bed for longer than five minutes. Shepard was the commander, sure, but she had been on the wrong end of Dr. Chakwas's rage one too many times to want to risk another incident. No matter. She'd work from bed.
Garrus visited her twice before. Once, to deliver her a stack of datapads from Liara that all needed Shepard's stamp of approval. She lost track how many times she told Liara that she could manage her network however she saw fit, and that Shepard didn't need to be the deciding vote. He deposited them on the foot of her bed, then lingered for just a moment, taking in the sight of her swaddled in all of the reserve blankets. He looked like he wanted to say something, then seemed to think better, leaving her alone with a newfound pit in her stomach.
The second time, it was to show her a funny vid he found. She didn't mention that they had a thread where they sent stuff that made each other laugh, and he could have easily just sent it to her tool. He fluffed one of her pillows, then nearly ran out of the room before he could even go as far as to make eye contact with her.
And on the third time, he came bearing gifts.
"Dinner," he said, putting a tray on top of her lap. It was soup and some bread, with a suspicious colored slurry that was sure to replenish all of her electrolytes and nutrients and have the taste of plaster.
"Did you make this?" Shepard asked.
Garrus scoffed. "You don't want me near a kitchen, trust me. Unless you like spending time near a bathroom."
"Noted."
"And…" He handed her a small container that rattled. "Pills from Dr. Chakwas. Don't ask me what they are. Each one has at least seven syllables."
"Dinner and drugs. I'm honored."
"And…" He lifted his elbow from his side. "Your hoodie. Fresh out the laundry, still warm."
Shepard didn't know how to respond to that one. She remembered once, maybe back on the SR-1, where she told him that she loved the smell of fresh laundry. But it was more of a passing comment than anything else. She never meant for him to log it into memory. She took it, the fabric borderline too hot to hold with her bare hands. She imagined him reaching into the machine right as the cycle ended, then sprinting to the elevator so it would be as warm as possible for her. She nodded, shedding her old sweater for the new one, and intensely aware that he was watching her. It smelled like laundry, but it also smelled like him. She lifted the cowl to her nose and smelled, hoping that he just thought she was appreciating the detergent.
"You scared me down there."
She was just about to ask him if he needed anything else. The silence between them was sticky. But then Garrus blurted that out, and when she finally had the courage to look up at him, he looked almost frazzled, his mandibles wide and his eyes a little bigger than she remembered. He looked shocked he even said it, and for a moment she wondered if the drugs Chakwas gave her had a side effect of hallucination. She wanted to read it on the vial: may cause you to imagine your friend who's a little bit more than a friend confessing by your bedside.
"I was fine," she said, except her voice didn't really sound like her voice anymore. She took a sip of the soup to see if it would help at all. It didn't. "Mechs like that are airtight."
"And what if you couldn't ascend back to the surface? What if you depressurized?"
"Cerberus brought me back to life once before, and I was more pieces than I would have been down there."
"That's not funny," he snapped. It caught Shepard off guard. Garrus didn't fight back with her too often. When it did happen, she could blame it on the heat from the battle. But they were in her cabin, and the battle was much more internal, and she didn't like her body's reaction of all of her blood pooling in her cheeks. "You can't keep acting like you have something to lose."
"I'm not—"
"Do you know what it was like? You come back on the surface, landing in the middle of a pack of brutes, and you're not moving. I had to carry you out of there— at least Cortez knows how to handle a rifle, or you'd be roadkill." He was pacing back and forth now, as if he had rehearsed this conversation in his head a million times. "Your core temp was below ninety-four. That could have killed you. You could have drowned, or not waken up, or…"
His voice trailed off. Shepard didn't remember much between getting in that mech, and waking up on the floor of the shuttle. But she did remember when the realization hit that she was with Garrus, she felt safe. She expected to feel small, but the more she thought on it, the more it made her feel as though she wanted to get out of bed and run laps around the CIC. She stared at him, for once in her life at a complete loss for words. And even that was a lie— she knew what she wanted to say, but could not bring herself to say it.
The silence was too long for Garrus. He nodded, then again, rubbing his hands against his thighs. He turned to go, and before he got to her stairs, she finally found her voice again. "Do you want to watch a vid?"
He stopped, his foot frozen just above the step. He turned his head just enough so that he could see her from the corner of his eye. "With me?"
"No, I was thinking you'd take the bed, then I'd eat down in the Mess, then you could brief me afterwards."
He laughed, single and breathy. In the time it took him to fully turn his body around to face her, Shepard swore it lasted hours. He smiled at her. "Alright."
The projector screen slowly descended from in front of her display case. Garrus settled on the couch. She looked him over, raising an eyebrow. "Seriously?"
"What?" he said, and by her tone she could tell he wanted this reaction. "You make a mess when you eat."
"I'm not eating with my elbows."
"Ask my bruised ribs."
"Get up here," she laughed. She was always put at ease by how quickly she could talk to him. Shepard didn't consider herself to be a particularly lighthearted person, but when she was with Garrus she laughed so much that sometimes, her stomach would be sore afterwards.
He settled next to her, propping up the one pillow that wasn't yet in use. For him, it didn't look awfully comfortable. She offered one of her own pillows, but he turned it down. "Are you planning on making this as difficult as possible?" she asked.
"Doc's orders. Your comfort comes first."
"You want to sit for two hours like that?"
"I'm a sniper. I've trained for this."
"In a bed watching a vid?"
"You never know who's gonna burst through the door."
In the end, she won. She wedged one of her pillows beneath his waist. He made a big show of sighing, not willing to thank her. Finally, he settled, sinking deeper into the bed. He actually looked like he could have been comfortable, the scandal. She went to gloat, but the look on his face shot her down. She consigned herself to a smug expression, folding her arms in front of her chest and a content little hum in her chest.
"What do you want to watch?" she asked.
His silence, followed by hers, was indicative of one glaring problem in their plan: neither one of them had watched a vid in years. Shepard didn't keep up with what was popular. She didn't have time, between the war and the guilt that she would feel if she actually gave a couple of hours to herself. And by Garrus's blank expression, he didn't feel too differently from her.
"Are they even making vids anymore? With the war?"
"I have no idea."
Evidently, they were. There was a tab for vids made in just the past month. Asari medical dramas, salarian STG adventures on the fringes of space, quarian survival flicks, krogan action vids. There was a whole series, twenty-four seasons, of a turian political drama about a Primarch's daughter falling in love with her lowborn pilot.
"Huh," Garrus said. "You know, if they put the budget for twenty-four seasons into something like barracks, or fighters, maybe Cipritine would still be standing."
"I guess people just want a distraction these days."
"An episode a day?"
"Look at the timestamps. They're doing three a day."
"No time for anyone to even realize there's a war going on."
In the end, they chose something that took place on the Citadel. Shepard thought it was a coming-of-age story between an asari and a salarian who struggled to contend with the fact that their lifespans were vastly different, but she wasn't really paying attention. Garrus didn't necessarily commit to touching her, but his arm was pressed up against hers. It made thinking difficult. And through his shirt, she could feel just how hot his skin was. She didn't think she would need her blankets for too much longer.
She put her dinner to the side, half-eaten— it tasted like salt was a foreign concept, and that was considering the rest of the rations they carried on military vessels. In about ten seconds, she went from sitting to being completely horizontal. She slid closer to Garrus, hoping that if he questioned it, she could blame it on the blankets for having no traction.
He didn't. He was nearly horizontal as well, his arm snaking around her, his hand resting on her bicep. He twirled strands of hair between his fingers absentmindedly. They had cuddled before, but it was brief. Normally a minute, no longer than two. She would get up to pee, or he would get up to clean himself off. It was their silent signal that their tryst was over— and even better, it prolonged their combined avoidance in anything close to a conversation about emotions. Garrus never once stayed the night. It was their boundary, the one thing standing that was in the favor of being just friends.
But now, he was so close to her. She could feel the thrum of his subvocals in his chest, faint and sleepy. His fingers traced little circles on her arm, his feet intertwined with hers. And in that time, she cursed herself for never cuddling him in earnest before. Surely, friends could cuddle. Surely, it didn't mean they were edging into territory she once thought was forbidden fruit.
She paid attention for about ten minutes before dozing off. She wanted to blame it on the meds, or the exertion from the mission. But Garrus dozed off somewhere in there too, his breathing turning heavy and steady. Every now and again, he would twitch, adjust his arm, then fall back into a half-stupor. The vid played on.
His hand moved down to her waist. It took a few times for Shepard to fully get through to Garrus that human waists didn't feel erogenous in the slightest. Still, she found that it's where his hands would naturally settle. Except this time, there was nothing sexual behind it. His hand rested, his thumb tracing back and forth along the curve of her ribcage. Every now and again, his hand would move, the motion with his thumb staying constant. It was as if he was checking to see if she was still alive.
She turned her head to look at him. He was already facing her. She didn't know when exactly he stopped watching the vid in the first place. His eyes were half lidded, but it wasn't with fatigue. In the past six month, she'd seen him age six years. Lines formed on his face that weren't there the first time he came into her cabin.
Without thinking about the ramifications or consequences, her hand was on his scar. The first time he showed her underneath the wrap, it was splotchy, as if it were held together with glue, thoughts, and prayers. Now, it was about as smooth as turian face-plate could be.
"It healed really nice." Except it didn't sound like Commander Shepard. It sounded like someone who was terrified that he would jump back, say that this went too far, and leave with the vid half finished. She hated it— not that she spent her whole like trying not to be that person, but because it was her, truly and authentically.
His mandibles twitched underneath her hand. "It made me pretty ugly." His voice was just as soft as hers, almost a whisper. Her thumb traced up the grooves of his plates. She wanted to memorize each curve until his face was known by heart.
"It didn't." She said it before she could stop herself. And for someone who thought he was gangly and brutish, she saw an expression softer than she ever could have imagined.
Her head twitched forward. And his did, too. Inch by inch, they closed the space between them, not wanting to be the person to commit. Her nose was on his, she could feel his breath on her lips. And despite being swaddled in blankets and wrapped around a turian, she felt as though she was feverish.
She kissed him. They had kissed before, obviously. Shepard taught him how to kiss like a human, and she learned how to kiss like a turian. But kissing was something they did just to pass the time it took for them to get their clothes off. It never lasted too long, it was quick and efficient and a little impatient.
This was different. Slowly, she pressed her lips onto his mouth, and she didn't pull back for dear life. He didn't have lips, but he could still purse his plates out. They fit in nicely between hers, a little rough and a little warm. He tasted almost like wet pavement after a rain. He pulled her in tightly, his body flushed with hers underneath all of the blankets.
They kissed for so long, she must have lost track of time. She alternated, with her lips and then with her forehead on his crest. Every time they would make new contact, he would sigh deeply. His hands were on her waist, her thighs— but all he did was pull her closer, closer, closer, until she couldn't tell when she stopped and he began. His fingers tangled in her hair, followed down the curve of her spine, counted each of her ribs. He faltered only when he touched the pulse on her neck, and she could tell he was trying to calculate just how fast her heart was beating.
She ended up being the first to unzip her hoodie. She still didn't move all too much, just letting it fall off her shoulder. He broke the kiss for only a second to take off his outer vest. The tight shirt underneath showed off every single curve of his carapace and waist. Her hands were everywhere, on his arms and chest and waist. He jumped when they followed its curve, her fingers barely tickling the thin fabric that was the only barrier between his skin and hers.
Neither one of them was the first to take their pants off. When he moved, so did she. When she kicked her sweats down to her feet, his were already off. But still, she wasn't rushing to touch him. She wanted to live in this moment forever, that wasn't about sex and wasn't about convenience. When his hands were in her hair, his mouth pressing even harder onto her lips, his tongue dancing with hers— she felt something she hadn't in the longest time. Nervous.
But even that wasn't a good word— it was more of an anticipation. She had already slept with him, countless times. She knew his body, she knew how to touch him and how to get him off. When his hands played with the hem of her underwear, she held her breath. She was dying for him to touch her, and she wasn't. She wanted the moment to last forever, and she was terrified of it. It confounded her.
She touched his slit gingerly. Garrus sucked in a sharp breath. She had seen him coax himself out of his slit before. She had even done it for him a few times. She knew the rules: firm, but not too hard; not down the middle; down to up. He was already soaked. But this was different. She traced up the sides of his slit, and she took her time. He broke from his crest on her forehead, and she swore that there was a fire burning right in his eyes. He looked as though he was about to fall off the edge of a cliff, one that he very much wanted to see the bottom of.
He touched her just about when his cock came out of his slit. They hissed the same breath of air, Shepard's head folding down with her chin on her sternum, while Garrus's was thrown back. He felt so warm in her hand. His hips twitched every time she would stroke up his shaft, but she didn't dare adjust her pace. Slow. Agonizing. Horribly eager for more.
That was— until he began touching her in earnest. His movements were just as slow as hers. He circled around her clit at a gentle pace. Her teeth gritted together, a little sound escaping deep from the back of her throat. He was so close to her that she had to adjust her hand to be able to stroke him. Both still horizontal, his hand on her cunt, hers on his cock. Their movements were lazy, but their moans were sharp.
She didn't think, and neither did he. Their movements were like water, Garrus on his back, Shepard on top straddling him. Her bra came off in one swipe of her hand, his hands on her breasts before it even hit the bed. She lifted her hips the same time he pressed his into her.
The pressure was delicious. Normally, when they were together, it was quick. They didn't have time to make it last. She came quickly when she was on her back. He came the fastest when she was on her side, legs pressed together. But this was almost torturous, how slow they moved against each other. She felt the pleasure rising, and it was present, but meandering. It wasn't the rapid release she had come to known with Garrus. This took its time.
One of his hands was firmly on her hip, the other on her clit. He made no effort to try and go any faster than he did when they were side by side. It was a paradox: it was slower than anything they had ever done before, the pleasure had long dips, but when it hit, it was unlike anything she had ever felt before. She heard herself moan, and loudly. Shepard wasn't one for a performance. But this was like instinct, something taking over her body. She wanted her release, but she wanted it to last forever.
He made a noise as if he was going to finish much before her. His head threw back— it always did when he was close. She grabbed his jaw and forced his face back down, his eyes on her. He huffed on her hand, her fingers in his mouth. Suddenly, the dips in pleasure weren't far apart at all. One after another, until she couldn't tell when one stopped and one began. Right on the edge, she gripped Garrus tighter, her chest heaving with each breath.
It was a bit of a taboo, Garrus explained, to not pull out with a hookup. Not like I'm going to get pregnant, Shepard joked the first time, but he waved it away. It's sorta like… it's hard to explain. Like it would mean that we're something really serious, he said. She ignored the pit that formed in her chest when he first said it.
But now that pit was flourishing into something else. Pleasure snaked down her legs and up her belly, so tantalizingly close to a summit. He felt it— he had to. His hands flickered like a shutter camera, not deciding if they wanted to be on her body, or if he'd throw them behind his head, letting his body fully surrender. She felt the muscles contract in his stomach, his eyes squeeze shut, his movements turning sloppy and unrefined.
It was too much. She squeezed her legs firmly around him as she came. And while she couldn't focus much on anything other than the pleasure, she was certain he was right there too, with the sound that was coming out of his mouth, the tensing of his muscles, the heat that bloomed deep between her thighs. She threw her whole head back, so forcefully that it almost threw her balance off entirely. She gripped his hipbones for dear life, like he was bucking bronco. And he held onto her too, willing so that she wouldn't float away.
When she came down, she was drenched in sweat, panting madly. She looked at Garrus, fuzzy and unfocused, his chest heaving just as much as hers. It looked as though it took the rest of his energy reserves for his hand to trace up her waist, her breast, her shoulder, to cup her jaw. She let it melt under his touch, like she was a candle, wax dripping between his fingers.
She pushed him out of her when she couldn't handle it any longer, and even then she was hesitant. Their combined wetness dripped out from her cunt to her thighs and the mattress, already soaked. Even then, she didn't care. She didn't let go of Garrus once, afraid that she would signal him somehow that she wanted him gone.
The truth is that she didn't want him to leave. Ever. She wanted him in her bed, she wanted him by her side. She wanted him in the mornings and the evenings, and all of the time in between. She wanted him as a friend and a lover and some combination of the two of them that she had been foolishly running from for the past year. She wanted to tell him that that she thought she was in love with him; except there was no thinking involved, and she was most definitely in love with him, but didn't want to scare him away with absolutes. She wanted to fly the Normandy into some far off relay that even the Reapers didn't know about, where they could get lost for the rest of their time floating in the deep expanses of space.
He kissed her forehead. Or, he tried to, his mouth on her skin. He kissed her once, twice, then down her nose, on her cheeks, her jaw. Each one, she could feel herself falling deeper into a pit that she didn't think she could climb out of on her own. She didn't want to.
"Do you want to watch another one?" he whispered in her ear.
She pulled her head back, staring at him for an incredulous moment. Then she began to laugh, and so did he. All the while her hands didn't leave his body, and his didn't leave hers.
When they both settled, a sense of calm washed over her, one she didn't think she had ever really felt in her life. She was always threatened, right on the verge of fight or flight, where the answer was almost always to fight. Part of her was scared of this newfound peace. Another part of her kicked herself for letting it stay locked up in a cage for so long.
They never did have that talk that night. They didn't need to. It was unspoken, like so many things between the two of them were.