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If Shepard is finally going to allow the touch of another, to twist and writhe under his weight, to fuck and bruise and feel something besides rage before she dies - for real this time - then there's no point in settling for halfway.
Even if it ruins the closest friendship that she has left.
"Harder!” she grits out, one sweaty hand splayed flat against the headboard, the other frantically working between her legs just above where Garrus joins with her. “I’m gonna…”
The words are choked into silence as she goes rigid against the cresting wave of euphoria. Having more practice in pleasuring herself than she’d casually admit, she holds her breath to draw it out, to make it last. It’s blissfully familiar, the way her toes clench and the tingle of her scalp as the dam breaks - a pure, frenetic rush of pleasure flooding her bloodstream like a long-awaited fix.
The unfamiliar is what makes her collapse and shout into her pillow. The nearly painful pinch of his talons on her waist, the brutal snap of his hips against hers, the fullness inside of her throbbing in rhythm with his heart. He’s holding fast, anchored to her, as her body jerks and pleads for more, more, more, simultaneously pushing him away and pulling him deeper within.
When it's over, she melts into the crisp, white sheets that have bunched into a messy pile underneath her, gulping down greedy breaths of air as he releases her and backs away, the click of his peditalons disappearing towards the front of the cabin.
At her insistence, he’d been rough and urgent with her, his subvocals thrumming so hard they shook her bones. Now that she’s tempered her cravings and the drunken dizziness of her ecstasy becomes a memory, she buries her face in the pillow and swallows his silence. She shuts her eyes against the flashes of what could have been - the abandoned wine, the silenced music, and the earnestness of his confession.
She’d wanted something to go right, too.
But the Collectors took her crew, and whatever space she’d carved in her heart to be thoughtful and accommodating during her first time with Garrus had been taken along with them.
A blazing wave of shame mingled with relief reddens her face when Garrus settles in next to her less than two minutes later, the bed sinking with his weight as he stretches alongside her, clutching a warm, damp towel in his hand. She peeks at him from the cradle of her arms, praying he doesn’t see the embarrassment flushing her cheeks. He remains quiet but starts to rub the warm cloth over her back slowly, tenderly attending to the evidence he’d left behind.
“I’m sorry, Garrus,” she says, her voice flat and muffled against her skin.
“For what?” he asks softly, pausing his caretaking and meeting her gaze.
“This probably wasn’t what you were expecting.”
“I, ah…” His uninjured mandible twitches and he clears his throat. “I didn’t have any expectations, Shepard. You don’t need to worry about that.” He drops the towel over the side of the bed but returns his hand to her back. His thick, calloused fingers are a bit scratchy against her skin, but it feels good, like satisfying an itch she didn’t know she had. “And you definitely don’t need to apologize.”
Her skin is warm for different reasons now as he continues to draw pictures against her skin, translucent trails she’ll feel for days to come. Maybe it’s random nonsense. Or maybe it’s a story for them, of all the major events and middling technicalities that had to align for them to come together like this - chaos and improbabilities, half successes and close calls.
“I thought you left,” she says, hating how far away and small she sounds, hating how she has the nerve to be self-conscious when this is all her fault.
Garrus’s face is inscrutable, unmistakably turian, and infuriating in its passiveness. Her whole body is tense as she waits for his response. She’s the half pull of a two-stage trigger on a long-range rifle and the next move either of them makes could change their relationship forever.
He flattens his palm against her waist and drags it upwards, over the notches of her ribs and the ball of her shoulder, smoothing over her arm to rest on her wrist, where he clasps and gently pulls.
“Come here.”
Silently acquiescing, she crawls into his lap, thighs slotting between his waist and hip spurs, fingers finding purchase in the rim of his cowl. With one hand he soothes the remaining tension in her back, while the other tips her chin so her eyes are level with his. It’s shocking how small and delicate she feels in his arms. Precious, even.
He’s staring, regarding her with a quiet intensity that she’s never been the target of before. This close, and without his visor to distract her, his eyes remind her of a half-frozen river in winter - pale, crystalline blue that rolls in waves as his pupils dilate and constrict, with slivers of white in the irises that reflect the light like ice.
She suspects, if she let herself, she could drown in them as well.
“I would never do that,” he mumbles, his voice drowning in layers of thick, rumbling subvocals. She doesn’t understand all the hidden intricacies of his voice, but the sentiment is clear, and for a panic-stricken moment, she feels like she’s plunged into that icy river, doomed to be swept away before she can touch the bottom.
Every raw instinct in her bones screams at her to get up, laugh it off, play it cool. ‘We’re friends, right?’ she could laugh while she tosses his clothes to him, grinning with all of her teeth exposed like a maniac. It could end now and they could get back to what she was born, reborn, to do - save the damn galaxy one more time.
But to her dismay, her body is composed entirely of lead, paralyzed under the limitless weight of his sincerity. Every blink. Every breath. Every soft flutter of mandibles reminds her of things she buried years ago - that she was forged from explosions of random chemical reactions and polished with flesh and blood. That she was human long before she was an icon.
His thumb grazes the full curve of her bottom lip as he studies her, searching for… something. Maybe an answer to a question he hasn’t asked her yet. He sighs, heavy with the weight of someone resigning themselves to an inescapable fate, then leans forward and presses his mouth to hers in a soft, slanted kiss.
All resistance melts from her body, tension giving way to tingling warmth, like blood returning to a numb, sleeping limb. After years of tempering her urges, hardening herself for the sake of others, his kiss is an argument she cannot win. Her whole body lifts with his, breasts crushing against his carapace, hands catching in his fringe, mouth opening wider to touch his tongue with her own. His subvocals rumble in agreement, and he eagerly licks into her mouth, threading a hand into her hair to keep her close. Garrus tastes like crushed salt licked from the rim of a cool glass and whispered promises from someone else’s youth. Familiar and brand new all at once.
Her hand brushes the scarred side of his face and the greedy way he leans into it pulls something loose in her chest. He’d always wanted to be like her, and now he is, though maybe not in the way he’d expected. Every battle is an excuse to put something blood-stained and smoldering between himself and the demons that chase him–every day is a hard-earned choice to see his scars as either badges of survival or grim reminders of his failures. Doesn’t he deserve some peace?
Doesn’t she?
Only when their bodies scream for air do they break apart, panting into the diminished space between their mouths. His eyes are dark and as serious as an apocalypse.
“Well,” she huffs awkwardly, for reasons she doesn’t understand given that not twenty minutes ago he was fucking her like an animal on her freshly laundered sheets. “You don’t seem nervous anymore.”
“Hah, well, that means I’m doing a good job of hiding it then.” He brushes his thumbs against her cheekbones and presses his crest gently to her forehead. The contact is scorching, and he sounds almost reverent when he whispers, “Though I think I’ll always be a bit nervous when it comes to you.”
She swallows unevenly and nods, not exactly sure what she’s agreeing to, but it doesn’t matter when his tongue is on her neck, humming as he licks a broad stripe from her pulse point to her ear. It’s hard to concentrate with his throat vibrating against her like an earthquake, and she suddenly can’t remember what they are doing here anymore.
Blowing off steam? Falling in love? Had there ever been a difference to begin with?
With his hand still in her hair, he flutters his mandible against her cheek and she wonders if he’s scenting her in some way. “I think we have time for another tie breaker,” he says directly into her ear, triggering a wave of goosebumps to erupt over her arms and back. “If you’re up for it.”
She wants to ask who won the first tie breaker, but can only gasp and nod when she feels his length hardening beneath her.
“Hmm?” he hums and nips just below her ear, tongue darting out to soothe the spot before it has a chance to sting. “I didn’t hear you.”
She’d think he’s teasing her, and maybe he is, but it’s Garrus - always checking in, never assuming anything, considerate to his own detriment even when she’s naked and splayed on his cock Garrus.
“God, yes.”
He chuckles low in his throat, a sound that’s laced with pride and self-satisfaction, and rubs his mouth along her jaw, winding his way back towards her mouth.
“Only… let’s do it my way this time,” he murmurs against her lips, hands lowering to her hips, thumbs idly circling the sharp jut of bone found there. “I want to see your face this time. And Mordin’s diagrams said this would be the most comfortable position for you, too.”
“You looked at the diagrams?” she chuckles, leaning down to kiss his throat but also to catch her breath. It’s really not about upper hands at this point, but it’s painfully clear that she has lost hers as she struggles not to writhe in his lap.
“Of course I did,” he scoffs. “I’m almost disappointed you’d think otherwise.”
She laughs softly before brushing her lips over a cluster of silver scales on his neck, shiny and smooth like salted beach glass. Experimentally, she nibbles the scales, catching the fine edges between her teeth, and he gasps so sharply it gusts through her hair. She comforts the spot she’d bitten with a kiss, smiling against his warm hide and wondering what other delicious sounds she can pull from him.
“Tell me something, Vakarian.” She lowers her voice and continues to kiss his throat in between every few words. “Has anyone ever sucked your dick before?”
His cock must have heard the question before he does because she feels it jump before he can formulate a response. She smiles shyly, swallowing her nerves as she watches him pick through potential answers in his head. It’s been a long time since she’s done anything like that, but the desire to thrill him far outweighs the anxiety. What she lacks in practice can be made up for with eagerness and a lot of fucking nerve.
“You, ah,” he starts, grasping her shoulders and pushing her back to look at her. He takes a deep breath to steady himself and exhales sharply through his nose. “You don’t have to do that.”
She might believe his protest if he wasn’t staring at her mouth with the keen focus of a sniper and shifting his legs beneath her, spreading them wider in silent invitation.
“I want to, though.” She cups his jaw and strokes his mandibles with her thumbs, then meets his eyes. “Do you want me to?”
“Spirits, Shepard. Yes, of course I do,” he says, his voice low and on the edge of an incredulous laugh. “Only… I’m not sure we have time.” He smooths his hands over her shoulders, dragging his talons down her arms with a pressure that promises heat and need. “I meant what I said about seeing your face when I make you come this time.”
Shepard’s breath hitches in her throat, her grin falling away. Had he really said that? She’s sure she would have crumbled into dust and been sucked into the air vents if he’d really said that to her in that filthy tone, every syllable pressing on the pulsing ache between her thighs with dark, velvety fingertips.
“Oh,” she breathes. It’s all she can manage.
His face darkens with the shadow of a smirk, but Shepard barely notices because her eyes are drawn to his fully hardened cock below her, smothered in his lubricant and pulsing in the cool air. It’s big and wet and everything she’d expected. She might not have studied Mordin’s diagrams, but she’d done her own version of homework - which may or may not have included a questionable Fornax download and a pint of vodka.
“Fine, you win,” she teases as he purrs and lets his hands wander lower down her body, “But I’m going to show you all the amazing things a human mouth can do next time.”
The words next time ring in the air like she’d shouted them down a long, cavernous hallway. They could be dead before the next cycle breaks and in the eleventh hour she’s introducing things like expectations… obligations…
Hope.
But Garrus doesn’t falter, only flicks a mandible in a wobbly grin and slides himself between her folds, earning a lip-biting, muted groan from her. “Deal.”
Thankfully, he claims her mouth in another fierce kiss before she can say anything else inappropriate. For not having much practice in the human custom, he’s already better at it, knowing when to give and when to chase as their tongues slide together - adept beyond his scope of practice and directed with a singular focus. She jerks and nearly bites his tongue when his thumbs graze the swollen lips of her labia; seeking, searching, and spreading her open.
“Lift up for me,” he murmurs against her mouth.
Nodding, she sucks in a breath and silently rises to her knees, gripping him at the base and guiding him to her entrance. Garrus rumbles approvingly and holds her open - the edges of his blunt talons glistening with her wetness - intent on watching himself disappear inside of her.
Though the slide is slick and hot, much more forgiving than the first time, she’s determined to take it slow. To savor the sweet burn as she stretches around him, inch by aching inch. Chasing his heat, her body welcomes his intrusion, instinctively clenching and pulling him deeper, feeding a fervent hunger that’s slumbered fitfully for nearly a decade.
Garrus’s eyes flutter while he sucks in short, noisy breaths through gritted teeth as she sinks onto him, his hips and thighs straining not to come off the bed. The perfect picture of barely controlled restraint. She wonders how far she could push him before his composure broke, before that delicious tension snapped and he grabbed her and fucked her face down until she sobbed.
Next time.
They groan in unison as she experimentally rolls her hips, taking him as deep as he can go, the pliant ridges on his cock rubbing against her most tender, hidden places. She trembles as she finds a rhythm, fingers curling almost painfully into his cowl for balance, gradually pulling up and then grinding hard against his lap on the downstroke.
“Hmm, that’s it,” Garrus purrs as he bumps her forehead and matches her pace with carefully controlled upward thrusts. One of his hands encircles her hip and the other–
“Oh, fuck!” Shepard cries out and jerks as his thumb finds her clit and pushes against it. He’s trying to mimic what he’d watched her do earlier, but the pressure he applies is direct, insistent, and almost too much - dagger sharp and sidling the edge of pleasure and pain with piercing precision. Electricity arcs through her legs, the nerves dancing and jumping like downed power lines, but she doesn’t want to correct him. Time is running out and if she can stand it, she’ll come fast. And hard.
Garrus starts to pull his hand away, a hurried apology gathering thickly on his tongue. “I’m–”
“No, please,” she whines, releasing his cowl to grab his hand and keep it firmly between her legs. The weight of desperation in her voice surprises her, pressing against her from all sides, and if he responds, she doesn’t hear it over the tremulous throb of her pulse in her teeth.
Once she’s sure he isn’t going to pull away, she lets go of his hand to drape her arms across his shoulders, pressing her fingertips into the soft hide at the back of his neck, feeling the muscles in his throat jump beneath her hands as she resettles and starts to rock her hips against his in earnest. In the small space left between their bodies, his thumb continues to work her clit in tight, diminutive arcs - knowing him, the rotations are perfectly consistent in speed and circumference.
He winds his free hand, cool and steady, into the sweat soaked hair at the nape of her neck. Scraping his talons against her scalp, he pulls, not hard enough that she couldn’t break free if she wants to, but enough to make her want to obey, tilting her chin up so he can nip her jaw as he speaks.
“Does it feel good?”
At least that’s what she thinks he asks. His voice is so thick and gravelly with lust that she can barely understand him, but she feels the words take shape in the vibrating cadence against her cheek.
She can feel his subvocals inside of her as much as she can hear them - a constant, reverberating thrum that seems to shake the air around her, surround her, wrench her apart from the inside out. It’s a bliss that she’s never known, washing away the once important reasons why they shouldn’t do this until there’s nothing left but his body and the way he moves inside of her.
“Yes, fuck, I–” He fucks into her harder, punching the air from her lungs before she has a chance to finish. Her pleasure is rising quickly; the telltale knot of climax twists in her belly and her feet arch against the sheets as a thousand little fires spark and spill into her bloodstream. He must know she’s close, as he tightens his grip in her hair and yanks her head back further.
“Are you going to come? Tell me,” he growls into her ear, spurring her higher. His voice is as deep and rough as she’s ever heard, and she realizes she’s getting a taste of the vigilante that lives within him - commanding the compliant, deferring to his impulses, and dripping molten Archangel gold from his veins.
The voice may belong to someone he wishes she didn’t have to know, but his touch is implicitly Garrus. There’s safety in the way he knots his hand in her hair, gentle but unyielding. Affection on the tip of his tongue as he licks at the throbbing pulse point on her throat. Determination to be everything she needs when he stills his motions, denying himself his release while she chases hers, grinding down desperately on his fingers and his cock.
He shifts his hips, and oh, he hits a spot that makes her body tremble and her vision blur. “Fuck, right there, oh, fuck, Garrus,” she whimpers and tosses her head back, whipping the sweat from her hair in a sparkling arc.
“Come on me, Shepard,” he pleads into her throat, and that’s what it takes to shatter her.
Her climax cracks through her like lightning, setting her entire body aflame and then dousing it in cool euphoria, wave after wave of blinding pleasure radiating from the tips of her fingers all the way to her toes. He folds around her and fucks her through it, long, steady strokes to coax every ounce of her orgasm from her. A tingling sensation spreads along her chest, likely from being crushed and scraped against his chitinous carapace, but she’s too limp and boneless to care, still fluttering around him from the aftershocks and gasping his name to the rhythm of his thrusts. All she can do is hold on to him and let the joy and the pain consume her.
Isn’t that what she’s been doing all along?
Garrus’s grip moves to her hips, holding her still as his pace quickens and soon grows erratic. “Shepard, I need…I need–” he groans, a noise held captive low in his throat.
“Do it,” she whispers raggedly into his aural canal. Whatever he’s asking for, whatever he needs, he can have it.
Always one to follow a good order, Garrus comes undone, gritting his teeth and stirring her hair with hot, panting breaths as his cock empties inside of her, painting her with his release. His subvocals continue to thrum through her overstimulated cunt, causing her to groan and squeeze around him in blinding, exquisite agony.
As their breathing slows and steadies, Shepard presses as close to him as their differing biologies will allow, deeply inhaling his rich scent of warmed leather and pine as she nestles into the cradle of his hips and buries her face in his neck. Garrus hums, using one hand to push her sweat-slicked hair from her shoulder before resting his chin there, his other hand lightly pressed at the small of her back.
She shuts her eyes and commits this moment to memory as the air-chilled sweat drips from her lashes. The cool, comforting feel of his hands on her overheated flesh, the way his mandibles tickle her face with every breath he takes, and the tangled mess of her heart, unspooling into coils of elation and trepidation, excitement and dread - a jumble of feelings that can only mean one thing.
It’s one of those moments that makes Shepard doubt she is really still among the living. It isn’t the first. There have been many moments so incredible, so logic-defying, they couldn’t possibly have been real - starting with her own fantastical resurrection. But this is the first time an accompanying spike of sadness lodges in her chest, mourning Garrus as a consequence of her own death.
If she’s gone, then so is he. There would be no eleventh hour save on Omega, no one to hold his face together as he bled out in the bombed out apartment that was once his home, nearly disintegrated from bullet holes and swallowed up by fire. Without her, he’d never have the chance to fulfill his potential or live the life that he deserved - doomed to become another cautionary tale whispered by the Omega locals in darkened alleyways and greasy food stalls.
And yet… here they are. Daring the void, laughing at destiny, fucking each other to pieces in her state-of-the-art captain’s quarters - two grains of sand in a sea of billions who’d escaped their shattered hourglass. Maybe her resurrection isn’t a cosmic magic trick she pulled on the universe, after all, but a gift - a revelation - deserving to be cherished.
“You okay?” he murmurs as his hand smoothes up her back.
“Yeah,” she says, her voice muffled in the warm hide of his neck. She takes a shuddering breath and pulls back just enough to face him, a smile splitting her face, a makeshift shield from the burgeoning tears; he might not understand they were born from relief and not sadness. “Hi.”
“Hi,” he chuckles, eyes half-lidded and crinkled at the sides, mandibles swayed low in a relaxed smirk. He tucks an errant strand of tousled hair behind her ear, a move so tender in its simplicity, her breath catches in her throat.
A few moments of silence pass before he swallows and speaks again. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, uh.” His eyes flick down to where they are still connected, but he doesn’t finish the sentence.
She smiles shyly. “Come in me? It’s okay, I wanted you to.”
“Hmm,” he hums and uses his thumb to trace her cheekbone down to her mouth, pausing to slide over the fullest part of her bottom lip. “That’s sexy.”
She kisses the thick pad of his thumb and opens her mouth to say something - hopefully clever, but she’ll also settle for something resembling a rational thought - but his mouth soon replaces his thumb as he pulls her into a kiss. It’s as gentle a kiss as he can approximate, a simple brush of plate against skin. It holds warmth, and a self-indulgent promise of a hazy lover’s afterglow - where time doesn’t exist and responsibilities are someone else’s problem. She didn’t think she’d experience this ever again, and as much as it scares her to learn that she hasn’t permanently hardened her heart to stone, there is also a sobering relief.
Her life is still inconceivably, irrevocably, full of surprises.
When the kiss breaks, his chest jumps with something like a laugh. “So,” he drawls, “I’d say we did pretty good for a couple of first time xenophiles, wouldn’t you?”
Shepard allows her hands to become loose on his neck and pulls back with an inquisitive brow cocked. “Who said this was my first time?”
“What? Really?” he falters as she forces her mouth into a straight line, biting the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. “I guess I just assumed...”
“You really couldn’t tell there was something between me and the councilor?” she scoffs, “And here I thought you were supposed to be observant.”
“Oh.” His good mandible flutters as he realizes the ruse. “May I ask which councilor?”
“Valern, of course.”
He narrows his eyes and grins in a decidedly feline manner. “Nice try, Shepard, but you’re dealing with a detective here, a damn good one, I might add. It was a rookie mistake to pick the salarian councilor out of the three.”
“Damn, busted.” She clicks her tongue in feigned disbelief. “Who’s more my type, then? Sparatus or Tevos?”
“Sparatus. Definitely. Only a turian in love could be that ungrateful and insulting.” He tilts his head. “Now, who isn’t observant?”
“Okay, good to know.” She nods. He leans into her hand as she cups the bandaged side of his face and lets her fingers ghost over the fabric. “You must not like me very much then.”
“Hmm,” he purrs, pulling her close again and nuzzling against her hair. “Actually… I can’t stand you.”
A hitching puff of air escapes her as her body starts to warm. He’s softened, but still inside of her. “Is that so?” she whispers against his cheek.
“Commander, Joker wishes for me to inform you that we are twenty minutes out from the Omega-4 Relay.”
They pull back immediately and freeze, as if they were teenagers caught groping under a blanket spread across their laps.
“Thank you, EDI,” she says in her commander’s voice, a tone she hasn’t used all evening but that comes as naturally as breathing. She doesn’t miss the way Garrus’s shoulders tense, or the cold snap of his eyes from half-lidded-well-fucked to piercing military focus.
They had all the time in the world until they didn’t - that’s the way of things in the lives they have chosen. Shepard knows this all too well, yet she’s still surprised at how quickly their sanctuary for two has expanded to include every other life in the galaxy. Even the air in the room has thickened, cloying, and it’s almost easier not to breathe as Garrus looks at her with a curious tilt to his head, awaiting her next move.
The Collectors nightmare is coming to an end, and her people are waiting for her.
They have a job to do.
“So.” She curls her fist and taps him on the keel. “Ready to throw ourselves into hell for the good of the galaxy, then?”
His browplates lift and his nose twitches, recognizing his own words from when this whole thing started between them.
“I’m right behind you.”
Smiling a bit awkwardly, she gives him a short, affirmative nod and begins to climb out of his lap. They both sigh as he slips out of her, and she misses the fullness already. Scooting to the edge of the bed, she wonders briefly if their combined fluids, warm and slick, between her legs would be a distraction or a comfort during the mission.
A distraction. Definitely a distraction.
“I’m gonna hop in the shower,” she says as she stands, but before she can take a step, Garrus stops her by grabbing her hand.
“Shepard, I…”
She turns to him, waits for words that don’t come as he looks away. Either too many are gathering in the back of his throat, or maybe not enough. Her gaze is drawn to their hands as he threads his fingers between hers. It should be odd, or alien, or uncomfortable, but it’s as easy and natural as anything else they’ve done together, and the sight alone makes her heart beat hard and heavy in her chest, as if it could seize at any moment.
“Don’t die out there.”
He means now but, he mostly means forever.
She squeezes his hand once more before backing away, their fingers sliding together until his fall from her grasp.
“You too, Garrus.”
And she means the same.