This space station has turned you into an insomniac. Deep in the Wards, there is no day or night cycle, only dim lights and the constant thrum of far-off seedy nightclubs. Neon signs light the walls and provide helpful directions when you forget your way around. It shouldn't be so easy to lose your way here; you've been here for months.

Your coworkers joke around with you sometimes, asking you how long you've been here, anyway.

You give them a vague reply, because telling them "Five months, seventeen days, twenty hours" would make you sound like a homesick loser. You are a homesick loser. You hate it here. You miss your mother and sister (not your father, not your father, it's all his fault you're stuck here) and your home planet.

At least Palaven had open skies and real water, unlike the Presidium, with its too-bright artificial light panels and annoying, overly chipper VI tour guides at every turn. Every time you take the elevator up to its artificial verdancy for some stupid routine security patrol, your eyes burn from the brightness. Thank the Spirits for your visor, which at least blocks out the fake sunlight in one of your eyes.

Fuck. You could have been a Spectre fighting interstellar crime far away on some dreadnought right now, instead of sitting at a bland desk surrounded by paperwork and red tape. Instead you are here.

On the Citadel.

Wasting your youth away at the behest of your father, who only wants the best for you, Garrus.

Next door, you can hear a door whoosh closed. Curious. C-Sec officers are usually required to keep an open-door policy, so as to keep the whole legal process in the semblance of transparency. It's sort of stupid.

As you're wondering why Whatshisname next door (you met him once, at an orientation, but you can't remember what his name is. What was it that he did? Was he the C-Sec requisitions guy? You never really needed to visit him) would ever really need to shut and lock his door, you suddenly hear regulation armor hitting the floor disgracefully with a loud thunk. You've served your time in the turian military, just like every turian guy in this shithole; you know that blowing off steam, as they say, is totally normal. But something about the situation doesn't feel like C-Sec requisitions guy next door's just having a casual wank.

A female voice cuts through the wall-oh spirits, he's not alone. You stare out your own door intently, into the empty office across the hall. You try not to listen.

Her voice is familiar. You've seen her before. She got in an elevator before you and you watched the doors close behind her as you missed your elevator, like a fucking chump. Her hair is red and her face is lightly freckled with those markings that some humans have. If she was in your office, you'd fuck her without a second thought, too.

"So, I've heard about your," she pauses for a second, "large weapons supply," and she laughs gently. Yes, it's definitely her, the girl from the elevator. As a human you once knew, once met in a bar long ago, would say, "la femme de l'escalier."

"Show me what you've got."

Guy-next-door's subharmonics are rumbling and they're sending wasted signals of lust and desire and possessiveness to his human. She can obviously tell how he's feeling through other means, though, because you can hear her panting and the muffled thump of chitinous plates on soft skin.

This shouldn't be turning you on.

You shouldn't be listening to this. This is depraved, wrong, filthy perverted. You should be focused on work, you should be turning in forms and taking the rapid transport home. You cover your ears with your hands like a child, knowing full well that it won't change anything. It won't change how she hisses and muffledly moans into her fist when his mandibles clamp down on her shoulder, it won't change the wet noises her cunt makes as he pounds into her. It won't change how your plates are shifting and how your uniform is getting tight at the seams.

Her moans from the office next door assault your eardrums and you try to ignore it, you really do. "Harder," she whispers loudly, and the walls are so thin it's like it's your ear she's whispering in.

Your clawed hand grasps a pen as tightly as it possibly can, and you begin filling out as many forms and citations as you can. Whatshisname next door thrusts so hard into his girl of the week that his desk topples over with a resounding crash. "Spirits be damned," he mutters. His voice grows ever more familiar, but you still can't remember his name. "I think you just knocked over my entire store of supplies."

"Come back over and fuck me in them," she says throatily, and he does. The clatter of guns and armor falling from their neat, orderly little boxes masks the sound of your tiny pencil-cup hitting the floor as you groan and pull at your own buckles.

"Oh, god," she babbles between thrusts and moans and whimpers, "I, I love turian cock."

You wonder if she'd love yours just as much, if not more. You think about the depths to which she'd show her devotion, her pink human tongue reaching out and lapping at your ridged cock. You imagine what it'd be like to trail your claws through her hair and push her head down, forcing her down to her knees. Your armor is in a heap on the ground.

She moans into her fist and you can hear how wet she is. The noises she's making are obscene.

The friction between your rough palm and slick cock grows unbearable.

His subharmonics are going crazy and you know he's close. You quietly, unconsciously let out a pant, a breath, a slight chitter of the mandibles.

Suddenly, for just a second, everything stops. You realize you've left your office door wide open for anyone to witness your shame through.

Have you given yourself away? Oh, oh oh oh, Spirits.

The walls are paper-thin and you would give anything to change places with your neighbor, the C-Sec requisitions officer. You've completely lost track of time, you have no idea what hour it is. Night and day are one and the same in this hellhole. The moment ends. Your fist is like a vise around your cock, just like her cunt, clamping around his and he's thrusting into her and the walls are like paper. You can hear everything and he's close. You're close but not there quite just-

Yet.

Your right hand reaches up to cover your mandibles and you're spasming and coming all over the place, the force of your orgasm hitting you like the butt of a rifle in the back of the head. All those citations you hastily filled out to give you peace of mind are ruined, completely ruined with splatters of cum, and suddenly you realize that you don't give a fuck. From the room next door, you can hear him pulling out, his cock drenched with turian jizz and human fluids. You wonder if he took an antihistamine, if he'll be walking funny tomorrow. You know she will. In the empty glow of your shameful orgasm, you want to laugh at the thought of it. But then you'd be given away.

She kisses him and leaves, and she doesn't even look your way as she walks past your open door. Your armor lies in a heap at your ankles under your desk.

It's too quiet as you wait for your neighbor to leave and go home, the silence only broken up and punctuated by the occasional thump of the C-Sec requisitions guy, what the fuck is his name, you know what he sounds like when he comes but you don't even know his name, picking up a gun or a piece of specialized Spectre armor and replacing it in its box.

Eventually, he leaves too, and you get dressed and start to clean up after yourself. You pick up the pens that lie on the floor, wipe up your cum which coats your desk in a monument to your shameful voyeurism. In a fit of disgust and self-loathing, you roar and crumple up all of your papers and throw them into the trash. All your important reports and evidence are backed up at your terminal, anyway, which you can properly clean off tomorrow.

You take the rapid transit home and close the blinds and curl up in your concave bed and dream of nothing at all.