What You Can Have
A roll in the hay isn't what she wants. Not really, or maybe... not only.
But its more than she hopes for most days. Sometimes, she knows, you have to take what's being offered and make it into what you want. Want what you can have and you'll always have what you want.
She thinks her father told her that once. But that was a long time ago and maybe she just read it somewhere and imagined he'd said it. It sounded like him anyway. Pragmatic. A survivor. Right up until the end. Right up until the odds finally won.
Like his daughter.
This mission.. hell, her whole life.. its always been a crap-shoot. Some people, they make plans. They expect a future. She doesn't. She never has. Plans never extend past tomorrow, the day after that. Maybe there are goals somewhere out in the future, but they're always distant, abstract. Orders to be carried out, survival, fate of the galaxy and all that. They are never "get married" or "have kids" or "retire". Those are things that other people do, things she doesn't understand or even really want to understand.
There's no end to her career because the military is her life. Fighting is her life and she's been doing all this for so long that when she gets time off she doesn't know what to do with herself.
There are plenty of people that think they understand. But always they put it in terms of afterward. Tomorrow. The future. What we might have or can't have. Who and what they are trying to become. Its never today. Right now. What we are. What we have.
Which is why its so easy with Garrus. There are no plans in the offering. No mentions of futures. No words about tomorrow. When she's with him, he's there in the moment with her. There's no expectations that she'll want to stop this one day. There's no talks about settling down or retiring. He's like her in so many ways. He'll keep moving, keep fighting until the day he dies. Because this, what he is now... like what she is now, is just who he is.
Which is also why its so hard with Garrus. Because he's this strange mirror to herself and she can't find a way to say she wants more from him than a bed partner without making it sound like she wants some sappy fairy tale love and that's not it at all.
There is no happily ever after to her life. Ever afters need endings, need conclusions. But there's always another fight. Always another conflict. The galaxy is too big for there not to be. And until she's dead.... until she's all dead, there's no end. Just right now and what needs doing and what she has here in this moment.
And in this moment what's being offered is trust, and a friend and physical comfort. Something fun and light and a little bit insane, because Mordin's jokes about chaffing and interspecies sex vids aside there are all kinds of logistical issues to be overcome. But its a good challenge for once. One where no one is going to die if it goes bad. Where the worst that can happen is they will joke about it later.
Not that she expects it to go badly. She's done her homework and if she knows Garrus he's done his as well. He's always been very... thorough like that.
The idea brings a smile to her face as she strips out of bloody and battered armor, piling the mess as neatly as she can manage considering how worn down she feels. There are new bruises on top of old ones and the hot water has never felt so good.
She needs time to recover. They all do really, but there just isn't any. There's never been any time, just borrowed days, borrowed minutes. Two hours of FTL and she's sent everyone to get whatever rest and stability they can. Two hours of borrowed time.
Her body is warm and lethargic as she dresses, the uniform crisp and cool and comforting in its simple clean familiarity.
She is hunting for shoes when the door to her quarters swishes open and Garrus enters.
He looks smaller without the armor, all long limbs and unfamiliar joints, and it makes him seem vulnerable somehow. Incongruently human in spite of the obvious anatomical differences. Where it counts, she thinks, their species are not so very different.
"I... ah, brought wine." He says, his eyes meeting hers. There is nervousness there. Trust, and something else that she's never managed to define. That constant in his eyes that never fails to calm her, steady her.
She smiles at him warmly. Encouraging, trying to say with her eyes what she can't put into words.
A roll in the hay isn't what she wants. Not really. But somehow she thinks that maybe what she really wants is what she already has.
Author's Notes: Dood. Fluff.
Don't get used to it.
I love Mass Effect. I was all giddy when ME2 came out and I found out you could finally romance Garrus. I love Garrus, he was my right hand in ME and infinitely more interesting than Kaiden (Sorry Carth) or Liara. I've tried playing through the other options but Thane is way too baggage-y for me (and also it felt like the relationship escalated too fast and he wound up reminding me of a stalker I had once) and Jacob... meh. I have nothing against him but the awful flirty voice Shep does when she talks to him is a real turn off.
Garrus has the kind of personality that you would want to date in real life. Funny, easy to hang out with and always there for you when you need him. Too often that gets overlooked for the big EMO-MANCE and not being a teenage anymore? The emo-mance does nothing for me.
I do also think that of the possible side effects of sweet-sweet-alien-love that some Garrus-burn is probably the lesser of possible evils (the alternatives being hallucinations and hives for Shep or potentially life threatening illness for Tali ← note that I risked it anyway because Tali is adorable).