Bioware Owns All, or I'd never share Garrus with anyone.
Shepard leaned into Garrus, her feet tucked up under her, enjoying the warmth of his chest and the arm around her shoulders. After a quiet dinner, they'd curled up on the couch with an old vid and wine, and it had been such a relaxing night. A moment of normalcy stolen from the war. "Mmm", she sighed happily, snuggling into his side.
He leaned down and pressed a kiss softly to her hair, one talon idly running up and down the bare arm she'd wrapped around his middle.
They were only recently reunited after Menae, still trying to figure out the dynamics of a romantic relationship that had been separated by six months and uncertainty. They'd barely had time for just each other after the memorable night before the Omega 4 Relay, and only a few short weeks before she'd been forced to surrender the Normandy and herself to the Alliance for her tribunal, and he'd returned to Palaven. They were best friends, but the romance was still fresh, these waters precious but deep, and they were still learning each other, neither wanting to mess anything up. So, relaxed, unguarded moments like these were even more important to them both.
He'd been quiet for a while, so when he chuckled softly, unexpectedly, she turned to look up at him, arching an inquisitive eyebrow. "What?" she asked with a smile.
"Oh, nothing," he replied, ice blue eyes twinkling down at her, before returning his attention to the lazy stroking of her arm. "It just occurred to me how funny life can be sometimes." he said, one mandible flaring in a half-smile.
"Gonna share?" she asked, her eyes now also following his pointed talon as its feathery trail raised gooseflesh on her arm. She was still bemused at how such a digit could be wielded with such devastating effectiveness against an enemy, but could now be so gentle against her comparatively softer flesh that it was but the whisper of a touch.
"I was remembering the first time I decided I wasn't going to like you." He snickered at her surprised start.
"What do you mean?" she said, a half-laugh startled from her as she pulled back to look up at him. "I never knew you didn't like me."
His grin broadened at her slighted tone, and he quickly pressed a kiss to her lips to soothe the implied insult. "That was a long time ago, Shep. Another lifetime." He nuzzled her ear, and she settled back into his chest. He rumbled softly his contentedness.
"Well?" she demanded expectantly, without bite.
"It was right after I joined your mission to stop Saren. Immediately after. We'd just left Dr. Michel's clinic down in the Wards, remember?"
"Wow. That is reaching back." Shepard said, sliding down lower so that she was almost reclining on the couch, her head now planted against his hip, both arms wrapped around his smaller waist. So much had changed since those days. Another lifetime ago, indeed.
Her new position disrupted his movements on her arm, so he lifted his hand to start carding through her hair instead. "Your hair was longer then," he said, remembering the wavy, artificially bright red hair that had ended right above her shoulders. She'd usually kept it loose, tucked behind her ears when not on ground missions, tied at the base of her neck when she'd worn her helmet. She'd apparently gotten it cut during her incarceration on Earth. Her hair style now was almost a bob. Soft curls, now their natural auburn color, ended right below her ears, tapering to the bottom of her neck, but the rest was straight and swept across her brow. It flattered her smaller face. Gave her a more professional, polished look.
"Yeah," she said, a bit sadly. "The lawyers decided that loose hair projected the wrong image or something. Said I needed to look less like a space jockey and more like a soldier, or something to that effect." She snorted, still irritated by the politics. "This was the longest they'd let me have." she sighed. "'Mom' cut, I think they called it. You liked it better long?"
He ran his fingers through her shortened strands. Though he'd secretly enjoyed wrapping his fingers in her longer hair, it still felt like silk. "Sometimes," he admitted, but quickly assured her as she sighed again unhappily. "But this is good, too. It suits you, I think. Of course, you could be bald and you'd still be gorgeous."
She snickered at his hasty reassurances. He was sincere, and that was what counted. "Well, it's easy to maintain at least." She turned and pressed a quick kiss to his chest in forgiveness, and he relaxed.
"OK, spill it." she said after a while into the comfortable silence, grinning as he huffed a small laugh. "No, I'm not letting you change the subject. Why did you hate me?"
"I didn't 'hate' you." he corrected, amused. "I just thought you were going to be stuck up. Sold on your own public image."
"What?" she exclaimed, surprised enough to pull back, sitting up and blinking at him. He slid one arm back around her, pulling her to his side as he chuckled, eyes crinkling at the corners.
"We had just left Dr. Michel's clinic, and we were going to head to C-Sec to recruit Wrex. We ran into your Number One Fan." He said it like a title.
She groaned a laugh now, one hand covering her mouth girlishly while her eyes began to shine. "Conrad Verner," she agreed, remembering. "It was our first introduction."
"Listening to him, my first thought was that he was a stalker." Garrus said. Pausing, he added, "Really, I don't think my original assessment has changed."
Laughing out loud, Shepard shook her head. "I've never met anyone else quite like him, I'll give you that. But he's a good person. Awkward, shy, but I like him."
For a moment, his grip around her tightened. An overloaded gun and an unexpected act of heroism flashed through his mind. "After what he did for you on the Docks, Verner's got a lot of leeway left in my books." She kissed his cheek, nodding her agreement and understanding, and after a moment, he eased up and the tension faded. He ran one talon down the side of her face, and she leaned into his hand.
Garrus smiled fondly down at her. "I'd been officially with your team for maybe twenty minutes, and my first contact was just standing there, gushing on and on about you. And you let him." He absently took one of her hands, playing with her many fingers. "I thought you were just enjoying the limelight. Especially when you gave him your autograph."
"No one had ever asked me for my autograph before." she admitted, bemused. "I was actually pretty surprised, but I couldn't see the harm."
He smirked at her wry, slightly embarrassed shrug. "So then I figured I'd signed up with a snob. Capable, but interested in fame. Maybe more than in her job."
"Geez, Garrus," Shepard protested. "That was pretty harsh, wasn't it?" She made to pull her hand away, but he gripped it firmly and she wasn't serious enough to fight it. So, she pouted instead.
He stroked his thumb over the back of her hand soothingly. "I was wrong, and it didn't take me any time at all to discover it. You were like that with everyone we met. That was just your way." He lifted her hand to his mouth, pressing a soft kiss to her palm, and she couldn't help how her breath hitched, just slightly.
He began running a talon in small, gentle circles over her palm. "You've wanted to help people for as long as I've known you. No one could be as successful, or as driven as you are if that wasn't true. But I watched you, studied you, I guess you could say."
"And Conrad was the stalker?" she joked weakly, but her focus was shifting to the way her body was starting to be affected by the way he was staring at her.
"You cared about people. You weren't just driven to take on the big, high-profile missions. Half the things we did weren't even really mission-oriented. You were just in the area when you'd run into someone, and you couldn't walk away while you could help them. Remember the pregnant woman and her brother-in-law? You just listened to them, completely random strangers, and helped them make a decision that would potentially change their lives."
"Michael and Rebecca," she supplied. "I ran into them again the other day on the Citadel." She frowned thoughtfully, pulling her hand away from his light grasp to fold them in her lap. "When I listen to how you explain it, I kind of sound like a pushy know-it-all." Her brow furrowed as she stared at her clasped hands. "I never realized it before, but I guess it's true. I do sort of stick my nose into people's business all the time, now that I think about it."
He lifted her chin, turned her face to him as he shook his head in negation. "That's not what I meant at all, Shepard." he said, blue eyes holding hers fervently. "You have a natural way to get others to talk, and a natural inclination to help. That is not a bad thing. You have a large heart, and that's what makes you a fantastic, effective, leader. I learned that early on."
Her mouthed opened in surprise, the frown replaced by some soft emotion. He lowered his forehead to touch hers, blue eyes softer, never leaving her gaze. "It also makes you a better person. I lo- respect that about you. Always have."
Her eyes widened at his words before misting, and she felt her heart speed up. She didn't press him about his near slip, but it warmed her in a way that she couldn't articulate. She had to swallow a couple of times. Garrus wasn't really the type to express himself so emotionally, and his surprise confession touched her deeply. "That," she said finally, her voice thicker, "is quite possibly the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me."
His blue eyes softened further and he smiled tenderly at her in response. She tilted her chin up, pressing a chaste, sweet kiss to his mouth. "Thank you, Gare."
Soon, sweet kisses led to hungrier kisses, and as both were eager to make up for lost time, words were lost to action for a while.
~oOo~
They snuggled quietly together in her large bed, content and happy. Garrus nuzzled his face against her hair, comforted by the familiar scent of her. "I like this color better." he announced decisively. Other than automatically noting it as another defining characteristic for identification, an instinct from his C-Sec training, hair color was generally not something he thought much of. Shepard's had been rather unique among the other humans he'd met, but he'd not really given it much thought before, just assuming idly that it was a colonial thing for humans, like facial markings were for turians. It had certainly made picking her out of crowds easy. But now, studying the subtle variances of shading in her natural color, he realized how much she'd hidden. Her eyes had always been his favorite feature, but her hair was beautiful. Even if it still looked like threads stuck to her head.
"Why did you cover your hair with that color?" he asked suddenly.
To his surprise, she didn't answer, but just sort of shrugged, looking away sheepishly; instantly, his curiosity was aroused. "Shep?" he pressed, the teasing flanging in his voice unmistakable, a small flare tugging at his mandibles.
"It matched th…." she finally mumbled, too quiet for him to catch all the words. Her cheeks were tinged a faint pink, he noticed, and one mandible quirked up in amusement.
"What was that?" he asked nonchalantly, and she glared at him. For a moment he worried, knowing she'd be paying him back later. Still, now he had to know. "I couldn't quite hear you."
She scowled at him, but he saw the corner of her mouth twitch upwards, and he knew she wasn't really mad. The blush deepened though, and his grin widened. Oh, this would be good.
"Itmatchedthestripe." she said in a whispered rush, and immediately looked away, mortified.
He blinked at her, lost. "The…stripe?". Then he followed her gaze to her armor customization unit, and his grin became a full on smirk, mandibles flaring as his eyes widened in comprehension. "Your N7 stripe?"
"If you laugh, so help me…" she began, swatting his chest not quite painlessly, but without successfully masking her own amusement. He loved that she could laugh at herself.
He chuckled, and her mock-glare faded as she looked away, trying to hide her smile. That was all it took for his snicker to deepen, and after a moment she giggled; and just like that, he lost it. She followed right after, cheeks still charmingly rosy, until, for a time, the war and everything outside of their cabin was forgotten amidst the ringing of their laughter.