"God, I missed you."

"Likewise," Garrus said with an appreciative purr. Head turned in towards hers, he scraped his mandible lightly across her bare shoulder.

"That thing you did with your tongue—"

He sighed, smugly confident. "I know."

"I'd kill someone to get your extranet history for the last six months…"

His chest rumbled with an echo of laughter, rolling onto his stomach before it dissipated fully. Using one elbow to prop himself up, his free hand trailed over the skin just above her navel. "So you enjoyed the research?"

With one arm drawn up against her pillow, the back of her hand resting bonelessly against her forehead, Shepard smiled wide. Her lips were still flushed a deep red from the increased blood flow and warmth, just as her cheeks were a faint pink. "I always do."

Garrus dipped in close, dragged the plates of his mouth over her nipple until he felt it harden again into a stiff peak. That was as far as he went though, lifting his head back to get view of her. "I suppose the Alliance didn't let you…?" The piece of his brow raised just as the corner of his mouth quirked in an amused question.

"No, but I would've loved to see Anderson's face if he caught me searching for a hundred and one ways a Turian's cock is more satisfying than a human's."

"That many, huh?"

"Mmm," Shepard hummed, and stretched a hand to trace over his cheek, then back along the length of one of the pieces of his fringe. He leaned into her touch, body alight in sensation. "But I did have a lot of time…" she nodded, eyes squinting for half a second to emphasize her words, "…to myself."

"And what does Commander Shepard do with her free time?"

"That's the thing." Her hand trailed from her forehead down to a breast, palming but passing it over, until fingers came to rest at the junction of her legs. The thigh furthest from him fell lazily open, skin still glistening slightly from the excess of their mixture of fluids. Her fingers caressed the outer lip of skin, now sore from the time they'd spent joined at the hip, pushing into one another to make up for lost time. "Without a war to fight, I don't have many hobbies. So your memory became a favorite."

They'd gone at it more times than he could even count, in fact his body felt positively drained in more ways than one. But seeing her so wanton… hearing that croon of her voice, Garrus was unable to let it go. "Touch yourself," he ordered, albeit rather gently. "Like you did for the months we were apart."

Shepard's eyes locked with his, tongue slipping forward to lick over her lower lip. Without a nod or even a sound that she was complying with his order, her fingers slipped between her still damp folds. She winced for only a second at the sensitivity and slight ache from overuse she found there, but powered through it anyway, the tips of her index and middle finger drawing a circle around her hooded clit.

"What'd you think about?"

She bit her lip, a nearly silent gasp let out as she fought the urge to clench her eyes shut as had become habit when she was stuck on Earth without him. It had been easier to forget where she was like that, imagining herself with her Turian lover—even if they'd never exactly clarified what they were to one another before she'd turned herself in—instead of on her own. "Night before Omega," she admitted breathily, "I was nervous, but so keyed up for the days before." Shepard smiled, teasing. "Wanted to finally see what you had under the hood."

"I bet you did."

Her free hand cupped a breast, varying between squeezing the tissue roughly and pinching at her sore nipple. Between her thighs, she dipped her pair of fingers inside of herself, pulling some of her new moisture back up to the bundle of nerves, using the slickness to speed up the familiar pleasing touch she'd been using on herself since she was a teen. "How good you felt inside me," she barely got her words out before she moaned, eyes fluttering shut for a few seconds before opening again to find his. "All the things we didn't get to try."

Garrus just nodded, and his hand slid from her abdomen to her upper leg, rubbing at the soft, though slightly chaffed, skin of her inner thigh. "We've got the time now." He knew that, in truth, they really didn't. The Reapers were on their backs, and any day could be either of their last as they fought for the good of the Galaxy… but when it came to their pillow talk, they'd both come to an unspoken rule of not letting real life bleed into their intimate moments. With his words, he slipped his two longer digits inside her.

Shepard moaned, back arching at the sensation of great fullness stretching her. "Please," she begged, and Garrus would know immediately what she was asking for. He'd been rather proud of himself a few hours earlier when their foreplay had only just begun, as he slid a digit inside of her and found that fabled spot with some ease. Thank his Spirits for that research and the fact that underneath the vigilante-hardened-outer of him, he had always been something of a nerd. Always prepared.

He applied pressure inside her, stroking, and it wasn't much longer before she came while their hands worked in unison. She was left panting, the whisper of his name still on her lips. Cheeks once again flushed, she slid her hand away, wetness trailed along her abdomen. Garrus, similarly, withdrew his own hand, wiping his fingers off on their bedsheets.

They said nothing for the longest time afterward as Shepard turned onto her side, curling in closer to him. Instead of words, they communicated in soft touches. Shepard, for her part, brushed her lips along the closest expanses of his skin, while Garrus nuzzled his face to her and ran his palms along the side of her body. He admired, in particular, the way her hip flared out and then dipped down to her smaller waist, how it was almost Turian in appeal, but at the same time still so very human.

"Do you want to stay here?" Shepard suddenly asked, touching her forehead to his, their noses meeting in the middle.

He stifled a laugh. "Wasn't expecting you to kick me out for the night…"

"No," her head shook just barely, "I mean, instead of in the main battery, you stay here with me. Here. Every night."

Garrus' eyelids drifted shut for a moment, dimming one sense to enhance the others to remember her smell, the touch of her skin to his, even the heat of blue blood in his veins as she asked what was a rather serious question for the two of them. "Yeah. I do."

"Good, because I already left a few drawers empty for you."

He couldn't help but smile at her outward admission, and in response he touched his mouth to hers. Shepard returned the affection, her lips soothing against the cut of his own. She was the first one to part eventually, sliding from the bed as she rocked up onto the balls of her feet, arms stretched towards the ceiling, the muscles in her body stretching and flexing. All Garrus could do was watch, even as she threw a glance to him over her shoulder.

"Like what you see?"

His mandibles flared and clicked while he nodded. "Going somewhere?"

Shepard patted her stomach in an animated exaggeration of her hunger, quick on her feet as she crossed the cold floor of the cabin to retrieve what her stomach was calling for. There was an audible crunch as her teeth sunk into the crisp skin of the apple that was as big as her own fist. Wiping the juice from the corner of her mouth with the side of her hand, she raised a brow in his direction. "Need anything while I'm up?"

"Unlike you, I can somehow manage to go a few hours without eating."

She didn't miss his playful jab, a small smile across her mouth as she continued to bite at the apple on her return trip to him. He was sitting up partially by then, pillows propped up behind him, and Shepard, without concern or pause, found her place beside him, his arm open and curled about her.

Garrus rubbed his jaw to her hair, breathing in the scent of what she was eating. Having anything onboard that wasn't freeze dried, frozen, or canned, was a rarity for life deep out in space, and it made him long for some of the ordinary food that he'd grown up with on Palaven. "What's that taste like?"

Shepard chewed loudly, but slowly, savoring the taste and texture like others would a fine wine. "Sweet. You know, you could just try it yourself." Biting off another hunk, she didn't go ahead and chew the piece, but rather simply used her teeth to chisel away at a morsel for him. Had a knife been handy, that of course would've been the preferred method, but she figured after some of the things he'd done to her in the last few hours, some saliva was the least of his worries. Taking the small piece of apple, she offered it to him, and when he didn't look at her with disgust, she popped it into his mouth.

"Not sure," he said, sharp predator's teeth chewing the apple into mash before swallowing, "that we taste things the same way."

"Hmm, alright," she contemplated, leaning a little further into the crook of his arm. "Tastes like… a cool breeze on a cloudless day."

Garrus purred, trying to paint the image in his head to match the taste she described.

"One of those things you feel good after eating. Fresh. Light." She'd finished with the apple by then, not an ounce of waste as she was left with the core and seeds. Haphazardly, she tossed it onto her night stand, licking the juice off her hands, even if the flavor was slightly tainted by the remains of her own slickness from earlier in the evening. "You'll have to describe some of Palaven's delicacies to me sometime."

It earned her an exhale of laughter. "Better yet, I'll take you there, let you try it all for yourself."

Her hand ran along the cut of muscle and leathery skin of his thigh. "Sounds like a promise to me, Garrus."

"It is." He sighed, not out of anxiety or exhaustion, but rather a deep release of both of those things. "We'll take a galaxy-wide tour when this is all over."

Shepard slid her body down along the bed, only stopping when her head replaced her hand on his thigh. She shut her eyes, stroking her fingers along the length of his calf. "I should've mentioned, as part of the deal of you moving in here, you're in charge of the hamster."

"I wasn't aware there were conditions when I accepted. Too late to back out now…?"

"Fine print," she said with a roll of her shoulder, "humans are all about the fine print."

"Worse than the Volus," he teased, stroking his fingers through her hair, tucking the strands behind her ear.

"Those are fighting words, Vakarian."

"Why did you even buy a hamster?"

"Garrus," with an exasperated, dramatic breath, she spoke. "I had a discount."

"Well it all checks out then."

"Uh-huh. So you'll find his pellets and bedding in the drawer below his shelf. I hope you two get along—he's been known to bite."

"Great. You're really serious about this, aren't you?"

Shepard patted his knee cap, or the close equivalent of what Turian's had. "Deadly."

In the minutes that followed, she was lost in the reassurance of his touch, repetitive brushes of his digits to her scalp. Their first night together, after the nerves of their interspecies joining had faded with their relative success, he'd run his talons through her hair just as he did now. Fascination with the strands, she'd attributed it to, but she was suddenly sure it had been more than just that. In ways she never really assumed Turians to be, he was showing tenderness and longing. Some things, no matter how many light years apart their worlds were, were exactly the same between their species.

"Am I going to meet your family someday?"

He'd been near some kind of sleep when she asked, and it was the only thing that made his soothing fingers falter for half a second. "I, uh, didn't think you'd want to."

Shepard lifted her head and body, blinking away the sleep that was creeping into her as she looked to him. "I don't mean as…" She paused, teeth worrying over her lower lip. "…Whatever we are to each other. Just as friends. Colleagues?"

His expression was as equally confused as hers was. "What are we?"

"I don't know," she was quick to answer with a shake of her head. While Shepard could face geth or husks head on, the other things—the personal things—didn't come so easy. So instead she rolled over onto her side facing away from him, pulling the sheet and blanket up to cover most of her.

Garrus didn't let her stray far, turning his body in towards her as he settled at her back. Spooning, he'd heard it called, their bodies fitting together despite their anatomical differences. "You can meet them." So long as they make it out alive, he thought, but didn't say. That would have been against the rules. "As whatever we are."

"You're not worried about what they'd think?"

His arm draped over her, he palmed her abdomen then moved up to come to its final resting place as he cupped her breast. Down below, his leg slid between both of hers, letting her warmth cradle him. "No."

Her silent reply was her back pressing a little closer to his chest, muscles relaxing against him. When she spoke again, her words were almost a whisper. "I wish I had family for you to meet."

Garrus pulled her in tighter, squeezing her to him gently, the pressure a reminder that wherever her thoughts had wandered off to, she wasn't as alone as she thought. While Shepard had never directly talked to him about the details of her past, he knew more than he wished he did. It had been a side effect of being a few years younger and horribly enamored with the Commander after they'd first met. A consequence of a late night with far too high of a clearance in C-sec databases and extranet records that he'd pored over, feeling afterwards like he'd taken it a step too far. He'd seen too much into the past life that he was sure she wished others never knew of.

"You've got family," his dual tones said quietly, continuing on before he forced her hand in correcting him with personal details she didn't truly want to share, "they're on this ship, and spread throughout much of the galaxy."

She gave a shuttering sigh, a telltale sign of the emotion she was fighting to hold back. "Not the same."

"I know," he said sadly, and brushed his forehead to the back of her scalp, the nape of her neck. "If you want to tell me about them, your family, sometime… you know I'm here, Jane."

Her hand found his at her breast, her more numerous digits folding into his. "Not tonight… but maybe someday soon."