Ezmay shuddered, looking down at her desk once again. Her hand still rested on the overturned photograph, fingers still toyed with the slat of metal that would hold the holo frame upright, were she to turn it over once more. But she couldn't. He made his choice. He sent his useless email. Anger rose in her once more, and she turned away.

Her model ships hung before her, and beyond that, the rest of her quarters. Not for the first time, she felt like crying. How could Alenko be such an idiot? How could he not see what the stakes were? Cerberus had played on the wrong side in the past; hell…was probably still playing on the wrong side of the field. For all she knew, there were a thousand bases scatted here and there, filled to bursting with creepers and rachni, and a thousand different versions of Jack. She didn't trust the Illusive Man as far as she could throw his smug ass. Sometimes, one had to get into bed with the bad guys in order to do the right thing. Ezmay and Alenko had thrown caution to the wind before, stolen the first Normandy, and set out to do the right thing, courts martial be damned. Where had this unwavering loyalty to the Alliance come from? Was he too much the paragon to see when rules must be bent and broken? Sometimes, the end did justify the means.

The last thought erupted in her, sharp and hot, and the rage boiled over. She snatched a miniature ship off of the rack before her- the Destiny Ascension, fittingly enough- and threw it overhanded as hard as her arm would allow. She felt a muscle yank in her shoulder blade, and watched the little ship fly to shatter against the bulkhead. The thick plastic splintered. The side wings broke off and bounced up in quite a satisfactory manner. Ezmay Shepherd stood, staring at the broken little ship, a feeling of fatigue settling over her, and her pulled muscle beginning to twitch horribly.

"Yeah, well, fuck you too, Alenko." She spat at the remains of the model ship.

Hell with it. Hell with him. She had better things to do than trying to batter open closed minds. It was beating her head against a brick wall, and frankly, she was getting sick of the headache.

She turned, starting for her shower, and let her eyes drift lazily over the upturned portrait. Time had come and gone since the Collector base. Her first, most basic instinct had told her to kill. Eradicate everything. A scorched earth policy usually worked best in these scenarios. But she had hesitated. If Cerberus were willing to pour the massive amounts of money that they had into Project Lazarus, into her, then there was much to be gained from dissecting every aspect of the Collector base. Garrus had questioned her, Thane, Tali….

'I won't let that happen.' She had told them later, said it in such a way that left no doubt. If the Illusive Man screwed her, she'd find a way to show him that Ezmay Shepard was not the person with whom to fuck. She'd adopt a scorched earth policy with him.

And if Alenko didn't agree with her, well, then… He'd put her behind him. Turnabout was fair play. It was time to move on.

She stripped, tossing the rumpled uniform into a refresher than slid conveniently out from the wall between her shelves and the toilet. It would be washed and returned to her before she fell asleep tonight. The metal floor was cold under her feet. She relished the feeling of chills running up her body. It made the hot water, when it hit her back, feel all the more delicious. The glass that had risen up around her fogged immediately, and for a time, she let her head loll forward, let the water run over the crown of her head and down over her face. Her mind drifted, the muscles in her scalp and neck starting to loosen. She thought of her parents. She thought of Eden Prime. She thought of stopping at Illium and buying a replacement for the model she'd broken.

She needed music.

"EDI, give me some Chopin. Just randomize it. A nocturne preferably."

The rest of her shower went as if choreographed. Ezmay finished up, and then padded into her sitting room to stretch out on the bed. She let her head tip back over the bed and closed her eyes. By the time she was drifting off, EDI had spooled her music to the Nocturne in C-Sharp Minor. It was mournful and beautiful. Shepard's fingers started to go lax on the edge of her white bathrobe. Not for the first time, she wished there was someone in the bed next to her.

Garrus halted outside Shepard's door, and cocked his head. Strains of music were filtering out; Shepard tended to listen to her music loud. But, gods, he didn't know what instrument was being played. All he knew was it sounded like crying made into music. There was a second of silence, then he heard the soft lilting start up again. This was different. He knew this instrument. Garrus lay his hand on Shepard's door, tilting his head close to listen. A piano, it was called. He couldn't name the artist or the title of the piece, but over the course of many conversations with the Commander, he'd come to learn a little more about human music. This piece….it was sorrowful. Something yanked in his chest as he listened to the notes. His mind went distracted for a moment…

'See, Garrus, humans hear music in the minor keys 'n perceive it as sorrowful.'

Shepard's hair was tousled. Her clothing was wrinkled and her uniform jacket lay slung on the couch next to her. She leaned, picking up the wine bottle, and sloshing a bit more into the glass. He'd done them the favour of bringing them something they both could drink. He was already well on his way to being quite drunk, and they were having quite the lively discussion of music. Shepard's sound system blared classical human music over their raised voices. Playing cards and both turian and Alliance currency were scattered over the low table in front of them.

'Mournful 'cause it sounds like someone's gutting a varren and recorded it.' He sank further down on the couch, resting the back of his head against the wall. What he'd really wanted to tell her at the time was that he could hear the spectrums of sound associated with human music. The stringed instruments were truly a torture.

Shepard laughed, a rare, full-bodied laugh spurred on by her blood-alcohol content. She picked up a turian coin, and threw it at him.

'Hey!' Garrus half-yelled as it hit him in the chest. He made a bigger deal out of it than it was, because it amused him to do so.

'Oh, yeah.' Shepard grinned, and launched another coin at his belly.

'Now, godammit.' He swore, using the human phrase he'd heard her use earlier in the night. It sounded funny coming from his lips. Shepard reeled back, setting her cup on the table and laughed. 'Now, Shepard…'

'Commander to you.' She was still laughing. Her face was turning red; hearing him mock her accent and use that phrase had tickled her. 'I'll toss your turian ass in the brig if you insubordinate me one more time...'

'Oh, yeah?' He said, lurching to his feet. He was unsteady, but managed to remain aloft. What he planned to do, even he wasn't sure. The booze was driving him.

'Oh, yeah.' Shepard crossed an arm over her abdomen in a protective motion, all the while laughing. The other hand rose up in front of her.

'Oh, yeah?' Garrus stumbled over the foot and a half to where she sat, and reached down to her. 'If I insubordinate you?'

'Oh yeah!' She screamed with laughter, twisting away on the couch as she went. 'Don't, you stupid ass!'

'Hang on, Commander, I'm insubordinating you!'

Her face was red now, and had turian faces had the ability to colour with laughter, his would have been scarlet as well. He picked her up from the couch, tossing her over his shoulder, all while she screamed and laughed, and shouted at him to 'No, no, put me down! Mutiny!'

'Brace y'self. Can't even speak your own language. 'm going to insubordinate you for it!'

Her laughter was in his ear.

There wasn't laughter inside the cabin now; hadn't been laughter in there for a while. They'd drank and played cards like fiends when he first came aboard and was well enough to move about again. That was before they'd landed on Horizon. When times were still innocent enough and the Commander was still eagerly gleaning every scrap of intel she could on Alenko. She'd fought on the Collector ship with a killer instinct and a fury that came from having truly nothing to lose. That had been days ago; now they were in transit.

And Garrus had come up to have it out with her. This…funk that she was in. It wasn't going to cut it for moral. The crew needed direction now. What crew was staying, anyway.

Garrus straightened up, and jabbed a talon onto the call button. He heard a female voice from within….but nothing happened. Once more, he jabbed the button. There was silence. Awkwardly, he stood, debating what to do. Okay, well, he could just go in. The display was green, showing the door wasn't barred. Shepard didn't lock her door; there wasn't any reason to. "Dammit." He muttered to himself. Usually she either answered, or gave a reason why the visitor should bugger off. This was unusual.

Hell with it.

In he went….and immediately halted.

And there she lay, stretched out on the bed, head tipped over the edge and eyes slitted closed. Garrus's blue eyes were drawn instantly to Ezmay's bare knees.

"Did I come at a bad time?"

Ezmay's head snapped up, eyes opening suddenly and focusing on him.

"Oh, Jesus, Garrus." She sat upright, and twisted around. Garrus raised his hands in a 'no problem gesture,' and turned his back.

"Oh, hey, you got an angel fish." He observed.

"Cut the crap, wiseass. You just barge right in?"

"You usually answer one way or another. I thought something was wrong."

The lighting of Shepard's cabin was just right. Garrus found, to his dismay, that the backlight from Shepard's desk afforded him a view as she strode behind him to her bathroom. He couldn't see much, to be truthful, but he did get a glimpse of smooth collarbones, and further below that, slim ankles. Garrus had never seen so very much of her body before. Even when they spared, she was in a shipsuit, and these little glimpses of flesh were curious to him. Was she really that delicate underneath the hard plating of her armour?

"Well, next time, don't come in unless you're invited. What if I'd been changing? Polishing a gun? I might have shot you." Her voice was muffled through the door. Garrus turned, then, confident he wouldn't be catching her en flagrante. He did not answer her back.

'Not bloody likely.' He thought. 'You always check your shots.'

**One month earlier**

What the fuck had he done? Garrus bent over, leaning his head in his hands. He groaned, and kicked his feet again the floor once in frustration. Had he really let his pent-up sexual tension get the better of him?

"Your commanding-fucking-officer!" He said to himself.

But yet, when she'd thrown back his quip about testing reach and flexibility, he'd replied without really thinking it through. He'd grown very devil-may-care since Omega. And yeah, like he said, he didn't have a human fetish. But he had to admit….there was something appealing about human females. They were soft where turian females were soft. Their skin looked all soft and smooth. They didn't have any plates to speak of. At least that's what he gathered from Fornax.

That was…until he'd looked at the vids.

Garrus did not raise his head from the desk, but reached out. His talons closed around the glass of turian beer. Of course, there was the dilemma. He couldn't raise his head to drink without having to look at the paused vid. And he hadn't quite come to the decision as to whether he wanted to continue it or not. It was…rather graphic.

Oh, hell. He thought. Don't be a wuss, Vakarian. If you're going to do this thing right, you've got to learn.

There were groups of turians out there who did indeed have fetishes for humans. That wasn't the problem. The problem was that he couldn't watch the vids without thinking of Shepard, and it was getting him right hot and bothered.

He admitted defeat and raised his head. Garrus really wanted to finish his drink. With alcohol came oblivion.

And she'd kept pressing, kept….flirting. And he'd be damned if he could resist it. Hell, he'd be lying if he said he didn't want to try it with her. Just never brought it up or pressed the issue since she'd belonged to then-Lieutenant Alenko. Even then, he couldn't be sure that she didn't harbor any anti-turian sentiments. Most humans did.

Good and stinking drunk, he was. Garrus looked up, seizing the turian beer in front of him, and draining what was left of it. The alcohol burned down into his stomach, and momentarily distracted him from the sight of the naked human writhing in the vid before him. Supposedly, the turian skewering her was famous in certain circles. Garrus couldn't really identify him. Actually, he couldn't even identify his own shoes at this point. All he knew was that apparently human females were pink in places he didn't know existed on humans, and that the expanse of a human's body was smooth, with a sheen that didn't exist in turians.

His shipsuit had suddenly become tighter in the lower section, and he was embarrassed all over again. His talons fumbled with the holo screen, and he clicked the vid off. Resigned, he sagged in his chair.

Garrus had considered himself a man of the world until he'd watched that vid. Hell, he was so jaded by everything that had happened. It was doubly humiliating to find himself so unsure, and yet so incredibly turned on by the sight of plating pressed to soft, pink flesh, and imagining it to be him and Shepard.

Fuck, he was going to have to blow off steam before he even thought of blowing off stem with her.