Author's Note: In this story I'm having fun playing around with gender and biology and the A/B/O fanfic trope, not sticking strictly to canon or reality. If you haven't heard of A/B/O, look it up on Fanlore. It's kind of weird, but interesting :)
Garrus had had dreams that started like this. His commanding officer was staring at him with an intense look of concentration, and he was naked.
Shepard ran her finger along the thin indentation running across Garrus's stomach, between the plates.
"And you store eggs in there?" she asked, wonderingly.
"In theory," he said. "Once a guy gets pregnant it opens up a bit more."
"Wow," she said. "That is so weird."
Garrus felt a little offended on behalf of his species. "Yeah, because having a baby grow inside your actual body isn't weird at all," he replied, gently poking at Shepard's much softer, unplated stomach. How had humans survived in space with such delicate bodies? Of course Shepard's softness was a veneer of reconstructed flesh over cybernetics and "improved" replacement body parts, but she was, as always, an exception.
Shepard laughed. "Hey, I never said we weren't weird too." She snuggled up next to him, and he was reminded how nice all that soft squishiness could feel. He wondered what he must feel like to her. She kissed his chest and he thought maybe the "tell me about your weird biology" part of the evening was over...but apparently not.
"And all male Turians have these pouches?"
"Well, unless they're trans or have some sort of medical condition...so pretty much, yeah."
She shook her head ruefully. "And yet your society and military are male dominated. Just goes to show...I don't know, something."
"It seems logical enough to me," he replied. "Well, as logical as any prejudice. But I guess from your perspective it must seem kind of odd. I know human society can be prejudiced against the, uh, childbearing members of your species."
"Hypothetically childbearing," corrected Shepard, patting her stomach. "These tubes got tied a long time ago."
There were tubes? He thought the babies were grown in some sort of sack. Then again he'd also heard that this sack shed blood every few weeks, which sounded unlikely for any number of reasons. Maybe he should ask Mordin.
"But yeah," said Shepard "I mean things are improving, but there's a reason there aren't many other female Commanders in the Alliance military, let omegas. And as for being a female omega...well. I had to put up with a lot of alpha males thinking I only existed to go into heat and brew coffee."
"Right," said Garrus, pretending he understood more than every second word Shepard was saying. "Sexist bastards." Apparently female humans carried babies...unless they were alphas? Or was it omegas who carried babies unless they were male? Turian biology was all so much more simple.
"Well, I don't think you're only good for coffee and, uh...being hot," he said. "You're also really, really good at making things blow up. Sometimes even the things you were aiming at."
"I can't believe you're still giving me crap about that!" laughed Shepard. "I hit the base eventually! And really, it was Joker's fault..."
Garrus entered into the old argument with a smile. She might be squishy and weird and bumpy in all the wrong places, but she was Shepard, and that was all that mattered.