I got such nice feedback about my first Shakarian fluff oneshot that I wrote another one for you :) For those that haven't seen the first one, it's called "Take a Moment" (if you saw it when it was originally posted, the formatting has been fixed).

Enjoy!

Shepard grunted as they limped into the icy cave, trying to keep the weight off her left leg as Garrus towed her along. They had been going for about half a mile now, her arm around his neck and his taking most of her weight as they'd shuffled through a foot of fresh snow toward shelter. They had spent the day investigating remaining Cerberus signatures on an ice planet off the Hades cluster, and had found… a whole lot of nothing. A series of outposts that had apparently been abandoned without warning. Equipment still running and giving off the readings they had picked up while scanning nearby.

"Geez Shepard, do you always have to go with the heavy armour?"

Garrus was puffing hard now, and Shepard could tell he really was tired given that he hadn't complained about the cold once in the past ten minutes. He had jumped at the opportunity to get off the Normandy for a while after a week of relative inactivity, but as soon as they had boots on the ground his aversion to the temperature had been a recurring subject.

She narrowed her eyes dangerously and flicked her helmet visor up to give him a pointy-eyed squint.

"You trying to say something about my weight, Vakarian?"

She winced as he helped her remove her arm from around his neck to awkwardly lower herself down and take off her helmet. Garrus flopped down onto the floor of the cave, spreadeagled.

"Yes. You're heavy."

Shepard's eyebrows almost disappeared into her hairline as she stared at him incredulously.

"What?" He seemed supremely unperturbed by the dangerous edge to her voice, half zoned out but just managing to crack an eyelid at her.

"Also, next time you decide to drive the Mako off a cliff and then stand too close to an exploding hydraulic shock, can you put some lifts in your shoes or something? I think I'm going to have a permanent 90-degree scoliosis in my spine after bending to support your weight." He stretched his hands above his head and winced at the audible cracks in his back.

"Jerk."

Garrus' mandibles spread in a grin as he pushed himself into a sitting position, putting a hand over his heart with a mock-affronted expression.

"Shepard, you wound me!"

"No, I'm wounded, smartass! Why the heck do they make shocks that explode? Who needs vehicle suspension anyway, waste of time in my opinion…" She shifted her leg a little with another grimace and twisted to see the hunk of metal protruding from her left calf muscle. Garrus' plates paled at the thought.

"Spirit's forbid…" and he shuddered at the thought of her driving without some sort of compensatory mechanism. Shepard rolled her eyes and then grinned, reaching over to tweak his mandible.

"You know you love it."

"You? Sure. You're driving? Not so much…"

He ducked out of the way as she leaned over to smack his head, then overbalanced and sprawled on top of him from where she had been perched on a rock.

"Oooff…" Garrus felt all the air in his body leave him as her elbow seemed to hone in on his diaphragm with frightening precision. Shepard was swearing like a sailor and trying to extricate herself from his spurs and his armour and whatever other goddamn gear he had on him.

"A little…[gasp]…help?" he managed to squeeze out.

"I'm trying but my armour is stuck on your spurs! Why are Turians so goddamn pointy?"

As she wiggled around on top of him trying to extricate herself she froze, and her face turned back to Garrus'. The squinty-eyed look was back.

"Garrus."

"Mmm?"

"Are you suddenly… a little more pointy than before?" Garrus couldn't help the smug grin that flared his mandibles as he settled his hands on her hips.

"Can't help it. I have this fantastic wriggly woman dancing around on top of me, what's a guy to do?" Shepard tried to hold her stern expression but couldn't stop her own reluctant grin from emerging. Her red hair cascaded over her shoulder to tickle his nose as she moved closer, her mouth just inches away from his. He swallowed hard. For a moment all he could focus on were her soft, full lips that shaped themselves around his so perfectly in a way he had come to greatly appreciate. He'd never had a thing for humans, and still didn't really. Just a thing for Shepard. Who'd have thought?

Garrus let a hand wander down her back, feeling the curve of her body through her armour and sighing a little.

"Get your head out of the gutter, Vakarian."

He groaned, and she finally disentangled herself to roll off him with a growl as she hit her injured leg.

Together they sat up and Shepard pushed her hair out of her face while Garrus subtly shifted his armour into a less restrictive position. He winced inwardly. It was going to be a long few hours before they could make it back to the Normandy and Shepard's invitingly large, soft bed. Shepard was examining her leg and grimacing at the blood that had started leaking out around the edges with the most recent bump.

"Should probably try and get this sucker out, I suppose." She said, tearing open a pack of medigel with her teeth and spreading a good amount around the wound and then uncapping and punching in a microdermal injector for whatever the surface medigel wouldn't reach.

"Alright, ten minutes and it should be good and numb." Garrus said, reading the back of the packet before tucking it into a compartment of his armour. He looked at her appraisingly for a minute.

"So….what do you want to do with the time?" he said in the low growl that always got her engine running, waggling his brow plates suggestively.

"Garrus!"

"Ok fine, I had to ask… Gee I didn't think human eyeballs could roll that far back."

Ten minutes later Shepard was wincing in anticipation as Garrus examined her leg.

"Can you feel this?" Garrus pinched his talons close carefully around the shard of metal in Shepard's leg. She swore at the top of her lungs and jerked her leg away from his hands.

"OF COURSE I CAN GODDAMN FEEL IT, WISE GUY." Garrus subtly shifted out of Shepard's reach as her fists clenched and carefully kept his eye on her.

"Well then, guess the medigel needs a bit more time to work…" Shepard mumbled something unintelligible under her breath that sounded like "Bloody turian bird-brain".

"Now Shepard, name-calling isn't nice." He laughed, ducking under her flailing arm before darting in to press his lips to hers.

Suddenly she stilled, breaths becoming shallow and more rapid as she became engrossed in the kiss. Her hands moved up his cowl to rest on the sensitive hide of his neck, sending a pleasant shiver down his spine. Gently, he pulled her towards him until she sat sideways in his arms, pressing her body into his through the armour that was becoming a little confining again. Her hands began to skim delightfully over his skin, travelling up to beneath his crest to insistently pull him closer. Shepard's mouth left his momentarily and he sighed at the loss until he felt her tongue tracing a line along his mandible, her own breath coming faster now as the kisses came harder and more relentlessly.

He let his talons trace down her side, then suddenly gripped her butt and tugging her up to sit on his lap. She laughed a breathless giggle and got hold of his cowl as Garrus let his hand run down her side. Down the swell of her hip, past her ass, which incidentally, was another part of her anatomy that he has come to adore. He wasn't sure if he was an 'ass-man' or a 'boobs-man', but he sure made the most of any opportunity he had to get to know any part of Shepard's anatomy better. He palmed her thigh, curling his fingers until Shepard moaned a little, completely oblivious to anything else but the feeling of his mouth and his hands on her body. Her breaths were ragged as she shifted to face him better, bringing her leg closer for Garrus to caress.

She was so engrossed in the feel of him against her, his teeth as they tugged at her lip followed by his tongue that darted out momentarily that she didn't notice where his other hand was heading. Quick as a flash, his talons wrapped around the metal shard still protruding from her leg and gave a sharp pull.

"OWWWWWWWW!" Shepard shrieked, eyes bugging out of her head and jumping away from him. She stared at him accusingly and clutched her leg, swearing in every alien language she could think of at the top of her lungs. Garrus gently pried away her hands to squeeze a glob of medigel over the wound that was now oozing blood.

"You fucking asshole, what the hell did you do that for?"

Garrus just leaned back with a shit-eating grin on his face, admiring the hunk of metal he'd extracted from her calf.

"It's called field surgery, Shepard. Have to be adaptable in dire circumstances, you know. Something I learned from you." She growled, fuming but unwilling to move her hands away from her leg until it had stopped bleeding.

"You kissed me until I wasn't paying attention and then yanked the fucking thing out of my leg! It was a good two inches deep in there."

Garrus had the grace to look a little abashed, but shifted over to her and threw an arm around her shoulders to pull her close to him. She reluctantly let him, expression still very put out.

"Hey, it worked didn't it?"

He should probably stop, he thought. It looked like Shepard's head might explode. Her mouth worked soundlessly, an expression of utter outrage on her face.

"You're on the couch for a week, buddy!" She said finally, jabbing a finger in his chest and leaving a splotch of blood and medigel.

"Aww come on Shepard, you know I hate that couch, I don't fit on it!"

She grinned evilly, leaning back against the rock wall and taking a deep breath.

"Suck it up big guy, that's what you get for stabbing me in reverse!"

Garrus grumbled, shaking his head.

"Geez, I was only trying to help…"