Mature story, edited out the most explicit parts. Original is available on the "masseffectkink" journal on Livejournal, Part XI, Page 18, same title.
Garrus tells himself that even without the rolling black outs, he would've dimmed the bathroom lights down low. There's something more intimate about the room when they're both bathed in the oranges, reds, and browns of candlelight and what little emergency lighting filters in through the cracked glass of the windows, not to mention how the lack of direct light conceals the chipped tiles, the missing cabinet doors. It's not perfect, it's barely home, but there's hot water and that's a luxury most of the universe doesn't have right now.
He runs a hand through the water, it feels warm to him, but still colder than he'd like, which means its perfect for the human the bath is for. Garrus is careful with the faucet, the metal is loose on the handle, and he knows one push too hard will leave it broken, wrecking the one good thing they have left in the way of material possessions. A towel is set on top of the nearby toilet seat, and when the scene is finally set, he leaves the small bathroom to find Shepard.
She's where he left her, of course, nestled among old pillows and blankets they mostly procured from the hospital when she insisted her convalescence be spent away from the busy halls and the constant scent of antiseptic. This apartment smells faintly of mildew and war, and everywhere there are still the remains of a family that lived here, their picture frames cracked and fallen along the floorboards, children's toys scattered in bedrooms. It's an eerie sort of thought, and more often than not Shepard has been left wondering if the people that lived there are alive somewhere. She believes, for her own selfish reasons, that wherever they are, they are all together. Mother, father, son, daughter. Maybe even the tiny dog, too. And one day when things are better, at least better than they are now in the aftermath of the war, they'll return home and find their things where they left them but maybe a little neater. She's heard Garrus in the mornings cleaning up broken glass, straightening the clutter in their temporary sanctuary.
Wordlessly, he begins to unbutton her fatigues, and Shepard assists for what little she can, her body arguing in silent screams with every use of muscle, every pull of still healing scars. She's weak, a kind of helplessness she hasn't felt since she was a child on Mindoir and her father gathered her in his arms after she'd taken a tumble off the porch, skinning her knees and palms. Garrus smiles nervously, teasingly, as her breasts are bared, and Shepard's cheeks flush under his gaze, even if he's seen them a million times before. For a week now, it's been like this twice a day, her nude and worn body turned clinical instead of romantic, and part of Shepard idly wonders if he'll ever see her like she was again, or if caring for her as the invalid she feels like will forever interfere with the image he once had of her. Maybe, just maybe, she made a mistake in asking him to take her out of the hospital, to find them some peace for just a little while.
Her pants go next and just like there wasn't a bra, there's no underwear, undergarments would only interfere at this point. Garrus hooks an arm around her back, the other under her knee—for she only has one now, the other leg gone from halfway down—and lifts her from the bed. She buries her face into his shoulder, teeth and fingers pulling, biting at the fabric of his civilian clothing, stifling the cry as pain flares all over. The steady drip of morphine and other pain relieving medication had kept her comfortable in the hospital, but that was another side effect of choosing to leave. She would have to learn to rely on the weaker stuff, the kind they trusted patients to take on their own.
His head nuzzles down into hers as he carries her, purring from the back of his throat for added calm. She'll feel better soon, they both know, as soon as the hot water soaks into her muscles and the deep tissue damage that will only ever heal with time, if it ever heals at all. In the bathroom, he's extra cautious with her, kneeling down beside the porcelain bath to gently lower Shepard in. His arms, his chest, are soaked by the end of it, but he pays it no mind, not even for a second, as he helps to adjust Shepard in the water, making sure she's at a sustainable angle for herself up against the back of the tub. Steam rises off the water and Shepard shuts her eyes.
"Feel good?" He asks, and runs his hand under the surface, caressing the thigh of her leg that's a little more complete than the other. He learned rather fast that any and all attention delivered to the other was unwelcome, left her pulling away, and so he no longer tries his luck.
"Yeah," she says, nodding, and it takes a fair amount of her energy to lift an arm out of the tub, to hold it level and even as she caresses his cheek lazily.
He turns into it, brushes his mandibles and mouth along her open palm, delivering his own equivalent of her human kiss. Shepard's watching him, her eyes never leaving his.
"Do you still love me?" She asks, even if she knows the answer.
Brow plates shift and his head shakes. "You know I do."
"I mean," Shepard sighs and flexes the muscles of her body, sinks an inch deeper in until she can dip her head forward, let her lips get moistened by the surface of the water if she so pleases. "I don't want you to see me as your burden, Garrus. I don't want to be the thing you have to take care of out of honor or duty."
He rises on his knees, shifting even closer to her, and this time it's his hand that cups her cheek. "I love you," he echoes his words from the battlefield. "Always."
Tears coat her eyes, a cry tickling the back of her throat, but Shepard just nods into his hand. Then she braves the worst of it, faces the pain, and grips her hands on the edge of the tub, pulling her into a more upright position within the confines of the bath. Garrus' movements are quick, almost frightened, as he watches her exert herself far more than he knows she can take. His hands hover around her, even brushing over the breadth of her back like one would a child that can't sit up fully unsupported yet.
"Easy," he warns her. "What are you doing?"
Shepard inches her body forward, knee bending under the water. "Get in." He doesn't know what to do or say to her, so he does nothing, and then Shepard is grunting through the ache, repeating herself. "Get in the god damn tub, Vakarian. I won't break." Her body's scans may say otherwise. "Hurry up."
He obeys, pulling his shirt off, standing to remove his trousers, and he's even faster than he'd been on the nights they'd made love in her cabin, barely getting out of the elevator before he had to be inside of her. The times they'd ended up fucking against a wall in the hallway leading to her loft had been numerous, and with a fondness he thinks back to them, how it had felt for her to wrap both of those legs around him as he buried himself in her, pounding her into the hard bulkhead. Now, she's a frail shadow of herself, but still burning with the same kind of heat and authority she'd held then.
"I don't know," he stutters, "there's not enough room." He feels himself running scared, and not because he doesn't want to feel her skin pressed to him—it's been the thing he's dreamt about since the first night they'd crashed on that jungle planet and he was left to believe her dead—but because he doesn't want to make things so very worse. Shepard just scoots up even further, encourages him on. Garrus slips into the space behind her, catches the way she stiffens in what he knows must be a wave of pain as her body is jostled when his legs move around her. She makes no sound though, not a peep, and when he's as fully situated in the bath as any Turian will ever be, Shepard leans back into him, finding safety against his chest.
"Better," she murmurs as his arms move around her. This is as close as they've been since their reunion. They may sleep next to each other at night, but it's not the same, it lacks the intimacy that they share right now.
"Let me know if it gets too uncomfortable," he gives his request, even if he knows she won't say a thing until it grows unbearable, until her overstimulated nerves are pushed beyond their limitations of pain tolerance.
Regardless, Shepard gives a sound of agreement and then runs her arm along his, her palm against the back of his hand, fingers folding over into his. She takes control of his limb like that, using his strength as her own, only just barely guiding him as she pleases. The first place she takes his hand is to her breast, the hardened peaks of which no longer sit covered by the water, instead chilled by the air.
"Do you remember," she calls upon the memory, directing his hand to cup at her breast and he does with some gentle hesitance, "the first time you touched them?"
There's a laugh to the tail end of her words and Garrus smiles. That's a good sound. "I learned," he defended himself. "I've gotten better." Fingers work a nipple between them and then release, grasping the whole of the breast and squeezing the swell.
God, she thinks with a quiet moan, has he ever gotten better.
Behind her, Garrus simply rubs his cheek to her scalp, on occasion even leaning forward to touch the plates of his mouth to her shoulder and neck. He's mindful of the angry, red scars of healing wounds there, lines that will always remain even with all the medi-gel in the world. Shepard rolls her head, exposing the other side to him, and there the hair is shorter, strands prickly as it grows in from where it had once been shaved, skull cracked open and then sealed shut again after the damage was corrected. The pin pricks of where staples had once been follow the river of scars, and Garrus kisses her there too.
"Garrus?" Shepard whispers, voice unsteady.
"Hmm?"
"Am I ever going to be beautiful to you again?"
His free arm around her squeezes her tighter, for once not worried of the stress of pain he may cause to her. All he wants is to remind her of the closeness they share, how under the warmth of the water it's easy to forget where he ends and she begins, and how if he had a choice, he'd forever keep it that way.
Shepard's chest shakes a little—from crying, he knows by now—and she moves with renewed strength to wipe the tears away but he catches her hand, stops her from doing so.
"Do you really worry about that?"
The sound she makes is quiet, strangled and pitiful. Embarrassed for speaking her fears aloud at all. "I wasn't what you wanted in the beginning as it was," she barely gets out, "and now…"
"No," he interjects before she can continue on. "You were always what I wanted." Maybe at first he didn't know that, not when the idea of bedding his Commander and friend was a new one. But since he'd first learned to kiss her, since he'd first touched her bare skin, Garrus had known that the lies he'd fed himself for years… well, they'd been just that: lies. He'd always wanted her.
Shepard cranes her neck back, shifting her body so she can hide her face away into the crook of his neck, can feel his pulse against her as he breathes and lives, a reminder that for all the bad in the world, somehow… someway… they made it back together. "You shouldn't have to do this, I shouldn't have asked this of you."
"If we were there or here," he argues, "I'd be doing it either way. I'd rather it be me than a stranger." The nurses had changed her bandages, delivered medication and antibiotics, but Garrus had slowly begun to usurp their duties as time went on, cleaning the new wounds from the last of her surgeries, washing her body with a cloth and a pan of warm water, preserving her dignity where he could. Here, at least, it was the two of them without the eyes of the others.
"You're getting stronger now anyway, Shepard. It won't be much longer." He knows she believed that her recovery would be faster than this, that somehow all the pieces of machine she was already stuffed with would be enough to make the process quicker, but her progress had slowed, creeping along at a snail's pace. It's something, though, and so long as there's improvement, however small, he'll be content to keep her with him.
"I miss you."
"I'm right here."
"No, I mean, I miss you. I miss us. I miss you inside of me."
Soft laughter hums in his chest. "Me too. But you've got ways to go until you're ready for that again."
"Not if I lie back and let you do all the work."
As much as the idea of being with her gets his heart beating a little faster, Garrus, in good conscience, can't bring himself to really consider the thought. Even if she wants it, even if she's asking for it, it feels too much like playing with fire and taking advantage for his own selfishness.
Their hands are still linked and Garrus once more begins feeling at her breast while his other trails down her abdomen, fingers stalling once they encounter the curls of hair between her thighs. Shepard trembles against him as soon as he gets close, even if he touches nothing directly, just caresses the flesh around it.
"Don't tease me," she warns.
Garrus just kisses her scalp and shifts a leg under hers, forcing her calf to hook around his spur. Once done, he lifts his leg, planting a foot against the opposite end of the tub and wall, and hers does the same. Her body is cradled to him, nestled against his in every way, and again does his hand finally return to the apex of her thighs.
The last time they'd done anything like this, it had been the night before they'd hit the Cronos station. Garrus had worshipped her body then, that time with far more skill than he had before the Omega-4 relay. If he thinks hard enough, he can even still taste her on his tongue, smell her deep in his olfactory senses. The water prevents such a gift now, but that doesn't stop him anyway. Achingly slow, he circles the bud of nerves, trying to coax it out and awake.
"How long have you thought about this?"
"Since they told me the Normandy was coming home," she confesses with a moan.
"You know, all you had to do was ask."
Shepard laughs, urging her hips to raise and press against his hand as he continues his ministrations. "Easier said than done."
Just when she's fallen into a pleasant, predictable numbness thanks to his skilled digits, Garrus lets that finger slip down, caressing her down to her entrance. He can see it in his mind's eye and for a second he wishes they were out of the water where he could instead feel her slickness, how despite the general state of unwell that her body was in, Shepard could still spare the energy wasted on getting wet in anticipation of him.
Finger tip draws itself around her and then slips inside. He feels for the rougher patch of her upper wall, and begins to rub along it, gently at first, then with an increased pressure and insistence. Shepard's thighs begin to quiver beyond her own control.
"Right there, hmm?"
Shepard moans an incoherent reply, nodding her head. The frustration of wanting this for so long and being unable to have it—partially due to her exhaustion and pain and partially due to the fact that sliding her hand between her thighs in a hospital room just felt wrong, even for her—had been unbearable.
Garrus' thumb continues in less synchronized movements as another digit still work inside her, but Shepard doesn't care, can't think of anything but his hand, determined and convincing.
Her other thigh, the one missing the rest of it down from where her knee should have been, widens along with the other. Shepard grips at the sensitive flesh of his trim waist, and Garrus, too, lets out a soft moan, though he at least has some control over himself.
Shepard cries out. "Garrus!"
"I know you're close," he whispers, can feel it in the way her hips began to buck ever so slightly, can hear it in the strain of her voice. "Don't come yet."
Breathy, she protests. "I can't—"
"Just wait, it'll be worth it."
Each second that passes, Shepard's body coils tighter and tighter, tension in her from her toes up to her eyebrows. She stiffens, each moan a desperate plea for permission.
"Do you love me?"
Her fingers dig into his thigh, nails leaving their mark even in his thick hide and plates. "Ye—" Words catch, she fights off the urge for release. "Yes!"
His other arm around her squeezes her once more, and finally he whispers against her ear. "Come."
She falls apart at his command, swallowing the moan as she bites her lip, body jerking against his. Garrus doesn't let up, continuing to stroke and prod, only relenting as she grows weak and weary again, when he can feel her weight settle limp and tired against him.
Shepard turns her head towards him, her hand tugging at his mandible rather roughly and rudely, forcing their mouths to meet together. While they kiss, she shows him just about the most energy she's had since London had been under Reaper control.
"I missed you," Shepard reiterates her sentiments from earlier as she pulls back. Her head rests back on his chest.
Around them, the water's grown cold. Garrus lets his own head rest against the cracked tile wall and continues to keep her close. "I missed you."