Author's Note: It's been years since I've submitted anything here and I can only blame life and the funny things it does. I found myself on the meme some time ago. Yeah, you know what meme I'm talking about. This is my only complete contribution to it. Prompt was about drunk Shepard having drunk times with not drunk Garrus. Salty language and a bit of groping ensues.
This is a far cry from Modus Operandi. It's short, sweet-ish, and just a bit silly. Consider yourself warned.
Shepard was lost ten minutes in the future, staring at the bottom of an empty tinted glass. Shapes lurched back and forth, swimming across her line of sight in a dizzying display of muted color. Her right eye had failed to check in and her brain was reporting an alarming blackout in the eastern region of the universe. The good eye registered a turian-shaped blob growling at her. No- not growling. Words. Shepard opened her mouth to reply. Why, exactly, was a mystery. She had no idea what he'd said and there was no appropriate universal response. Shepard tried to air on the side of caution and appeal to his vanity, complimenting his choice of pants. However, the words never came into being.
Or at least, the sounds were not chosen carefully. Instead of sitting in the presence of a thoroughly-flattered turian, who may have been generous enough to slide a free drink her way in exchange for a compliment, she found herself at the wrong end of the counter, yards away from the bartender who appeared to be having words with a burly pair of human men in matching blue uniforms.
Uniforms. Good? No, bad. They weren't the black and white of Cerberus loyalists. The was no yellow insignia to mark the presence of a sympathizer. C-sec would have her out on her ass or delivered via hand cart to the Normandy if she didn't play the part of a compliant patron. Drunk Shepard liked to rouse the rabble and take a few hits in the name of great justice, but tonight she lacked the appropriate body armor. Of course, Commander Jane Shepard overlooked the possibility of a bar fight in her haste to drown the cacophony of responsible thoughts in ryncol. She was dressed down and unarmed.
While she'd succeeded in chasing away the near-maddening fear that she kept locked up in the back of her mind, she'd forgotten a few other important details. Her fast-approaching date with the Omega-4 relay was having a more adverse effect on her resolve than she'd anticipated. The visage of bravery faded when her crew took leave. Alone, she had to cope with the fear another way. There was no one around to parrot her own pep-talks back at her. There was no one there to instill confidence in the Commander. She was at the top of the ladder- a cold, lonely place.
Everyone had a means of self-medicating; some methods just happened to be less destructive than others. Shepard was now ordering regular visits to the Citadel, claiming that the Normandy was in frequent need of new munitions and supplies. With the jump looming on the horizon, the crew didn't question her judgment. With all the recent upgrades they'd installed, she was always requesting engineering assistance from private contractors in the wards. It had been almost two weeks and she'd optimized the Thanix canon twice, calibrated every firing algorithm program, replaced the shock absorbers on the Kodiak, and had even hired a team to install an automatic feeder system in her fish tank.
Excuses like that left her with plenty of downtime in the Zakera wards, though she'd only just recently discovered the the Dark Star. Her squad mates usually jumped at the mention of "shore leave," but she could tell that everyone was starting to get anxious as they air they shared seemed alight with uneasy anticipation. While the Illusive Man hadn't come a'knocking yet, she could feel that she could no longer delay the inevitable. But she could at least enjoy one more night of drunken bliss.
When her thoughts returned to the present, two men crowded her vision. She knocked her glass back, which ended up looking more like an attempt to bash her own head in, having forgotten that she'd already finished her drink and failed to order another. The men in blue were addressing her- "Shepard" was easy enough to make out in her inebriated state, but with the pulse of the music and Dark Star's signature... well, darkness, there was a certain absence of clarity. There could only be one outcome here: they would fight. It had to happen. They were challenging her sobriety and such insolence could only be punished by a closed fist. She stood up quickly. Too quickly. Before she could even formulate a proper challenge, she began a face-first free fall to the cold hard floor and bid farewell to consciousness.
"Shit, Adams! You killed her!" hissed the young officer, backing away from the downed woman as though she might spring back to life and sink her teeth into his boots.
"Fuck man, I just wanted an autograph..." Adams whined, eyes darting around the bar as he felt dozens of eyes lock on him. He'd had a badge for barely week and he was already shaping up to be the most hated officer in C-sec. "Joe, We can't just leave her here..."
"Hell yes we can. They're going think we messed her up," though few seemed to pay any heed to the pile of woman who appeared to be having far too good of a time.
"Is she with you?" The turian bartender called over the blaring music.
"What?" Adams blurted.
"Look buddy, you need to move your friend. This isn't some slum joint- get her off my floor," growled the bartender, gesturing to Shepard's crumpled form.
"Hey, we were just trying to talk to her- we don't know her or anything," Joe insisted, but the bartender would have none of it.
"You guys are C-sec, right? Isn't this your damn job?"
"We're off duty -"
"Officers." A low rumble pierced the din of the synthesized bass. The rookies turned to find a fiercely-scarred turian looming above them, the glow of his scanner stark in the low light. "I'll take it from here."
Shepard's eyes flew open, then promptly shut again as a florescent light assailed her. Cool tile felt pleasant against her cheek, but her stomach was doing somersaults and the air around her was becoming uncomfortably warm. This was a new place- one she didn't remember walking to. The missing minutes in her memory alarmed her and she went on full, albeit drunken alert and scrambled onto all fours. She'd consumed enough alcohol to put down a mid-size krogan, but deep-rooted habits were hard to kill.
She stumbled to her feet and spun a full one hundred and eighty degrees with a closed fist, aiming for the towering blue figure that loomed just behind her. Shepard couldn't be sure of where she was, who she was with, or how she got there, but she was certain of one thing: someone was about to get fucked up. Real bad.
The sudden rush of air around her stirred up smells that made the contents of her stomach churn and she stumbled. Three long digits caught her outstretched hand and, in turn, her. The rest of her body went along for the ride and momentum suddenly seemed to be an unstoppable miracle of physics. Lean, muscular limbs flailed pitifully as she struggled to assume a respectable fighting stance and her mind raced.
She knew this adversary. How, though, had yet to be discerned. Until then, the threat remained and she yanked her hand away, escaping the stranger's grip as she mounted a new assault. Shepard tried to distribute her weight evenly, finding a stance that allowed her to counter with another jab- a quick strike from the opposite hand. Her knuckles grazed smooth, hard armor and she swore loudly.
These weren't thoughts fueling her blows anymore- they were pure swells of anger that helped sharpen her reflexes and pierce the haze of drunkenness. Emotion helped untie the knot in her tongue and quell the storm in her stomach.
"I'll fucking end you, asshole! C'mon! Hit me!" The pain would be good- fuel for the fire. For each blow, a counter ten times stronger. She swayed less now, but her vision was still lacking. She let the white hot rage guide her and let another series of short, sharp jabs fly.
"Come on!"
Then form fell apart and she lunched, tackling the figure round the waist and tumbled to the floor. Her head connected with the hard, smooth surface of the stranger's armor and she blinked dumbly, stunned. Shepard struggled to gain the upper hand, but the alien was stronger than she'd anticipated- hell, she hadn't anticipated anything. Part of her wondered if this was just some imaginary booze cloud that would evaporated as soon as she came to her senses.
But it wasn't.
It was fighting her, and fighting well. It never struck her, but it was making a damn impressive effort to overpower her.
She was rolling again. Rolling and rolling until finally the world stopped spinning and she found herself straddling a set of blue chest plate, crowned with the head of a turian, who let out a sharp cry of pain.
The room was coming into focus and her attacker's face finally came into view- the very same turian she was straddling. She'd knocked his scanner askew.
"G-Garrus?" Shepard slurred.
He groaned and lifted his head up just slightly off the tile.
"I'm never..." he muttered, "ever going drinking with you."
Shepard opened her mouth to reply, but the words never came. Instead, she retched.
Shepard had insisted on taking the walk of shame alone, but she was still too far gone to put one foot in front of the other without face planting into a wall. A brief, incoherent shouting match began and ended in that bathroom with Garrus winning by default, since he was the only one who could formulate a decent argument. Luckily for her, he chose not to address the fact that minutes ago, she'd tried to kill him. Shepard wasn't sure she could have handled a deep discussion about her own subconscious fears, and Garrus mercifully didn't initiate it. He caught her by the waist when she fell again and steered her towards an open stall, supporting her while she finished what she'd started on his chest place. He wiped off what he could while she coughed on the floor, then pulled her arm around his neck and lifted her to a semi-standing position. She dragged the back of her hand across her mouth and grunted.
"Sorry 'bout your... mess. Lemme buy you a drink."
Garrus was only half-listening as he steered the two of them past a disgusted-looking turian hell bent on relieving himself without a human female in the room.
"Maybe some other time," he muttered as they began their slow procession back to the Normandy.
Garrus didn't expect things would escalate so quickly. He'd only just recently mustered up the courage to tell Shepard that he was very much open to the idea of pursuing a romantic relationship with her. After the encounter with Sidonis, he couldn't think of anyone else in the galaxy who knew him better and it all just made sense. Yet while he was finally picking the pieces of his former life back up, Shepard's seemed to be crumbling.
He'd made a promise- just before the jump, he'd prove to her that this was more than a desperate fling. They needed each other more than they knew. At least Garrus felt it was mutual. Shepard had pulled him from countless fires and he'd always done his best to be there for her. He wanted to be counted on and trusted, a reflection of the trust he'd put in her and never questioned.
Here and now, he still spared her doubt. But now he was experiencing a strange kind of role reversal, one he'd never anticipated before. Shepard was lost somewhere in her own mind and Garrus wasn't sure how to draw her out.
More importantly, she'd probably kill him if he marched her back to the Normandy like this. Weeks worth of positive morale would melt the instant the crew set eyes on the Commander, covered in her own vomit.
So Garrus made an executive decision.
"Hey. Heeeey. Garrussss?" Shepard snorted at his side, head lolling into him with a soft thud and muffled "ow."
"Hmm?" He rumbled softly as he guided them through the rapidly-thinning crowds. The late-night crew was already out and patrolling the streets. The hum of air car traffic was fading.
"Somebody threw up on me," And, as if on cue, Shepard burped and another stream of vomit spilled down her shirt. Garrus stopped and gripped her waist tightly as her felt her go slack against him, wondering exactly how much more the woman liquid the woman could possibly be storing. He put aside the thoughts of how much he liked the feeling of her against him, or how supple she was in his grasp. The recent memory of Shepard throwing up on herself made it considerably easier.
"Oh. Wait. Thatwasme," The words rushed out of her mouth just before Shepard slipped once more into unconsciousness.
Garrus blinked hard, briefly entertaining the possibility that this was all a dream and that he was not, in fact, support her entire weight in one hand while Shepard disappeared into a drunken coma. Yet he trudged through the sliding glass doors and greeted the appalled-looking concierge with an unapologetic smirk. He reached for his credit chip just as Shepard twitched violently, jerking herself out of his grip. She fell to the floor in a graceless heap.
"Checking in?" The woman suggested with a slight sneer.
Garrus hoisted Shepard up off the floor with a soft grunt, "Just for the night."
"I'm afraid none of our rooms have drains built into the floor," The concierge arched an over-plucked brow, reluctantly taking the offered credit chip from Garrus' outstretched hand and offering a room key in return.
Shepard belched in her sleep, the last of her stomach contents cascading on the carpet.
"Well that's a damn shame," Garrus made no attempt to hide the sarcasm in his voice as he abandoned the horrified woman and escorted his commander to the elevator.
Shepard awoke into a partial state of sobriety- lucid enough to recognize pain, but drunk enough not to be overly concerned. She was sitting upright, staring into a plain white light overhead. The seat below her was hard, cold, and vaguely reminiscent of a toilet.
Back in a bathroom.
The pounding in her head mixed terribly with the foul smell that wafted from everywhere. She could almost her hear own bones creaking as she let her head loll forward, eyes drifting to the vomit stains that dotted her shirt. She meant to say something profoundly hilarious, but only a groan passed through her lips. A big blue bulk blocked her view of the mirror, much to her relief.
It took her several slow seconds to realize that the blue was Garrus and the steady pounding was the sound of running water.
Her stomach flip-flopped and it felt as though someone had just buried a knife in her forehead.
"Jesus fucking... shit," Shepard hissed, clutching at her brow with a white-knuckled hand.
Garrus's hands braced against her shoulders so fast, Shepard couldn't tell if they'd been there from the start.
"You say the most colorful things when you're drunk," Garrus said mildly before returning to the task at hand. "Do you think you're going to be sick again?"
Shepard let her eyes roll up and lock on his face. For the first time that night, she actually saw him.
And refrained from puking on him.
"No. M'runnin' on empty." Her voice cracked and her cheeks flushed in embarrassment.
"You sure? Because I'm pretty certain you've got a bottomless pit in there," he pointed a talon at her midsection.
Shepard hissed, more annoyed at the persistent headache than his playful jab. "Asshole."
"On a scale of one to ten, how drunk would you say you are right now?" Garrus asked plainly, leaving Shepard to stare at him as though he'd just asked the dumbest question in the world- which it sort of was.
"... Huh?" She blinked, but for some reason, the left eye refused to close. Instead, it rolled towards her nose.
"Yeah, that's what I thought. Come here," And then something about Garrus turned painfully paternal as lifted her up by the shoulders and led her to the source of noise. Shepard's motor skills were still recovering and she could only flail pathetically as the ground disappeared out from under her. But his grip was certain and she wasn't going to be falling down again any time soon.
"What do you think you-?" She whined, wincing as her stomach flip-flopped.
"You'll forgive me later, if you remember this at all." Garrus pulled the sliding glass door aside and revealed a rather spacious tile room. A shower head was running on the far wall and there was a small alcove a few feet off the ground.
Shepard was so busy trying to come up with a possible explanation for the running shower or what exactly such an alcove was intended for that she didn't notice Garrus removing her dress shirt until it was being pulled over her head.
"Garrus... I'm gonna punch you in the face for real this time if you don't tell me... what the fuck you're doing," She glared through tousled bangs, casting a sidelong glance at the rancid shirt lump beside her. Shepard still had an athletic tank on and couldn't exactly cry indecency, but neither could she fathom how Garrus all of a sudden assumed the role of alpha male. But she was also focusing very heavily on the streaks of leftover chunks of something on the surface of his chest armor.
"Destroying the evidence. I'm saving you from a another heart to heart with Miranda." He set to work removing her boots while Shepard let that scenario play out in her mind. There was absolutely nothing about that possible future that appealed to her.
"How thoughtful," she muttered, her words an odd mix of earnest gratitude and sarcasm.
Barefoot, shirtless, but still sporting pants, Shepard suddenly felt like she was in a dream. Garrus began to shed his mangled armor, removing the plating from view. She wasn't sure what she would find underneath- scales, ridges, a thousand tiny eyes blinking back at her. Instead, she found herself staring at an unremarkable black skin suit that contoured quite well to his form. It slowly dawned on her that this was the first time she'd ever seen Garrus without his protective gear. The circumstances disappointed her.
"S'too far away," Shepard groaned, certain that there was no way she'd be able to maneuver herself into the shower, and she felt a dull pang of shame at being so utterly helpless. Sober Shepard would have murdered her. This was hardly befitting of a Commander Officer. She could at least make an effort to move her own mass a few feet forward.
The prospect of trying seemed like it might kill her.
But Garrus was shedding the rest of his armor and moving towards her with obvious purpose.
Perhaps it was the sudden realization of what was about to happen. Perhaps it was the sudden change of altitude. Perhaps it was purely cosmic, but whatever the reason, Shepard passed out during the process of being lifted up and awoke to the sensation of warm daggers piercing her skin. A hard, warm vice held her face still. When her eyes cracked open, Garrus was wiping at her mouth with a damp washcloth.
"You still with me, Shepard?" Garrus' voice rolled across her skin.
The pounding in her head seem to lessen ever so slightly. "Yeah, I'm here."
She sighed and leaned into the pressure. Garrus let her, supporting the weight of her head in his hand while he continued down her neck and shoulders. It was easy to just let herself sit there, back against the cool tile while Garrus cleaned her. One of the fleeting blessings of being so drunk was the ability to relinquish pride and allow the impossible to occur. Shepard had wanted an intimate night with Garrus- a memorable, wonderful one devoid of the interspecies-awkwardness they'd discussed, but the odds were stacked against them when they were both in full control of their faculties.
Here, under the steady, warm cascade of water, everything seemed so much easier.
Shepard let her eyes fall shut, droplets gathering on her lashes as she let her head rest on his bare shoulder and wrapped her arms around his neck.
Garrus' talons were suddenly lost between strands of wet hair and Shepard placed a kiss on the plate of his shoulder. With a quivering breath, he allowed himself to explore. One hand remained steadfast, keeping Shepard upright lest she succumb to drunkenness once more. The other trailed down her arm, tracing the muscles and enjoying the smoothness of her skin. He knew better, though.
He was taking advantage.
She was drunk, in pain, and would probably forget this night ever happened. That had been his plan from the beginning. Garrus had hoped that she'd wake up with no memory of him stripping her and wiping her down like a spent animal with no intention of wooing her. He hadn't seen it that way, but he was certain that Shepard would throw a fit.
Yet the exact opposite was happening. He could feel her inching closer, the warmth of her chipping away at his resolve. He didn't push her away when her lithe form finally fell flat against him.
Garrus tore off his scanner and tossed it outside the shower with a clatter.
Shepard panted softly as Garrus nuzzled her neck. Steam was rising around them. The air was thick and warm. Each caress brought her back to life, coaxing a dormant fire to flare again.
"You're drunk, Shepard." Garrus said aloud, though he couldn't remember why that was a problem. Ah. Yes. She wasn't in control. This was instinct- not passion driving her.
But he knew they wanted each other. Yet he'd imagined... a much classier culmination of their "mutual trust."
"You're welcome," she whispered.
That was all the permission he needed.
Suddenly, his talons were cupping her breasts and he bowed over her, willing the fabric between them to melt away and reveal the smooth skin he longed to touch. Shepard let out a long, low moan and he was suddenly pulling at her shirt, wrenching it from her and throwing it away without a second thought.
Her hands found comfortable resting places at the curve of his hips, exploring the contours with the pads of her fingers. Garrus emitted a deep, guttural growl that made the tiny hairs at the back of her neck stand on end.
In that moment, she forget about the headache, nausea, and taste of vomit. They were the only two living things in the galaxy. There were only his hands on her breasts, exploring her softness. There was the muscle that flexed beneath her fingers. There were the sounds of pleasure spilling from their mouths.
And there was the haze that clouded her vision as all the blood rushed from her head to parts far south.
Then there was nothing.
Garrus caught Shepard before she connected with the tile and pulled her to him, maneuvering her legs across his lap. Worry subsided when he realized her chest was rising and falling in even time.
Cradling her in his arms, he rose and turned off the water. Outside the shower, he dried them off and carried her to the bed.
He had expected to endure a far less enjoyable night. While the short-lived fist fight hadn't exactly been his idea of fun, he couldn't complain about the rest of the evening. His only regret was that he lacked the restraint to stick to his morals. He'd been weak, indulging in a fantasy.
Yet maybe this was how it had to be. Stripped of their duties and intoxicated, living without thinking.
Was that a complete experience? He couldn't be sure, but Garrus made up his mind to indulge himself for the next few hours. The room was paid for and there was no sense in letting it go to waste.
He tucked Shepard under the blankets before sliding in gingerly behind her, folding the human into his embrace before dimming the lights. Shepard stirred in her sleep, arching her back into him so the curve of her ass fit neatly between his hips.
He growled softly in contentment, wishing in that instant that he possessed the power needed to rouse her.
But sadly, not even Garrus Vakarian couldn't compete with ryncol.