A/n: Forgive my occ-ness, I just… haven't written anything Mass Effect before. And Turians really intimidate me HOW DO I WRITE THEM.
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It was always a wonder to Shepard how Starbucks had managed to open several chains on Illium, yet remained strangely scarce from The Citadel. Apollo's Cafe could not produce the same flavors as Illium's Starbucks (with it's alternatively-blue colored logo), but Shepard was grateful for a sweeter taste on her tongue than the mud-water Joker passed as coffee. The caffeine coursed through to her fingertips and chased away any feelings of dreariness, and any promises of another sleepless night.
Apollo's Cafe also had a shipment of dome-shaped lids the asari barista had clumsily fitted onto the plastic cup. Shepard squeezes it off and runs her finger along the inside of it to catch the remains of whipped cream that had not already almost dissolved into her drink.
"That looks appetizing," Shepard looks up, her lips puckered around the straw, and meets the eyes of Garrus. She knows that he says it only to be polite, even though the best a sugary beverage could do to him would be taste like dirt going down and give him a stomach ache.
"Yeah," she rubs her right temple as he takes a seat in the chair across from her. His face reads concern, but Shepard smiles and gestures to her forehead. At least he'd then understand why she complains about the coffee on the Normandy. "Brain freeze."
"I'm afraid I don't follow…" Garrus responds, looking with concern onto Shepard, who now has the pad of her tumb pressed against the roof of her mouth.
"Oh, you know when you drink or eat something cold too fast and you feel a sudden surge of pain in your head?" It was almost difficult understanding the first half of her statement until the appendage was removed from her mouth and brushed off on her pant leg. Garrus hums in understanding and some form of empathy. The thumb once in Shepard's mouth dives into the mouth of the drink, resurfaces with the last dose of whipped cream and pops back into her mouth.
"What are those?" Garrus's question catches Shepard off-guard, never having to explain her choice in sugary beverages before.
"What-?" She tries to remember what used to cover her thumb as she slowly pulls it out of her mouth, as if doing so would rewind the memory of her eating off of it. She then glances down into her cup and takes note of the swatches of color in the foamy layer between her and her coffee. "Oh, they're called sprinkles." Shepard sort-of frames her drink with her hands and taps her fingers against the plastic. "They… well, you use them to decorate- they're an edible food decoration."
"And do you often adorn your headache-inducing drinks in 'sprinkles'?" Garrus asks, calmly, though there was something detectable that sounded like mockery. Commander Shepard, survivor of Akuze, hero of The Citadel, Destroyer of the Collectors and Reapers alike, and the biggest damn hero this side of the galaxy, liked edible confectionary decorations on her whipped-topped sugary coffee-beverage.
"Yes," she admits, gnawing at the inside of her bottom lip, retorting with "you got a problem with that?"
"Of course not." The Turian replies calmly, making Shepard slightly more self-aware of her exaggerated response to a made-up accusation.
"Oh, well then," she smiles into her cup and sucks up the last gulps of her coffee. "Do Turians have anything like sprinkles?"
"Well, we do decorate our foods on rare occasions, but not to such a colorful extent." He finishes his statement through the sound of Shepard slurping up the coffee pooling in the grooves of the bottom of the cup.
"Must be a human thing then," she responds, smile crooked on her face.
"Ah, Shepard you have a-" Garrus finishes his statement with a gesture, tapping at his own cheek pointedly. She knits her brows together and draws her finger across her cheek, mirroring him, and catches a orange sprinkle. She hides it under her tongue and behind a smile. "I was unaware humans also adorned themselves with sprinkles."
"Only sometimes," Shepard replies without missing a beat. She sticks the very tip of her index finger in her mouth, salvaging the remains of the whipped cream she'd scraped from the sides of the cup. "Whipped cream, mostly. Sometimes humans decorate themselves with that. That, and sushi."
The lack of reply from Garrus while Shepard proceeded to chew the end of her straw to bits either meant that she'd lost him entirely in the sea of their cultural differences, or that he was currently imagining two humans eating seaweed-wrapped fish off of each other's abdomens. "I don't think I've ever heard of a Turian using others as dishware."
"Well, it's not the sort of thing humans talk about openly." Never mind the fact that Shepard, a human, had just openly discussed a taboo subject in public with Garrus. "Ninety-nine out of a hundred times, they're eating sushi off of plates and sprinkles off of ice cream."
She realizes then that her cup has nothing left in it for her to eat in order to make the uncomfortable silence more bearable, and just resorts to biting the tip of her thumb.
"I don't think you'd enjoy the idea of Turian food being on any part of your body."
Shepard bites down, hard, and leaves teeth marks in her thumbprint she's convinced will be permanent; A permanent marker to recall the time when Garrus Vakarian pictured eating Turian sushi off of Shepard's abdomen. The empty cup falls to the floor with a hollow thud and Shepard is brushing her thumb off on her pant leg again.
"I should go."
And the mark she leaves on her thumb will serve as a permanent reminder that Commander Shepard, survivor of Akuze, hero of The Citadel, Destroyer of the Collectors and Reapers alike, and the biggest damn hero this side of the galaxy, was imagining eating sushi of Garrus Vakarian's abdomen.