Deviance
Yup, shouldn't be doing this. Blah. Need to work on ongoing projects. There might be more, too, at the very least a follow-up from Garrus' perspective.
I'm just waaaay too excited for ME2. Which I don't own. Nor do I own ME1, considering that I spent all of it eyeing Liara and Kaidan and Ashley and being like, "Forget this; why can't I romance the Turian????" [I don't know what it is, but female avatars consistently get screwed, wanting to romance the unromanceable NPCs.]
And there is way not enough Shep/Garrus fics.
ETA: Deviance is both the title of this part, and of the whole story. There will be more forthcoming!
It was in the air, she noted.
There was Liara, again, flirting with Joker as she mined him for information—or rather, misinformation—that Joker would later disclose to her over a good G&T, walking to warn her about the pervy alien who thought that just because she had freckles and pretty blue eyes, everything was permissible. The closer to human she looked, the more alarms she set off. 'Researching', she called it. On anyone else it would have just been…desperate.
There—imperceptibly—was Alenko. His presence barely registered on her mind, not because of any lack of personality, but because he hovered on the edges of her sphere of perception, tapping his toe just over the edge. One day ago Ashley—ruthless, competent, girly?—had brought her the finest piece of gossip: word belowdecks was that a certain Lieutenant had a 'thing' for a certain Commander of his…a Commander with 'startlingly lovely gray eyes', as he had so drunkenly admitted after Noveria. She supposed (and Ashley agreed) that Kaiden, besides being her subordinate officer and fellow crewmate, would be so full of issues that what she would take to be like peeling an onion (strip, fondle, cry) would really be like halving fractions: divide and conquer, divide and conquer, never win.
Of course, hidden in that semi-flushed admission was the celebration of yesterday and she had caught what Ashley had tried so desperately to conceal—a wayward heartbeat, a downward glance too long, an earnest catching of her eyes—a too-high laugh. Tracing out the circles, akin to the hunting stalks of a lioness, she had seen the spiraling of desire in Williams' actions. Whether she would support or crush those dreams, she supposed, would make her a certain type of commanding officer.
Even, ironically, Tali—whose air could never be his, whose life could never be unfolded to a human—and her chief engineer had paced and pranced and posed. Adams was too old; he was too military; he was too human. But, she observed, a poetic part of him wanted to float out into the galaxy with Tali—to hold her mind in his aging hands, before passing it on to someone more suitable. Tali, awestruck, learning, admiring, clearly had the better lot. To have that knowledge at her girlish disposal, like a compendium begging to be used…she supposed it was rather like her own relationship with the captain: a consort wrapped in prudish robes. Modesty—assumed, depended upon—was courtesy and convention. It did not always hide the sensuous flesh underneath.
But so too worked the whole world, relying on norms that concealed dominance and subordination, and the vestiges of rebellion that shook them all. And so, too, worked she—
—sitting, almost despairingly, in the tinted sanctuary of the Mako: gazing out on a view of another, most spectacular, world. The fulcrums of that world were well-formed and adept as it turned, and its shape was pleasing, utile. Its echoes were the raw rasp of steel mixed with the plaintive whisper of a lover's breath, and its surface was a beautiful feature of tan and blue and black. She sat there, eyes half-closed, not daring a sound lest he investigate—for how pathetic would it be, for him to find her like this?
To remind herself, she turned her head toward the left side window. There, there was a wall of metal, much closer to her, much more suitable. She gazed at it often, to remind herself of all the reasons—species, anatomy, military, political, personal—why what seen on the right side was impossible. Even though he was so close to her that whatever activity he engaged in seemed almost appallingly intimate, that—and no further—was as close as they would come. She turned her head back to the left: this, here, this was her essence. She was the commander of this ship, the helmsman of a crazy attempt to save the galaxy; she was the walls and the airlock and the engine. She was the demure gauze holding together this pulsating, fleshy animal.
There, on the right, was a world unto itself. A world to which she was as impotent as Wrex, as though she was a dying helmsman of a dying breed. She laughed softly at that: perhaps she was its leader, the wanton renegade like an Old West hero, with a speckled crew of sinners and revolutionaries. The leader of a band of deviants, straining in all ways against every custom—social, societal, military, political, taxonomical. Reviling the order-in-annihilation which Saren and the Reapers sought to impose, even more stringent than that of the Citadel. Revolting against a Reaper named Sovereign, whose very name implied Order and Obedience.
They, her mixed-race crew, on a hybrid ship in a special position, were the axioms of Chaos—those things which, by their very nature, flung themselves out into the worlds and demanded that others choose.
And here she was, caught between the cool metal she leaned against, she relied upon, and the promise of another world. In that curious relationship that instants and instances always have to continuity, she'd bargained him out of the Citadel, saved him from extinction in the uniform of C-Sec. Suddenly she'd saved him from the cruel, orderly impressions of his father—given him choices, given him himself. But he always chose to give all of that back. He was the one who had saved her, again and again.
Damn him, he was the one who had polarized her.
For like any random succession of points, the sum of those points exceeded their intention. Each brief event, in dying away, had crystallized. The feelings she had for him were as continuous as they were unexpected—they made their own, sickening, sense.
Her eyes closed. She stared straight ahead, not willing to give into either side.
She was brought back abruptly by the thunk on the right side of the Mako. "Commander, sorry for interrupting, but Joker says we're about to land on Virmire and I need to prep the Mako."
Had he known this whole time? Ashamed, blushing, she climbed out of the vehicle. The deck was deserted, but for her—and him. She shook her head and wondered if the darkness would obscure her face. "Why don't I help you, Garrus, you've got a lot of work to do."
The veil, firmly, in place.
