Twenty years ago, she couldn't even imagine considering the thought of choosing a turian for a partner. They were all angles and protrusions, no softness to them at all. And their faces... blank and immobile and hawklike. No feeling, no emotion; just barely concealed predator behind armour.
Lying tangled equally in his limbs and the sheets, she was forced to admit just how wrong that was. There was softness after all, in the suedey skin at his neck and the crooks of his arms and the sides of his waist; in the press of his tongue to hers, the delicate stroking of his fingers on her skin. There was passion in his gaze on her, nervousness and uncertainty (thankfully now fading) in her presence, a sly and dry humour in his voice. He was a veritable welter of feeling hidden in plain sight, that only now she could see, let alone appreciate. He was still a predator, still deadly; but then, so was she.
She stroked soft fingers along the bony plates that covered his jaw and he huffed quietly, eyes closed, his breath cool and vaguely metallic smelling.
"I can hear you thinking." His voice, even now, managed to soothe and excite her at the same time. "Sleep, Shepard."
"Not possible with you here, Garrus."
He grinned, and she marvelled that she now understood that that particular arrangement of his mandibles and facial plates meant You make me smile coupled with a bit of You're lying naked next to me.
"I hear humans have a tradition where they sing their loved ones to sleep. Shepard, don't make me sing to you. I have a terrible voice. I sing about as well as I swim."
She smiled almost without meaning to, fondly and a little wistfully. "We usually sing our children to sleep, not our lovers."
His arms tightened about her. His eyes, startlingly clear, opened to gaze into her own, and one finger raised to trace over her own bony hawk-beak of a nose. She wrinkled it self-consciously. "I could sing you a children's song, if you liked," he murmured. "Though it's been a while."
"Later," she whispered, trapped in the void of his pupils. "When we need it."
For a long, quiet moment his gaze held her rapt, and then he leaned into her and nuzzled his face against hers. "Later," he agreed, and in his voice was a promise.
