Jane Shepard could pinpoint the exact moment it started.
It started in the hold of the Normandy, next to the Mako, that poor, bruised and battered husk of a car. She was there and Garrus was there too, but no one else, which was strange. And he was standing close to her, so close…
He lifted a talon and traced the line of her cheekbone. It seemed so tender, the light touch across her skin, and she looked up at him. Their foreheads touched and she found she didn't need to say a single word.
He looked at her, a question, a request, and in return she slipped out of the uniform she was wearing and let it fall to the floor. He looked her over, appraising, and she was glad to see hunger in his eyes, not disgust.
Beneath his own armor he was slender, lean, all long, plated limbs and torso. His skin was a soft gray, with almost a metallic hint of shine at the edges of his plates and along his fringe. She stepped towards him—so bold! it was utterly unlike her, but the feeling of being in control was both reassuring and sexy.
She let her hands wander over him, caressing, stroking. She wasn't surprised by what she'd seen under his clothes, basic training had covered alien anatomy. Her N7 training had gone into more depth about alien physiology, but if she had learned there how to hurt an opponent, the flip side of that knowledge meant she knew which parts of his body would respond if she were to caress him.
He seemed to know a thing or two about humans as well, caressing her breasts and grabbing her ass, his fingers leathery and surprisingly warm. She shuddered as he pushed her against the wall, his rough plating making her nipples stand at attention. She wrapped her legs around his waist and…
…and woke, suddenly, in her own bed, which was certainly not the hold of the Normandy. The dream remained in her body, throbbing between her legs.
She reached for the figure next to her and was almost disappointed to feel warm flesh and muscle beneath her hand instead of rough plates and leathery hide. Kaiden sighed in his sleep and turned over to face away from her.
She lay on her back and let the dream wash over her, trying to remember each detail, but the further she slipped from sleep, the more the dream became just a dream, not the vibrant, earth-shaking, sexy reality it had seemed.
And why was she having dreams about Garrus? As the dream left her, she wondered. The turian had become one of her closest friends in the desperate chase for Saren, and he'd stood by her side on the Citadel when they'd taken him down.
"You trust him more than me," was one of Kaiden's favorite things to throw at her when they argued, and in some ways it was true.
But it was a long way from trust and battlefield camaraderie to "let's get freaky on the Mako."
It's just a dream, she told herself. It doesn't mean anything.