For the Mass Effect Writer Circle Gift Exchange of 2017. Happy New Year, Machatnoir.
Thanks to bioticfox for beta reading.
Garrus settles down on a hoverboard and directs it to glide under the Mako to inspect the underside. Scanning with his omni-tool, he can already see that the damage is extensive but mostly superficial.
He is deeply engrossed in the scanning process, checking for structural damage, making a list of repairs. Just as he inspects a scratch with a deep scan, something crashes inside the Mako and he almost cracks his head on the underside. He maneuvers the hoverboard back out and hits the opener of the door to the vehicle, wondering if he should have gotten his gun from the locker.
When he climbs up the stairs, he is greeted by the Commander's butt. She is on her knees, wiping up some liquid on the floor. The pieces of a shattered cup are in a rough pile next to her. For a moment, all Garrus can look at is the dip of her waist and the soft curve of her hips.
He turns his gaze to the shards on the floor before his commanding officer can catch him staring at her ass. No cultural differences could convincingly excuse that kind of behaviour.
"You need any help, Commander?"
"You were working under the Mako?" she asks without turning around.
"Yes, Commander."
"Sorry, I didn't notice." She turns around with a smile. "I would have waited until you were done." She climbs up on the bench on the inside of the Mako.
"Do you often sit inside the Mako?" Garrus wonders if he is overstepping any bounds right now.
"Hiding, hiding is the word." Shepard leans back and unscrews the top of a thermos flask. The familiar smell of that terrible human concoction 'coffee' wafts through the room. She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes in bliss.
"Then I will leave you to it, Commander," Garrus says and turns to climb down the steps.
"No. I mean, you can stay, if you want."
"Doesn't that defeat the purpose of hiding?"
She chuckles at that and pats the seat next to her. "Stay a moment. I think I have one of those pink drinks you like so much stored in here."
He climbs back up and sits down next to her. He had taken off most of his armor to work on the Mako, but the lower section still makes a scratching noise when he sits down.
As promised, Shepard procures his favorite drink from a storage box and hands it to him. She waits for him to open it and then clinks her thermos flask against his drink as she looks him in the eyes.
"I've seen that before, does this ritual mean anything?" he wonders.
Shepard is very carefully putting the flask to her lips and tests the liquid with the tip of her tongue. He can't turn his eyes away, he knows that humans have short, blunt tongues but somehow Shepard manages to stretch hers now into a tipped shape. He has never seen anything like this.
"Damn, still too hot." She turns to him and smiles. "It's like a friendly greeting and you're supposed to look into the other's eyes, otherwise you'd be rude. I don't know why, it's just one of those things we do."
Garrus needs a moment to return to the conversation, his mind is still stuck on humans and their strange bodies. He takes a sip of his drink. "If they haven't changed too much of the general design of this vehicle, then there should be utensils for food and drink in the storage locker over there."
"You mean a cup?" Her face lights up and she twists her body in a way that makes Garrus fear for her spine to access the locker behind her. "Haha! Behold! A cup for my coffee!" She sits back down and pours out some of the vile smelling stuff. Pursing her lips, she blows over the cup and finally takes a sip of the beverage. Her eyes close in bliss and she sighs, "Garrus Vakarian, you're a lifesaver."
Garrus is glad that her eyes are closed because he can't stop staring at her lips. They are so flexible. "Glad to help," he mumbles and quickly looks down to his own drink when her eyes open again. "If I may ask, Commander, what exactly are you doing here, in the Mako, during your night cycle?"
"Reading, mostly. And drinking coffee. Unless I smash my cup into pieces." She takes another sip and lets out a happy sigh. It makes him wonder how her subharmonics would rumble if she had any.
He leans back and enjoys the relaxed atmosphere between them. "What are you reading?"
When she doesn't answer right away, he turns to her and is surprised to see her cheeks flushed deep red. A sign of excitement, embarrassment or fever, if he remembers the brochures correctly. "Did I say something wrong, Commander?"
"No, not at all," she assures him with an open smile. "It's just... some people look down on the kinds of novels I like to read." She activates her omni-tool and shows him a picture of a woman in a long, flowing dress. Words with unfamiliar letters are superimposed over her red dress as she looks back over her shoulder.
"What does that say?"
"The Unbound Lady," Shepard says. "It's a romance novel. A lot of people think romance is stupid, not real literature. But I love romance." She flips through lots of similar looking small images, showing off an impressive collection of novels. "This one is my current favorite. It's called Destined Through Galaxies." She enlarges an image that shows a human hand, with a piece of red cloth wrapped around. The cloth winds over the image towards a decidedly non-human, clawed hand with green and blue fur.
"What is it about?" This is a side of the Commander he never would have guessed existed and he wants to keep the conversation going as long as possible.
"It's a story about two people being connected through everything. It's... let me think... do turians have romance novels?"
"Yes we do."
"Any common threads, something that people love in those stories?"
Shepard types a search term into the interface and then looks at rows of images that Garrus recognises as turian novels. They show turians, men and women, with enticing waists, often in armor and a battlefield in the background.
Garrus points to one of those images. "That's a beloved concept, two soldiers from opposing armies, falling in love."
"Oh yes, enemies to lovers," Shepard says. "That's a common one for human novels too. Do you have soulmate stories?"
"Soulmates?"
Shepard flips back to the image with the human and alien hand and the red cloth that connects them. "It's the idea that two people are destined for each other. As if an invisible band connects them through all of the galaxy." She lingers on that image, one of her many fingers tracing the contour of the alien hand.
There is a small voice in the back of Garrus' mind that keeps drawing attention to the fact that she's reading novels about humans having romantic feelings for an alien. He will need time to get used to that thought and why his inner voice thinks it's important.
"I think we would call that Ingemaneun, Spirit-as-one." Solana had pads with her novels lying around all the time and Garrus sometimes took one out into the garden with him and read them. He liked the stories with soldiers from opposing armies best back then but he remembers a few where the protagonists were destined for each other, connected by their Spirit before they even knew each other. He thought those stories were rather ridiculous.
"Spirit-as-one? As in sharing a Spirit?" Shepard looks up to him, her whole face glowing in curiosity.
"Turian Spirits form around people from the bond they have in their unity. A family usually shares a Spirit, close friends have a Spirit, or a well working military unit would. It's something that happens as the people involved get closer to each other."
"If the Normandy were a turian ship, would she have a Spirit?"
"I'm pretty sure she already does," Garrus says, heat creeping up his neck. He has never discussed his spirituality with anybody, let alone an alien. But it feels like the most natural thing to do, sitting here with his strange, human commander. "So sharing a Spirit is normal but a Spirit has to grow. It grows from the friendship and trust between people, from..."
"From love," she says quietly and looks into her coffee cup, as if it has the answers to questions that neither of them wants to ask.
"Yes, but in those Ingemaneun stories, the Spirit is there from the beginning and connects two or more people before they even know each other." Saying it out loud, it sounds even more ridiculous.
Shepard nods. "I see. That's actually pretty close to our concept of soulmates. In some novels it's like a force that pulls them towards each other, in others they have identical marks on their bodies. It's the idea that some people are just destined to be with each other, no matter how far apart they are." She looks up to him with a grin. "I find it fascinating that the military hardasses of this galaxy are such romantics."
Garrus rubs his neck to hide his blush. "Yeah, not exactly something we advertise in military brochures."
Shepard laughs out loud, almost spilling her coffee and Garrus trills with her. Her cheeks are red and her eyes sparkle and her laughter shakes her whole body. He can't look away. She has weird curves and soft wobbly bits where he has angles and firmness. Her body language is mostly a mystery to him but he has never felt so connected to anybody.
Their laughter quiets down to a giggle and then Shepard tells him goodnight and leaves. Garrus stays in the Mako for a long time, just sitting on the bench. He twirls his drink in his hands and contemplates the confusing song his subharmonics want to sing about his commanding officer.
In the coming years he often thinks back to that evening. When he waves at her from the docks, not knowing that she will not return from this assignment. When Wrex wordlessly pulls him away from the memorial plaque for the Hero of the Citadel and gives him something to drink that numbs him for days. When he takes his first shot on Omega, when he sees his team work together like a well oiled machine, when someone looks at him with grateful eyes.
There is a part of him that refuses to believe that their connection has been broken, a stupid, nostalgic part of him that regrets what could have been. It makes his subharmonics sing in his sleep.
And then the personification of an angry Spirit storms over the bridge towards him, just when he has decided to not live through this any longer. Against all odds, she saves him.
His thoughts are still a mess but this time he doesn't want to have regrets. And it's confusing and embarrassing and they both don't quite know how to court the other. He almost gives up on the idea at some point, but Shepard just smiles at him and tells him that they will be alright, no matter what happens.
The night before their final mission, he takes all that he can scrape together from his confidence and goes up to her cabin. Regardless of how compatible their bodies are, he will make sure that she'll have a good time.
He fumbles, he almost breaks the bottle of wine and he doesn't know what to say. His subharmonics sing out of tune. But she puts her hand on his mandible and all his tension flows away.
"Relax, Garrus, it's me. It's going to be fine."
"It's just... I want something to go right, just once, Shepard." He has to fight down the desperate keen of his subharmonics.
"Let's start with you calling me Laura." She smiles brightly and keeps stroking over his mandible with her thumb.
"Laura?"
"That's my name."
He tries this new sound and subconsciously it gets layered with subharmonics humming in adoration until it is more than just a name. "Laura."
"Garrus." She doesn't have subharmonics, but it also sounds like more than just his name coming from her.
She steps closer and looks up to him. "Remember back on the first Normandy, when we talked about those romance novels?"
"Yes I remember." He never forgot.
"In those turian romance novels, what would the characters do first?"
He leans forward and presses his forehead against hers. It feels unusual, soft but with hard plates underneath, and she doesn't have scent glands. But it's perfect. It's her and he has dreamed about this since that smashed coffee cup in the Mako.
He hums at her and is delighted when she hums at him too. She may not have subharmonics but she tries to speak to him in his own language.
Finally a tiny spark of hope sings in his chest. This just might not turn into an interspecies nightmare.
He breathes in her scent and says, "In those human romance novels, what would the characters do now?"
She smiles and puts her hands on his neck, pulling his head down. She presses her lips against his mouthplates, softly nibbling at them until he opens them up. And then her tongue slides into his mouth, brushing against his own and his subharmonics drop to another level.
After this, everything just falls into place, her soft curves fitting perfectly into his sharp angles. She responds to him encircling her waist in reverence, just like he responds to her kisses along his neck. What they don't know, they learn from each other, guiding, moaning, communicating with their bodies.
He licks her to ecstasy on her guidance and marvels at her unrestrained joy. She takes him into her body and rides him, using his cowl for leverage until his subharmonics scream out a song that every turian would understand.
The reapers do their best to rip them apart but they find each other again, on the moon over his burning homeplanet. Every turian in his proximity knows instantly what she is to him because he can't stop his subharmonics from singing.
Everything and everyone pulls at her, demands of her time, but he finally can get her away and all to himself for once. He takes her on a date at the top of the Presidium and just tries to have fun with her.
The C-Sec officer is not amused. "Are you aware that you broke about 130 regulations?"
"Yes, I am," Garrus says, squinting out of the Skycar. Shepard sits next to him, smiling at the turian officer. They don't even try to hide that they're not wearing most of their clothes. The darkened windows of the Skycar don't hide much.
"I must ask you to accompany me to the station." The officer ticks a box on his interface and glares at them.
Shepard sighs and leans over Garrus' lap to look at the officer. "Listen, I don't like doing this but I'm pulling the Spectre card."
"Spectre? You?" The officer trills dismissively, which causes Garrus to threaten him with bodily harm through his subharmonics.
Shepard flicks her omni-tool open and sends out her ID. "I'm Commander Shepard of the Normandy, this is Garrus Vakarian, advisor to the Primarch and we're on a date!" She stares at him and even half-naked and sprawled across the lap of an equally half-dressed turian, Commander Shepard's stare is a weapon. The officer takes a step back and trills in a slight panic.
Shepard changes her tone, "All I want is to spend one afternoon with the love of my life, just us, before we throw ourselves into the war again. Can we please have that?"
The officer nods, mumbles something of Spectres and flees to his own skycar as if he is afraid to get shot.
Garrus' subharmonics sing. He can't help it.
"You can stop looking so smug," Shepard says, climbing into his lap. "Yes, I said it and I meant it." She kisses him. "Love of my life."
Garrus has never wished more than now that Shepard could understand his subharmonics, because the song in his chest already tells all he wants to say.
"You don't have to say anything," she says with a smile. "I know you sing it."
He lets his subharmonics sing louder and thinks back to how they met, how he got so lucky to end up here, with this woman to share a Spirit with, in his arms.
"Laura, do you remember when we sat in the Mako, on the original Normandy and you showed me that book you liked?" He watches her face light up at his question.
"Of course I remember, I had such a crush on you after that."
Now he has to laugh. "You had a crush on me?"
She grins, caressing the inside of his cowl as she speaks. "I was so nervous, having a turian on board. I didn't know what to expect but it definitely wasn't this cute, spiky giant who chatted about romance novels with me. And then you told me about this thing with, what's it called, what we would call Soulmates?"
"Ingemaneun," he says with a deep rumble in his subharmonics.
"Sharing a Spirit, right?"
"Yes, as one."
"That was so beautiful, it changed my whole view of everything." She sighs at the memory. "I mean, turians being romantic, krogan having family heirlooms, a quarian handling a shotgun — what an amazing galaxy, when you look past the stereotypes."
Garrus strokes over her cheek with the pad of his finger. "It changed everything for me too."
"Yes?"
He pulls her forward, to rest his forehead against hers. "Yes. Because Ingemaneun? That's us."
She presses against his forehead and lets out a breath. "Soulmates?"
"Yes, Soulmates. Ingemaneun." He breathes in her scent and presses his mouth against her lips.
He can feel her lips move against his mouthplates, forming the unfamiliar syllables. "Inge-mane-un."
"Yes," he says, his subharmonics singing for her, "Ingemaneun, my love."