This is just a short one shot as requested by Mark on the Demand a Better ending to Mass Effect 3 Facebook page. He asked for a story about Tali and Marcus Shepard which was either about how bad he is at building a house for Tali or a quick story about them getting married. So I decided to go with the first one :)

Hope you like it Mark!

Rannoch was warm. It was odd to notice it now when he had been in this very place little less then two weeks ago but it didn't surprise him. The last time Marcus had been here he had been fully clad in armor, covered in wind swept dirt and the blood of reaper troops, fighting for his life against a reaper. He hadn't exactly been in the position to stop and admire the scenery but he would gladly do the same thing a hundred times over if he had needed to. He had gotten Tali back her home world after all, and even if it had been impossible he would of rather died trying then doing nothing.

Wiping a bead of sweat from his brow Marcus leant back from the schematics he had pinned to the floor with a few stray rocks and frowned. Everyone was rebuilding right now, Rannoch was no exception there, but where most planets were still clearing up debris and burying the dead the quarians had only had to remove the carcass of one dead reaper before they could rebuild.

And it was going well. The geth had really sped up the manual labor and the foundations for most of the houses in the area were already up... Well when he said most he meant all of them except theirs. He had to stand on a few toes to get it but Tali had her beach front property and now he was trying to do something with it. He had denied the geths help, he wanted to do this himself. He wanted to marry her on the cliff they had reclaimed Rannoch on and whisk her away to the beach front property that he, and he alone had built her... but it was proving difficult.

He was no engineer or builder, he was a soldier and the height of his engineering skills was hacking open doors. Yet he had assumed building a house would be easy enough, he had destroyed his fair share of buildings after all, and he had thought building them up again would be just as easy.

"Well..." He drawled, glancing between Tali and the building materials he had been given. His frown deepened wondering how on earth he could turn them into an apartment before he sighed and sat down next to a pile of bricks. He placed two bricks a few inches apart before balancing two more on top, resting them together to form a small triangle. "I think I'm going to have to accept that this is the best I can do."

He saw Talis shadow come over to where he was sitting and looked over at her as she sat down beside him. She giggled as a small bird landed next to the small pile of bricks and hoped into the shade they provided before rested her arm around his shoulders. "She seems to like it." She said, and he could tell she was smiling behind her helmet just by her tone.

"Yes but I want you to like it." He joked and she laughed at him.

"Shepard, you could bomb the place and call the crater home and I would still love it." She admitted, nestling into his shoulder. Looking at the stack of bricks, she reached for his hand and smiled. "I mean how could I not love anything you do?" She looked from the bricks to his face and he could see him illuminated eyes narrow into a smiling expression. "I am the quarian who can claim that her boyfriend took back our home world, no other couple can hold a candle to that as you humans say, and if they can be happy so can we."

Marcus laughed and brought his free hand to stroke the cloth of her suit that rested around her helmet.

"All those other couples have a house."

She laughed. "And so will we if you let the geth build us one."

Marcus grinned and led down on the dirt, staring up at the clear blue sky sighing at the new found peace. "Fine, we can tell them to build us a bungalow with as many bedrooms as they can fit on the land we own."

"Isn't one bedroom enough?" She whispered at him and he turned to smile at her.

"Oh come on Tali, think of the children."

I hate to cut it short but I think that line was the perfect way to end this little drabble :)

Please R&R and if you would like to request a one shot please say so in a review or PM me, I'm pretty much open to everything :)

- Nicolette out!