Shepard was visibly calmer when she stepped from the bathroom. Garrus saw her reflection in the glass of the aquarium and spun to face her.

"Look, Commander, you're right. I shouldn't have come in. I got worried." He flicked his eyes downward, feeling Ezmay's eyes on him. "You act like you're made of steel. If I didn't know you better, I'd think you were."

Ezmay weighed this, and nodded to him. Her face was perfectly calm, and for some reason, the sight of it raised Garrus's ire. Did she always have to act the ice princess?

"Actually, I am now, apparently." She said with a hint of a grin. "I probably owe you and Tali an explanation anyway. You've all been tolerant of my bullshit."

He was immediately soothed. No longer irritated, he took a step forward.

"Shepard, you told me once that you didn't want to..uh..pressure me. I'm not going to do that now. You don't owe anyone an explanation. I just wish there was something I could do to help."

A slight blush bloomed in Ezmay's cheeks. Yeah. Pressuring him. Did one count knowing glances and half-cocked smiles as pressure? Because she'd done plenty of that. And the good sport had taken it in stride. He'd done his fair share of pressure back.

"Help, huh?" She weighed that, and then grinned suddenly. Garrus was thrown off. A sudden smile like that usually meant trouble.

"You know what I need?" She asked. He thought…maybe…it was supposed to be rhetorical.

'A good, long shag?' Garrus shook his head. He was trying to clear away the thought; Shepard took it as an answer. He was suddenly ashamed of himself.

"I need the old days." She folded her hands behind her back, straightening up, and speaking matter-of-factly.

He was confused. Did she mean she was going to go back to the Alliance?

"Uh…" He was the pinnacle of articulate. "You've been thinking about this for a while." "Yeah. I can't help what Kaiden said, or did, but I can't let it keep haunting me. He moved on. I need to as well." Shepard's head bobbed as if in punctuation.

The low light glinted off her black hair. Garrus ripped his eyes away from the glossy sheen and focused on her. How bloody long was this going to hang over her head? Talons tightened as Alenko's face appeared in his mind. Once again, the urge to murder gripped him. Betrayal. Alenko should have made love to the Code, rather than the woman.

"To be fair, Shepard, Horizon was only a few months ago…"

She'd already turned and was punching furiously at her private terminal.

"I've got an assignment for you, Garrus."

"Oh?" His posture corrected instantly. Funny how the no-nonsense tone and the official words could kick him backwards through time.

"Yes. Until we reach Citadel space, I'm putting the crew on a light rotation. That includes both you and me. I want you to go down in the cargo area, and look through the stores. There's some of that good wine left that we picked up on Illium. You can drink that, right?" Her eyes went to him over her shoulder.

There was momentary confusion, but Garrus picked up on what she was getting at very quickly.

"Commander, honestly, I think I've taken enough of your credits for now. I wouldn't want to bankrupt the savior of the galaxy."

"That remains to be seen, turian." She'd turned away, and her voice was still no-nonsense, though Garrus could see her ears slowly tug upwards as she smiled. "If I remember correctly, I was up 500 credits on you last time…"

"You were down 380, and yes, I can drink that wine."

There was suddenly a datapad waving in his face. He snatched it away from her. A glance found engineering specs and Shepard's approval code.

"While you're down there, take that to Tali. She'll need that to requisition replacement parts on the Citadel." She was serious now and standing with her arms crossed and a gentle smile on her face. "When you're done, bring that wine and your money back up here."

He'd intended to toss her on her bed, and then to do a large celebratory dance to mock her. But it had ended with him bending to drop her, and then falling over, off the side of the bed. Shepard's laughter echoed around the cabin.

'You stupid ass.' She said again, rolling to peer at him over the edge of the bed. For Garrus's part, his head was wooden and up was down. With a monumental effort, he righted himself, sat up, and then leaned back against the bulkhead. Gods…how much had they drank. He squinted at the wine bottle, and saw it was empty.

'You know what, Shepard? I'm getting another wine and I'm going to drink you under the table.'

'Right.' Shepard turned. She slithered off the edge of the bed, and started hauling herself to the table. Stumbled to her feet, and then stood upright.

'Come here and help me up.'

'God, Vakarian, you're so helpless.' Nonetheless, she edged closer and bent to extend her hand to him. His talons clasped around her fleshy paw. But instead of standing, he yanked on her. Shepard fell, and Garrus closed his arms around her as she landed on his chest, between his knees. All of a sudden, his face was in her hair, his nose at her ear and his mouth at the curve of her jaw. He couldn't kiss her, like he'd seen humans do, because of the lack of the appropriate flesh to do so. But he nuzzled her, inhaling the scent of gun oil, regulation fabric, wine, and below that, a note of a sweet flower that spoke of refinement. Shepard froze in his arms, but did not break away. He was glad.

He'd acted on impulse. When she stood there, fighting the effects of the alcohol, carefree for a moment, she was…appealing, to say the least. He'd come up here to blow off steam, but chickened out at the last minute. So they'd partied the way they always partied instead. Hadn't wanted to take advantage of her. Hadn't wanted to con sex from her when her heart had a big hole on it. If her heart were elsewhere, all he'd ever get was her body. That wasn't good enough for Garrus Vakarian.

'Now you're definitely being insubordinate.' She murmured into his shoulder.

'You can always throw me in the brig.' His voice reminded her. She had to have felt the rumble in his chest, and the stirring below his waist.

Not yet. She wasn't free and clear yet. He wasn't going to have sex with her yet.

'Don't tempt me.'

She seemed quite suddenly less drunk, and Garrus himself seemed to achieve a sort of clarity as well. Indeed, when she raised her head to look at him, her eyes focused just fine. Garrus felt a little bit of something in his chest slipping away. It seemed to flow from him to her. There was sudden, desperate urge to mark her. She'd look damn good with a blue tattoo along the line of her neck. The feel of her small, very warm frame against the line of his torso felt very, very good. Her voice, when she spoke again, was lucid and curious.

'Where does this go from here, Garrus?'

A sudden thought leapt into him. Did he dare?

'Ezmay…' He tried her name on his tongue, and looked to see what she thought. There were no imperious looks and reprimands. Only silent waiting. 'Well….uh..I hadn't planned that far yet.'

She moved against him, and he saw that she was getting to her feet. Her hands came out, and he clasped his talons around them. With effort, she hefted him up, with a little of his help.

'C'mere.' She said, holding on to his talons still. She backed until the back of her knees were at the bed, and then she sat. One hand patted the smooth, white coverlet beside her. 'It's late. Let's lie down.'

Garrus was suddenly, painfully embarrassed as he sat. He talked a good line, been around, seen so many bad things. Now he was behaving as flighty as an asari maiden newly loosed into the galaxy.

'I'm…I'm sorry…' He began to stammer. Ezmay hushed him with a finger pressed to his mouth as she began to turn and curl on the bed.

'This thing'll happen at its own pace.' Her hand drifted down to his elbow, and she tugged slightly, indicating he should lay with her. 'Let's just let Fate dictate this one.'

Garrus collapsed next to her, curling, twining his arm around her waist. At the last moment he started, and then relaxed. Humans probably didn't have the same erogenous zones. He wasn't behaving out of fashion.

As they dozed, Garrus felt her fingers brush over his scarred mandible. He slitted his eyes open, blinking sleep away. A smile was on Shepard's face, her eyes closed, her chest settling into the gentle rise/fall of sleep. She looked content. Garrus's chest began to vibrate nearly imperctibly in a purr.

"You know, I was winning until you changed up the game." Garrus peered down at the hand he'd been dealt. For a couple hours, they'd played poker until Shepard got bored, and insisted on a change of game. More likely, she was irritated at the growing pile of currency on Garrus's side of the table, but he wasn't going to be a jerk about it.

"Hey, turnabout's fair play. Remember when I played that ridiculous turian card game with you? I'm pretty sure you hustled me…"

"I don't hustle."

"..and before I know it, you're up nearly a thousand credits."

"Bardac's a great game. It's not my fault you're terrible at it."

Shepard tossed a silver coin to the center of the table. An assortment of gold, silver, and copper coloured coins had grown there. A silver-sheened claw tapped a matching bet to the pile, and then Shepard dealt. Garrus meticulous arranged each of his cards in ascending order and according to suit. Helped him keep things straight.

"How is it that you're having trouble with this game?" She said, teasing him. Her flat, white teeth glinted at him. For a moment, he admired the contrast it made against her swarthy skin. Garrus gestured with his cards.

"It's not that I don't understand the rules." He tapped the briscola card with a claw. "It's that you seem to have a never-ending supply of trumps."

"You want me to show you my hand? I'm just lucky."

"Riiiight." Garrus reached out a claw, and pulled one of her sleeves away from her arm. Shepard barked a short, sharp laugh and tugged her arm away.

Her hand was drifting towards the ashtray, where a cigarette was waiting for her, when suddenly the ship seemed to turn upside down. The impact lurched everything to the right, and Shepard fell to her side, skidding along the leather couch and her legs flailing over her head. Cards and credits rained to the floor, and their glasses overturned. The sharp stink of wine suddenly flooded the cabin. Garrus was tossed into the edge of the couch, wine sliding along the floor and soaking into the leg of his shipsuit before he could move out of the way.

"What the bloody hell?" Shepard's voice rang out at the same time that Garrus was reaching out to check on her. The shaking of the ship stopped, and silence prevailed, aside from Shepard's heavy breathing and the sound of general alarms going off around the ship. "EDI, what just happened?"

EDI's voice came as Garrus was picking himself up. He tugged Shepard to her feet.

"There was an explosion in Cargo Bay One. At the moment, I am venting the bay to extinguish the fires."

Garrus was confused, and when he looked to the Commander, he saw the same confusion mirrored there. Cargo Bay One was situated beneath Grunt's area. It was accessible through a small staircase, and through the bay doors. Before Grunt had moved in, they'd kept it unaired and unheated, but since the krogan had taken up residence, they'd juggled supplies around. Currently it housed stores and rations for long trips into deep space. There simply wasn't anything down there that could have exploded.

"EDI, is Grunt okay?" Garrus spoke up.

"Grunt was not in starboard cargo at the time of the explosion; He is currently in the galley."

Shepard was already shrugging her uniform jacket on as she moved towards the door; a backwards glance over her shoulder found Garrus right at her heels.

They took the elevator down to the lower decks and waited until EDI stopped venting the cargo area. Garrus had to admit that his blood was singing with excitement. The real danger was long past, of course. A quick conversation with Joker had confirmed that the hull was safe and intact; they would need to conduct repairs of course. It was fortunate that Shepard had put them on a course to Illium. The maintenance bays of the asari were top-notch. Garrus caught himself grinning as he moved beside Shepard. It was thrilling, watching her issue orders in that terse, no-bullshit kind of way she had.

"Miranda, get me the manifest for the last time we filled up Cargo Bay One. I want to know what we had in there. Tali, take Jacob and go down there." She nodded to a couple of other technicians. "Go with her. Do a sweep. Check for radiological, chemical…whatever. Find out what it was. Whatever the physical components were, they're out in space now. Check for residue."

"Commander, I'd recommend going through surveillance and seeing if there was anything unusual." He piped up at her side. Already his mind was working. They'd last docked at the fuel depot in the Shrike Abyssal. Before that, they were at Omega. Was it family of that batarian that tried to poison Shepard?

"Good call. Joker, I want you and EDI combing the sensors just before that explosion. If there was so much as a mouse fart in the ship, I want to know."

Joker's voice over the intercom was half-amused, half-serious.

"Mouse farts. Got it."

Shepard's hand brushed over Garrus's shoulder; he turned to her, a little surprised. Her mouth had a quirk to the corner.

"Vakarian, don't think you've gotten off easy. We're going to continue our game of briscola later." Her eyes held a gleam that spoke of mischief.

"Right, Commander. Be sure to restock your sleeve. You burned through a lot of high cards."

With that, the two parted. Each had their own duties in the wake of the explosion. It was curious, though. Each found their minds drifting backwards in time to the cabin and the card game.