A/N: Thank you all for the reviews and the alerts!

The prompt for this one (from jediserenity82 - thank you!) was: "Are you drunk?" for Shepard and Garrus.

Big thanks to Suilven for beta reading.


This had to have been one of the most productive days since Garrus had met up with the ghost of his old commander, stopped a rocket with his face, and subsequently awoken aboard the Normandy SR-2.

Today, they'd destroyed an Eclipse listening outpost from orbit, found an emergency beacon on their way to a refuel station, saved the last quarian survivor of a shipwrecked crew on a hostile planet, and mined enough resources in the system to finally be able to afford those ship upgrades he had been itching to install for the last four weeks.

He'd even managed to squeeze in a few minutes of algorithm checks on his calibrations before it was time to go to bed. And now, bone-tired and unable to concentrate on anything anymore, Garrus was ready to collapse onto his cot and call it a night.

He got as far as pulling off his tunic and chucking it into his laundry bag when the door to the forward battery slid open with a startled hiss and Commander Shepard stormed in.

Wearing only a sleeveless shirt and a pair of short pants, and carrying a bottle of whisky Garrus recognized as the one she'd confiscated from Zaeed as punishment for Zorya in her hand, she stopped abruptly a few feet into the room when her eyes fell on Garrus.

"Garrush Vakarian!" she roared, waving the bottle in the air, sprinkling drops of amber liquid onto the floor. "You gonna shag me or not?"

Garrus's eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. "I'm sorry, what?"

"Fuck waiting," Shepard declared defiantly, her voice thundering in the confined space. "Fuck disrapshing… disracking… dishtracting the crew. Fuck it." She raised the bottle to her lips, but her hand paused in the air as an amused giggle bubbled up in her throat. "Acshully, no. Fuck me."

Garrus took an appraising look at the amount of alcohol still left in the glass. It wasn't much; apparently, she'd been having a lovely time with the contents of that bottle for quite a while.

"Are you drunk?" he asked, not as much to get an answer (since, to him, the reply to his question was quite obvious), but to draw her attention to the fact that maybe she had consumed a bit more of that stuff than she should have.

She crinkled her brows into a frown and pointed a finger at Garrus's chest. "Maybe."

She burst out laughing, seemingly finding herself quite hilarious. Garrus, however, did not quite share her enthusiasm. Sure, she was an adorable drunk, but the way she was swaying, barely able to stand on her own two feet, there was no knowing how long she could hold on to that bottle in her hand. The last thing he needed was for her to drop that thing and shatter it into a thousand tiny, razor sharp pieces on his floor.

Making use of her distraction as she cracked herself up, he reached out and took the bottle from her, and deposited it safely on the console to his right. She didn't seem to mind; in fact, she appeared to have something else to turn her attention to now.

Her guffaws quieting down into a lustful smirk, she slid her eyes up and down his naked torso, and suddenly, without any preamble, she lunged at him with outstretched arms. "Come 'ere. Lemme touch you, you sexy beast."

Instinctively, he shot out a hand and braced it on her forehead, arm extended and locked, to prevent her drunken, grabby little hands from making contact with his body. She flailed, trying to push closer, but to no avail. He did, after all, have excellent reach.

"Dammit, Garrus," she whined, "dontcha want me?"

"Yeah. I do," he said, deflecting a sneak attack from the side. "But not like this. You've had too much to drink, you don't know what you're doing, and I'm not going to take advantage of—"

Shepard suddenly stood back, almost making him fall forward, and folded her arms in front of her chest. Scowling, she blew a loose strand of hair out of her face. "So, watcha wanna do?"

"Right now, I just want to sleep. You should, too."

Shepard's lips stretched into a grin, and before Garrus could even blink an eye, she darted around him and made a beeline to his cot. "Okay."

Garrus heaved out a frustrated sigh as he turned around and watched her plop down on his bed. "Come on, Shepard, you know what I meant."

Instead of a reply, she patted the space next to her.

Garrus cast his gaze up at the ceiling in exasperation before he began to pace, desperately trying not to look at her long, bare legs, or the intriguing shape of her collarbone, or the little bit of skin showing at her waist below the hem of her top. "Look, Shepard, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't tempted. I have been thinking about us, and how we would, you know…" He stopped, rubbing the plates on his forehead, wondering if she could see the blush creeping up his neck. "I've done some research, and I think we could make it work. And it could be good. Very good. For both of us. But… not like this. You're my friend—my best friend, dammit, and I'm not going to jeopardize what we have by making our first time a drunken roll in the sack. And I don't think that's what you would want either."

There was no answer, and he stopped, taking a deep breath, and finally looked back at her. She lay sprawled out on his cot, dead to the world, one leg still on the floor, one arm hanging down over the side.

"Great." He walked over to his bed and stared down at her sleeping form, wondering what in spirits' name he was supposed to do now. Should he just let her sleep? Should he pick her up and carry her up to her cabin? What if there were crewmen out there; what would they think if they saw him lug the body of their drunken, barely dressed, unconscious commander through the mess like that?

No, that would just not do. He'd let her sleep for a couple of hours, then wake her up and send her on her way. She should be pretty sober by then; with her metabolism, she was always the first one to shake off the effects of their visits to the local bars when on shore leave.

Feeling better about the situation now, he bent down to lift her leg onto the bed to make her more comfortable. She didn't move, letting him position her body, but as soon as he attempted to straighten up and step back, her arms were around his neck.

"Hold me, Garrush," she mumbled in her sleep, tightening her grip when he tried to pry her hands off.

Garrus let out a sigh. Damn, she was stubborn even when unconscious.

Shaking his head, he pushed her towards the wall to make room for himself, and slid in next to her. It was going to be hell, lying in bed with her like this, but he might as well try to get a little sleep himself.

She moaned softly as she burrowed into his arms and held him tight, and Garrus couldn't stop himself from inhaling her scent, a mixture of soap, gun oil, and alcohol, and running a hand down her back as he closed his eyes and tried to drift off.

Maybe she was right. To hell with waiting. Next time they had shore leave, he was going to buy the best wine he could afford and go up to her cabin and then, and then, they could finally make use of his impressive reach and her admirable flexibility.