Given its owner, Shepard shouldn't have been surprised with the level of encryption on the data pad, and yet her frustration rose as all her usual avenues came up fruitless. This was the point in a mission when she would usually turn towards Tali or EDI or maybe even Garrus himself and call upon them for their expertise, and though she was sure EDI already knew what trouble she was getting up to, Shepard couldn't bring herself to make the outward admittance to the AI. With the data pad synced to her terminal, Shepard sighed and let the final program run its course. Two hours, thirty one minutes remaining.

The door behind her hissed and she shoved the borrowed pad aside and beneath a stack of others, turning the terminal screen off while her shoulders stiffened at another's presence. There was only one person she'd granted free access to her quarters, and even without the clack of his boots on the flooring, Shepard would have known who it was.

"Garrus," she said, her voice raised an octave, a poor attempt at disguising her earlier actions. Shepard glanced to her omni-tool, taking the time. It was far later than she'd thought. "Expected you here… hours ago."

"Ran into some complications, but no worry—" he amended swiftly as he stepped further into her cabin, leaning his shoulder up against the end of her display cabinet while looking down to where she sat at her desk, "it's all been handled already."

Although Shepard had punched a few reporters in the mouth, when it came down to it she was an old-pro at keeping what she really wanted to say and do to herself. At worst, an edge of irritation caught the tail end of her words as she spoke, but on the whole, she was an actress when she needed to be. Talking to the Council, promising Anderson and Hackett she had things more figured out than she really did, reassuring her crew that they'd all return from a mission safe and sound, and even faking orgasms a few lovers into her past. So rather than barely conceal the turmoil that bred in her chest, Shepard let herself push all the rest to the side.

She raised the foot of the leg crossed over the other at the knee, the toe of her sock brushing against his clothed spur. "That's why I keep you around."

"I think you said a few nights ago that you only kept me around for my tongue, actually," he corrected with his mandibles spread wide, a cheeky turian grin.

"Mm, that's right. How could I forget?"

"I'm a little hurt," he said, mock indignation in his dual-flanged vocals.

Shepard smiled, and easily enough, she was no longer pretending to be taken up in his companionship. "Can I ever make it up to you?" That foot rose, sliding up along his thigh and towards his narrowed waist.

A cough caught in Garrus' throat, his feet growing unsteady beneath him to the point where he even needed to reach out, fingertips brushing against the edge of her desk for an added point of balance.

"Yeah," she nodded, and letting her foot drop back to the floor, scooted the rolling chair in his direction, "that's what I thought." In the end, she was just close enough to reach her hand up to the fabric of his tunic, tugging unrelentingly until he was forced forward and down, bending at the waist, closer to where she sat. Their faces brought together, Shepard ghosted her lips over his mandible, only brushing gently to his flesh every inch or so when he rhythmically flared them in an expression of his excitement and anxiousness.

"Spirits," he struggled in getting his words out, even more so as Shepard finally touched down her lips against the flesh just before his auditory canal, the warmth wet moisture of the tip of her tongue barely a hint in her actions, "I was worried I'd be too late."

"What'd you think?" An arm slung over his shoulder, fingers slipping down in through the opening for his neck as fingers traversed the heat of the back of his carapace. She kissed his brow plate, and then worked southward, over the smaller ones that made up, for all intents and purposes, his nose. "That Commander Shepard sometimes isn't up for the job? You should know better, Garrus," she reprimanded, pulling back just far enough to shake her head while their eyes continued their otherwise contact. "I've always got time for you."

With sudden, brave gusto, Garrus behaved more human than turian, pressing his mouth against hers. She wasn't surprised by it, had even grown to hope for such shows of affection from him when they were alone ever since they had been reunited on Menae, and so Shepard's lips were already parted for his. Her hand pulled from his back, instead slung around his neck and in the hollow of his cowl as she leaned back some in her chair, continuing to keep him close. Garrus purred and groaned in response to her increasingly loud, throaty moans. He acted—and this time he did surprise her—hoisting her up and forcing her thighs into the indentations at his waist, using his hips as a shelf of support. Shepard clung to him for dear life and without further ado, Garrus carried her, positively and absolutely wrapped about him, to the bed they shared.

—

Not long after her skin had cooled from its flushed coloring due to both heat and orgasm, after she had worked muscles so hard she was sure she could already feel that pleasant sore ache, after Garrus had curled in towards her in his exhausted state, Shepard lay awake beside him, watching the darkness of space pass slowly up above.

Somewhere beyond the cocoon of warmth created by each exhale of Garrus' heated breath against her bare skin and the warmth he shared with her under the blankets, the soft ping of her terminal's alert resounded in the darkness. It was quiet and solitary, and if it weren't for the echo of it reverberating in her ears in the otherwise silent bedroom, she might have thought she'd dreamt it altogether, or at the very least, attributed it to a case of tinnitus that had been wrecking even her new, Cerberus-improved ear drums.

She licked her lip, salty still with the taste of the turian next to her, and gently rolled to her side, facing inward to Garrus. He didn't stir at the slight jostling, he'd never been a light sleeper which had always struck her as odd given their line of work, so Shepard tried not to press her luck much further. Part of her mind was drawn away from the present toward the immediate future, stuck obsessing over the possibilities over what that data pad held for her, and yet another portion sought out the recent past, her eyes blinking shut as she swore she could feel the rocking motion of his pelvis against hers. Shepard rubbed her thighs together, squeezing at the imagined sensation while she scooted herself in even closer, breathing in the scent of his plates and skin.

There wasn't a thing wrong with him, she told herself. There couldn't be. It wasn't just her denial, she rationalized, even as Mordin's careful and somewhat fearful tone rang in her ears otherwise. Garrus was warm, he was strong, he was unrelenting, he was everything he'd always been. Hell, even the scarring on his mandible had healed over more than she'd ever expected while they'd been apart. Shepard laid a hand against the front of his carapace, manually feeling him breathe while she listened to it as well. In. Out. In. Out. She timed her own breaths with his own before she even knew it, and then together they were breathing just as strong and steady. In. Out. It was a simple thing, a constant thing, and for a second it let Shepard find her calm. He was fine. Of course he was fine.

When she wanted to believe something, Shepard could convince herself of almost anything. And at that moment, more than anything in the universe, maybe even more than she wanted to get rid of the reapers, Shepard needed to believe all was well with the person curled up beside her.

—

Hours later, Shepard woke to the soft buzz of an alarm paired with the subtle, gradual raising of the cabin's lights. The only good thing about being in Alliance custody, she fondly recalled, had been the ability to sleep in. Not that she hadn't missed the structure of having things to do, as she'd found herself stir crazy by the second day, but that solid seven or eight hours… it had been heavenly. Shepard groaned as her body stretched, legs extending out towards the foot of her bed, arms up towards the headboard, palms pressed flush against the half wall there.

"Get up," she said after clearing her throat, nudging her forehead against Garrus' own. He offered a noncommittal grunt in reply, so she sweetened the offer. "Get up and you can shower with me." He grunted again, albeit a sweeter, more interested sound. "Meet me in three."

With a pat to his arm and a belated, hesitated kiss to his forehead, Shepard peeled herself from the bedsheets and headed for the bathroom. She passed her desk, moving on by the blinking indicator light of the stolen data pad, and once behind the closed bathroom door, drowned herself in the steam of the shower. The routine was, well, routine. Soap, shampoo, conditioner. Lather and shave all the necessary parts while the grogginess washed itself away. But it was only when she was reaching to turn the water off that she realized she'd spent the entire shower's length alone.

She towel dried her hair and then wrapped the damp cloth around herself before leaving the bathroom, but where she expected to see Garrus still asleep in the bed, having presumably never gotten up, she found him not just awake, but already mostly dressed, fishing around the floor for his tunic. A question appeared in her risen brow as she stood at the top of the steps, looking down at him and her bedroom.

"Forget something?" Shepard asked, more than a hint of teasing lust in her voice.

Garrus raised his head for only the briefest of moments before beginning to turn his shirt right side out. His facial plates also seemed inquisitive in a similar expression. "What?"

"I can't trust you to listen when you're asleep, I guess," she sighed and stepped down to meet him where he stood, rising on the balls of her feet to press her mouth to his jaw. "But you really do need to shower—you smell like sex."

"Oh," he said, ducking his head as a bit of quiet crept out. "Yeah. You're right. I should do… that. There enough time?"

She glanced towards the clock on her nightstand rather than call up her omni-tool while she searched through her drawers, pulling out underwear and a bra. "Make it fast and we can even get breakfast."

"Right," he nodded, and quickly enough began to pull at his trousers he'd only just put on, unfastening them as he walked towards the bathroom. Garrus stopped on the way, pausing behind Shepard, and after lingering, took a second to nuzzle the back of her wet hair. "Right."

Shepard turned to see him go, smiling at his backside as she pulled on her undergarments.

The sound of the shower and fan system clicked on behind the closed door and Shepard headed to her desk, hairbrush in hand. She powered up her terminal screen and set out as any other morning, scrolling through the messages she'd missed in her sleep. Nothing terribly important—if it had been, EDI would have woken her—but rather it was simply the usual, and Shepard was thankful for the ordinary. Supply requisitions, a couple pieces of not particularly interesting nor helpful intel, an updated itinerary and expected arrival time for Tuchanka.

From the corner of her eye she caught the flickering light of a data pad. Her stomach dropped at the reminder of the previous night. Shepard reached for it, pushing the others aside, and as she took it into her lap and turned the screen on, Garrus emerged from the shower, steam following him as he went.

"What do you think of Eve?" She questioned, eyes scanning over the print on her screen while he began to towel dry and dress.

"Who?"

"Eve—you know that's what Mordin's calling the female krogan."

He lifted his head to look to her, eyes squinted, stern, serious, and confused. "What are you talking about? You'd have to go all the way to Tuchanka to find a female krogan."

Though she was listening, part of Shepard wasn't really listening. Too lost in the information on the data pad at that exact moment, it took Shepard an extra breath to really understand and process what was being said between Garrus' words. Showing symptoms of early onset Corpalis syndrome, an earlier doctor had written on Garrus' file. Mordin included his own notes, that of which were mostly just a confirmation of what had already been said. She scrolled down, and in that instant looked up towards where Garrus was standing, watching her. The words on the screen immediately jumped to life in the back of her throat.

She didn't—couldn't—say anything to him. In the distance, Garrus simply shrugged and went back to getting dressed like nothing was amiss, and Shepard… Shepard was only able to sit perfectly still where she was, so unmoving she wasn't even sure if she'd drawn a complete breath. Her eyes dropped back down to the data pad and limply she dragged a finger over the length of the screen, trying to decipher the complicated into more layman's terms for herself. There wasn't much to be understood, not by someone without any kind of medical training, but she knew what was important. Hell, she'd seen it with her own two eyes just now, and if she really thought about it, Shepard was sure she'd be able to find other instances she'd simply overlooked.

"Eve," Garrus mumbled to himself quietly in the bedroom. "Eve." He said her name again, this time with a familiarity and recognition, and then with a sheepishness that was more his own, he coughed to clear his throat, and stood a little straighter. "She's not what I expected," he shyly added, his voice louder to reach her.

But Shepard had nothing to say, instead drew her hand to her face, elbow on the arm rest of her chair. Her hand ran across her brow, bent downward to shield her eyes away, giving herself a sense of privacy when she needed it most. She took a deep breath, and for the first time in a long time, sat still just because she didn't know what else to do.

"Shepard?" Garrus said, no longer from far away but right beside her. Concern was heavy in his vocals and soon enough he touched the bare skin of her shoulder. "What's wrong?"

Her body trembled at the contact and she could do nothing else but shut her eyes and lean into where their skin met. Garrus knelt beside her and took her cheek in his hand, drawing her face towards his, forcing her hand to drop away. Her eyes were watered and red, and somewhere inside of herself, Shepard's figurative skin crawled at just how much emotion she shared in front of another. She couldn't remember the last time she'd cried, although she'd felt the tears begging to form in her eyes when she'd said goodbye to her crew and turned herself over to the Alliance all those months ago.

Garrus wore a wide-eyed fear as he watched her, his mandibles spreading and pulling back in tightly as though he was prepared to say or do something but always teetered on the edge and came back. He opted to lean into her and brush their cheeks together. "What happened?"

"You," she said, her fingers digging into the back of his collar, unconcerned if pain pricked his flesh.

"I don't—" he started, but before he could finish, Shepard was pulling back, putting enough distance between them only to tip forward the procured data pad. There was short lived hesitance, but he gave in the nearer she pushed it across her lap towards him, and though it took a minute for him to read and comprehend what she'd seen—Shepard knew exactly when he truly understood. He didn't look at her for a full minute after, his body sighing and deflating where he kneeled.

"Were you just never going to tell me?"

"If I could help it… yeah," he admitted.

"Well—" she breathed deep, those hadn't been the words she'd been expecting, and as a result, what left her mouth hadn't been what she'd been expecting either. "Fuck you, Garrus."

That got his attention. He looked back up to her, but stayed silent.

"Fuck you." Shepard pushed her chair away, standing in the process and moving around him, cutting back to the bedroom of her quarters. Every muscle in her body tightened all at once, blood pumping fast just like it did in the middle of a particularly bad fire fight. There were no bullets flying now though, just the pure, unadulterated infuriation she felt. Infuriation and… well, a lot more than that. A lot more that she didn't know how to contend with yet.

She tore into her closet, pulling out a fresh tank top and duty shirt, but when it caught on the hanger she opted to pay into that anger rather than even a breath of patience, instead tossing the fabric back into the closet, jarring the hanger as it and the garment fell to the floor among her other, overcrowded things. It was the only thing she knew how to do, the only way she knew how to be, and what was more—it was easy to be this way. To be angry, to feel nothing but that warmth of hatred and madness because the reality and opposite was so very cold.

Garrus, wisely, watched her as he stood, but chose to stay out of it.

"Fuck you," she repeated, looking back to him, though now those tears that had once been in her eyes had fallen, wetting her cheeks. Shepard set her hands on her hips, just above her underwear, and it was a position she'd taken many times when she needed to summon a kind of inner strength or command attention. She'd just never done it before in her skivvies, and rather than give her what she needed, it seemed to sap away what little she'd held onto. Her shoulders slouched, her eyes shut, her face crinkled, and on wobbly legs, Shepard simply cried.

Garrus knew when it was his time, and now… now was his time. He enveloped her in his arms and held her close. She sobbed against his chest.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, and he was, there was no question of the truth in his voice.

"You're a bastard," she said between gulping breaths. "You're a fucking bastard, you know that?"

"Yeah," he brushed his mandible to the top of her head. "I know."

He held her until the worst subsided, though Shepard was certain that aching pit she felt in her stomach—a place so deep she'd never known it could even exist—would never let her go. When she could breathe again, they only just pulled apart, bodies separating only long enough until their foreheads could meet together, eyes shut.

"What does this mean, Garrus?"

"It means…" he sighed, and through the subtlest of movements brushed his forehead's plates against hers soothingly, reassuring. "I don't know what it means. I suspected something was wrong after Bahak. Things that were simple, that I knew so well… they didn't come as easy anymore. And when I went back to Palaven, after my mother died," his breathing stuttered at the memory and Shepard pressed an affectionate palm to his mandible to help him along, "I saw a doctor, found out what I feared more than almost anything else."

"What do you know?" Shepard asked, this time lifting her forehead from his, blinking bleary eyes open to look at him, catch his eyes and the painful truth there as they spoke.

"I was stage three. Now Mordin says I'm pushing the fourth."

Shepard didn't need to know how many levels there were to it. Five or five thousand. No matter the amount, the illness having a hold on him at all was too much. Her hand found his and with the greatest of strength, she squeezed it.

"Is it moving… fast?" Her eyebrows furrowed at her phrasing. "Progressing. Is it progressing fast?"

His facial plates downshifted and Shepard had seen enough. She shut her eyes again briefly, wincing through the pain as though it were a physical ache.

"You've got a lot on your plate Shepard, I didn't want to give you something else to worry about."

"To worry about?" She accused, incredulous. "To worry about? What, like you're a head cold? Or having to dip into the reserve fuel on a long mission? This isn't—" her hand waved between them without direction, "what you mean to me isn't something, it's not something to just worry about. Even before you and I were you and I, you never meant so little to me. Maybe—maybe you don't feel the same," she held up a palm silencing him preemptively, "but I don't care."

She could tell there was a world of things on the tip of his tongue, things he wanted to say, things he might not ever, but Shepard was content to just imagine them instead.

"What can they do for you? Are you taking any kind of medication, should you be getting some kind of treatment that you aren't getting because you're here with me?"

"There's not much they can do," he sighed, "Mordin already requested the research from the salarians who were treating my mother. So… after he cures the genophage and helps us kill the reapers, maybe there will be time for me."

Even at the end of the line on Omega, Shepard hadn't heard such despair in his voice. It was as though he'd already given up, resigned to his fate, and that perhaps hurt more than the secret he'd kept. She put her hands to either side of his face and turned his head towards her so he couldn't look away. Shepard steeled herself, finding that strength that had evaded her before.

"You listen to me, Garrus. You're going to be fine," she said, nodding as she did, "and I'm going to make sure of it. Do you understand that? I'm going to take care of you, and when it's over, when you're healthy and this is all past you, you'll take care of me. We're going to hit this head on. This isn't your battle to fight alone anymore. I've got you."

If there was reluctance or doubt in him, he didn't show it. Garrus shallowly dipped his head in a nod, even as she held it otherwise steady.

She forced a smile through the tears that had gone dry, relinquishing her hold on him only to bury her face in the crook of his neck. There, she let the near silent sound of his breathing once again overtake her like it had in the middle of the night. "Good."