Chapter Summary: Garrus puts 1 plus 1 together and comes up with "these 2 need help."
Tags/Warnings: Slow Build; Friends to Lovers; Demisexual Shepard; Garrus is a Great Best Friend; Swearing; Sexual Tension; Blood and Injury; Canon-Typical Violence; Rating Will Change Later in Story
Standard Disclaimer: Everything Mass Effect is owned by BioWare, and I receive no financial benefit from this fanfiction.
Many, many thanks and dozens of drell cookies to my amazing beta, N7Siha.
Garrus stepped into the elevator from the crew deck and hit the button for the top level. After Thane left the forward battery, the turian had started to feel bad for sending his new friend to face a potentially irate Shepard in his place. And imagining an angry commander led him to realize, far too late, that this game he was playing with Jacob was probably much harder on Shepard than on the Cerberus agent. She of all people didn't deserve this kind of crap from him.
She has every right to chew me out, he acknowledged as the elevator doors opened. Maybe between that and hearing me admit that I'm an idiot, she'll forgive me. With all of his focus on Shepard and the mess he'd created, he was doubly startled to see Thane leaning against the hallway wall as if he needed support.
"You okay, Thane? Ah, Spirits—Shepard didn't read you the riot act, did she?" Although the drell straightened immediately, Garrus still found himself concerned. Something was…off.
"Um, I am fine," Thane thrummed. Despite the claim, Garrus could clearly make out the distress conveyed by Thane's subharmonics. Turians had excellent hearing, better even than drell. "I apologize for not delivering your message. Shepard is…occupied. I told her I would return later." Thane nodded a goodbye before turning to enter the elevator.
Garrus looked his friend over carefully, trying to figure out what was wrong. Thane was dying, after all, and might need medical care, though Garrus found he liked the unusual assassin too much to dwell on that thought. Instead he fell back on his C-Sec habit of cataloguing unusual or suspicious details.
Person of interest: drell. Ribbing on face and throat flushed, vibrant red. Ditto red in center of lips. Breathing fast but clear. Heartbeat louder and faster than norm. First statement, growling throb in lowest register. For turians, similar sounds associated with sexual desire.
Wait…DESIRE? For a split second, Garrus considered glancing below Thane's waist, but he couldn't do it. Obvious arousal in public was bad enough for a male, if that was indeed the problem, and the evidence seemed to indicate that it was. Recalling some awkward moments with Tali back on the SR-1, Garrus realized he empathized with Thane too much to make him more uncomfortable.
Shepard had somehow caused this? Shepard? She just wasn't the lust-inspiring, Fornax-cover-girl type. At least not from his perspective. And she certainly wasn't a sexual tease. The old C-Sec officer in him wanted answers, if only to satisfy his curiosity—and, maybe, give him some ammunition for the next round of verbal sparring with his best friend.
The elevator doors closed, and Garrus entered Shepard's cabin as he usually did—without using the intercom—and took the stairs into the seating area when he saw she wasn't at her desk. It didn't take long to spot her, squirming and swearing, with her torso stuck upside down between the couch and the wall. She was working her way back up and out, or at least giving it her best shot. He almost snorted with amusement: only Morgan Shepard could have a reason for ending up in that position.
Before he offered his help, he briefly took stock of what Thane had clearly seen—the short shorts, the bare legs, the curved assets human males admired so much. Drell males, too, apparently. Though perhaps it was more a case of this particular human female and this particular drell male. Maybe, he thought. They were a lot alike, more than either of them realized.
As he finally strode around the coffee table and up to the couch, his raspy voice flanged through his laughter. "Spirits, Shepard—how do you get yourself into these situations?"
"All your fault, Garrus," she shot back, uncowed by his obvious enjoyment of her predicament. "Well, yours and Jacob 'pole up his ass' Taylor's." She continued wiggling until he could see some of her back. Her shirt had ridden up to her armpits.
"Let me help you, Morgan," he chuckled, while gently placing his talons around her waist.
"Don't you 'Morgan' me!" she fumed. "You can't declare war on a Cerberus team member and expect to keep using my first name!" Finally worming her shoulders and head free, she whirled around and glared at him, his talons on her waist still keeping her steady. For once she didn't have to look up when trying to chastise him.
"I'm going to strangle you, Garrus!" she bristled with indignation. "What the hell were you thinking, submitting your own supply request like that?"
"You'd be a lot more intimidating, Miss Savior of the Citadel, if I wasn't looking at a very red face and an Alliance-issue bra," he snarked, his mandibles shifting into the turian version of a grin.
Shepard looked down at her modest chest, shimmied her shoulders to resettle her tank top, and went back to glaring. "Answer the question, you ass!"
"No good, your face is still too red," he teased, trying to lighten her up. "Nice logo on the bra, by the way."
She fought hard to keep a straight face but then sputtered a laugh she couldn't hold back. He released her waist as she stepped down to the floor. "I'm still mad at you," she announced, as she waved the newly-recovered datapad in his face, "so don't think you're off the hook."
"I know, I know. It's my fault and I need to make it right," he conceded.
"The galaxy thanks you for admitting you CAN be wrong," she deadpanned, a bit of irritation still audible in her voice. "And damn straight you're going to make it right, 'because once thrown into the world, man is responsible for everything he does.'"
"Damn. I'm never going to hear the end of this, am I? You're even throwing quotes at me." He hoped his deep sigh of faux distress might bring her laughter back, but Shepard just shook her head at him.
"A turian quotation even, probably required reading when you were in the military," she scolded.
He blinked at her.
"Come on, no guesses? Okay, Paultis Strarius, war historian and political philosopher."
"Double damn—I should have known that one," he admitted. "Consider me suitably humiliated. So are my 'Morgan' privileges restored?"
"Yes, yes, fine," Shepard pretended to grouse. "You know I can never stay mad at you." She motioned him to follow her around the room, and together they repositioned the couch, resituated the coffee table and chair, straightened up her work area, and checked on that odd little rodent she liked so much. What silly name did she call it? He could never remember. He watched her as she shifted about, so fluid, with no wasted motion, the same way she moved on the battlefield. He tried to truly LOOK at her, seeing his role model, his best friend—his sister, really—but working hard to glimpse what Thane might see in her that he didn't.
He saw someone who still looked youthful to him, though he knew he was bad at assessing human age. The lack of natural armor always threw him off. He knew her birthdate, knew she was three years older than he was, but he rarely thought of her age relative to his own. In a lot of ways her experiences had made her far older and wiser, yet somehow she also seemed younger— less cynical and able to hold on to some sense of optimism. It was confusing but that was Morgan—composed of contradictions. Comparing her to other humans, she was probably six or so years older than, say, her yeoman, Kelly, but they looked about the same age to him. He remembered the times when she had looked older than her age, when she was bone-deep exhausted or when betrayal or the weight of the galaxy was wearing her down.
She seemed about average height for a human woman, judging from his experience aboard the SR-1 and 2; she was taller than some, shorter than others. She only came up to the middle of his cowl, though of course he was the tallest crewmember on the ship. He'd even stood back to back with Grunt in front of a mirror to prove it to the krogan kid, who had immediately growled, "Rematch in a few months. I'm still growing." When Shepard stood next to Thane or Jacob or Zaeed, the top of her head didn't quite clear their chins.
She was on the slender side, definitely athletic but without obvious bulk, and without the accentuated hourglass figure that Miranda or even Liara had. He started to remember Tali's curves and then decided to shut down that line of thought. Shepard's workday uniform of Alliance blue BDUs, a bit of anti-Cerberus rebellion, emphasized her commander role but downplayed her femininity. Those shorts today must have been a real surprise to Thane, Garrus imagined with amusement, highlighting so well the gentle curves she DID possess.
At the moment she looked fresh and…wholesome, he supposed, with her sprinkling of little face dots. Freckles was what she called them. Her dark red hair looked almost brown in low light but blazed with fire in the sun. And he liked how her clear green eyes usually revealed her amusement before her smile did. It was a very useful trait when he needed to figure out if she was really mad at him or just giving him a hard time. Tomorrow she could easily be covered in blood and battle muck, with that unholy light in her eyes declaring her love for tactics and combat. But right now, as she glanced up from her work pile and smiled at him, she looked… beautiful. In a soft, mushy, human kind of way.
The more he thought about it, the more he believed that Thane's interest lay in Shepard herself rather than the unexpected situation the drell had just found himself in. As far as Garrus had noticed, Thane didn't pay much attention to bodies at all, unless he was deciding how best to incapacitate one. He treated everyone on the ship—including EDI—with the same calm politeness. Lately he'd made more of an effort to come out of his shell with the squad, but he still didn't seem to notice, let alone admire, the various assets Miranda, Samara, or even Jacob had on display.
And if he didn't want to muddy the waters with squad mates, he had other options. Garrus knew Thane wasn't stupid or blind: the assassin was well aware that quite a few interested eyes followed him about whenever he left his quarters. If he really wanted to see a naked human, it wouldn't take much effort on his part. Zaeed had even tried to bait him into a discussion about it once in the mess, calling him "you lucky bastard." Thane simply shrugged a shoulder in response. He seemed more amused than anything else by the subtle and not-so-subtle invitations those interested eyes kept sending his way.
But the only person his eyes followed about the ship was Shepard. Garrus had asked him about that a week or so ago, as the two tinkered with mods for their weapons. Thane had studied him for a long moment with those large, black eyes before giving his usual half-smile. "She is a fascinating woman, one well worth contemplating."
He'd assumed then that Thane was talking about Shepard's brilliant and occasionally intimidating intellect. She'd mentioned her late-night talks with the assassin a couple of times to Garrus, and he'd grinned at her excitement over finding someone with whom she could discuss dozens of odd topics. Thane, with his drell memory, even recognized most of those obscure quotations she was always dropping. Garrus had wondered sometimes back on the original Normandy if intellect was her initial attraction to Kaidan. He was also a deep thinker, though he didn't have the breadth of interests Shepard did. Few beings did or could, Garrus thought. Her mind was simply unique.
When Cerberus first brought her back, she had a hard time accepting she was alive, that it was all genuine. Admitting her fears of being a clone or an advanced VI, she'd quizzed him on their shared experiences—nicknames, private jokes, misadventures in the Mako—things the Illusive Man couldn't know. And she'd related some stories from her childhood for the first time, trying to remind herself of the reality of her past. Despite Morgan's very real anxiety, they'd ended up enjoying their conversations about the challenges her parents faced, raising a child like her on a colony as remote as Mindoir.
"I went to school with kids my age, and that was great because I made friends other than my sisters. But the actual learning there was dead boring," she'd explained to him. She was just a toddler when she started reading, was into novels when other kids her age were still into picture books. By eight, she'd demanded that her father explain geometry and algebra. She held off on calculus until she was ten.
"My brain was like a sponge, I just needed more and more and more, constantly. I had to have the mental stimulation of new knowledge or I became restless and bored. And when I got bored, well…I found other ways to entertain myself," she had admitted sheepishly. "Usually didn't work out great for the people around me." He found it easy to imagine her as a holy terror. Not because she was malicious, despite her temper, but because she needed nearly continuous mental or physical activity the same way most species needed to breathe. She still did.
So her parents found enrichment for her everywhere they could. She'd described wonderful memories of her father demonstrating principles of physics by teaching her how to shoot every different weapon he owned or could borrow, with every different type of ammo, under every condition variation he could think of. She ended up falling in love with the challenge of long-distance sniping. She could settle down and be still in a sniper's perch—a rare gift for someone like Morgan. The only time she was more at peace, he supposed, was when she slept.
Her introduction to biology was her father simply taking her everywhere with him on their farm. He'd done his best to answer every question she asked about plants, wildlife, domesticated animals, crops, growing cycles, weather patterns, watersheds, food chains, ecological symbiosis, how all these things might be different on Earth than on Mindoir, and on and on. What he didn't already know, he helped her look up.
A family friend added martial arts to Shepard's repertoire, as a different kind of application for her knowledge of physics as well as anatomy. Other colonists passed along everything they knew about engineering, architecture, astronomy, and navigation, so this special little girl had even more ways to apply the mathematics she absorbed with no effort. Her mother handled art, literature, history and languages, always searching the extranet as well as tapping friends for learning tools to keep her daughter's hungry mind occupied and growing.
Although Shepard never mentioned it in any way, losing her family in the batarian raid must have been horrific. He understood that Shepard's loss was much worse than the word "family" or even "colony" could communicate. And Thane, he was beginning to think, perhaps restored to the woman some of what had been taken from the child.
What he was less sure about was whether Shepard admired more than Thane's brain and his ability to keep up with her many interests and trains of thought. He knew she marveled at the assassin's combat abilities, especially how his intense physical and biotic training allowed him to flow through a field of attackers, dropping a body every other second.
One time he caught her watching with her mouth hanging open as Thane took down a charging krogan with nothing but his hands and feet. Okay, he was willing to admit that his own mandibles had probably been hanging open for that one, too. Sadly, Thane's impressive sniping skills, like his own, were no big deal to her, but that was probably how it should be. When Shepard took point in her infiltrator role, she trusted them with absolute certainty to make the shots that would protect her the same way she always protected them.
Off the battlefield, in group settings, she treated Thane the same way she treated the rest of the squad. She took an honest interest in everyone's ups and downs, likes and dislikes, and got to know each of them as individuals. And of course she joined in the joking and general camaraderie, willing to take her share of teasing as well as dish it out.
Though now that he thought about it, Shepard actually talked less, a LOT less, whenever Thane joined in group discussions. And her face did that funny human flushing thing, going just a bit pink, when Thane spoke to her directly. Garrus couldn't remember that happening before, even with Kaidan. Hmm, maybe he was onto something with these two…
"Hey, Freaky Raptor Guy," Shepard smirked. "Are you going to stare in wonder at my luxurious quarters? Or are you going to help with this snafu you and Taylor caused?"
"Of course I'll help, my tiny, fragile friend. I'll even talk to the Cerberus flunky in a civil manner," he offered, grudgingly. Then he switched topics, watching for Shepard's reaction:
"By the way, I saw Thane as I was coming up."
"He stopped in while I was trying to find that damn datapad," she acknowledged as she sorted through the various reports waiting for her. Now that Garrus was looking for it, he noticed she'd gone pink again. "I can't imagine what he thought when he saw me half stuck behind the couch. But he left without saying much, said he'd come back later. Do you know what he wanted?"
Recalling Thane's appearance in the outer hall, he tried not to chuckle. "Yeah, I have a pretty good idea what he wanted."
He finished the thought in a low voice he knew Shepard's ears couldn't pick up: "I think things are going to get interesting around here."
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