"Well, what are you waiting for? Spill."
I raised my head wearily, craning my neck to get a look at the med bay door and see where the interruption had come from. Fatigue and Chakwas's drugs had left me exhausted. I was laying flat on my stomach on one of the med bay beds, and I wanted nothing more than to drift off to sleep.
But it wasn't going to happen. Because in came Jack, eyes bright, shotgun still strapped to her back. She sat down on the cot closer to the door and gave me a long, eager look. "Well?"
I blinked. "Well what?"
"That guy on Horizon. Kaidan Alenko, right? Any good?"
I yawned, glanced at the bottle of fast-acting painkillers Doctor Chakwas had left me, and briefly considered taking one. Or two. The pain in my back was subsiding, but I wanted Jack gone, and I needed an excuse to send her away. "Can we talk later, Jack?" I grabbed the bottle. "I'm in a lot of pain."
She glanced briefly at my injured back. "Bullshit. First degree burns is all you've got, and you're a big girl. You've had worse. Now I want to hear about this Alenko."
"What about him?" I groaned.
Jack laughed, and it was a wiry, scornful sound. "What the hell do you think, hero? I wanna know how good he was. In the sack."
My cheeks quickly caught fire, and I buried my head in the white sheets. Now was not the time. I was too tired and drugged up for this. "You got the wrong impression, Jack. Kaidan and I never… any of that."
She made a tsk sound. "Gay, huh?"
"What? No! At least… I don't think so."
Jack was silent, as if waiting for me to say more. When I didn't, she said, "Well then why the hell didn't you fuck him?"
A fresh wave of fatigue battered my head, and I felt my eyelids sinking. "Gee, I don't know," I said with closed eyes. "Maybe because I didn't know him well enough? Maybe because I didn't feel like we were anything more than friends, or--"
"Seriously, hero? Come on. He's scorching hot. You're scorching hot. Two scorching hot people don't stay just friends."
"Sorry to disappoint you, Jack. But I don't think that way."
"How sad." She reached across the gap between our beds and grabbed my bottle of painkillers, giving the label a weary look. "Malodyne opoid. Weak as shit. Doesn't even give you a buzz." She tossed it back. "So what did you do? Or more specifically, who did you do? How'd you blow off the steam of that mission, as it were?"
I buried my head back into the covers. My voice came out muffled. "God damn it, Jack. Leave me alone. This isn't any of your business!"
"Oh, shit! You didn't blow it off at all, did you?" She cackled loudly, her voice loud and mocking. "The great Shepard, a prude. Incredible. You went sexless through an entire deep space mission just because of your own high standards. What, do you need to be in love before you feel ready to hit it?" She gasped. "Are you a virgin?"
"Enough!" I roared, glaring at her. "No, no, and no. No to all three questions. Happy? Now let the injured soldier sleep."
She chuckled. "Damn. You're a weird one, hero."
She got up to leave, and I thanked my lucky stars as I listened to her footsteps drift away. I stretched my limbs, yawned, and shut my eyes. I could feel sleep just on the periphery. But Jack stopped just short of the door and said, "I get it. Nothing wrong with being alone."
Believe me, I wanted to let her go. I wanted nothing more than to let her go and let heavy sleep take me. But damn it, I just couldn't allow the conversation to end that way! Jack refused -- absolutely refused -- to even consider the possibility of trusting someone. The idea of having a friend, a person to depend on, was completely alien to her. I had to help her understand. I owed it to her. With a soft curse, I said, "Jack, wait."
She drifted back to the empty cot and sat down with a springy bump. "What, hero?"
"I was not alone."
Jack's head tilted. She watched me for a long time with the thinned eyes of distant skepticism. Eventually she pressed her hands against her lips and said, "Dare I ask what you mean?"
"I wasn't, well, hitting anyone, as you would say. But that didn't mean I was alone." With some effort, I straightened myself, sitting upright on the bed. "I had friends. Good people I could count on and trust. And honestly, I don't think I would have made it without them."
She had already started rolling her eyes before I even finished. "Ugh. Somehow I knew this crap was coming. Now you're going to tell me about the power of friendship and shoot a bunch of pretty flowers out your ass, right?"
"No. I'm just going to tell you that going it alone is tough. I know you're a powerful biotic -- I'm a pretty damn good sniper myself. And believe me, I am not one of those people who looks for an open shoulder to whine on at every opportunity. God, I hate that crap. But without people like Ashley and Tali and Garrus at my side, I wouldn't have been able to take on Saren. Not physically able, and certainly not mentally." My eyes and hers locked. "I'm just saying it helps sometimes."
Jack's posture changed subtly with my words. She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees, bringing her eyes closer. "Vakarian, huh? You two are friends?"
"Absolutely. I don't trust anyone like I trust Garrus."
"So did you bang him?"
And that was the first time Jack ever succeeded at making me lose my words.
I stared at her, shocked and dumbfounded, my mind slowly trying to wrap itself around what she'd just said. I tried to come up with a response. All I got was fuzzy mental static. Garrus? Damn, I couldn't think. Garrus? Me and… such an idea felt utterly insane.
I stuttered out a response. "I… n… wh…"
She grinned, a devious spark of understanding flashing through her eyes. "Shit. You've never even considered it, have you?"
I'd be lying if I said Garrus and I weren't close. I'd be lying if I said I didn't love spending time with him, said I didn't trust him with my life. I'd be lying if I said I'd ever had a better friend. If he were human, I probably would already have exactly the kind of information Jack would want to know about him. And physically, well, I had always found turians fiercely attractive in their own weird way. Especially Garrus, with his gravelly voice and silver-iron skin. I had wanted to make a joke about him being ugly anyway when I first saw his scars, but hell, it would have been a lie.
I guess the idea of me and Garrus wasn't… wasn't as insane as I might have thought.
But still. One does not simply walk into Mordor, as it were. Even in a perfect world, where Garrus wasn't a turian and I wasn't Erin Shepard and we weren't on a secret Cerberus vessel chasing after the most glorious suicide in galactic history, I couldn't just walk up to him and rip his clothes off. Well, maybe Jack would. But I wasn't like Jack at all, and neither was he. There were so many other considerations… our friendship, the crew, the mission. Hell, the idea was as insane as I might have thought.
"Out of the question," I said to Jack. "It's a terrible idea, and you know it."
Jack's lips tightened. "You like him?"
I nodded.
"So what the hell, hero? Grab the dumbass, throw him against a wall, and claw off his armor. I think you know what to do after that. You certainly wouldn't be the first human-turian pairing of all time, if that's what you're worried about. Give me five seconds on the extranet and I can--"
"Okay, stop! And it's more complicated than that, Jack." I sighed. "Look, Garrus and I are close. But that… is not what I need right now. Not what he needs either. We've got too much on our plates as is."
Jack scoffed. "Whatever, hero. Be close all you goddamn want, and keep enjoying your cold, lonely bed. I'm just making you aware."
I knew I would probably regret it, but I asked anyway. "Aware of what?"
"The raptor is gaga about you," she said. "I can't believe you don't see it. Pining. Head over heels, as lamer people might say. All you have to do is suggest it, and he'll jump on you without a second's pause." She rolled her eyes, shook her head derisively, and pulled herself to her feet. "Just thought you should know the option's open."
This time, when she left, I didn't say a word to stop her.
I lay back down on my stomach. I was still tired. The fatigue and the drugs were still blanketing my head with their thick, drowsy fog. But hell if I was going to fall asleep now. A war was being waged in my mind, between the aching fatigue and the rushing thoughts keeping me awake.
And the thoughts were coming out ahead.
