Shields failing, Shepard dove into the shadow of a shipping crate to excape the blistering Haestrom sun. She tossed a grenade into the latest wave of geth, instantly killing the snipers but barely scratching the heavily armoured primes. This mission was pushing her to her limits, but she was grateful for the distraction. Since she and Garrus opened up to one another in the main battery, they'd been unable to find a way to discreetly spend time together. From the time she'd recognized her feelings, thoughts of him had made it more difficult for her to focus. Now that she was aware of his desire as well, it was positively maddening.
Momentarily distracted, she looked up to find a geth prime less than ten meters from her current position, frozen solid in mid-charge. Mordin. It was the salarian's turn to come along this time: Garrus was always at her side, accompanied by one of the non-human crewmembers. No wonder the Illusive Man always seemed irritated with her. Maybe if she could trust any of the humans on her team she'd be more inclined to bring them along.
"Come find me later, Shepard. Have helpful advice. Hormonal fluctuations impairing combat ability. Could jeopardize the mission." Was she that obvious? As much as she liked the doctor, she cringed at the thought of him offering relationship advice.
Hormonal fluctuations aside, her heightened bond with Garrus had its advantages. Coordinating their attack to take down the colossus was effortless. Taking turns ducking in and out of cover, they moved too quickly for the lumbering behemoth to target either of them effectively. Before long it came tumbling down in a heap of scrap metal. The mission wasn't exactly a success: out of the entire quarian team only Tali Zorah and Kal Reegar survived the geth attack. Still, Tali agreed to rejoin her team, and Shepard felt one step closer to victory.
Back on the Normandy, Tali wasted no time in making improvements to the Normandy's engines. Shepard was delighted to hear of all her adventures aboard the Neema and on missions for the flotilla. Tali made her dislike of Cerberus clearly known, and was particularly apprehensive about EDI. Shepard doubted the AI had malicious intent, but was irked by the utter lack of privacy aboard her ship. She made a point of visiting Tali in engineering when Ken and Gabby were in the mess hall. Even then, the quarian insisted they speak over by the drive core, where the mass effect fields kept them hidden from EDI's sensors.
"Tali, you're the best engineer I know. I bet you could hack just about anything."
"Thank you, Shepard. What exactly are you asking me to do?"
"It's just… the constant surveillance on this ship is really bothering me. Could you show me a way to turn it off, even temporarily?"
"Sure, that's easy. For me, anyway. I'll help you as soon as you come clean with me."
"About what?"
"You know what."
Shepard turned bright red. "Is it that obvious? Maybe I don't need to worry about surveillance."
Tali laughed. "I'm surprised it took you two this long. There were times on board the old ship when I was sure you were already a couple. Don't worry, most of the Cerberus crew are oblivious. A few of them call you an alien lover behind your back, but they have no idea they're actually right. It's funny, just because I'm in my suit they seem to think they can say whatever they want right in front of me and I won't notice."
"So, what else have you heard?"
"Not much. Kenneth's been spending time with Jack downstairs. Jacob and Miranda are back together but he's upset with her about something. Joker has a crush on Kelly, who's been trying to seduce Thane. He's too busy brooding over his past and drooling over you. Has he told you what 'siha' means yet?"
"Holy… you've been on the ship for two days and you picked up all that? I've been talking to them for weeks and I had no idea."
"Oh, I don't talk much. Mostly I listen."
"Glad you're on my side, Tali."
"It's good to be back, commander. Here, take this." She activated her omni-tool. "There's a program embedded that mimics a maintenance subroutine. Just run it when you need some privacy, and EDI won't be able to spy on you. She'll figure it out eventually, but you should have at least a few minutes completely undetected. If you wait until I have an excuse to go to the AI core tomorrow, I can create a weakness in her neural network that will give you a few hours instead. By the way, I found a recording in EDI's encrypted files. It looked… personal. I deleted it, of course."
"Damn it. I can't thank you enough."
"Anything for you, Shepard." She hugged her friend, delighting in Shepard's newfound happiness and wondering whether she might have the chance to see Kal again.
Shepard sat alone on her couch, staring at the medical case on her coffee table. Her mind was reeling from the chat with Mordin, the one he cornered her into despite her best efforts to avoid him. Comfortable positions. Anaphylaxis. Chafing. She'd wanted to crawl out of her skin and slink away, needing every ounce of resolve to hold her ground and finish the conversation. Only the fear of discovery allowed her to maintain a calm demeanor as she accepted his advice and carried the medikit back to her quarters. She'd already failed miserably at keeping her emotions to herself. Mordin knew, Tali knew, but fortunately none of the humans aboard the ship seemed any wiser. A human-turian pairing was probably beyond the scope of their imaginations, except for Kelly.
Cautiously, as though preparing to defuse an explosive, she allowed herself to open the lid of the medikit and peer inside. Antihistamines and injectable epinephrine sat on top. The vial of balm looked innocent enough, as did the datapad. Gathering the courage to access the files, she stopped abruptly. What if EDI sees what I'm looking at? There had to be a better way. She picked up the datapad with her right hand, letting her palm rest atop it for a moment as she placed it back in Mordin's case. That was all the time it took for her wetware to scan and upload its contents, allowing her to peruse the information without any external evidence. Shepard forced herself to sit down and read e-mail at her private terminal, so as not to be too obvious. After an eternity, bedtime came around and she had an excuse to lie down and close her eyes.
The first few files contained information on human female anatomy and physiology. Accurate, but clinical. She began to access the turian data, and was initially disappointed to find nothing she hadn't learned already. Alliance combat training taught her the locations of a turian's weak points, and she'd already discovered that most of these doubled as erogenous zones. It seemed their reproductive organs were concealed beneath heavy armour, their plates only shifting when sufficiently aroused, and then… Oh.
Shepard didn't make it any further through the files, her imagination carried away by thoughts of her turian. She fell into a restless sleep, tossing and turning with the most delicious dreams.
