Ever since Lesuss, Shepard had a hard time keeping herself busy. Reports, consultancy and planning could only take so much of her time and she was getting more frustrated with her splint every day. Not only she was unable to train properly, but even the most menial tasks were a nightmare for her shallow patience. Put the crutches away. Take them back. Lean them on the wall. Pick them back up from where they slipped and fell. Plan convoluted strategies to move objects in walking distances without needing to use her otherwise busy hands or spilling everything. It was seriously driving her bonkers.

Thankfully, it's almost over. Only a few hours and she'll be free.

They spent the rest of her recovery time traveling around the Nimbus Cluster to scavenge a few resources and get a few ancient documents from the Library of Asha. Garrus, EDI and Liara just returned from Trategos where they found a Reaper weapon they could dismantle, and they managed to bring its intact barrel back on board for study. All in all, it has been time wisely spent. But it has to stop.

She really needs her autonomy back, to stop this atrocious feeling of weakness and uselessness. She doesn't feel like herself when she's not in full control of her body, and it never fails to affect her self-confidence. Feeling weak is feeling undeserving. Feeling useless is feeling worthless. Most of the time, she manages to keep face, but it's wearing thin. Every little thing that escapes her control starts to throw her off-balance and it shouldn't be long until her uncertainties start to show on the surface.

And Garrus is not helping.

She barely had the time to come to terms with the fact that there was much more to her best friend than she had originally thought, when his behavior started to change even further. It was subtle, and it took her some time to realize it, but it was there. She couldn't pinpoint exactly what had changed though, aside from a few details. The only thing she was sure of is that he was getting harder and harder to predict. She could feel an instability in him that wasn't there before. Granted, he always had a quick temper for a Turian, but this was different.

He would alternate between somewhat distancing himself and getting closer to her than he ever was before. Some days she would hardly see him at all and the rest of the time, he would follow her like a shadow, teasing her significantly more than usual. As much as she enjoys his company, it's unsettling in more ways than one. Not only does it worsen her feeling of losing control, but the sudden periods of unusual proximity are dangerously threatening the waning control she has over her attraction to him. She's close to feeling cornered.

In hindsight, it probably started around the same time she hypnotized him, and it's worrying her. What if she had induced that shift in behavior? If it's the case, how can she fix it? Even if she's pretty sure the trigger is still valid, she cannot possibly rely on it anymore. For one thing, she could worsen the situation in the process, but after the Lesuss fiasco, she's not too keen on repeating the experience. This is too unpredictable, both because of potential external influences and because she doesn't trust herself anymore around him in this state. Too many lines have been crossed already.

All things considered, the best she can do now is to reestablish some sort of normalcy between them. To just be the bedrock she's supposed to be in her ship and let them both lean on that. Easier said than done when she's in such a fragile state herself, but hiding the cracks under the paint of her superficial confidence is the story of her life. Fake it 'til you make it. She's managed it so far, she can't fail now.

And ditching the damn splint will help, no doubt about it.

Until then, she'll have to do what she can with her current predicament. Thankfully, one of the things that have cemented their close friendship is exactly within the scope of her capabilities. Pranks. She couldn't really do anything elaborate, but sometimes the simplest things were the most effective. Besides, she needed to get back at him for both the flour bomb and enjoying himself too much at her expense. That, and she was currently bored out of her mind. The trip to the Far Rim was already planned and she was up to date with all her messages, which was rare enough an occurrence to point out. She needed action like she needed air.

Besides, she couldn't deny that the part of her that resents Garrus for making the room hotter every time he would get too close for comfort was looking forward to getting a little revenge.

Trying to remain impassible, she pretends to be listening to Campbell and Müller from where she's sitting on the kitchen counter. They had already been chatting for a while around the coffee maker when they offered her a cup, and the perfect opportunity to set her plan in motion. She doesn't have a clear view of the mess hall with her back turned, but she can still see both the entrance to the main battery and the way to the men's bathroom from the corner of her eyes. All she has to do is wait for Garrus to come out for a well deserved shower.

She absently sips on her coffee while patting on her right pocket to check if her screwdriver is still there. Yep. She spots a clean rag next to the sink. Perfect.

She knows it's evil and a shitty thing to do to a Turian, but he has it coming. If she's honest with herself, it's not really about his last prank anymore, but more about the recent relentless teasing. It's driving her nuts and she knows she's venting, but she's too pent up to care about being the better person right now. Besides, she knows he's expecting something of that magnitude, but it didn't deter him one bit.

He wants to play dirty? With her of all people? Very well. Game on.

She hears the hiss of the main battery's door and finishes her coffee while putting on her best act to make it look like she's actually interested in the conversation in front of her. Soft footsteps pass her by. When they're far enough, she throws a quick glance at her left. Garrus is in his undersuit, a spare one thrown over his shoulder and his toiletries in hand.

She spends one more minute on counter, then thanks Campbell, giving her the empty cup and hops down, excusing herself. She grabs the rag on her way and hobbles towards the men's bathroom. She pauses and listens. The shower is running. Good. She approaches the narrow panel on her right, just before the corner. She glances around, there's no one nearby. Lucky.

She quickly unscrews the panel and opens it. Inside, several pipes run vertically, and two of them have a tap. One is blue, the other is red, and radiating heat. She takes the rag and puts it on the hot handle, and counts down in her head.

3... 2... 1...

She shuts the tap, and a very loud, very flanged and incredibly undignified squeak resonates from the bathroom.

Wait, squeak?

She can't contain herself anymore and doubles over in laughter, clutching her stomach. When the bathroom doors hiss open, she tries to wipe the tears off her eyes, still giggling uncontrollably.

"Holy shit Garrus, I never knew Turians could make sounds like that, that was..."

Her words die on her tongue at the sight before her. She had expected it, theoretically, but was too busy plotting revenge to pay attention to the possible implications of such an eventuality.

There stood a growling Garrus, a hand clutching at the door frame and the other securing an Alliance issue towel around his angular hips, towering menacingly in all his wet, naked, predatory glory. The weak remnants of her mirth barely manage to save her face but her eyes are out of control and roam freely over his exposed body. She had never seen him naked, and she instantly knows she just shot herself in the foot yet again, as that sure is a sight she can never unsee. Not that she ever would want to, but it's absolutely not going to help.

He's beautiful. A scaly, pointy, very Turian kind of beautiful. She had seen holos of naked Turians, mostly educational, and none of them did him justice.

His shoulder and long limbs are on the thicker side, muscular yet graceful, an impressive testament to his strength and skill as a soldier and a survivor. The rim of his hard, plated cowl falls down on his chest in twin, graceful arcs, gradually blending in the thinner pectoral plating that fades into scattered pebbles at the edge of his abdomen. Under the broad expanse of exposed hide, defined muscles ripple with every heavy breath, hastening droplets of cold water to glide faster down his deceptively narrow waist to die on the folded rim of his infuriating towel. The light plates are almost glistening with wetness and create a mesmerizing aura around his powerful figure, proudly standing on two strong feet whose shape and thick, sharp talons almost make her feel like a little girl facing the big bad wolf she knows she can never outrun.

She forgets how to breathe.

Gradually getting over his indignation, Garrus realizes she never finished her sentence. He can feel her eyes on his body, studying every nook and cranny while she stands frozen in place. He didn't think twice about coming out with just a towel around him, but now he's starting to feel a bit nervous. What exactly does she see? He never felt particularly modest but he almost forgot how alien his appearance must look like to a Human. Hell, usually, the rest of the crew avoided the showers when he was there. He never minded since he instinctively avoided them as much, not really wanting to see their weird, flaccid, exposed junk dangling at all times, so he almost forgot he had to be careful.

And here he stands almost naked in front of a gaping Shepard. Now that was awkward.

To defuse the situation and hide his growing embarrassment, he opts for the only thing that crosses his mind, turning his hopes into a half joke. He straightens, leaning on a hip, lightly puffing his chest and cocking his head to the side in a teasing gesture.

"Like what you see, Shepard?"

That effectively jolts her out of her trance and her lingering smile vanishes. She realizes she's been staring for longer than what could pass as initial shock, and she feels warmth instantly shoot up to her face. In panic, she instinctively reacts with aggressiveness. She's cornered, and she can't help it.

"You wish," she retorts, throwing the rag to his face with a nervous smirk.

Smooth, Shepard.

He doesn't dodge, and it lands with a soft flump.

The low, rumbling chuckle that escapes his throat when he releases the door frame to pull the rag off his face send a sudden wave of heat down her spine that pools and settles between her thighs. She absently notes that not even five minutes have passed after she set her plan in motion and it's already backfiring, hard.

"That was harsh though. You know how we deal with the cold." He shoots her a hard stare but can't help his mandibles from twitching at the sight of her raging, traitorous blush.

Oh, so she is enjoying the view after all. He can feel some of his confidence coming back and pushing him forward. How much can he get away with today?

"Oh c'mon, Garrus, it's just a cold shower." She crosses her arms. "Maybe I could plan our next shore leave on Noveria to amp up your thermal resilience a bit?" She tries for a sly grin, forcing her eyes to remain on his face and willing her heart rate to get back to a reasonable pace.

A flicker of horror briefly crosses his eyes and his mandibles twitch in concern, but he recovers quickly.

"You wouldn't." He snorts.

"No, I wouldn't." She lowers and shakes her head, still smiling, briefly closing her eyes. "Though I might seek new, creative ways to make you squeak again like that in the future." She looks up, grinning devilishly. "Totally worth it."

He grunts lowly, already knowing he's not going to hear the end of it anytime soon. Trust Shepard to fight back harder, even with a face red enough to stop skycars mid-flight. Fine. Time for the next level. He distantly feels some instincts kicking in, spawn by the obvious challenge thrown at him by his... interest. If she thinks he's going to go down that easily, she's in for a surprise.

"Bring it on, Shepard." He slowly walks the few steps that separate him from an invasion of her personal space. "Should I seek ways to make you squeak too?"

He's now centimeters away from her, much too close for comfort, looking her in the eyes with the same intensity he seems to display lately when he's teasing her the hardest. Without his visor on, it seems all the more intense, as if nothing is shielding her from it anymore, and it feels like he's seeing right though her.

The sight of him towering over her, wet and naked, looking like he's seconds away from eating her alive sends waves of heat up and down her body, and she feels the sudden rush of blood towards her crotch, instantly making her throb with want and anticipation. Yet, she refuses to budge.

She instantly sees herself back in her quarters, when she was straddling him, burning with a desire that took her by surprise, and the Garrus of her memories is not in heavy armor anymore, but wet and naked with a skimpy towel around his hips. How would it feel to smear those lucky droplets of water all over his chest? What would it be like to lick them off the soft hide of his neck? How would he react if she did the same to his reportedly sensitive waist?

No, not the time for that. Back to reality, Jane. Don't let him win this round. Say something. Anything would do at this point.

She laboriously steels herself and frowns, glaring right back at him, and blurts out the first thing that crosses her mind.

"You're too close." Well, no shit. She suppresses a groan.

His rumbling another chuckle and her panties suddenly feel very wet. Shit. Does he even know what he's doing to her?

"My apologies, Commander," he says, stressing her rank with the best bedroom voice he can perform, not even trying to clamp down on his lewd, purring subharmonics. "But I need to..." He leans on his left, reaching behind her to grab the tap with the rag he's still holding, and his face is now dangerously close to her right ear. "Reach... the handle." He opens the water with a jerk of his arm. "And you're in the way."

He releases the handle and takes a step back, straightening, and takes a couple of seconds to admire his handiwork. She's completely frozen, eyes wide and jaw slack, and redder than he ever thought to be possible. He proudly contemplates the fact that he's the one who put the deadly, fearless Commander Shepard in such a state of arousal induced daze. But as her now familiar scent starts to float in the air, he quickly moves before it makes his composure crumble.

"Now if you will excuse me," he says, placing the rag on top of her head. She doesn't even react. "I have a shower to finish."

He about-faces and walks back to the bathroom. Once inside, he hangs his towel with a sigh, suddenly feeling drained. The growing erection pushing at his plates demands attention, and he already knows he's not going to resist until he's back in the main battery. Public showers wanking it is.

While he sets the shower controls to a Turian-friendly temperature again, he can't help but feel impressed with himself. Not so long ago, it would have never occurred to him that he would ever dare hit on her so unabashedly. Or even hit on her at all. But lately, he has seen her fucking up so hard that it somehow shattered the pedestal he used to always place her on. Having her crossfading herself on him had been the last straw. Seeing her so flawed, so imperfect should have disappointed him, but no. If anything, it makes her more accessible, made him realize she's not so far out of his reach, not so different from him. He was finally seeing her as an equal, a fellow soldier, a woman. Not a hero. It's liberating in many ways, and he's done holding back.

Outside, Shepard blinks dumbly, reaching up for the rag still sitting on her head. Still half-dazed, she closes the panel, gathers her crutches, makes a beeline to the elevator and slams the call button.

The fuck just happened?

She repeats the scene in her head, over and over again, until she realizes she's in her quarters. Once inside, she goes straight to her bathroom and mechanically disrobes, leaving a pile of discarded clothes on top of her crutches. She turns on the shower and steps inside, letting the water tear her out of her trance. She slips a finger between her folds and gasps. Has she ever been so wet? She closes her eyes and thinks back on how close Garrus's head had been to hers when he reached...

Wait.

She opens her eyes, now feeling fully awake. Reach? Now that her brain has recovered some of its basic functions, this sounds very familiar. How could she not connect the dots right away? Oh that bastard actually quoted himself, from a very, very interesting conversation he knew she didn't forget. Apparently, he didn't either. So he managed to slip in a subtle reminder of his allegedly above average size in the process. Damn him. She probably would want to punch him if she didn't have other... priorities right now.

She lets her head fall back with a long, low groan as she moves her finger around, feeling how swollen her clit is. She's already over-sensitized, almost to the point of being painful. He had been so close. She could feel his body heat licking her skin and his breath tickling the fine hairs of her neck. She's sure he was close enough that he could have tasted her skin if he had stuck his tongue out.

Oh fuck. How could she forget that?

A distant, blurry memory suddenly makes its way back to her attention. A memory of her lips pressed on his. Of her tongue darting out to tease his mouth plates. And the very unexpected, very interesting feeling of his tongue literally curling around hers.

It's fucking prehensile.

All the potential of such an appendage suddenly hit her like a ton of bricks. Just imagining all the things his tongue could do on her body, in her body, while her fingers seem to have acquired a mind of their own, sending jolts of mind-numbing pleasure so intense she can feel them in her toes, is enough to push her over the edge so fast that it takes her by surprise. She collapses on her knees with a cry of pleasure and her vision briefly dims.

She stares at the drain for a couple of minutes, immobile, one hand still between her thighs and the other still gripping the shower control panel tightly. The only sounds in the room are her labored breathing and the sound of the water hitting her shoulder blades. While she recovers from what has to be the quickest orgasm in masturbation history, she contemplates the recent events, now seeing more clearly without the thick fog of her arousal.

He had seemed so big, towering over her. No, this isn't really accurate. Rather, he had made her feel small. Like a predator on the hunt making his prey cower under the weight of his dangerous presence. Well, he was one, technically speaking. But she had always seen him as the honest, loyal, reliable soldier and friend he was, sometimes she could almost forget he's a Turian. He always was Garrus to her. But that... she just had a glimpse of a side of him she didn't know he had. That was an assertive, smooth, sensual Garrus she had yet to be acquainted with, and now that she knew he had it in him, she wasn't sure she'd be able to look at him the same way again.

Because that Garrus was hot as fuck.

As if she needed any more reasons to want him.

Part of her is a bit disturbed by the fact that the thrill of danger she felt when he loomed over her turned her on so much, but I doesn't really surprise her either. She always was an adrenaline junkie, so no wonder it would rub on her tastes in men. She realizes no Human men could ever make her feel like that, back when she still had a sex life. Most likely, she tended to intimidate them to an extent with her lovely personality, so none of them ever had the confidence to defy her like that. Leave it to her to need a space predator with sharp teeth and claws to satisfy her desires...

She slowly stands up, wincing as her knees had begun to fall asleep, and gives herself a quick scrub before heading out. As she dries herself, she tries to understand what could have possibly motivated him to push her buttons like that.

There was no denying his teasing got a lot worse as of late, but this just now was on a whole new level. A shiver of dread travels up her spine as she realizes there are only two reasonable explanations to his behavior. Either he has figured out she's attracted to him and has fun at her expanse, or he doesn't and he's actually hitting on her. Either way, the situation is serious.

However, the first one doesn't really hold water. Garrus is not mean, and certainly not a bully nor an idiot. He wouldn't do that to her, especially if he knew it could have potentially dangerous consequences on the battlefield. So that leaves her with the second explanation.

And suddenly, everything makes sense.

That strange behavior he's been displaying ever since that fateful experiment. The sudden closeness he seemed to seek constantly. The relentless teasing that was no longer him poking fun at Human mating behaviors but more about flustering her in the most creative ways possible.

It was all her fault.

She has induced this behavior in him by taking advantage of him while his unconscious was bare. And now he has that delusion of wanting her firmly planted in his head.

She sits on the toilet with her towel around her neck and rests her elbows on her knees. She has no idea how to fix that. And now, she had to endure the man she wants flirting with her, knowing it's not real; not him.

She doesn't bother holding back her tears this time.


A/N: My sincere thanks to everyone who took a minute to leave a comment. They mean the world to me and give me the energy to keep going. I would never have written so much without you. 3

See you next week! :3