Keep
five: home is a name
The Normandy's airlock hisses closed behind them. Garrus never bothers with the debrief if she doesn't order him to. So it's no surprise when he makes a quick exit.
She lets him leave. Doesn't bother asking him to stay. If he needs space, he needs space. After what happened with Sidonis, she hasn't been able to begrudge him that.
Shepard and Kasumi handle the debriefs on their own. They do just fine at it; after only half an hour, Miranda has the beginnings of a twelve-page report and Shepard has notes for the requisitions/expenses paperwork she'll send the Illusive Man.
That's as much work done as she can manage, for now. Time to go see what Garrus has to say for himself.
She's still in her armor when she finds him hunched over one of the monitoring terminals in the forward battery, his attention supposedly on the screen. He presses two keys endlessly: left and right.
Poor bastard's scrolling through the same damn algorithm again and again.
"Line five or line six, Shepard?"
"It's all numbers to me," she replies. "So, now you're afraid of an argument? But not back there?"
He taps two different keys and the lines of code vanish. He turns to face her.
"You were willing to put a pregnant hostage in needless danger, then charged into the worst of the mercs over and over, to prove a point." He pauses, makes a two-toned sound suspiciously like a growl. "And no, I'm not afraid to tell you that. Not there, and not here."
She spreads her hands. "You're right about Antilarax. That was a mistake, and I should have come up with a better option sooner."
"But I'm not right about you?"
"I'm trained for CQC. It's what I do, Garrus; it's what I've always done. What I did today, you've seen a thousand times."
He takes a step forward. "You were never this bad during the hunt for Saren."
"I had Geth Destroyers in my face more times than I can count, and I punched them in the face with a shotgun, then, too."
"But you didn't go chasing them." Another step closer. He's almost in her face, now.
Her stomach sinks. It seems like any second, he's going to press his mouth to her cheek and flare his mandibles. And that's no sweet, cheek-kissing human gesture.
"Garrus —"
He places both hands on her shoulders, digs in until she swears she can feel the tip of his claw finding the metal she's reinforced with. Then he leans his head forward, presses his forehead against hers. His mandibles flare.
Turian body language for I love you, now shut the hell up.
"You didn't really think," he growls to the bridge of her nose, "that I'd let you just walk into danger."
She presses one hand to the unscarred side of his face, pushes him sideways. Can't afford to duck away. Not now.
"What's this about letting me? I may be your girlfriend, Garrus, but I'm your commanding officer, too."
"Situations like this," he says, and one voice growls while the other purrs, "I could..."
But then he shakes his head, takes a step away. "No. I couldn't. That's impossible."
"Garrus?" She half wants to ask if he plans on rejoining the land of the sane anytime soon, but there's no call to be flippant.
"I thought — I mean you seemed — I can still smell — I know it's crazy, impossible, but I keep thinking —"
"Thinking?"
When he looks back at her, his eyes are wild, unfocused. His voice comes out in a rush, so quickly that her translator barely catches it: "I-think-you-need-to-take-a-shower-now."