Over the course of another two weeks, Shepard's health had improved to the point that Karin agreed to release her from the med-bay. Though Garrus suspected that the Commander's growing restlessness likely had some sway in the decision. He wouldn't complain though. Waking up next to Shepard's warm body was a luxury he was happy to indulge in again.

Unfortunately, it wasn't always positive. Sharing quarters with her again required more of his attention to her needs. While she had grown stronger, she still didn't have full use of her legs, so she needed assistance going up the steps in her- their- cabin or using the restroom. That had led to another moment of contention, in which she adamantly refused his help until after she fell when she tried to tackle the first step on her own.

Garrus was quick to help her up, before she could shoo him away, and aided her to hobble to the bathroom. Her mouth was set in a grim line and she refused to speak or meet his eyes until her shorts were off and he lowered her onto the toilet. Then the lines of her body wilted, her eyes scrunched, and the tears came.

"This was a stupid idea," she sobbed, pressing her face hard into the palms of her hands. She looked as small as she likely felt. "Look at me. I should've stayed in the med-bay. This isn't fair to you, Garrus!"

Like several other times in the past, he was tempted to tell her how he really felt. He wanted to express that taking care of her was no chore because he was bonded to her. He would never want anyone else. He belonged to her. His second larynx vibrated in his throat, expressing as much but it fell on deaf ears. She looked at him and he opened his mouth to finally tell her in a way she could actually understand, but all that came out was: "You'd do the same for me."

She stared at him, eyes glassy with the moisture of her tears. Then her mouth opened, about to say something, but she must have changed her mind because she closed it and simply nodded her affirmation.

As days went on and they adapted, as they always did, Shepard more readily accepted his help while he was learning to recognize that fine line of when to offer and when to sit back and let her work through it on her own. Yet, while that aspect of their new situation improved, another was on a quick decline.

Turians typically slept in the nude, unless they happened to be stationed in a relatively cold area. Shepard, on the other hand, preferred to sleep with clothes, a habit she had developed in basic because she always wanted to be prepared to spring awake and start fighting if she had to.

"Never want to get caught with your pants down, Vakarian," she had told him once, smirking over her shoulder at his questioning look as she pulled a pair of sweats on.

At least, that was the case before he had asked her to be a one-turian-woman. Then, instead of immediately cleaning up and putting on some shorts and a t-shirt after sex, Shepard took to pressing up against him. For reasons beyond him, not that he minded, she wanted to feel his hide and plates against her soft skin. Under normal circumstances, Garrus would have rejoiced at the feeling, but now he found himself cursing it.

The problem wasn't that he didn't want her. The problem was that he did. His body screamed for the mate to who he had bonded to. Every innocent trace of a fingertip left a trail of fire in its wake. Every sleepy hum that sounded even remotely like a moan left him growling. The feel of her warm body triggered every primal instinct inside him to roll over and take her, but she was in no condition to take him the way the beast inside demanded. She was in enough pain and didn't need him adding to it just because he was horny. And he certainly didn't want her to feel pressured.

Garrus groaned at the building pressure beneath his pelvic plates, knowing it was an issue he had to ignore until Shepard fell asleep. Then he could slip quietly from the bed and take care of it in the bathroom without risk of initiating a very awkward conversation.

The only light in the cabin was from the blue glow of the fish tank. Much to Shepard's disappointment, her fish were one of the first things to go when the Alliance had seized the Normandy. It was a fact that pissed him off too. He had worked hard to keep those damn things alive when they were stranded in that jungle. And, unfortunately, not many people were overly concerned with restocking their fish tanks when they had houses to rebuild, so there weren't many stores from which to buy fish.

At least Joker had the forethought to claim Shepard's hamster. That was made abundantly clear when Garrus would wake to the sound of the furball running on his obnoxious wheel late into the night... every night.

"He's nocturnal." Shepard would defend the sleep-murdering rodent. "He can't help it."

Garrus stared at a long piece of kelp, watching it bend and sway in the artificial current. He did so in an effort to take his mind off the naked body beside him. The plant twisted and curved like Shepard did when he would-

'Spirits!' Had it really been so long for him that he was beginning to find eroticism in a plant?

The starring role of his prurient thoughts shifted beside him. Apparently sleep remained elusive to Shepard too. He knew, without looking, that her eyes were on him now.

"Garrus?"

"Yeah?" The dancing plant bent and curled.

"I wasn't able to take a shower today," she sheepishly admitted.

'Damn it.' He mentally cursed. He'd been so busy earlier, coordinating a strike team with the Krogan Councilor for an alleged drug bust in the Attican Cluster that he'd forgotten to ask. On days when he was too tied up with work, Lawson or Liara would often take over for him.

"You don't want to wait until morning?" He asked, feigning sleepiness.

"I sweated a lot in physical therapy today so I kind of smell-"

"Amazing," he tacked on, brushing his nose against her scalp to breath in the scent of her. The throb behind his plates punished him instantly.

She chuckled and gave his keel a playful smack. "I'm serious. I stink. Please?"

And how could he say no to that?

"All right," he adhered. Knowing gravity would work against him once he stood, Garrus took a moment to school his pelvic plates closed before he sat up, bringing Shepard up with him. He then planted his feet on the floor and offered her his arm, allowing her to brace on it while she found her footing.

Carefully, and with very small steps, they slowly crossed the room, made it up the stairs, and moved into the bathroom.

The day Shepard moved out of the med-bay, Garrus had placed a plastic chair over the shower drain for her convenience. With his arm around her waist, supporting her weight, he reached out with his free hand to turn the shower on. Turians prefer showers at a higher temperature than human skin can withstand so, once steam began rising from the plastic, he maneuvered Shepard so that she could reach a tentative hand towards the spray to conduct an accurate, human-friendly temperature test. At her approval, Garrus eased her down onto the seat.

He stepped around the spray, trying not to get wet, as he retrieved her soap and shampoo from the built-in shelf and set them on the floor at her feet where she could reach them. He was about to make his retreat, leaving the door open in case she needed him, when she asked: "Will you stay?"

She looked up at him, eyes wide and innocent, giving nothing away. Garrus wasn't fooled.

He shifted his weight back, fixing her with a suspicious gaze. "I'm beginning to see the makings of a setup," he told her.

"Maybe a small one," she admitted, glancing up at him through her eyelashes, a sheepish smile on her face. "I really do need a shower though and... I wouldn't mind if you... you know... helped?"

It was dangerous ground he was about to traverse on. He had surprised himself with the amount of willpower he demonstrated in order to stay behind his plates when he was just lying bedside her in bed, staring at kelp. To have her warm and naked in the shower, water running down her body...

He just managed to suppress a wanting groan.

His silence must have falsely translated as reluctance. "It's all right if you don't want to," she quickly added, doing an admirable job at hiding the disappointment from her voice. "I don't want you to feel pressured."

She didn't want to pressure him?

"I want to!" He blurted. Against his better judgment, he really did.

He tried not to wince when he saw how relieved she was that he hadn't turned her away, her small face lighting up. Stepping into the shower, the less-than-ideal water temperature served as a nice distraction to the guilt he felt for making Shepard think, for even a minute, that he didn't want to be in there with her. As he did so, water ran down his neck to pool slightly in his cowl, which gave Garrus an idea of how to move past the awkward start to this encounter while at the same time, tugging at an old thread of their relationship. He gave himself several seconds to stand under the water, collecting as much as he could before he used the shampoo on the floor as an excuse to bend over. Shepard's eyes widened, rather comically, as she recognized the old game.

"Vakarian, don't you dare-!" But her threat went ignored as he allowed the water to pour out onto Shepard's upturned face all at once.

"You ass!" She exclaimed, but her ensuing laughter drained the word of any venom it could have packed.

Though he had an ulterior motive for bending over, he did follow the motion through by plucking a bottle from the floor; dual shampoo and conditioner. It was Shepard's preference for the sake of efficiency. Remembering the lesson she'd taught him long ago in showers past, - 'a little goes a long way'- he squeezed a small amount into his palm and moved behind her chair to begin massaging it into Shepard's hair. As he gently scrubbed her scalp, watching the soap foam around his fingers and through her red tresses, he found the seemingly mundane task oddly... affecting. Strange, considering it was a deed he had done many times before, but maybe that was the cause.

When he was back on Palaven, he didn't have to keep his talons dulled. That, he would quickly learn, proved to be one of the biggest adjustments to suddenly living life without a human partner. He had kept them filed for only one, soft, reason and that reason had gone from his world. As the months went by, the gradual lengthening and sharpening of his talons sufficed as a biological timescale for how long he'd gone without his reason to blunt them. Now, in that moment, as Shepard groaned and leaned her head pliantly into his palms, relishing the feel of his now-dulled talons scraping along her scalp, Garrus smiled for having a reason again.

"That feels really good," she sighed.

The water made short work of the lather on Shepard's head and he used the runoff as soap for the rest of her body. His hands glided down the soapy skin of her neck, sliding over the ball of her shoulders and traveled down her arms. For good measure, he dragged his talons lightly over the length of her arms on the way back up, remembering how much she used to enjoy the feeling and how much he enjoyed watching her skin react. Goosebumps, he reminded himself. As his hands rounded over the tops of her shoulders and started their destination down and over her collarbone, Shepard moaned softly. It was a small sound, barely audible over the echoing water, but his pelvic plates reacted immediately all the same, shifting slightly and his hands froze in place.

This was bad. He didn't want to initiate something if she wasn't ready. He remembered the pain on her face back in the shuttle to London. Mentally scrambling for a solution, it occurred to him that he hadn't washed her back yet. He could retreat there for now, a place free of human erogenous zones and regroup to her front from a different angle-

"Garrus." His name left her lips in a needy whisper and his hands halted in their retreat. He was staring down at the top of her head, willing his traitorous plates to remain closed, but he knew that tone. It was a tone that he frequently heard both in person and in his dreams ever since the first night they shared together. It was welcome, familiar, and his body responded to it in the way it always did. Then she tilted her head up, and he found himself trapped in her gaze. Her short, copper hair spilled down her neck in a wet, seemingly single piece, but there were strands that curled around her cheeks and eyes, glued to her speckled skin. Her lips moved, uttering a single word that was almost deafened by the sound of the water spattering on the tiles, yet it was loud enough to topple him. "Please."

And he was lost.

Her eyes gleamed mischievously -and perhaps a little proudly- up at him before she asked one of the most unnecessary questions Garrus had ever heard. "Good?"

He fell to his knees and pressed his brow against her own while his sub-vocals sang a song she'd never hear or fully understand.

He was hers.

"Good," he affirmed.

Later, after toweling off and assisting Shepard back to bed, her voice rung out in the darkness, an echo of what had initially set their night into motion.

"Garrus?"

"Another shower, already?"

He felt, more than heard, her answering laughter.

"No," she declined, shaking her head against his chest. "I just... I thought I should tell you," she paused to consider her words. "No, wanted to tell you that- well... I really needed that."

There was something to her voice that hinted a deeper meaning than just the release of sexual tension. Garrus waited for her to continue, sensing she had more to say. He filled in the silence by trailing his talons up and down her arm as he waited.

"I don't quite know how to explain." Another quirk they had in common. They were both terrible at expressing their feelings. Thankfully, they both had a flair for understanding the other regardless. "This whole... thing" -She gestured to her body- "It really sucks. I can't join you in the field. I can't watch your six like you've always watched mine. You do so much for me that I guess I just... I don't know... Wanted to know that I can still do... something for you- Not just sex, I mean. Just, something of what we had before... this."

His sub-harmonics keened at the trepidation he heard in her voice.

"Shepard-"

"I know, Garrus," she soothed, her lips planting a soft kiss on his keel. "I know I never have to prove anything to you. I just wanted you to know that I'm trying." Her arm snaked across his chest and she squeezed him as hard as she could. "I just want what we had before. More than anything."

Garrus shifted her against him so that he could press his mouth to the top of her head.

"If you ask me, we never lost it."