His game was not as simple as he made it sound, there were rules about what cards she could lay down when, and her human deck of cards had face cards that he didn't know what to do with, and the terrible whiskey wasn't helping either, so eventually they gave up on it, and Shepard taught him spit.

He mostly caught on quickly, but kept having to drink way more than she did because he couldn't catch on that he didn't have to wait turns to lay down cards. The goal was to be faster than your opponent.

"Stop waiting for me!" She shouted at him, laughing as she laid down three cards from her hand, while he was still staring perplexed at how she had changed the discard piles.

"I.. keep thinking I have to be nice to you, though." She laughed again, and folded her hands.

"Go on, I'll wait for you to catch up." He laid down five or six cards, and then looked at her.

"Come on," he slurred, "If I can't be nice, you can't either." He waved her on with a talon. She laughed and laid down a card.

"Wait! Wait, wait, wait. I know that's not right." He picked up the card she had laid down to check the one underneath. "You can't put a three on a seven. Three doesn't come after seven."

"Fine." She took the card back.

"No! Hey, wait." He pinned her hand with the card to the table. There was a drunken grin in his eye that she wasn't sure she should trust. "Shouldn't that mean I win or something? You have to drink?" She shook her head. "You have to drink!" He repeated. "That's what you really need to catch up on, Shepard."

She laughed again, she felt way too hot. She was fairly certain that it was because she was feeling fairly drunk. It didn't have anything to do with the tingle in her shoulders, or the heat of his hand against her wrist.

"I'm... I'm pretty sure I'm just drunk enough." He shook his head, and then seemed to have a momentary bit of difficulty steadying himself again. She laughed as he seemed to tilt from side to side a few times, eyes somewhat unfocused. She grabbed his forearms, hoping that would help some. He laughed again.

"Alright. Fine then. You've got to... answer a question." He said.

"What? No, I hate that game!" She replied. "You're going to ask a question that I won't wanna answer."

"That's the point. And then you ask questions I won't want to answer."

"But you already tell me everything I ask. What am I supposed to ask you?" Every time they sat at the Mako waiting for an extraction, they'd sit and talk about life and their choices, and what brought them to where they are now. He never avoided questions the way she did.

"I don't know. Whatever you want."

"I don't want to."

"You lost, Shepard. You put a three on a seven! Or a seven on a three. Whatever. You've got to do something, and if it's not more of that whiskey..." Shepard looked at the bottle, now less than a quarter full. They really had decimated it. She felt drunk, but she wasn't so drunk that having more of that awful stuff seemed like a good idea... In fact she already felt a little queasy from it. She looked back up at him and grimaced.

"Okay. Yeah. What have you got?"

"Why are you so bothered by Lieutenant Alenko?"

"Damn, Garrus." She slammed the remainder of her hand on the table and pushed some stray hairs from her face.

"Well, why? What was that out there?" He asked, gesturing to the door to her cabin where Alenko had made her freeze. She suddenly became very aware that his hands were on her forearms. His thumbs were brushing against the inner crease of her elbows. This... this was exactly what she hadn't wanted, and yet here they were; she was drinking with a friend—right? He was a friend, as far as she could tell. He'd never given her a reason to think otherwise or mistrust him... but now he was asking her questions about something she really didn't even want to think about herself.

"Why do you wanna know that? Why are you even thinking about that?" She asked.

"Because, I've seen you gun down thresher maws without breaking a sweat, and every time you see this human on your own crew, you freeze up and go all weird."

"What difference does it make?" She was acting childish. She knew she was. She was acting childish, but she also really needed to know why he cared. "Why do you care?"

"Damn, Shepard." He said. "If it really bothers you that much when someone worries about you..." He couldn't even finish his sentence.

"You worry about me?" She asked. "Why? I'm fine. I don't like it when he does it for no reason, and I don't need you to do it either."

"I"m sure you don't, you don't need anything, but I thought we were friends, at least. I want to know that you're okay, and I want to know if I need to do something for you."

"What does that mean? We are friends. We talk, we drink together, we make a great team. I'd rather be around you than anyone else."

"Then why is it so hard to believe that it bothers me when someone upsets you like that?"

"Because we kill together, Vakarian! I shoot when you reload, and you shoot when I reload. I cover you, you cover me. We don't..." she tried to gesture between them to explain what she couldn't find the words for.

"Don't do that." He cut her off

"Do what?" She realized she was shouting now.

"Do... what you're doing!" He responded, just as loud. She realized he was as frustrated as she was.

"Don't tell me..." she couldn't even finish that sentence. She couldn't remember where she was going, and she wasn't sure if she wanted to. She didn't want to yell, didn't want to shout. She didn't want to admit that she was in the process of yelling at... at her friend.

She cut her head away from him. Took the rage in her gut and stifled it. Balled it into a fist and slammed it onto the too small metal table.

The sound was loud in the small metal cabin, reverberating around the deactivated console, her sad little bunk, the door to the head, her duffle bag still strewn over the ground in front of the bed. She suddenly felt tired. Transient, looking at that sad, Alliance issue bag with her other pair of standard issue socks hanging out.

She propped her elbow on the table and stuck her thumbnail between her teeth.

The alcohol was making her thoughts a little slow... and maybe a little too honest. Even to herself. Alenko made her uncomfortable with his soft, pretty eyes, and his overly romantic holo-novel stories. Vakarian was making her uncomfortable now with his concern about her distaste with Alenko... specifically fact that he zeroed in on that... when she was dead set on ignoring Alenko until he went away.

Vakarian hadn't made a sound.

His arms were crossed over his broad, turian chest, and his bright eyes were staring at her from under those bony brow-plates. He looked pissed.

This wasn't getting anyone anywhere.

"I thought it was 'We get the job done right, not fast', Commander." He said, and slapped his hand of cards onto the table.

"What the hell are you talking about?" She asked, dropping her other fist onto the tabletop. Her voice came out a lot softer than she intended.

"I mean if I was mistaken about our friendship, I'd rather you say something."

Is... is that what this is? Is that why she sought him out every evening for conversation? Is that why she didn't feel right going planetside without him dropping into cover next to her?

What was she supposed to say? That... Alenko didn't bother her? He did. But Alenko was her problem.

The toggles on his shirt caught her eyes and she couldn't stop staring at them. They were some sort of silver plastic that shone dully in the orange LED lighting of her cabin.

"Yeah." She managed. When she caught his eyebrow raise, she realized what she had just said... and what he had said. "I mean no!"

Shaking her head, she packed the cards into a stack and began to shuffle again.

She laughed a little to herself. Stupid. So stupid.

"You're not mistaken." She looked back up at him. "Ever played blackjack?"

"No."

"It's easy. 21 and you win, over is a bust."

"Teach me how to deal it."

She nodded, passed the deck over to him.

"I'm sorry. Garrus." She said. "I don't like to talk about... I don't like to talk."

He nodded.

"I see that."