Note: this is an AU, so I'm playing around with events to ensure that all the characters I want are on the Normandy at the same time. Mostly so Kal'Reegar and Victus can form a support group because they're the only two who seem to remember there's a war going on.
Chapter Text
Garrus
Two days later, Shepard took me with her as part of the ground squad, and I wished she hadn't.
"Shepard, when I said I wanted to go someplace nice..." I glared into the distance. "Noveria? Really?"
"What, you afraid of catchin' a cold, Garrus?" Vega bounced on his feet. He hadn't stopped grinning since Shepard pulled him for the ground squad. "I spent my life on the beach, sun and seventy degrees in the winter, and I ain't complainin'."
"That's because it's possible you're brain-damaged."
"All right, cut the chatter," snapped Shepard. She watched the landing zone rise up to greet us as the shuttle dropped. I straightened; by now it was instinct. Vega took a little longer to catch on, but at least he stopped bouncing.
"A Cerberus base on Noveria." Another human might have shuddered, but Shepard just rolled her shoulders, her mouth a thin grim line. "Hope your Overload is ready, Garrus."
I nodded.
"Commander, the LZ is hot - it's a quick drop."
"Copy that, Cortez." She moved to the shuttle door and hit the keypad. The blast of cold air rocked me back and for all his bluster, Vega shivered. Spirits-forsaken Noveria.
"Move out!" shouted Shepard, and jumped down from the shuttle. I could see the bright spray of Cerberus gunfire.
"Right behind you!"
The mission, while technically a success, didn't go as planned.
"Goddamn asshole bastard shitheads." I could hear Vega over the comm and through the wall. The echo gave his voice a turian vocal shift. I wished he would stop talking.
"I can't believe they sabotaged the heating systems. And the doors. Now I'm freakin' stuck over here."
"We heard you the first time, Vega." Shepard sat with her back against the wall, knees drawn up to her chest. "And every time after that. Why don't you try and pull up the heating schematics for the compound?"
"No problemo, Commander. Just as soon as I rebuild this console. You know, the one that Garrus shot."
"Vega."
"No, really. Maybe I could kick it. It's not like it could do more damage, right?"
Shepard hissed and punched the wall. "Vega, if you're just going to keep complaining, get off the damn comms. We need to conserve power. Once this storm passes we'll need enough juice to radio the Normandy for pickup, and every time you use the comms you're draining your suit. You know, the one that's keeping you warm."
"Yes, ma'am," he mumbled, and mercifully went silent.
I counted in my head, slowly. When I got to seventy-three seconds, Shepard turned her head to look at me.
"How're you holding up?"
I leaned back against the wall. After a moment's thought, I slid closer until my armor clacked against hers. "Next time you want to play with Cerberus on a barren, icy wasteland, leave me at home. Turians deal as well with cold about as well as we do with swimming."
"So I can expect - "
"Flailing and shivering interrupted by occasional bouts of frostbite."
Shepard laughed, her hand covering her mouth. Neither of us spoke for a long time. We were good at that, being quiet together. She had a capacity for stillness that I'd never seen in a human before.
After a while, she turned her head and watched me. I kept my eyes straight ahead and stayed still. Then, I felt the tips of her fingers ghosting over the right side of my face, tracing the ridges of my scars. There wasn't a chance she knew how intimate this was, and I wasn't about to spoil the moment by telling her. I closed my eyes for a moment.
"Garrus?" Her hand stopped moving. "I'm sorry I didn't get there sooner." It sounded like every word was being punched out of her. I kept still.
"You came," I said. You came back, I thought.
"Yeah, but -" I reached up and closed my hand around hers.
"No. No second-guessing. You came. The fact that I took a rocket to the face fades in comparison."
"Garrus, we need to talk about your priorities." But she squeezed my fingers anyways.
There were any number of things to say to that, but I opted for silence. Like I said, we were good at that.
The silence lasted until both our suits started making ominous beeping noises.
"What the - oh shit, Garrus, get your suit off!"
I didn't have time to wonder out loud what was going on before heat seared across the back of my cowl. I hissed and started fumbling for clasps and catches. The frigid air bit at exposed skin as I dropped piece after piece. Not too soon, either - the heating coil at the back of my suit was a clotted, smoldering mess. Shepard's was the same.
"Goddammit," she gritted through clenched teeth. "Goddammit. Heating coils are shorted out. Must have been when the damn ATLAS blew - James, you okay?"
"Yeah, Commander, guess I was outside the blast radius. I'm good."
"Good." Shepard crossed her arms over her chest and crouched next to me. "Goddammit," she said again, and shivered. Outside, the snow howled on. The cold was the kind that aimed right for your gut and worked its way out from there. I thought of the main battery, warm and dim, and hated Cerberus a little more.
"Commander?"
"Yeah, Vega?" Shepard was pale and shaking.
"I think I saw some thermal sheeting over there - you could, uh, use it for insulation." I'd never known Vega to sound sheepish before, but at the moment I was too grateful for the suggestion to wonder why.
"Where?" Shepard's eyes roamed the room. "Never mind, found it. Thanks, Vega. I owe you a drink."
"Maybe two - just so long as the first one's hot."
"Noted. Garrus, want to give me a hand? We can make a tent, conserve more body heat this way."
My hands were clumsy from the cold, but eventually we squared off a corner of the room and covered it with the thermal sheeting. We laid three sheets on the floor as a cushion, with some of the smaller pieces wadded together for pillows. There was barely enough room for either of us to lay down, but with our combined body heat, it was cozy, once we used a flashlight so we could see each other.
Inside, Shepard pressed close against my side and I considered putting an arm around her waist - for warmth. I decided to wait.
"You know," I said, once we'd stopped shivering, "I think I've seen this vid."
"Me too." Shepard cupped her hands and blew into them. "A few times. Lots of different endings."
I glanced at her, trying to read her meaning in her face, but her expression was as carefully blank as her voice. It was the closest she'd come to responding in kind in two days, and I wanted to push her again. Having her so close was an indulgence I couldn't resist.
"Which one did you like best?"
"Which one what?"
"Which ending?"
"Oh, uh...not sure. Probably the one with the quickest rescue and hottest shower." She was retreating. I growled, not missing the way her hands stuttered, and slid my arm around her waist.
"Garrus, what are you doing - aaah!" I pulled her in between my legs, her back to my carapace, and wrapped my arms around her chest. Loosely, so she could pull away if she wanted to. She didn't.
"God, you're strong." Shepard pulled her knees up to her chest and looped her arms around her legs. Because I'm shameless, and because a chance like this might never happen again, I buried my face in the heavy mass of her hair and inhaled.
"More energy-efficient this way," I said into the shell of her ear. Shepard rewarded me with a shudder that had nothing to do with cold.
"I think I remember this from a few of the vids. Good thinking."
"I occasionally have good ideas."
"Coming along with me today wasn't one of them?"
"No, it was one of my best." I whispered into the curve of her shoulder. "I'll always have your six."
Some well-hidden tension slipped out of her. She let her head rest on my shoulder. "I know," she said, and the bone-deep faith in her voice was so pure I had to close my eyes.
Shepard
If I was honest with myself, I'd admit that I was in love with Garrus. But I know, better than most, how fickle honesty is, so I avoid with myself.
Saying to myself, I love Garrus Vakarian, that doesn't make anything easier. It just creates a whole set of new problems. Once those words are said, they're fact instead of just an abstraction, and then I stop being sure of myself and start worrying about being sure of him.
Or so I thought.
When he dropped his head into my shoulder and murmured I'll always have your six, with his whole body a solid frame around mine, something snapped deep in my chest.
"I know," I said, which sounds cold in theory but was the only way to tell him what I felt. My trust in you is absolute. If I fall and you're not there to throw out an arm to catch me, it's because you're falling too.
What I wanted to say, so badly my throat creaked, was There's no Shepard without Vakarian.
"I think we should grab some sleep while we can," Garrus rumbled, after I'd tried to scrape the words out. "There's no telling how long this storm will last. Might as well pass the time and catch up on some sleep."
"I like the way you think, Garrus." He huffed a laugh that blew through the loose hairs at the back of my neck and shoved the leftover sheeting into a pile against the wall. I watched, without bothering to disguise my interest, as he arranged himself so his fringe and carapace were supported. When he saw me watching, he raised his brow plates at me in an expression that didn't need a translation.
"Looks complicated," I said. I already missed his warmth along my back.
"Not all of us are lucky enough to carry around our own padding, Shepard. And no, that wasn't racist." I snapped my mouth shut on that exact reply and glared at him. "Don't pout. The great Commander Shepard can't pout."
I chewed my lip. "So what can I do?"
"You can do your part and help us keep warm." He stretched out one impossibly long arm and I curled into his side, sighing when his body heat started doing the work for me.
I was dozing, but my comm crackled.
"Don't worry, I'm still alive, Shepard."
"Duly noted, James." Garrus chuckled and turned off the flashlight. The only light now was his scouter. I'd always wondered if he slept with it on. Guess I was about to find out. "Warm enough?"
"Yeah - suit's not made to sleep in, but I'll make it. Better than the alternative. I'll try the comms at dawn."
"Copy that. Get some rest, James."
"Aye, aye, Commander."
The urge to swing my leg over Garrus' was thankfully brief - I couldn't even lie to myself that it would be for warmth - and the only sound was our breathing. I pushed a little closer, ready to back off if Garrus got sick of my invasion of his personal space, but he didn't say anything. I listened while his breathing got long and shallow, and fell asleep counting each rise and fall of his carapace. What would I call that, if not love?
Much too soon, cold air gusted over us and I jolted awake, reaching for my gun.
"Wakey, wakey, eggs and b-AH!"
"I see Vega has overriden the lock on his door," said Garrus without opening his eyes. If anything, his voice was closer to a growl than I'd ever heard it. I wanted to curl up inside his voice and go back to sleep. Vega blocked out most of the cold, thanks to his suit and to just being enormous, but he let enough in to start me shivering again. I tried to glare him away - I'm never good at talking before coffee and breakfast - but then I followed his gaze, to where my legs were tangled with Garrus'. Apparently I'd given into temptation during the night.
Vega's expression was slowly morphing from mortified to gleeful. Like I said, all my friends were assholes.
"Hey Garrus, you know you got some, uh, Commander all over you?"
"Your powers of observation," Garrus deadpanned, "fill me with awe. Is there something you wanted to tell us, or are you attempting to freeze us to death?"
"Sorry, sorry, just wanted to say the storm's cleared and the shuttle'll be here in thirty minutes." Vega paused, ready to say something, then thought it over and changed his mind. He just said "sorry" again, in case the third time was the charm. He slid out, closing the tent flap behind him, and the air started to warm immediately.
I sat up. Stretching was impossible in our tight space, but when I rolled my shoulders to get the everlasting kinks out, I felt the broad pad of Garrus' thumb massaging the knotted muscles next to my spine.
"Oh." I sighed and let my head loll back. His touch was constant but not insistent, just a gentle pressure in all the right places, and it felt even better when his thumb slid over the threadbare places on my undersuit.
Part of me wanted to get freaked out that we'd spent the night curled up together, and that Vega had found us like that, but it was receding.
He let me touch his scars.
He didn't even like people looking at them.
Some balance had shifted between us. Or maybe it was more accurate to say that we were coming into focus.
Sorry, James had said. Not, what the hell are you guys doing or uh not what I meant when I told you about the sheeting. But sorry, like he was apologizing for interrupting.
It was an equation, and I was starting to fill in the variables. The biggest variable of all was curled around me like a question mark.
My heart leapt, one quick spike of hope. When I looked at him, Garrus slid his hand down my back before letting it rest at his side.
"Still cold?" he asked. Without waiting for my answer, he rolled on his side and tugged me close.
"Just till the shuttle gets here," he sighed next to my cheek. I nodded, because I didn't trust my voice, and hid my face against the warm hide of his neck. Just till the shuttle got there.