Garrus was thinking that Shepard was probably bored. She was used to an active lifestyle, hunting down reapers across the galaxy and getting shot at on a daily basis. The life of a retired war veteran had suited her fine in the beginning, but after a while he saw how she was itching for something to do. That's when she had started her little projects. One of which had gained them a large shed outside behind the house, that she had built with her own hands. Another had her spending several months learning how to shoot with a bow and arrows. For hunting game, she explained to him when he asked. He had enjoyed the image of her lurking in the forest around their house, waiting for her prey to make itself known. A while later she had brought home something that she called 'rabbit'. But when Garrus looked it up, the small, furry, bloody mess didn't look much like the pictures on the extranet. Maybe you had to see one alive, and truth be told she had skinned the thing rather quickly. When her first attempt at cooking it failed, by her words, since Garrus couldn't actually eat her food, the next project lay in front of her. Learning how to cook, and she didn't stop with just levo food. Soon she was calling up his sister and Tali to get recipes that he would enjoy as well.

The bottom line was, when Shepard did something, she didn't do it half-assed, and everything she tackled went down beneath the force of her resolve. The newest project of hers was to look for eligible mothers for Garrus' future children.

"You know we don't have to have any contact with them after the... hrm... coupling, right?" he asked and leaned on the door frame to her study.

Shepard was sitting by her terminal, engrossed in lists of names, all of which had signed up to mate with him. He tried not to notice the sheer magnitude of the numbers of willing females, but it was hard to not get his ego flooding. Obviously he was a very sought after man.

"You mean the mothers would raise the kids on their own?" Shepard looked up from her desk and the dislike in her voice was plain and unhidden.

Yeah, that was how that had sounded, didn't it? Garrus kicked himself for his lack of eloquence.

"It's not like that," he started. "There is a whole program surrounding this project. The mothers will be supported by the government and if they choose, they can raise their young in a group with others just like them. Men who are not in a relationship might choose to take one of them in as well, to help out with the upbringing. Besides, you forget, turians aren't like humans. Our kids are more or less brought up with the help of the entire society: schools, pre-service training, mentors, that sort of thing."

That seemed to ease her mind somewhat, but she looked hesitant.

"But..." Shepard eyed one of the applicants. There was a picture of a slender, gray plated turian woman with stark yellow markings around her eyes. She looked good, maybe a bit thin limbed, but very attractive. "We can if we want to, right? Have contact with the kids, I mean."

That was something Garrus hadn't thought about, not yet. All of this still seemed very surreal to him. He half expected to wake up soon and realize this was just a crazy dream. He eyed his wife carefully. There was something, did he dare say it, longing in the look she had. They had joked around about children and the impossible mutations that would produce. But then they had to stop the reapers and neither of them had expected to survive that. But they did and after that, time had blurred away as they hunted down the last Cerberus operatives and helped with the restorations from the destruction, gotten married, then settled in here, in this house, adjusting to life outside the military. It hadn't always been easy, but they'd managed. Children hadn't really been in Garrus' thoughts for a long while. He was still just blissfully, miraculously, happy that he had her, well and alive and next to him.

Did she want kids? Did she think about that a lot? Except for adoption, and they had gotten a few requests from Wrex to take a bunch off his hands, the options for them were limited. Not to mention rather messy and intrusive.

Garrus walked over and sat down on the edge of the desk next to her. Softly brushing his fingers over the back of her hand that was resting on the table top, he smiled warmly down at her.

"Yeah, sure, if you want that," he said.

Now she looked uncertain.

"I don't know, do you?" she asked, something uncharacteristically fragile in her tone.

He opened his mouth a couple of times without anything coming out, his mandibles waving back and forth. This had bothered him before, he remembered. The possibility that she would want to have kids of her own. Kids he wasn't able to give her. He wanted to be able to be everything for her, do anything for her. That she would miss out on anything that she could have had with a human man made his gut churn uncomfortably.

She seemed to understand his lost feeling, gripping his hand and smiling softly up at him.

"Maybe we'll jump off that bridge when we come to it?" she suggested and his chest swelled with love for this woman. His incredible, understanding, patient woman, who put up with his strange, for her, turian behavior and quirks. Who tried to learn about human woman needs and desires and not always succeeding in his endeavor. He didn't deserve this, and he thanked the spirits yet again for whatever they had done to make her want him in return.

Garrus pulled her up into his arms and nuzzled her neck.

"Yeah," he said. "As long as we jump together."

She laughed, a pearling, clear sound that was music to his ears and kissed the side of his neck.

"In the meantime..." She pulled back a little and looked down at the terminal. "You mind helping me pick out some candidates?"

He flicked his mandibles at her in a grin.