Face It

Inquiline

Inquiline: Living with another; dwelling in another creature's lair

Jack had never been in Shepard's room. She'd never really seen Shepard outside of battle. The commander tended to blow things up. Not classy, but effective. And hella fun. So it was kind of surprising when she walked in, and everything was organized. Terribly so. Ships in the case were alphabetized, weapons on her table were painfully straight.

"It's a little disturbing when you try to take it all in at once." A voice said from behind her.

She flipped around quickly, embarrassed about being caught.

"She doesn't sleep much, so she organizes things." Garrus shrugged.

"Is she sick or something?" Jack asked.

"No, she likes cleaning her weapons, taking them apart." Garrus' arms started moving towards the table.

"Weird."

For a few minutes Jack watched the turian in silence. He was making a mess of things. Moving all the guns about, hiding them in places. He took a few ships and put them out of order. He seemed to be doing it without really thinking about it. There was a soft expression on his face- he didn't mind doing whatever it was he was doing. The biotic didn't understand. She leaned against the wall behind the glass ship display. She couldn't see the door from where she was.

"What are you doing?"

"If it were organized, she would have nothing to do. So I change stuff around."

"Do you do that all the time?"

"When it gets bad." He shrugged again. He had almost finished when the door opened. He stopped what he was doing to embrace Shepard. It was so...sugary, it made Jack cringe away.

"Messing up my stuff again?"

"Force of habit." He rolled his shoulders back, rubbing the back of his head.

Shepard grabbed one of the weapons off of the table.

"What's that for?"

"Going to go talk to Grunt. He's getting antsy again."

"Want me to come?"

"Nah, stay here." Shepard started walking back to the door, still facing Garrus, "Snoop through my underwear drawer. Read my diary. Download porn on my terminal."

"I would, but I don't think Jack would appreciate that."

Jack cleared her throat, trying to hide her laugh. Shepard balked and quickly backed out. Garrus snorted.

"You guys make me sick."

"Hey, what can I say?"

"Were you two always like this? All..." Jack couldn't think of the right words for what she was trying to say.

"We just kind of worked well together."

"So when did this all start?" She motioned to the disorganized array of items now strewn about the room.

Garrus laughed darkly, "Ah..."

Jack shook her head. They could keep their sex life to themselves. The biotic had forgotten her original purpose in coming here, but it didn't matter right now. Now questions about how the two of them got along, how much they had changed for each other, and how long it had taken for them to get used to one another were permeating her brain.

She'd never wondered what it would be like to have someone who cared enough to do the same thing every day- even if it was something as simple throwing around guns and toy ships.

Jack left in a huff. She didn't need to be thinking about this kind of thing. That kind of stuff was distracting, and got people killed.