~Garrus~
To say Garrus was happy was an understatement. Today Jane would be arriving on the Citadel for her shore leave that would last for close to two months in celebration of completing her first step of Interplanetary Combatives Training, officially referred to as N-Training.
Work patrolling the Wards had made Garrus consider applying for admittance into the Investigations Division of C-Sec. He felt that the best place to be to help more people in need would be to be able to discover the secret crimes beneath what the tourists and outside observers saw. The best place to do just that was none other than Investigations. The only thing holding him back from submitting his application was the knowledge that his father had every chance of becoming his superior at one time or another.
For most the idea of a family member being a superior would seem like an unfair advantage and foolish mistake in the chain of command, but when it came to Turians like his father, the exact opposite would occur. His father was his toughest critic and often times held him at a higher standard merely because he was related.
For as long as Garrus could remember, his father represented anything, and everything, that could go wrong for any plan Garrus laid out. When Garrus would excel in his schooling as a child his father would often insist that his instructors were not challenging him enough or tended to add his own curriculum to Garrus' schooling. He knew that his father would love nothing more than to pick apart his cases at any and every chance he got.
Receiving a message from Jane said saying that the ship she was on was beginning its docking procedures he decides to drop his current train of thought and get ready to head to the docks to meet her when the ship was done docking, which usually took close to an hour.
Leaving work and getting a transport to the dock took nearly the whole hour and Garrus hoped that if she was already out, she wasn't waiting for too long. Just as he arrived to the visitor's lobby for her dock he saw her entering from the ramp.
He could tell she was tired, thanks to him gaining more experience in human expressions from his daily patrols talking to citizens, but as she found him across the way her face lit up in a smile he was sure she hadn't felt during the entire six months. He made his way up to her as she looked him up and down. "Look at you, all spiffy in your new armor."
He was surprised she could tell the subtle differences between the recruit armor and the Enforcement Division's armor he wore now. As a Turian she would've been able to see that the material was a bit thicker and constituted it as a Light Armor instead of the reinforced cloth uniform he wore six months ago, but usually humans weren't that observant. "I'm surprised you could tell that this is different. Most humans think all Turian clothing looks the same." He smirked.
She squinted and turned her head slightly to the side. "I can't tell if I should be proud of my observation or slightly insulted at how racist that sounded," she joked, to which he responded with a very human shrug, but by her snickering he assumes he didn't quite master it. "In either case, I sketch people and things as a hobby, noticing tiny details kinda comes with the territory. All that's missing is a helmet to hide that ugly mug of yours and it'd be perfect!"
"Are you kidding? It'd be a crime to deny everyone me in all my glory." He crosses his arms and sets his weight off to one side while smirking.
She makes a weird noise by blowing air past her lips as she waves one hand dismissively, "Oh the poor public." They each return smiles, but hers quickly drops to a grimace as she drops the duffel bag she had slung over one shoulder to the ground with a thunk. "Jesus, that thing is way too heavy for my sore arms…" He reaches out and grabs the bag's strap and shrugs off her weak protest. "Well that's just insulting," she says as he slings it over his own shoulder effortlessly.
"Come on, let's get you set up in your hotel and I can take you to a new place that just opened up. It claims to have the best human cuisine on the Citadel." He motions towards the transport hub.
She shrugs and follows, "being the only place doesn't always mean it's the best, Garrus."
He shakes his head at that. "I didn't say that, you difficult woman…"
"Crap!" she cuts in. When he stops and looks to her to see what was the matter and finds her quickly scanning through her Omni-Tool interface. "Sorry to cut you off," she looks up to him apologetically then back down. "Those bastards," she says under her breath.
"You okay?" he stops and turns completely to her, concerned.
She starts, looking up to him confused, then shakes her head with a half-smile, "yeah, sorry for the mini freak out. Usually the Alliance has a special with a local hotel - the owner is ex-Alliance I think - for their soldiers that take shore leave on the Citadel. The deal is that if you give them a big enough heads up they can reserve a room for cheaper than usual cost to stay for leave." She sighs, "I had sent them a message about two weeks ago requesting that they reserve a room, to which they assured me it was saved, but then this morning on the ship right before getting out of communications range they said they messed up my booking. Now I'm stuck paying full price for a room until a room clears, which is total bull."
Garrus knew the hotels on the Citadel charged unreasonable prices and, although she probably made a similar amount of pay as he did, the cost would take a large portion of her pay in order to give her somewhere at least somewhat comfortable to stay. Still hearing her ranting, damn, can she talk when she gets mad, he deciding to interject before she got much more worked up. "You can stay with me," he offered.
Just as sudden as her rant started, it stopped, and she turned to Garrus. "I can't do that." Shaking her head a bit with a scowl, "I'm fine with a room for a few days, just lost myself a bit. Must be the lack of sleep." Her smile is weak but no less genuine.
At her reluctance he puts his hand on her shoulder, not condescending, but a solid weight. "It's no problem. If you're fine with the size of my apartment then you're welcome to stay out that time where you don't have to pay the ridiculous prices hotels charge."
She sighs and her shoulders relax, "Saving me from paying out the ass huh?" She smirks, then nods, the action more to herself than him, as if making a decision. "Okay, but I'll only shack up until they get a room. Thanks Garrus."
"Anytime," he smiles and they continue to make their way to the cab terminal to head off to his apartment to drop her things off.
After dropping off her things to his apartment while she waited in the taxi Garrus took Jane to enjoy a meal at the restaurant he told her about. Luckily, next door was a Turian place that he could place an order for himself and have it delivered to the human eatery.
The owners were more than happy to allow him to eat with Jane, thinking it a great opportunity to start a possible joint arrangement between the two establishments for better business. Either way, Garrus was just happy that the two of them could enjoy a meal that wasn't military grade food stuffs for her or cheap take-out for him.
When he asked about her food she responded with a "better than gruel I have to slather with ketchup or hot sauce." He figured that probably meant it wasn't the best and apologized for such which she shrugged off with a smile. The rest of their meal entailed the two catching up on anything that had happened from the time the last messaged each other and now.
Now found Garrus and Jane outside his apartment. It was still somewhat early, but from the barely contained yawns that escaped, Jane was ready to call it a night. As the lock on his door changed from the locked red to open green, he stood to the side to allow her access before him.
His apartment consisted of one large room with kitchen facilities - a sink, countertop, stove, and fridge along one wall - and a living area – a single couch in front of a wall mounted television – and a door that led to the bedroom with attached bathroom. Picking up her duffel bag from where he laid it earlier by the door Garrus starts to make his way to the bedroom when she stops him.
"Whoa," she rushed over and grabs the bag out of his hands. "No sir, I am not taking your bed. I got the couch."
As she manages to get him to release it, she receives a stern look. "Jane, you've been getting at most a few hours of sleep a day for the past six months. I know humans need more sleep than that." At her continued refusal he crosses his arms and stands to his full height, looking down on her, and she stares right back. "You're taking the bed."
She squints, gauging him, then after a long and tense silence, she smiles at some internal joke. "Nope," she flippantly responds while turning around, walking to the couch and flopping down.
Did she walk away from a stare down? he baffles. He has to give it to her, staring down, or in her case up, a Turian tended to end with the other party giving in, but Jane did not bow. If anything, she treated Garrus as if he had already lost the battle, he just didn't know it yet. He's pretty sure she was also the only one who would ever be able to get away with something like that, and Garrus was happy to admit he was perfectly fine with it.
Sighing, he walked into his bedroom to at least grab her a pillow and blanket to sleep with. Returning to hand it to her he found her scrolling through her Omni-Tool, seeming to look for something.
"I saw an advertisement for a movie that came out recently," she says without looking up as she takes the pillow and folds it under her head one handed. The blanket, he puts over the back of the couch. "Looks like fun, want to see it?" She looks over the lit interface to him as he pushes her still shoed feet off from hanging over the couch armrest and sits down. The move had her swinging her whole body so she was sitting up and with that she was able to show him the said movie downloading on her Tool.
"Sure," he tries to shrug, which from her lack of laughter he must have at least accomplished enough to translate. With that he pulls up his own Tool to transfer to his television for the both of them to see.
By what he could tell as he keyed it up and she settled in with the blanket, the movie was some horror vid about an Asari Commando squad on a desolate planet. Not what he'd usually watch, but what the hell, its Jane's time off. It wouldn't really matter if they watched a reading of Elcor poetry so long as she got time to relax, the fact that she decided to share her time with him was just a bonus.
Half way through the movie, the two of them laughing at the horrible acting, huge plot holes, and glaringly bad special effects, Garrus found that Jane was starting to get quieter and quieter and slower to respond. Looking to her, he found her curled and wrapped up in the blanket in her corner of the couch. Smiling to himself, he stopped the movie and got up to help her into a more comfortable position.
As he unwrapped the blanket so she could stretch out, she stirred a bit, saying something about the fact that his couch 'was more comfortable than it looked.' Settling back into a more comfortable sleeping position with her back to him. Covering her back up with the blanket, Garrus left her to sleep.