Title: The Map of Her Skin
Rating: T
Word Count: 500
Characters: Garrus/F!Shepard
Summary: She calls them freckles, the little spots of darker toned skin that decorate her face. He traces the path they take, over the slope of her nose and across the bones of her cheeks.
Author's Notes: This is...ridiculously fluffy. Apparently I needed that today. One of those 500 word exercises I like to do now and then. Techincally takes place after ME3, but no real spoilers, just a vague reference to what Shepard and Garrus will do once this whole 'galaxy saving' business is done. Hope you like!

The Map of Her Skin

She calls them freckles, the little spots of darker toned skin that decorate her face. He traces the path they take, over the slope of her nose and across the bones of her cheeks. First with his eyes, then with his talons. Delights in the way that her nose twitches and her hand reaches up to swat at him when he does, even as she sleeps. Finds peace in the breathy little sigh and half-formed smile that ghosts across her lips when he cups her face in his hand; an open-palm caress.

Loves that she doesn't wake up when he does this, but instead seems to relax further into the sheets. Curling towards his side, her hand slipping down his back to rest upon his hip. Grip soft, but present. The warmth of her seeping pleasantly into his plates everywhere they touch.

Unlike his facial markings, the freckles - she once explained - are something she was born with. He assumed that meant they would remain static, unchanging. Similar to the shape of her lips or the color of her eyes. Only, that's not the case. The constellations they form on the canvas of her skin are different now from what they once were. More numerous.

Before the Reapers hit Earth - even before the Collectors' ship was blown sky high - by the muddled, shifting light of her cabin, he first mapped the patterns they made. With eyes, talons, and tongue. Memorized the route they took along the arch of her shoulder, the sweep of her collarbone. Dotting the expanse of her upper back. A swirl here, and a twisting helix there. Used their lines to learn what areas to tickle and which to tease. Carefully noting how they faded into nothing above the peaks of her breasts; the skin bared to him beneath that line lacking their patterns for him to trace. (So instead, he followed the contours of her muscles with equal enthusiasm.)

But now, their numbers have escalated to such a degree that even his careful, nightly examinations can not keep track. He can follow their trail not just along her nose and cheeks, but into the dip beneath her bottom lip, to the valley of her throat. When he presses his hands to the smooth flesh of her abdomen, her thighs, his palms are warmed by skin painted by them. Each day, it seems, a new pattern emerges for him to find.

When he asked why they'd changed, she explained that it had to do with the sun. That as a child, she'd been 'plagued with the silly things' with new ones blooming daily as she worked the field of her family's farm, but that an adult life spent aboard ship had dimmed their color, depleted their numbers. And that now, after countless hours spent basking naked by the sea, bathing in the salty spray and the pink sun, they're returning. So every night, Garrus devotes himself to relearning the map of her skin.

~ End