Disclaimer: chapter one.

Next time Garrus opened his eyes, he was in the medbay for the Normandy. Chawkwas was working at her own terminal, and only looked up when he rose to a sitting position himself.

"Finally awake, I see." She stood from her seat and walked to his side. "What's the last thing you remember?"

He groaned. Shepard's punch. Other details filtered in after that thought. "It's a little fuzzy. We were in battle, there were some varren. At some point, Shepard was trying to get me back on my feet, but I don't remember standing."

"Well, you have the important parts. I'll give you a run-down: You shot out the teeth of a hostile with an assault rifle, then beat those two varren to death with the butt of it. One of those varren sliced up your front in the process, and when Shepard applied medigel to the wound, it reacted with a drug already in your bloodstream. The product was a common turian allergen, and shock took you out. After that, we picked you up, flushed your system, and kept you here to recover for about a day."

"Damn, and how about Shepard?"

"Her Cerberus upgrades had her healed before she got off the shuttle. She finished her mission on Illium and now we're at the Citadel. She's ashore right now, no doubt running a million errands."

"I see." He looked down a moment, then swung his legs over and stood. "If I'm cleared, could I..."

"I didn't say you were cleared, yet." She glared at him, but then she waved her hand, "But I have been keeping a monitor and a drip on you. Pick up something to eat while you're out: no junk food, sit down if you feel tired, and I advise against wearing armor for your typical extended duration."

"Sounds reasonable."

"And if Shepard is in a middle of a mission she got saddled with like she usually is, you report straight back."

"…Really?"

"You aren't cleared for combat until tomorrow. The commander herself suggested this yesterday and I happen to agree. We couldn't use medigel to patch you up until a few hours in, and even a turian feels the effects of blood loss."

He conceded, if only to get out of there quicker.

EDI helpfully provided an up-to-date report of Shepard's current coordinates and actions with little issue; it was easy enough to say he needed to know in case she actually was in a situation he shouldn't get involved with (and, against all odds concerning Shepard, it was lucky that she was just shopping and talking to various diplomats). When he finally caught up with her, she was having some sort of argument with a volus shopkeep.

She easily saw him as he approached, and she made a sign that it was alright to come up. The volus she was speaking to turned away in obvious distaste with whatever it was they were talking about, and Garrus was at her side in a second.

"I've got a few more things to do before going back. Walk with me?"

He nodded. "I heard you had a couple missions without me already."

"Hey, it's not like I neglected you; I came in and made sure you were still breathing from time to time. I guess you really were allergic to that drug."

He chuckled. "Not by itself, but our lifestyle wouldn't recommend further use of it."

Shepard laughed. "That's definitely true." Her eyes looked him up and down a moment, but they didn't meet his and ran away before he could try. "I've never seen you out of your armor before."

"The doctor recommended I don't wear it, though I think she's being a little dramatic."

"She tends to do that." They shouldered through a large group of aliens in the ward's halls. "I… really should apologize about the mission."

Garrus shook his head. "What had to be done…"

"No, you are my responsibility. I shouldn't have let you take that pill, or abused my authority like that, or punched you the way I did. I endangered you. I wounded you and took advantage when I should have been able to stop and consider different options."

He huffed enough to clatter his mandibles. Shepard making apologies wasn't something he was used to; when she made a decision, it was final, and any hindsight was pointless speculation. Until that mission. "For what it's worth, I didn't really feel taken advantage of."

"Really?" Her brows rose and she stopped walking to consider him. He stopped with her, figuring sooner was better than later.

"Yeah," he reached out and took hold of her armored hand. He could actually feel the coolness of the plate through the thinner cloth gloves. "There's never been anyone I respected in this galaxy more than you and, well, now that I have in my head all these… err… possibilities…"

Now an incredulous grin split her features. "Possibilities?"

"Yeah, like, uh, well…" He pulled his hand back suddenly and scratched the back of his neck. "I never really thought about it before. I mean, humans, but you're not just… it doesn't matter. And I was freaking out because I was afraid you'd notice… Not that being attracted to you is embarrassing, but, you know, I didn't want to do anything that might make you, uh…" He stopped his ramble and his shoulders dropped. "…uncomfortable."

"Hmm." She leaned forward and placed a small, soft kiss over his mouth, and his already-hammering heart just got another rush. "You should know by now you don't have to worry about making me uncomfortable, Garrus."

He took in a slow, deep breath to keep from gasping. Something going right for once in his life seemed too much to hope for, but damn did he want it, if only this time. "We've been repeating that phrase a lot, haven't we?"

She laughed and shook her head. "I'll admit, this wasn't the ideal method for me to let you know I was interested."

"Ideal method? Knowing you, I'm sure you would have cornered me with some seduction before I even knew what was going on, disarming me and putting me at a disadvantage."

"I would not have! You're not a mark, Garrus."

"Mhm, so you say, but you get bored unless you find a way to force battlefield tactics into it. I've seen how you fill out reports, Shepard. Hell, Gardner can even tell it was you who raided the mess during the night by how things were moved to specific locations to produce the quickest snack with the least noise and spillage in the pantry."

"Right. And how would you be going about it? Would you have preferred to come up to my cabin and offer to 'calibrate' me, instead?"

He snorted at her. "I haven't thought that far, but trust me, what I would have planned would have been perfect down to the wine and music, and you would have been swept off your feet."

"Well, in lieu of the wine, music, and strategic seduction, where do we go from here?"

"The doctor did say I should pick up something to eat… and now all I can think about is something delicious I tasted the other day, but someone punched me before I could finish."

"Now that you mention it, I am parched." She pulled up her omni-tool. "We could pick ourselves a nice little café…"

"Don't tease, Shepard."

Her expression was mischievous. "Bar, then?"

"The closest one is in a completely separate ward, and I know you're going to make us take the long way."

"Shadowy alcove a few meters away? …Garrus! Let go! I was joking!"

"I'm not," he tugged her in, then opened a thin door to a hidden corridor with his omni-tool.

"…Huh."

He couldn't help his cocky expression at her dead-pan amazement. "Not all my C-Sec clearances are defunct, yet. There are some maintenance walkways that are just big enough for officers that we use all the time. And, I happen to know that so long as we don't mess with any keepers, there's actually nothing officially illegal about using these for our purposes."

She laughed. "I doubt that."

"There are a lot of loopholes on the Citadel, so it's about time I took advantage of one." He pressed her in and attempted to kiss her.

Shepard made up for his lack of expertise in it by melting into his stiff lips and leading his tongue into action with her own. Her hands travelled over him, and once again, he was amazed by how she seemed to know what she was doing; she did say she was already attracted to him and intended to eventually tell him, so it wasn't odd that she would have done some research.

Yes, research. Like all the research he hadn't done.

He pulled away from her suddenly. "Wait!"

She blinked at him and the sudden arms-length distance she found herself in. "What's wrong?"

"I have no idea what I'm doing. Well, I mean, I do have an idea, but I think I'm at a disadvantage, here. I know how to touch turian women, and I guess we're safe on the obvious part, but—"

"Garrus." She interrupted. "I'll let you know. My god, all I want right now is your cock, and you're still not even out and hard." Her hand glided over the crotch of his pants. "I'm starting to wonder why you were in such a hurry to get me into a keeper tunnel."

Instead of arguing further, he dived right back into her, nuzzling into her neck and searching for the seals of her armor. She made a grateful sound and helped him along to remove her armor. Eventually, he gave up and let his hands explore her exposed undersuit while she finished it off, which he was able to remove himself when she switched over to removing him of his own clothes.

His bare plates against her skin had exposed him to the most contact he'd ever had from a partner, for how her flesh molded to him and his angles. It was intimacy on a level he'd never really imagined before, and he was chanting anthems in his head trying to keep from getting overwhelmed by the new feelings. It wasn't something he was prepared for, not when he had a mission to ensure the pleasure of his commanding officer.

Oh, she liked his mouth on her neck quite a bit, and she made it clear that he had free reign to do what he wanted with his hands. She pressed her chest into him so needily when they found her breasts that he stayed there a while, rubbing, kneading, squeezing, and pinching. When his mouth replaced his fingers as those fingers went down to her center, she gave the most beautiful growl that it would have been unfair to compare her to a turian woman.

Shepard kept her hands busy as well, teasing and grasping every erogenous zone on a turian's body, and it was more than obvious that she'd done a lot of research leading up to this. It was when a finger came to trace his opening through the crotch of his pants that he finally had to stop his own progression along her body, reveling in how her human nail scratched ever so slightly against the widening edges of his plates. Soon, his member was pressing against the fabric, and Shepard's hand was cupping and pulling it at the other side of the thin barrier, coaxing him out.

Her nails dragged down the waist of his pants slowly, and he laid a great huff of breath into her nape when the very peak of him was exposed to the cool, circulated air of the Citadel. "Shepard..."

With a smooth movement, she dropped into a kneel and brought him into her mouth. In seconds, he was gasping and clawing at the wall behind him, trying to anchor himself with this sudden acceleration—and freefall—of sensation. He was effectively unconscious for what she did to him. Perhaps literally, too, because the next coherent observation he had that wasn't Shepard's tongue or Shepard's lips or Shepard's hands was that the wall he was leaning on was now floor, and his head was spinning.

Shepard looked down on him with startled, maybe even worried eyes, and a glistening mouth. It didn't help stop the spinning.

"Okay, we're going to have to get some of what you turians call food in you before we continue," she said as she helped him stand again. He grunted and shook his head, but she didn't look too upset with that satisfied smirk on her face.

"Maybe you're just that good, Commander. Anyway, I'm eager to show you how well I can keep up."

"Later." And he wasn't going to be allowed to argue, as she was already getting the armor back on. "We have a private cabin and everything to test that out on later."

And so they did, but eating in a restaurant nice enough to have tablecloths first had it's advantage.