Shepard blamed Garrus. If he hadn't made that passing comment about krogan testicles, she wouldn't have gotten curious and picked up an issue of Fornax on their next stop at the Citadel. Once alone in her cabin, she'd been overwhelmed with embarrassment that she'd actually bought the thing, and stuffed it behind her pillow. It stayed there, ignored at first, then completely forgotten in the aftermath of Noveria and Virmire.

They were back at the Citadel now, grounded thanks to the Council's blindness and Udina deciding she'd outlived her usefulness. Politicians, the lot of them. Shepard slid her locker shut with more force than necessary. She'd extended the crew's shore leave after the Council meeting, but returned to the Normandy herself. In the mood she was in, she'd end up picking a fight with the first person who looked at her wrong and torpedo any chance of getting her ship back.

Briefly, Shepard thought of calling her mother—she had to have dealt with this kind of political bullshit during her service—but decided against it. Ashley was proof family connections could dog a soldier's career. She wasn't going to risk that with her mother just so she could vent to a sympathetic ear. What she needed was a distraction.

That's when she remembered the Fornax. Might as well, Shepard thought. I'll never have more privacy.

The issue came loaded on its own datapad, one of several privacy measures that seemed like overkill until Shepard turned it on and was greeted with a series of questions. She picked "male" for the sex she wanted displayed, "all" for the species option, skipped the exhaustive list of specific kinks, and "no" when asked if she wanted her preferences saved.

"Yes, I'm sure," she muttered, when it asked again, with a cheery reminder that most users spent up to half an hour setting up their account and wouldn't she like to save time with future issues by using the import function? She almost closed it down again when the table of contents loaded and she was greeted with a pop-up touting the issue's 360-degree viewing rotation and zoom features. Despite being alone in her cabin, with a locked door between her and an empty ship, Shepard still gave a furtive look around before choosing the krogan section.

The first picture was a full-length profile shot. The krogan was heavily scarred on his face and arm, and his hump towered over his head. His phallus was shorter than she expected, given the size of krogan, but it was thick and jutted out from his body at an angle that left no doubt he was aroused. Shepard glanced at the door again, then rotated the picture for a frontal view, zooming in on the groinal area.

Well. Krogan certainly did have four testicles. They hung large and heavy at the base of the cock, in two sacks nestled one behind the other. No wonder krogan put such stock in them as a sign of virility. How in the world did Wrex fit them into his armor? Were they smaller in a state of non-arousal? Did he tuck them back between his legs? And, oh god, she knew she was going to stare the next time she saw him to try to figure it out.

Cheeks burning, Shepard thumbed the button for the next section. She passed over the batarians, laughed a little at the bored-looking salarian with the engorged cloaca and the suited quarian with a missing codpiece, then stopped, baffled, at the hanar. It was half-lounging against a bar, front tentacles raised and spread. She spent some time turning and zooming the picture, trying to figure out what made the shot pornographic. It wasn't the lack of clothes, hanar didn't wear those anyway. Or maybe—Shepard squinted at the dangling appendages—maybe one of those tentacles wasn't just a tentacle. Upon closer inspection, she dsicovered that one of the back ones was coated in some kind of glistening mucus. So it was just out there? All the time?

She moved to the next picture and found two hanar in what she assumed was coitus, their coated tentacles intertwined with the ends pressed against each other. Despite the lack of a recognizable face, despite their bodies being the most alien out of all the Citadel races she'd met, there was something erotic in the twining and press of their tentacles, in the uncharacteristic rigidity of their front limbs and the way the light patterns on one was mirrored on the other. Shepard shifted in her chair, discomfited by her reaction.

"Commander?"

Shepard jumped and fumbled with the datapad in a panic before she realized the voice came from the comms, not her doorway. "You're not supposed to be on the ship, Joker."

"Uh, I'll skip the obvious response to that—"

"Good," Shepard interjected, embarassment clipping her words shorter than usual.

"Captain Anderson wants to meet you. Unofficially, it sounds like."

"Get the location and tell him I'm on my way." Shepard locked the datapad and stuffed it back under her pillow.

"And you never looked at the turian section?" Garrus was skeptical.

"I told you, I was interrupted." Shepard ran her fingers down his bare arm, reveling in the way his skin twitched when she curled them enough to bring her nails into play. "Besides, I couldn't look Wrex in eye for days afterwards. I didn't want to be uncomfortable with you too."

"So you had no idea what you were getting into. Good thing one of us did the research."

Shepard leaned over and demonstrated just how much she appreciated his research. He laid his hand along her neck, thumb settling in the place behind her ear that made her shiver, and returned the kiss with less awkwardness than he had at the beginning of the night. He gave her a sly smile when they parted.

"It does explain some things," Garrus said. "Now I understand why you like those awful Blasto movies so much."

He looked so pleased with himself that she couldn't help but laugh. "You found me out. Not jealous are you?"

Garrus looked her over, the hair at her brow still damp from sweat, and resting naked on top of the sheets with the loose-limbed lethargy that followed satiation. "I think I'll survive," he said.