A/N: This is the last of it. :) Thank you so much for reading, and for the kind reviews!

Shepard awoke to the sound of vomiting, a little miffed to find herself startled out of sleep. She opened her eyes laggardly and then immediately closed them, her head panging out a sharp protest. For a moment, she didn't know where she was—she blinked, her eyes blurry, and the crisp, white sheets she was draped in smelled of familiarity.

She relaxed, a gust of air puffing from her lungs. The commander was in her quarters, in her bed—she'd actually fucking made it back.

It was a miracle.

Shepard stretched out her limbs and her entire body erupted in pain; she cried out, at first confused, but then the events of the previous night flooded her mind.

A crooked smile tugged at her lips then and she scratched at the burning itch that fired its way up her torso. She winced, the hive like rash lining its way down her arms, her stomach, and blazing on her thighs; it was everywhere, the worst it had ever been. She kind of wanted to scream.

It was okay.

It had been worth it.

Holy fuck, what a night.

The events that had unfolded after their monumental act of shagging were now vivid in Shepard's mind, some of them making her want to squirm. She'd had to dress the drell while he was conked out, a real feat that she still didn't know how she'd even managed, and then carry him off of the shithole that was Omega hefted over a shoulder.

That shoulder was now very angry with her.

When she'd walked through the place, she hadn't really attracted a lot of glances and it had almost concerned her that something like that had looked normal. T'Loak had seen her, the queen perched upon the thrown of Afterlife, and had laughed at her mockingly (or was it a laugh of approval?).

Aria had offered her a piece of advice, shouting it from a distance:

"The next time you want to fuck in my bathrooms, Shepard: Don't."

When she'd finally gotten back on the Normandy…oh, it had been a mess—a painfully embarrassing mess. Kelly had actually winked at her as Jack gave her a knowing slap on the back, and Joker had landed one of his usual quips, something along the lines of: "Have a rough night, Commander?"

She had been just a little offended that their minds had jumped straight to sex, that they hadn't even entertained the possibility that they had been jumped or beaten by batarians or something, though this was likely due to her drunken, freshly fucked swagger and rosy tinted cheeks.

Mordin…Mordin had been the worst, though.

It had been something like…

"Ah, Shepard. Happy to see you. Had fun, yes? Thane is fine, no permanent damage. Just came into contact with a stimulant. Seems you've taken care of the problem."

She couldn't quite recall the specifics, only the creepy smile he'd offered and the gentle clasping of his hands in front of him after intricately explaining in vast scientific detail exactly what had happened, that he'd been jabbering at around a hundred miles per hour not helping in the least.

Shepard groaned and pulled a pillow over her head, the muscles in her arms crying out at the action. She was miserable. It was all kind of funny, actually, but the commander wasn't in a laughing mood; she was hung over, cranky, achy, and flat out exhausted, the latter a fact which alerted her to what had caused her to startle awake in the first place.

She heard a gag again, coming from the direction of her bathroom, and then noticed the emptiness of the bed around her. She leapt off the bed and then staggered, her legs tangling in the sheets. She swung out to balance herself against her nightstand, which knocked her alarm clock onto the floor in the process.

"Aw, shit," she hissed, not bothering to pick up the annoying technological object at her feet. Her body was far too aching to even bend over.

She ripped the blankets off of her person irately, grabbing the bottle of ointment from the table she had previously used to steady against, and applied the lotion to herself in large globs on the way to the bathroom. She stopped on her way there in front of her private terminal, the thing blinking at her obnoxiously, and she imagined the yeomen's voice ringing out to her and saying, "Commander, you've received a new message at your private terminal."

She leaned over her desk, still applying the salve to her abused skin, and then called out to Thane, "I'll be there in a minute, babe." She didn't really know if he'd heard her. Poor guy must've had a terrible hangover, not that he'd done very much drinking. She'd have to give it to him for being such a lightweight later. Either that or it was a bad reaction to the stimulant. Mordin hadn't said anything about possible allergic reactions, but the thought kind of worried her.

She shrugged and tapped a button and her terminal lit up orange, her message archive popping up and flickering at her. There was a new one waiting for her from an unknown user, so she pulled it open, blue eyes gliding over the screen sluggishly.

"Human,

I got your info from T'Loak, and I gotta tell you something. Stop fucking with me. It's like every time I just wanna take a piss you're there, lurking over my shoulder, doing something weird and inappropriate and human-like. I wasn't even on the same planet, for fuck's sake, and there you are, wavin' your fuckin' tits around, disturbing the only time I ever get to myself. Next time I take a shit, I'm gonna be scared your face'll pop outta my—"

Shepard closed out of it quickly, horrified. Oh, god. She knew she recognized that face—he was the turian from the Citadel bathroom she'd woken up in after she'd gotten a little too wasted. He was probably the reason T'Loak had called her out as she was leaving and, oh…that was…that was too much. She promptly deleted the e-mail, refusing to read the rest of it, pushing the embarrassing incident from her mind entirely, and turned to walk into her own bathroom.

She was shocked at first to see Thane's nude form huddled in the corner of the small space near the toilet, his knees bent up in front of him and hands clasped as if praying. His eyes were squinted shut and he had startled when she'd entered the room, visibly trembling. Shepard didn't know how to respond to it, the blood draining from her face, and she felt suddenly that she might puke as well.

Not a second had passed before she was down on her knees in front of him, prying at his hands and stroking his face with the urgency of a mother trying to protect and console her child. He only responded by backing into the wall, trying to get as far away from her as possible. His body closed off from her even further and he brought his arms up to shield his face from her view.

Shepard was horrified, the drell's skin so cool to the touch that it was alarming.

She tried reaching out towards him again, her fingertips brushing against his hand, and he cried out, flinching, jerking his arm away from her. The commander was confused at the picture of devastation before her and she sat back on her haunches, almost too frightened to speak. She remained like that for a few frustrated seconds before erupting.

"Thane, snap out of it!" She grabbed his wrists and tugged, moving his arms away from his face and forcing him to look at her. "What's wrong with you?"

It hurt to see Thane like this—Shepard didn't understand it. He was refusing to make eye contact, despondent and gaze downcast; he was constant in his need to avoid her touch. She eventually stopped trying and just looked at him, thinking, trying to figure out what was wrong because it was becoming abundantly clear to her that he wasn't interested in speaking with her. Just as she was considering asking EDI to send word for Chakwas, Thane broke the silence, finally looking at her.

"My soul aches for what my body has done to you, and I wonder, how is it that you can still muster the kindness to look at me?"

Shepard's eyebrows rose in surprise, and for a second she wasn't really sure what to say. Thane pulled his wrists from her grasp and clasped his hands in front of him, once again averting his gaze.

"Whoa, whoa, hey now." Shepard reached out to stroke his cheek, surprised at the wetness she found there; this time, he did not recoil from it, having given in to her affections. "What are you talking about?"

She was met with silence, the drell's refusal to respond once again evident. Her ears were ringing, a migraine pounding away at her temples—the biotic implant in the back of her neck buzzed in her ear, but she couldn't hear it, because the lack of his voice in her world was deafening.

The commander shivered as a chill passed through her and she shifted her knees against the hardness of the tile, in the back of her mind wishing that she hadn't gone to bed naked. The more he didn't speak, didn't look at her, the more pressing the quiet became; she felt like she was going to blow up any second and she bit down on her lip, her teeth harsh against tender skin.

"Why won't you just look at me?" Shepard had nearly shouted this, her voice echoing off the walls of the small room.

"Because when I do, I see the evidence of what I've done and bile rises in my throat, constricting in my stomach. Look at what I have done to you, Shepard."

The use of her last name caused her to falter, her breath hitching; that hurt a lot more than her fatigued body did. The pounding in the commander's head was incessant, causing her eyes to burn in their sockets; she ran a hand across her forehead and felt the knot that had risen there, and she looked down at the floor beneath her knees.

To accompany the rash on her breasts, stomach, and thighs, bruises marred her skin, as well as whelps and scratches. Shepard honestly couldn't recall any of that happening, but she certainly didn't mind it. She may have come out of a suicide mission both feeling and looking better than this, but being with Thane had been worth it. The commander didn't understand what the problem was.

"You were just…a tad unrestrained, that's all. It's nothing a little medigel won't fix, nothing to lose your head over. I'll even let you doctor me." She smiled at him weakly, but he didn't see it, still not looking at her.

"'Just a tad unrestrained?'" his brow shot up in distress. "Siha, I have hurt you. I had thought it a nightmare, flashes in my mind upon my waking; soft flesh, pale like milk beneath my touch, pliant limbs giving into my action, my urges, my needs, but not of their own volition; the voice of a strong woman—my siha—crying out, begging for it to stop, telling me—"

"Oh, wait just a goddamned second here, baby, that's not how I'm remembering this at all."

"Tell me then, Shepard, how are you remembering this? I'm interested in knowing why you're under the impression that your memory is any better than mine."

Her face reddened and she felt her temper flaring, but she bit the inside of her cheek in order to rein it in. If this were about anything else, she might have punched him and threw a screaming fit over his mockery of her. She pinched the bridge of her nose, her arms crossed in front of her chest, before becoming excessively animated.

"Okay, well, first of all," Shepard gestured with a finger to emphasize the 'first,' then continued to wave her finger at him while making her point. "You were really, really out of it, like off your ass drugged, so I doubt your perfect little memory is working very well this morning. Mordin thinks some kind of stimulant made it into the champagne I ordered you, so if anything, the blame is on m—"

Thane interrupted her midstream and she clamped her jaw closed with a snap. "It doesn't matter. My soul became disconnected and I allowed for my body to lose control. I myself am at fault for this, Shepard. You can't place this blame on yourself; I will not accept it."

Shepard snorted at him derisively. "You're being a little melodramatic, don't you think? Hell, when I woke up this morning, I was happy about last night. You don't even have a full memory of what happened."

Thane seemed to ignore her attempts to reason with him, pressing on, his tone of voice broken. "All of my efforts to atone, they have been in vain. There is nothing I can do to save myself now; when it comes time for me to embrace the sea, my soul will be lost…in facing all I have done, I find that this is the most suitable outcome."

Shepard sat in shell-shocked silence before reacting, not quite able to believe that he had gone…there. They didn't talk about the whole "embrace the sea" thing; that was a touchy subject for them, something they had learned not to discuss often with the other. It led to head butting. It really wasn't that, though, that bothered her. It was the fact that he'd said it so hopelessly; she didn't want to think about his soul being lost and it made her angry that he'd said it.

"God dammit, Thane Krios, as your CO I forbid you from ever saying shit like that again. In fact, if you do, I'm going to fucking airlock you." She prodded him in the chest and then continued her tirade. "Now sit there, shut up, and let me finish." She then paused, trying to remember where she'd left off. When she did, her expression looked as if a light bulb had just flickered on above her head.

"Second of all," she gestured with two fingers for emphasis this time. "My 'pliant limbs' were very much doing things of their own 'volition.' The whole thing was entirely consensual, so you need to push any thought of forced sex out of your mind right now. Besides, do you really think I'd be sitting in front of you right now not kicking your ass if you'd actually raped me? It fucking boggles my mind that you could even think that."

The question stumped him, but he responded anyway, honestly wanting to know. "Then why did you keep telling me no, telling me to stop?"

She'd suddenly just figured out some of the things she'd been incoherently babbling about throughout the whole bathroom sex thing and felt really embarrassed at having to explain herself, doubly so because she hadn't thought of how it'd sound to him. Shepard felt awkward, her face turning a delicate shade of pink. It wasn't their first cultural misunderstanding, but it was definitely the...most uncomfortable. "Humans just…sometimes say that when they, uh…really like something."

"Interesting, because you've never said it before."

Shepard ran her tongue across her teeth and shrugged her shoulders. "Yeah, well, you've never been like that before."

"That is exactly my point."

She rolled her eyes at him like a child, utterly tired of the whole conversation and wishing he'd just understand. "Well, your point sucks. A little rough sex never hurt anybody."

He blinked at her as if she were foolish and Shepard's body seemed to agree with him, screaming at her every time she moved in a way it didn't approve of. This was the first time she'd ever sat naked in front of someone in a bathroom, conversing seriously with them, and trying desperately to convince them that they hadn't just raped her. She suddenly felt absurd and laughter bubbled upward and out of her mouth, quiet at first, but soon reducing her to hysterics.

"This isn't the slightest bit humorous."

She couldn't stop and she was doubled over her knees, her arms hugging her ribs and her face mere inches from the ground. She was giggling so much tears were dribbling down her cheeks. Thane eventually touched the crown of her head, petting her hair to try and gain her attention. She finally stopped, breathless, and looked up at him with a grin, all of her previous anger dissipating.

"I promise you didn't rape me, button eyes."

"And I didn't hurt you?"

"No, you didn't. You made me feel great. Now, will you drop it and stop looking so dejected? I can't stand it."

The assassin just sat, dumbfounded, looking like he didn't quite know what to say. She wasn't sure if he was over it, but she leaned forward and kissed him tentatively anyway, her hand under his chin, and he gently stroked her arm with his fingertips.

"Will you grant me forgiveness, Siha?"

"Does a bear shit in the woods?"

He made a low sound in his throat. "That is…an interesting human idiom."

"I know, it's one of my favorites." Shepard got up from her position on the floor, her knees thanking her, and walked over to turn on the shower, shoving the knob to the left; the commander stood with her arms crossed while she waited, shivering, for the water to warm.

She wanted to forget that they'd had this conversation, and make him forget it too. Unfortunately, she couldn't do that, so she settled for distracting him. "You should get in here with me. I'm cold, so you've gotta be, plus we both smell like ass."

Warm steam ghosted out from the shower and teased at her face; oh, that's exactly what she needed. Shepard didn't waste any time getting in, not bothering to see if Thane would follow; she knew he would. The assassin rarely turned down an invitation from her and she didn't expect he'd start now.

She sighed as hot water enveloped her, drenching her hair and washing away yesterday's grime from her body. She was grabbing for the shampoo when she heard the shower door sliding open behind her and a smile came to her face.

"You wanna wash my hair?" She only asked because she knew he loved doing it and she wanted to make him happy again. He was absolutely fascinated with her hair.

He responded by taking the bottle from her hands and they traded places, Shepard moving out of the direct stream of water so that he could get her lathered up.

Shepard heard a bottle squeeze behind her, which was quickly followed by Thane's fingers massaging her scalp. She groaned at the deftness of his touch and her headache was reduced to a dull throb, the circular kneading motions enough to soothe it. He touched a sore spot where she'd bumped it on the stall, her breath hissing, and he muttered an apology, running his fingers out through her hair and working the soap into her roots.

It brought back memories of the time she'd taught him how to braid it; he'd enjoyed it so much, marveling at the individual strands and how he could group and bind them together into a whole piece. Shepard had never seen him look quite so enthralled, but being that it seemed like humans were the only things out there with a head of hair, it made sense. She'd have to let him do it again sometime.

"Mmm, I think that's good enough, water hog," she turned around to face him and slapped at his thigh, shooing him. "Outta the way, so I can rinse it."

They swapped spots again. "You've had much more time under the water than me, I think."

"I also got in first," she quipped.

"Irrelevant, a poor attempt at justifying your greed."

Shepard laughed, suds dripping down her shoulders as the last of the shampoo was washed from her hair. "Kiss my ass."

He smiled at her. "A fine offer."

She stared at Thane as she reached for the soap, his striped arms crossed in front of him, and snorted. That clever son of a bitch always got the last word. Someday, she'd win. Until then, she was just going to glare at him, a hint of floral scent tickling at her nose. He looked rather smug.

"I hope you're freezing over there, my love, I really do," she said, flicking water at him.

He hardly flinched as the water hit him, just shrugging—a gesture he'd picked up from the time he'd spent with Shepard—and looking all too cool. "You're beginning to look like a dried human fruit…a prune, Siha."

She made a face at him. He always won. Oh, sometimes she hated it. But right now, she loved it.

"A sexy prune?"

"That goes without saying."

Shepard had to work the bar of soap around to a lather in her hands because she'd forgotten a wash cloth in her haste, and as she turned it around between sudsy fingers, she got lost in her thoughts, thinking how funny it was that he was just standing there watching her, and she must have squeezed the soap too hard because it popped out of her grip and onto the floor.

She quirked an eyebrow.

What a motherfucking cliché. This must have been some kind of karma thing, the universe's way of enacting revenge upon her for asking Jack, as soon as she'd gotten her onto the ship, if she'd ever dropped the soap.

How comedic.

She sucked it up and bent over to get it and when his cock was suddenly in her face, a thought popped into her head. This whole thing still wasn't really sitting right with her; his take on everything had somehow sullied their escapades, and she didn't like it. In fact, she wouldn't…stand for it. He needed some convincing.

Instead of picking up the soap, she found herself on her knees again, looking up at him through the water that was pelting her in the face to see his reaction. He stared down at her, first and second lids blinking in harmony, and she pressed her lips together, suppressing a grin.

"What are you doing, Siha?"

She failed in suppressing it this time, a lopsided smirk gracing her angular features in full force. "Nothing," she brushed her fingers across a kneecap, then spread her hands and smoothed them up his thighs. They were muscular, smooth and textured, the same black stripes that covered him elsewhere lining them attractively. "What are you doing?"

"Ah, well I was under the impression that I was watching you pick up soap, but apparently I was mistaken." He didn't even react in the slightest to her hands on him. He was so…irritatingly good at this. She'd have to put a stop to it.

"That's exactly what I'm doing, I promise." She took him into her hand and gently tightened her grip, sliding in an upward motion, and he gasped.

"That's not—" she cut him off, but not with words, and leaned forward, the water now down pouring on her back instead of her face. She swirled her tongue around his tip and a quiet groan tore through him— it seemed that he suddenly had profuse trouble formulating complete sentences.

"Siha, please…don't. Stop."

"See there? Now you're speaking my language. Besides, that could easily be interpreted as 'don't stop,' so I'm not going to." She continued to stroke him into hardness, water still raining down on them, but mostly on her. He felt rigid and bumpy in her hand, ribbed, but not painfully so; his skin gave under her constant touch.

"No, I—"

"I still don't feel like you're okay with what happened. I want you to be okay with it," she continued in her movements, slow enough that he could still function, teasing him with one hand and batting away at the fingers trying to prevent her from continuing with the other. "I need you to be okay with it."

"Siha…" he paused for a moment, gasping and then taking a deep breath, and then chewed on the plush flesh of his lower lip. "What happened is evident in the bruises on your body. My behavior…it is inexcusable."

She licked him again from base to tip before responding, pulling what almost sounded like a whimper from his pouty lips. "But did you like it?"

He didn't respond immediately and Shepard looked up at him from her position on the floor, the water not as hot as it had been but still comfortably warm, and watched as he leaned into the tiled wall behind him. His head tilted back and his eyes closed, his breath coming out in soft pants. His brows were pinched upward as if he were trying to concentrate very deeply on something, but was instead getting caught up in her distractions.

"Whether or not I liked it is irrelevant."

"Listen, I'm going to strike a deal with you. Admit you liked last night as much as I did and I'll stop."

"Siha, I d—"

"Admit it." She gripped him harder, moving her hand along his shaft a little faster, wrenching quiet noises from him.

"Fine, Siha—ah, I liked it…I liked last night."

"Just kidding, I'm not going to stop." He hadn't said it with enough conviction.

"Oh, you are—"

"Just relax, Thane." And with that, she took his full length into her mouth, already throbbing hard, until it hit the back of her throat.

She elicited a sharp moan from him, one tinged with the distinctive sound of surprise, and he involuntarily bucked his hips forward; Shepard's hands shot out to steady him, her head pulling back slightly so that he didn't overwhelm her, and she tightened her lips around him. Shepard knew Thane, she knew he liked it when she did this, and she knew that the only reason he was so persistent in wanting her to stop was because he still felt guilty over something she'd thoroughly enjoyed.

She bobbed her head, hollowing her cheeks, and then tilted back until only the tip of his member remained in her mouth before descending as far back down as she could go, working the muscles in the back of her throat around him, tasting and stimulating him with her tongue; he felt heavy in her mouth and she moaned and hummed around him, the vibrations from her vocal cords intensifying the feeling. His fists were balled at his sides and he trembled against her, losing the want to fight her. It was a good sign, but he wasn't there yet.

His cries encouraged her, egged her on; the sound of him letting go and slowly unwinding in her mouth turned her on way more than she had thought it would have the first time they'd experimented in this way—she'd never really liked doing this for anyone before.

The taste of his pre-cum was saccharine on her tongue and it tingled as if she'd just licked the end of a battery, a familiar prickling sensation spreading through her. It started in her lips and moved outward across her cheeks, burning along the shells of her ears—it was a remarkable feeling, something she never quite tired of.

Hyperawareness settled over Shepard and the feel of him on her tongue, of her tongue sliding along his length, began to feel pleasurable to her in a sense that it was almost orgasmic. The first time it'd happened she'd been so freaked out that she'd had to stop, embarrassed that he'd forever have memory of it.

Whatever chemical it was that caused her to have hallucinations, it had to have been far more potent down low, because it made her trip for hours, this kind of high far different from her normative experience; the high she got from kissing him or tasting of his skin tended to quell down in strength after a few minutes, but this seemed to keep going, wracking through her, never settling.

Instead of feeling tired or clouded, she was energetic and sharp, almost jittery. Rather than her ears rushing, she felt like she could hear more clearly than she ever had before; she had the mad thought that if for some reason, a pin dropped on the crew deck, she would surely be able to hear it rattle onto the floor.

Everything within her field of vision felt magnified, and she fleetingly recalled that after the first time she had finished doing this for Thane, she had stared deeply into her fish tank, hands and face pressed tightly against the glass, watching intently as Illium Skald darted about, swearing that she could see every organ in their tiny bodies. She'd tried explaining this quite animatedly to Thane, but was disappointed that her efforts had only garnered chuckles and looks of disbelief.

Sadly, she had kept pressing the feed button, marveling out loud at how it'd looked sinking into the water. She'd thought that she could see what was food traveling through them as they'd consumed it, giggling as their mouths had puffed out around the flakes at every opportunity, which had led to an untimely demise for all of them.

She had blamed Thane for not stopping her, saying that his amusement had been a crappy excuse for what'd happened to the poor little guys. They'd reached a consensus that next time, she'd definitely be banned from the fish tank.

These thoughts passed quickly through her mind, the feel of water pounding down on her back sharpening in intensity. It broke her silent reverie, and she felt like the water was an extension of her being, like she was fluidly melting into a puddle around herself—it was so deeply corporeal that it would have been jarring had she not been expecting it.

Despite these distractions, Shepard was attentive, her moans muffling around him, and every time she descended down on him, he rumbled out a groan that tickled at her mouth and the back of her throat.

Everything felt good, like she was having the best fucking day of her life. Even her teeth felt amazing in her gums, the scent of floral soap so tantalizing that she felt she could eat a bar of it if she willed to do so, and the taste of Thane in her mouth was quite possibly the best flavor she had ever experienced. She was tingly, bristly, and her nerves were bouncing and bunching around on her skin uncontrollably.

"Siha" was a whispered mantra, echoing about the walls of the shower, and it coupled beautifully with the hissing sound of water that was now rapidly cooling.

Shepard felt the overwhelming need to touch something, to move her fingers, to do more than what they were currently. Gripping his hips was not enough, so she reached out and spread her hands over Thane's sensitive stomach, it jerking under her gentle contact, and he reflexively rolled into her, arching out beautifully before her.

This time she didn't pull back or attempt to steady him, but rather reveled in the feel of him moving freely in her suctioned mouth. His flesh beneath her hands was deeply lined and textured, exciting the pads of her fingertips, and she looked up at him to find that he was looking down at her, seeking out eye contact and also wanting to watch what her mouth looked like as she took him in. For a dizzying moment, she saw a reflection of herself in his large, black eyes.

Two things then happened simultaneously: first, she felt a palm stroking the back of her hand from where she'd placed it on his stomach. He pulled it away from his skin, wrapping his hand around hers and interlacing their fingers, his mouth slightly ajar and lips puffy from where he had bitten down on them. She then, secondly, felt his other hand on her head, quickly realizing that it wasn't placed there to try to hold her in place or to force her to take him in deeper, but so his fingers could curl in her hair to feel it, to pet her. Both of these things made her heart clench; small things like this were why she had easily fallen in love with him.

When she did something right, she was rewarded a moan and a tight squeeze from the hand holding hers. Everything felt good; she was throbbing, aching, wanting, and Shepard couldn't help or take it anymore. She spread her knees, a hand working its way between her thighs so that she could touch herself, quick and needy in her movements.

Thane finally tensed against her, vocalizing in quiet gasps, this time not asking her to pull away as he had done many times before, aware of her preferences. It didn't take her long to reach her peak afterwards and she moaned again around him, cumming hard with the sweet taste of his ejaculate on her tongue.

She laggardly drew him from her mouth, taking a final few moments to tease his oversensitive length, and he brushed wet tendrils of hair from her face. Her teeth were beginning to chatter, Thane noticing and quickly turning off the shower. He disappeared behind the shower door and Shepard sat in a daze, looking at the water puddled around her and sliding her fingers over it in silent awe.

She felt so funky.

Shepard's head popped up as Thane poked his way back into the shower, towel in hand; he was eying her with a slight smile, his lips curled in amusement, and he squatted down next to where she was still seated. It didn't surprise him in the least that she had not yet moved.

She whimpered when she felt the towel on her head, her face shaking comically as he dried her hair in the way she'd once shown him, his laugh ringing out softly at the look she wore.

"Thane, it was funny."

He moved the towel downwards, drying her neck, her back, and her torso.

"What was, Siha?"

"I thought," laughter interrupted her sentence and she raised her hands to cup his face. "I thought I was the water."

He kissed her nose, neglecting to respond, and pulled her up to her feet. She leaned heavily against him as he finished drying her, the occasional mewl escaping Shepard's lips, and picked her up to carry her to the bedroom.

Thane tossed her onto the bed and she giggled again, latching onto him as he curled up beside her. She murmured contentedly as he tugged the sheets around them and then cuddled more tightly against him, stroking along his throat and rubbing circles into his chest. She just had to keep feeling things, touching them, not able to fight the compulsion.

"Did you really hate last night?"

Thane's lips pressed together as he thought quietly, running his fingers through her shaggy, towel dried hair. "I believe there's a human phrase for this…"

Her caressing finger turned into a poke. "Don't you dare ask me if bears shit in the woods."

He paused and chuckled. "I wouldn't dream of it, Siha."

Shepard's expression constipated, her mouth quirking and eyebrows furrowing. "Who…who even fucking thought of that saying, anyways?"

"It's probable that it was someone as equally as strange as you."

She bit her lip, feigning a frown. "You're a butt."

"Not near as alluring, however."

Shepard laughed and bit his collar bone, his arms wrapping tightly around her as he smelled her hair.

"Do you mind if I go look at the fish?" She moved to get up, not waiting for an answer, and Thane's arms tightened, not allowing her to shift from her position even slightly.

"Siha…"

It was going to be a long day.