Disclaimer: I am not in any way related to Bioware or the Mass Effect series. I am making no profit from writing this and am doing so purely for pleasure.

Pairings: Female Shepard/Garrus Vakarian

Summary: [What would it have been like if Shepard and Garrus had met as equals?] Spectre Vakarian decides to tag along on Shepard's mission to take down Saren. Their partnership develops in ways neither of them expected, with lots of banter and fluff. This story arc follows ME1 canon, with some liberties taken.

Air and Lightning

24. In which Shepard explains ballet

"We haven't seen any plans for a clean-up crew in this quadrant, right?"

"What? No, we agreed with this ward's committee that manpower should be focused on rescue and refugee operations first, and the main cleaning-up efforts could come later," Garrus replied absently, poking at his food. "Why?"

Shepard frowned at the street outside, her chopsticks hovering over her bowl of untouched bowl of ramen, attention completely diverted. "Does that street look suspiciously clean to you?"

"No? Shepard, the residents in the area probably pitched in to clean up the debris."

"Except that I remember a huge two-storey chunk of Reaper sitting right smack in the middle there. You're telling me somehow civilians managed to remove it and clear up all the not-insignificant extra bits in the last day?"

Garrus switched from staring dubiously at his 'New and Improved! Dextro Ramen! Guaranteed Genuine Noodle Texture!' to staring dubiously at Shepard. "You remember something like that when you couldn't even remember the Zakera Ward Governer's name?"

She rolled her eyes. "I remember," she said testily, "because I remembered this ramen place for having both dextro and levo food. And because of the great big chunk of Reaper leg outside. Which is gone. Are you going to eat that or just play with it?"

"You first. This looks like worms, Shepard."

"Oh, like those maggots you ate yesterday looked any better?"

"Those were ritva fruits! They're very rare!"

"Probably because no one wants to grow them because they look like maggots." She grinned at the mock-offended expression on Garrus' face. "Fine, look, I'm eating my noodles. See?" She slurped her first mouthful down. "Surprisingly good, actually."

Garrus was watching her with horrified curiosity. "That is the most horrendous noise I have ever heard you make," he informed her, shuddering. "I'm also amazed that you can even pick up those worm things with those stick things."

"Chopsticks? They're easy, you just have to get used to them." She clicked her chopsticks at him. "You only need three fingers, too, so you're set."

"No. Those are definitely a human joke."

She stared at him. "I'm actually using these to eat," she pointed out. "See? Picking up my food. Putting it down again."

"No sane species would develop utensils that make it more difficult to achieve the task you want to achieve, Shepard."

"Garrus, I swear to you, by all that is holy, these are actual utensils for the actual eating of actual food."

He gave her a long, cool look. "No," he said. "Not falling for that one."

She sighed. "Do I have to line up a whole bunch of humans using chopsticks before you'll believe me?"

"A species-wide joke."

"...fine. Fine, believe what you want, I don't care anymore!"

"I will," Garrus said smugly. He picked up the turian-modified fork and spoon by his bowl, and tried a mouthful of the dextro noodles, chopped up into tiny pieces for turian convenience. "This is... odd," he said, "not bad, but odd. Turian cuisine doesn't have textures like these."

"Mostly just maggot-type shapes, huh?"

Garrus gave her a long-suffering look. "There's a dessert item on the menu made from dried frog fallopian tube fat, Shepard," he said, very precisely. "I've studied enough xenobiology to know what each of those terms means and I wish that I didn't."

She winced. "I'll give you that one," she said. "What can I say? Humans are very inventive, especially in desperate food-shortage situations."

"Dried frog –"

"Okay, okay! Stop saying that!"

Garrus grinned at her, clearly delighting in his verbal victory, and Shepard had to smile back.

For the next few minutes they sat in comfortable silence, focusing on eating. Shepard found her gaze drawn back to the cleared street outside, however. She remembered the gigantic piece of debris, all jagged metal and looking incredibly heavy, thrust into the street itself from the force of impact. There was simply no way mere civilians could have cleared all of that in the day or two she'd been with Garrus in this ward, attending meetings and giving speeches.

She finished the last of her noodles and looked up, searching for a waiter. All three of the floor staff practically sprinted over, falling over one another to get to her table first. Garrus snickered; she gave him a glare.

"Hey," she said awkwardly as the three of them stood to some kind of attention. "I just wanted to ask – what happened to the big piece of debris outside?"

"Oh, that? It was there last night when we closed, but gone this morning," the youngest of them, a human girl, said eagerly. "Good thing, too, business was slow the last few days."

"Gone? In the span of a few hours?"

"Probably the Keepers. They tend to work night cycles. No one sees them anyway. They're discreet." That was the salarian teen, practically vibrating on the spot.

"My aunt, over in Tayseri Ward, the ward hardest hit by the attack, you know, she said she went to sleep and woke up and half her house was cleared of all the metal bits that fell down," the third human teen babbled, a gangly teenage boy. "She said it was the Keepers, she saw the last of them scurry away when she awoke, they're really efficient, aren't they?"

Shepard frowned. "Did she see where they took the debris?"

The three exchanged looks. "No," said the boy, confused. "She didn't say."

"Probably doesn't know," said the salarian. "No one knows."

"No one really sees the Keepers at what they do," the girl said. "They sometimes do things around people, but I guess they tend to work when we're all sleeping?"

"Pretty considerate of them," said the boy, with a nervous grin.

Shepard mulled this information over. "I see," she said. "Thank you."

The three of them looked like they'd received gold medals. Awestruck – "Commander Shepard thanked us!" the girl whispered loudly – they trailed away, casting frequent looks back at the table.

"You're thinking too hard about this," Garrus told her, finishing the rest of his food as well. "The Keepers are harmless. They clear up the place, keep the Citadel running –"

"What do they do with the debris?"

Garrus shrugged. "I suppose... the incinerators?"

"You'd think that after all these centuries, someone would have figured out where they take all the things that they collect. You'd think someone would have seen them work. Don't you think it's weird? Where does it all go?"

"If they're followed, they shut down," Garrus said placidly. "If we probe too deep into the Keeper tunnels, they shut down. If we try to analyse them –"

"They shut down, yes, yes." Shepard frowned at the street. "We should preserve some of the debris, though. It's evidence of the Reapers, and if we can study it, so much the better. I don't like that the Keepers seem hell bent on taking it all away. Who knows what the Reapers programmed them to do?"

"We'll raise that point during the afternoon convention, then. It's a good idea." Garrus reached across the table to cover her impatiently drumming fingers with his hand. "Shepard, don't you have enough to worry about without adding the Keepers to the list? Remember, the Protheans have already modified them so that they're harmless."

She blushed. After a moment, Garrus withdrew his hand, and she cleared her throat and tried to think. What had she been saying? Oh yes. "I know, I remember what Vigil said. Still... remind me later to contact Chorban, I think his name was. The guy who scanned the Keepers with his partner? I want to see if they managed to figure out anything else about the Keepers, besides the whole reacting-to-the-Citadel's-signal thing."

"Shepard..."

"If they're engineered to help the Reapers enter the galaxy via the Citadel, don't you think that their other functions may be suspect, too?"

"Huh." Garrus looked thoughtful. "The Keepers are just... there. They're just a part of the Citadel. I never thought..." His mandibles flexed in and out. "I feel like an idiot."

She shook her head. "Maybe it's because humans are new to this whole thing, that we question even the basic aspects of life that every other race takes for granted. Don't beat yourself up over it. Hell, it may not even be anything and I'm just being paranoid, but better safe than sorry."

Garrus tilted his head at her. "I like that saying," he said. "It's a good one, and easy to understand."

"Are you still hung up on that?"

"Hung... up?"

She laughed.

The restaurant owner refused to let them pay the bill, shooing them out with a flap of his apron, big beer belly wobbling. "Come back anytime," he said cheerfully, waving as they left.

"Thanks!" Shepard called as they headed up the street. "He was nice," she said to Garrus.

"Shepard, you could ask someone for the shirt off his back right now and probably get it."

"Don't remind me." She stretched, grimacing at the ache in her still-weak muscles. "Can't wait until I can move properly again," she sighed. "Right. Secretary Vakarian, where to next?"

"Secretary?"

"You're the one with the schedule."

He bumped her shoulder lightly, causing her to stumble a little. She gave him the finger, which made him grin. "I like that human gesture," he confessed. "So simple, and yet it conveys so much."

Shepard thought about this. "Guess there's no equivalent, with you having three fingers and genital plates and all," she mused. "Any other human things you have a secret fetish for?"

Garrus actually seemed to consider this seriously. "That thing you do with your hair and your fingers. What's that word... ah! Braiding."

That was so entirely not anything like what she'd been expecting. Shepard stared at him. "Braiding?" she repeated, hand going involuntarily to the bun at the back of her head. She braided her hair every morning and pinned it up into a bun, and yes, she'd seen Garrus watching her do it before, but she hadn't realised that he'd actually been watching.

"It's amazing how your fingers don't get tangled," he explained to her, utterly serious. "How do you coordinate so many of them at once?"

"What? It just... happens." She looked at her own hand and wriggled all five fingers. "You know, if you asked me to explain to you how I braid my hair, I'm not sure I could do it. It's just muscle memory by now."

"The mysteries of your terribly put-together yet incredibly flexible species." Garrus grinned at her. "So, any turian fetishes?"

"Your voice," she said before she could stop the words. Her eyes widened. Fuck, did she actually just say that? Oh god, now Garrus was going to think she was weird and freaky and –

"I know that already," Garrus drawled. "Any other less obvious things?"

...what?

What?

"You knew?" she exclaimed. "All those times you lowered your voice, all those times you purred into my ear –"

"Well, yes." Garrus smirked at her. "All those times you sort of glazed over when you listened to the turian Councillor, too. I noticed that."

"I do not – I don't glaze over because I like his voice, I'm just tuning out because he annoys me!"

"So you don't like his voice, then?"

"What? Well, it's okay, it's not like yours or anything – oh god I need to shut up."

Garrus was laughing hard. "If only your enemies knew that my voice is your one weakness!"

"Shut up, Vakarian." Shepard smacked him on the arm. "I've always liked deep voices, okay? And your double vocals are twice the goodness. Now stop laughing at me!"

"That an order, Shepard?" Garrus purred, very deliberately.

"Stop that!" She couldn't stop the grin from spreading across her face, though, not when Garrus was so tickled by the whole thing.

He snagged her arm and tugged her towards him before she could really resist. Lowering his mouth to her ear, he said in a voice like black velvet, "You sure you want me to stop?"

She shivered, hard, as heat washed through her body and her eyes involuntarily closed for a second. Then she reached up and slid those oh-so-flexible fingers under and along his fringe.

He jerked back, the flabbergasted look on his face utterly priceless. Shepard burst out laughing. "Vengeance!" she crowed.

"Spirits – Shepard – where did you learn that?" he demanded.

She smiled sweetly at him. "Wouldn't you like to know?" she said, dancing out of his reach as he attempted to snag her again. "Come on, Vakarian, as much fun as this is, duty calls."

He flexed one mandible at her in a turian sneer, and started walking again. "I'll get you back for this," he warned.

"I know a good many other sensitive spots, just try me."

He bumped her with his shoulder again. She stumbled and flipped him off automatically, before catching his eye. They laughed together.

The afternoon conference was as boring as she'd feared – committees and half-promises, veiled threats and subtle bribes. Politics. Shepard hated politics. She hated in particular that the focus was on recovering and defending... she knew that immediate lives had to be saved, pirates had to be turned away, and all that crap, but the threat of the Reapers loomed large in her mind. It felt like they were dealing with ants while the elephant herd thundered towards them, and no one was paying any attention to her screaming.

A slight flash on her omni-tool alerted her to a message. She opened it discreetly.

That's exactly the glazed look I was talking about. Stop fantasizing about Sparatus.

She made a strangled little noise that caused Sparatus to look at her, mandibles flexing in annoyance. "Something wrong, Shepard?" he said.

"Bug in my throat. Please continue."

Sparatus stared at her for a moment more, confused and irritated, before he clearly dismissed her mentally and continued his speech. Shepard breathed a sigh of relief and opened her omni-tool interface again.

I know about your waist.

She smirked across the room as Garrus opened the message and froze upon reading it. He sent her a pained look.

What did you do, research turian erogenous zones?

Human saying: know your enemy.

In the carnal sense?

If that's what it takes.

You are a bad human, Shepard.

You're a bad turian, or so you keep telling me. Clearly we're made for each other.

I think the rule is supposed to be 'opposites attract'.

We're Spectres. We don't follow the rules. Besides, girls are supposed to be attracted to bad boys.

Really? How does that make sense from an evolutionary perspective? How has your species not died out yet?

It's just a saying! It's not actually a rule kind of rule.

A humanism, then. Does it apply to you?

Depends.

What on?

Shepard paused. She caught Garrus' eye; he flicked out an inquisitive mandible at her. She gave him a slow, rich smile, looking at him from under her lashes.

How bad a turian are you?

Garrus read the message and choked. His mandibles drew tight against his face as he tried desperately to keep his laughter silent, but his entire body was shaking. Shepard ducked her head to hide her own huge grin.

"Spectres." The disapproval in Tevos' voice was plain. "If you have something to contribute...?"

"No, my apologies." Shepard schooled her face, looked around, and then decided that this was definitely not how she wanted to spend the remnants of her week. She'd wasted one whole day yesterday on these talks already, and by now she was pretty sure that they didn't actually need her and Garrus around. "In fact, Spectre Vakarian and I are rather superflous to these proceedings, so do send us a message if there's anything you need us for. Otherwise, if we may leave to properly enjoy what's left of our week of official rest?"

Valern looked taken aback, but recovered quickly. "Very well," she said, with a magnanimous wave of her hand. "You may leave. We shall notify you if your services are required."

"Agreed," the other two Councillors said together. Was that a note of relief in their voices? Anderson merely sighed, and nodded, but there was faint amusement tingeing the long-suffering look on his face.

Shepard didn't hang around to psychoanalyse the Council. She gave Anderson an apologetic smile, and then made her escape.

Garrus was laughing softly as he caught up to her, easily matching her stride down the corridors of the building they'd been meeting in. "I can't believe you managed to get us out of meetings," he said. "It never even occurred to me to ask."

"That's because you're still partly a good turian, no matter how much you keep claiming otherwise," she teased. "All that military training, obeying your superiors and never questioning? I think it's engraved in your bones."

"I didn't do too much of military training proper," Garrus pointed out. "Went into Spectre training early."

"I remember. Against your father's wishes, right?"

"Yeah." That one word was dark.

Shepard winced. The Vakarian patriarch was still a touchy subject, and even after all this time with Garrus, he'd never opened up about it. She didn't want to push, either – if he'd asked her about her time on the streets, she would hesitate to answer as well. With that in mind, she tactfully changed the subject. "What are we going to do with our suddenly free days?"

"We could take up some kind of class," Garrus said, allowing her to turn them to lighter topics. "Pottery, maybe."

She snickered. "Ballet, let's do ballet."

"What's ballet?"

"Oh. It's this type of dance, with lots of pink and skintight clothes and fluff and everyone goes around on their tiptoes."

"...what's tip-toes?"

"It's where you balance on the balls of your feet, the toes... huh." Shepard looked down at Garrus' legs. "Okay, this is one thing that definitely doesn't translate well across species. I'll have to show you a vid later."

"You know, that's an idea," Garrus said as they drew level with the taxi stand. He tapped the interface to summon a cab. "Shall we just head back to the flat and have an evening in? We could order take-out and watch vids. I promised Tali to show you Fleet and Flotilla."

"Ugh, I guess I have to watch it sometime. Romance vids are not my thing, let me warn you."

"Same here, but at least in that film it's tastefully handled, and there are some awesome battle scenes based on actual strategic manoeuvres. Good artistic direction, too. There's a reason it won so many awards."

"Fine, we'll watch that tonight, but I'm showing you ballet first. Oh! And some James Bond."

"Vakarian," Garrus purred. "Garrus Vakarian."

She let the shiver run through her, but retaliated by slipping an arm around his waist before he could react and squeezing.

"Okay, okay! Truce?"

"Truce." The automated taxi glided to a stop before them, hovercar doors sliding open. "Shall we?"

He grinned down at her as they got in. "You know what? Forget shitty take-out. I think we need to celebrate being let out of meetings. Let's get pizza and dessert drinks and fries and anything else we can think of." He gave the directions to the taxi, and its VI guided them smoothly into the traffic.

She blinked. "Wow, my translator actually got all that except 'dessert drinks'."

"Hmm. Those really thick, creamy, and cold drinks? Made from ice cream?"

"Milkshakes?"

"That's the one. Strange that it translates well for me." Garrus tapped a few commands into his omni-tool. "There. Milkshakes."

"How do you even know about all that?"

Garrus looked amused. "Shepard, it's not like I've lived under a rock before I met you. Human fast-food was one of the things that caught on quite quickly. No other species had quite the same concept of incredibly tasty but also incredibly unhealthy food... no one else took it to the extremes that humans did."

She bit her lip in thought. "We humans do tend to extremes," she admitted. "Good thing we have science to keep us all healthy now, because the thought of the kind of obesity we had pre-space? That's terrifying."

"A fat Shepard," Garrus mused. "Can't quite imagine it."

She gave him a horrified look. "Stop trying!"

"All wobbly," he continued, "and bouncy, and –"

She kicked him. Hard.

"Ow! Abuse!"

"Stop trying to imagine me fat, that's disgusting!"

"I think it's kind of adorable, actually."

"Garrus, you are a sick, sick turian."

"Not that I don't like you the way you are now. All lean and springy."

"Springy!" Shepard gaped at him, torn between laughing and kicking him again.

"Yes," Garrus said thoughtfully, though she could see his mandibles twitching in that manner that meant he was trying to suppress his laughter. "If you started having to roll your way around, we wouldn't be able to kill things together anymore, and that would be a shame. But you know –"

"Garrus –"

"Rolling around together doesn't sound so bad."

Her mock death-threats died on her tongue. Garrus wasn't laughing anymore. Rather, he was smiling at her in his slightly embarrassed, slightly sheepish, slightly anxious way, like how he usually was after accidentally putting his foot in his mouth. Except that this wasn't an innuendo or a terrible pun, and it wasn't an accident.

It was a good thing the cab was dimly lit, because her face and ears were burning. Though of course, the bloody turian could hear her suddenly pounding heartbeat, but at least he'd have the grace to pretend that he didn't.

"I, uh... thought turians couldn't get fat."

"Oh, we can't. Our bodies don't work that way." He coughed. "If you grew fat and rollable, though, I would find some way to get spherical too so that I could roll around with you."

"I'm not sure if that's sweet or disturbing." She shifted in her seat with new-found self-consciousness and awkwardness.

"Well, you don't have to decide that right now." Of course, he'd picked up on her discomfort and was giving her an out, teasing with their usual banter. Typical gentlemanly Garrus. "All you have to decide is what kind of milkshake you want. Would you like fries with that?"

Shepard raised an eyebrow at him. "You'd make a great fast-food employee."

"I do my research. Also, Joker keeps saying it in the mess hall."

"One of his greatest wishes is to have drive-throughs for ships."

"Shepard, that is a genius idea. We could be rich! Well, richer."

"Can you imagine the Destiny Ascension stopping for takeaway?"

"One million burgers to go, please."

"Would you like fries with that?"

"That's it, Garrus, I'm recommending you for fast-food employee of the year."

They pulled into a drive-through and ordered some pizzas and milkshakes. When the VI asked, "Would you like fries with that?" they cracked up laughing. It didn't help when the VI kept saying, "I'm sorry, my software could not recognise those words. Would you like fries with that?"

"I'm getting a copy of that VI and installing it in your cabin," Garrus informed her when they'd finally gotten a hold of themselves. "I'm going to make it activate every time you open the door."

She made a face. "I would go mad, Garrus."

"What if I did a voice-over on all the lines?"

Shepard smacked him on the arm. "Bad turian! No pizza!"

"Aww, but I want to grow fat with you!"

"Shut up and drink your milkshake."

She entertained them for the rest of the ride by showing him one-liner scenes from James Bond. Once Garrus recovered from his near heart-attack at the incredibly bad graphics, even the remastered versions – "Are you sure this isn't a corrupted file? No one scrambled the signal? Is this some kind of human throw-back art?" – he couldn't stop laughing at each scene.

"There is no way your species named a character Pussy Galore. This has to be a joke."

"That's what I thought when I first watched it, too."

"Shepard, your species is weird."

"Don't remind me."

When they got back to the apartment, Garrus took the food from her. "Go get comfortable," he ordered. "I'll set up the movie."

Shepard saluted. "Yes, sir!" She took the stairs two at a time, ducked into her room, shed the armour, and dashed into the shower. It was only after she'd taken a quick rinse and changed into her casual clothes that she realised this would be the first time she'd worn anything but army-issue clothes in front of people since... well, since the Blitz. The last three days, she and Garrus had been so worn out from all the meetings that they'd just headed into their rooms with weary good-nights the moment they got back to the flat.

"Shepard! Are you turning into a girl up there?" Garrus demanded from downstairs. "Next you'll be doing scalp treatments and shovelling on make-up!"

"Scalp treatments are for asari!" she yelled back. Well, nothing for it. It wasn't as if she had anything to show off or to hide, and she didn't have anything else to wear, anyway.

Turning into a girl? How did Garrus see her, anyway?

Shepard pushed those thoughts out of her head and padded back down the stairs. She stopped on the bottom stair, though, a little self-conscious, when she realised that Garrus was staring at her. "What?" she demanded.

"I've just never seen you so..."

"What?" she said again.

"So... civilian. When we watched that movie on the Normandy, it was just military casual, but this is... civilian casual."

Shepard blinked. Then she laughed. "Yeah, well, tank top and lounge pants are my usual get-up when I'm off-duty and due for relaxing." She crossed the distance to the couch and dropped into it, crossing her legs under her. "Your turn to go get comfy. I'll pull up a vid of ballet while you're at it."

"Be right back, then." Garrus disappeared upstairs, and after a while the hum of the shower started faintly.

Shepard amused herself with various space-ballet vids – it was like choreographed swimming, but in space, and hilarious with all the 'artsy' space-suit designs. Her favourite was the one where someone was a pot of petunias and someone else was an elephant. When she heard Garrus coming back downstairs, she pulled up the classic ballet short film that she'd found.

"Do all ballet people dress like that?"

"Ballerinas, and no they don't. Well, skintight clothing forms the basic costume, because this is an art form that's all about subtlety and movement, so you can't have cloth restricting or covering or tripping up people. But the tutu and leotard – that's the frilly skirt and the stretchy top – are the hallmarks of classic ballet, the original form of the dance. For guys, they usually stick with tight pants and some kind of billowing top. Oh, and both genders have the toe-shoes." She hit play as Garrus handed her the levo pizza box, before settling himself down with his own.

As Garrus watched the vid, fascinated, Shepard looked him over. Garrus' casual clothing – the basic turian leggings aside – was an interesting hybrid of a tunic and a hoodie. The body of it draped like a tunic from ancient sword-and-shield times, falling to his hips in a very flattering cut tailored to the turian physique, and it didn't have sleeves. It did have a huge cowl that was pretty much a gigantic hood. If Garrus put the hood up, it would shadow his face completely.

Like a turian Robin Hood, Shepard mused, and then grinned to herself. First James Bond, and then Robin Hood... Joker would love this. She raised her omni-tool and surreptitiously took a photo of Garrus. There was something about him in that slouchy, sleeveless hoodie, relaxing as if he wasn't the embodiment of thousands of years of evolutionary engineering in one armoured and muscled body, that was incredibly... hot.

She blinked.

"Shepard, that was amazing." Garrus turned to her, eyes wide. "I had no idea that you humans could bend and balance like that! Your feet are usually turned the other way around!"

"You're the one with backwards feet," she retorted, uncrossing her legs and stretching them out. "Here, look – we can point our feet like this." She arched her foot. "Ballerinas train for decades to perfect the way they balance on their toes, though. They bloody dozens of pairs of shoes through their lives. It's incredibly painful and difficult, and I sure as hell couldn't do it..." she trailed off. "Are you listening?"

Garrus was staring at her toes with even more fascination that he'd been bestowing upon the vid. "Those are your toes?" he breathed. "They're so... pink and squishy! And there's so many of them!" He prodded one with the air of a kid expecting his balloon to explode.

Shepard wriggled her toes experimentally.

"AUGH." Garrus yanked her foot away from him, like he was holding a dangerous snake and trying to keep its head from biting him. Unfortunately, that meant that Shepard followed it. She landed on her butt on the floor with a yelp.

"Garrus! What the hell?"

"Oops. I'm sorry, Shepard." He picked her up bodily and sat her back on the couch; Shepard marvelled again at his strength. "It was just..." His face wrinkled. "Gross."

"Hey!"

"Remember that conversation we had over lunch? About maggots?"

"Garrus Vakarian, are you actually comparing human toes to maggots?"

He shrugged. "Just putting it out there."

Shepard scowled at him and scooted back on the couch, before lifting her legs and plonking her feet into his lap. Garrus leaned as far back as he could, looking highly disturbed; she prodded his thigh with a toe. "My feet are going to stay there until you come to your senses," she said ominously.

Garrus grimaced. "The things I do for you," he groused, before he cautiously poked at one of her toes again. Her foot jerked reflexively.

"Sensitive?"

"Kind of."

He prodded again. "They're so weak," he said, surprised. "The bones in them are so fragile... how do you do it? I'm amazed you don't break them every time you go into battle. And those ballet people! How do they do it?"

"Like I said: decades of training, blood, and pain. Dancers fight their own bodies the same way we fight ourselves to always push our limits when we train." Shepard wriggled her toes again, but this time Garrus only winced a little as he watched. "And toes aren't that weak. We can't grip anything, but they can take a lot of weight."

Garrus prodded the middle of her foot. This time her entire leg jerked, and she let out a squeak.

Shit.

Garrus looked at her with a huge shit-eating grin on his face. "Sensitive?" he drawled, and then grabbed her ankle with superhuman speed – turian speed – as she tried to get away.

Shepard levelled her best glare at him. "Don't you dare."

He ticked the bottom of her foot with a talon, making her let out a yelp of laughter. She tried to kick him with her other foot but he batted it away easily, grinning. "Today should go down in history as the day Garrus Vakarian found two of Commander Shepard's weaknesses," he said smugly. "Ticklish feet and turian voices."

"It's a very common ticklish spot," she said defensively.

"Wait, do you have others?"

She glowered at him.

"You do! Tell me where."

"Garrus, do you want me to kick you in the crotch plates?"

"If you don't tell me, I'm just going to search on the extranet, you know. Or do you want me to ask Liara?"

She winced. "Waist," she said grumpily.

"The waist is a sensitive zone for you too?"

"No, it's not sensitive in that way... it's not an erogenous zone or anything. It's just ticklish if you poke it. Makes us squirm."

Garrus grinned at her. "Does it, now?"

She pointed a finger at him. "If we're going to have a waist-touching contest, you're going to lose, Vakarian. Don't even start. At least I don't get turned on."

He laughed. "True enough. Shall we get to the movie?"

"Smart turian." She swung her feet off his lap and sat cross-legged again, picking up the dropped pizza box from the floor.

Garrus dimmed the lights from his omni-tool as the movie came on. It made Shepard suddenly remember the last time they'd watched a movie together in the dark. She snuck a glance at him.

Her gaze met startled blue eyes. He'd been watching, her, too.

When he dropped his gaze, pretending to be busy opening the pizza box neatly, Shepard grinned, feeling warmed from the inside. She cleared her throat.

Garrus looked up again, confused.

"Where's my headrest?" she asked, trying her best to sound nonchalant.

"What?"

She shifted closer, her shoulder bumping his chest lightly. "I seem to remember having a headrest last time."

Garrus slowly smiled. There was some relief in his voice as he drawled, "It's not easy eating pizza one-handed, Shepard."

"You've got a point. I suppose I'll have to make do then," she said with a very put-upon sigh. Pressing closer, she let her knee rest on his thigh, his chest warm against her back. "At least you can perform your heating function."

He snorted. "Glad you can find some use out of my body. Feel free to use it how you like."

There was a pause. Shepard's shoulders started to shake.

"Oh. Uh. I didn't mean... damn it."

She laughed so hard tears came to her eyes. It was a wonder how Garrus could always do that to her. "It's been a while since you've made an accidental innuendo like that," she said. "I missed it."

"You missed me making a fool of myself?" Garrus said dryly.

"I missed seeing you all flustered." She tilted her head back to smile up at him. "I think it's adorable," she admitted.

Garrus fluttered his mandibles in embarrassment, but his smile was soft. He shrugged a shoulder, jolting her head back down. "Stop ruining my reputation," he said, amused.

"But you make it so easy."

"Oh, watch the movie, Shepard."

Laughing quietly, she finally gave in and turned to focus on the movie. The pizza was only lukewarm by then, but she didn't mind. She wouldn't have given up talking to Garrus for anything.

Halfway through the movie, when the food was long gone and they'd cleaned their hands on wet tissues, Garrus gently pulled her backwards into the crook of his arm, stretched out along the back of the couch.

She tucked herself into his side, and his arm wrapped tight around her. It was warm, and comfortable, and she fit like she belonged there.

Maybe she did.

Shepard smiled.

End Chapter 24

Author's Note: Hey all, it's been a while! Work has been super busy, but to make up for the wait, here's a very long, very sappy chapter. Hope you're all still reading and do leave a review if you enjoyed it, I always like reading the notes you guys leave me! Gives me inspiration.

Ashen Skies
"Rolling around together doesn't sound so bad."