Title: Good Morning, Mrs. Verner!
Author: skybound2
Rating: T
Characters: F!Shepard, Conrad Verner, Garrus, and Jack (some Conrad/F!Shep and F!Shep/Garrus)
Word Count: ~7000
Summary: There are four words that Shepard never thought she'd hear strung together in a sentence and directed at her, four words that will forever make her flee in panic and if she never hears them again it'll be too soon: "Good Morning, Mrs. Verner!"
Spoilers: References to Conrad's appearance in ME3.
Author's Note: Started out writing this for a prompt over on the kinkmeme, but it kind of veered off course. The prompt wanted a Conrad who had fallen hard for Shepard after meeting up in ME3, and while that is a little implied here, I don't quite go where the OP wanted I think. Instead, they got this very loose fill. Initially posted this on the kinkmeme anyway, because hey! Why not? Now I'm sharing here in a less anon fashion, again, because I can. It's a little bit cracky, a little bit sad, and there is a distinct absence of kink (double anon-kinkmeme fail!), but I hope you enjoy anyway.

Good Morning, Mrs. Verner!

Upon waking, on a scale of one to ten, Shepard rates her hangover at a five, maybe a six. There's a headache, for certain. And her throat is parched. Severely. Tuchanka levels of parched. But she's also feeling pleasantly sore and tingly all over, which is typically a sign of a pretty good night. Best of all, she's able to stumble forward with a minimal amount of toe stubbing on her way to the bathroom.

"OW! Jesus! Fuck! Shit!"

Okay, make that a moderate to severe amount of toe stubbing. Damn. That hurt.

The bathroom, she finds, is not where she left it. Neither are the stairs leading up to it. She blames this unanticipated relocation of previously immobile room features for all the toe stubbing, and not on her still somewhat inebriated body.

Once she gets to the bathroom, she fumbles around in the dark looking for the sink. Uncertain why the automatic lighting hasn't turned on. She shrugs the confusion away, and goes about rinsing her face and guzzling down as much water as her unhappy stomach can handle.

It's not nearly enough to quell her thirst.

She contemplates using the toilet, but when her hand-eye coordination refuses to cooperate enough to lift the lid, she gives up, and makes her way back towards the bedroom. Maybe a few more hours of shuteye will help the world make sense again.

Sadly, she never gets to find out.

There are a few things Shepard anticipated awaiting her back in bed. Top of that list was one Garrus Vakarian (preferably naked), followed by her favorite pillow (the same make as the one she had at basic, if not the same model), the turian friendly-blanket that she'd recently procured (a necessity when regularly sleeping next to someone with so many pointy bits), and perhaps her trusty Paladin (don't go anywhere without it!).

None of these things are there, however. Instead, what she she sees by the oh-so-bright bedside lamp that has now been switched on, is a room that is most certainly not hers with a pillow that is not hers, a blanket that is not hers, and a gun nowhere to be seen. The lack of a visible weapon would have been the most disturbing thing on that list were it not for one other significant detail.

In the place of a naked sleeping Garrus, there is instead a wide-awake, smiling [equally naked] nightmare beaming at her from above the sheets. "Good morning, Mrs. Verner!"

And so Commander Jane Shepard, Savior of the Citadel, Council Spectre, and all-around badass extraordinaire does what any logical and sane individual would do in such a situation.

She screams.

~~~\/~~~

Her screaming seems to jar Conrad into action. Feeling somewhat removed from herself, she watches with horror as he leaps out of the bed and bounds over to her. Still. Naked. (A distant - and forever after ignored - part of her hindbrain makes a mental note that apparently he works out. But she'll never admit that fact to anyone.) He grabs her by the shoulders and leans down to her eye level. She can see his mouth moving, but she doesn't hear anything coming out of it. All she can hear is a distant shouting.

It takes her several seconds to realize that the noise is coming from her. He tries to maneuver her towards the bed, ostensibly to make her sit, she thinks. The motion is apparently what she needs to come back to herself and she is finally able to shake his hands from her and take a step back.

If Shepard was still of sound enough mind at this point, she would mentally revise her hangover scale estimate to somewhere in the neighborhood of two million and twelve. Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on how you look at it) she is not.

"Conrad. What. Are. You. Doing. Here?"

He looks at her with an expression of confusion, one hand reaching up to rub at the back of his neck and a frown spreading across his face. "I live here." Then he smiles again. An altogether too little-boyish of a smile for him to be wearing considering his current lack of dress. "Well, I suppose, we live here now. Oh! Only on your off time of course! It's not like I expect you to stop patrolling the galaxy. Saving people, righting wrongs. Fixing things. Kicking scum to the curb!" He punctuates his statement by hitting his open palm with his fist. Making things...bounce...on him that Shepard would rather not see bounce. She shakes her head, dazed. He just keeps on talking.

"That's your duty as a Spectre, and I would never stop you from doing that. It's one of the things I love so much about you. Only maybe on shore leave we could stop by here once in awhile? I kind of like this place. It's not much, but it's cozy, you know? Oh! Do you like fish - because I recently got this batarian eel, she's real friendly and-"

"What? Slow down, Conrad. What the hell are you talking about?" And more importantly, "Why are you naked! ?"

He coughs. Cheeks going red as a little half-smile forms on his lips. "Well, it is our honeymoon, and well, you know..." As he gestures at her she becomes acutely aware of her own state of dress. Or lack thereof.

Oh god.

She looks down at herself and feels that same strange sense of being outside of her body once more as she notes that: yes. Yes all of her parts are indeed out for examination by her Number One Fan. She'd known that she was naked when she'd awoken, of course. Had felt that cool air from the ventilation fan hit her as she stepped into the bathroom. Noted the stickiness of dried sweat coating her body. (And no, no she is NOT going to think about what else that might mean.)

It was an easy enough fact to acknowledge when she thought it was Garrus that she was waking up next to, but she managed to block it out the minute her life began spiraling out of control with Conrad's morning greeting. Call it a defense mechanism. The absence of clothes makes the twinkling little gold and white band on her ring finger stand out all the more. Her gaze darts to Conrad's left hand. And yup. There's a matching one there as well.

Oh. God.

She starts sucking in air at an alarming rate. Shaking her head and backing away from him as far as she can get. Repeated denials falling from her lips. She knows she's not making any sense by the increasingly perplexed look on Conrad's face.

Realizing that she is on the verge of a full-on panic attack, she closes her eyes and takes several deep breathes, willing her blood pressure to slow down. Using controlled steps she starts pacing the length of the room, looking for her clothes. Snapping up her shirt and a stray sock from the foot of the bed with so much exuberance that the fabric hits her in the face. She soldiers on, deftly ignoring the view of the overly-decorative (but still somehow tasteful) shrine with her picture splattered all over it by the side of the desk. A lone fish swimming slow circles in a tank next to it.

A flush of heat rises to her cheeks when she discovers her underwear behind the lamp. She slips them up over knees that are most certainly not trembling, careful not to make eye contact with the smiling fool (her husband? !) standing behind her. She follows that action by pulling her undershirt on over her head. Smoothing it over her unsettled stomach. It's not armor, but it'll do.

As she digs around for her pants, she catches sight of what she can only assume is a pair of Conrad's boxers sticking out from beneath one of the pillows. The lone sock she has found hangs limply from her hand as the reality of the situation (hah!) hits her with the full-force of a krogan head-butt.

Oh god oh god oh god. What the hell did I do last night? ! She can't fathom how she could possibly have drunk enough of anything to have lost so much control of her faculties as to not only have ended up in bed with Conrad Verner (how is that even possible! ?) but to have apparently married him as well. It has to be a joke. A cruel, vicious, horrible joke.

And just like that, it comes to her. She clutches the sock tighter. "I've been indoctrinated."

"Wait, what?"

"I've been indoctrinated. That has to be it." She spins on her heels, looking past Conrad and towards the door behind him, eyes finally locating her boots by the entrance. Her hoodie hanging from a hook on the wall, looking lonely and out of place. She stares at it, something familiar in a sea of insanity. A crazed sense of clarity settles over her. "There's no other explanation. I've been indoctrinated and this..." She gestures to him and her and the room. (And why oh why oh WHY hasn't he put on any clothes yet?) "And this, this is Harbinger's idea of a joke. Always knew that bastard was sick. Twisted. What with the 'I know you can feel this, Shepard!' and the 'assuming control!' But this. Oh, man. This just goes above and beyond the rules of polite engagement."

She heaves in a breath and turns her head towards the ceiling. "Okay, Harby! Enough is enough! You've had your fun. Wake me up now! This isn't funny!"

"Shepard? Love? Who are you talking to?"

"Harbinger. The Reaper."

"Oh. Uh. Okay? Can, can you do that?"

She shrugs. "Don't see why not. This is my indoctrination after all, I can do what I want."

"Indoctrination? Shepard, you're not making any sense."

Shepard never would have imagined a world where Conrad Verner would be standing in front of her, naked as the day he was born, wearing a wedding ring that she apparently put on his finger and giving her a look like she was the crazy one.

It's strangely sobering.

All of the fight drains out of her with her next breath, and she slumps onto the edge of the bed. She drops her head into her hands, the cloth of her sock against her overheated skin oddly soothing. Rubbing two fingers against each of her temples, she addresses Conrad again. "What happened last night? Exactly?"

Since she is refusing to look up, she hears rather than sees him cross the space between them. A moment later she feels the bed dip by her side with his weight. Thankfully, he doesn't touch her.

"We ran into each other in the docking area."

She nods her head. That makes sense. The memory seems so distant now, and she can't really connect how they got from there to here, but it's a start. "I remember that part. You were ranting about Cerberus. Telling people to join up."

"But you stopped me! Told me what was really going on with them. And then we took down that crooked Doctor together!" She hears his fist meet his palm again, and can't help but look at him, meeting his happy gaze. (And very much NOT looking down. No sirree. Not going there.)

"I remember that part. I also remember you walking off with Jenna. Something about her saving your life?"

He looks embarrassed. Contrite even. Like a kid who got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. "Oh, yeah. Well. That. That, uh, that didn't really work out."

She pointedly looks between the two of them, immediately regretting it with the eyeful that she gets. Huh. No tan lines. "Obviously."

He laughs a little. The sound is soft, and sweet. It surprises Shepard by making her smile.

"Umm, anyway. I ran into you and some of your squad at Purgatory later on. Do remember that?"

Purgatory sounds about right to Shepard. She remembers having gone there to meet up with Jack. Found EDI and Joker out on a date. Cortez living it up with Vega and a few of the other crewman from aboard the Normandy. She vaguely remembers throwing back shot after shot with the biotic. Dancing until her muscles were sore and she was grinning like an idiot. Hell, she even has a vague recollection of messaging Garrus to see if he was free to meet up, only to be disheartened to find out that he was remotely dealing with a situation on Palaven. She'd been too far gone with alcohol at that point to be of any help, so she'd just gone back to the bar for another round. Or fifteen.

Probably not the best choice she'd ever made.

She digs around in her brain, trying to recall just when Conrad showed up. She can almost grasp it on the outskirts of her memory. She thinks she has it, but then it darts away from her like a greased up pyjak. Slippery little bugger. The more she tries to remember, the more her head hurts.

"You were, uh, really happy by the time I got there. Very, um...touchy-feely. And that friend of yours? The scary one with the tattoos? She was - um - she seemed to be having a really good time with a guy with kind of puffy hair? One of your other squadmates, I think?"

Huh. Jack and... "Kaidan?" Never would have seen that one coming.

"Yeah! That's the one! They left pretty soon after I met up with you, I think. Couldn't stop touching each other. Or laughing, for some reason."

She snorts. "I bet." I'll kill them. If they left me there, drunk out of my mind, with Conrad, on purpose. I'll kill them. Tear them limb from limb, travel to Tuchanka, and feed their remains to Urz.

But even as she's thinking it, she knows that nothing about that rings true. (Well, no, she would feed them to Urz if they did that. She just can't believe that they did.)

For starters, Shepard can drink most turians under the table, and a decent number of krogans as well. The amount of alcohol it would take for her to black out is just shy of how much it would take to kill her. (And she knows from experience that she is hardly mobile when she gets to that point. The patrons of both the Dark Star and Afterlife can attest to that. As can poor Garrus, who has helped her limp home more than once. And by limp, she means carry.)

Assuming that she hasn't died, and that this isn't hell, and that Harbinger isn't fucking with her (she still hasn't ruled that out completely) there has to have been something else at work here besides alcohol.

Luckily, she still has at least one synapse firing inside her brain (Go! Synapse! Go!) and she is able to make a connection between Conrad saying how happy not only she was, but Jack and Kaidan too. Because she knows Jack. And she knows Kaidan. And even when those two are drunk, euphoria is not a typical response.

Hell, she doesn't remember Kaidan being there at all. And the idea of Jack and him getting together completely unassisted is just too ludicrous to even contemplate.

Her poor synapse continues to struggle on feebly until she finally recalls having danced with an asari for awhile. Recalls letting her buy her a couple of drinks. Not really paying attention to what she was imbibing at that point. (She figured she'd survived ryncol, she could survive anything they served her.) She was just having a good time, there was no harm in that. Well, so long as she didn't wake up naked with a stranger. Or Conrad. Shit.

On an impulse, she fires up her omni-tool and starts scrolling through her messages. Fifty-seven of them. A dozen of which are from Garrus. She avoids those for now, she'll deal with that train wreck once she has a clue what the hell happened last night.

She finally comes to one from Jack, a quick little ditty. Clearly sent when she was still drunk, and Shepard is now certain, high. It's signed with a 'J' and an obscene looking emoticon.

The drinks, numerous.

Your dancing was atrocious.

Who gave us Hallex?

Well. Shit. That explains a lot.

The one beneath that is also from Jack, and simply reads:

This man is a BEAST. Why you been holding out on me, Shep?

To Shepard's credit she doesn't blush. Then again, Conrad Verner is still sitting next to her completely naked. (Seriously? Why the hell hasn't he put on any clothes? !) So maybe she's just all out of blushes for the day.

Scrolling further down she comes across a message from a person whose name she doesn't immediately recognize, but after a minute she manages to attach it to the asari that she was dancing with the night before. The message is clearly one expressing interest in Shepard, and offering to show her a good time in the shape of a little pink pill the next time she's in port.

At a price, of course.

Okay then. Mystery solved. Shepard closes down her omni-tool and breathes out the mother of all sighs. So, drunk? Check! Drugged up on Hallex? Check! Accidentally cheated on boyfriend with crazed stalker, who she somehow managed to marry? Check and double check!

"Fuck."

She buries her head in her palms again, scrubbing her sock-free hand through her hair. Scratching at her scalp in an effort to relieve some of her mounting tension. She stands up, and moves away from the bed. Sees her pants tossed over the railing by his desk (still not looking at that shrine), and happily slips into them. Glad for the time it gives her to compose her thoughts.

"Listen Conrad, I'm not sure exactly what I said, or what I did, but-" She turns back around to face him, her sentence lodging in her throat at the sight that he makes, sitting naked on his bed and staring up at her like she's the second coming. And damn it all to hell, she apparently does still have more blushing available to her today. She grits her teeth and turns her head. "Could you put some pants on please?"

"What? Oh! Sure. Sorry." While he rummages around for something to wear, she grabs her hoodie. Zipping it up over her shirt like a shield. A moment later, she slides her bare feet into her boots with a huff. The one sock she was able to locate finds a home in her pocket (she wouldn't be able to stand wearing just one, better to go without) and lord knows where her bra got off to, but she's dressed enough to feel almost like Commander Shepard again and that gives her some relief.

When she turns back around, Conrad is standing there in a dark tank and a pair of overly shiny, silver shorts. They're so bright, she finds it hard to look away. When she does finally tear her gaze northwards, she sees him looking at her with a frown, one hand wringing the other repeatedly in a nervous tick. "Didn't mean to make you uncomfortable."

"I know. It's okay." She moves back across the room. Marveling at how compact the place is. It's only about the size of her cabin, but obviously houses his whole life. By the front door there is a small kitchenette with a single bar stool pulled up to the counter and a solitary coffee mug resting on top. The image strikes a discordant note in her soul, but she does what she can to ignore it. Besides that the only place to sit is the bed and the desk. Unwilling to go anywhere near the former, she opts to lean against the latter. (Ignore the shrine. Ignore. It.) She gestures for him to sit, and he does. Back stiff, but a somewhat hopeful look in his eyes.

She had no idea they were so blue.

"I'm sure you've figured this out by now, but I wasn't in my right mind last night."

"You were a little drunk. But so was I!"

"I was more than drunk, Conrad. Someone slipped me some Hallex when I wasn't looking. To me and my friends."

"What? Why would they do that? Who would do that?"

"To fuck with my head, maybe. Or just because they thought it would be fun, and I'd enjoy it. And only an idiot, obviously, who has no idea the shit they are in for now. Doesn't matter. What matters is that I...I wasn't capable of making an informed choice last night, Conrad."

The look on his face as he processes that bit of information is positively broken. Unaccountably, she feels like she's just kicked a puppy. Any lingering doubts she may have had about his involvement have just been washed away with that downtrodden look. "I - I didn't know."

"I'm not saying that you did, Conrad. I just want you to understand where I'm coming from when I tell you that I can't stay married to you. Hell, I don't even remember getting married to you."

"I have a video, if you wanna see." He starts to pull up his omni-tool, but she darts forward, grabbing his arm and stopping the playback before it can start.

"No! No, that's okay. Maybe later, okay?" He still doesn't look happy, but he nods all the same.

An uncomfortable minute passes where he fiddles with the edge of his shorts, before he lifts his head to meet her gaze. The question that comes out of his mouth is so unexpected as to have revolved all the way back around to 'well of course he would ask that' land. "Why not?"

"Pardon?"

"Why can't you stay married to me? I know that you don't really know me all that well. But I know you, and I think we'd be compatible. And yeah, sure, maybe you were on drugs last night, but we got along really well! Had fun, even." He stands and crosses the distance to her. Something in his approach makes her straighten up and shift away from the desk. The better to avoid getting cornered. "And I think, if you'd give me a chance, I could make you happy."

He looks so sincere, so hopeful, when he says it that her response is automatic. "Maybe you could."

She must still be hopped up on Hallex. It's the only explanation for how those words slipped through her brain filter and out of her mouth. Oh, the perils of having only one working synapse. (Bad, synapse! Bad!)

"But I can't, Conrad. You think you know me, but you don't. Not really. What you know is all just from what the vids put out, and a handful of encounters. And that's not me."

"But-"

"And besides that, I'm...involved with someone. Have been for a long while now."

"Is it serious?"

She can't prevent the smile that lights her face when she thinks of Garrus, and their reunion after Menae. When he showed up in her cabin, duffle slung over one shoulder, and rifle in his hand ready to claim the spare drawer she'd offered and his own side of the bed. "Yeah. It is."

"Oh." Now his face really and truly falls. Less kicked puppy, and more devastated man. The severe change hammers home how real this all is for him, even if it isn't for her. He might be an obsessed stalker, and maybe a little crazy, but he's never caused her any harm. And hell, just yesterday, he was willing to give his life to save hers. With all the antics he's pulled, it's easy to forget sometimes that he's also a person. A person with an unhealthy amount of hero-worship for her, true, but a person nonetheless. She can't imagine how it would feel to be in his shoes. "Does he make you happy?"

He deserves her honesty, and maybe a gentle reality check. Maybe it's time to see if she can scare him off. "Yeah, he does. Not sure how he puts up with me sometimes though."

"What are you talking about? You're Commander Shepard. Anyone would be honored to be with you!"

She snorts. Leans back a bit into one hip as she prepares to unravel a bit of that undeserved worship. "You say that, but that's because you don't have to deal with me all the time. You've never injured yourself just trying to sit down because I can't be bothered to put anything away. Guns, parts, tools, pieces of disassembled model ships. Boots left at the foot of the stairs where you're sure to trip on them."

"Well, that's okay. You're a busy woman, and-"

"I never clean the bathroom. It's not that I can't I just know that if I don't, he will. So I let him. Got my fill of it during basic, and would be happy to never do it again."

"I love cleaning!"

"I'm horrible at taking advice. Even when I know it'd be good for me. I'm too much of a control freak, and relinquishing that is hard. Sometimes impossible. I've picked a lot of fights to avoid doing just that."

"Maybe you just need the right person to-"

"I'm a suicidally bad driver, couldn't even pass my test. But I never let anyone else behind the wheel. Despite the obvious danger I am to my passengers."

Conrad looks genuinely confused. "Why would you do that?"

She shrugs. "Control freak, remember? But, if I'm honest, I kind of like seeing how scared I can make them. Gives me a little thrill." She gives him a small smile, one that quickly fades as she swallows the lump that has formed in her throat.

"Also, apparently, I can't be trusted to go out with my friends for the night without ending up in bed - let alone married - to someone else, despite a promise of fidelity." She flicks her hands between the two of them, before letting them fall limply to her sides. "I - I honestly have no idea how I'm going to explain this to him. I don't want to hurt him, but..." She trails off, not wanting to delve that far into her relationship with Garrus with Conrad. It feels wrong.

Conrad just stares at her for a solid minute, an unreadable expression on his face, before clearing his throat and ducking his head. "If it helps, we didn't actually, you know..." He makes a swirling hand gesture between them, and her chest swells with hope. "Consummate it yet. We uh...we started to, but then you, uh. You passed out."

She opts to not dwell on the 'started to' portion of that sentence, and instead clings to the 'passed out' portion of it. Mentally, she does a fist pump. Yes! A lack of consummation is good! With that removed from her 'oh shit, no I didn't' list, this nightmare doesn't seem quite so hellacious anymore.

She can deal with having accidentally married Conrad Verner. Really, she can. That can be taken care of. Just a couple of calls to the right officials, and it'll be wiped from the record. Hell, she might even be able to explain that one to Garrus without dying of mortification on the spot, so long as she can tell him with one-hundred percent certainty that she didn't actually have sex with the guy (no matter what else they might have done).

The whole situation might get him laughing so hard, that he'll just bypass being upset entirely.

What? It could happen.

But, just in case she's wrong, she plans to be far, far away from the Citadel before giving Garrus the full rundown.

"So does that mean that you won't fight me on getting this annulled?"

He gives her a look, long and maybe a bit on the side of assessing. She has to give him credit for maintaining eye contact the entire time, not a lot of people can handle that with her. "I won't fight you, Shepard. What kind of a person would I be if I did?"

She lets go of the breath of air that she hadn't realized she'd been holding, and has to fight back grinning like a loon. No need to hurt the guy any more than she already has. "Thanks, Conrad. I appreciate it. And, for what it's worth, I'm sorry."

He bobs his head a couple of times. Looking sad, but not quite as broken. She checks that off in the win column.

"Okay then. I should probably get going. I'll get everything in order for the annulment and send it your way for finalization. Probably take me until this afternoon, okay?"

"Okay. Oh! Before you go." He moves past her to his desk, scattering datapads and disks, mumbling to himself the whole time until he finds whatever it is he is looking for with a loud 'A-ha!' and passes her a datadisk. "What I sent you yesterday over your omni-tool was just the final published work. This is all of the background research for my dissertation. On xenotechnology and dark energy integration. Remember? We talked about it yesterday."

"I do actually. I guess that part wasn't a hallucination, huh? You really are a doctor?"

"No. I mean, yes! No it wasn't a hallucination, and yes, I am a doctor. I worked on this for years. Some of the translations were almost impossible to come by, but I got lucky and made some contacts in the Alliance. They were able to help out with some of the more difficult parts. Though, now that I have those asari matriarch writings you found, I'll be able to do even more. In fact, I spent some time working on a primer yesterday, after Jenna - before you and I - well, anyway, here." With a couple of quick keystrokes, he sends the information over to her omni-tool. "I'd like to help out however I can."

She scans the data, eyes going wide at some of it. She's never had a head for languages, or physics - guns and ammo are more her speed - but even she can tell that he's onto something here. "This is good, Conrad. Really, really good."

He looks happier, but still uncertain. "You think so?"

"I do. The Alliance could really use this. Hell, if this is any sort of an indication, the Alliance could use you."

At that, he positively beams. "Really? You're not just saying that to make me feel better?"

"No, Conrad. I'm not. It might take some time to get you the necessary clearance, but the Alliance needs all the experts in this sort of thing that they can get. I think you'd be a real asset to the war effort."

"Wow, Commander Shepard. You have no idea what it means to me to hear you say that! I won't let you down, I promise."

His smile is infectious, and she can't help but laugh. "I didn't think you would."

A few moments of almost - but not quite - strained silence pass before Shepard decides to get her butt in gear. She has a marriage to annul, an asari with a happy Hallex hand to lecture, and a (judging by the dozen or so additional - and ignored - messages her omni-tool has received) worried boyfriend to have an awkward conversation with. "I should go."

"Yeah, of course. I understand." She pockets the datadisk, and starts to turn away before giving into an impulse that she will forever blame on the lingering effects of the Hallex. A lingering effect which causes her to place one hand on his shoulder as she leans forward to give him a kiss on the cheek.

It's only a second, but in that time he manages to snake his arms around her and pull her in tight for a fully open-mouthed, deep kiss. The kind of kiss that makes your toes curl and your head spin. She's too shocked to react, her hands just gripping onto both of his shoulders as he continues to kiss her within an inch of her life, bending her back into a slight dip until she's completely breathless.

It takes her an embarrassingly long moment to steady herself when he releases her. And her cheeks betray her physiological response by heating up considerably. Traitors. Okay, just gonna edit that part out of the story when I talk to Garrus.

She makes a beeline for the door, all thoughts of any missing clothes forgotten. He can keep them, for all she cares. She needs to get out of there before her synapse realizes that she was just turned on by Conrad Verner.

Oh. God.

"Goodbye, Conrad."

"Bye, Commander Shepard, I -"

The door slams shut before she can hear the rest of what he was about to say.

~~~\/~~~

It takes her five and a half hours to get the marriage annulled and expunged from the official Citadel records. She'd held out hope that the whole thing was a farce, but no such luck. The hoops she has to jump through are worth it though if it means that she can put the whole nightmare behind her. At least she's able to take care of it all without anyone on her crew finding out. It'll be bad enough having to explain it to Garrus, she shudders at the thought of explaining it to anyone else.

She checks in with Joker once she's back on the Normandy, gives him the all clear to head towards the Arghos Rho system before heading up to her (thankfully empty) cabin for a shower and change of clothes. After they've passed through the Mass Relay, she heads to the main battery where Garrus is (predictably) working on the guns.

He's so engrossed in what he's doing that he doesn't even acknowledge her when she enters - which she thinks is a bit odd, given all the (still unopened) messages he sent last night - but she contents herself by slipping her arms around him from behind anyway. Leaning her head a bit awkwardly against his armor and breathing in the familiar scent of gunpowder and metal.

One of his hands settles on hers at his waist and gives it a little squeeze. "Fun night?"

"Hmm. Followed by a long day. I missed you."

He chuckles and turns in her arms, hands coming to rest on her hips as her own stay locked around him. "Is that right?"

"Mmm, yes. It is." She leans up to give him a kiss. A knot of tension in her stomach unraveling just by having him close. She knows she needs to tell him, but for now, she just wants to enjoy being here.

Which is why she's a bit perturbed when she feels one of his hands drop from her to start tapping away at the console.

She pulls back from the embrace with a frown. "Am I interrupting?"

"Not exactly. Just wanted to show you something that I came across a little while ago. Thought you might find it interesting."

He pulls her along side of him, one hand still wrapped around her waist while the other finishes pulling up the file on his console. She stares in horror at the images shifting on the screen. Her poor overworked synapse promptly commits suicide. But not before amending her hangover scale to something closer to one billion and five.

Distantly, she feels Garrus nudge her with his hip, his face burrowing lightly against her hair in what she supposes is an affectionate nuzzle, only her body is too numb to properly process it. He shakes a little against her with a rumbling laugh.

She manages to avoid screaming this time, but just barely.

Without her express permission, her hand smacks at the console repeatedly until she can make the horror show scrolling along it stop. It pauses on an unfortunate frame before blinking out completely.

"So, yeeeah...that. Not exactly what I was expecting to see in my inbox when I woke up to an empty bed this morning. Wanna throw me a line here, Shepard? Because I'm a little confused."

She nods, and sucks in a breath. "Heh. Funny story..."

~~~\/~~~

Alone in his apartment, Conrad cleans up the mess the two of them made. Taking the time to smooth out the sheets and fluff the pillows. Hand lingering a little on the space where her head rested for a short time. It's cold now, but he can clearly picture her asleep in that very spot, and that warms his heart.

He moves his discarded clothes into the basket for washing later. Smiles when he discovers Commander Shepard's bra kicked under the end table, thinking about how it got there. It's purple, and a little girly. Not what he expected, but all the more lovely for it. He picks it up, folds it, and after a moment of pondering, slips it next to his own undergarments in his drawer.

From there, he moves to the desk, straightening up his files before moving towards the... definitely not a shrine... set up on the wall alongside it. He slides his hand into his pocket and pulls out the sock that he found hiding in the kitchen. Drops it onto a small plate that also holds a dusty N7 emblem and a torn scrap of fabric (cost him 10,000 credits to get those through the extranet, but it was worth it - came with a certificate of authenticity and everything!).

Next he powers up his omni-tool. Scrolls through a selection of pictures before deciding on the best of the bunch, and sending it to one of the photo-frames on the wall. A grainy image of Shepard just after she was awarded Spectre status is replaced with one of the two of them standing at the altar. Well, he's standing. Shepard is more or less leaning on him for support. But she's smiling. (A little lopsided, and her eyes are a bit glassy, but it's a smile all the same!) The hanar behind them shines brightly at the camera as Conrad holds Shepard close. His fingers skate over the image for a second and he closes his eyes, remembering how soft her lips were. How nice her hands felt when they touched him.

He taps on the glass to his aquarium before pressing the food dispenser key. "Morning, Jane. Ready for breakfast?" He watches as the eel races to the top of the tank and snaps at the food, tail whipping back and forth. Happy to be fed.

His omni-tool pings with a message from Commander Shepard, and a thread of excitement, of joy, runs through him. Hope kindling in his heart. The feeling is squashed a moment later when he realizes that it is just the annulment papers. With a heaviness in his soul, he adds his digital signature and sends them back.

"Well, that's that. No more Mrs. Verner. It was nice while it lasted though, wasn't it, Jane?" The eel doesn't respond. She very rarely does. His slumps into the desk chair, chin resting on his hand while he watches her swim. "Must be nice to be a fish. Nothing to do but swim and eat and swim some more, huh?" His reverie is interrupted by another message coming through on his omni-tool. This one from Khalisah Bint Sinan al-Jilani letting him and 'The lovely Mrs. Verner' know that her special on their whirlwind romance would be airing tonight at eight, exclusively on Westerlund News.

"Oops. I knew that I forgot to mention something to her. Think she'll be mad when she finds out?"

The eel stays silent on the matter.

"Yeah. I think so too. Not too mad though, I hope. She's a little scary when she's mad." He smiles more to himself then to the fish. "I like it much better when she's in a good mood. Much, much better. At least she'll get to see the wedding video this way! It was such a nice ceremony after all..." He sighs and reaches forward to finger the fabric of the lone sock, surprised at how soft it is. "Well, better get to work. These schematics aren't going to decode themselves!"

Jane the eel just swims on.

~End