Characters/Pairing: Shakarian
Rating: T
Word Count: 455
Prompt: from jadesabre301, for the kiss meme, in which the prompter chooses the location of the kiss: "Shepard-to-Garrus, stomach kiss"

Notes: Originally written in 2013.

—

"It's amazing," Shepard tells him frankly, sitting astride his hips. His thumbs stroke up her naked sides and down them again, head cocked on her pillow in something like inquisitiveness.

"Who, me?" He raises his eyebrows. "Go on."

"It's just—" She frames his hips with her hands, her fingertips nearly touching the bedclothes on either side of his waist. "You know, women on Earth used to wear these contraptions around their waists. Corsets. They were made out of rigid straps and worn tight as they could get them, and as they shrank they got even tighter. All so they could have waists that looked like this."

"You're saying I look like an Earth woman."

"I'm saying if you'd been in Western Europe about three hundred years ago, the fashion magazines would have been all over you for your secret." She pauses. "Well. After they were finished screaming at the sight of you."

Garrus hums, a dual-toned thing that thrums through the air between them. "I always knew I was the paragon of attractiveness somewhere, to someone. I guess I was just hoping it would be something a little more contemporary."

Shepard rolls her eyes, her fingers sliding up from his hips across his stomach, his chest. "That's some pretty transparent fishing, Garrus."

"What can I say? Your opinion matters to me, Shepard."

His voice is light, teasing, but Shepard isn't dense enough to miss the little thread of sincerity weaving through it, and after a moment she bends down and presses her lips to his stomach, just below the rise of his ribs. "It's a very nice waist," she murmurs, grinning as she feels him suck in a breath, as she feathers her fingers up and down his sides in a mimicry of his earlier motions. "In fact, it's my very favorite waist ever."

"Now you're just being patronizing," he grumbles, but Shepard can hear the edge creeping into his voice beneath it, can feel the rising…interest elsewhere as his hands grip her waist a little tighter. "I can go talk to Javik if I want someone scorning my every word."

"But I do it with love," Shepard points out, and isn't entirely surprised when he flips them both on the bed in one smooth motion. "Besides," she adds, grinning up at him, "I don't think Javik quite understands the nuances of human fashion."

"Not yet," Garrus says, his hand settling in the crook of her knee as her leg comes up around his narrow, sturdy waist. "But if I see him wandering the decks of the Normandy in a—what was it?"

"Corset."

"I'll know who to blame."

"Who to thank, you mean," Shepard points out, and laughs all the way into his kiss.

.

—

Characters/Pairing: Shakarian
Rating: G
Word Count: 392
Prompt: from mystery-moose: "Shepard, Garrus, talking about nothing important."

Notes: Originally written in 2013.

—

"That's stupid."

"No, it's not."

"It is."

"If you'd watch it, you'd understand. It was an intergalactic phenomenon, Shepard."

"It's a bunch of asari cat…pet-things dancing in a circle around a rainbow. It's stupid."

Garrus laughs, hard enough she can feel the rumble of it through both his thigh and the pillow she's got pressed against it. She would just have her head in his lap, but turians don't exactly come with extra padding, and the pillows on Anderson's couches—her couches, she reminds herself—are too comfortable to go to waste. She looks up at him, his mandibles flaring in amusement as he shakes his head. "How would you know if you haven't watched it?"

"I just know."

"Mm. She just knows."

"I do," she insists without much fight, and changes the channel. It's some asari melodrama, mid-reveal that the pregnant asari onscreen has spontaneously developed amnesia and has no idea who the father of her child is. The other asari in the room look utterly horrified, suspicious, and gleeful at once. "I don't know why you're pushing this so hard."

Garrus plucks the remote from her hand, flicking through a biotiball tournament, an elcor cooking show ("With relish: Add relish,"), and a quarian children's show featuring a large number of handmade puppets. "And I don't know why you're resisting. A guy might think you have something against asari…cat…pet-things."

Shepard grins again, twisting on her side until she can see the screen better. She's never had much of an interest in quarian children's programming, but anything is better than an inane holo gone viral. Garrus's hand comes to rest on her waist; she blows out a breath and adjusts her pillow against his leg, listening to the rumble of his breathing, to the distant, muted whirring of skycars outside the apartment's impossible windows. On the screen, a puppet of a quarian boy is cheerfully describing the color orange to a six-legged creature with five eyes.

"Stupid," she murmurs again, wondering about Rannoch, thinking of Legion, of hope and death and the way lives wasted themselves so easily, and she blows out a breath. "Fine. Show me the vid."

"Okay," Garrus says, and she can hear his smile; but he bends closer to show her his omnitool's screen, and she can't deny that as the holo comes to a close, she laughs.

.

—

Characters/Pairing: Shakarian
Rating: G
Word Count: 318
Prompt: from maybethings, for the first-sentence meme, in which the prompter writes the first sentence of the fill: "Didn't think I'd find you here."

Notes: Originally written in January of 2015.

—

"Didn't think I'd find you here."

"Didn't think I'd find myself here," Shepard says ruefully, and leans back on the bench, her arms spread out along its elegant wrought-iron back. "Considering how awkward it was last time, I mean."

Garrus shrugs, coming to stand behind her. "I didn't think it was that bad."

"You didn't have to say anything. You just had to stand there and look pretty."

"Devilishly handsome, you mean."

Shepard flutters a laconic hand, lips pursed. "My point's still good."

Garrus laughs, two-toned and more attractive than she'd ever admit, and uncrosses his arms to rest his palms on the back of the bench. "It was the opening of a school, Shepard. Not an interrogation."

She glances again at the wide, pale brick building opposite the green, enormous glass-and-steel doors closed for the moment, framed every side by green maple trees and a lawn trimmed precisely enough to pass a military inspection. That lawn, she knows, stretches on behind the building to a state-of-the-art training facility; and before her, above the enormous doors, an expensively-lettered placard declares the place the Shepard Preparatory School for Biotic Children.

"That sign," she says without thinking, "probably cost more than my entire school did, growing up."

"You told me about the scholarships."

She laughs. "My one stipulation. As if I know what that means for them."

Garrus is quiet a long time, long enough for her to regret her words, but eventually his hand comes to rest on her shoulder, more comforting than anything so taloned has right to be, and she sighs. "So many kids will learn here, Shepard. It's a good thing."

She stands abruptly, circles the bench until she can hold his hand properly, feel the reassuring weight of it, the strength. "I want them to be better than me," she says, and looks up. "If that happens, then it'll be enough."

Garrus smiles, squeezes her hand. "You gave them the chance."

.

—

Characters/Pairing: Shakarian
Rating: G
Word Count: 1180
Prompt: from perahn, for the same first-sentence meme: "The stars seemed further away than usual, veiled by the drifting clouds, and Shepard was glad of it."

Notes: Originally written in January of 2015. Probably also of note is that my Shepard picked the Destroy ending, and anything set post-game assumes this world is in play.

—

The stars seemed further away than usual, veiled by the drifting clouds, and Shepard was glad of it.

She'd spent two years of her life staring up at stars through the window of her cabin, entirely too close for comfort and entirely impossible to close away, and as much as she loved the freedom they'd given her she didn't mind seeing them for once at their distance, or the solid, steady ground under her feet.

She was standing. That was the first victory in…quite some time, more meaningful for having no casualties, and though it'd taken an omnitool trick Tali'd taught her to kill the IV alarm—and a cane, pilfered from her stupefyingly massive pile of well-wishes, to work her way from the bed in the first place—she'd managed the ten whole steps between her hospital bed and the tiny balcony without falling once.

Of course, now that she'd made it she wished for nothing so much as a chair, but so such things went, and to distract herself she drew in a deep, clean breath. Earth air. City air, faintly industrial, only the barest hint of alien smoke remaining from the Reapers' devastation. Not so long ago, barely a month and a half according to reports—but already she could make out the long, thin cranes in the glittering city laid out below her, raising the buildings that had been destroyed; the gleaming skycars arcing light through the night sky; the low and steady hum of life resuming, resurging, resilient in the face of even the most devastating threat the planet had ever seen.

She liked that. Liked more the wind over her cheeks, the unmuffled sound of vehicles and a city as much recovering as she.

God, her back ached, and her left leg, and her arm, shattered in a dozen places and held together by pins and plates while the bone weave struggled to remake her again. Pulverized, one of her doctors had said. She herself remembered very little after the explosion that had blown the Citadel apart: only twisted steel, and pain, and the threadbare shimmer of a mass effect field between her and endless stars.

Then nothing, until she'd woken, dazed from a cocktail of drugs and pain, to the sound of a turian voice—

"Shepard? Spirits, Shepard?"

"Out here, Garrus," she called back, stifling the gasp at the strain of turning too quickly, and watched him cross the empty hospital room with long, even strides. Half the steps it'd taken her—an eighth of the time. She longed for a decent run, and she couldn't even walk.

"Don't," he said, and even she could hear the worry. "Don't do that. I thought—don't do that again, Shepard."

"Sorry," she told him, meaning it. "I didn't know you were coming tonight. I just needed to breathe for a few minutes."

"Are you even supposed to be standing?"

Teasing, she knew—she could see the smirk—but it hit too close to home, and she sighed as he offered a bracing arm. "Garrus. When have I ever listened to what I was supposed to do?"

He adjusted his grip, bent his head closer until she could feel his heat, until the brilliant blue of his eyes met hers. "You're absolutely right," he drawled. "I don't know why I'm surprised. I suppose you used Tali's trick on the alarm."

"Got it in one."

"That eager to get outside, huh?"

Her smile faltered, then faded. Garrus saw it and his hand tightened; before her face could show the ache she leaned into him, letting his arm settle around her waist instead, and abandoned the cane in favor of the balustrade. "So many people died, Garrus," she said, the sound almost lost between the wind and the city. "And all I can think about is how much I hate this place."

He glanced back over their shoulders to where she knew the pile of presents sat, obscene generosity from a people so barely removed from war, this particular fraction screened and rescreened by Liara before even being admitted to the hospital. And beyond them: the determinedly inoffensive taupe walls, the little rolling table that held her fleet of medicines, and her small, segmented bed, railed on both sides to prevent her falling in the worst throes of her nightmares. She hadn't even been able to watch the news; even now all they showed were death tolls and speculation of her own actions, and to watch them—so wrong, and yet she couldn't bear—

She hadn't even told Garrus.

His voice, when he spoke, was abruptly serious. "If you want to go home, Shepard, say the word."

"The word," she said flatly, but the flutter of his mandibles against her temple told her the joke had translated. "Chakwas would kill me. Miranda would kill me. Tali would be disappointed in me, which would be even worse."

He laughed again, and she turned her face into his warm, hide-soft neck. "Besides," she added more quietly, "I don't even know where home is. Not with Normandy still off on recon and rescue."

"Wherever you want it to be."

"What if," she started, and continued only because she was tired, and grieving and in pain, and because Garrus of all people knew her best, "What if that's—where you are?"

He took an odd breath and his arm tightened against her. For a moment her heart sank—then he smiled, wide enough she could feel it in his voice, and he said, "Yeah, Shepard. Def—"

"Don't say definitely."

Garrus laughed again, turned her in his arms until she could see him properly, his visor dim, the green and blue and red and gold of the city lights flickering gently over his plates, dulling the markings until all she could make out was the glint in his eye and his wide, toothy grin. "What do you want me to say, then?"

She swallowed, gripped his hand. Maddening, that she could face a Reaper on foot without flinching, but this should make her palms sweat. "Say yes."

"Commander," he said drily, lifting a brow-plate, and she groaned.

"Garrus."

"Shepard," he parroted in the same tone, then pretended to flinch at her thump to his chest. "Fine. Daxa. Yes."

"What did that mean?"

"Well, it's usually a word used to indicate assent, or agreement, or—"

"That's not what I—Garrus," she said, startled, and a sudden rush of warmth began to pool in her stomach, chasing away the smaller aches behind something else, something strong and floating. "Well. Okay, then."

"Okay," he said, and cupped her jaw to bring her forehead to his own. She breathed, in and out; then she tipped her chin until her mouth met his, no longer alien, familiar as her heartbeat. His hands, too, and his warmth, and the way he hummed when she scratched his back. How much more could she learn? How much more, now that there was a chance—

The city had begun again; the proof of it surrounded her. And above her, stars…

It was time, she thought, that she did the same.

"Yes?" Garrus murmured against her mouth, and Shepard laughed.

"Definitely."