Chapter Text
Now
If a pistol was held to Shepard’s head-- which it had been done, many times-- with the demand that she sang C-Sec’s praises, there weren’t too many compliments she could conjure up on the fly. She thought they were a bunch of pencil pushers, so-called agents that liked to tout some imaginary concept of power all while being saddled by protocols and monumental levels of ass-kissery. There was some joke somewhere in there, that the answer to how many C-Sec operatives it would take to change a lightbulb was five: one intern to pitch the idea, another to draft a presentation, one supervisor to stamp the approval, one Alien Resources rep to document cross-cultural practices involved, and one stilted janitor to actually screw it in place.
But perhaps the nicest thing she could say was at the very least, Garrus Vakarian-- operative, detective, and favored liaison to the Spectres-- wasn’t afraid to break the rules.
Level 14 of Tayseri Ward was entirely zoned to be a red light district. It wasn’t entirely prostitutes and sex clubs. There were still normal businesses, like noodle restaurants and income tax offices and even one crematorium. But stashed in between those were entire buildings made of glass windows, asari with their tits out just beyond reach of the street. Turians teasing their slits with almost zero regards, humans bending over to give the krogan bouncer a show outside of the sex clubs packed to the brim, moans audible from the streets. There was a not-so unspoken rule that C-Sec didn’t go to Level 14 unless it was an emergency-- and the word emergency was incredibly loose. Dead whores on the street, sandblasted pimps, and tweaked out sex dolls didn’t normally file under the “emergency” category.
Lucky for Shepard, she was a Spectre. And those unspoken rules had very little impact on her.
She was staked out at some vegan restaurant on Meter Street, and not by choice. She had been picking apart some mystery brown patty that was supposed to resemble ground poultry, and had exactly zero luck discerning neither flavor nor ingredient. But the cafe was the closest to her target, so ambiguous vegan food she was forced to endure.
Shepard’s target was some volus named Bulkar Fen that was wanted for tax evasion, among other things. Normally, not the sort of nibble that the Spectres would try to reel in. Their mode of operations mostly centered more around diffusing suicide bombs and saving ships with no life support from crashing on uninhabited planets. However, when said tax evader volus attempted to sell Keeper blueprints to an agent posing undercover as an intermediary to the Shadow Broker, the Council naturally took a vested interest. They sent Shepard to the Citadel with a timeline of exactly seventy-two hours to bring Bulkar Fen in, either in cuffs or in a bag.
She had never been one for the Citadel. She had only been stationside when she had to be for training and fundraiser galas and the occasional shoreleave where she ingested enough Hallex to knock out-- and quite nearly fuck-- a krogan. She needed a local, she needed someone who she could trust. Or, someone she could trust not to stab her in the kidneys when she had her back turned (which was another long story she didn’t want to bother getting into the details of).
“Think he knows we’re watching?” Garrus asked, for maybe the third time in the past hour, nervously eyes the office building that Bulkar Fen was currently inside of. He had mentioned once before that stakeouts made him jittery. She could tell from a plethora of tells. A rattling of her water on the table from his leg bouncing uncontrollably, the nearly melodic sound on his fingers tapping against his thigh impatiently, the almost stubborn insistence of his eyes to not focus on a single point for more than two seconds. She felt as though she were sitting next to the galaxy’s most hyperactive toddler put in time out right in front of an ice cream truck.
“You know, if you need to piss, you don’t need to ask. You can just go.”
“What? I don’t need to piss.”
Shepard looked at him. Garrus had swapped his customary C-Sec blue armor for a suit. Tight, slate gray with navy detailing, tight, most likely a latex blend. And fucking tight. She had no idea he was so skinny underneath the armor. Shepard had this vision of Vakarian that he was some bulked out bodybuilder of a turian with all of that crazy padding he had on his armor. It was very nearly uncanny to see him be so lithe. She swore she could see every last muscle, like it was less of a suit and more of one long roll of gauze he meticulously wrapped over his limbs and torso.
“Then calm down. Stop it with the leg. For all he knows, we’re just two people trying out a new lunch spot.”
Garrus grunted, pushing his plate aside. He, like Shepard, had barely touched his food, which was for some repugnant reason all the same color of mauve. “This makes me feel like a rabbit.”
“You even know what a rabbit is?”
“Had to confiscate one from some human during my first year,” he said, his voice still bitter as if it happened only a few days ago. “Jumpy thing. All white, red eyes. Damn demon.”
“What happened? Didn’t melt your heart, Vakarian?”
“It bit me.”
She didn’t mind Vakarian. And in regards to a C-Sec Officer, that was nearly as close as saying that he was her most trusted friend. He had an okay sense of humor-- for a turian-- and didn’t mind getting dirty-- also, subjectively, for a turian. When she pitched trying to intercept Bulkar Fen on Level 14, she was anticipating some sort of lengthy lecture about how it’s off limits to C-Sec. But instead, he agreed immediately, a glint in his eyes that wasn’t there before. Catch him off guard , he had told her. When she asked about the Level 14 rule, he had just rolled his eyes at her, as if she should already know the answer to that question. And truthfully, she did. Vakarian didn’t care about protocol.
Although, and she would be the first to admit this, stakeouts were boring . Shepard joined up with the Spectres for action. Adventure. Wide-lens shots of her swaggering away from an explosion in slow motion. Stakeouts were mundane. She felt as though she needed something to occupy her hands. She had this intrinsic urge to knit, even though she had never once done it in her life.
Their location wasn’t making it any easier. Meter Street wasn’t one of the main attractions of Level 14, but it was still painfully obvious they were in a red light district. Just next to the office building Bulkar Fen was inside of-- first floor an accounting firm, second floor sheet metal distribution, third floor another accounting firm-- was a club with music thumping so loudly Shepard could feel it on the balls of her feet. It had some neon sign on the outside, Blight , that strobed on and off so frequently she felt vaguely nauseous.
And of course, in the windows like a fucking candy display, were strippers.
Level 14 didn’t care an ounce about nudity. Humans and asari pressed their nipples against the glass, flicking their tongues out at the passersbys that stopped to ogle. Turians bent over, spreading their asses, playing with the sheath that hid all of the juicy bits. There was even a vorcha in the window, naked as can be, which Shepard very much questioned the ethicality of. He had a cock that very nearly touched his knees-- something she tried very hard not to notice. Strippers didn’t necessarily do it for her. They made her feel dirty, used, like some sweating, fat glutton that got all red in the face just to come in less than two minutes.
But every time she glanced over at Vakarian, he looked away from the window front quickly, as if she was a teacher about to chastise him. First time, she figured it was curiosity. Second time, double checking that the window front did indeed include a vorcha stripper. Third time, and Shepard had to stop herself from checking on his crotch to see if he was hard or not.
“Try to keep it in your pants, please,” she said after catching him staring a fourth time.
“Excuse me?”
Garrus was one of those people that was incredibly entertaining to tease. He got all hot and bothered at the slightest of provocations. She knew she shouldn’t goad him, seeing as they were on a stakeout for a potentially dangerous fugitive handing out Council secrets like chocolates. She knew she should also try to at least hold up a gossamer of professionalism. The Spectres were not known for their decorum. She thought that, maybe, she could try to change that.
But then she saw him glance at the window front again, and none of that mattered anymore.
“You’re acting like you’re gonna cream in your suit. Is that why your leg was so jumpy before? Want to pop off to the bathroom to rub one out?”
“That-- I’m not--” he sputtered. His neck did this thing when he got all flustered that it turned a deep blue color. Sort’ve like blushing. It was Shepard’s personal goal to get Garrus to blush at least once whenever she saw him. He sighed, as if purging all of the pent-up horniness from his body like the galaxy’s most Catholic turian. “You said, probably, five of the most repellent things I’ve ever heard in my life strung together in one sentence.”
“And here’s a sixth: I know what gets you off ,” she said in a singsongy voice, falsetto and vibrato and all.
“No, you do not,” Garrus said, enunciating each word with great gusto. “I know you may think you do, but you don’t.”
“As a matter of fact, I do,” she said, awfully proud of herself. “Remember that benefit gala a few months ago?”
Garrus looked as though, whatever she was going to say that he would prepare a witty and biting comeback for, that was not it. He opened his mouth, then in a moment of realization, he groaned, rubbing where the bridge of his nose would be.
“ Ugh ,” he groaned, as if the hangover was still lingering. “ Not the gala .”
Four Months Ago
The gala in question was some big Citadel fundraiser where the Executors and Councilmembers could compare dick sizes and stroke each other off under the tables. Publicly, it was supposed to fund C-Sec and Spectre training. Maybe requisition a few fancy guns and MECHs if someone struck big at quasar. Shepard didn’t really know, nor did she care. She just knew that she had to be there, and she was incredibly annoyed with the fact they were limiting guests to only two drink tickets for the night.
Garrus was also there. And by the time Shepard caught up with him, he was drunk. No, he was wasted . Somewhere along the line, he managed to collect drink tickets from his coworkers, one of them pregnant and the other one on day fifty four of sobriety. He was so drunk that Shepard almost took pity on him, wanting to find him a quiet booth with a glass of water so that he could lay down and try and take a nap. He was slurring horribly, swaying in his stool threatening to fall on his back, and talking very, very loudly.
She settled in next to him on the empty stool. She vaguely knew the other C-Sec agents he was talking to, maybe even enough to guess at a few of their names. But to be fair, she never knew anyone at these stupid fundraisers, so she would gladly take weak associations over complete strangers.
“You’re lying,” the one turian said from across Garrus, half of his face covered in an all-white tattoo that vaguely resembled a skull. Shepard thought his name started with an L. Lamont? Lacrosse? Something like that.
“I’m not,” Garrus said. When he got drunk, he got this strange growl to his voice, like he was trying to intimidate and talk at the same time. When he noticed Shepard, he flung an arm around her and pulled her in close. The alcohol reeked on his breath, and his weight was enough for Shepard to nearly buckle on her stool. “He thinks I’m lying, Shep.”
She managed to push him off. Not in an unfriendly way-- because if she thought about it, she really didn’t mind Garrus leaning on her all that much-- but in a way that attempted to straighten him back on his axis. “About what? Klepping drink tickets?”
“They don’t think I got arrested.”
Shepard looked at him, long and hard. Despite her softness towards Vakarian, and her admiration that he was willing to play outside of C-Sec’s rulebook, at the end of the day he was still a turian. And turians did not boast about getting arrested.
“There’s no way,” she said, waving a hand in his face dismissively. She wondered if she was getting drunker by osmosis, his spit particles in the air dissolving in her bloodstream. She certainly felt warmer.
“I did!” he said, gesturing wildly. “I promise, I did. And we don’t lie. As a species. An honest people. Proud people.”
“What the hell would you even get arrested for?” Shepard asked. “Not lacing your shoes up properly? Not eating your vegetables so you could skip right to dessert?”
Garrus hiccuped in response, taking another swig of his drink. Shepard looked at the turian across from Garrus, trying to ask a question only with her eyebrows: should he still be drinking ? Lemon, or whatever his name was, did a remarkable job at responding with the plates that lived where eyebrows should be: beats me .
“Shore leave, 2176,” he said, setting the scene like he was some cheesy detective noir narrator. “Lined up with this girl-- woman’s -- leave. Alsia. Fucking… magnetic . We had this thing going before we got sent off to boot camp, and then again a bit during another shore leave, but it never clicked with us. Always wrong time, always wrong place. You get it. Right, Shepard?”
“Too right,” she said sagely. “Let me guess: she arrested you for being a total creep. I bet you had a shrine to her. I bet it had like a thousand tiny little candles. A voodoo doll, too.”
“I fucked her in the stall of a divebar,” said Garrus.
Luxembourg, or whatever his name was, threw his head back and let out a cackle so loud it made someone at the table next to them jump. “You did not!”
“Bent her over the toilet. Got caught. Too loud. Not that I can help that, I am a consummate lover.” Except he kept stuttering over the word consummate. He settled on a word that sounded vaguely like consulate . “Got a drunk and disorderly and a public indecency charge.”
“I don’t care about what they say about turians and lying,” said Shepard, “but I am almost positive that everything you just said was one big, fat, bold-faced farce .”
“Got the headshot to prove it,” Garrus said, pulling up his omnitool and scrolling through his photo library.
After a few scrolls, he had it, as if it were pinned to be close to the top if ever he needed to convince people that perhaps one of the most straight-laced men in the galaxy actually, truly got arrested. And there his mugshot was. Smirking, full of himself, someone who did very likely fuck someone over a toilet.
“But in public like that?” Shepard asked. “I mean, it was a toilet. Doesn’t that gross you out?”
“Oh, I live for that public stuff,” Garrus said so earnestly, she would have thought he was talking about charity, or orphans, or a charity for orphans. “Gets me going just thinking about it. Anything where I could get caught, you can’t even think about touching me or I explode.”
“And? What happened to the chick?” Laundry, or whatever his name was, asked. “Some long distance flame back on the motherland? Saving up the creds to ship her out here?”
“No. Died,” Garrus said, in very much the tone that one should not take when talking about a dead lover. He sounded conversational. Casual. Maybe even a bit wistful-- but not in a grieving way, in a way that he was more excited talking about this part of the story than the whole fucking-her-over-a-toilet part.
“ Died ?”
“Batarian pirates. She was a frontliner. Apparently, she had boarded their ship and was mowing down the bastards, when one of them had the bright idea to bust open the airlock. Got spaced, they said her head shrunk to the size of a fruit pit in under a second.”
“You sound awfully torn up about this,” Shepard said. And-- maybe this was part of the drunk by association thing she was feeling, but she couldn’t help but to laugh while she asked.
“Dick was so good she couldn’t even focus on her mission a few months later,” Garrus sighed dramatically. “It’s been known to happen.”
The conversation derailed pretty fast afterwards. Linguini, or whatever his name was, started trading sex stories back and forth like Garrus’s story was the crack that broke the dam. But then some security guard came over to tell Garrus he was far too drunk, and that he needed to leave before he caused a scene. And when Garrus did eventually leave, he snatched the half empty drink right out of Shepard’s hand and downed it in one gulp.
There was a warmness to Shepard she couldn’t quantify, a buzzing just underneath her skin. Blood particles in a tizzy, over the idea of being touched in public. For some very odd, very irrational, very unexplainable reason, she wasn’t immediately disgusted with Vakarian. That stuff never turned her on to begin with. But when Garrus talked about it, it became the only thing she could think about. She walked home unfortunately alone that night, and vowed that she would do everything in her power to work out of her system the sudden interest she had in fucking Garrus Vakarian in public until she went to bed.
And one cheap vibrator bought at the store, an hour of porn vids, and a hotel room that she didn’t bother to close the blinds in later, she did just that.
Now
“I almost got fired for that, you know,” Garrus said mournfully. “We had a meeting a few days later about professional boundaries and alcohol consumption. Made it seem like I was some degenerate, I swear everyone stared at me the whole time.”
“To be fair, you were chronicling how you fucked someone over a toilet.”
“To be fair, I was puking in a toilet for days after that gala. There’s irony in there somewhere, I’m sure of it.”
“You were going on and on and on about how doing it in public gets you going,” Shepard teased. “Said, and I quote, that if someone even touches you, you’ll--”
“I remember perfectly what I said, thank you for rehashing it for me,” Garrus interrupted her, that persistent blush creeping further up his neck. He was in this strange limbo where he couldn’t seem to decide whether he was avoiding eye contact with Shepard, or if she was the last thing he could ever take his eyes off of. It made her feel incredibly hot, desperate for the breeze she knew didn’t exist on the Citadel to cool her off.
“Really? And here, I thought you were wasted.”
“For some reason, that moment shines out from a night of otherwise incredibly blurry memories,” Garrus said. “Like the second you showed up, someone dunked my head into a bucket of ice water.”
“Yeah, talking about some lady you fucked to a casual coworker tends to have that effect.”
“May she rest in peace,” Garrus said, horribly deadpanned. Shepard-- not drunk in the slightest this time, so there was really no excuse-- found herself laughing once more. She supposed it was some sort of trauma response, like if they couldn’t laugh about it, what were they going to do?
“Can’t risk you getting all hot and bothered in public again. Jeopardizes the mission if you need to take a five minute intermission to jerk off,” she said.
“Strangely enough, as a grown man, I have more self control than you’re assuming I do,” Garrus said.
“Is that why you’re acting like you’ve been caught with your hand in the cookie jar every time you ogle at that window front?”
“Is that why you’ve been stealing glances at my crotch every few minutes?”
“Call it a scientific curiosity.”
Garrus balanced both of his elbows on the table, leaning in as if he had a secret to whisper to her. His eyes were slightly hooded, his mandibles flicked out once. “Can’t imagine you’re staring at my lap just for the benefit of your scientific curiosity.”
Shepard didn’t have time to respond to that. She didn’t even really have time to let the words settle in. Because if she did , she certainly would have noticed the buzzing she felt between her legs, the anticipation that had been growing between the two of them for months now, the insistent chattering of her teeth in her mouth that she was barely able to control.
Because at that exact moment, Bulkar Fen walked out of his office.
Shepard had to use every last ounce of constraint she had in her body not to jump ten feet in the air at his sudden presence. It seemed as though Vakarian, either thankfully or unlucky, had the same issue, very nearly knocking over the glass of water onto the floor, the back of his chair squeaking madly across the floor as he surged to grab it just before making contact with the tile. If Bulkar Fen noticed, he didn’t indicate it at all, bobbling down Meter Street as if he didn’t have a singular care in the world.
The two of them waited until he rounded the corner to surge up from the table, leaving behind their ambiguously edible food. They had a plan so simple, it was nearly concerning. Wait until Bulkar Fen was on a more secluded street, then apprehend him. How hard could it be to nab one volus? What was he going to do, bite at their ankles like some misbehaving dog? It was so simple that they didn’t entertain the thought of issues, hiccups, bumps in the road, or any sort of roadblock. There was no roadblock. Just grab him by his little arms and--
Shepard felt an incredibly firm hand on her shoulder pulling her back as she rounded the corner, so suddenly she very nearly lost her balance. To her, walking in heels was almost second nature at this point, but as soon as Garrus yanked her back from the curb, it took all of her willpower to stay upright. She had half a mind to snap at him, but one look at his dangerous expression and her words failed in her mouth.
“He’s not alone,” Garrus half whispered, half relying on his rumbling subvocals.
“ Shit ,” Shepard cursed. She felt suddenly naked. She had swapped her normal armor out for a gown of deep navy, cut just above her knees so that, if need be, she could run. She felt the cold frame of her pistol stashed on her back. But if Bulkar Fen had backup, that meant that her pistol and her tech armor was good for very little. Latex gloves did, surprisingly, very little against heatsinks. “Who’s he with?”
“Can’t tell. Couple o’ krogan, I think.”
“Lemme…” Shepard inched toward the corner of the wall to peer around. Instantly, Garrus had hold of her wrist, trying to pull her back once more. His face was inscrutable, as if he didn’t quite realize why he was doing it.
“ Don’t be stupid ,” he whispered, his mouth barely moving. Shepard gave him a nasty look as her response as she, incredibly carefully, peered around the corner.
‘Couple o’ krogan’ was the understatement of the fucking century. Bulkar Fen was surrounded by at least a dozen krogan, all big and lumbering and in various states of wartorn. Each one looked meaner than the next. One of them even had this mechanical arm that was double the size of a normal krogan arm, which was to say it looked as though it could easily weigh a few tons.
“Blood Pack,” Shepard whispered behind her.
“How the hell did Bulkar Fen get involved in the Blood Pack?” Garrus breathed angrily. “Don’t krogan eat volus for breakfast?”
“Well, I guess when those volus have a few thousand creds to throw around…”
“Crap.”
Garrus’s hand was back on Shepard’s wrist, pulling her away. This time, she didn’t protest, letting herself get dragged backwards down the street until they were safely out of earshot. It did very little to stop her heart from pounding in her chest so violently. She tried to tell herself that it was because stupid little Bulkar Fen was armed with the krogan equivalent of a tactical nuke, and had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the longer Garrus’s hand was the approximate temperature of the sun.
Once they were nestled underneath the awning of a storefront (kitchen tiles and grout work, caddy corner from the 3D printer dildo shop), did Garrus risk talking at anything louder than a whisper. “We gotta cut him loose.”
“ Cut him --”
“For now,” he said, impatiently shutting down Shepard’s protestations. “Regroup. Get some damn armor on my plates. Maybe enlist in some backup.”
“I do not want backup.” Shepard didn’t believe in backup. Even asking Vakarian for help was a stretch for her. She had one very simple rule, and attributed it to her survival thus far: either she went in alone, or she didn’t go in at all. C-Sec was filled with nothing but people who waited in the queue for other people to do the job. Until there was someone ready to take down Bulkar Fen, he’d be long gone, and Shepard would be empty handed.
“Well, you can’t go barreling towards a band of krogan mercs by yourself,” Garrus said, throwing his hands up in frustration. Shepard wondered if it was directed at the situation, or at her.
She bit the inside of her mouth, her tongue passing over her teeth until she tasted the metallic tang of blood. Shepard didn’t leave jobs unfinished. It wasn’t her calling card. She ran headfirst into walls, she didn’t wither away while waiting for incompetent backup.
“I don’t need backup,” she said again. “I just need to get close to him.”
“Close? To him? What does that even mean?” Garrus snapped, as if she were just speaking in riddles.
She fidgeted with her omnitool. Being a Spectre had its perks. Widows and paladins and wraiths for free if she batted her eyelashes the right way, hack modules and skin weaving and biotic amps worth enough for a small apartment on the Presidium. Hell, they offered cosmetic surgery to cover up any scarring, from battle or from cybernetics-- she used it to fix her crooked nose, broken one too many times from her stint in the Alliance.
So new, experimental, highly temperamental, and absurdly dangerous mods she had outfitted on her Nexus were not out of the ordinary. Namely, the one that sends a remote hack to the nearest tool in the vicinity that would override permissions and security measures. A little tumor that would latch itself onto Bulkar Fen’s GPS and not let go, masking as a download that he simply forgot to clean up.
She explained this to Garrus, who thankfully nodded as if he was understanding each and every word. She was thankful, she didn’t feel the desire to explain herself. The only caveat?
“We need to get him alone,” she said. “I can’t control the override remotely. Unless I’m right on top of him, there’s no telling which krogan this bad boy would integrate with.”
“Shouldn’t that be enough?” said Garrus. “He hired the mercs, don’t you think they’ll stick by his side?”
“Except when one of them doesn’t. We go in hot and heavy, and all our volus needs to do is slip down an alleyway, and he’s gone for good. We have to get him alone.”
Garrus nodded slowly, the bottom hinge of his jaw working hard, as if he were formulating a plan all on his own, and needed to check with his conscience first. She liked when people planned out dangerous attacks-- but at this precise moment, her patience was waning awfully thin. She nearly groaned out his name. Awfully childish, like a petulant teen, she knew it. She almost didn’t care.
“I’m gonna draw out the mercs,” Garrus said slowly, as if he was afraid she was going to shut him down with each and every word that came out of his mouth. “Get ‘em running down the street, eastward. You focus on getting Bulkar Fen alone, separate him, something . And whatever you do, don’t you dare drop the comms channel.”
“It’s--” stupid, reckless, dangerous, suicidal -- “perfect.”
She felt this odd wave wash over her. Garrus was staring down at her, breathing intensely, as if he had just finished his chase with the Blood Pack mercs, not barely even started it. He towered over her. It was something that intimidated her about turians when she first joined the Spectres. All of them, even the whimpering little runts, were at least a head taller. And that head was counting their spiky fringe. And yet, Garrus loomed over all of them. Panting, staring directly in her eyes as if she were about to evaporate into thin air.
It almost nearly turned her on.
“Stay safe,” he said, brushing her bicep with the backs of his knuckles. It would have been a perfectly friendly gesture, if Shepard wasn’t nearly a powder keg ready to ignite and explode at the softest of touches.
“You too,” she said, too slow-- he was already jogging away before the words left her lips. She shook her head. She shook her whole body , working out every little bit of muscle tightness and anticipation and the odd buzzing that persisted just underneath her sternum that she firmly told herself to ignore. There would be time to focus on that later. For now, she had a volus to catch.
Shepard took off down the street, cutting down an alleyway, in a light jog. When she heard the ever-familiar pop-pop-pop of gunshots, that jog turned into a run. And when her omnitool was screaming in her ear that three-to-five hostiles were attempting to target her soft, that run quickly formed into a sprint.
She laughed through it all, for some odd reason the only thought playing in her head was that she was forever thankful that Vakarian always messaged her back within five minutes of landing on the Citadel.