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Friends With Benefits	By : The_Red_Celt Category: +M through R > Mass Effect Views: 6224 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I don't own Mass Effect or any of the characters therein, and make no money from this story.

Chapter List
- 1-Friends With Benefits
- 2-Two
- 3-Three
- 4-Four
- 5-Five
- 6-Six
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- 3
Shepard bounded into the battery and sat down with a flumph on the crate she used as a seat when she came by to visit.
“Hey!”
“Hey, yourself.” Garrus pretended to be too absorbed in his console to look up, which he knew drove her crazy.
“So, what are you gonna do for shore leave?” she asked, pulling her legs up and hugging her knees.
“Haven’t really thought about it,” he answered. And he really hadn’t, apart from a half-formed plan to visit some old colleagues from C-Sec and maybe see a movie. “Three whole days off the ship? We’ll both die of boredom.” They had finally upgraded the Normandy’s shielding and the installation was going to take a while, so Shepard had declared an extended shore leave for the entire crew. The engineers doing the retrofit were going to be making too much noise for anyone to stay aboard anyway.
“That’s only if no one starts shooting at us,” she pointed out.
“True enough. With your luck, that should only take about ten minutes.”
“So come with me,” she said. “We’ll see the sights, get into trouble . . . just like old times.” She smiled and wiggled her eyebrows at him (a feat as perplexing to him as it was funny).
“Don’t you have anyone else to annoy?” he asked, finally looking up and crossing his arms over his chest.
“Well, I have to go see the Walking Conniption Fit at some point,” she said, using her pet name for Udina and earning a laugh from him, “but everyone else has their plates full.”
“So I’m your back-up plan?” He clutched his chest dramatically and sniffed. “You wound me, Shepard.”
She threw a datapad at him and it bounced harmlessly off his armor. “You were my first choice, you big goof.” She jumped up and leaned on the console next to him. “So, what do you say? We could go see a movie, maybe see if the Presidium Suites still has any doubles available.”
“No need to worry about a hotel room; I kept my old apartment.” It occurred to him after he said it that it was more of a large closet than an apartment and he hadn’t been back for almost a year—the Spirits only knew what kind of state it was in now. But Shepard pounced on the idea before he could express any of those reservations.
“Well, that takes care of that problem. Oh! There’s a retro Earth film festival happening that we should go check out.”
“You say that like I’ve already agreed to this.”
“They’re showing Star Wars.” She leaned in closer and said, with a meaningful look, “The original trilogy.”
Garrus looked down at his commanding officer, who was currently making her best cute face at him.
As if he would have spent his shore leave with anyone else.
“Oh, all right.”
She grinned and lightly punched his shoulder. “That’s the spirit. You’d better get packing, we’ll be docking in an hour.” She shouted over her shoulder as she headed to the elevator, “And bring your gun, just in case.”
__________
After dropping off their stuff at his apartment in Bachjret Ward, they rode the shuttle to a restaurant in Zakera that served levo-dextro food. After the meals Gardner had been making, the plate of fettuccini alfredo with chicken was a slice of heaven. Garrus hummed with pleasure as he popped what looked like a fried beetle of some sort into his mouth.
“All right—favorite food,” he prompted.
“If you mean in general, pecan pie is my favorite—the real southern-American kind, with ice cream. But there was this place on Earth I went to last time I was there . . . it was a real dive, off the main road. The sort of place you’d go for coffee and breakfast before work, you know? It always smelled like engine oil and cigarettes and hot grease, but the cook—Bobby, I think his name was—could make the best damned cheeseburgers I’ve ever put in my mouth. What about you?”
“Macedyn fried louza. Believe it or not, my dad used to cook whenever he had the time, and his louza was amazing.” He crunched the head off another beetle-thing and Shepard decided she didn’t really want to know what louza was.
“Okay, my turn. What’s your favorite song?”
“Fire in the Courtyard, from Fleet and Flotilla.”
“Oooh, that’s a good one. Hmm . . . oh, remember that song I used to play in the Mako all the time? ‘In the Black’ by Motorhead? That’s mine.”
Garrus cocked his head, his gaze taking on a dreamy expression. “Oh, yeah. I miss that damned tank.”
“Hear, hear,” she said, and started to raise her beer to her lips but froze halfway there. Her eyes went wide and her pulse spiked, and Garrus immediately scanned the room for the threat. There was nothing—except a man coming toward their table. He looked to be in his mid- to late-fifties with graying hair and had a bit of a paunch; not the sort of person Shepard was likely to be afraid of, but here she was looking like she was about to bolt. He reached for her hand and she clutched it like her life depended on it. What the hell . . . he thought.
“Jane?” the man asked. “Is that you?”
“Hey, Holder,” she said with a nod. She’d managed to get herself back under control and her voice sounded mostly normal, but her knuckles of the hand gripping his were white. “Been awhile.”
“I’ll say. What’s it been, something like ten years?”
“Something like that.”
“I tried to contact you after—“ he glanced over at Garrus and cleared his throat, “—after everything blew over, but they told me you’d been assigned to a starship.”
“Yeah, I’ve been really busy lately.” Just then their waitress, an asari with sky-blue skin, appeared at their table.
“Is there anything I can get for you?” she asked, pointedly glancing at Holder before looking back at Shepard.
“Yes, can we have the check please?”
“At once, ma’am.” She bustled off, leaving the trio in an awkward silence.
“So . . . it was good to see you, Jane,” Holder said, offering his hand. Shepard just stared at it until he lowered it, and he took that as his cue to leave. Once he was out of sight, Shepard let out the breath she’d been holding and slumped in her seat.
“You okay, Shepard?” Garrus asked. He’d never seen her so shaken.
“Not really. Just give me a minute.” She let go of his hand as the waitress reappeared and Shepard paid the bill (courtesy of Cerberus’ expense account), adding a fifty percent tip for her help diffusing what could have been a really bad situation. She tried not to think about Holder and how much she’d tried to suppress that part of her life forever.
She and Garrus left the restaurant in silence and walked along in no particular direction until they came to the Night Gardens. She’d only ever been here once before, but it certainly made an impression—there were all sorts of plants here, moonflowers and bougainvillea that mingled with others from different planets all over the galaxy. It was quiet, peaceful, and just what Shepard needed right now. She pulled off her shoes and rolled up her jeans, sitting on the edge of the central pool and dipping her feet in the water. Garrus did the same next to her, his digitigrade feet making ripples around her ankles.
“I know you want to know what happened back there, but I . . . I can’t talk about it. Not yet, anyway.” He slipped an arm around her waist, drawing her against him and she went gratefully, soaking in his warmth.
“You’re allowed to have secrets, Shepard. We all do.”
“Thanks, Garrus.”
The calm of the gardens seeped into her bones and chased away the awful, cold sensation of being a lost little girl again. She closed her eyes and allowed herself to relax, glad that she’d managed to talk Garrus out of wearing his armor tonight; he was a lot softer than he looked, and they fit together even better without all that metal in the way.
“I’ve got an idea,” he said suddenly. “How about we go get some beer and continue this back at my place?”
“That sounds like a plan.” He stood and helped her up and they walked, carrying their shoes, back to the transit hub. After a stop at the store to pick up the drinks, they arrived at his apartment just as the night cycle started. He keyed the door open and flipped the lights on, and Shepard got her first good look at the place. It was really small, not much bigger than her cabin on the Normandy. There was a gray couch upholstered in something that looked a little like suede with a low table in front of it and a television butted up against the wall. Two framed pictures of an alien landscape (Probably Palaven, she thought) hung on the wall and there was a small work bench in the corner with shelves above it that were meticulously organized. The air was a little stale from being closed up for so long, but the whole place was so full of his influence that Shepard couldn’t help but smile.
Garrus picked up a shirt from the couch and tossed it into his room. He rubbed the back of his neck and glanced around, hoping there wasn’t anything overly embarrassing sitting out. “I know it’s not the Presidium Suites, but hopefully it’s okay.”
“It’s perfect,” she said, and meant it. “I’ve spent the last decade hot-racking on starships, Garrus. Anything bigger than Grunt’s test tube might as well be a five-star resort.” She took the beer into the kitchen, cracked open two of them, and sat down next to him on the couch. “So, you want to watch a movie or something?”
“Sure. You pick.”
She ended up going with an asari-made movie she’d never heard of called “Night Winds” about a group of maidens whose ship’s VI gets hacked by the geth and they have to try to get to the main terminal while the VI messes with them by randomly opening the airlocks. Shepard got really into it and hardly noticed that she had at some point put her legs in Garrus’ lap and that he was idly stroking the bare skin of her calves. They’d had three beers apiece and were both pretty buzzed by the time the credits rolled.
Shepard stretched, arching her back over the arm of the couch, her shirt riding up just under her ribs. Garrus couldn’t help but notice the way her muscles moved under her skin, and flashed back to that night a week ago when they’d gone up to her cabin for a little “stress relief.” Her stomach had stretched like that when she’d leaned back and braced herself on his thighs as she—
“I’ll take the couch tonight,” she said. “Do you have any extra sheets?”
“Uh . . . yeah,” he answered, shoving that train of thought to the back of his mind. He moved her legs off his lap and went to grab the sheets. There were some in the closet that had come with his bed and were softer than the ones he used (rough turian plating tended to wear holes in regular sheets), so he took those ones back to the living room and saw Shepard in the process of changing into her pajamas. She had her back to him with both arms inside her baggy sleep shirt and had managed to get her shirt and bra off without ever showing any skin, which was both impressive and somewhat disappointing.
“If you want to stay out here, you won’t keep me awake or anything,” she said.
“I think I’ll go ahead and turn in, actually.” He handed her the sheets and bumped her forehead with his. Shepard raised an eyebrow and gave him a little bemused smile—he’d never done that before. Huh. “’Night, Shepard.”
“G’night.”
After she’d fallen asleep he lay on his back staring at the bedroom door, half hoping it would open and she’d be there.
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Friends With Benefits