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Friends With Benefits	By : The_Red_Celt Category: +M through R > Mass Effect Views: 6229 -:- 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
- 4
- 5
- 6
There was a balcony at the end of the hall that had a pretty decent view, and after they’d changed back into their civvies they took a few beers out there and leaned against the railing, just looking at the bustling life below.
“You don’t have to explain, you know,” he said.
“No, I do. You deserve a real answer to your question.” She took a long pull from her bottle and collected her thoughts before beginning her story.
“I grew up on Mindoir, a little farming colony in the Attican Traverse. When I was sixteen, a group of batarian slavers landed and started rounding up everyone they could get their hands on. Anyone who tried to fight was killed on sight. My dad told me to hide under the bed just before two of them kicked in the door. Dad tried to get a shot off, but they were ready for it and put a bullet in his forehead.” The tone of her voice was the same as if she was talking about the weather, and that somehow made it worse.
“Spirits . . .” he whispered. He’d had no idea, and it occurred to him then that maybe no one did. She never talked about her past and somehow he’d never thought to ask.
“He went down and the gun slid under the bed, so I took it and killed one of them. The other one grabbed me, and shot my mother three times when she tried to save me.” She took a deep breath to steady herself. “He told me he was going to make me pay for killing his buddy, so he shoved me to the floor and . . . he, uh . . .” Even after all this time, it was still hard to say it out loud.
“I understand,” Garrus murmured. He wished he didn’t, but he did—he’d seen how the slavers operated during his time on Omega.
“The Alliance finally landed and rescued everyone they could. I was lucky that they got there before the batarians had a chance to put any implants in me.” She waved her hand dismissively and said, “All that’s in my Alliance file, though—not explicitly, but you could piece it together from my medical records, the psych evals, and the official report of the incident.
“What the Alliance doesn’t know is that about six months after I enlisted, I tracked down the son-of-a-bitch who . . . raped me and killed my parents. Holder was one of my contacts at the time, and he told me that a batarian meeting the description I gave him had been picked up for something petty, I don’t even remember what anymore. So I gave him four thousand credits to have the guy locked in the basement of an unused warehouse and lose his file. Holder is the only other person who has any idea what I did—he doesn’t have any proof, I was too careful for that, but he knows. Anyway, when I got there, I chained the guy to a chair and shot him full of stims so he couldn’t pass out.”
Garrus thought he knew where this was headed, but he couldn’t imagine the woman next to him in a situation like the one she was describing.
“I worked him over for eight hours. For two of those hours he begged me to kill him, offered up his family and friends just so I’d stop. When he finally died, he was unrecognizable. And so was I.” She turned to Garrus then and her jaw was set, but her eyes were haunted by the past. “I found out that day just how much darkness I was capable of, and I wish now that I didn’t know. But that’s why I’m so good at my job—I can make the tough decisions because once I decided to torture a man with nothing but a knife and my bare hands, suddenly killing a bunch of mercs didn’t seem so bad.” She waited to see what his reaction would be, if he would flinch away from her, but he didn’t. He stood before her and held her hands, real and solid and there, just like he’d always been, and she knew that she could never express just how much that meant to her.
“I couldn’t let you kill Sidonis,” she continued, “because I couldn’t bear to let that darkness anywhere near you.” She reached out and touched his face, her eyes bright with unshed tears. “Not you.”
“Shepard, I . . .” He couldn’t find the words to describe what he was feeling right then, like his world had been blown apart and remade into something new. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her tight against him, and after a moment she hugged him back. “Thank you, Shepard.” For being here, for caring about me, for giving so much and never asking for anything in return, for making me want . . .
I want . . .
Oh, Spirits, I want her, he thought, and the revelation struck him like a hammer right between the eyes.
“So, are we okay?” she asked, tilting her head up to look at him. Had her eyes always been so green?
“We were never not okay,” he replied and she breathed a sigh of relief. He nuzzled her hair, then pulled back a little in confusion.
“What?”
“You smell like me.”
“Huh?” It took her a minute to figure out what he was talking about. “Oh yeah, I had to use your soap this morning. Left mine in my bathroom.”
The way their scents mingled together was heady and he inhaled deeply, and things may have progressed from there had Shepard’s omnitool not beeped. She heaved a frustrated sigh and checked the incoming message; it was from EDI, asking her to return to the Normandy to confer with the engineers about some additional suggestions to improve the ship’s performance.
“Damn,” she hissed under her breath. “I’ve got to go down to the docks to go over the ship’s specs. Want to come? I promise it’ll be super boring.”
“Much as I love being bored out of my skull, I think I’ll pass on this one.” He needed some time to think about this. Her face fell a bit, but she gave him a quick kiss on his unscarred mandible and left for the docking bay.
Garrus went back into his apartment and got a bottle of turian brandy from the cabinet. He poured himself a shot and sat on the couch, his elbows resting on his knees. This thing between him and Shepard was supposed to be casual, just a little good sex between friends. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t done similar things before with other women, but nothing romantic had come of them. When had he started to want more from Shepard, and why?
Because after all this time, you’ve finally found an equal in her.
And there it was, in a nutshell. She was a warrior, strong and capable, at once ruthless and merciful as the situation called for. He looked forward to seeing her when she’d come into the battery to talk, and enjoyed their easy back-and-forth. She knew his mind and could read him better than anyone he knew. It was what made her a great leader and his closest friend.
And now he might be fucking it all up because, Spirits help him, he was starting to love her.
__________
Talking with techies always made her brain feel like it had been turned into soup, and tonight was no different. It had taken a lot longer than she expected (about three hours longer) to go over suggested maintenance, throwing out some things due to lack of funds or necessity and approving others that would give them an edge against the Collectors. She’d had the foresight to message Tali and Joker to have them, along with EDI, assist her with any specific questions about lag or engine power that might come up. Finally, they had a plan of action that would not only fortify the ship, but it would knock a full day off the retrofit. She and Tali were headed the same direction—she had found a nice hotel room and was planning on spending it with another quarian on pilgrimage she’d run into at the bar. Shepard had been merciless in ribbing her with innuendos most of the night until Tali was giggling and stuttering almost constantly and Joker gave her the stink-eye and made her stop so he could eventually go get some sleep.
In the stairwell on the way back to the transit hub, Tali said, “So, you and Garrus are getting pretty serious, huh?”
Shepard was thrown for a loop and could only sputter a bit before saying, “What? Serious? No, we’re—what?”
Tali laughed and poked her friend affectionately. “You sound like me now. Serves you right for teasing me, Shepard. I meant that you’re wearing his scent now, so . . . that means you’re officially together, right? It’s about time, you two have always been so cute with each other.”
“No, I forgot to bring my soap with me so I used his. Why, does that mean something in turian culture?”
“Wearing someone’s scent usually means you’re in a relationship with that person. It probably stems from some biological imperative to mark their territory or something; the krogan do something similar.” She glanced over at Shepard, her eyes gleaming behind her mask. “So, you aren’t with Garrus? He mentioned that you two were going to spend shore leave together.”
“As friends, yeah.” Something about the way she said that made Tali raise an eyebrow—at least, Shepard thought that was what she was doing. One eye opened a little wider than the other, anyway.
“You don’t sound so sure.”
“It’s just . . .” She sighed and let her hands drop to her sides. “Okay, you know that turians are a lot more open about sex than humans tend to be, right?”
“And most other species, for that matter.”
“Yeah, well, me and Garrus slept together. Twice.”
“What?!” Tali exclaimed and Shepard shushed her. “You can’t tell me something like that and not give me details, Shepard!”
“I’m not telling you what he’s like in bed, Tali.”
“Party pooper.” Shepard laughed out loud at her usage of human slang, and she shook her head.
“Okay, but I swear to god if you tell anyone, I’ll uninstall your nerve stim program.”
“You wouldn’t.<”
“You’re right, I wouldn’t. But seriously, don’t tell anyone, okay?”
“Girl talk stays between girls, Shep. You can trust me. Now, dish.” So Shepard told her how it went and Tali gave little sighs and “awww!” sounds at the appropriate times, and by the end of it, Tali was so excited at the prospect of two of her best friends getting together that she was bouncing on her toes.
“So, do you want more out of him than that?”
“I don’t know, Tali. We’ve been friends for a long time; what if we just don’t work as a couple? I don’t want to lose what we already have.”
“You’ll never know unless you try.” Tali stopped and faced her, touching her shoulder. “You humans have a saying—it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. You know what the stakes are, Shepard. There’s no guarantee we’ll make it back through the Omega-4 relay. This is your chance to do what you want . . . what feels right.”
“I hope you’re right.”
"You know I am."
The two friends hugged then went their separate ways, and Shepard was left alone with her thoughts. Decidedly more optimistic thoughts than she’d been having, too.
When she finally made it back to the apartment, she knocked on the door and waited but no one answered. She tried again with the same result so, hoping Garrus wouldn’t mind too much, she hacked the door open and stepped into the gloom. Thinking he must have gone to bed already, she flipped the light on and was surprised to see him passed out on the couch, a bottle of brandy in front of him. There wasn’t a lot missing from it, though; it had been a long day, and he was probably just having a night cap before it caught up with him. She considered just letting him sleep it off on the couch, but he was leaning over the arm rest with his head on his arms. He’d tried to sleep in a similar position once in the Mako and it had played merry hell with his back for the rest of the day, so she crouched down next to him and rubbed his shoulders, shaking him gently.
“Hey. Hey, Garrus.”
He snapped awake immediately and knocked her on her butt, sitting up straight with wide, darting eyes before he finally registered where he was. His features twisted into a grimace and he slouched forward, pressing his fingers into his temples.
“Ow.”
“Headache?” she asked, picking herself up off the floor. Never sneak up on a sleeping turian, you’d think I’d remember that.
“Yeah. Serves me right for drinking right before falling asleep.”
“Come on, big guy, let’s get you to bed.” She helped him up and he plodded into the bedroom, then flopped face down on the mattress while she went to get some painkillers. Shepard had him sit up to take the pills and sat down on the edge of the bed next to him.
“Thanks,” he said and lay back down. Shepard took his hand and started working her thumbs into his palm. It was something her mom used to do when she got migraines, and evidently it worked on turians, too—some of the tightness in his face had eased.
“You still smell like my soap,” he said, already half-asleep again.
“Sorry, I’ll get my own tomorrow.”
“You don’t have to. I like it.”
Shepard went still. “You mean that?”
“Mmmhmm. You can wear me around all you want.” His hand closed on hers, then he brought it up to his face and inhaled, brushing his mouth across her wrist and making her heart beat like a runaway train. He lowered it to his chest and his breathing slowed, the last lines of tension melting from his face in sleep.
Shepard’s omnitool pinged again and, once she’d ascertained the sound hadn’t woken Garrus, she saw that there was a new message from Mordin.
JS,
Believe I have the information you asked for. Took the liberty of contacting S.B. for conference. Can you meet at the Presidium Commons at 11:30 hrs?
MS
She stared at the message in awe. Could he really have it already?
MS,
That sounds fine. See you then. By the way, you’re a genius.
JS<
She gently extricated her hand from Garrus’ loose grip and as she headed into the bathroom, she got a reply.
JS,
I know. ;)
MS<
She couldn’t help but chuckle as she stepped into the shower. She used Garrus’ soap again, too.
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Friends With Benefits