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When Garrus had mentioned the planned party in passing, Adrien had expected many things that could come between him and attending. The Reapers, of course, in any number of ways. A shift in the war on Palaven that required his personal attention. Any change in their plans to refit and restock the Ukanna: space weather, engine failure, a distress call, the Citadel denying them docking permission for some reason. It was war, after all. Nothing was certain.
Of all things, though, he hadn’t expected to be denied entry by an over-enthusiastic bouncer that wouldn't even let him get a word in edgewise.
After the third attempt left him still standing staring in frustration at the door separating him from a very loud party, Adrien changed tactics and opened up his omnitool.
Garrus - I'm here, but the krogan at the door just keeps yelling no at me.
He waited a long minute in the dim hall, the neon of the Silversun Strip scintillating through the window and the beat of something that was probably supposed to be music thumping gently through the walls. Belatedly, Adrien wondered if he should have brought a gift. He always forgot. Maybe he'd be lucky and humans didn't have that custom.
His 'tool pinged with a response: ahaha, of course. Minute.
Finally, progress.
A series of muffled thumps descended on the other side of the wall, as if someone was coming down a set of stairs. A familiar voice resolved itself just over the music as it came closer to the door.
"--let him in! He's the Primarch of Palaven."
The door slid open, revealing Garrus in a truly fetching set of black and white civvies. He was grinning, listing slightly, a bottle of beer in one hand and the other gesturing Adrien inside. As Adrien entered, he found himself next to a krogan in silver armor. The krogan ignored him, rolling his shoulders and grumbling to Garrus, "See, you told me to keep everyone out. Not everyone except some high muckety muck turian."
"Yes, and you've done an excellent job," Garrus said, patting the krogan on the arm. "Good work."
"Heh heh heh." The krogan let out a truly impressive belch that made Adrien glad he'd not been inhaling at that moment, then weaved from side to side a bit. "Cover the door for awhile. I gotta piss." He turned, wobbling a bit and grabbing at Garrus' shoulder for balance. Garrus staggered as he provided it, leaning into the push and chuckling as the krogan headed for the hallway under the stairs.
Garrus shook his head, gripping Adrien's shoulder with his free hand. "Hopefully he'll actually find the bathroom first."
"If we're at that stage already, I have some catching up to do," Adrien noted, smiling.
"Oh, definitely." Garrus stepped in close enough that he enveloped Adrien in the warm scent of beer and musk. "I'm glad you could make it."
"Yes, I…" Adrien was interrupted, not unpleasantly, by Garrus leaning in closer, brow to brow, with a warm, loving subharmonic hum. Adrien returned it, nudging his brow into Garrus', his hands tentatively settling on the younger turian's waist. When Garrus pulled back, slowly, Adrien's gaze shifted to the humans on the couches, in the kitchen, on the balcony, his harmonics dipping into an interrogative. He had no idea what Shepard and Garrus had told these people about him, and the last thing he needed was another clash with human cultural expectations.
Garrus' mandibles flexed in a smile, his voice humming reassurance. "They might not know already, but no reason to hide it from them. Everyone here's a friend," he said, softly, the smile repeating as his gaze followed Adrien's through the crowd. "We've already established that what happens at the party stays at the party." His hand kneaded at Adrien's hip, rumbling friendly lust. "Doubt you'll want to hold back, either." His subharmonics dipped into lust-surprise-approval. "Spirits, wait until you see what she's wearing."
"Oh? Do tell--"
"Adrien!"
Garrus gave him a significant look, stepping back just a bit so they could both watch Shepard slowly descend the stairs on the other side of the living room. Her dress was tight, black, with a silver necklace spanning her throat and draping down onto her chest. The turn of the stairs gave them a fine opportunity to see from the side and front exactly how the clingy material showed off her waist. A bit thick by turian standards, but rather deliciously exotic, same as the breasts above it.
"I see what you mean," Adrien murmured. Garrus chirped in smug agreement, taking another swig of beer.
Her gait was different, not as fluid as usual, and Adrien wasn't sure why until Shepard swore, stopped on the landing, and reached down to wrestle off her high-heeled shoes, tossing them over the side of the stairs. Freed, she pelted down the rest of the stairs and across the room, sliding to a stop like a biotiball pro. Her momentum carried her into his arms in a wave of warm skin and firm muscle and the scents of spent eezo, alien alcohol, and...pizza? She was also rather strangely damp as she leaned up to touch brows with him, but he was getting more used to that the longer he knew her. Given the situations in which he usually made her sweat, he was beginning to make some very pleasant associations with damp human skin.
"I didn't know you were coming!" Shepard said, obviously pleased.
She looked over at Garrus, who shrugged and answered the unspoken question. "I mentioned it in my last report. Only heard then that he was heading here for a refit and restock as well."
"I actually asked him not to say anything," Adrien said, hands settling on that tantalizing waist. "I wasn't even sure we'd make it in time, and I didn't want to disappoint."
"Mmm, you never disappoint," she said, pressing her lips to his mandible. "Come on. Have you eaten? Want a drink?"
"Eaten, no. And yes, spirits, I'll take whatever you have." Adrien raised a hand to one of the humans, the Normandy's pilot, as they walked deeper into the apartment. Adrien was still terrible at telling humans apart, but the pilot he recognized, if only because he wore that distinctive hat. He was dancing with...the Normandy's robot body? And obviously having a good time at it. Adrien shook his head. "I see that I've missed several stages of the party."
"But you're just in time for the best part," Garrus said, moving ahead. "Here, I've got just the thing to start."
The kitchen counter was strewn with food and bottles of all kinds, separated mostly into levo- and dextro-safe, with plates and napkins and utensils piled as a bulwark between the two. Adrien read the sign half under the plates as Garrus rummaged in the refrigerator. The first line of the page ("←-Dextro Levo---->") had been scratched out, an argument penned in the sides about whether that would be confusing or not, and Garrus' handwriting insisting to someone named "Tali" that only nerds like her would even notice. (At this point, Adrien stared at it blankly for a moment before the ghost of his academy chemistry class rose to mind and he silently agreed with Garrus that "Tali" was, indeed, a nerd.) The argument went on down the page until "Tali" had written a large, slightly askew "←-Levo Dextro---->" clarification. The rest of the page was them bickering about whose fault it would be if anyone got confused at the change and died of, as "Tali" wrote, "anaphallictic shoock".
Shepard grabbed a handful of some kind of virulently orange chip. She rolled her eyes when she saw him reading the sign, shoving the page back under the plates pointedly once he was done. "Seriously, don't get him started again."
Adrien chuckled but verified that the pallika jerky was, indeed, pallika jerky before he started munching on it. He leaned back on the counter, turning his attention to the even more entertaining sight of his lover's backside as he rooted through the refrigerator.
"Where in hell.... I swear, if Wrex has drunk all my beer, he won't even see me coming--ha!" Garrus stood, two bottles held triumphantly between his fingers. He extended the hand to Adrien, who made an impressed face and took one.
"Denorian. I approve of your taste."
"Good, because these are both for you. As you said, you have a lot of catching up to do." Garrus opened a bottle from the "Dextro" part of the counter and poured something that looked like brandy into a turian-style tumbler. "Tali and I haven't even begun to dent the stock of dextro booze, and Shepard bought the good stuff."
"Only the best for my friends," Shepard declared, concentrating rather hard on pouring herself a shot of something green.
Adrien took the tumbler, and one sniff confirmed that it was, indeed, brandy. He tipped it back, rolling the liquid over his tongue before swallowing. "Ah...that is the good stuff." And, since he did have a lot of catching up to do, if he was any judge of his mates' states of inebriation, he tossed the rest back like a raw recruit, cracking the seal on the beer with one thumbclaw so he could chase the brandy with the entire bottle of incredibly potent beer. He sighed, feeling the burn start in his gizzard and work its way out to the end of his fingers, warming and relaxing everything in its path.
"That's the spirit," Shepard slapped him on the back in approval, throwing back her own shot. "Now grab some food and bring that beer. I have a lot of friends who're going to want to meet you."
"Should I be alarmed?" Adrien wedged a claw under the lid of the second beer bottle and popped it off onto the counter one-handed.
Shepard laughed. "I think you'll fit right in."
***
Surprisingly enough, he did. "Surprisingly", because he'd not expected to enjoy himself quite so much. Garrus and Shepard helped, of course, joining him intermittently but allowing him to mingle as they chatted with their friends. Adrien was happy to see Liara, who he'd shared more than one late-night cup of tea with on the Normandy. Adrien was, no doubt, not supposed to know that the asari was one of the Shadow Broker's most powerful agents, if not the Broker "him"self. He amused himself for most of their conversations trying to determine if Liara knew that he knew. By the time they had informally ironed out a small matter involving a broken supply line for a quarter of the turian fleet, he still couldn't decide.
He got along fine with the Alliance officers, and was honestly fascinated by the ragtag cast of characters that Shepard had worked with in the past. He talked with the drunk human merc with the old Blue Suns tattoo for twenty minutes about favored assault rifles. The asari justicar quizzed him on the status of various turian colonies, and he was taken aback when he realized that she was looking for desperate fights to aid, not avoid. The alien he did not recognize, Garrus told him, was a Prothean. Adrien admitted that he was curious, but after seeing the ancient warrior coldly shrug off several other attempts at conversation, Adrien didn't try to approach. The ex-Cerberus agents were polite enough for small talk. The heavily tattooed woman was barely polite at all, though obviously good-natured: when she saw the three of them standing close together, she shook her head and asked Shepard, "What, one turian wasn't enough for you?" And as for the android "VI" from the Normandy, well. Watching her and the pilot interact confirmed his every suspicion about her true nature. Either that or the pilot was very kinky and she was very well-programmed.
As the party started to wind down, though, Adrien was picking over the "Dextro" side of the snack table when he caught sight of Urdnot Wrex at the windows. He'd somehow missed the krogan for the rest of the night, and Adrien was suddenly reminded of a request that had crossed his desk. Not the best time to ask, Adrien supposed, but certainly faster than the alternative. The krogan leader was not known for quickly answering anything but the most critical military requests. Adrien couldn't exactly begrudge him that, given that his own message queue had probably climbed into the thousands just while he'd been chatting up Shepard's crew.
Adrien grabbed a meatroll and the least alcoholic bottle he could find and wandered over to stand next to Wrex at the windows.
Wrex eyed him, raising his bottle of ryncol to his lips. "Victus."
Adrien nodded at him. "Wrex. I didn't expect to see you on the Citadel."
"Yeah, well, the Council doesn't really respond well to long-distance negotiations," Wrex said, smiling toothily. "Kinda like vorcha, ya know?"
"What are you nego--" Adrien started, then stopped himself. "No, no, don't tell me. I'm off-duty."
"Heh," Wrex said. "Keep drinkin'. You'll get there."
Adrien nodded his head at the party behind them, which had moved from dancing and biotics competitions to sprawling on couches and chairs. "I don't think I can catch up, at this point."
"Coward," Wrex said, grinning.
Adrien chuckled. "Experience reading the battlefield. Besides, I'd like to actually remember tonight."
"Yeah, I'll bet." Wrex turned to lean against the window, peering at him. "So. You'n Shepard and Garrus, huh?"
Adrien nodded, suddenly a bit wary. Belatedly, it occurred to him that if anyone at the party was going to make an issue of their relationship, it would probably be Wrex, who'd known Shepard and Garrus longest and was the least easily intimidated by his rank.
The krogan's intense look, though, flowed into a shrug. "You'll probably be good for Garrus. I always got the feeling on the Normandy 1 that he didn't quite know who he was yet. Now...he's gettin' there. Hell, another two, three hundred years, he might actually know what he's doing."
Adrien snorted. Krogan digs at turian lifespans were older than either of them. "Are you making fun of one of my triad, Wrex?"
"Absolutely. It's a rule of mine: always make fun of Shepard's dancing and Garrus' anything. Keeps 'em humble."
"I...haven't seen her dance," Adrien said, considering.
"Consider yourself lucky. There's a lot of--" Wrex waved his arms in demonstration, ryncol bottle and all. "--flailing."
"Something she can't do? I don't know that I believe it."
"Yeah, I know the feeling," Wrex said. "You've heard the story about the thresher maw, right?"
Adrien cocked his head in confusion. "The huge maw and the Reaper on Tuchanka? Of course." He'd listened to the mission comms from the Normandy, as surely Wrex knew.
"Nah, nah, the one during Grunt's Rite. Oh, you gotta ask about that one." Wrex's grin involved a lot of teeth. "That was a glorious fight. Grunt, Shepard, and that human merc, Massani, took down a thresher maw on foot."
Adrien just stared at him for a long moment, his beer bottle frozen on its way to his mouth. "On…foot? ...You're joking."
No krogan in the history of the universe could actually look innocent, but Wrex tried. "Would I do that?"
"...are you serious? You're serious. Spirits...." Adrien stared in unseeing horror at the lights outside. Like anyone who had set foot on alien worlds, he'd had to deal with maws. At distance. With artillery. From the safety of a swiftly moving vehicle.
He took a long drink. Only the great Commander Shepard would have multiple unbelievable stories about thresher maws.
Wrex sighed. "Yeah, she's a hell of a woman. Really should have been born a krogan."
Adrien winced internally at the (terrifying) mental image.
"Speaking of," Wrex said brightly, clapping a heavy hand on Adrien's shoulder, "she's an honorary sister of mine, and if you don't treat her and Garrus right, I'll hunt you down and feed you your internal organs in alphabetical order." Wrex appeared to consider for a long moment. "Though don't tell Garrus I included him. It'll go to his head."
Not for the first time, Adrien found himself taking a krogan's threat of bodily harm in stride. "Noted." He turned, leaning back against the window so his eyes could seek out his mates. The two of them were on the second floor balcony, leaning on the railing and smiling as they talked. Shepard said something and Garrus slumped with easy, loose-limbed laughter, the bottle in his fingers dangling over the edge.
The simple happiness of the scene made Adrien's heart swell and crumble at the same time. Tomorrow or the next day, they would part, him heading one way and Garrus and Shepard heading another. Into the throat of danger, most likely.
I sincerely hope that we all live long enough to worry about breaking each other's hearts, Adrien thought. Or at least share an honorable death before we head to the afterlife.
He hadn't told them that he planned on going to Earth, when the time came. More out of embarrassment than anything. There was likely little one more turian would be able to do, and no doubt his chain of command would try to dissuade him. Perhaps Shepard and Garrus would try to dissuade him, too, if they knew. Perhaps not. They were intimately familiar, obviously, with loved ones choosing to put themselves in mortal danger.
The sobering thought brought with it much of the responsibility that he'd left on the Ukanna, and Adrien sighed, feeling the Primarch's armor settle onto his shoulders again.
Which reminded him....
"Actually, I had a request for you," Adrien said.
Wrex pulled back, squinting at him in suspicion again, and Adrien held out a placating hand. "Not...really a request. More of a question. Don't worry, it doesn't involve troops. Live ones, at least."
The look on Wrex's face made him realize how stupid that had sounded, and Adrien sighed, finishing his beer and setting the bottle on the floor. "I got a request from one of the last surviving High Priests of the Spirits. He wants to hold a ceremony honoring those who died in the Miracle."
Wrex's slitted eyes rolled in a very human manner. "Now? You want to hold some ceremony now?"
"I know, but he's a priest. This is his job." Wrex shifted on his feet, crossing his arms across his chest and looking unimpressed, while Adrien continued. "It's not going to be large or even public, and no one else needs to be there. It will just be him on the ground somewhere relatively safe on Palaven. He's quite insistent. Feels that properly honoring the Spirits will help strengthen the Spirit of Palaven. ...Don't look at me like that, it's not my idea. It's only symbolic, but...it's a very important sort of symbolism to turians."
Wrex shrugged. "I don't care about turian religion. What does all of this have to do with me?"
Adrien rubbed his browplates. Perhaps, on second thought, late at night and half-drunk hadn't been the best time to discuss a request steeped in religious symbolism. "This type of ceremony...it honors the spirits of the dead. Their names are read, and they are acknowledged as having honorably sacrificed themselves for the greater good, thus elevating themselves to join with the Spirit of Palaven. But, he feels that everyone who died in all phases of the operation should be included. Obviously, that's impossible on this scale. Right now he'll just name groups, companies, platoons, and honor individuals by name...later." If there was a "later". "But...he wants to include the krogan ops units that died. That's what I wanted to ask you, whether he has permission to name those units. He wanted to confirm that it would be appropriate, and get the names themselves."
"Appropriate?" Wrex spread his hands, ryncol sloshing. "What do you mean? What do we care what a turian priest says about us?"
Yes, this had definitely been a bad time to bring this up. Adrien wasn't particularly religious himself. Perhaps if he was, this would be easier to explain, though he doubted it. "By naming them, symbolically it's recognizing that the spirits of those krogan have joined the Spirit of Palaven. No one was sure if that is compatible with krogan religion. We wouldn't want to name them, for instance, if the ops teams' spirits went back to Tuchanka, or were watching over their loved ones or something--what? What's funny?"
Wrex was snickering. "Like some turian's words'd keep any krogan spirit where it doesn't want to be."
Adrien turned his palms up, shaking his head. "Yes, well, you know priests: they like to think they're relevant."
Wrex scratched his chin and took a long, thoughtful drink. "Any other krogan ever joined the Spirit of Palaven?"
"No."
"And this priest guy wants to do it? Just...let krogans into the Spirit of your home planet?"
"I think he believes they're already a part of Palaven's Spirit and this just acknowledges it, but essentially, yes."
Wrex looked off into the distance, obviously thinking. "A hell of a lot different than a statue on the Citadel."
"Yes."
"This guy must really like us. Any particular reason why?"
Adrien tilted his head in a shrug. "I didn't ask, but my guess is because he was there. A krogan squad liberated him and most of his city from a Reaper camp, on their way to delivering one of the bombs. He heard them say that freeing them wasn't even an objective. They were just bored and the camp was on their way. Half his family died en route to the evac point, but the rest got off right before zero hour."
"So he's grateful."
"He's...more than grateful."
Adrien had had--still had--his doubts about Shepard's choices regarding the genophage. But he was nothing if not practical, and he was willing to trade dealing with a revived krogan population if it meant saving his people from extinction. Wrex had been true to his word and a surprisingly solid ally. Crucial parts of the plan for the coordinated bombings had been his idea.
Adrien tried to find words that didn't sound trite. "He's not the only one, Wrex. It means a lot that it was the krogan that came to our aid. Not the salarians or the asari, not our closest 'allies'." Adrien had enough brain cells left to stop himself there, before the bitterness got out of hand. He had strong feelings about this, but there was no need to air them here. He suspected that the salarians and the asari would have much to answer for, when the Reapers were defeated. He waved a hand, though, trying to stay on topic. "Our darkest hour, and it was your troops that came to our aid and saved possibly billions of lives. Many will never forget that. I will never forget that."
Wrex grinned. "Not that you had to twist my arm or anything."
Victus sighed, eyes closing, thinking of the millions that died while Shepard fulfilled Wrex's demands. "Yes, well, I wouldn't have worked for free, either, in your place. Given our history." When he opened his eyes, Wrex was still watching him, shrewd as always. "We are leaders, you and I. We have to look at the big picture. I understand that."
Wrex continued to eye him as he finished off his ryncol. "So you support this. This ritual thing."
Adrien thought of every report that had crossed his desk in the last month. Of krogan bolstering key points, building and holding fortifications, and helping move crucial supplies. Of the small, three-krogan team who, Adrien was more than 50% certain, Wrex himself had sent in utter secrecy to find and ensure that Garrus' father and sister were evacuated, with no expectation of recognition or thanks. Of the krogan who had charged into battle to provide walls of steel and tooth and claw around evacuation routes, landing pads, and shuttles. Krogan who had gone on suicide missions to bait deadly traps, who had blocked chokepoints with their own dying bodies, who had drawn fire and carried injured turian children. Who had hauled on their own backs the bombs that had blown the Reapers half off Palaven, saving who knew how many millions of souls from the hell of becoming Reaper slaves.
Adrien just nodded: yes. Yes, that was the sort of Spirit that Palaven needed.
After a long moment, Wrex brought up his omnitool. "Tell your priest to talk to Bakara. I'll send you her address. Whatever she decides, that's my answer. Though as far as I'm concerned, your priest can do whatever he wants. I sent those krogan to die on Palaven, and if they want to stay, that's their business."
Adrien bowed his head. "Thank you."
Wrex opened his mouth to say something, but his eyes cut up and to the side. "Uh oh. You're in trouble."
"Hmm?" Adrien followed his gaze and finding Shepard and Garrus starting down the stairs, their eyes on him. "Oh."
"Want me to hold 'em off for you?" Wrex asked, settling back against the window as if holding anyone back was the last thing on his mind.
"I think this battle is already lost," Adrien said, catching the look in Shepard's eyes and the predatory stalk in Garrus' step. I certainly hope so, he thought, pushing himself away from the window so he could meet them halfway.
"You," Shepard said, as she padded down the last step, "looked like you were doing work." She wagged a finger at him. "That's against the rules, you know."
"Is it?" Adrien asked innocently as he let himself be flanked by Garrus. "I don't remember that being mentioned when I joined this party."
"Oh, come on," Garrus said, looping an arm around his and moving them both toward the kitchen. "You're the Primarch. You know that ignorance of the rules is no excuse for breaking them."
"I see. My apologies?" Adrien let himself be towed along toward the kitchen.
"I suppose we could forgive you," Garrus said, stopping them by the snack table. "Given that we've reached the wine portion of the evening."
"The...wine portion?" Adrien asked, as Garrus let him go to poke through the bottles still on the table. "I'm missing something, aren't I?"
Shepard captured him before he could move, wrapping his free arm in hers. "It's the part of the evening where we retire to our room to...blow off some steam."
"Aaah, I see," Adrien said.
"There's usually some showing off. Reach, flexibility, all that," Garrus said, selecting a bottle and working on the cork until it gave with a gentle pop. "Hey, Shepard, if I've got reach and you've got flexibility, then what does he bring to the contest?"
"That's an easy one," Adrien laughed, looping his free arm around Garrus' waist as they headed back to the stairs. The difference in Garrus' and Shepard's heights made him a bit of an awkward bridge, but right then it just felt perfect. "Obviously, experience."