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"WooooooooooOOOOOOOO!"
Garrus recognized that particular terrifying whoop. That was the sound of Comm Specialist Samantha Traynor taking prisoners on the dance floor, and if she was there, then Shepard had to be around here somewhere, too.
He moved through the shadows of the club, in the general direction that the shout had come from. Amazing that she could even make herself heard above the bass. His ears were already killing him. Spirits, he was getting old. This had been every night off while he worked for C-Sec—not this exact club, but close enough.
Finally, he spotted them, but Shepard wasn't with them; it was just Tali and Traynor on the floor, and everyone else was giving them a wide berth.
Tali's eyes—scrunched up into glowing crescents behind her mask, a sure sign that she was having a good time—touched his face and moved away before darting back. "Garrrrrusssss!" she shouted, beckoning. She sounded only a little drunk. "What are you doing here? It's girls' night!"
And even though she had just waved him closer, she shooed him, her hands sweeping him away. She didn't stop dancing to do it, either.
"I got an interesting message from Shepard," he said dryly, ignoring Traynor, who was tugging on his arm in an attempt to make him dance. "It led me to believe that maybe she should call it a night."
"Riiiiiiight," Traynor agreed, nodding. "God, I've never seen her that drunk. Usually she has a liver of steel. She's over there." With exaggerated motions and her arms lofted high above her head, she pointed toward the bar.
The crowd cleared at just that moment, and Garrus got a clear view of her: one elbow propped on the bar, chin cupped in her hand, the other waving wildly as she articulated...whatever she was articulating. Judging by Ashley's bemused stare, she wasn't articulating it very well.
"I'm just saying, Williams, it's hard to do one hundred and eighty-three fucking push-ups with James fucking Vega standing right there, smiling indulgently like you're some cute little pyjak doing a trick, and I could have done all hundred and eighty-three—hell, I could have done a hundred and eighty-four—"
"Ladies," Garrus broke in.
"Hello, Garrus," EDI chirped pleasantly. She looked decidedly more human than usual—it had something to do with the absence of her visor, and the way her helmet hair had parted into individual strands, about the length of Shepard's.
"It's girl's night," Shepard groaned, looking up at him. She pulled her cocktail to her lips and sipped. "What are you doing here? Ash, what's he doing here?"
"Don't look at me," Ashley snorted. "You're the one who pinged him."
"Oh. Fuck." She squinted up at him. "But I don't remember telling you to come down here."
"No, you didn't. In fact, I couldn't make any damn sense of your message, so I came down to make sure you weren't...in distress."
"I would call it distress," Ashley commented.
"'M fine," Shepard muttered around the straw of her cocktail.
"Take her home," Ashley ordered. "Apparently she forgot how to hold her liquor since the last time we went out."
Shepard glared, but Garrus distracted her by taking her hand and pulling her to her feet, where she staggered. "Whoa," she said, squinting. "Very spinny."
"Take some aspirin, Commander," Ashley advised, a smile pulling at her mouth. "Go to sleep."
Garrus tucked an arm around her shoulders to steer her, but Shepard still managed to throw up her middle finger as they departed. Ashley laughed; the sound was soon lost in the crowd.
Back out on Silversun Strip, Garrus's ears pounded with the sudden absence of noise. Shepard didn't seem even remotely affected—in fact, now that he'd gotten her out of the club, she snuggled happily against his side. It was hard to direct her when all she wanted to do was cuddle, but he dragged her along. Her feet moved only reluctantly.
"How much did you have?" he asked her, amused. "I've never seen you this bad."
"Not much," she mumbled, peeking up at him. "What did the message say?"
"Meaningless keyboard mashing," he told her, calling the elevator for her apartment. "Amazing, what you can do without a keyboard."
She giggled—a sound he only heard when she was really, truly drunk or really, truly tired—and let him tug her into the elevator. As the doors closed, her arm dropped to wrap around his waist.
Automatically, he tensed. Sometimes she forgot that it was a...sensitive...zone. She was more likely to forget when there was a lot on her mind—or not a lot on her mind, as the case may be—so he weathered the weight of her fingers with what he hoped was a stoic expression.
She looked up at him again, chin propped on his shoulder, expression perfectly innocent. "What is it?"
Since she'd noticed, he pointedly took her hand and settled it a little lower, on his hip.
"Whoops," she murmured, pressing a kiss to his cowl.
The elevator pinged, letting them off at her floor, but she didn't seem inclined to move much further down the hallway, stopping just outside the elevator. He couldn't exactly drag her—well, he would, but not without trying to convince her to move her feet first. While they stood there, her arm looped up, higher this time. The backs of her fingers stroked beneath his fringe. Automatically, he shivered.
"Shepard," he warned, "you're drunk."
She snickered as though she found it funny, standing up on tiptoe to brush a kiss to his mandible. She ducked out from under his arm—without staggering at all—and put her hands on his chest, pushing him gently back into the wall.
Her mouth was pressed to his before he could stop her, her fingertips wrapped tight around his cowl. He put his hands on her hips, intending to push her back to arm's length, but that was when he smelled her breath.
Surprisingly minty fresh, for someone who was falling-down drunk.
He put his hands on her hips to push her back, anyway. When he opened his eyes, she was smirking broadly.
"Took you long enough to catch on," she said, so sweetly, correctly interpreting the reproachful look on his face.
"You really ditched girl's night just to prank me?" he drawled, hands tightening where he held her.
She snorted. "I pranked all of them. They thought I had alcohol poisoning. Traynor's the one who pinged you, by the way. I strongly suspect she hacked my omnitool just to get you down there to cart me away."
She moved to kiss him again, but he stooped down to knock her body over his shoulder instead. She squeaked—adorably—as he straightened up with a firm hold on her legs.
"What, are you mad?" she demanded, knocking on the bit of his cowl she could reach. She sounded funny upside-down.
"No." He keyed in the encryption for the door lock and walked into her apartment. "But for a person who isn't drunk, you still made me drag you across the Silversun Strip. I'm not going to drag you to bed, too."
Her laughter rang out as he started up the stairs. "There's a more dignified way to carry me, you know."
"Right, but this is better for my back," he deadpanned. "Why did you want to wiggle out of girls' night, anyway?"
Shepard groaned. "I love them, I do, but I can only handle two or three hours of drinking and dancing and EDI's weird questions and Ash making subtle remarks about Vega's abs—"
"Okay, okay, I've heard enough." He tossed her on the bed. She squeaked again when she bounced.
"Besides," she said, reaching for her heels, "my feet are killing me."
He stopped her with a hand on her ankle and slipped the shoe off for her. "Well. I guess I'll do all the work, then."
He'd gotten her other shoe off and her skirt bunched up around her hips before he added, "Like always."
Her eyes narrowed, a touch of lucidity returning. "I think I'm leading in headshots, Vakarian," she said, but her complaint trailed away into a soft, throaty moan when he pressed down between her thighs. She slipped a hand beneath his shirt, fingers caressing his vulnerable skin. His head swam, a little, when her legs tightened around his hips.
"Didn't think we were counting those anymore," he said, working to keep his voice steady. "After the Presidium incident, and everything."
For a split second, she looked on the verge of saying something disparaging—but then her features melted into a smile; her head tipped back on the pillows, exposing her throat, and she rolled her hips up to meet him.
"All right," she conceded breathlessly. "You win. Will these spoils suffice to celebrate your greatness, Arch—"
"Don't call me that," he interrupted hastily. "Spirits, Shepard, not in bed—"
And she was laughing, carefree and loud, when she pulled him down to kiss him; and here, for a few, tangled moments, reapers and war did not exist. It was better than a night spent calibrating the thannix cannon, better than any night than anyone had had, ever.
They deserved it, he told himself. A little repayment for saving the galaxy a few times. Spirits knew there was no retirement package, but he could be happy just having this.