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Garrus has been waking up with a sour taste in his mouth for a year and a half now.
He rolled off the poor excuse for a place to sleep he's been camped out in for the last week and scanned his surroundings for the fifth time in as many seconds, paranoia not wasting time rejoining his sleep-numb body.
His sniper rifle was close, and he carefully gripped the handle as he checked the perimeter of the room. There's no sign of another sniper hired by one of the gangs here on Omega, no sign of his doom come to meet him.
There's only the still air, the pulsing lights of the station, and the sour taste of human alcohol from a year and a half ago.
She had invited him for a drink in her quarters. She had said they needed a chance to relax after being cooped up on dead-end assignments the council was brushing them aside to. She had said it'd be good for them.
After rechecking and re-rechecking the dingy room's boundaries, Garrus deemed it safe enough to take apart his sniper rifle for maintenance. The repetitive movements were almost enough to soothe his hackles into a lull.
His hand still twitched toward the assault rifle on his back. He ignored it as he listened for sounds beyond the room, met only with silence.
Shepard was never quiet. She was always shifting, striking up a conversation to get his opinion on the last mission or find out where his head was at. If not talking to him, she was on her way to the cockpit to chat with Joker or to the engine to talk with Tali. She poked them during missions, whispering comments about how cold Noveria was, or the stiffness of the assorted people in the Citadel's Presidium.
His rifle clean, his mind sharp, his jaw unconsciously clenched, Garrus slipped outside. His eyes swept the immediate area, scanning for the glint of a lens or the sound of a thermal clip being changed out.
There was nothing. There never was.
He checked again, just in case.
"Nothing happens out here," Shepard had lamented. "The council thinks they can treat us like shit just because we've played nicely before. It's total bullshit."
Her cheeks were slowly getting redder, which according to her months earlier was just a part of human intoxication. Garrus remained unchanged, but nodded along. She took a swig of the sour drink- apparently to humans it wasn't one of their sour alcohols. The fact that they sought out sourness confused Garrus, but he didn't say anything of it.
"I- we - fought Saren and kicked his ass. And this is how the council wants to respond to that? So much for being the universe's saviors." Her hair was falling out of her ponytail, and she was enunciating every syllable like each was a pistol blast to the faces of the council. "It's a fucking stab in the back is what it is."
"You humans have a lot of curses for these situations," Garrus mused as he flicked back his own drink. Shepard snorted.
"We have a lot to curse about," she'd said, raising her glass as though a toast to vulgarity.
"Fuck," Garrus breathed as slipped out of the apartment. A krogan mercenary, currently working for the Blue Suns, was down the hallway. Garrus hadn’t caught his attention yet but he needed to flee, and fast. Last week he had taken out a higher member of the gang and evidently they weren’t keen to let him off the hook for it.
He walked off, rounding the nearest corner and pressing himself against the wall. He listened carefully as the krogan thumped down the hall, stopped outside his door, and broke it down.
The krogan spat.
The near-silent chirp of a comm rang out. "He's gone. Bed looks fresh- he must've had advance warning. Maybe a whole damn network." Garrus could have laughed, had the situation been any less precarious. In his dreams, maybe.
Garrus gave the briefest pause to the idea. An actual group to back him up, keep him safer, keep them safer. Shepard would have approved of it.
He silently growled to clear his head, and the moment was over. The krogan had listened to the comm’s response and was now snarling into it again.
"You didn't pay me to track him down, you paid me to come here and kill him. Hire a detective or something instead."
The heavy thump-thump of the krogan's feet went back down the hallway and Garrus held in his sigh of relief for at least a minute before he let it out. Checking his radar to make sure the area was clear and seeing nobody, he quickly moved back into the crappy room he'd called home for almost a month.
He knew it wouldn't last. But it was one of the better places he'd gotten on the crime-riddled station, and damn if he wasn't going to miss it at least a little.
He gathered up his meager belongings, dropped a note on the table for the landlord, and put his hand on the door, allowing himself one glance back before he left.
Over the course of the evening, Shepard had gotten progressively more drunk while Garrus found the sour drink entirely underwhelming. He found himself grateful they were already in Shepard's quarters- he didn't want to be the one dragging Shepard's lolling body to bed. Both their glasses were empty and Shepard had just about talked herself into an exhausted sleep.
"I'd best get going, Shepard. You look like you're about to die a very red death."
Shepard snorted. "Lotsa deaths are red- wait. Y're blue. Damn it. Change that."
Garrus huffed a laugh from the door. "Whatever you say, Commander. Sleep well."
"You too, Garrus," Shepard grinned. "Sweet dreams, eh?"
"Goodbye, Commander."
Garrus had slept better that night than he had in the past week. The next afternoon, his regular calibrations had been interrupted by a surprise attack on the Normandy.
Flames erupted around his every step as he helped Tali and the engineers onto the escape pods. He didn't see anyone from the above decks get in, only heard Joker's voice from the now-silent intercom.
He didn't see the Commander get out.
He didn't see the Commander again.
He didn't sleep well for the next two years.