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Garrus held the skein of yarn out at arm’s length, rotating it back and forth and staring at it with a critical eye. “I don’t believe you,” he finally said. “There’s no way you can make this into clothing without some kind of machine to help you.”
“Stop being dramatic,” Shepard laughed. “You’re just mad because you don’t know how to do it.”
“In my defense, most turians don’t care for clothing that isn’t intended to stop bullets.” He sighed wistfully as he handed the yarn back. “I’d like to learn, someday. Making something out of nothing seems…kind of nice, I guess.”
“I can teach you!” She meant it too, though she probably would have agreed to anything if it kept that melancholic expression off of his face. “I’ve got an extra crochet hook, and it’s easy to learn. If you’re really interested, I mean, I don’t–”
He wrapped her hand in his own, cutting off her speech with a polite squeeze. She smiled, suddenly shy, and was relieved to see that the expression on his face matched her own.
“I would love for you to teach me,” he said solemnly. “I would be honored, in fact.”
She hesitated for a moment, trying to figure out if she had just overstepped some kind of turian cultural boundary or if Garrus was just being…Garrus, before she decided to throw caution to the wind. He would tell her, eventually, if she had crossed a line; but the temptation to watch his eyes light up as she taught him something new was too strong.
She unwrapped the yarn slowly, making sure he was following as she tied a quick slip knot. “I can show you this in detail later,” she said. “It took me a lot of practice, at the beginning. But it’s more fun to make the stitches than it is to tie the yarn.”
He nodded, solemnly, as he raised a hand to his visor. “Can I record this?” he asked, voice slightly warbling as he spoke around his subvocals. “I learn much quicker when I have something to reference back to.”
Not for the first time, she cursed whoever had thought it was a good idea to upload the turian language into the translators with none of the subvocal meanings attached. “Of course.” Her voice came out hoarse, heavy with something she wasn’t able or ready to name. She cleared her throat against it, and wrapped the end of the yarn around her pinky. “Like this, to start.”
He nodded, sniper’s gaze focused on the curl of her yarn in her hand. “That makes sense. Keep going.” She cleared her throat again.
She laid the yarn gently over her index finger, and held her hand up so it better caught the light. “Do you need me to move? Or can you see this alright?”
“Yeah, Shepard. I’ve got you.” His voice had gone hoarse as well, and she flushed at the sound of it. This was excruciating, and inconvenient, and the thrill of it had her smiling wider than she had in years.
She had dropped the crochet hook on to the table when Garrus had entered the room; now she took her time picking it up, letting herself linger in the heat of his gaze as she bent down to retrieve it. There was a subtle pulsing of light coming from his visor – the recording, making itself known – and she felt her heart beat in time with it. She was used to being watched, but not like this. Never like this.
She liked it.
She took a shuddering breath as she sat up, turning to face Garrus fully and playfully brandishing the crochet hook in his direction. “Are you ready?”
He shifted slightly on the couch, swallowing heavily as he did so. “Show me.”
She took a deep breath. “Okay.”
She had been crocheting for years; there was no need to watch her own hands as she created a simple chain. So she kept her eyes locked on to his own, and saw the exact moment when the heat in his gaze flickered out and was replaced with barely restrained regret.
He spoke before she could. “Uh, Shepard. I don’t think this is going to work.”
She had spent enough time in stressful situations to bite back her instinctual gasp, and that moment was all the time she needed to realize that he wasn’t speaking about their…situation…at all. Instead, he was staring intently at her hands and the yarn stretched between them.
Spell broken, she followed his gaze and identified the problem almost immediately: she was controlling the tension of the yarn with her pinky and her index finger, and maneuvering the chain with her thumb and her ring finger. Four fingers.
Garrus was one short.
She couldn’t help it – the shared tension of before, the spike of fear at the thought Garrus might reject her, the new and sudden awareness that she liked the way it felt when he watched her; it hit her all at once, and she dropped both yarn and hook into the couch as she curled over in uncontrollable giggles.
Garrus followed her; she could hear the rumble of his subvocals under the sharp bark of his laughter, and when she sat back up to meet him they were wearing identical grins.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, but he was smiling, and she was smiling, and everything was fine. “You don’t have enough fingers.”
“I don’t know, Shepard. I think maybe you have too many.”
If she were braver, she would do something about the cocky tilt of his head, the confident flare of his mandibles. But the moment was perfect; she was happy to stretch it out into infinity, even at the expense of something better.
“Do you want to watch a movie?” she asked instead. “I have all of the Blastos. Charged the Illusive Man for them.”
“Well, if they’re already paid for.” Garrus leaned back into the cushions, and if he was suddenly sitting closer to her than he had been before; well, she wasn’t going to comment. “Go on Shepard, press play.”
So she did.