Work Text:
“Like what you see, Vakarian?”
Garrus imagined the commander had meant the question to be sarcastic, but Shepard had never been very good at instilling much bite into his words, his tone. Vestiges of the golden boy he’d been and might be again, one day, when they were far away from this time, this place, from these cruel choices they had to make. From whatever it was Jack had found in those files that had caused such a stir of tension in the air, winding tighter and tighter that it was no wonder Shepard had started to break.
Still, the Turian considered an answer.
He hadn’t seen him, before, not really: a realization that had crept up on him little by little, chipping away at the things he thought he knew about Commander Adrien Shepard. Classic good looks, as he understood it, thick dark hair and kind brown eyes set under heavy brows. Clean shaven, or at least that’s how he’d kept himself back on the SR-1, laugh lines starting to form around a mouth made for smiling.
But now his cheeks and chin were shadowed by a patchwork of stubble, and his lips were bitten and chapped, and there was no hint of those lines — just the new ones, the too-straight surgical scars, glowing softly red against lightly brown skin, constant reminders of the sort of loss Garrus could only rudimentarily understand.
But there was still that kindness in his eyes, somewhere beneath the exhaustion and the sleepless nights, and maybe there was a fair amount more despair in the set of the man’s shoulders, an air of desperation coiling muscles tense and tight, but at least Adrien kept his chin up. Watching, waiting, almost defiant, sensing, maybe, that Garrus was going to give an answer, but fuck he seemed so, so fragile all at once.
Horizon had hurt him. The meeting with Anderson had hurt him. He’d watched as the commander had haltingly requested a reversal of his KIA status at the Citadel, a haunting quiet surrounding him, the sort befitting a man who seemed more than half ghost these days.
He saw the cracks clearer now, the fault lines of history reaching deep, but even so…
Even so.
The man Shepard was at his core was still there.
He’d seen it when the man had intervened with the Quarian on the station, seen it in drawing firm lines with Zaeed on Zorya. Seen it with Jack after she hit the button on the bomb, with Tali when she’d learned of her father’s death. For all Adrien was torn to tatters, he always found more to give.
And here, maybe, in some small way, maybe Garrus could give a little back.
“Yeah,” he murmured, stepping into the other man’s space. He gently tugged the bottle of booze from his fingers and set it on the side table. “Yeah, Adri. I do.”
Those fathomless eyes seemed to track from one to the other of Garrus’s, and Adrien’s exhale was shaky.
“Yeah?”
He really has no idea, Garrus thought as he stepped closer, the effect he has.
Or maybe he did, and that was part of the problem.
And maybe that problem was partially on Garrus, too — for always engaging with the hero and not the man beneath the armor. For resorting to platitudes of service, to denigrations of duty, for comparing and contrasting and building his admiration into a pedestal Adrien had never asked for.
A pedestal, Garrus was rapidly understanding, that had isolated his friend rather than offering any real support.
No more of that, Garrus thought, and his heart seemed to skip in his chest as he brought his hand up, cradling that scruffy cheek, watching as Adri’s eyes fluttered shut and the tension seemed to bleed from his shoulders. Felt it as he relaxed against him, his soft, smooth skin so wonderful and strange against Garrus’s mouth as he pressed a kiss to his forehead.
“Yeah. I see you, Adri.” And maybe his own breath was a little shaky as he felt Adri’s arms slip around him. Welcoming him.
“I see you,” he murmured. “And I promise I’ll always try to keep seeing you.”
A shudder and the other man leaned into him, and Garrus drew his talons carefully through those thick curls as his free hand moved to the commander’s back. Bracing. Supporting. Being there.
Always.
And maybe it wasn't the same as Adrien's interference back on the Citadel, blocking Garrus from making another huge mistake. But maybe that wasn't the point -- maybe it wasn't the size of the gesture that mattered, but rather that the gesture be made at all. To show up, and listen, and see, just see the man before him for who he really was. Flawed, broken, but so, so fucking earnest, so stubborn and determined, so…
So wonderfully, painfully human.
A strange expression, he'd always thought, whenever humans would say it -- 'I'm only human.' A redundancy, he'd thought, but now… now he thought maybe he understood.
It was a matter of perspective, an acknowledgment of one's limits -- not an offering of excuses. An honesty, an admission to the truth that fit so well with another of those human idioms.
"What's that your people say again?" Garrus asked, brushing a kiss to Adri's hair this time. Despite the alcohol on his breath, his hair still smelled of citrus. "'No man is alone on an island?'"
"'No man is an island,'" Adrien murmured, and Garrus thought he could feel the smile starting to form on the commander's face, pressed as it was against the softer skin of Garrus's neck.
"Yeah," he hummed in agreement, giving him a little squeeze. "That one. We're all an island, uh… together. So more of a continent, really." A huff of laughter, and Garrus's mandibles twitched in approval. "Listen, the point is there's a beach there somewhere, and what better place to sit and rest for a little while?"
"Are you saying you're the beach in this metaphor?" And it was such a relief to hear that hint of teasing back in the commander's voice.
"Palm trees and all," he replied solemnly. He cocked his head, considering. "Grunt's the volcano."
"I'd've thought Jack was the volcano. Or Zaeed."
"Zaeed is also a volcano, but like, a dormant one."
"Definitely wasn't very dormant back on Zorya," Adrien muttered.
"But he did wait a good twenty years for that revenge, so, I mean, I'm still correct."
Adrien was laughing against him at this point, and Garrus wrapped both arms firmly around him.
"The point is," he went on after a moment. "I'm here for you, Adri."
"I know," Adrien whispered softly, pulling back to look up at him. And he knew it was just a reprieve, a moment to catch their breath, and that the shitstorm that was their collective lives still raged on outside this slice of time and space.
But maybe the moment mattered anyway.