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It's faint, but Garrus hears it all the same.
Leaving his calibrations for the moment, he follows the strange sound away from the Main Battery. A quick glance at the elevator interface tells him that whoever or whatever the sound is coming from seems to have moved down to Engineering. Once the elevator is free again, Garrus steps on and continues his idle chase - and sure enough, the far door to Engineering hisses closed a moment after he arrives on that floor. Garrus feels his heart rate pick up slightly as he crosses the threshold, closing the now-finite gap between himself and answers.
What he finds in Engineering, however, provides anything but answers.
Shepard is there, beating a hasty retreat towards the loud, ever-thrumming driver core. Her shoulders are shaking intermittently, and at first Garrus's mandibles flare in alarm; is she crying? But wait, no, that noise... It's coming from her?
Utterly flummoxed, Garrus finds he knows just enough to read that Shepard needs space right now and shouldn't be followed. He halts his pursuit and instead turns his focus to the room's other occupants. Daniels and Donnelly haven't even looked up from their stations, so clearly Shepard isn't in any immediate distress. That or they're used to their commanding officer lurking mysteriously near a giant orb.
Tali, at least, seems to be just as lost as he is about this. Garrus moves toward her with a last glance at Shepard.
Her shoulders are shaking again.
"Garrus," Tali greets. "Are you here because you heard Shepard malfunctioning?"
"I-" Garrus flounders. "Yes, but uh, also no? I heard a weird sound and followed it down here. I never expected it to be Shepard. You said she's... malfunctioning?"
"Yes, my suit makes similar noises when the life support mainframe starts to uncouple itself from the rest of the hardware. I'm glad you're here. Shepard probably needs help, though why she'd be unwilling to ask for it-"
"There's nothing to pitch a fuss about, you two."
Garrus and Tali break their semi-anxious huddle and turn towards Donnelly, who is looking far too smug for Garrus's liking. "What do you mean?" he asks.
"The Commander only has a case of the hiccups."
"...The what?"
Now it's Donnelly's turn to look flummoxed. "You know, hiccups. ...You mean your species don't get hiccups? I thought everyone did - except maybe hanar, I suppose, since they're kind of just... jellyfish priests. But still, all the rest of us have lungs and throats and things. I think."
"So it's some sort of lung disease?" Tali asks slowly.
"Goodness, no, nothing like that." Daniels is the one to speak this time, clearly keen to rescue Donnelly from whatever the hell this conversation is. "Hiccups are a... Well, I guess 'malfunction' isn't that far off, but they're totally harmless! It's just a weird air pressure... thing."
"Right," Donnelly seconds. "No one really knows why hiccups happen, but all humans get them at some point." He glances over at Shepard, who is resolutely facing the driver core and seems totally oblivious to their conversation. He smirks. "The Commander gets them rather often."
Garrus still doesn't totally get it, but he does know that Donnelly's smirk has made his face look even more punchable than usual.
Fortunately, Tali moves the conversation along before Garrus can let himself get really tempted. "So what can we do for Shepard?" she asks. "I assume there's some kind of cure?"
"Nothing that's one-size-fits-all, I'm afraid," Daniels replies, "and most of it isn't exactly scientific." She brightens. "Lots of people say that scaring the person works, so you could try sneaking up on the Commander and startling her!"
There is a pause.
Tali manages to look unimpressed even through her suit.
"Daniels," she says.
"Yes, ma'am?"
"Do I look to you like I want to get suplexed today?"
Daniels visibly deflates. "No, ma'am."
Garrus feels his mouth twitch as he suppresses a laugh. "Yeah, sneaking up on a deadly supersoldier doesn't seem like the smartest plan." He looks over at the supersoldier in question, curiosity now burning in his chest, and feels his feet start to move practically of their own volition.
"And yet you're going to go talk to her anyway?" Donnelly asks in disbelief. When Garrus ignores him (only mostly on purpose), he shakes his head. "It's your funeral."
To his credit, Garrus doesn't actually intend to try Daniels' tactic on Shepard. That doesn't stop her, however, from jumping about a foot in the air when he says her name.
"Dammit, Garrus, don't scare me like that!" she exclaims, pressing a hand to her chest. Her chest heaves slightly a moment later, though the pulsing roar of the engine combined with her hastily closed mouth silences this particular malfunction.
Still, it's interesting to observe up close. Garrus can't help but chuckle softly, shifting into a relaxed stance that Shepard notably does not mirror. "Sorry about that. I came because I heard an unusual noise - and I'm told it's coming from you, if my sources are reliable."
Shepard shoots a mutinous glare over Garrus's shoulder towards his "sources", though whether they're watching the proceedings or have returned to their stations feels neither here nor there. Flicking her gaze back up to him, she crisply replies, "I don't know what you're ta-HIC-lking about."
Neither of them move for a moment.
"...So I guess you heard that?" she asks.
"Loud and clear, Commander," he replies.
She curses again.
Garrus quashes the urge to reach out and reassure her (since when was he all touchy-feely?), but he does allow himself to shift slightly closer. "Turians don't get these... what's the word again?"
"Hi-HIC... Hiccups."
"Right. Hiccups. I've never encountered them before, so I'm kind of lost here."
Shepard lets out a frustrated breath through her nose. "I think they're -HIC- embarrassing, and I DO NOT like being made fun of."
"Made fun of? By who, your engineers? Come on, you don't seriously care about what Tweedledee and Tweedledumbass think, do you?"
Instead of laughing at his remark about Daniels and Donnelly - or hell, even chiding him - Garrus sees Shepard's gaze slide away from him as she grabs her elbow with her opposite hand. "Not them exactly, no."
A strange thought occurs to him. "Are you saying you... care about what I think?"
Shepard doesn't respond, but those uncanny eyes of hers look... bigger, now that they're looking back at him again. Embarrassed, if he's reading her correctly.
And it looks like Garrus is unable to resist touching her after all. He moves in close and gently grips her elbows, one of his hands overlapping hers where she still maintains her nervous grip on herself. "I'm not going to make fun of you, Shepard." He gives her a reassuring squeeze, fully intending to leave it at that.
Apparently his mouth has other ideas, however. "We've taken down Saren together," he continues, "given Sidonis a chance he doesn't deserve." He shakes his head. "I'm on this damn ship in the first place because you're saving the entire galaxy from the Collectors, and somehow need my help to do it. You really think a few adorable noises are going to change what I think about you?"
Garrus feels Shepard jolt, this time from surprise rather than hiccups. The movement is enough to shake him out of whatever headspace he'd just been in. He recoils away from her, his scarred mouth working double-time as he tries to stammer out an explanation for his... spirits, even he doesn't know what that little monologue was. Shepard, to his surprise, steps back into his space, opening her mouth to try and cut off his verbal flailing-
And hiccups right in his face.
Very, very loudly.
A particularly droll corner of his mind thinks that, if Shepard's eyes were any wider right now, they'd fall out of her head. There's no doubt in his mind now that she looks completely mortified.
And speaking of looks, Garrus can't help but glance over his shoulder at the engineering stations, a move that Shepard mirrors instantly. Sure enough, Tali, Daniels, and Donnelly are all staring back.
Garrus and Shepard look back at each other.
They burst out laughing, loud and long - the kind of unrestrained mirth that's so hard to come by in their line of work, that instantly drains the tension from their bodies. They cling to each other as they practically double over, breathing the same joyful air together even as a few more hiccups join the mix.
And for now, at least, they're content to leave it at that.