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They were three films and two bottles of dual-chirality liquor into the day before Garrus noticed that all of the women were dressed the same.
“Joker, what’s…why are the women in those clothes? Do they mean something?” His words were more slurred than the last time he had spoken (One hour ago? Two? Time had been moving strangely since he had heard the news) but he knew that he was onto something, even through the haze of a drink that claimed to be vodka. Besides, there was no one here now but Joker, and he certainly wasn’t in the position to judge.
“Yeah, man, it means that they’re beautiful.” Joker's head lolled on his neck as he turned to look at Garrus, his eyes taking just a moment too long to focus. “I didn’t know you were into humans. Is that why you’re still here?”
“Joker, this is my apartment.” He ignored the rest of the statement; it was easier to pretend he didn’t understand the insinuation than to open a door that could never be closed again. Just like the door in the corner, the door that just a few weeks ago–
He stood up with a groan, shutting his eyes tight against the slight swaying of the room. None of this had been easy, but it had felt more manageable before it was just the two of them. It reminded him of something that Ashley had said, on that first, horrible night – grief shared is grief… destroyed? Deleted? It didn’t matter; it had felt true at the time.
But Ashley had left, called back to duty by the Alliance after an insultingly brief number of days. Wrex had followed, insistent that the Krogan people would kill each other for sport if he didn’t make it back to Tuchanka in a timely manner. Tali had promised to stay, only to find herself packing her belongings the following evening – a quarian ship was leaving the Citadel and had offered her free room and board, and she couldn’t turn down the opportunity.
He didn’t actually know why Liara had gone. One day, she was cuddled up between him and Joker on the couch; the next, she was ducking into the bathroom at all hours of the night to take intense, whispered calls. When he had awoken one morning to find her spot on the couch empty but for a simple note – I’m sorry. I promise, it’s important. – neither he nor Joker had been surprised.
At least the pilot wasn’t going anywhere. The Alliance had yet to reinstate him, and the stipend they offered for housing on the Citadel was nothing short of laughable. So Garrus offered up his recliner, and Joker told the Alliance he was paying rent, and together they used the Alliance’s blood money to keep them stocked in booze. It was the least the Alliance could do, after ruining her reputation and leaving her to –
Spirits, he was still thinking too much. Maybe it was time for bottle number three.
He tried again as he weaved unsteadily towards the kitchen. “No, I mean the color. All of the women in these movies are wearing red. I don’t know what it means.”
Ever since Liara had left, they had taken turns with the television. Garrus was partial to crime procedurals; there was a show about a quarian Spectre who was forced to work undercover on Illium that had been running for thirteen seasons, and Garrus had managed to get through half of them since Joker had moved in. But Joker was partial to old Earth films, and all of today’s followed the same general plot. There was a detective, usually, who was poor or sad or down on his luck, and a horrible city full of humanity’s worst to keep him occupied. And there was a woman, a beautiful woman with mysterious motives, with a sad smile and a beautiful dress.
Sometimes the woman and the detective got together in the end. Sometimes they didn’t, and they ended up as enemies. But no matter what happened, no matter if the women were good or evil, Garrus had been transfixed by them.
The dresses. It had to be something with the dresses.
“It doesn’t mean anything,” Joker said when Garrus re-entered the living room, sitting up straighter in his chair and reaching out a hand to grab the full glass that Garrus offered him. “She’s just mysterious and hot.”
“They’re all mysterious and hot,” Garrus said, “But I fail to see what the color red has to do with that.”
“So you do think human women are hot. I knew it.”
“Shut up and drink your–” he paused to take a sip of the drink in his hand, rolling what passed for flavor over his tongue. “–horrible gin.”
Then he settled back into the couch and watched the man on screen slink down a dark alley, seemingly unconcerned with the fact that he had no backup, no one to cover his six. It was a dumb move; the old Earth detective wouldn’t have made it through a week of C-Sec policy training. Still…
He wished he was able to describe the way these movies made him feel. Even knowing that they had all been filmed on film sets that were light years and decades away from his pitiful apartment, they felt more real than anything he had ever seen while taking a stroll down the Presidium. Nothing in these movies was ever guaranteed; the main character was just as likely to die as he was to ride off into the sunset with a red-dressed woman at his side. They didn’t paint the galaxy in some false, optimistic light, or make promises that everything would turn out okay. That was real.
“What’s real?” Joker hiccupped. He had sunk back down into his seat, and all Garrus could make out was the brim of his cap and the bloodshot gleam of his eyes.
“Oh, nothin’,” he slurred. “Thinking out loud, I guess.”
He didn’t mean for his eyes to wander away from the action taking place on screen over to the door in the corner of the room, but it was a reflex as involuntary as breathing. It happened every time he dropped his guard, as if the door was waiting, beckoning him forward.
Her civvies were still in the closet. “I only have so much space in my luggage,” she had said, before. “Besides, when I come back to the Citadel, I’ll be hanging out with you.” And then, as if it was an afterthought: “Though you’ll obviously be moving into a better apartment once you formally get into the Spectres. You’ll keep your spare room open for me, right?”
He was still keeping it open for her, even now. Even when she would never be back to use it.
He ripped his eyes away from the door to Shepard’s room and forced himself to focus on the film. The detective wasn’t alone anymore; while Garrus had been reminiscing, he had been rescued from certain danger by a woman in a red dress.
“Joker,” he said, slowly. “Do you think I could be a detective?”
“What are you talking about? Isn’t that your job?”
But Garrus didn’t hear him. His eyes had wandered back to the door.
***
He wasn’t surprised to find Kasumi in the lounge; it was her room, after all, and he didn’t blame her for claiming it. If he had been the first one on the ship, he also would have taken the room with the couch.
He also wasn’t surprised to find that Kasumi had company. Shepard spent most of her free time at the bar these days, though only the Cerberus crew was impolite enough to call her on it. He would never bring it up – her business was her own, and besides, he wasn’t a hypocrite.
Still, he was shocked by the position he found them in. Shepard was standing on the counter, rotating slowly in the most preposterous dress he’d ever seen. Kasumi watched her from a barstool, head tilted to the side in deep thought. Neither of them spared him a glance when he sidled through the door, though he knew they clocked his entrance. They were both more observant than they let on.
Kasumi sighed, disappointed. “It’s not an argument, Shep. It’s a difference of opinion.”
In response, Shepard struck a pose, one hand on her hip and the other on the back of her head. “Okay, Garrus, settle the score. Do I look stupid?”
It had to be a trick question. The dress was black and form-fitting, showing off the muscles of her arms and legs while clinging to her torso. It was designed to be beautiful, to be elegant – and it should have been. Probably would have been, on someone like Miranda. But on Shepard it only seemed to highlight how thin she was, how her shoulders bowed under the weight of more experience and expectation than one person should ever be asked to handle.
Did she look stupid? No, of course not. He didn’t think she ever could. But he didn’t know how to say any of that. He fumbled for the correct words, only to settle for ones that rang false and hollow: “To a turian? You just look like a human.”
Shepard sighed and sank to her knees, sliding off the bar and grabbing a bottle on her way back to the floor. “But do I look like me?”
He hummed in relief. That was a question he knew how to answer. “Sure you do. The unhappiest version of yourself I’ve ever seen.” He reached out a hand to steady her. “Is that dual chirality, or do I need to pour my own drink?”
“Come on, Garrus.” She took a swig from the bottle, then passed it to him with a sharp grin. “When have you ever known me to keep things to myself?”
He held his tongue – after Feros, after Virmire, after the disastrous run in with Ashley on Horizon. He didn’t have enough fingers to count off the number of nights he had watched her disappear into her locked cabin, choosing to suffer in silence on the off chance it would keep the rest of the crew laughing and smiling. So he took a drink of his own in place of a response, and tried his best to pretend that it meant nothing to rest his mouth where her lips had been.
“It was a serious question, by the way. What do you think of the dress?”
The liquor burned in his throat; he willed his feelings to wash away with each swallow. “I think it depends. Who are you dressing up for?”
“Donovan Hock. Do you know him?”
He didn’t, but he recognized a human name when he heard one. “Is he a friend of yours? Or did he do something to piss you off?”
“He did something to piss me off, actually.” Kasumi said. “Shep’s helping me with a favor.”
“He has something that doesn’t belong to him.” Shepard said, walking over to where Kasumi stood and staring out the window. “We’re going to take it back.”
With her back to him, the light from the stars outside seemed to rest upon her shoulders. He drank in the sight of her, letting his eyes trail over her body before raising the bottle to the mouth for a second time. If she didn’t see him looking, it didn’t count.
“And you need to wear the galaxy’s worst dress to commit petty thievery?”
“Hey,” she said, turning back around with a hand on her hip. “According to Kasumi, this is the peak of modern fashion.”
“Sure, but a dress isn’t a disguise,” Garrus said. “How are you supposed to steal something when you’re the most famous human in the galaxy? Everyone knows you, Shepard. You’ll be the center of attention.”
“Thank you!” Kasumi cried, throwing her hands up in the air. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell her. I can steal all of the couture on the Citadel, and it won’t do anything to hide her face.”
Shepard rolled her eyes. “You both overestimate my fame. Besides, I never wear dresses. I’m sure this will fool people.”
It wouldn’t.
“You might not realize this, Shepard, but your face was plastered on the vids for months after Sovereign. Everyone in the galaxy with half of a working extranet connection knows who you are.” He didn’t mention that her funeral had been broadcasted as well, that it had hit viewership records throughout Council space. Members of every species had tuned in to watch the Alliance say goodbye to their tragic hero, gone too soon but never forgotten, before they had collectively turned their backs on her to drag her legacy through the mud.
She reached out for the bottle still gripped in his hand and he passed it to her silently, holding his breath at the jolt that ran through him when her fingers grazed his. All of this was new – the way he suddenly couldn’t keep his eyes from her when she charged across the battlefield, the fact that he was always making up excuses to seek out her company. It was so distracting. He should be focusing on something important, like tracking down Sidonis or figuring out how to break the news about his ruined face to his sister.
Instead, he watched the way that Shepard‘s smile cracked just on the edge of shattering, and fantasized about a galaxy in which he had never been forced to learn to live without her.
“They know who I was,” she said softly. “Legally, I’m still dead. Not one person in that room is going to look at me and think, ‘Oh wow, the magically resurrected Commander Shepard has invited herself to this party.’”
“I did.”
For a moment, they just stared at each other. He hadn’t meant to speak, but he had caught the way her eyes suddenly shone in the light, and the words had come out regardless.
“Would you really call what you were doing on Omega a party?” she asked.
For all that she loved to deal with her problems by pretending that they didn’t exist, she refused to extend the same courtesy to anyone else. He probably would talk to her about Omega, one day, but he certainly wasn’t going to do it now. Not without a bottle of his own and her in the most revealing clothing he’d ever seen.
“I’m not joking, Shepard. You can make light all you want, but you’re recognizable. I knew it was you the moment I saw you.”
“So what was the warning shot for?” Kasumi asked with a smirk. He kept forgetting she had been there too. At the time, he had only had eyes for Shepard.
“He was probably just keeping me on my toes. Bastard.” She finally broke her gaze as she lifted the bottle to her lips; when she lowered it, the fragility in her expression had vanished. “Alright then, Garrus. You’re the expert, apparently. Tell me what I should be wearing instead.”
He was definitely too sober for this. For the first time in years, he allowed himself to remember his abandoned Citadel apartment. He had never cared what had happened to the things he left behind, but her things had been there too. A collection of casual clothes in the closet, the blanket she had always used folded neatly at the foot of the bed. She would have looked better in any of that than this. More herself, at least. More alive.
Then he swallowed heavily, tamped down his subvocals, and focused. She wanted him to play along, so he would. He had done security at a handful of fancy Citadel events back in the day; certainly he could dredge up a memory or two that would be of use.
“First thing’s first. You can’t dress like a soldier. Anything that allows you freedom of movement – it won’t look right. The people at this party will be talking and drinking and standing around, and they’ll be dressed for it.”
He closed his eyes and imagined the scene. People of all species gathered around small tables, drinking sparkling drinks out of sparkling glasses. Criminals, all of them, and happy to flaunt their ill-gotten gains.
“You need jewels. Decadence. The easiest way to go undercover with criminals is to show off. Modesty will get you caught. You need to–”
“She needs to be someone else.”
He opened his eyes. Kasumi was smiling confidently beneath her ever-present hood, and Shepard…
He’d never seen the look on her face before. It was like she was seeing him for the very first time.
“What else?” Shepard asked, voice rough around the edges.
Spirits. He needed distance. If only he could remove himself from the equation, could talk to Shepard like someone who didn’t know her.
“You can’t look reserved or serious. There will be security present, probably, and they’ll be trained to look out for anyone who walks around like they’re on a mission. Infiltration is all about blending in, so you’ll have to do as the criminals do. Take a shot, dance with a stranger. If you don’t look happy, they won’t buy it.”
Shepard looked skeptical, but Kasumi was nodding fervently over her shoulder. “Listen to the vigilante, Shepard. He knows what he’s talking about.”
“So you’re telling me to…have fun?”
His good mandible twitched involuntarily into a smirk. “Come on, Shepard. I know you know how to do that. Just pretend you’re taking the Mako out for a spin.”
She whirled around then, walking over to the window and slamming her hand against the shutter controls with just a little too much pressure. Garrus and Kasumi watched in silence as the stars vanished and the shutter raised, bringing Shepard’s reflection into sharp focus.
He didn’t know how long they stood there, watching Shepard stare herself down as if – in this lifetime, at least – it was the first time she had seen herself in a mirror. And maybe it was. He certainly didn’t frequent them, these days. Did she feel what he felt? Was her own reflection something she normally avoided? The faint orange scars that crawled down Shepard’s face weren't so different from his own, after all. He thought about the bandages wrapped around his head and the scarring that trailed its way down his cowl, and he pictured her hands running over it all. “It’s alright,” he imagined her saying. “You’re still you.”
Even her phantom touch was enough to make him shudder.
He was still unsteady on his feet when she turned back to face them with the hint of a genuine smile peeking out from the corner of her mouth. The cocktail of yearning-shame-grief-want that churned in his stomach didn’t disappear, but in the wake of that smile it felt more manageable. Whatever – whoever – she had seen looking back, it had eased some of the tension from her frame. For that and that alone, he would sleep easier tonight.
“Okay,” she said decisively, taking one last sip from the half-empty bottle before placing it onto the bartop with a clink. “If I look like Commander Shepard, it’s out. Let’s make me into someone else.”
Kasumi was already frantically scribbling notes onto a datapad. “Do you have suggestions? Shorter styles are popular right now. We have dresses with beading, cutouts – oh, this one claims to be made from faux-maw skin, that’s certainly an attention-grabber–”
“Not short. Something that drags across the floor, I think.” There was still a bead of liquid clinging to her lips; Garrus repressed a sigh as she wiped it away with the back of her hand.
“With volume?” Kasumi asked.
“Sure, why not? Might as well use some of this Cerberus money to play dress up.”
The two of them moved to the couch, hovering over Kasumi’s omnitool as they researched ateliers on the Citadel, and he took it as his leave to exit. Spirits, he felt like he was stepping off of a battlefield. He had only come to the bar while he was waiting out the line for the showers. At least now they should be mostly empty, and he could turn down the temperature until the cold water helped him to banish the lingering specter of Shepard’s hands upon his skin.
But on his way out of the room, he paused. Thinking of his old Citadel apartment had opened the door to other long-forgotten things, and a distant memory, hazy with liquor and grief, floated to the surface of his mind. “Red,” he murmured.
Shepard’s head shot up. “Did you say something?”
He cleared his throat. “You should try red. For the dress, I mean. You know, instead of the black.”
“You’re an expert on colors too?”
I’m an expert in you.
But he couldn’t say that, any more than he could say that the sight of her in black reminded him too much of the way the human politicians had dressed at funeral. He swallowed the words and pretended he couldn’t feel the way they sat heavy in his stomach.
“Just trust me,” he finally said. “ No one would expect you in red.”
The last thing he saw before the door closed was her hesitant nod.
***
Time moved strangely when you lived on a warship.
There were weeks where Garrus felt like he never stopped moving. Recruitment missions turned into mercenary fights turned into endless ship upgrades, and on those days Garrus found himself falling into bed still in his undersuit, too tired to even dream. It was the kind of life he had fantasized about back at C-Sec; he was making a difference in the galaxy, a tangible one – what more could he ask for?
He knew better now. The important days were the ones that fell in between in missions, when he had nothing to do but sit back and let Joker steer the ship from one side of the galaxy to the others. Here, in the dark between stars, he had time to focus on the things that really mattered.
Things like spending time with Shepard.
Everything had changed that night in the bar. Shepard no longer haunted the ship like a ghost; now she flitted from room to room, laughing and smiling with the crew as if they were all lifelong friends. Everywhere she went, the Normandy came to life around her. Gardner’s food started to taste better; Miranda’s open hostility softened into sarcastic ribbing. The competition around who would secure a spot on the ground crew, something that Garrus had long been convinced would end in bodily harm, became little more than a light-hearted game. Despite the fact that he had watched her do it before, he still couldn’t believe what he was seeing. One day at a time, Shepard was turning the disparate group that made up the SR-2 into something like a family.
And his evenings, once entirely spent absorbed in the wiring and algorithms that made up the Normandy’s guts, were now spent more leisurely: up in Shepard’s cabin, where the two of them caught up on everything they had missed during their misspent years.
Sometimes they watched movies together – he always let her pick, even though she was just as likely to choose a nature documentary over something with more explosions than plot – and sometimes they sat in companionable silence, engrossed in the books she always insisted on buying whenever they ventured into a city. But on the restless days, when the outside world felt too close and the walls of Shepard’s cabin closed in around them, they found things to do with their hands. He installed a panel over her skylight while she made hats and scarves out of yarn; when he brought home a model of a turian cruiser that he found in a shop on Ilium, they painted and assembled it together.
He didn’t know what to expect tonight. Shepard had been strangely distant all day, replying to his messages with one or two word answers rather than their standard back and forth. Still, he refused to give in to worry, not when everything felt so right. Shepard was the Commander, after all; surely she was just busy.
Then the elevator deposited him in front of her locked cabin door, and he allowed himself a brief moment of concern.
“Shepard!” he called, banging his fist against the door. “You better be okay in there! If you aren’t–”
The door slid open before his hand could connect again.
“Easy, Garrus,” Shepard said, smiling shyly up at him from the bottom of the stairs that separated her living space from her work space. “I’m safe. I just wasn’t ready yet.”
He didn’t answer her. He couldn’t. The relief he had felt at seeing her had almost instantly crystallized into something he wasn’t sure he had the words to name. Because for the second time in as many months, Shepard was standing in front of him in a dress. And this was nothing – nothing – like the time before.
The dress that Garrus had seen Shepard wearing that night in Kasumi’s room had been sleek and simple, function over form. He had seen thousands like it on thousands of different people; if he hadn’t seen Shepard wearing it, he doubted he would have had an opinion of it at all.
This dress dared him to look away. He should have gotten lost in the exposed skin of Shepard’s shoulders and the dusting of freckles that trailed down from her neck to her clavicle – oh spirits, she was covered in them, how had he never noticed before? – but instead he found himself staring at the way the dress clung to the curves of her chest and stomach before it flared out towards the floor in a riotous explosion of color. The women in the old movies he had been fascinated with had never looked like this: so vibrant, so enticing, so alive.
He remembered Shepard asking Kasumi for a gown, but this…this…
Red. From top to bottom, the dress was red.
“Shepard, you– I mean– ”
She laughed nervously, a faint blush staining her cheek. “What do you think?”
He thought he was a fool for suggesting red in the first place. It got him all tangled up, made him feel completely unmoored in space and time. He was himself, the man who had survived Omega and was determined to make it count, but he was the old Garrus too – the one who had died with the Normandy even though his body had never managed to catch up. And both of them were staring at Shepard in wonder through the same set of eyes, completely overwhelmed with a sudden realization: that from the moment he had met her, the axis of his galaxy had been irrevocably altered. It had only taken losing her, then finding her, then watching her find herself again for him to realize it.
“Garrus,” Shepard whispered. “You’re staring. If I look bad, you can just–”
“You’re beautiful.”
“Oh,” she said, blushing even deeper and dropping her eyes to the floor.
He crossed her room in a handful of steps, finding himself at the top of the stairs before he had even consciously decided to move. He reached out with a trembling hand, gently grabbing her chin and easing it upwards until he could look into her eyes.
“You’re beautiful,” he said again. “You’re always beautiful.”
The nervous expression that she’d been wearing since he walked through the door bloomed into a genuine smile. “Yeah, well. The dress helps. A friend suggested the color.”
“Your friend sounds very wise.”
“He has his moments.”
With a start, Garrus realized that his hand still rested on Shepard’s face; he dropped it to his side with forced nonchalance, subvocals trilling all the while. He didn’t know what to do with his body. Shepard’s cabin, which had always seemed unnecessarily large, suddenly felt too small to contain him. His feelings were too big for a starship to handle. He needed a city; he needed a planet.
“Hey, are you okay?” Shepard asked. “You’re staring again.”
“I can’t help it,” he said dumbly. He rolled his shoulders back, as if the giddy feeling building in his chest was something he could shake off like a night of bad sleep. As if it was something he wanted to shake off at all. “Can I ask you something?”
“Yeah, Garrus. Anything.”
Can I kiss you? It was like calling her beautiful had opened a door that he hadn’t even been aware existed. Suddenly it wasn’t enough just to be near her – he wanted to run his fingers through the golden strands of her hair, wanted to know how her lips felt pressed against the unplated skin of his neck.
But it was too soon for that, no matter how much the beat of his heart sped up with his wanting. So for the first time in his life, he took a minute and thought before he spoke. And finally, in a quiet voice, he asked, “Are you happy, Shepard?”
She cocked her head to the side, considering. He was close enough to see the fine lines on her cheek where the orange glow of her cybernetics had faded to simple scarring; his hand twitched with his desire to trace them with his fingers.
Slowly, she nodded. “I’m not sure yet,” she said. “But I think I’m getting there.”
He grinned past the stiffness in his mandible. It didn’t move the way it used to, but Chakwas was convinced that it would get better in time. Up until now, he’d always had a hard time believing her. “Yeah,” he murmured. “Me too.”
Then she grabbed him by the hand, pulling him forward into her living space. “Come on,” she said, “You can pick a movie while I get this off.”
He was so busy focusing on the way her hand fit in his own (it shouldn’t have worked; she just had so many extra fingers) that he didn’t fully clock her words until she had deposited him on the couch. “Wait,” he said, “You don’t have to change. I mean, unless you want to.”
Shepard laughed, tossing her hair over her shoulder with a lightness he hadn’t seen– well, since the last time they had laughed together in his old Citadel apartment. “It’s a gown, Garrus. It’s not exactly meant for comfort.”
“It’s just one piece!” he exclaimed. Turian formalwear consisted of multiple parts, most of which were connected by chains and buttons and the rest of which were weighed down by medals. He found all of it unwieldy and overly formal, and consequently had made it a mission of his adult life to get out of any occasion that necessitated wearing it. So far, he had been successful, with one notable and unpleasant exception – the funeral of the woman standing before him, who was currently hiking up her elegant skirt while she made her way over to her wardrobe in search of more comfortable clothing.
She was wearing mismatched socks under her dress. The sight of it made his chest hurt.
“There was more, originally,” Shepard said. “A really cool bodice that went over the top. It looked like tech armor.”
Garrus imagined that, then forced a cough to disguise the keen that almost echoed unbidden from his throat. “But you didn’t like it?”
“Oh, I loved it. I just can’t get it on by myself.” She was already stepping into sweatpants, pulling them up under the skirt that cascaded around her. “Kasumi would probably help me, but I didn’t want to bother–”
“Let me do it,” Garrus said, nearly leaping to his feet. “I suggested the dress, I mean. I can help.”
Now that he was looking for it, he could watch the blush bloom on her her skin in real time. It started in her cheeks before climbing down her neck, ultimately settling on her chest amongst her numerous freckles.
“If you don’t mind,” she demurred. “It’s next to you. Just under the coffee table.”
He reached down, wrapping his hands around what looked at first glance like a cage made out of gold wire. It was shaped in a rough facsimile of the human female form, though it jutted out at the shoulders.
“These look like pauldrons,” Garrus said, running a finger over the sharp tips that would sit over Shepard’s arms. “It’s very turian.”
“It’s vintage human fashion, actually.” Shepard grinned. “If it were turian, there’d be a cape attached.”
“Yeah, yeah, very funny.” He turned the bodice over in his hands, examining the nearly hidden latches that would allow it to separate into two pieces. He saw the problem now: when the bodice was in one piece, the metal was too inflexible for Shepard to slip it over her head without constraining her arms. But the location of the latches that held the two pieces together were impossible for anyone but a hanar to reach on their own, at least while it was being worn.
“Come here,” he said, easing the bodice apart. “I figured it out.”
Shepard floated towards him, still ethereal in her gown despite the fact that she now wore sweatpants beneath it. “I knew you would,” she said. “Hand me the front?”
He could have. He should have. He and Shepard were already dancing too close to the edge of something he knew he wouldn’t recover from, and the opportunity to help her get into her golden armor already had his heart skittering in his chest.
But he never would have become Archangel if there wasn’t something deep inside him that liked to live recklessly.
“Just step into it,” he said instead, holding the front of the bodice out in front of him with hands that trembled. “I’ve got you.”
Slowly, so slowly, Shepard stepped in front of him. They were closer now than they had been on the stairs; if she leaned just slightly forward, she would be able to feel the subvocals that shuddered through his keel. He did his best to hold the bodice steady at the edges, but the gold mesh did nothing to stop his fingers from brushing over the warmth of her skin as she slid her arms through the holes beneath the pauldrons. Every touch was like a revelation; she was so much softer than he had ever imagined.
“How does it look?” she asked. The expression on her face was brand new to him — her eyes hooded, her pupils blown — but he found it even more beautiful than the way she looked in the gown.
“Turn around,” he said hoarsely. “Let me get the rest of it on.”
She did, holding the bodice to her front and rotating with a swish of her skirts that dragged the delicate fabric across his legs and revealed the most devastating detail of all: the dress was backless.
He froze, helpless to do anything in the wake of so much skin adorned with so many freckles. And she, always aware of what he was feeling even when they weren’t face to face, knew it.
“You don’t have to do this,” she said quietly, looking over her shoulder to face him. It put her face in profile: the bright slash of her eyebrows, the sharp jut of her nose. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
“You never could.” He placed his hands on her shoulders, pressing his thumbs into muscles that relaxed under his touch. “Turn around, Celine. I’ve got you.”
He waited until she was facing fully forward before brushing her hair over her shoulder, making sure to run his fingers over the open expanse of his back as he went. It was a matter of moments to pick up the back of the bodice from where it had been resting on the couch and hold it tight against her skin.
“Is this okay?” he asked.
“You’re breathing on my neck.”
“Okay. Do you hate that?”
She laughed, her shoulders jumping under his hands. “Just finish the job, Garrus.” And then, more quietly, “I don’t hate it if it’s you.”
He finished assembling the garment in focused silence. The right shoulder connected to the bodice with a confident snap; the left followed moments later. He moved his hands away gently, making sure that the metal didn’t dig into her skin.
“Okay,” he said quietly, forcing himself to take a half step backwards. His hands felt empty without her body beneath them. “You’re ready.”
She took a moment, breathing deeply and shaking her head slightly before striding forward with a walk that wasn’t her own. When she turned to face him, it was with an entirely different persona.
“The person Kasumi needs me to be is Alison Gunn,” she explained. “I’m a criminal. A rebel.”
And against all odds, Garrus could see it. The golden bodice made all of the difference. When she was just in the dress, she was the woman he had always known: colorful and eye-catching, bold and resplendent. But with the armor on?
This was a woman guarded, a woman who presented themselves a threat first and a person second. She was sexy, she was dangerous. She was…
“Don’t ever tell Kasumi I said this,” Garrus murmured, “But you were right. You don’t need a disguise.”
“Are you sure?” Shepard asked, dropping her shoulders and resuming a familiar posture. “I ordered a wig from some weird store on Omega. I wanted to make sure I covered all of my bases.”
“You’re perfect,” he said. “Just as you are.”
Her smirk was cut off by EDI’s unwelcome chime. “Apologies, Commander,” the AI intoned from overhead. “Operative Lawson has requested your presence. She will be at your room in approximately ten minutes.”
Garrus winced; Shepard groaned. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I told her she could come to me in an emergency–”
“It’s fine!” he said, already getting to his feet and moving towards the door. “It’s fine, Shepard. I understand.”
“Do you?” With one hand cocked on her hip and the other fisted at her side, she had stepped so seamlessly into the role of the Commander that even the ballgown didn’t undercut her. “I’m not chasing you out of here, Garrus. It’s– I just–”
“I’ll come back later!” No matter how calm he meant to sound, his voice came out shrill and panicked. “It’s fine, I promise.”
“No, Garrus–”
He was already nearly to the doorway. “It’s fine,” he said again, stopping just past the threshold. “It’s fine.” Then he remembered the complicated latching on the bodice, the way it sat too far out of reach for even the most flexible human arms. “Wait, the dress–”
The taste of ozone hit his tongue before he noticed the fine blue sheen that covered Shepard’s form. With a crash, the two pieces of the bodice slammed into the ground, electric with spent biotic energy. “I got it,” she said, disappointed. “I’ll see you later? You can pick the movie.”
Then the doors of her cabin slid shut in front of him, leaving him with one last image: Shepard, still faintly outlined in a biotic glow, absolutely radiant in the red gown he had suggested.
He pressed his head to the elevator wall as it took him back to his floor, his hands curling fruitlessly in on themselves. Whenever she was done with Miranda and she invited him back up, he was sure she would be covered in civvies from head to toe. If he saw the gown again, it would be a momentary thing: a glimpse before she left on the mission, and only if he was lucky enough to wander up to the deck at the appropriate time.
But her last words echoed in his head, in time with the beat of his pulse and the memory of her skin under his fingers. She had asked him to pick the movie.
He pulled up his omnitool, readying a list of the the old human films that had acted as a lifeboat when he was too lost in grief to even think about swimming. She hadn’t given him the opportunity to explain what the red dress meant, but–
“Vakarian?” Miranda asked, standing awkwardly at attention at the bottom of the elevator.
“Hey, Miranda,” he said, lost in thought as he wandered off towards the battery.
It was okay. It would be okay. He would show her the old films, and then maybe, maybe–
He smiled. He was alive; Shepard was alive.
He had time to tell her.
