Chapter Text
Garrus was firmly under the impression that nothing could drag him back to police work. Between the utter failure of the Archangel project, and the tail end of his time at C-Sec, he’d been certain that his crime-fighting days were behind him. Trust that Shepard would bring him the only case that could possibly change his mind.
He was getting in some target practice in the Normandy’s armory when Shepard walked up to him, pistol in her hand.
“Do you have a minute?” she asked, securing the sound mufflers over her ears. “A mission’s come across my desk and I’m trying to decide whether it’s worth my time.”
Garrus lined up his shot. Jack had scribbled some obscenities on the paper target: he fired right through a big pink FUCK YOU MIRANDA. “Fire away.”
Shepard lifted her pistol and shot the target square through the head, like you were supposed to, completely ignoring the swear words. Typical her. “What do you know about the Vardos family?”
His eyes widened with surprise. He didn’t know what he was expecting her to ask about, but that was very much turian business. “What don’t I know? They’re the biggest crime syndicate in Hierarchy space. Drug-running, extortion rackets, kidnapping, blackmail, murder – and that’s on a good day. But no one can touch them.” One of the reasons his father transferred to C-Sec was because, when he was a cop on Palaven, he actually collared one of them. “They have a code, of sorts, and a strict hierarchy, but they’re utterly ruthless.” He reloaded his gun. “Why?”
Shepard shot the target again, this time through the heart. Again, entirely procedural. “I got approached by another Spectre. Apparently they’ve finally caught Ursula Banks.” Banks was a big crime boss on the edges of Council space.
Garrus shrugged. “One less scumbag to worry about. What does this have to do with the Vardoses?”
“I was getting to it. Over the course of her interrogation, Banks revealed that she was on her way to meet with a Vardos lieutenant on Omega. She said they were seeking to entrench their presence in Council space.”
That threw Garrus. “Entrench? Meaning…”
“They’re already there?” Shepard fired her pistol a few more times, just to show the target who was really in charge. “Yeah, that’s what the Spectres think, too.”
This was huge. If the Vardos family was operating under Council jurisdiction, then the Spectres would be able to intervene. Maybe even put a stop to their operations. Turian law enforcement was powerless against them, but this…
“I’d say this is definitely worth pursuing,” he told her.
Shepard smirked. “I thought you might say that.” She reloaded her pistol and fired again. “I agree.”
If Garrus was being completely honest, while he had always liked Shepard, he’d initially written her off as something of a goody-two-shoes, especially for a Spectre. Everyone kept mooning over the big hero of Elysium, and she never tolerated so much as a single crack about hitting suspects. But he hadn’t been a part of her team long before he realised that, although she cared deeply about right and wrong, she didn’t give two shits about the rules. They’d started to get along a lot better once he’d figured that out.
They’d been friendly, on the SR-1, but not any more than she was with any of the other crew members. Certainly a lot less friendly than she’d been with Alenko. Things were different now that she was working for Cerberus. Although she’d clearly not been happy with him for the way he’d gone about his work as Archangel, Garrus suspected that she was getting a bit more comfortable with moral greyness. She still maintained her upright demeanor, her keen desire for justice, which was probably what drew her to the Vardos case, but Shepard was also starting to value his perspective more. Maybe it was only because he was one of the few familiar faces on a ship full of people she couldn’t entirely trust, but she confided in him, asked for his opinion. Sometimes, he thought, she was shaping up to be best friend material.
Garrus turned to her. “So, what’s the plan?”
She pulled a face. “They want me to go undercover.” Shepard put away her gun and pulled out her datapad and showed him a picture of Banks. “Apparently there’s meant to be a sort of resemblance. Pale-skinned, red hair. And I’m the only person of the right species and gender that the Spectres have any access to.”
Garrus peered at the holo. He didn’t think they looked that much alike: then again, turians didn’t have a great eye for human faces. But the physical resemblance wasn’t the biggest issue he had with accepting this plan. “Wait, they’re asking you to pretend to be Ursula Banks? You? The girl scout?”
Shepard sneered at him. “Not just me. Apparently she never goes anywhere without a turian bodyguard. They offered to send me another Spectre, but I told them to save the travel allowance. I have someone who fits the bill.” She leaned against the wall. “That is, if you’re up for it.”
Firing his final shot, Garrus grinned. He felt ready to get back in the saddle.
“I’m up for it,” he said. Bringing down the Vardos family? That’d be ten times what he accomplished in Omega, easy. Garrus put his gun down, pivoted his attention to Shepard. “The only question I have is, are you?”
She raised an eyebrow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Garrus lifted his hands, like you did when you were about to be attacked by something you didn’t want to hurt you. “Shepard, you’re good at what you do, and you get shit done. But I know you like to walk away from operations without getting your hands dirty. The Vardoses don’t work like that. The opposite, in fact. If you’re going to take them on, you’re going to need a killer instinct.”
Shepard’s lips pressed together in a straight line. “I know what I’m doing. But your way isn’t going to work, either.” Garrus rolled his eyes. “I’m serious. We’re looking for intel, not to blow off people’s kneecaps. Or worse. If you’re going to come with me on this, I need your word that there’s not going to be any Archangel shit.”
She stopped him from killing Sidonis. She was the only person who could’ve possibly prevented it. The only goody-two-shoes in the galaxy who had ever had the slightest effect on Garrus’s behavior.
“Deal,” Garrus said, holding out his hand. Shepard shook on it.
They’d head to Omega first thing in the morning.
---
“I have finished decrypting Banks’s datapad, Commander,” EDI announced.
Shepard didn’t really expect to find much on it – only a real idiot would keep too much sensitive information about their criminal empire on their personal device, and anyway the Spectres had provided her with a thorough debriefing about everything she’d need to know going into the negotiations – but it would probably be useful, for background if nothing else. She’d never had to impersonate someone before, and even though this was the first time Banks would be meeting with the Vardos family, she didn’t want to slip up on anything too obvious.
She resented, a bit, Garrus’s girl scout crack. When he’d first made it, she’d asked him what, exactly, that meant in Palaveni. The translators they had were top of the line, but it was normal for it to struggle with idioms, and she didn’t want to get mad for no reason. It turned out that it had actually been a one-to-one concept: an officious youth leader, colloquially used to refer to someone who was a stickler for the rules.
That offended her somewhat. She’d never been one for following orders blindly, but she also didn’t like the way he preferred to operate. Shoot first, ask questions never. But maybe she’d need a touch of that attitude, if she was going to successfully impersonate a criminal.
The datapad was sparse, to say the least. Few messages, little in terms of documents. That immediately made Shepard wonder why there was so much encryption. What on Earth could there possibly be to hide? The only thing on there was a rather sizeable photo album. She clicked on it the second before she thought oh, wait, that might be personal.
She regretted her misclick immediately. Shepard let out a sharp bark of surprise and tossed the datapad to the side, in shock.
“EDI,” she said, flatly, once she’d recovered.
“Yes?”
“You could’ve warned me about the turian porn.”
She’d never seen one naked before.
“I don’t believe it’s pornography,” EDI said. Shepard assumed that she thought she was being helpful. “They’re unique images.”
“So… it’s her boyfriend or something?”
“One of them, anyway.”
Shepard only had to flick through the pictures to see what she meant.
Ah, shit, she thought. The worst part about it is that she didn’t see a way that she couldn’t tell Garrus.
His eyes went wide as he examined the photos. “That’s… a lot of turians,” he said, diplomatically. “So, what, do we think these are her bodyguards?” Shepard nodded. Garrus grimaced. “Dipping her pen in the company ink.”
“I guess when you’re the head of a criminal empire, you don’t exactly have to worry about an HR complaint. Not that I have much room to judge on that front.” It’d been a while since Horizon. Since Kaidan had made it clear that he wanted nothing more to do with her.
Garrus looked up at her. “What you had with Alenko isn’t anything like this,” he said, unexpectedly seriously.
Although Shepard appreciated the reassurance, she wasn’t so sure about that. “I should never have dated a subordinate,” she told him. “I’ve never done anything like that before.” She hadn’t talked to anyone about her relationship with Kaidan, but she talked to Garrus a lot, these days.
Her and Kaidan had just sort of happened, and then, just as suddenly, ended. She’d tried to convince him that she wasn’t Cerberus, not really, but he simply didn’t believe her, and that was that.
Garrus was a reckless hothead who drove her nuts half the time, but he was a surprisingly empathetic listener. “Was it love or something?”
Shepard shook her head. “He’s a good guy and I liked him, but it wasn’t more than that. I’d understand it more if it was. I think… I dunno. It was the situation. Choosing him over Ashley. The probable court martial. The end of the world. It made it all feel very serious and important, when I don’t know that it was.” She sort of scuffed her boot along the floor. “Lesson learned. No more co-workers.”
Unlike the Alliance, Spectres weren’t subject to rules about fraternization. Shepard was certain it hadn’t affected her judgment in any way, not even during Virmire. If it’d been Ashley that needed saving instead of him, she was sure she would’ve done it, attraction be damned. But it felt wrong, and that had always been more important to Shepard than the exact contents of an employee handbook.
If Kaidan hadn’t understood that who she worked for had nothing to do with her decision-making, and never had, well. He clearly couldn’t have been the person for her.
“As someone who has gotten involved with too many co-workers, I'd say that’s pretty smart.” Garrus shook his head. “Anyway, this,” he said, indicating the datapad, “is some kind of fetish. I’m honestly insulted.”
Shepard regarded him warily. “You do realise this doesn’t change anything about the mission. It might be that we have to pretend to be… whatever Banks and her bodyguards are.”
Garrus considered the pictures. “Uh, I don’t think I’m going to pass muster if that’s the case. She tends to like them… pretty.”
She snickered. “Are you not pretty?”
She’d thought it was another one of his jokes. She saw his face move, falling a little, and she realised, with some surprise, that it wasn’t. “Not particularly,” he said, quietly.
They all joked about how unattractive turians were, but Shepard honestly hadn’t realised that it might hit home for him. What could possibly be wrong with him? By turian standards, she meant. She couldn’t tell what the difference was, between him and the Banks collection. Apart from the scar. Was he still self-conscious about it?
“Well,” she said, trying to introduce some levity, “maybe the rocket to the face will be helpful on that front. You know, underneath all of the scar tissue and the cybernetics you could’ve once been Mr. Palaven.” He laughed at that, which made her feel a lot better. Shepard had a lot of skills, but one of the ones she was proudest of was her way with people.
“Anyway, who knows,” she continued. “It’s probably a big secret. She used a lot of passwords.”
---
Unlike Shepard, Garrus wasn’t going into this pretending to be someone he wasn’t. Or, he was, but he was using his real identity. There wasn’t time to cover his facial markings. Besides, he’d been missing from C-Sec for two years. It wasn’t implausible that he’d pick up work in private security.
It was significantly less plausible that he’d be anyone’s idea of eye candy, but hey, it might not come to that. For now, all he had to do was hold a gun and glower, and Garrus definitely knew how to do that.
They landed on Omega, Garrus in his armor, Shepard in non-descript civvies. They hadn’t known how Ursula Banks dressed herself, so she had gone as neutral as possible, with a white shirt and black pants. The Normandy would be off scanning planets: they didn’t need Shepard at the helm for that, and it was best to make it seem like she was somewhere else.
They had been informed to meet the Vardos lieutenant in one of the more garish hotels on Omega. Garrus was surprised. The Vardoses were typically known for their restraint, not flashing their ill-gotten gains. They were basically old money, as far as gangsters went. But that surprise vanished when the lieutenant arrived.
Aptian Vardos was flanked by two bodyguards. Aptian was young, maybe in his early twenties. His facial markings were a deep blue, almost black. Rumor had it that they were mixed with the blood of each Vardos’s first kill. His clothes were flashy, and his voice was loud. Garrus could tell because he was aggressively shouting into his omnitool, “I don’t give a fuck about what the supply chains in the Terminus systems are like, I’m not using shit-tier carapace scrub!”
Shepard turned her eyes to Garrus, suspiciously. “This is the fearsome Vardos lieutenant?” she asked, under her breath.
Obviously, Shepard was as bad with turian faces as he was with humans’, because as Aptian drew closer, it became apparent to Garrus that he had been sent on this mission for exactly one reason: he was very much Banks’s type. Extremely pretty.
Garrus tried to warn her, but before he knew it Aptian and his men were there. Aptian grinned down at Shepard and said, “Ah, the famous Ursula. Nice to finally see you in the flesh.”
Then – and if Garrus hadn’t seen it with his own two eyes, he’d never have believed it – he smacked Commander Shepard right on the ass.
She was clearly too appalled to respond, which was probably the only reason Aptian kept his hand. Garrus squared up to the guy and growled, “Hey!”
Aptian blinked, disbelievingly, at Garrus, like he’d never been yelled at before. And who knew, maybe he hadn’t. He returned his gaze to Shepard, who was still processing what was happening. “Hey, Ursula, you’re not offended, are you? It’s just I remember what you wrote when you asked to meet with me.” He winked. “Anything with a fringe?”
OK, so Ursula did not keep her fetish a secret. This would make things more complex than Garrus had been hoping.
Shepard blinked, once, then she did something that truly floored him. She let out a little laugh. One that was downright alluring. Garrus nearly fell over with shock. He’d only ever really known her as his commanding officer, but he was certain she’d never laughed at Kaidan like that. At least not while Garrus was there to witness it. It was not the laugh of a girl scout, that’s for sure.
“Stand down, Vakarian,” she said, her face pleasant, her eyes firmly fixed on Aptian. “Please forgive my bodyguard. He gets jealous, and when he gets jealous, he gets shooty.”
Garrus had never truly seen the Shepard charm in action before. He was aware, perfectly aware, that she was considered attractive for a human, and that plenty of people liked her. Liara had been heartbroken when she’d chosen Kaidan (if Shepard had noticed Liara’s crush, she hadn’t let on). But Garrus had never exactly noticed it himself. She was human, and he wasn’t into them, and it had always been that simple.
It was sort of strange being so close to it, though. Like the chill you got when you walked past a door when it was freezing outside. No matter how warm it was inside the building, you still had to shiver.
Aptian smirked triumphantly at Garrus, then turned his attention back to Shepard. “I have to admit, I was hoping you’d dress a little less… practically.” He was leering at her. Garrus didn’t like it, and he certainly hoped Shepard didn’t either, but she didn’t slip for a second.
Shepard did it again, the alluring laugh thing. Garrus wondered that he’d never heard it before. He was sure that anything, a krogan, a thresher maw, a Reaper, would bow down before it. They should probably discuss it in their strategy planning.
“Oh these? These are my travelling clothes,” she said, and did she actually toss her hair? She looked up at the mobster with a downright flirtatious gaze. “I have others.”
Aptian grinned. “Well, my people will escort you to your room. I’ll let you settle in before we start… negotiating.” He leaned in for a kiss. The only thing that convinced Garrus that this was, actually, in fact still Shepard was the moment of panic on her face before she thought to press her hand to his mouth. She tilted her head towards Garrus.
“Shooty. Remember?”
Garrus wasn’t a terribly good actor, so it was probably fortunate for him that he utterly, genuinely loathed this Aptian guy. Hopefully, it would pass for jealousy.
Vardos stepped back. “I’ll see you tomorrow to begin our discussions.” Somehow, he made even that seem lascivious.
Garrus narrowed his eyes. Gripped his gun a smidge tighter. He was protective of her – it was his job, and she was in a dangerous situation. That was natural. If it read as possessive, that was just fine.
And if he put his hand on Shepard’s back on the way out, well. It turned out everyone knew about Banks’s bodyguards’ other duties. They didn’t want Aptian to suspect anything was amiss.
---
They were escorted to their hotel suite, and obviously there was only one room, with only one bed. Obviously. Because today hadn’t been humiliating enough.
Shepard sighed and put her bag down on the bed. She’d have to find an hour to go shopping, somehow. She hadn’t really packed for sexpionage. She’d never even thought about sexpionage.
“What was that all about?” Garrus asked, a little gruffly. “You can’t possibly be considering…” He trailed off, apparently struggling as much with the concept as she was.
Shepard shrugged. She tried to be nonchalant, because if she made it seem like a big deal then it would immediately become one. “If I let him think I might fuck him, he’s going to let his guard down and make mistakes. I might be able to get access to places I can’t otherwise.” She looked over at Garrus and he still seemed sceptical. “It’s an advantage. One we didn’t know we had.”
“Well, the only problem there, Shepard, is that eventually he’s going to expect you to make good. And mobsters don’t historically deal with rejection well.” He started to remove his armor, like she’d seen him do a million times on the Normandy. “I assume you’re not, um. Planning on taking one for the team?”
If Shepard felt embarrassed about that, there was no reason to let him know. “Definitely not.” She shrugged. “I’ll figure out how to play it. Anyway, thanks to Ursula, we don’t have a choice. I bet she’s laughing her ass off on the Citadel right now.” Bitch.
The hotel, somewhat surprisingly, came with a gun rack. Garrus put away his rifles. “Well, just be careful.” He didn’t say anything for a while, then he asked, “So. Does the Alliance… train you? For this sort of thing?”
Shepard didn’t understand the question at first.
“It seems a little underhanded, for them,” Garrus clarified. “Didn’t think an organisation that produced a woman like you would go in for honeypots.”
“Oh!” Shepard said. She shook her head. “I mean, I don’t know. Maybe.” She remembered reading old spy fiction, stuff about sparrows and hawks – agents trained in seduction. “If they have them, then they must’ve thought my talents lay elsewhere.”
She hadn’t thought, exactly, about what she was doing. She’d never been a teasing type: but it was, weirdly, easier when you didn’t mean it at all. Shepard tried not to think too much about what that might say about her.
Garrus muttered something under his breath.
“What?”
“I said, you’re not doing a bad job.” He smiled facetiously. “You know. For an amateur.”
Shepard didn’t know what to make of that. She, eventually, shrugged. “I thought I was about to die when he tried to go in for the kiss. If I was Ursula and they sent out this guy to negotiate with me, I’d be insulted.”
“They probably didn’t choose him for his brains.” Garrus started to unpack. “Anyway, the final decision won’t be with him. The Vardoses like to send their junior lieutenants out for the first rounds of negotiations, to give them experience, but I expect once the initial details have been hammered out they’ll send someone who wasn’t picked because of their face to make sure it’s all OK.”
Shepard considered this new information. Felt a little less offended on Banks’s behalf, although she still didn’t see much difference between Aptian and Garrus. Was it the shape of the mandibles or something? “So we should really do our best to get out of here while we’re still dealing with the pretty idiot.”
“Ideally.” Garrus turned to her. “We should probably talk logistics. Of how this is going to work.” Shepard nodded and encouraged him to go on. He returned to his pack, pulling out his clothes and putting them away. “We’re going to have to pretend to be involved, but I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
Oh. Shepard hadn’t thought about that. Where to draw the line? After all, this operation was only going to go on for a few days and after that, they’d be back on the Normandy preparing for the Collectors, and she really couldn’t deal with crossed wires. Not with Garrus, who’d become so important to the mission. And, she was happy to admit, personally. They were friends, and she’d never had many of them. Not real ones.
Professional. They could do this. They were adults. It’d be fine. “What you did, touching my back. That was fine. Nothing between the waist and the knee. I assume the same goes for you.” Garrus nodded, still not looking at her. “Not the, uh. Breasts.” Would’ve been perfect if not for the uh. Her heart was pounding with mortification. “We might have to kiss. If it’s important to the cover.” Kissing was practically nothing, everyone knew that, once you got past a certain age. She was sure that applied to turians as well.
“Yeah,” Garrus said, in a strangled voice, sounding, if anything, slightly annoyed that there were no more clothes to put away. “That’s all right.”
An awful thought occurred to her. She didn’t want to voice it, but she felt like she had to. “If I have to kiss Aptian, and I haven’t kissed a turian before, do you think he’ll be able to tell?”
His shoulders tightened. “Probably.”
Their eyes met. The solution to their conundrum was obvious.
Garrus sighed, resigned, and turned to face her. He was still in his underarmor. Even if she had been attracted to turians – which she didn’t think she was – it wasn’t a very sexy look. Grey from use more than design, baggy in all the wrong places. But she flashed back to the pictures on Ursula’s database, and suddenly Shepard realised that she had at least an educated guess of what he might be like underneath, when she never had before.
Shepard tried stuffing that thought into a tiny little box and shoving it to the back of her mind. But he kept getting closer.
“Are you sure?” he said, his voice more exasperated than concerned. “It’s gonna be weird.”
“Of course it’s going to be weird,” she said, more bluntly than she’d intended, “but we don’t have another option.”
He smirked. “Ah, the words every turian’s dying to hear.” She laughed, and for a moment she felt better about this. But then Garrus put his hands on her face, and she didn’t know what to feel.
He stood very still. His expression was kinda nervous. “I’m just gonna…”
“Whenever you’re ready.”
He hesitated, for less than a moment. Then he made a move.
Shepard realised that she hadn’t known what to expect, before he started. She’d been Alliance her whole life; her parents had served, and then so had she. Before she’d become a Spectre, she’d had little exposure to aliens, other than in vids. For all she knew, what turians called kissing could be anything, anything at all.
Garrus pressed his face to hers – first forehead to forehead, then rubbing his mandibles against her cheek. If someone had described it to her a few moments ago, she would’ve guessed it wouldn’t really do anything for her. She was surprised to find that it did.
She did her best to respond in kind, but through force of habit she defaulted to kissing his face. His mouth, she sensed, wouldn’t be the best place for it, but her lips moved over his jaw, his mandibles. She’d only meant to do this for a moment, but she felt his hand slide down her back. Her eyes drifted shut.
They continued, like that, the only sounds that of their breathing, for a lot longer than was strictly necessary for research purposes. Eventually Garrus drew away. Shepard’s first impulse, from the very back of her lizard brain, was to pull him back down for more. But then she remembered herself.
Weird would’ve been better. A lot better.
“I’m gonna go put my pajamas on,” Shepard said, grabbing them from the bed and hightailing it to the bathroom.
It was purely a biological reaction, Shepard told herself. Every ancient part of her brain was wired towards reacting this way. Maybe not to a turian, specifically, but in general. It just an unfortunate accident that it was Garrus.
A kiss meant nothing. Less than nothing.
The image of him naked sprung, like a jack, from the box she’d shoved it in.
When she left the bathroom, Garrus had changed into his own nightclothes. “Are you all right to share the bed,” he asked, too neutrally, “or do you want me to sleep on the floor?”
He was right. Best to move past it. “Sharing’s fine. If it gets awkward, we can always do top and tail.”
Garrus’s head snapped up in shock. Right. Idioms. Maybe the translator had rendered it into something dirty? Shepard clarified, “I can sleep with my feet up by your head, I mean.”
He relaxed. “Oh. I’m sure it won’t come to that.”
Shepard wasn’t quite so certain, but telling him that would make it real, and she didn’t want it to be. She was Cerberus now, whether she liked it or not, and that meant there were no rules, not really, but it still felt weird. He was her subordinate. He was her friend.
She knew it’d be wrong, to let the initial spark of attraction spiral out of control. It’d been bad enough with Kaidan; she sensed that this would be worse. Still, she kind of wished she had a handbook, if only to be 100% sure.