Squiggly Squid

Niccy is in Garrus’s secure hold, dangling over three inches of fresh snowfall, his mandibles wide, mouth tight.

“It’s ok buddy,” Garrus soothes. 

Niccy kicks and trills. He’s cocooned in four warm, thick layers. His scarf covers his mouth and nose, his beanie is pulled low. Two pairs of socks. But turians don’t like the cold.

Garrus inches him down, and as soon as Niccy’s tiny boot touches the powdery snow he tenses. “Shit!” he says with startled eyes. 

Jane laughs. 

Garrus gasps, then scowls. “He learned that from you.”

“Me? No he didn’t.”

“I don’t curse in English, mela.” 

Shepard and Garrus had scrambled out of the mansion as shots rang out all around them. Garrus practically threw her on Mako's back before he jumped up onto Mantis, and the two rode until the hills turned rosy under dawn's creeping light.

The dress Kasumi had put her in had torn at some point, and it seemed intent on fully dissolving by midmorning. Apparently the damn thing had been designed so that she couldn't wear any undergarments with it, and there were stripes of red scrapes where her skin had pressed against the saddle for hours. Her knees were exposed by the rapidly fraying hem and while it was pointless to perform modesty for a man who'd already been between her legs, she didn't care to let the sun char her already-chapped skin.

She let gravity pull her off the saddle. Garrus hopped down (the bastard had been able to wear pants for the ride), and began setting up camp as she finally slipped on the pair of buckskin trousers she'd stored away in her pack. A sigh escaped her lips as she felt the suede hug her hips; not nearly as soft against her ass as the silk, but much more familiar against her rough skin. The shirt slid over her shoulders and she rolled her shoulders back until she felt like a soldier again.

She nearly jumped out of her boots when she turned and walked straight into Garrus' now-very-familiar keel. The man's face was covered in red dust and left him looking as though his iron plates had rusted.

City slicker, didn't even pull up his bandana.

"Can a girl get one moment of peace, Vakarian?" Her voice came out creaky and she remembered that she hadn't had a bandana to cover her face, either. Shit.

"You nearly died back there." His eyes were wild and bloodshot. Three-fingered hands landed on her arms and he grasped her like he still wasn't sure she was in front of him.

She did dodge a bullet or two, she had to give him that. Still she shrugged. His hands moved with her shoulders. "Wouldn't be the first time, now, would it?"

He'd been running his eyes up and down her figure, no doubt to check if she was injured. Not one days ago he'd traced those same lines with his eyes, then hands, then tongue - she shivered at the memory.

"I need you," and oh, wasn't that a sentence to hear, but he kept talking, "to stay safe."

"I'm fine, ain't I? Don't I have a big, strong turian watching my back?"

He stepped closer, his voice approaching a growl. "Shepard."

For all that ferocity, Shepard felt his fingers trembling against her skin. It occurred to her that he might actually care, and that thought nearly scared her as much as the thought that she might care back. "Fine. I'll be more careful."

His hands slid down her sleeve, briefly holding her fingers as he made to slip away. There was that wildfire again. She grabbed his hand as it was just about to leave hers and she tugged. He nearly spun back into her arms, but stopped himself on the toes of his boots. Blue eyes met green.

Her lips moved. Shepard liked to think it was of their own accord, because she didn't care to take ownership of what they said. "Kiss me." She said in her hoarse, dusty voice.

short form writers look at people writing 100k+ fics as though this is some sort of talent given as part of a fae bargain, that the commitment required shows some sort of ungodly mental fortitude.

This is a little spoiler... but damn. Here it is.

Once again Vero and Liu.

15. when one stops the kiss to whisper “I’m sorry, are you sure you-” and they answer by kissing them more

It's been two weeks since we are on the Citadel, two weeks of therapy, two weeks of support and healing… two weeks of Liu being extremely careful around me. 

Yes, what happened to me was horrible, though less than what happened when I was a kid. Yes, I’m still afraid to go outside and a little jumpy. But I know there is no safer place in this galaxy than his arms.

And I’m so fucking done. I will not let this break me, I’m done being a victim.

I left Lucy asleep in the bedroom and tiptoed my way to the living room. Liu was dozing off on the couch, datapad forgotten and slowly sliding down his chest. 

Normally I would put a blanket on him and let him sleep. But that was not my goal, he had been too restrained as if he could do something that would shatter me.

Climbing on his lap, I left the datapad on the coffee table, his eyes opened and locked onto mine growing wide as I kissed him, gentle at first, then growing hungry and desperate, one hand reaching that soft spot under his fringe and the other opening his tunic.

His hands went up, gently pushing my shoulder, breaking the kiss, resting his crest careful on my forehead, crimson worried eyes looking at me seeking reassurance only to be met with a glint of frustration and a lot of heat.

“I’m sorry. Are you sure you…”

Another kiss silenced him, pouring all the things I couldn’t say. 

Yes, I want this. No, I’m not afraid of you, I never will. Yes, I need this.

Moving around while kissing, stumbling over things, pushing each other back against the wall/onto the bed. Kissing so desperately that their whole body curves into the other person’s.

(Of course, my dear. 😌 I must say, they kinda belong together, so I'm treating them like one and the same. Just changing the order.)

CW: dressing an elk; mentions of organs and blood and stuff.

(Again, spoilers. This might be a follow up from the previous Dani one I did. I'm also sorry about how fucking long this got too. I guess I really enjoy buildup.)

Krogan are repeatedly shown to not be able to control their numbers, and when there's too many in a limited space, EDI says they become aggressive. Tuchanka was a nuclear wasteland before the genophage. Resources are limited, so what's the plan there? Tuchanka can't support a large population.

At the end of the war, every species will be vying to restore colonies, but resources again will be limited. Wrex (if alive) will outright say that he's already pressuring the Council for new worlds before the war is even over. If you destroy the cure, you can use Wrex's pulling out of krogan forces to infer that he was holding their contribution over the Council's heads.

Both he and Bakara say they'll lead the krogan into a diplomatic future, but that caters way too much to some Great Man/Woman ideology. I don't see two people leading the 2.1 billion krogan on Tuchanka alone, much less the ones also scattered across the galaxy.

"You could have gone with him," she said, smoke wafting in the general direction she imagined Saren to be hiding out, somewhere deep in the deserts protected by the shroud the geth cast over him, with nothing to keep him company except the charred remains of the beacon.

"I could have."

"And you could go back to your own people. But you're here, with more humans than you've probably seen alive this whole cycle. Alliance, top ambassadors, an admiral." It was layered just underneath her voice so plainly, she suddenly understood decades of human discussion around subvocals. She wanted to hurl all of it right in his face, and the cherry on top would be that in three months none of it would matter anyway. None of it would matter, and yet now she could still choose to be unfair. She sounded like a child— not that she ever got to be one of those, anyways.

He took it all, and didn't even blink. Come to think of it, she didn't think she had ever seen him blink before. It was all blue eyes, shockingly cold, like an ice pick breaking her skin. She saw someone she was conditioned to hate, she saw someone she could have left bleeding out in a ravine. She saw the balcony, the sun setting over Victorious, and all of the things he tried— he tried— to say to her without actually saying any of it.

"I think…" Garrus said, his voice of the very edge of a game of tug of war, frayed and threatening to veer into territory very much uncharted, "you should have died a dozen times this past week. You haven't, and it's not for lack of trying. That beacon, it should have killed you. The geth ship, the husk, Saren, all of it. You took it all like it was nothing, woke up like it was a nap with a bad dream. I'm not a religious person, but I think that it has to be some sign that you're the only one out of the lot of them still standing. And when we make it to the Citadel—"

"If."