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"This is a kiss," she tells him, and she presses her lips against his mouth, careful to avoid the edges sharp enough to cut.
They're in her quarters, him on the couch and her on his lap; he's brushing up on human courtship customs, because with the suicide mission over and done with, he's got all the time in the galaxy.
Garrus hums against her lips -- soft lips, very sensitive and easily damaged; humans are very strange -- and feels them curve into an unseen smile. He thinks that kissing is not altogether unpleasant.
"And what's it for?" he asks when she pulls away. Shepard shrugs, but her face is still fixed in a soft smile.
"Affection. Physical contact. Mostly it's to express... er, fondness, without actually saying it."
"What's wrong with just saying it?" he asks. For a species that likes to charge into combat guns blazing, human courting rituals are incredibly roundabout.
She laughs. "Actions speak louder than words, they say."
"Who says?"
"Oh, you know." She waves a hand around vaguely. "People."
"What people?" he asks, insistent.
"Oh, forget about the people," she says, her tone cross but her expression fond. "It just feels nice, alright?"
"Okay," he relents. "A kiss." And he presses his mouth to hers, closed, careful not to cut. "Is it like that for everyone?"
She shakes her head. "No. That was a very simple kiss. Sometimes there's biting--"
"I'd just hurt you," he says. "My fangs are very sharp."
"--and sometimes," she says, talking pointedly over him. "There's tongue. And making out."
"Making what out?" he asks.
"Just... making out. Trading spit, and whatever."
"That sounds a little unhygienic," he points out. "And deadly. For us, I mean. Because of the--"
"Incompatible DNA, yes, I know." She snorts an unhappy laugh. "Evolution is a bitch."
And she looks so forlorn that one of his talons finds one of her hands of its own accord. Hand-holding; a common gesture of comfort and one of the few courtship practices turians and humans (and other species) share. She lays her head upon his shoulder as her fingers wind between and around his claws.
And then he looks down at their intertwined analogous anatomies and realizes that somehow that makes it worse; the alien shape of her hand drives it home: her two middle fingers slotted between his, her pinky and pointer abnormally stretched apart by his thicker digits, her thumb looking so small and slim as it traces the back of his dewclaw.
It's a fitting summary of them, of their relationship: she's too much, and he's not enough, and he'll give it his all but there'll always be an excess of her he can't hold.
Selfish, he chastises himself. What does his happiness matter in the face of hers?
"Shepard," he begins carefully. "Now that the suicide mission's over, you could have anyone you want."
"I have him," she says, matter-of-fact.
He thinks he could love her, just for that. Maybe he already does.
And he thinks: maybe, maybe, she's beaten him there.
"But don't you think you should go for someone a little more--"
A little more levo, a little more human, a little more not-Archangel-not-Turian-Rebel-not-washed-up-CSec-tired-of-the-rules--
A little less not-worthy.
"No," she says, resolute.
"But--"
"No," she says, and then she curls up into herself, tucking in her knees and pressing her forehead against his neck, her arms snaking their way around his torso.
Garrus holds very, very still, some long-buried predator instinct shouting alarm at being caught in a strangle-hold, and another, much-less-turian part of him wondering what the hell is Shepard doing and why does it feel nice to have her curled around him like this?
"Shepard," he begins. She only hums in response, and he feels the sound vibrating through his shoulder and down into his chest, sending a flood of warmth through him.
"What are you doing?" he asks.
"Hm?" She laughs, and then: "Oh, right. This is a hug. I'm hugging you, Garrus."
"Okay," he says, arms fidgeting uselessly at his sides. "Am I supposed to... let you continue? Or is this some kind of challenge and I'm supposed to escape?"
She laughs, pressing her face against his neck, and that can't be all that comfortable because plates and all, and her skin is thin and soft and so easily broken. One time he saw her cut her finger on a bit of exposed copper wire and she'd bled scarlet drops all over his workbench, and since then he's made a habit of keeping the battery in immaculate order, all tools and implements keep away and out of sight, just in case.
"You're supposed to hug me back, Garrus," she says, smiling against his skin.
"Oh," he says. "Right." A pause, and then: "How do I go about that, exactly?"
"Just put your arms around me."
He does. And then Shepard chuckles and admonishes, "On me, Garrus, don't just hover your arms." So he does, a little more embarrassedly.
"Oh," he says, after a while. "This is nice."
"Don't turians have anything like this?" she asks.
He hums in thought. "We carry our young sometimes in a similar way. Arms around the other, and all. But nothing between adults," he explains. "It's the plates, you see. Not very comfortable."
"Mm. I think I get that," she says, shifting a little.
"Oh, sorry." His mandibles flutter in a turian blush. "Are you uncomfortable?"
"I think your hip is digging into my thigh," she says, brushing back a lock of her hair that had snagged on his embarrassment. "And no, that does not mean I want 'someone closer to home'."
"You should."
"The Illusive Man would tell me I should've handed over the Collector Base," she retorts, defiant as the day he met her. "The Alliance would tell me I shouldn't have joined Cerberus. Everyone tells me I also shouldn't have died in the first place. So tell me, Garrus, when have I ever done something because I was told I should?"
And Garrus looks at this human -- his human; it sends a shiver of pleasure up his spine because it's true -- with her strength and immovable will and all the conviction in the galaxy shining in her eyes and he thinks: she would've made a good turian.
And then he looks at her strange fluffy fringe and her five-fingered hands and her complete lack of a protective exoskeleton, and he thanks all the spirits that she is human, and not a turian, because good turians only go for good turians and Garrus Vakarian is anything but.
"Oh, I don't know," he says, grinning. "I could think of a few occasions. Like right now, maybe."
"What?"
"I think you should kiss me again."
She laughs, and then she does.
His mandibles flick wide in a turian smile, completely unashamed. Ten minutes ago he learned what a kiss is, and now he wants to kiss this human, and if that makes him a bad turian, he can live with that, because apparently turian bad boys are Shepard's type.
"For the record," she says, her lips brushing the roughness of his mouth, "I'm doing this because I want to, not because you told me to." She kisses him again, as if to prove her point.
Garrus doesn't care. He wins either way.