Chapter Text

2183, Normandy SR1

<cached page, C-S_IDB: Commander Shepard, Alliance Navy >

<downloaded file: Memories of Mindoir, a story of human resilience >

<deleted file: Memories of Mindoir, a story of human resilience>

<search results: human eye fringe torture contraption >

<search results: eyelash curler >

Commander Shepard runs a very different kind of ship than he’s used to, Garrus learns very quickly. He hasn’t worked much with humans, barring the occasional C-Sec colleague, so he’s not sure what to expect, exactly. He just knows she looked at him with those green eyes, held her hand out… for what, he wasn’t sure, and offered him a way out of the rut he’d been sitting in. When he took her hand, uncertain if that was what she’d been expecting, those eyes had crinkled at the corners, and she’d grinned with her strange round teeth.

“Welcome aboard, Garrus.”

There are… many new experiences to follow.

There’s the Gunnery Chief, Williams, who barely pays him any notice, but checks her reflection in a compact mirror in front of him one day, running something black from a tube along her eyes. Cosmetics , he realizes, and makes a mental note, not markings then. Always wondered.

There’s Alenko, whose laugh is rare but bright enough when he and Shepard get to talking, and though he’s her subordinate, she claps a hand on his back like they’re good friends. It takes Garrus aback, the first time, and Wrex snorts beside him in the mess.

“Not much like the Hierarchy, is it Vakarian?”

And then, of course, there’s the way she talks to him. 

She visits each of them more often than precisely necessary for maintaining the team’s integrity, so he knows it’s not any type of favoritism. But still. She watches him intensely, in a way that makes him feel like she’s actually interested in hearing him tell old C-Sec stories and complain about his father. He shouldn’t be so open with her, he knows. It goes against everything he’s been taught but he can’t seem to help himself and it is utterly disarming.

The next time she stops by, he can’t help but look at her alien features more closely, the dark shade around her eyes, the constellation of light dots across the bridge of her nose, her cheeks. Are those cosmetic, too? She doesn’t seem to notice, or at least doesn’t call him out on it. Just deftly weaves through their conversation until before he knows it he’s spilled the whole story of Saleon and, much to his horror, mumbled something about krogan genitals.

She promises to follow up on what little of a lead he has, much to his surprise, and leaves him with nothing but his own churning thoughts and Wrex’s laugh from across the cargo bay.