FShep/Garrus Mass Effect mandible fic
I did a little fangirling over @norwegianpornfaerie, writing a fic with her!Shepard and Garrus.
"Commander." Garrus didn't know what to do with his hands. Damn things. They twisted around each other in a way that paralleled the eel in the tank twining around fronds, hunting for purpose - fortunately, they were clasped behind his back, where their flailing was less visible. "I thought I'd stop by and, erm..."
"Garrus!" she sighed, waving at the chair from where she sat, on the couch, putting a sheaf of paperwork and a glass of dark, foaming alcohol aside on the little dark table at the end of the couch. "You can call me by my name, you know!"
Garrus perched awkwardly on the edge of it, grasping his thighs. There! That was something for his hands to do. "Shepard." She gave him a slightly beleaguered look, and he somehow knew the next words would be first name, and he couldn't, this was already such a leap...! "I know I said I'd think about things."
"Garrus." She smiled, that sweet smile that made him feel all was right with the world, even though he intellectually knew that wasn't the case. "I don't need anything from you other than to just... be you. Would I like more? Of course I would! But love should be easy. Fun."
Ah, yes, it should! If only Garrus were easy or fun. "I'm interested. I'm... very interested." It was so difficult for him to just say these things! Why couldn't he just shoot a few things and let that be his declaration of his feelings? Why couldn't he calibrate the perfect photon beam, just have that blaze I love you and I want to have physical relations with you across the sky, so he didn't have to say it? "I just..." His mandibles twitched, trying to signal I love you and I want to have physical relations with you in semaphore.
She laughed, a bright, happy sound. "I love to watch those." She pointed at his face. "Sorry! It's just so cool..."
"You mean my..." He touched them, gently, as they waved a little hello.
"Yes! Your mandibles. They're so expressive!" She sighed. "Sorry, I don't mean to be weird about things."
"What? No, what's weird about it? I'm an alien, I'm different from you. Why wouldn't you be curious? It's fine." She thought they were interesting? They were just... a part of his body, all of his kind had them, they rarely thought them... interesting. And she did? His second heart jumped with shy excitement, his first shifting to the side to give it room.
"Well." She shrugged. "We're not that different? We have mandibles, too, they're just under our skin."
"Wait, what?" He jumped upright. "You do?" He wasn't a xenobiologist, he wasn't even a biologist overall, that side had always seemed boring to him, compared to engineering. He never really even thought about that sort of thing, and was just now starting to regret that. "Where?"
"Here." She touched the side of her face - basically the same place as where they were on him?
Before Garrus even had thought properly about it, he stepped close, putting his fingers on her cheek. So warm, so soft, so pleasing to the touch! And yes, a bone underneath... he traced the contours of it, the thickness of it, the sharp bend. "It's so much like mine!" he marveled. Only perhaps even bigger and thicker? And human bones weren't hollow! The power of it!
"Yes!" The bone moved under his fingers as she spoke. "Isn't it amazing? I don't know if it's convergent evolution or what, but we're more alike than we look - under the skin?"
"Yes," Garrus breathed. "We are." So much alike. Different, like every individual was different, but alike, in the way all sentient, caring individuals were alike. And she was more caring than most, with those big bright eyes that changed color depending on the light, with those soft, full lips, so different from his own but so appealing, bent at the top like the weapons Turians used before energy weapons were a thing. "Uh, I shouldn't..." He pulled his fingers away.
"No!" She smiled more broadly, charmingly. "It's fine. Touch me all you want!"
His fingers went back to her soft, smooth cheek. "I... like to touch you," he managed, stroking it. "I'd... like to..." Did humans even do this? Oh god, he hadn't researched this appropriately! That was the problem with being spontaneous and easy and fun, maybe his beak-lips pressing to her soft ones was unwanted and strange... but her hand went up to his own face, stroking his mandibles with her clever, strong fingers, thrilling down his spine, making him want to...
He sprang backwards, overcome with the possible ends of that sentence, stumbling into her desk, scrabbling at the pen and paper and various knick-knacks, trying to put them back into place. "Um, I should, I have places to go, I have... down... calibrations..." He stumbled out of the room, his head swimming, full of visions of soft skin over hard bone, firm lips that left his skin tingling, the smell of her, her clever hands, her kind eyes...
Somehow, he ended up in the mess room without incident, seated on one of those chairs that didn't fit right. He watched Miranda talk to Jacob, touching his own mandibles, watching theirs move as they spoke.
They were all right, he supposed. But not all mandibles were created equal.
