there and back again.

kate. sometimes i write things & play video games. ao3 icon/sidebar by mounted-archer

[thychesters]

hi, i'm kate! she/her. 25+. i like to write and play video games. 🌿

currently i'm into mass effect and enjoying some shakarian. find my recent fic below!

inspo blog | ao3 / writing tag | bluesky | ko-fi | mass effect liveblog

syzygy. [mass effect] shakarian / E / 7.4k; ME-2; post-collector base; little bit of voyeurism; oral sex; garrus said watch this tongue; shepard caught feelings but she will absolutely not be admitting to them

A week after the Collector base, a week of trawling around space and mindless errands and revisiting posts they only passed through, Garrus comes up to her cabin like a man on a mission.

They’ve gone back and forth over the past few days, him coming to her quarters or Shepard to his, passing around fleeting touches that carry more intent and are more explorative than anything they would have exchanged months ago. Sometimes, more often than not, it’s to simply spend time together, just as they always have.

For now, whatever it is between them feels real enough.

“Did you need me for something?”

“I—ah, yeah,” he says, and she twists her cheek into the dip of his cowl to look up at him.

Shepard smooths her hands down his chest, enjoying the twitch of muscle, the minute give of plates where they meet his hide, and his gaze flicks around her face. It lingers on a damp bang curled against her forehead before meeting hers again.

His hands settle on her hips and he glances to her bed before asking a curious, “Show me?”

surviving the omega 4 relay gives them a lot of time to themselves.

----

body tender. [mass effect] shakarian / E / 4.6k / ME3; presidium date; getting together; confessions of feelings; a vain attempt to get it on in a skycar; sometimes home is a person

He asks if she wants to be serious, with him.

He’s been thinking of her since the last (second last, really) time they parted ways on the Citadel, his bag slung over his shoulder as they stood at the dock. She’d told him to take care of himself, just as she had the first last time, but then she’d stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him. The hug had been too warm to be friendly, her body molding to his, and Garrus had dropped an arm around her waist and tucked his face into her temple. She’d kissed his cheek, and he spent a week wishing he’d kissed her back.

He’s been thinking about her since she came to see him in the battery, where she held his hand and kissed him and told him she thought about him. That she missed him.

He’s been thinking about her since he followed her up to her cabin and the view of her backlit by the aquarium was burned into his memory.

And Shepard laughs in a way that’s warm and with her eyes and is one of his favorites, and when she tilts her head says to her they already were.

the presidium date, and the moments after.

----

like real people do. [mass effect] shakarian / E / 9k / me-3 ; citadel dlc party ; established relationship ; sneaking off ; making out ; alien sex ; clothes sharing (see: shepard wearing one of garrus' shirts)

As she steps away to grab another drink she turns to find herself stepping into the circle of his arm. Garrus leans toward her, under the guise of reaching over the bar for his own glass, and Shepard lets out a breath against the side of his neck. She can feel fingers trailing along her thigh, following the hem of her dress without quite slipping beneath it. Since their date on the Presidium he’s held himself with more surety around her and where they stand.

Emboldened, she tilts to press her shoulder into him, mindful of the murmurings coming from the kitchen as the party winds down. Shepard tilts her head, brushing her lips across his mandible, and then pulls back as Traynor stumbles up to the bar with a grin over her shoulder to Liara before startling at the sudden start-stop snore that is Zaeed asleep on the couch.

His hand tugs her back into the solid curve of his keel, subvocal rumbling against her shoulder.

“So much for fifteen minutes,” she says.

“I doubt anyone’s going to notice.”

the citadel party ends with a bang. so does the morning after.

––––

the space between. [mass effect] shakarian / t / 2k / mid-me3 ; established relationship ; domesticity ; moving in together

“I can come back.”

“No, I want you to stay.”

Garrus moves to meet her halfway, standing at the foot of her bed while she blinks sleep out of her eyes. Still clad in his armor and her in little more than her pajamas she suddenly looks so small in comparison, and he can’t help but feel overdressed.

“I have something for you.” Her voice is softer now, losing its last vestiges of sleep. In the low light her hair looks darker, and he reaches up to brush some away from her chin. For a fleeting moment she leans into his touch, eyelashes casting longer shadows as she lowers her gaze, tracks it across his torso and then up to his cowl for any new signs of wear and tear she didn’t spot a few hours ago. 

in a bit of a roundabout way, shepard asks garrus to move in.

––––

a steady, sure thing. [mass effect] shakarian / E / 8k / me3 post-menae ; reunion sex ; mutual pining ; minor miscommunication (and then communicating how much they missed each other)

“I wanted to see you,” he says, voice thick. “Spirits, I missed you, I wasn’t sure if you still felt the same way about me and I wasn’t expecting…”

“I thought about you all the time,” she says. His subvocals rumble against her chest, and she tilts her head further as his hand winds through her hair with a gentle tug that draws a sharp gasp from her, warm to her core. Part it almost feels like grief dissipating.

Garrus tucks his face into the side of her neck, nose plate brushing along her pulse and his visor glows in her peripheral as he murmurs, “Yeah? You said that.”

A grin pulls at the corner of her mouth and she drags her nails along the delicate patches dotting the column of his throat only for his hips to twitch toward her and his grip tightens on her own. “I did. I thought about a lot of things though,” she brushes her lips along his mandible, letting everything else fade away just for the moment of Garrus wrapped around her, “you’ll have to be more specific.”

shakarian reunion post-menae.

––––

triptych. [mass effect] shakarian / E / 38k ; 3/3 ; me2-centric ; post-resurrection ; alien sex ; making out ; slow burn (kinda)

Shepard smiles but something about it feels off, like she’s tired but no amount of sleep will help. The scars crisscrossing her cheek betray that, and it makes his own sting. The look on her face is gentle, something reserved just for the low lighting of the late hours. A trill she can’t hear vibrates in his chest. It’s good to have her back, even if there’s still a dissonance lingering because he spent the last two years mourning her and coming to terms with that, only for her to come blasting back into his life, as is her style. “I missed you, Garrus,” she says. “That’s so weird to say; I feel like it’s only been a few weeks, but… It’s like I went to sleep for a while and when I woke up everything was different.” “Yeah,” he mutters. “Guess that’s taking some getting used to.”

Shepard must relearn her place in a galaxy that spent two years moving on and living without her; Garrus finds there are three women he must relearn: the Commander, Shepard, and Jane.

[thychesters]

#wipwednesday! shepard's out cold and garrus is going through it, even though she's not even a foot away from him. what if they both let themselves relax and get too complacent and risk losing everything all over again? / text under the cut:

His next breath gathers in his chest, dissipates across his carapace as hers evens out into her pillow. He wants to reach out for her—smooth a hand across her back, settle it on her hip. Before, in the early days of their not-relationship turned something serious, they’d had to work out various configurations to sleep comfortably together: he ran hot and she liked it cool; both were light sleepers and would jolt at the barest brush. Soon that had transformed into her hand on his arm, his settled over the curve of her hip.  He’d marveled at the various positions she could sleep in—often deferring to her stomach as she got more comfortable with sharing a space. For a bit there he’d envied her some because lying with a slight incline was the closest he got to comfortable until he’d shown up one night to find a pile of pillows better suited for his physiology. Shepard had never been embarrassed, but there had been a dusting of pink on her cheeks when she told him the option was there, but maybe she was being a little forward. He couldn’t remember what he said, but he remembered that he’d kissed her. After a while he’d noticed she’d favored her side facing him, back to the aquarium and armor locker, curled into him with a hand reaching across the mattress. They’d fallen asleep touching one another more often that not. Sometimes they found a way for her to lie in his arms, keel following the notches of her spine. He’d like some of those nights the most. He’d gotten so used to sleeping beside her that the first time woke up alone he wasn’t sure where he was.

[thychesters]

rolling a 2 in dnd was so funny my girl almost got her ass kicked by a bird

[thychesters]

#wipwednesday! shepard's out cold and garrus is going through it, even though she's not even a foot away from him. what if they both let themselves relax and get too complacent and risk losing everything all over again? / text under the cut:

His next breath gathers in his chest, dissipates across his carapace as hers evens out into her pillow. He wants to reach out for her—smooth a hand across her back, settle it on her hip. Before, in the early days of their not-relationship turned something serious, they’d had to work out various configurations to sleep comfortably together: he ran hot and she liked it cool; both were light sleepers and would jolt at the barest brush. Soon that had transformed into her hand on his arm, his settled over the curve of her hip.  He’d marveled at the various positions she could sleep in—often deferring to her stomach as she got more comfortable with sharing a space. For a bit there he’d envied her some because lying with a slight incline was the closest he got to comfortable until he’d shown up one night to find a pile of pillows better suited for his physiology. Shepard had never been embarrassed, but there had been a dusting of pink on her cheeks when she told him the option was there, but maybe she was being a little forward. He couldn’t remember what he said, but he remembered that he’d kissed her. After a while he’d noticed she’d favored her side facing him, back to the aquarium and armor locker, curled into him with a hand reaching across the mattress. They’d fallen asleep touching one another more often that not. Sometimes they found a way for her to lie in his arms, keel following the notches of her spine. He’d like some of those nights the most. He’d gotten so used to sleeping beside her that the first time woke up alone he wasn’t sure where he was.

[thychesters]

1 and 16 please for the writer asks!

hi cal!

1. the last sentence you wrote

presented, without context:

“Your music taste sucks,” she says, dragging in another breath. / “My music taste is just fine, you just don't appreciate it.”

16. favorite place to write

answered!

[thychesters]

27 and 28 and a wildcard for the fic writer asks? 💕

capnnnnn hi

27. your favorite part of the writing process

the editing process! my rough draft will be a lot of ideas and lines pieced together that don't quite fit, and giving it a pass smooths things out. plus i'll find spots to flesh out a little more, and then can view the scene in a new light or those small tweaks turn it into something i'm much happier with.

28. your least favorite part of the writing process

the editing process. autocorrect has me fighting for my life with mass effect. on palaver's moon mean to go find adrien rictus. sometimes i'll find in my first round of edits i added a new line and then scroll to the next page and find a very similar line two paragraphs below. must have really liked the idea.

also finding the summary, sometimes. i use excerpts from the fic but my god for smut fics? what the hell am i doing.

[thychesters]

4, 7, and 14?

hello!

4. a story idea you haven’t written yet

i want to do more of a deep dive into something with the leviathan dlc. i haven't decided what direction to go with for that yet, but there's a ton of cosmic horror potential in it.

7. your preferred writing fonts

helvetica neue babyyyy. size 11 font because i know nat and archer hate it. size 12 because suddenly i can see. i can fight.

14. where do you get your inspiration?

depends! i'm using mass effect here: sometimes it's a line of dialogue and then thinking about wishing shepard could have reacted like x, y, z, sometimes it's taking my time scouring around a location and thinking about the potential of it. other times it's of bouncing ideas around with @mounted-archer that take on lives on their owns. i love character studies and playing the game of "but what if..."

[thychesters]

16 and 17

hi cams!!

16. favorite place to write

i've done an awful lot of writing on my couch cozied up with a blanket. if i'm not there, i'm at my kitchen island or i'm sitting at my work desk (i have a standing desk on top of it and just move my keyboard and watch for emails lmao.) sometimes i'll be in bed and have an idea i need to jot down too

17. talk about your writing and editing process

most often i start out with writing a bunch of stuff as it comes, which is usually a lot of half-sentences or dialogue without tags. it's mostly to get out whatever in my head so i've put pen to paper, so to speak. it'll read like a stream of consciousness and a bunch of notes, but it gives me something to build off of when i come back to it. i talked about it somewhat here in this ask as to how one scene morphed from the earliest to the final draft!

[museaway]

✍️ more fic writer asks!

reblog & your followers can send asks with the questions they’d like you to answer!

the last sentence you wrote

a character whose POV you’re currently exploring

how you feel about your current WIP

a story idea you haven’t written yet

first sentence of the fifth paragraph of an unpublished WIP

the word that appears the most in your current draft (wordcounter.net can tell you)

your preferred writing fonts

if you had to write a sequel to a fic, you’d write one for…

start to finish, how long did it take you to write the last fic you posted?

what is the longest amount of time you’ve let a draft rest before you finished it?

a WIP you’d like to finish someday

a trope you’re really into right now

a fandom you’re thinking about writing for

where do you get your inspiration?

favorite weather for writing

favorite place to write

talk about your writing and editing process

if you keep them, share a deleted sentence or paragraph from a published fic

the most interesting topic you’ve researched for a fic

in what year did you publish your first fic?

when did you publish your most recent fic?

do you ever worry about public reaction to what you’re writing? how do you get past that?

pick three keywords that describe your writing

how do you recharge when you’re not feeling creative?

besides writing, what are your other hobbies?

are you able to write with other people around?

your favorite part of the writing process

your least favorite part of the writing process

how easy is it for you to come up with titles?

share a fic you’re especially proud of

[jerreeeeeee]

not every mutual fits neatly into an archetypal medievalism but there are some mutuals that im like yeah addressing you as “my liege” would come strangely naturally

[jerreeeeeee]

what mutual is prev

my liege lord

my loyal knight

my wise wizard

my evil advisor

my brother in arms

my lady muse

my wild mermaid friend

my fellow alchemist

my dashing rapscallion

my monstrous foe

Remaining time: 2 days 18 hours

[thychesters]

what happens if you pick the “never heard of them” option when jacob tells her the project was funded by cerberus?

[thychesters]

“they were my team. if they knew i was alive, they’d come back,” shepard says. jacob doesn’t comment on the note in her voice, or maybe he doesn’t know her well enough to catch it, that sounds almost mournful. wistful. he said most of her crew made it off the normandy when it went down. here she stands in the middle of this unfamiliar lab that’s burning around her and he tells her he’s no scientist but she was dead. they were her team. if they knew she was alive, they’d come for her.

[thychesters]

excellent both my shepards are default so the game goes “do you want to import jane or jane?” well uh

[thychesters]

oh i hit resume instead of “new game” and it just loaded in shepard’s cabin with garrus chilling on her couch lmao

[thychesters]

mass effect 2 part 2 electric boogaloo let’s gooo

[thychesters]

i forgot ME1 ended with everyone adamant that the reapers are coming and they need to prepare and then there’s the immediate smash cut to “ah yes, ‘reapers’” shortly thereafter

[thychesters]

“saren has to pay for what he’s done!” / “saren can’t run any more!” well no guys he’s dead. you very much so watched that happen.