#I only dedicate fourteen of my daily twenty one thoughts to this game

[some-pers0n]

I have GOT to get more publically mentally ill about TF2

[words-writ-in-starlight]

Hullo! Please could I get a 1 or a 23 for Shakarian? 😁

Somehow you SENSED that I spent all of yesterday looking at gifs of my favorite battle couple to calm down in the financial aid office, congratulations on being psychic.  This got very long.  

For this headcanon meme!  Also specifically I’m using Gabriel Shepard from this series I’ve been writing.

1. How do they fall asleep?  Wake up?  Any daily rituals?

As a pair of dedicated workaholics trying to save the universe, they sleep when and where they can get it--while they were hunting the Collectors, Garrus discovered that he had to keep a sharp eye out when Shepard came down to sit in the battery, or she might fall asleep on a counter or crate.  After they’re more formally together, they have a slightly more regular sleep schedule.  Turians have different sleep needs than humans, doing best on two or three three-ish hour naps rather than one long one--after Sovereign, and the fallout from Sovereign, Gabriel slept for fourteen hours and Garrus would have thought she’d died if not for the fact that Chakwas wasn’t concerned.  This means that it’s not uncommon for one of them to be up and the other to be asleep more than once during Normandy’s ‘night’ cycle, so they accommodate that.  

Basically what this means is that while they have perfected a good position for falling asleep together, it’s much more common for one of them to be sitting up doing work and the other to curl around them like a cat in their sleep.  Shepard is especially annoying about it, mostly because when she rolls over and ends up exactly where Garrus’ tablet needs to be, he can’t bring himself to wake her up.  Shepard, on the other hand, is perfectly happy to have Garrus asleep with his head pillowed on her stomach, because she can rest her tablet on his keel and have her very own lap desk.

In terms of waking up, when things are dire, they’re quick about it--they get up, get dressed, drink something caffeinated (fun fact: caffeine is an achiral molecule so therefore I declare them both diehard caffeine addicts), and roll out.  It’s the legacy of a lot of training on both parts, and a lot of recent nerve-frying paranoia.  When things are not dire, or when they’ve just resolved the immediate problem and thus lowered the urgency level a little, Garrus gets up first because, as Gabriel declares whenever asked, she’s Commander Fucking Shepard and she deserves to sleep in.  Garrus makes her coffee to his best ability (passable) and once even tried his hand at breakfast (unsuccessful) and eventually comes to heckle her into getting up.  That conversation is usually something like:

Garrus: “Come on, you have a call with Anderson in an hour.  Get up or I’ll make you get up.”

Shepard: *mumbling*

Garrus, laughing: “What did you just call me?”

Shepard, cracking an eye to look at him: “I said, come back with a warrant, you fucking cop.”

And then she drags him down into bed with her.

23. How do they hug?  Kiss?  Tease?  Flirt?  Comfort?

Turians are not...intrinsically huggable beings, but humans are, and Garrus came around real fast.  He likes to pull Shepard into his lap so that he can wrap himself around her fragile skin and bones like armor.  Shepard, who hasn’t been the recipient of regular touching since Akuze, takes a while to get used to it (can you spell touch-starved), but it’s...nice, she’ll admit that.  It’s nice to have someone’s hand on her just because she’s there and they want to, without ulterior motive or threat of violence.  And Garrus likes to be touching her when he can, he likes to know she’s there with him and alive and kicking, he likes to have an arm on her shoulder or a hand in hers or, yeah, a hug.  Everyone on Normandy gets used to the fact that, when they’re relaxed and informal, Shepard tends to end up in Garrus’ lap after the first few hours.  

Speaking of things that turians aren’t really built for, proper kissing is mostly a moot point.  Garrus does it because Shepard clearly finds it charming, the way he’ll bump his mouth against the crown of her head in a fond gesture, and Shepard kisses his jaw or his cheek plate when he bends down enough (or the back of his neck if he’s sitting down, she likes to watch him jump), but what humans would class as “making out” is kind of a nonstarter.  Turians press their browplates together to show affection, so Garrus and Shepard do that as well--this feeds into Garrus’ fondness for having Shepard on his lap because, if she’s facing him, it puts them on roughly even footing so that they can be face-to-face.  One time he admitted this to Gabriel and, on the one hand, she has not stopped calling him a sap since, but on the other hand, she makes a point to drop down into his lap a lot more since he said it, so he will take the win.

In terms of teasing, they’ve been getting the Old Married Couple snark down pat since day one.  Gabriel took cheap shots at Garrus’ work repairing the Mako, he made cracks about her driving, and it pretty much went on that way from there.  They’re both insufferably smug whenever they pass the other on their kill count, and when they’re on the losing end, they’re both more than ready to “helpfully” point out problems with combat style that make the other person’s win somehow not legitimate (”Just because you can bull rush the Guardians doesn’t mean you should”//“Does it even count if I bought you the gun and all its upgrades?”).

In terms of flirting, well, honestly the teasing covers a lot of it, and they’re both hopelessly awkward when they try to flirt (the only reason they ever got anywhere is because of the impending threat of death, to be honest), but also three shots of some kind of liquor under good circumstances will make both of them suddenly proficient at bad pickup lines.  Tali has thus far collected about a twenty minute video compilation of it, which she plans to use as blackmail when an opportune moment comes up.

Neither of them is really any good at being comforted.  Gabriel usually needs to talk it out--often with alcohol--and honestly a lot of Garrus’ coping mechanisms involve shooting something to calm down before he deals with it.  Fortunately, Shepard is always game to go roust a Cerberus outpost or hit a shooting range so that they can decompress a little, and then they usually go back to the Normandy for the alcohol and talking part of it all.  Gabriel tends to lock up when people try to comfort her and Garrus doesn’t like being seen to be in distress by people he doesn’t trust completely, and while those match up well, it also means that it’s not uncommon for everyone to think they’re completely fine through an entire mission, followed by the two of them having a bit of a breakdown the second they’re behind closed doors.  Weirdly this was early bonding material for them, because they have very compatible patterns of “cope, fall apart, pick yourself up, go back to coping”.

The exception to this rule is nightmares.  If one of them wakes up from a nightmare and the other one is there, they’ll curl up together until everyone’s heart rate slows down again.  No talking, just touch.  If they feel like talking afterward, fine, but there’s an unspoken rule that nightmares never get discussed right away.