#no detritus is not nihlus

[for-the-sake-of-color]

LAAt Pilot Howler and former Construct Detritus, who would really prefer if he would stop getting them shot out of the skies

"As if it is my fault we have to fly directly into artillery fire!" Howler would reply Wooo I love this peace and these two who managed to find their way to eachother in a universe that has predestined them to die in the name of others since the dawn of their creation. They refuse to be the shadows of others they were always meant to be, and will instead forge their own path forwards as individuals, as people, with their own hopes and dreams and ambitions. And they're going to do it together.

[for-the-sake-of-color]

Crisis Company + some extras

This came to me in a dream.

[thunderheadfred]

Kiss prompts, oh gosh! Jane/Garrus, with either 1 or 7? ;u;

Kiss Prompt #1 - breaking the kiss to say something, staying so close that you’re murmuring into each other’s mouths

Contains Red Streak plot points. Coincidentally whoops, this got long.

The Normandy kit was a rushed knock-off, cobbled together by drooling entrepreneurs who were hungry to make a quick couple of credits. Several details were laughably off the mark: the proportion of the wingspan, the placement of the IES vents, the width of her stripes. None of it to spec, but Garrus had to admit that for a rush job, it was almost too close for comfort.

It was the thought that counted. Normandy was already important enough to merit an adoring if inaccurate grey-market replica on her maiden voyage. Garrus Vakarian was important enough to said maiden voyage that his own mother had mailed a Normandy model kit to his apartment while he’d been off gallivanting through the universe, chasing the tail of Shepard’s comet.

Garrus had been important enough, yesterday. Now he was nobody. Again.

He’d discovered the kit in the middle of the night while stumbling across the threshold of his Citadel apartment for the first time in weeks. Trying to wipe Shepard out his brain had required alcohol of a strength and purity usually administered to gushing wounds in field hospitals. Too angry to see in a straight line, he’d caught a glimpse of the Normandy’s familiar curves, taken her reappearance for an elaborately cruel prank, and thrown the box across the room before passing out on the couch.

Upon waking in a mess of his own sweat and drool, details were fuzzy. Had Shepard kicked him off the ship, or had Garrus volunteered to resign? He remembered a lot of yelling, and the look on her face when the silence had finally set in, but not much more. Only one detail remained: she’d left with Nihlus.

Sulking around his apartment all through the gray morning, digging in dusty cabinets for any food that hadn’t expired, Garrus rediscovered the crumpled Normandy kit. It was cowering in the corner behind a newly shattered 1:100 model of the Rhapsodon, along with an omni-tool code that triggered a personalized holographic message from his mother.

How proud she was, though she wished Garrus had talked to her first. How scatterbrained Garrus was, for not setting up a forwarding system so she could contact him while he was away. How much Garrus owed her a call.

He couldn’t bring himself to call Mari. Not now. The least he could do was cobble together the gift she’d sent, maybe send her a snap of a wannabe Normandy assembled and sitting on his shelf next to the Kara… or the PFS Tenefalx.

The unguarded thought made him flinch, and he stared at his old stock model of the Blackwatch legend for a long time after that, as if hoping he could force it to confess or explode or both. It looked like the Normandy’s homely sister. Boxier and larger by half, primitive in comparison, but an undeniable relative.

Garrus rudely shoved the thought aside and managed to get one wing attached to the Normandy when the first knock arrived.

He froze and considered not answering. It was probably his father. Almost certainly his father.

How disappointed he was, because he wished Garrus had talked to him first. How stupid Garrus was, for dropping C-Sec like a hot rock and running after the Spectres again. How much Garrus owed him an explanation.

Another knock. Followed immediately by two more.

“Fine!” Garrus barked, setting the fake Normandy on his desk in a pile of detritus where it belonged. “I get it!”

He picked up the sloshing, mostly-empty bottle of horosk and brought it with him to the door, hoping to discourage a long visit. Artfully embellishing his own shame had always been a sure-fire tactic for getting his father to give up on him faster. Look at me Pari, I’m a washed up waste of a cop and a drunk. Leave me alone.

“Get it over with,” he said, palming open the lock. “I know. I should have stayed–”

The words died in his mouth.

It was Shepard.

No. Not Shepard. Standing in his doorway was someone almost completely unrecognizable. Sloppy makeup and a crooked leather jacket Garrus had never seen before. An ill-fitting combination of military blues and casual wear that made her look like a crude mash-up of Alliance Marine and duct rat.

“Jane?”

The name was little more than a bruising wheeze.

She nodded, staring at his knees. Jaw clenched, fists clenched, everything clenched. She’d come to finish the fight.

He keeled forward to laugh in her face, welcoming her into his apartment with a crooked sweep of his liquor bottle. She didn’t move.

He recognized that look. It was the same one she’d leveled at him last night, the same one she’d leveled at him the First Night, when she’d abandoned him in his squad car. No warning, no reason, just walked out of his life forever.

Except it hadn’t been forever. Not quite.

“Hit me while I’m down,” he jeered. “C’mon. I’m ready for it. Are you here with severance pay? What?”

She yanked the bottle from his hand.

“That’ll make you sick.” 

He quoted their first encounter on reflex, ashamed even as the words tumbled out of his mouth, reeling at his persistent sun-blindness. Shepard had never been a girl in a bar. He wished he’d known that from day one.

“Shut up,” she said, uncorking the bottle to take a deep swallow. 

He watched the mechanism of her throat as she finished the last inches of turian liquor. As if she was born to it.

She was, he remembered. In her way.

She pushed the empty bottle into his chest, and he tossed it onto the carpet with a pathetic muffled thud.

“That was my last drop,” he whined.

“Good.”

Then she was on him.

Her lips were cold, maybe from the liquor, maybe from wandering the wards alone. In startling contrast, the inside of her mouth was hot and sure, so forceful that he staggered and almost lost his footing.

“What—” he attempted, but that was all he managed. She grabbed the sides of his face and pressed in tighter, silencing him with her tongue. Bodies flush, he could feel the gyration of her hips swelling toward him like some ancient curse from the sea.

“No talking,” she warned, talking.

He pushed back, tangling all of his fingers into her hair until his hands were nothing but knots.

“I like talking,” he growled, biting down on her lower lip until she swore. “Apparently it’s the only thing I’m good at.”

Her breath painted his face in sour, sloppy bursts, remnants of the bottom of the bottle they’d shared. She was strong, too strong, and he was suddenly shoved onto his own couch, unable to defend himself even if he’d wanted to.

Luckily, he didn’t.

“Shut up,” she repeated. Her teeth traced his throat, his keel, his waist, the traitorous wasteland of his groin, and she did her best to undo him all over again. “Just shut up.”

AO3 | FFN