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They’re perched above the rest of Wrex’s people, watching Grunt and another krogan try to do what Shepard thinks is the krogan equivalent of jenga, just, using their heads to knock pieces of stone away.
He’s laughing, loud and bright and chaotic and Shepard’s warm down to the cold metal of her bones for once. Wrex tugged her up here after the celebration got in full swing, knowing without her having to say that she wouldn’t be the best company for a full on party right now.
Everything is varying levels of shit right now, but this isn’t. This went shockingly okay. Now she just has to shake the feeling that the other shoe’s going to fall.
“So,” Wrex knocks his shoulder against hers; the motion skids her ass an inch across the ruins and she exhales, almost a laugh. Jams her shoulder against his in turn. It’s rather like slamming shoulder first into a brick wall that laughs when she hits him. “You helped me. Helped Grunt.”
Below, some of the krogan are reenacting a move Shepard and Grunt did, skidding across the sand, and Grunt gives loud, boisterous instructions about how it went down.
Shepard has a feeling she knows where this is ultimately going and opts to go with the easiest route for avoiding subjects she doesn’t want to talk about: distraction.
“The term was krantt, right?” Shepard shifts her weight, tries to dig a bony shoulder into the plating gap this time and knocks her shoulder to his. He doesn’t move an inch, the bastard. “You know it’s not a one time thing. I know you can handle yourself out here. Not a one and done kind of deal, though.”
“Knew it, but it doesn’t hurt to hear.” It works. Wrex doesn’t soften, but he gives her that look, a little disbelieving, incredulous, like he can’t believe he’s working with a human, still, and then turns his attention back onto the party happening below. “You keep taking care of other people’s problems. When are you gonna take care of yours?”
“Shit, Wrex,” Shepard groans and tosses her head back. She’s getting it from all sides, Chakwas, Garrus, Tali. If it’s not them fussing over her sleep (or lack thereof) it’s the fussing over food. They all mean well of course, but, she’d sleep if she could and she knows she looks tired. She’d hoped the most she’d get from Wrex is a you look like shit, like a thresher maw threw you all around Tuchanka. They’d bang their heads together and mutually agree to never fucking speak of it again.
“You look like shit,” Wrex starts. (“Hell, yes,” Shepard sighs, relieved.) “Don’t get too excited. You aren’t gonna like the rest of it.”
“I mean, with such a solid start—”
“I’m not gonna lecture you like a whelp, Shepard. You know what’s at risk.” Wrex shifts on the concrete, turns and faces her and Shepard can’t do anything but the same. She folds her legs up underneath herself, inches from a fall that would kill any other human, probably and knows out here with Wrex is one of the safest places she can be outside the Normandy. “Everyone’s coddling you, but I don’t think you need to be coddled.”
“Wrex, no one has ever, in their life, accused you of coddling them,” Shepard drags a hand over her face, the scarring at her cheek pulling with the action, raw despite being as healed as it can be. Wrex could want to discuss a lot of things. The Shaman had given her some helpful insight, sure, but most of the time this kind of thing just boiled down to fighting. That she could do. That she would be grateful for at this point; the liquor does nothing for her unless it’s in huge quantities and krogan parties are a marathon not a sprint. A fight would keep her awake. “...Is it a fight? Do you have another thresher maw?”
“Maybe next time,” Wrex sounds like he’s genuinely considering it for a moment and then shakes it off, frowning. “I think you need a fight you can’t win.”
Shepard barks a laugh and abruptly stifles it when she realizes he’s not joking, he’s just watching her like he’s waiting for her to actually get the joke she thinks she’s laughing at. “I lose plenty of fights.”
“Yeah? When.” It’s not a question.
Shepard resists the urge to squirm under his gaze. When was the last time she’d lost outside of, well, dying. She hasn’t, not really. If she doesn’t have guns big enough to take the thing down, she just comes back with bigger guns.
“You need something that actually challenges you.” Wrex’s crest throws his face and the scars dug into it into dark shadow, the flames below them casting them brighter or darker as the fire pit burns lower. He still sounds amused, still in on the joke he’s just waiting for her to get. “You don’t lose, Shepard. You get revenge, you get even. One of my favorite things about you. You don’t check your messages half the time. That one’s annoying.”
“The others are my guns and winning personality, right?” Shepard asks, several things making sense at once. “You sent the breeding request.”
Wrex inclines his head. There’s no fumbling, no worry over what amounts to a personal, private inquiry on paper, on official channels. “You completed the Rite of Honor, you’ve served as krantt for two krogan by request. You’ve been an ally to the krogan when no one else was.”
Distantly, she recalls the Shaman telling her that the Rite was needed to be able to accept them and— wow, okay. There are so many different ways to attack this that it takes her a moment to sort through her thoughts and figure out which one to go with.
The idea of approaching Wrex had always been distant, an unreasonable expectation, really, because they both had lives and duties that wouldn’t keep them together for long. That was always fine; they were both adults and Shepard had gotten used to wanting things she couldn’t have. “I’m flattered — Wrex, I understand how important that offer is but humans don’t work the same way asari do.”
“What?” Wrex looks genuinely surprised, lips pulling back from sharp teeth when he realizes, snickering. “No. I know. You have Collectors to go after. You don’t need a baby, but the attempt might do you some good. I’m not asking for you to settle down, Shepard. I’m asking you to knock heads—”
“And knock boots,” Shepard finishes, not sure how the translator parses it; Wrex tilts his head, shrugs.
“Knocking a few things together, sure.”
The practicality (or lack there of) of it is its own kind of relief. Shepard had worried this was going to be complicated but no, it was blessedly simple.
Wrex has her outmatched in weight and strength and in hand to hand she’s not confident she could say she’d win every time. He’d make her work for it, but she’d be holding back because she couldn’t risk killing him. A challenge to take him down to begin with, but an even bigger challenge to not actually do it if she got that close. “You want to fight. And then have sex. The breeding request was… a formality? Invitation?”
Wrex waves a hand like he’s batting the words away into the fire. “Both. The first formal acknowledgement of your status within the krogan, after acting as krantt.”
“Okay.” Shepard drops her hands into her lap, moving onto the next question. Somehow, this wasn’t even the weirdest thing to happen this week. “I’m not… an expert on krogan reproduction but if Grunt got that many breeding requests in that short a time, you—”
This time the smile is more a leer, Wrex preening at the attention. “Have my fair share after helping save the galaxy, yeah, Shepard. I’ve still got a duty to my people, same as you. After, though.”
Below, Grunt tosses another one of the krogan across the pit and he rolls into the fire to loud, raucous cheers. When he lifts, his carapace is on fire and distantly she can see Garrus drinking something orange and glowing, slouched against crates with Tali while they watch the chaos.
Monogamy is, from what she’s gathered, isn't wholly human, but also isn't as common as it used to be. Shepard isn’t surprised by it; krogan especially have a laundry list of reasons to not be. The question is if she’s alright with that and realistically: yeah. She’s always been more practical than sentimental. She’s probably going to die anyway, right? The last thing she wants is Wrex pining after her when she’s dead.
“It’s not that complicated, Shepard,” Wrex knocks his knuckles against her folded in knee, drawing her attention back from the inside of her head to the real world again. “Not asking you to retire here.”
“Wouldn’t know how to retire,” Shepard admits sheepishly, scrubbing a hand through her hair. “That’s part of the problem.”
Wrex huffs a laugh, getting to his feet with a low groan and then reaches down a hand to heft her up, too. Very few people can lift her; whatever Cerberus did added a good thirty to forty pounds of metal, enhancements, enough cybernetics that she sets off every metal detector just looking at it. Wrex lifts her like he’s pulling up a sack of groceries. Gives her a once-over that’s too intentional for it to be anything but and Shepard grins despite herself.
“We’ve both got our duties, Shepard. I’m asking if you want to take a break from yours.”
Simple. Easy. Shepard weighs the pros and cons for a heartbeat and then starts down the path back to the ground floor, through all the rubble with Wrex’s footsteps heavy behind her. “I’m pretty sure Miranda’d kill me if we fought on the Normandy.”
“Tch,” Wrex scoffs at the idea and Shepard has the feeling it’s less about the Normandy and more about Miranda having the ability to kill her. “Give me some credit, Shepard. I don’t lead a clan for nothin’.”
They walk just long enough that Shepard’s able to work through the rest of it in her head: the breeding request in earnest, the borderline honorary krogan status. Wrex is practical down to his bones; he means it, sure, but she’d put credits on the idea that it’s not entirely altruistic. She might be human, but she’s fought with and fought enough krogan to understand it’s a power play even if there’s genuine interest there.
Wrex leads them to another stretch of cement and concrete, wide arching pieces of it jutting up against the sky like a rib cage, mostly ruined but some parts still in place. It looks like an arena of some kind, similar to one they’d just fought on. Outdoors, but leading up to a platform she sees what looks like a house, or what passes for one.
“Wrex, you’ve got a pile of rubble in your living room,” Shepard says, tilting her head as she looks up at it.
“It adds character,” Wrex mutters as he walks by, rolling his eyes at her. “Check the box by the bench.”
“...Is your front yard a fighting ring?” Shepard asks, knowing the answer before she’s even heard it. There’s a bench on one side, a carved stone box next to it and when she hefts it up, there are an assortment of weapons inside. She tugs out a knife, curved and jagged and mean and tests the weight. “The rifles were good, but you’ve been holding out.”
“You’ve had better things to do,” Wrex waves it off, starting to strip off armor piece by piece by piece. The dim lighting is shit for taking in any of the details so she sets the knife back down and eases the lid closed, coming back over to him to help with the fasteners on the back, the same ones she always helps with post-mission. “Figured I’d get a chance to show you eventually.”
Maybe, if things go well, she’ll get a chance to help him rebuild. It’d be nice to make something with her hands for once instead of just destroying it.
“You’ll have to show me again in the daytime.” Shepard settles the last piece of armor down on the ground and looks at her own clothes; she’d kind of assumed it’d be a team effort getting them off but the practicality isn’t lost on her. Hard to walk back clothed if she doesn’t have any left over.
“You’re gonna have to live if you wanna see it.” Wrex cuts her a look; the line is joking, but he’s serious as a gun to the face.
“Rules?” Shepard asks instead of making promises she can’t keep, stripping off her fatigues while Wrex watches, looking just as intimidating even without his armor, “Anywhere I shouldn’t hit?”
“You try to win. Or pin me. You won’t be able to do either, but you can try,” Wrex’s gaze is less lustful and more appraising, eyes wandering over the map of scars across her skin rather than staring at her breasts or the curve of her ass. Most of the visible ones are pretty normal looking; only once she’s done getting undressed does she show him one of the uglier ones, peeling material away to show what looks like melted wax on the outside of her thigh, except the wax was is skin. It’s still pink and shiny from omnigel, a Collector’s beam that had caught her armor, melted it to her skin while her shields were down. Tali had needed an assist, which meant a round of omnigel which had healed the mess of her leg like that. Wrex eyes it for a moment and then looks at her, smirk widening. “I do my best to find every single scar on your body.”
“There’s a lot,” Shepard points out wryly, shivering when Wrex’s hand fits itself over the gnarled flesh, tracing over where skin goes from smooth to wrinkled and dented. Shepard gives him a moment to feel her up and then flicks the elastic back down and steps out of everything but her bra, briefs, and socks. Wobbling from foot to foot as she hooks her toes in the heel and shoves them back on, she grins at him. “How’s your night vision? Want me to draw you a map?”
Wrex barks a laugh, loud and real and shakes his head. “Your ship can call it if we go too far. No weapons, real or fashioned. No kill shots, if you’re lucky enough to get the chance.”
“You got a bed out here too?” Shepard asks, already knowing the answer as she bends over and tries to limber up, pulse a slowly increasing thud in her throat.
“You need one, princess?” Wrex walks around her in a circle, appraising and Shepard isn’t above sticking her ass out a little, showing the long scar that starts somewhere around middle back and rakes down to the back of her knee where a pack of varren had torn into her. “We’ll make it work.”
“Always do.” Shepard catches her arms behind her back and gives one last stretch before bouncing idly back and forth on foot to foot, watching him. “No kill shots. No weapons. Hand to hand only, tapping out if we need to?”
“Mmhm,” Wrex watches her indulgently, arms crossed over the barrel of his chest, hump blocking out the middling sunlight up from Tuchanka’s sinking sun. “You wanna talk about it some more?”
“Nope.” Shepard shifts her weight, judges the distance and then throws herself at him without a second though.
They’ve sparred enough that she knows his reach, knows how to get in under his guard but it’s never been without weapons, never been anywhere but on the ship where she knew they were both holding back.
Biotics glow at her fingers and she gathers up energy for a throw trying to herd him into a space by one of the ruins of the arches, limiting the room he has to move. It works, but Wrex gives as good as he gets; Shepard finds herself lifted off her feet, tossed halfway across the ring with a shout. Sloppy, stupid. “Okay, now I’m pissed off.”
“Good,” Wrex grins at her, giving her a mocking little bow. “Prove it.”
They fight. They beat the shit out of each other. It’s fucking great. She hadn’t realized how limiting fighting on the ship was until they could go as hard as they wanted out here, throwing chunks of debris, slamming each other into walls and cement and a dozen other places.
Shepard goes down and Wrex charges after her, slams her back into the ground when she tries to get up and pins her so he can skate a hand across that scarring again, leaning down to lick over it. She’s out sure what she thought kogan tongues would feel like, but it’s smooth, no rasp, just hot and wet and for a moment all she can think about is his head between his thighs, logistics be damned.
“That’s one,” Wrex says smugly, and Shepard kicks him straight in the face, using that to push her back against the cement away from him to the sound of Wrex’s laughter, loud.
He’s infuriating; he was right in that it’s exceptionally hard to land a strike. She tries fighting him hand to hand and it goes exactly nowhere. There’s too much plating, too much armor.
“Krogan are built to withstand Tuchanka,” Wrex says, spitting a splash of blood onto the ground where she’d knocked her fist into his face for lack of anything else to do at one point. “We live through damn near anything, even before we’re in armor. Even you, Shepard.”
“Everything dies,” Shepard charges at him again, impotently. Human teeth aren’t sharp; she makes the mistake of biting a hand over her mouth, while he’s trying to wrest her arms behind her back. It hurts her teeth more than does any damage to him.
Knowing when she’s lost a battle isn’t something Shepard’s ever been good at but she thinks this might be the closest she’s gotten in years. He’s got several hundred pounds on her, stronger biotics where she’s optimized for infiltration. No soft spots she can reach easily without being close; there’s one at his neck, maybe, another if she can get behind him but that’s unlikely. It doesn’t do a damn bit of good but she punches him in the face, the same spot he’d bit earlier and gets rewarded by a snarl, the glowing press of biotics swirling around her until she throws it off. Any armor damage she’d have to focus on the same spot, try to crack it through repeated hits.
For a while, it’s just that simple. They fight.
Shepard’s never been good at losing and doesn’t intend to, but she’s also not certain how to win. Wrex maps out the roster of scars on her skin with his mouth and his hands: the bullet holes on her front and back, the bites on her arms, the thin line, center of her chest that she decidedly does not think about because it’s too close to a dissection mark.
They don’t kiss; it’s not foreplay in the typical sense but he pins her to the ground with weight and a steel grip and when his thigh slides between her legs she’s still fucking soaked like it is.
“See, princess,” Wrex says, specifically to piss her off. “You don’t need a bed.”
Shepard snarls at him and grinds her hips down against his thigh anyway, hooking a leg around his own. The leverage isn’t great, but he’s distracted and she flips them, sends them rolling across the pit floor while she alternates trying to figure out weak spots in the plating and not getting squashed underneath him.
“Fuck,” Shepard bites out when Wrex fits teeth to the mark on her other shoulder where it looks like she’d been shoved through a meat grinder, holds just long enough that Shepard’s stomach does a flip, torn between finding it sexy and scary and her body doesn’t know which is which. “You figure out which one’s from the thresher maw yet?”
“Not yet.” It works; Wrex lifts his head and looks with his good eye down at her; Shepard debates kicking him the quad if it weren’t going to be a pain in the ass for what she wants later.
“Trick question, didn’t need an omnigel to take it down.” Still not sure how that’s going to work, but she’s never been a quitter. Instead, she rolls to her feet, tries to climb him like he’s a tree, except he’s all round smooth curves up above. Hard to hold onto, she realizes after hitching onto his back, hissing when he grabs for her.
“You little pyjack,” Wrex gives up on trying to pick her up and toss her and just bodily slams them both against the wall. The impact knocks her clean off of him, to the ground where what little air survived the first hit gets knocked out when she impacts the ground. He’s close enough that she eyes the angle, braces herself and then kicks out against his leg to send him falling to the ground. “Shit.”
Shepard gives a pained laugh from the floor, lifting her head, spitting another mouthful of blood onto the arena floor. Wrex lumbers to his feet again, built like a fucking tank and as strong as one too, the bastard. Shepard rolls to her knees and ties her hair back finally, panting faintly, blood singing in her veins.
“Should’ve done this sooner,” she calls to him and watches Wrex hesitate. Just a moment.
“Would’ve,” Wrex tells her, giving the field a long slow sweep to appraise it before his eyes settle back on her again. “Weren’t krogan enough for the rest of ‘em, yet. Til now.”
Makes sense. Shepard inclines her head in a nod, because she does get it; they’ve always both understood ruthlessly practical. What takes her an extra moment is the realization that he said would have. As in, he’d been considering this before, but had to wait because culturally he couldn’t otherwise. “Oh, shit.”
“Yeah,” Wrex grins at her, blood on his teeth and Shepard grins back knowing she’s in the same state. “I know you’ve got shit to take care of, Shepard. This is enough. More than enough.”
“Okay. Okay, so this is a krogan...what? Mating ritual?” Who else would take her from a party to go beat the shit out of each other as foreplay? She tries to think back to idle searches and information given by the Alliance but by and large it didn’t cover the finger points of krogan culture like this. Shaking out her arms, she circles Wrex idly, once, twice. She’s not sure how long it’s been but she still hasn’t found any weak spots. Get a knife in her hands, or a bit of that concrete and she’d do some damage. Get a gun in her hands, and she’d make it work but she doesn’t have any of that. Maybe her bootlaces?
“Already did that.” Wrex charges her and Shepard takes the impact against her shields, tries to slide in low and jam an elbow into the soft plating at Wrex’s side and gets a hand in her hair for the trouble. He’d avoided it so far so she had thought he’d leave it alone, but no, he grips her head by the whole of her hair and drags her bodily against the ground until she’s panting against his lower leg, looking up at him furiously. “The guns I gave you. This is foreplay.”
The translator garbles it a little; this is a pre-sex event, but she gets the idea all the same and digs her nails into the fleshy part between his fingers, pleased when he hisses in pain.
“The rifle was nice,” Shepard admits, both of her hands wound around Wrex’s wrist, trying to dig into his fingers to get him to let go. He chalks up her squirming to that, rather than to her using it to brace herself into position to go for that same chunk of armor on his leg again to take him out. She braces one boot against the ground flat, and hisses when he pulls her, forces her to readjust, the pain sparking all the way down, hot and sharp. “Human foreplay is usually more— shit, ah, drinks, vids, that kind of thing.”
“I know.”
Shepard uses the grip to lever herself up and strikes out at that same bit of armor once she’s high enough, rewarded with Wrex’s pained yell and follows it with an uppercut to his jaw. Underside of his chin’s as unprotected as it gets. Under his arm. Inside of his thigh. All the same vulnerable spots of a human. If she had a weapon, she thinks she could do it. Biotics would be a pain, so it’d have to be a surprise, but if it ever came down to it she’d be in armor with a rifle and then it wouldn’t be a fair fight.
Worse: he was right that she needed this, or something like it. She misses tells, forgets to look for them when she’s fighting him. Misses blocks and takes hits she shouldn’t take, wouldn’t be taking if she were at her best. It wouldn’t be half as annoying if it felt like her fighting was even doing anything. She can bite and kick and claw all day long and it does nothing. It is, she thinks, a little like fighting a reaper except the only thing at risk right now is her shields. Impotently pissed, she kicks the same armor on his leg once, twice, and a third time before she’s chucked across the field like a grocery bag.
“Did I crack it?” Shepard calls, hands on her knees, panting quietly as she watches Wrex look his leg over in the flickering firelight.
“Come close and you can find out.” Wrex calls. Shepard grins and takes him up on it, biotic energy pooling at her hands. She throws it down onto the ground behind her and uses it to fling herself at Wrex, aiming a punch at the soft spot in his throat and attempting to duck under his reach and get out of range before he manages to catch her. “You’re easy, Shepard.”
“Shit.” He grabs one arm just as she swings back for another punch and knocks her straight into the crumbling archway of the arena, hard enough that her shielding flickers and her face grinds against the cement when it bleeds away into flickers. “Rude not to accept the invitation, right?”
Wrex is big; she’s always known that, but it’s not until he’s fitted up against her from behind, grasping her wrists just hard enough it actually hurts, that it really connects. He squashes the flickering attempt at bringing her biotics up, shaking her like she’s an unruly animal. His free hand comes up to her back, traces down the Cerberus-enhanced spine and scar over it and then then yanks once, quick. The seam rips wetly and he works her out of the top with minimal fuss. Bare breasts pressed against the cold stone isn’t exactly the sexiest thing in the world, but her body doesn’t seem to get the memo because he jams his knee between her thigh again and she can feel his laughter when he feels how wet she is.
“That’s a compliment, asshole,” Shepard hisses, shamelessly grinding herself down against him, breathing hitching. Wrex closes his teeth against her shoulder and Shepard’s hands flex in his grip, just the threat of pain enough to get her going even without the fight beforehand. “You gonna tell me how my side of this is supposed to work or should I just keep making it up?”
His tongue traces over the scar on her spine and she almost, almost gets her hands free when he slides his dominant hand around her and fits it between her thighs, cupping over her briefs. “You saying if I tell you to do something you’re going to listen?”
Shepard pauses, and Wrex laughs again, hand sliding down the front of her briefs and he doesn’t hesitate. His knee drops, first and third fingers parting her while his middle skims from clit down to entrance, filling her fast enough it feels like it steals the air out of her lungs. “Fuck.”
“I’ve been alive much longer than you,” Wrex leans in, presses his face into the curve of her throat and lets her ride his hand for a moment, getting a feel for what she likes and how she likes it. “Sure you don’t want vids and drinks? Human instructions suggested flowers.”
The cold stone isn’t nearly cold enough now, his body heat behind her with her own body on fire. She presses her other cheek against a new part of stone and smothers a whine between clenched teeth when he uses the grip on her forearms to hold in place while she gets herself off using his hand. Behind her, against her ass she can feel him idly grinding where his cock will be.
“Fight was a good choice,” Shepard grits out, thighs clenching against his wrist and forearm. Wrex was right about one thing earlier; she is easy, if she’s the one doing it. He doesn’t try to guide her or fight her, just fills her hole and lets her use his hand to grind off on, pinned against a wall after getting her ass handed to her for however long. It’s quite possible the most romantic thing that’s happened to her, which is enormously fucked up but so it goes. Her first orgasm comes with a final roll of her hips and a full body shiver, toes curled in her boots. When she trembles through it, Wrex takes her weight, presses teeth into the meat of her shoulder with a low hum. “Wouldn’t say no to flowers, though.”
“No flowers near here,” Wrex admits, grip on her wrists not changing but the hand between her thighs withdraws and then it’s just his massive fingers exploring, gentle, mapping out what gets her to squirm away or roll against him. “I know some humans can’t go again right away or it hurts. Not the fun kind.”
“You’re good,” Shepard tells him, instead of I’m so indestructible I’m not sure I know the difference between good or bad pain anymore. Out of any of them, a krogan, Wrex would probably understand but this isn’t therapy. Shepard pushes her hips back against him in invitation, sweat making her hair curl against her skin. If her hands and wrists are slick enough, maybe she can slide out of his grip, but it’s not looking likely.
She’s never been good at losing, but he’s right; this isn’t really losing. It’s just a fight she can’t win on her terms.
They’re still going to have sex, Shepard rationalizes. It’s just not going to be on her lead, by her instructions. Doesn’t mean she’s not going to keep trying. She relaxes in his hold a moment, idly rocking down against exploratory fingers, tilting her head back against the armor of his chest.
“You like to take your sweet time, huh?” Shepard asks him, rolling her shoulders to try and loosen them up from being tensed in place. “Show me what I’m working with.”
He mutters something, the translator garbling it, but the idea gets across all the same. Like hell. She hasn’t conceded battle yet and he’s not dumb enough to think she won’t try something. “You couldn’t take them, yet, Shepard.”
“Bullshit,” Shepard looks down, eyes the angle and stamps his foot once; she still wearing his boots, and it has to fucking hurt because he snarls, grip loosening just enough she strains and pops her hands free. Shot to the throat, another to the soft spot of his belly, ducking out of his reach when he grabs for her like he wasn’t just fingering her a moment ago. Abruptly, something registers in her brain and she pauses. “Them?”
Wrex’s smile is all sharp teeth and threat as he circles. “Second thoughts?”
Shepard takes his next charge head on, goes straight for the plate on the top of his head, tries to hook her fingers under it. It won’t do anything, sure, not without a weapon but the threat’s still there and for a moment, it’s just the simplicity of battle again until he knocks her down onto the bench from earlier. He takes two kicks to the face for it and bleeds orange in the fading light. “Come on.”
“So, no,” Wrex grasps both her legs and for a moment she feels a little like a hooked fish when he lifts and pushes her ankles back against his shoulder. One hand pulls her briefs back and down, tugs them to mid thigh and leaves her bare in the muggy air. He could rip them as easily as he had the bra and the reminder of it sends little thrill of fear and impotent anger through her which is better than any alcohol. “You’d make a good krogan.”
With the position, she can’t tell what he’s doing but one moment there’s the heat of his body and the next, he lines his hips up and pushes both of his unsheathed cocks between her thighs, grinding the underside of the bottom one against her clit. They’re dusky brown and red, the heads flared delicately, tips damp.
“Next life, maybe,” Shepard laughs, arching up against him. When he bottoms out both heads peek through the softness of her thighs and she presses a hand down between them, feeling around the flared angles of the heads, fitting her hand loosely around one to give it a slow stroke, testing. “Can’t do both, but one and then the other?”
“We’ll work up to it.” Wrex grins, drawing back and sinking back in again, fucking her thighs idly while she flexes and tenses them, fingers playing over the heads every time he bottoms out. She wants to get her mouth on him, but there’s time for that later. “You’re gonna limp back to the ship tomorrow.”
“Promises, promises,” Shepard knocks her fist into his shoulder plate, impatient. “Are you going to do it or are we going to keep talking?”
For all that he’d said she was easy, now that they’re past the fighting portion — or, at the very least, she’s stopped actively trying to win because there’s a better goal in place, he’s easier. Some goading and he’s already shifting, free hand gripping the bottom penis to drag the rounded head against where she’s slick and empty. The head catches and presses down, sinks into her and he doesn’t give her a single moment to adjust, takes her at her word and pushes the whole fat length into her as far as he can go, watching her face when he does it. His hand releases her ankles, lets them settle on the broad spread of his shoulder so he can hold himself up while she’s splayed on the bench, breathing raggedly.
“Better, Shepard?” Wrex asks, because he’s an asshole, and then he moves and Shepard’s sure that walk tomorrow is going to be a pain but right now the privacy is a godsend as Wrex does his damndest to fuck the oxygen out of her lungs. The strain on her muscles from her shoulders all the way down to her toes aches and it’s perfect. Wrex fucks a second orgasm out of her with one massive finger rubbing circles over her clit, and the second bleeds into a third when he comes moments after, three sharp thrusts of his hips and the wet, hot rush of come.
She’s soaked. He drags his cock out with a wet noise and Shepard presses a hand against her mouth when she feels the slick drip of his spend sliding out of her and then in the next breath, he guides his other cock into her. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, Wrex—”
“Know it’s not possible,” Wrex’s voice is a low rumble, a growl, broken intermittently by the intake of breath as he fucks her. “But worth a try. We’d have strong brats.”
They would. They’re an impossibility; she’s not even certain she can have children the normal human way; the Illusive Man not allowing a chip is one thing but she doesn’t trust that he’d consider the ability to have kids a distraction. Nevermind how she’d carry it to term or fight Collectors with a massive krogan baby, that wasn’t the point here.
“We do impossible shit twice a week, minimum.” Shepard can’t get to his second cock from here, can’t tell if it’s retracted or how any of that works, so she drags her hands up, cups her own tits and pinches at the nipples. Doesn’t do much; they’ve never been terribly sensitive but the spark of pain is good, sharp as he grinds himself as deep as he can go. “That get you going, Wrex? Thinking about me fat with your babies?”
That, in fact, does seem to get him going. He braces himself over her and Shepard lets out a sharp cry when his next thrust sends her skidding back, nearly dislodging him before he follows, pins her tight and works his cock into her in short, sharp jabs.
“Yeah,” Shepard holds onto the dip in the plating on his shoulder, eyes squeezed shut. “They’d be terrors.”
It’s her Cerberus bones and reconstruction that keep her from getting hurt when he comes a second time and settles over her, several hundred pounds of alien that would probably crush a different person. Pressing a hand down against her belly, she imagines it round with his kids and, wow, okay, she hadn’t considered that she’d find that exceptionally hot as well, but there they were.
Getting knocked up isn’t possible, but they give it a solid attempt for most of the night.
Krogan stamina opts for short bursts which suits her just fine, really; the edge of pain and oversensitivity on her terms is part of the appeal. When he’s done, she sits in his lap, aching thighs spread wide over his, his bottom cock not retracted in her hands as she explores it, learning the shape of it with her fingers. “Huh. I’d heard rumors some krogan did, but always thought those were full of shit.”
“Not all krogan,” Wrex yawns at her, his own hands having explored her breasts earlier out of curiosity, but settled for wandering over her ass and back instead, kneading the muscle there just shy of too hard. “You feeling better?”
Physically, she’s exhausted, worn down to the bone. If it weren’t for self-preservation, she’d fall asleep out here but part of Tuchanka’s charm is that everything on this damn planet wants them dead. Survival’s always been a good motivator. “Yeah. Thanks for the help with Grunt.”
Wrex’s whole chest shakes with the laugh and lifts her by the back of her thighs, carrying her up through the arena toward what passes for the front door, if it weren’t for the massive gaping hole knocked in by the stone falling inward. “Should be thanking you for the entertainment you brought. We’ll find a use for him here once you’re done.”
There is, blessedly, what passes for a shower in his quarters. She’d sort of doubted given how little they need water, but apparently one of the perks of clan leader means running water from a well. She’d do a walk back to the ship because she had to, but she’d prefer it’s not reeking of come and sweat and blood the whole time. It’s not hot but it’s warm when he settles her onto unsteady feet and elbows a button set into the wall. Water starts to pour down and she starts rinsing herself without a moment of hesitation, wobbling her way toward the center. Without the mix of adrenaline, her thighs tremble faintly, overworked.
The laugh that escapes him is more than pleased, a low, rumbling noise that’s almost a growl as he flattens a hand against one of them and stands under the flow of water with her while she rinses.
“Fucked the fight out of Commander Shepard,” Wrex says, nosing against the nape of her neck while his hands slide freely over the slick expanse of her body, which means it’s deserved when she jams her elbow back into the soft fleshy part of his belly. She laughs when he bites at her shoulder in retaliation. “Most of it, anyway.”
“You wish.” Somehow, they manage to make it from shower, to bed; Wrex gives her a krogan shirt to wear rather than her fatigues again and while it doesn’t fit by any stretch of the imagination it’s warm and comfortable and keeps her skin from getting rubbed raw by the plates of his armor. It’s good. Wrex maps out the scars he’d explored earlier, lifting the shirt to find the one on the inside of her thigh he’d grazed over trimmed claws tracing over the ragged marks on the inside of her thigh. “Last one. Got stupid, careless, hopping over vents; Cerberus took a knife to it. Nearly bled out.”
“Krogan killzone, too,” Wrex curves his hand over it, the motion less sexy and more protective, fitting his hand to a spot that’s very likely a death sentence for both of them if it’s attacked. Humans and krogan are delicate at some of the same places. “Good thing we’re both hard as hell to kill. Get some rest, Shepard.”
For once, exhaustion hanging over her like a thick blanket, the warmth of Wrex solid at her side, she doesn’t want to fight. She jams a long leg between both of his, fits herself in close, and lets herself fall asleep.
In the morning, she stares at the ceiling, relatively certain her body’s been replaced with a single, massive bruise. Wrex is gone from the bed, but her fatigues are settled next to the bed. Shepard kicks the covers back groggily, taking stock of the rest of her body part by part. The insides of her thighs are chapped, red from friction but in a day or so they’ll be healed. Mostly, it feels like she’d fought all day yesterday, which was effectively what happened, but satisfied after it.
“Boots are on the floor,” Wrex says, gesturing. Shepard sits up, dragging a hand through the knots in her hair and yawns, nodding. “Keeping those flimsy scraps of fabric, though.”
Shepard keeps nodding until the words connect and then she squints at him, scratching at her shoulder. “My underwear and bra?”
“Yep,” Wrex grins, arms crossed. “You’ve got more on the ship.”
Not giving him the satisfaction, Shepard flips him off and begins the arduous process of climbing out of bed, getting into her clothes without those things. Uncomfortable, but bearable. “Anyone radio yet?”
“Whelps are still asleep by the firepit. Garrus and Tali went back to the ship together.” Shepard cuts him a look and he grins. “Yeah.”
“Huh.”
Dressed, she heads over to him and presses a hand to his face, mapping out the scarring on it with her fingers in a way she couldn’t have last night. “I know you gotta go. We’ve both got our duties.”
“I’ll try to come back and see what you rebuild Tuchanka into,” Shepard tells him, honest, and isn’t surprised when moments later her communicator beeps, EDI checking in. “Duty calls.”
“Shepard,” Wrex says, and as she gets into the shuttle, less walk of shame and more limp of conquest, she grins at him. “Wrex.”
“EDI?” Shepard squints at the blocky cement square on her desk a month later, in with the newest physical mail batch. Inside the box is dirt, and a tiny, brown stick starting to poke through the red dirt. “Uh, what’s with the plant?”
“It’s a Tuchankan flower,” EDI pauses for dramatic effect. Robots shouldn’t be able to sound smug, yet, “From Wrex. He said you had requested it last time you were there. The kazah blossom isn’t a flowering bloom like the name would infer, but instead would shed its tough outer layer after a heat wave or, more often, a fire. Salarians theorize that the plant grew in conjunction with the rise and fall of krogan cities; after a burn, they lose their outer layer and become a bright red. They are notoriously difficult to kill.”
“You and me both,” Shepard tells the plant quietly, and settles it up on the display next to the Normandy.