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Meet me at the casino bar, Garrus’ message had said. Shepard didn’t know what he was getting himself into, but the leap into the unknown was half the fun.
It was Shepard’s calling card - - don’t ever let ‘em see you coming. The bad guys never play by the book, you shouldn’t either. Wanna be like Commander Shepard? Always expect the unexpected!
Garrus had eventually gotten on board with this approach, too. Leaving C-Sec to join Shepard’s crew? What an unexpected move. Becoming Archangel? Completely off-the-chain! Breaking 150 different regs and going on a joyride to shoot bottles at the top of the Presidium? A truly radical act, though C-Sec would tell you it would only be littering if you actually missed a shot.
Then there was the whole dating a human thing. Dating Commander Shepard, even. Who could have expected that? Shepard could barely believe it himself.
They’d started off telling each other this was really just blowing off steam. They’d needed something to ease the stress of being alive, and, unsurprisingly, they’d found it in the person who’d stood at their side through the worst of it. "There’s no one in the galaxy I respect more than you,” Garrus had told him, and if there was a more romantic pick-up line in the universe, Shepard hadn’t yet heard it.
What was surprising was it lasting. More than they’d needed to let off steam, they’d needed someone to hold on to when everything else was crumbling around them. They’d found it in each other.
Garrus had surprised him with the regulations-breaking date at the top of the Presidium, where he’d said, even more unexpectedly, “The worst part of the galaxy going to hell would’ve been never getting to see you again.”
Huge fucking shock, Shepard had actually felt the same way, and he’d kissed Garrus to let him know it.
“So, I hope you’re not going to propose marriage now, are you?” Garrus had said, awkwardly, when Shepard set him back on his feet. “Because, before we get back, there’s one very important thing we need to settle. There are some people who know how to handle a gun, and then there are some of us know how to make it dance. That would be me,” he pointed out, after a beat.
Shepard had let Garrus make fun of his dancing abilities, and had also let Garrus win their shooting match. Flushed with victory, Garrus had in turn let Shepard take him to Anderson’s apartment, as well as to Anderson’s bed. Shepard was pretty sure he’d been the real winner of that round.
That date had propelled them into uncharted territory. Thanks to the war and the Alliance Navy, Shepard had very little experience with dating, both in general as well as the interspecies kind. Was he expected to do anything else to lock it down? Did he need to ask Garrus if he was ready to be a one-human turian?
Not knowing what to expect was a shot of pure adrenaline, like plunging into a war zone, like free-fall. The best part? Getting to discover it together.
Case in point: Shepard showed up at the designated time at the Silver Coast casino bar, all prettied up in his best dress blues. He leaned decoratively against the bar with a fancy drink at his elbow and rubbed his hands surreptitiously against his nice trousers. He was at his best when improvising; he had totally no reason to be nervous, or to think his game might in fact be terrible.
Garrus was always on the dot at work, but tonight the fucker kept Shepard waiting for ten whole minutes. Shepard knocked back a couple of the ritzy drinks, including one that had a small paper umbrella in it, and was fixing to walk off in a huff, when he saw a familiar silhouette darken the brightly-lit entrance.
Garrus Vakarian, ex-vigilante formerly known as Archangel, strode through the doorway, looking razor-sharp in uniform, standing literally head and shoulders above the other partygoers. The pulsing diode lights of the bar haloed him in bright color and shadow, as if he was really an angel fallen from the heavens. Heads turned as he moved seamlessly through the crowd, including one belonging to a female turian. As he crossed the room with his long-legged strides, her laser-focused gaze locked in on him like a target.
Shepard trained his own glare at her until she colored, clearly reluctant to surrender her prize to a monkey in Alliance blues. When he turned back, he found Garrus at his table, all cowl and broad shoulders and a really self-satisfied grin that Shepard couldn’t wait to kiss or knock off his face.
Do the unexpected. “So… a Turian on shore leave. You come here often?”
That shot hit home. A gratifying look of surprise spread across the big lug’s handsome face. Garrus was a consummate professional, though, and he recovered quickly.
“Is this that first date thing that you might have talked about in passing?”
Had Shepard talked about it? He might have, now Garrus mentioned it. Shepard had never really been into role-playing, but with the right turian, anything was possible.
He raised an eyebrow in his best porn star impersonation, and Garrus belatedly got with the program. “Right, got it! Yeah. Oh, yeah, I come here often. Good place to blow off steam!” He lowered his voice into a seductive purr that made Shepard want to arch his back like a cat to be petted. “Gotta say, the scenery’s not bad.”
The fucker made a show of looking around the room. His gaze fell on the female turian, who visibly perked up. Shepard’s heart beat faster. Was he really going to have to break character and punch the guy that he was supposed to be trying to score with?
Fortunately, Garrus turned back to him in time and smiled his charming smile. “But the view in front of me is much better.”
“Don’t you forget it,” Shepard said, with feeling. He rubbed his knuckles reflexively. “You seem a little distracted, mister. You sure you know how to show a guy a good time?”
“Yes? I mean, yes. Absolutely! I’m an all-round Turian bad boy. I’m a wicked shot, I can dance, I kill Reapers on the side. Does that sound like a good time to you?” Garrus leaned in, his mandibles flaring with sub-vocalizations that Shepard couldn’t hear, but that went right to his groin anyway.
“Maybe,” Shepard said, trying not to grin like a besotted idiot. “I’m Commander Shepard, Alliance Navy. You might’ve heard of me. I kill Reapers on the side, too.”
“And I heard you’re a wicked shot.” Garrus cocked his head, as if listening to music just out of Shepard’s range. His smirk widened. “But can you dance?”
“Wha - -? Oh, no," Shepard said, as Garrus took advantage of his longer reach, levered him off the bar stool, and spun him out onto the dance floor.
Too late, Shepard heard the jaunty, synthed-up bars of a traditional human dance step, something with too many beats to easily follow, which brought to mind men in shiny pants and extremely tight shirts swaying with their partners as if they were plasto-glued together at the hip.
“Expect the unexpected!” Garrus hissed, gleefully, and steered Shepard into the center of the dance floor.
The other patrons made room for the debonair two meter tall turian and his only slightly less tall human partner. An excited murmuring rose as more and more people started to recognize them.
Shepard was forced to pull out his fake smile and stick it to his face like it was made of plascrete. “You’re gonna pay for this.”
“Time to do something stupid for a change,” Garrus snickered. “The last chance we might ever get. Now, think you can manage to follow my lead?”
Shepard gritted his teeth together. “Fuck, of course. You’ve made fun of my dancing for the last time. Anything you can do, Vakarian - -!”
Garrus chose that moment to clench him in his arms, chest to chest, and then launch both of them into the opening moves of the dance, and Shepard had to catch his breath in surprise. Garrus was moving in perfect time to the compound-metered music, shifting 400 pounds of carapace and powerful limbs with the same polished, fluid grace as he wielded his sniper rifle, as if the complex Latin rhythm was written into his blood.
Shepard said, suspiciously, “What is this dance, and where the hell did you learn to do it?”
“Argentine tango. From Buenos Aires. You know, the big city on Earth?” Garrus winked. “I’ve been taking lessons on the side.” From whom, he didn't say.
“No shit, and also, no fair,” Shepard protested. “It’s not humanly possible to figure out on the fly how to dance this fucking thing, even if it’s a dance from Earth.”
“Relax, Shepard, I got you,” Garrus purred, smiling reassuringly as someone started to film them on her omnitool. His two-fingered grip was surprisingly secure, and despite himself Shepard found himself relaxing in Garrus’s large arms, instinctively following the cues of Garrus’s shoulders and feet and, yes, his hips, without any need for plasto-gluing whatsoever.
Garrus was watching his face intently, as if nothing else existed in the whole galaxy but him, and them, and this dance.
“I see that you have,” Shepard said, after a beat, as Garrus executed a neat cross-step, and pivoted Shepard with his hands, so that Shepard kept time with him as well.
Three more people had started recording. Someone whispered loudly, “Can you believe that’s actually Commander Shepard, skipping around like a ballerina?”
“Shut up, asshole, he can hear you! And this isn’t ballet, but ballroom!” someone else hissed back.
Shepard leaned in closer to his partner. Garrus smelled of rifle blowback and standard-issue soap and, underneath his formal attire, tantalizingly of his desert planet. “They’re right, though, this is ridiculous. I must look ridiculous tangoing with you.”
“Hardly,” Garrus said, smiling the feral smile that made Shepard’s heart beat faster. “You’ve never looked better. Do you know the tango was originally a dance for two men? It was invented in blue collar neighborhoods, rejected by the upper crust, and practiced by mostly musicians and immigrant laborers. Thought it was fitting for us. Am I right?”
Shepard wasn’t going to admit it, but it was pretty cool that Garrus had decided to learn to dance this fancy dance so he could dance it with Shepard. He said, instead, “I dunno, I’m the one with two left feet, remember?”
Garrus winced as 200 pounds of fighting soldier stepped the wrong way and landed on his foot. “It’s not as if you’re letting me forget, Commander.”
Shepard said, a gloating note in his voice, “Hey, this was your idea. Expect the unexpected, you said; I got you, you said.”
“I did say that,” Garrus agreed, as he spun Shepard out like a star into space. “Trust me, John, you’re doing fine.”
Shepard wheeled across the dance floor, a rogue comet, tethered at one end by Garrus’s strong arm. Then Garrus reeled him back in, and Shepard’s feet fell neatly back into the dance’s four/four time.
Garrus leaned his inner leg back and braced Shepard forward. Shepard followed his lead and hooked his outside leg around Garrus’s leg spur, in a move he’d later learn was called an enganche. Some people actually started to clap, and Shepard couldn’t help smirking. Bad at dancing, his ass!
Garrus was silent for a moment, and then said, in a changed tone, “I’m sorry I made fun of your dancing, before. You’re really getting the hang of this. You know, you can’t help being good at everything you do.”
Shepard stared into the cloudy blue eyes. “Is this really just about dancing?” he enquired.
“No,” Garrus confessed. “Among my people - - let’s just say that dancing is a bit of a courtship thing.”
Shepard snorted. “Again, no shit.” A courtship thing? He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He just hoped no one recording had zoomed in on his expression.
The music continued, point and counterpoint, Garrus’ powerful body moving along the urgent flow of the music and moving Shepard with it. Garrus spun him away again, with more centripetal force this time, and let go. Shepard swirled twice around and came face to face with James Vega on the edges of the dance floor, wearing the smirk of someone who might just have facilitated Garrus’ dance lessons to mess with Shepard.
Vega made an involuntary, lip-smacking noise, his eyes bright with surprised appreciation. Shepard had to say it was pretty damn satisfying.
Shepard reached for Garrus’s hand and twisted himself back into his turian’s arms. Mock-sternly, he asked, “What was that all about?”
Garrus looked like he was blushing a bit. “Old turian saying. ‘When you love someone, let them dance with others. If they return to you in the dance, you know they’ll be with you for all of life’.”
Shepard didn’t have a snappy response to this. He wasn’t sure anyone could blame him. Garrus’s hands on his body were very gentle, as if giving Shepard the maximum opportunity to get away.
The big guy needn’t have worried. Shepard wasn’t going anywhere.
The rhythm pulled urgently at them, the music heading towards a crescendo. It was time for the final move. Another kick out, this time with his leg hooked even higher around Garrus’s thigh, and Garrus bent him backwards like the curve of a bow.
There weren’t many people whom Shepard could trust to support 1.9 meters of muscle and reinforced bones, but Garrus was one of them. He made it look easy, one large hand locked against Shepard’s upper back, like he'd never let him fall. There was only one person in the whole galaxy who could make Shepard feel this goddamned safe, on this dance floor as much as out there in all the combat zones across the galaxy.
There was one hushed instant in which they held the pose, as naturally as if they’d done it all their lives. They hadn’t, of course. But maybe they’d have the rest of their lives to do it together.
The sound of cheering and clapping brought them back to reality. Someone was standing on the bar in order to record their embrace.
Carefully, Garrus set Shepard back on his feet. “I see you’ve been working on your flexibility,” he said to Shepard, in a tight, thick voice that Shepard was beginning to recognize all too well. “Sometimes I forget how humans are so very, very flexible.”
“I have to keep up with my turian boyfriend,” Shepard said, absently. “Hey, you’re not going to propose marriage now, are you?”
He was kidding, of course, just like Garrus had been at the top of the Presidium when Garrus had made the same crack about proposing. But there was no hiding the bright flush that now spread across Garrus’s face. He cleared his throat and silently steered Shepard off the dance floor.
Together, they pushed their way through the gawking crowd. The turian woman from the bar was muttering, “Just my luck. Who could hope to compete with the Hero of the Citadel?” So much for an incognito date.
Once out of the bar, on the open ramp overlooking the Lower Silversun Strip, Shepard pressed the advantage.
“You don’t mean to say that that courtship dance thing was…?”
“No? No! Of course not! No mating contracts, or any opening of negotiations for one. In any way!” Garrus paused, and then added, sheepishly, “Besides, I’d need to seek my clan’s approval first before proposing marriage, and I’d rather not give my father a heart attack in the middle of a war.”
“But you thought about it? Holy shit, you thought about it,” Shepard marveled.
They stood side by side against the railing, above the bright lights and chrome and holograms that spanned the strip. Shepard leaned his head against Garrus’s broad shoulderplate. Sometimes, when it wasn’t actively trying to kill them, the galaxy was an amazing place.
Garrus muttered, “I told you, I figured it might be time to do something stupid. If this was our last day alive, I’d want to have at least thought about asking.”
Talk about really fucking unexpected. Shepard still couldn’t believe it. But then, he also couldn’t believe he’d just willingly danced the Argentine tango in front of fifty people and the entire extranet.
He took Garrus’s hand, and Garrus let him. “I’m glad you told me. And I meant it when I told you that I’ll follow your lead. I always will.”
Shepard still wasn’t sure what he was getting himself into. But the leap into the unknown was half the fun, and doubly so with Garrus at his side.