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Garrus thought of himself as a far more mature turian these days. With the Reapers sweeping over every planet in the galaxy and the scattered remnants of his people to rescue, he tried to keep the big picture in mind. It helped to have two partners from such vastly different corners of the galaxy, who made him think about things he never had to consider on the daily.
Things like, say, interior design.
He should have been happy. Today, after all, was a rare chance for the three of them to relax. The Normandy was being repaired, so they were grounded at the Citadel, and something or other urgent had delayed the meetings Shepard was supposed to be having. She was currently out of the apartment, but only because she wanted to pop down to the shopping district and pick up some ingredients for dinner. She could have had them delivered, but Garrus and Thane both understood what the shopping trip really meant: a chance to set down the mantle of Commander Shepard and just be a normal person for a day. A normal person with two alien boyfriends, maybe, but that just meant she had good taste. So when she put on a baseball cap, a pair of dark sunglasses, and a baggy hoodie, neither of them tried to come with.
Normally an afternoon with only Thane would have been an unexpected treat. The two of them had never gotten to spend much time one on one as boyfriends instead of colleagues, and there was always the shooting range.
Today, though. Today, Garrus had a target in mind that had nothing to do with the shooting range.
He tried to bring it up casually. He and Thane were lounging on the couch, Thane engrossed in some obscure work of ancient asari poetry while Garrus watched a sports game on mute. "You know I don't like to complain," he said, when Thane glanced up from his book to look at the TV.
Thane blinked, a secretive little smile tucking up in the corner of his mouth. He was lying with his feet stretched across Garrus's lap. Now he sat up to give Garrus a gentle shove. "Yes you do. I start to feel concern if you go a single day without voicing your opinion on something."
Garrus rubbed his neck. "I know what I like," he said, since it had not been a very good opening. Thane smirked at him, and Garrus lightly tapped his thigh. "Get your mind out of the gutter. I'm trying to talk about this apartment. It's weird, right?"
Thane set aside his book and cocked his head. Since he was engaged now, Garrus switched off the TV and turned to face him fully. "I'm not sure what you mean. You don't have any more experience with human spaces than I do, I should think. There's the Normandy, but that was partially of turian design."
"Well, no, but—Shepard got this apartment from Anderson, right? It certainly doesn't feel like… her."
"Most of her personal effects remain on the Normandy. You and I both know she spends most of her time there. She said herself that she's hardly had any time to spend in this apartment." Thane still looked a little puzzled, so Garrus tried a different tack.
"That's what I'm trying to get at. It's clear she hasn't had a chance to think about what's here. Why else would she leave an office chair in the bedroom?" He drummed his fingers on Thane's thigh. "I guess I'm saying this place doesn't feel very restful. Sure, she wants all her model ships and the hamster on the Normandy where she can decompress, but shouldn't she have something here that belongs to her? Something nice?"
Thane smiled again. "I see. You're concerned about her." Garrus huffed, which he knew was as good as a yes. Thane glanced around the room, his brow furrowed. "I suppose I hadn't thought much about it. We haven't had much time in this apartment either, but it is a little… quirky. Though human spaces are always designed strangely." He swung his legs off Garrus's lap so he could sit up properly. "What do you think we should do about it, then?"
Garrus had not expected to get this far, but it was a pleasant surprise. "Well… I'm not sure yet. It's not like we've gotten the opportunity to talk about what kind of decor she likes. And I don't want to come out and ask her because this has got to be the last thing on her mind. She doesn't need more stuff on her plate. So…"
"So you want me to ask her, because you are about as subtle as a sniper rifle with a broken silencer." Thane's smile broadened. The crack might have annoyed Garrus if he didn't know he was the only one who got to see Thane smile so openly on a regular basis.
"Not the way I would put it, but sure." He tried to pinch Thane's side, but of course Thane was too fast for him. He was already on his feet, regarding the art over the fireplace.
"Leave it to me, dear," he said, putting a fingertip on his chin. "I may already have an idea."
"Oh thank the spirits. Now I don't have to do any work." He pretended to collapse on the couch.
Thane looked over his shoulder, still smiling. "I wouldn't say that. We still have time to fill before Shepard returns, after all." He started for the bedroom, which made his intentions for that time clear.
"Well, that's not work," Garrus said, and Thane let him have the last word since they both knew he liked it that way.
A few hours later, Shepard returned from the shops with her purchases. "I take it things went well since you came back without a thousand new problems?" Garrus commented, hovering by the kitchen area since he knew Shepard would want to put her things away herself.
She started setting the ingredients for dinner on the counter, including two bottles of wine which she set in buckets of ice. "Pretty good," she agreed. "Nice to have normal problems for once, even if trying to go around incognito meant I couldn't get my usual discount. Stopped to chat with some people. You know how it goes."
Thane came to sit on the stool across the counter, watching her far more nonchalantly than Garrus could ever manage. He decided to stand by Thane since Shepard was choosing a knife from the block now, and he wanted to be away from the business end. "And by that you mean you did pick up more errands to run, but not today?"
"Not today," she agreed, then arched a brow. "Why? Did you have another errand you neglected to tell me about?"
"No," said Thane and Garrus in unison, maybe too forcefully.
Shepard only laughed. "Okay, okay, I get it. Day off means day off." She started chopping vegetables, which was not when Garrus would have chosen to ask her questions. Then again, Thane was better at this than him.
"When did Anderson gift you this apartment again?" Shepard cocked her head in reply, which Thane understood. "Garrus and I made good use of it while you were gone. I was late to join the two of you after Menae, so I missed the entire story."
Shepard paused, and Garrus thought they might have been caught, but apparently she was only running the story back in her head. "Oh, huh, I guess not. Well, this place is Anderson's, but he won't be coming to collect, so he said I could do whatever I wanted." Her mouth firmed. "And it's not because he's having any trouble on Earth. He just hates living here sucking up to the Council." She paused, tipping her head back. "I guess it must have been Udina's before that, but I never asked."
"Well, it has its charms." Thane rested his elbows on the counter, propping his chin on his hands. "The view, for one thing."
Shepard apparently understood this for a prompt, since she hummed in agreement. "I just like having so much space. I've been crammed in tiny boxes for as long as I can remember. I had my own apartment back home, but I never saw it—got shipped out too much, and training took up too much of my time. I was basically paying rent on a postage stamp for a place to store my stuff." She dropped her eyes, clearly thinking that place was just another missing element of Earth. "It was mine, though. First place I could lock the door and put whatever I wanted on the walls."
Thane changed the subject, asking her instead about where she'd gone shopping, but when she turned her back, he winked at Garrus, one of the many useful human gestures they'd both picked up.
Finding time to discuss the subject after that was a little tricky, not the least because they had other matters on their minds while Shepard was home. But once they had another little stretch of alone time, while Shepard was trapped in a meeting with people too important for them, Thane put on his business face. "I performed some research while you were both sleeping," he said, passing over a few file to Garrus's visor.
"By which you mean you scrolled through Shepard's old social media pages," Garrus said, though he wasn't going to complain at the old pictures. Shepard looked impossibly young on Earth; her hair was longer, instead of the chin-length crop, and she didn't even have the scar through her eyebrow that made her look so impossibly cool.
Thane shrugged, unabashed. "We use what tools we must. And, to be fair, I did have to contact Liara for these. They were deleted ages ago."
"So don't tell Shepard we got them. Got it." He continued flipping through the pictures until he found what must have been Thane's target—a picture of Shepard and a few other girls in casual clothing with the Alliance emblem. Must have been her squadmates. The thought gave him a little pang. They were posing in a tiny room with a low ceiling.
The walls were covered in something, though the image was such poor quality that Garrus had to run a program to tell what they were. "Her walls were covered in pictures." Her bunk on the Normandy was nothing like that—she had her ships, of course, and her other toys, not to mention the poor fish, but those didn't feel nearly as personal as the pictures, crammed so close together they covered the wall entirely. The quality was still pretty cruddy, but he could guess some of the subjects: landscapes, buildings, and people, all sorts of people. Some of them were clearly her squadmates, but some appeared to be just people on the street.
He cast the picture to the television so they could both inspect it, though an idea was already forming in his mind. By the sly glance Thane shot him, he had something similar in mind. Garrus switched off the TV, just in case Shepard came home early. "Okay, so here's what I'm thinking…"
The next few days of shore leave involved a lot more subterfuge than any of them probably would have preferred. If Garrus had tried this alone, he would have been caught immediately. But, with the two of them, it was relatively easy to distract Shepard so one or both of them could slip off to take care of what needed doing. And everyone they spoke with was more than willing to play along, since they were either already on the Normandy and therefore one of Shepard's closest allies, or somehow indebted to her because of the war effort. Most people didn't have much time or energy left to give, but luckily, what Garrus and Thane needed didn't take much time.
The trickiest part was the final day of shore leave, since Shepard had wanted to spend it alone with them doing nothing—well, maybe not nothing, but nothing strenuous. But they needed her out for at least a bit. The good news was pulling off their plan had required some help from Ashley and Samantha, and both of them were more than happy to strongarm Shepard into some girl time in the morning. They were about the only people she would tolerate that kind of treatment from anyway.
When they were finished, Garrus flopped back onto the enormous bed in the middle of Shepard's bedroom. "Do you know how many times you have saved my ass trying to do this? I never gave a shit how things looked before. You have great taste, though."
Thane settled beside him, lips quirked. "Are you only saying that because you want something before Shepard gets home?"
"No, I'm saying it because you love me, which means you have great taste in men and interior design. You have hidden depths, Krios."
Thane chuckled, shaking his head. "You always act more ridiculous than usual when you're nervous."
"I'm not nervous!" Thane stretched out beside him and said nothing, only let the silence stretch out until Garrus cracked. He was way too good at that. "Okay, yeah, a little, maybe. I don't want to upset her or anything."
Thane rolled over to tuck himself against Garrus's side. "Even if you do, she will understand that it was kindly meant. And she will enjoy it, or I would not have agreed. We did this together, you know."
"Which means you're equally culpable. I get it."
Thane rolled his eyes. "Which means we are in this together. If she doesn't like it, we will simply have to work together to find some way to make it up to her. And I have a way to make certain of that." He pushed himself up on his elbow so he could whisper in Garrus's ear.
Garrus blushed. "I do love how you always have a plan B," he said, tugging at his collar. "But save that for later. Don't want her to think we kicked her out just so we could fool around."
"Perish the thought," Thane purred, then whispered something else in Garrus's ear because he was a bastard like that. Garrus was forced to pull the blanket over Thane's head in self-defense.
Garrus had to be glad for Thane's presence once again because he was so much better at playing cool. When Shepard got home, Thane intercepted her at the door with a kiss on the cheek and then on the mouth. "Sheesh, maul me when you get in the door, why don't you," she said, even as she let him take her in his arms. "Can't a lady even take off her coat?"
"A lady could, but not you, since you have told me many times you are not a lady." He kissed her cheek again, then released her. "In any case, you need to set aside whatever plans you had. Garrus and I have something to show you."
Shepard put a hand on her hip, raising a brow, though her lips twitched. "Dunno how interested I am in whatever it is right this second, since both of you are here and not on the bed with little ribbons tied around your dicks. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the girl talk, but I was looking forward to having something else to do with my mouth."
Garrus laughed nervously. "I hope we'll get there. But first things first. This way."
Thane ushered her toward the bedroom. At least the lack of doors meant there wouldn't be much more waiting. When they reached the threshold of the bedroom, Shepard stopped short, her eyes narrowing. Garrus twisted his fingers together, certain they had gotten it wrong.
But of course Shepard didn't say anything immediately. She always needed a chance to chew on things before she responded, and this was no different. She walked fully into the room, taking a better look at the new decor.
The bedroom walls had been totally bare the night before. Now, though, they were covered in printed pictures. Some had been collected from friends and allies here on the Citadel; others were fresh, taken with an Earth antique Ashley had been gracious enough to let them borrow. It spat out pictures instantly, which made the whole project much simpler. They had even managed to track down one of the girls from the initial photo that started it all, and she had an absolute treasure trove of old photos of Shepard, all of which were scattered among the more modern versions. In pride of place in the center on the largest wall was a photo of Shepard and Anderson from the SR-1 days.
Shepard turned slowly, inspecting all the pictures, her face unreadable. When she finished her revolution, she folded her arms. "Explain."
Garrus, of course, cracked instantly. "Well—you made that comment the other day, about your old apartment, so we got curious—"
Thane put a hand on his arm. "Garrus is trying to say this he thought you might want this to feel more like home and less like a postage stamp you pay rent on." His eyes traveled over the carefully arranged photos. "I understand well what he meant. My own homes have been little but places to sleep over the years. You deserve better than that, siha."
"Yeah," Garrus agreed, looping his arm through Thane's. "I know what it's like to get hustled from bunk to bunk too. And spirits know my squat on Omega was a shithole. I never thought I needed anything nicer. But you do—you deserve it. So… we tried to make it nice."
Shepard waited a beat longer, her face still blank. Then she relaxed. The smile that spread across her face was the sweetest thing he'd ever seen. She closed the distance between them, yanking Garrus down to kiss him, then giving Thane the same treatment. "I don't know what I ever did to deserve the two of you, but I'm pretty goddamn glad of it. You were right. This isn't just another place to sleep. This is a home, and the only thing I want is to make sure I get to come here with the two of you when all this shit is over."
"Well said as always, siha."
Garrus thought about adding anything. Then he decided to kiss Shepard instead. She had said it better than he could, and she had said she was sick of talking.