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queercraftingchonk · 2 years

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Polyamorous Negotiation between Shepard, Garrus, and Tali~

(a Shakarian to Shalibrations excerpt)

"Okay. Now that we're all here," Shepard began, "it's time we actually talked to one another--openly and honestly. Nothing we say here leaves this apartment. And I'm formally employing a 'no judgement zone' for good measure." The commander took a calm, measured breath and briefly fiddled with her N7 dog tags. "Garrus told me what he overheard you say, Tali, but I want you to talk to us."

Green and blue sets of eyes honed in on the quarian. Her heart continued its gymnastics, but she knew Shepard was right--they needed to talk, all three of them. Tali took a deep breath and closed her eyes. "I guess that I, ah...I may like you and Garrus as more than friends. I don't know what to do with these feelings. I never want to ruin our friendships, nevermind sabotaging your relationship with each other."

"How long have you felt that way?" Shepard asked.

Tali opened her eyes but kept her focus on the floor. "I...don't know. I had a bit of a crush on Garrus by the time we had the shore leave party," Tali said; her averted gaze missed the flicker of the turian's mandibles. She continued, "Not that I'd ever act on it. I adore seeing you two together. I never imagined you two together back on the SR-1, but after the Collector Base, I...I couldn't see Shepard being with anyone else. You looked happy in a way you never did before, even when you were with Liara."

It was Shepard's turn to blush. "Tali, if I may ask...you said some things implying interest in not just Garrus, but me. I thought you were straight?"

"I also thought that," Tali gave a breathy laugh. "Until you, Shepard."

The human's blush cranked up to just a few shades lighter than her crimson hair. "Wow, uh...I think that's the greatest compliment I've ever received."

"Great, now I'll have to work three times as hard on any future compliments," Garrus quipped. Tali and Shepard gave light chuckles in response. Hearing him jest as usual helped the women relax. "Are, um, congrats in order, when someone comes out?"

"Oh, we'll have a proper celebration for Tali when--or if--she decides to come out as...bi? Pan?" Shepard asked.

"Bisexual, I think," Tali said meekly.

"Fuck yeah," Shepard grinned. Tali laughed and finally looked up at her companions. The commander continued, "For now, though, that's not really what this conversation is about. Tali, what would be your ideal scenario to deal with your feelings?"

"Shepard, I have no idea what you're getting at. I refuse to ruin the love you and Garrus have just because I'm a hopeless romantic."

"No one's said anything about ruining love," the commander replied. She rubbed her dog tags again before shifting down the couch closer to her partner. Shepard looked meaningfully at Garrus. "How are you feeling, big guy?"

Garrus scratched his scarred mandible. "I...don't know, Shepard. I'm still processing everything. I suppose I'm flattered. I certainly understand how Tali could fall for you. But I don't know what to actually do about that."

"Do you like Tali?" Shepard asked.

"Shepard, I'm your bondmate."

"I know. That doesn't change if you also like Tali."

Garrus fussed with the hem of his pants and looked at his quarian friend. She willed the strength to meet his gaze unflinchingly. "I...might." Tali's white eyes blew wide beneath her amethyst-tinted faceplate.

"And I certainly 'might', too," Shepard said.

"What?!" Tali and Garrus gasped in tandem surprise.

Shepard emitted a short snort of laughter. She composed herself and spoke again, far more seriously: "Garrus, we've been together for a little while now--albeit a chunk of that I was asleep for...and I absolutely meant it when I said I was ready to be a one turian kind of woman. But what I want to know is...what do you think of polyamory?"

Keelah, is this...is this happening?! Tali thought. She felt as though she might vibrate right through her suit with the sheer speed of her quickening heart.

"Turians don't usually bond with more than one partner," Garrus explained. "Not that it's unheard of. The Hierarchy only registers a primary bondmate. But...well, I've never been a very good turian."

Shepard nodded. She shifted closer to Garrus until she could reach across and clasp his taloned hand in hers. He gladly accepted and squeezed her five fingers once. Shepard looked at Tali and said, "I don't have any personal experience with polyamory, but I've known folks in various polycules. I'll admit that I can have a bit of a jealous side...but honestly, with you, Tali, I've never felt that. I trust you. I admire you. If anyone else admitted to having a crush on Garrus, I might be reacting, ah, differently...so, I think that--maybe--there's something we three can explore, together?"

Meaningful glances were exchanged between the three. Tali was in disbelief, while Garrus's mind continued to struggle processing exactly what all this meant emotionally. He answered first: "If we can figure out how to make it work...then, yeah. Definitely."

"Wait. Wait, wait, wait," Tali said. She stood up and began pacing. "Did you two just...did you--"

"Tali, there's absolutely no pressure," Shepard said. "If...if you want to try a relationship with us and see what that looks like...the offer is there. You're not ruining anything. No force in the galaxy could stop me from loving Garrus," the turian squeezed his girlfriend's hand lovingly once more, "and I think that we're all mature enough to see where this goes."

"Keelah..." Tali muttered.

--Excerpt from How to Love a Biotic God(dess)

Chapter 17: Diplomacy of a Different Kind

#mass effect fanfiction #how to love a biotic goddess #tali'zorah vas normandy #commander shepard #garrus vakarian #shakarian #shalibrations #shali #talibrations #polyamory #polyamory negotations #mass effect

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joking611 · 4 years

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I love your depiction of the femshep/ liara ship. It just feels so right. I love the extensive detail of the asari lore as well that just leaves me fascinated. I have a few questions if you don't mind! Where did you get your concept for Asari bonding?? Especially the concept of the amheloh’na which i find the most fascinating and would like to know more about. What exactly does this state mean for Liara? Also, how many levels of bonding do you imagine? What constitutes a full bond as liara said?

Where do I begin? One of the ideas that I use in Cari’ssi’mi is that the language barrier between asari and human is larger than the real-time translation we “see” in game is greater than we suspect. I specifically call out that an asari’s working vocabulary is much greater than a human’s. Now, the fact that asari can communicate with other races via the meld helps overcome how difficult initial translation would have been without it. “Here, let me just show you what I mean.” That doesn’t help where asari have a word for something and humans or other races simply do not. This also allows me to handwave away how often even a romanced Liara refers to Shepard as a "friend” even when their relationship is more serious than that. Where that helps in relation to asari bonding is that I postulate that what humans call bonding are actually different things. Much if it is at least loosely drawn from canon. BioWare is notoriously long on concepts, and short on specifics, so most of it is just fill-in-the-blank. First, we have bonding for communication and the sharing of information. As melding is an innate ability in asari, the ability to meld may be present at birth, or even in utero. My story has Aethyta reassuring Shepard that she’ll know what she and Liara’s baby will need through the meld. We know that full communication is available later in the asari lifecycle. We see this in ME1 when Liara assists Shepard in deciphering the Prothean beacon, as well as in finding the Conduit. Again, this method of communication that allows the sharing of concepts without already knowing the other’s words much have been a huge benefit to translation. Second, we know of melding as it relates to asari reproduction (sex). This might be a post-pubescent ability, but we’re told that Morinth was diagnosed as an ardat-yakshi at 42. It is not clear how this was diagnosed, as 42 seems young for her to have been engaged in sexual melds. In any event, it is present in asari of maiden age, as we see with Liara at the age of 106. A potential mother is able to map the genetics of her partner, which leads one to believe that the connection between the partners is quite deep. Still, this melding is more of a transient nature, potentially not even requiring physical touch. The fandom seems to disagree about if maidens are mature enough to bear children, or only engage in sexual melds recreationally. Where I veer into the realm of headcanon is where I have the the terms meld, bond, and bondmate begin to intersect. Bondmate doesn’t seem to have relevance to the parent/child relationship. In ME1 we see Laira refer to Aeethyta as Benezia’s “partner” (although they were estranged, so “father” might have been a stretch).

In terms of romantic relationships, the games and other media seem to used bondmate as a synonym for spouse/wife/husband. Partners can be registered as bondmates with the asari government, there are bonding ceremony gowns and bracelets. Where I expand on the concept is the idea of melding between bondmates being able to lead to a more permanent connection. Bonding = a literal bond. Yes, bondmates do not need to have this perpetual connection, (and many would probably fear it), but partners could choose to enter into what I imagine is effectively a constant state of low level melding. I show some of the side effects of this in my story where Sarah is able to pick up on Liara’s mood or presence. Liara seemed unaware of this, but at the same time, as an asari, her mental barriers are no doubt more developed than Shepard’s. The extreme side effect is when Shepard dies, and their connection is severed without any kind of preparation, leading to the events in the first two chapters of Asunder. I don’t know that I’ll show any additional “levels” of bonding. I see it more of a “they are” or “they aren’t” bonded. Partners either have or have not established this permanence to their connection. With the severing of Liara’s bond to Shepard, and her becoming “amheloh’na”, she has undergone several biological changes. Some of these have been revealed; increases in biotic ability, strength, agitation, and impatience. Some we haven’t seen yet. I think some of these also explain Liara’s transition in personality and ability between ME1 and ME2. We’ll also see some of the negatives mitigated somewhat upon Sarah’s return. Did this help? Make sense? Even a little? I know this didn’t specifically answer your questions, but some of this information I’m still working into the story!

#cari'ssi'mi #shiara #femshep x liara #Liara T'Soni #bondmates #biotics #stupidly complex headcanon

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herpronuonsarefemslash · 3 years

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TEASER - Bioweapons and Beef Stew - Chapter 2

Kara's pod goes into the wrong wormhole and she ends up in the Mass Effect universe. SEE MORE HERE: https://www.patreon.com/alephthirteen/posts?filters%5Btag%5D=Bioweapons%20and%20Beef%20Stew

=====

Shepard anchors her fingers around Liara's hipbones and pushes herself away. Tendrils twitch and try exposing Liara's hungry sex to cool air.

Her yelp of protest is not far from what she's heard humans call hiccups.

She's also kept her walls up. Somehow. Somehow a human, with no innate defenses against the meld--bar perhaps, her own stubbornness--has kept Liara at the edges of her mind. Pleasure has built and built and built, but she hasn't been allowed the meld, so she can't come. Not really. She's asari. She needs more than a muscular twitch, a burst of neurotransmitters and a gush of slick to release the pressure.

Crude but effective stasis fields pin her feet to the carpet while muscular arms are more than enough to pin her hands. At her request, they turned the lights off so that Liara's self-consciousness about her appearance wouldn't stop them. In her defense, she had expected to be drowning in the sparkling void of meldspace seconds after Shepard touched her, where there is no universe but each other and where any doubt she might have about whether Shepard is pleased with what she's seeing would be solved instantly because she would just know.

Shepard is just exploring rather than doing anything and it's driving her mad.

Fingertips walk along the skin because humans can't see in full darkness. Tiny, quiet huffs to draw Liara's scent, followed by a tilt of the head that makes hair tickle across the asari's skin and a pause. What she's noting in those contemplative moments, Liara shudders to imagine. Lazy drags of tongue at the crease of her thighs, from mound up to her breast and returning down the plane of her belly almost to her azure and then damnably retreating, at the inside of her wrists, one lashing lick against each of her ribs, a fierce suck under her chin that must have left a mark. Shepard's mouth is everywhere except the places--azure, tender spots on her back, the neck folds, her crests--everywhere except the places that might make her come or make her do what this damnable human thinks is coming.

Liara feels like she's a platter of food at a restaurant in the Presidium, nibbled and sampled and reviewed but not actually enjoyed to the fullest.

It's been hours, she thinks. Days. Weeks. Athame's mercy. She might have been lying here long enough for a galactic extinction cycle while Shepard explores.

Surely human soldiers are taught not to torture prisoners?

She tickles the hand holding hers fast and Shepard releases her. She pulls hard enough to bring her arm up and lay it out across her belly, and pokes at her lover's omnitool until she can get the lights on.

"Let..." she huffs.

"Yes?" Shepard asks, looking up from where she'd rested her chin on Liara's lap and fluttering her lashes oh-so-innocently. "Let you what?"

"Let me come."

"I need to meld, Shepard. I'm not sure if you're familiar with asari reprod-FUCK!"

The professor in her started lecturing. She was distracted too long and Shepard took the opportunity to turn her face down, climb over her and push her cheek to the sheets with one rough shove.

Shepard's tongue is laving across the jewel at the back of the skull, where all of Liara folds and crests meet. It's too good. It's too much. It's too much by light-years.

"Keep talking," Shepard snarls. "I love that you're smart."

She tries to explain about the layers of pleasure her body needs from a mate and about Tevura's Three Blades, about the sacred threes that echo throughout her culture. Maiden, Matron and Matriarch. Plaything, Lover, and Bondmate. Touching, Sampling and Blending. Tries to explain the way biotics, sexual pleasure, the meld and motherhood aren't separate aspects of being asari but that taken together, they are being asari, and all else are little tricks they use to experience those gifts.

Every time she catches her breath enough to speak, Shepard's teeth or tongue latch on to a neckfold, or dance through a crevice between, or a nip at crest-tip or her lips curl around the jewel where crests and folds meet and suck with building ferocity that makes Liara sag and moan into the bedsheets.

Finally, Shepard retreats.

"A good start?"

Liara calls on her biotics, flings Shepard into the air and then pulls her back to the bed, pinning her with as many points of stasis field as her pleasure-melted brain can concoct. She climbs on top and straddles Shepard's hips with her own. Surely now her tormentor understands. She must be able to feel Liara's azure weeping slick onto her...what did she say humans called it?

Shepard's grin--her damnable grin--is so wide it splits her face.

"I want you to make me come. You're a terrible lover, Shepard. Goddess knows how many times you've brought me halfway and refused to do more."

Shepard chuckles.

"Then as a matriarch's daughter, I think you should take what you are owed, princess."

Was it that easy? The entire time? Goddess. I did admit that I was a virgin. She was waiting for me to

take the lead...

"Let me in, Shepard. Now."

With little more than a nudge, Shepard's psyche yields and Liara's spilling into her mind, their mind, this space where two are one. Memory rushes and crashes like floodwater through a desert canyon.

Smoke and fire and blood and screams. Burning cities. Little children clinging to her exhausted, dirty body while she shushes them. Face after face sneering before Shepard's pistol or her biotics ends them.

She's a killer and a protector. She uses warpfire to melt a batarian slaver's skull down slowly, like a candle under a heatlamp while she takes his victim and pulls the crying turian child into her side to hide the violence, gritting her teeth as his spiny head scratches narrow wounds into her arm.

Pleasure blooms like a supernova behind Liara's eyes. It's as if all the half-ruined orgasms Shepard gave her collided and tangled and collapsed to a pinprick and exploded into something far more.

Meldspace thins as she can't maintain it against the trembling waves reaching down every nerve and then rippling back. She can feel and see her surroundings again and she sees Shepard's panting and spent, smearing a palmful of Liara's own slick over her belly. Her knees are damp from the soaked sheets.

"You're a messy one, Liara T'Soni. Good thing you look so sweet when yo-"

Liara leans down and covers her human's mouth with a kiss before she can say another stupid thing, swallowing whatever jibe or joke or tease while thanking Athame that the meld helps her know she's not wasting a proclamation of love.

=====

Oh.

She's messed up because she's hard and because the cause of it is painting wet breath across her wrist. Liara is using her right arm as a pillow and she's probably never getting it back. She's shifting in her sleep, dragging the firm curve of her ass against Shepard's throbbing, weeping cock while her hand holds firm around her back, fitting Shepard's body close and preventing any possibility of a gentlewoman's retreat.

Sex dreams spill from her bedmate's brain into her own and Liara murmurs half-words in Serraci, including her name.

If this is what morning wood is like, she's going to give Alenko thirty percent less shit when he shows up grumpy at a ninety-second wakeup evac drill.

"Please," Liara groans, voice sleep-scratchy and thick. "I need to feel you. Right there, Shepard. You feel so good inside me."

She tries to shake the sleeping temptress, and all she gets out of it is a catlike state that makes lifting her off about as likely as juggling a droplet of water.

"Lee."

She mumbles something else, something filthier and in English borrowed from her brain and shifts back, pressing as much of Shepard's skin against her scales as she can.

Her little Bluejay's brain bombards Shepard with images of exactly what she's imagining and some miraculous asari reflex guides Liara's hand across her skin, like she'll sleep better if the other body in the meld feels pleasure.

Liara wakes with a moan. Shepard is on top of her, pinning her with her weight alone. Her knees are inside Liara's, keeping her spread. Fingers are dancing through her crown, evading the hungry pulsations of the tendrils and fingers are on her crest-tip, squeezing hard as Shepard dares. She's sucking her jewel again and she sobs and moans and smears pleasure across her pillow from drool-slicked lips.

"Shepard..."

The lips abandon her jewel, but Shepard doesn't retreat, her breath ghosting across the tortured nerves. "Easy, baby. I could feel you dreaming. I'm sorry," she pants. "I had to have you."

"That's why we have the dreams, siame. To lure. When I do, wake me like this, please," Liara manages to croak out between her pants. "Always wake me like this." Then she feels it pressed against her ass.

Hard and hot and veiny, Shepard's pulse counted out in drumbeats. It must feel alien to Shepard too, this new organ, but she hides it well, jogging her own hips slightly and smearing something slick from the trembling tip.

"Can..." Shepard gulps.

"I want you inside, Shepard."

"Meld, so I don't hurt you."

=====

The intercom crackles.

"Update for you, commander."

"Joker," Shepard snarls. "I swear to god, if you were listening, I will have you Cat-6'ed for your porn collection. If you're lucky."

"No, ma'am. But congratulations to you and the doc. Got an unidentified object off our bow. Lifepod, we think but doesn't match any known models. Came in for a close pass. One aboard. Looks like a human female, twenty or a bit younger. Systems are powered and it looks like she's in cryo."

Shepard raises her hand to her omni and mutes the channel.

"Feel like solving a mystery, Bluejay?"

Liara turns her head to steal a kiss before Shepard dismounts her. Seed and her own slick pour out like a tide.

"I would love nothing more, Commander."

"Careful," Shepard teases, landing a teasing slap on her ass. "I might get jealous of the abstract concept of knowledge."

#femshep x liara #abo #mass effect #kara zor el #crossover #alpha!shepard

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kfawkes · 7 years

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"Please talk to me." And/or "Will you marry me?" Fluffy angst maybe? Or whatever you wanna write :3

ALRIGHT ANON! I did both of them for a fun challenge lol. SO I hope this is enjoyable for you whoever you are out there!!! Ao3 here!

Thanks for being patient :) Sorry my turn around isn’t that fast, but I do what I can haha. Hope you enjoy it!

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Shepard lay on the ground of Therum in a cool patch of shade. Her hair spread beneath her pale freckled face like a wave of fire. With ankles crossed and long delicate fingers braided together on her stomach. Her breath left her lips in hurried exhales ringing with a serene calmness with just a touch of stressed the fuck out. Pulling one hand from the others grip, she slid the glove from it one finger at a time. Once her hand was free she placed it on the ground beside her, spreading her fingers wide before picking up and dropping small pieces of red rubble.

“Shepard I… didn’t mean to… I don’t know. I thought…” Garrus strode over to her slowly, his head tilted to the side slightly looking at the abandoned mine entrance.

It was the same dig site they had found Liara in all those years ago. Shepard didn’t speak, she merely just grab small piles of sand from the ground, letting them slip between her fingers repeatedly. He took another step closer, testing the water so to say.

“Please talk to me, Jane.” Garrus’ voice was light and raspy. His subvocal’s flanging in a tone she learned was disappointment.

“I don’t know what to say.” Shepard finally spoke after another long moment, her voice cracking midway as she clear her throat and pulled the corner of her lip into a suddenly dry mouth.

“How about, ‘Yes, Garrus. I’d love to marry you and spend the rest of my life getting you out of trouble.’?” Garrus’s purr was filled with confidence and ease as he took another step closer, wearing his version of a perfect smile. Watching as she pull from her core to sit up with arms wrapped around her knees.

“Garrus…” She shook her head looking down at her feet, using the tip of her foot to create a small hole in the space below it.

“Don’t you ‘Garrus’ me. Like you know what’s going to happen-”

Standing quickly she closed the gap between them with urgency. Furrowing her brow, her face was screaming with anger but her eyes were screaming with fear. “You ‘don’t’… You have no idea what’s coming.” She pulled her hands to her hips as she sent a small pink tongue out before continuing. “I actually do know what’s out there, Garrus… I’ve known for a long time. And I think we both know I’m not…”

“Jane.” Garrus pulled her from her thoughts with a hand to her chin as he slid her face forward to his. “Come back to me.”

After a deep sigh she began, her voice was almost defeated. “How can you even think about getting married right now, Garrus? With everything going on… It’s just… You have to know know that I’m not…” Shaking her head at her thoughts, it was hard for her to even say them out loud.

“That you’re not what, Shepard? Huh?” He asked pointedly, his undertones already revealing he knew her answer.

“That I’m not coming back from this. This is gonna be it for me, Garrus. This is my last stop. You can’t cheat death twice, you just can’t…” Narrowing her eyes she forced composure as she slid her hands to either side of his neck. “I don’t want to leave you with that. With nothing…”

If she was being honestly there was nothing more that she wanted than to spend the rest of her life as his bondmate. She was in love with him. Irrevocably, unconditionally, unfathomably in love with him. With the way his nose crinkled when he laughed, to the soft flanging his voice made when he said her name. Down to the way he held her late at night, or woke her from the nightmares of death and failure. Shepard loved every inch of that damn turian, through and through. But she wasn’t about to promise him a life she couldn’t give him. Not when she knew what was coming… She couldn’t give him everything and leave him all alone in the world with nothing.

Shepard didn’t like saying it… But she knew it was the truth. She knew that all their months of preparation and gathering forces came down to their next big fight… The last fight. That all of their endless hours building the Crucible, and preparing for the battle came down to this. It all came down to her… She was going to have to fight the Reapers and she could feel it in every molecule of her body that she wasn’t going to make it through this one.

“You won’t marry me because you think you’re going to die? Hell, Shepard. You might… I might. Everyone we know might die during this fight. The Reapers could win and we could all be decimated…”

“I know, that’s exactly my point.” Shaking her head lightly she held her mouth slightly open in mild confusion.

“And it’s also mine. Except I’m not scared of it. I’m not running away from the things I want because I’m worried I might to lose them. I don’t want to marry you because the galaxy is crumbling, Jane. I want to marry you because if I die in a few days, I want to know I died as your mate. I want to die knowing I had the love of my life by my side until the very end.” Garrus’ rasp ended sincerely as he gaze down into those large emerald eyes.

He watched as they filled with a liquid he learned to be tears, sliding a hand to her cheek he removed it before it escaped over her ivory chin. “Why are you crying?”

“Because… I’ve never… No ones ever said anything like that to me before. And well… truthfully you’re right. I’m scared.” Sliding her hand below her eyes she removed more evidence of her sensitivity. After a deep sigh she continued again. “I’m scared because I don’t want to die again. I don’t want to go back to the dark emptiness of… nothing. I don’t want to leave you here alone again…”

Moving her eyes down she began thinking back to when the SR1 had been spaced. Back to when she had died… “Or if something happened to you and I had to just… go on without you… God, Garrus. I don’t know how you did it.” Shaking her head lightly side to side she looked back into his crystal eyes.

“You’ll never be alone, Shepard. Never. We’re going to get out of this alive. You better believe that.” Garrus ran his fingers down the back of her hair as he finished.

Jane leaned into his chest as she pull him into a tight hug. Thinking about all of their time together these last three plus years… All of their long nights, and every near death mission. All of those soft kisses and warm hugs. Every little piece of them came flooding into her mind wrapping her in a tornado of emotions. Squeezing him tighter with each passing memory, she didn’t want to let him go.

After several minutes of this, he broke the silence with a soft purr from above her. “Do you know why I wanted to ask you here?”

“Cause you like making me suffer?” Her voice was soft and light as she joked about the heat of the planet. She was trying for playful, only slightly able to cover their previous conversations weight.

“That is a bonus… But, no.” Sliding his three taloned hand to the back of her neck again, he rest it at the base of her skull as he rub his thumb across the side of her head affectionately. “That day we found Liara… when we were running up the tunnel, escaping the cave in… Which, if I remember correctly you caused-” Shepard scoffed as she rolled her eyes at him before allowing him to continue. “We got caught or something and we tumbled down that ramp in a pile. I landed right on top of you.” Garrus ended with an honest laugh as he recalled the memory with fondness pouring though his subvocal’s.

“How could I forget, you weigh a fucking ton.” Poking him with a finger lightly in the side, she returned his laugh with an affectionate smile. When she noticed the unimpressed look he held in his eyes, she nodded sweetly for him to continue, zipping her lips with pinched fingers and a closed mouth smile.

After a nostalgic sigh he narrowed his eyes at her once more, lowering his head closer. “That was the day I realized I was in love with you, Jane. That was the day I realized I’d follow you anywhere you asked me to.” His voice was strong, and he didn’t waver once, which was surprising since this was the first time he’d actually told her he loved her.

“And I did… I followed you to Ilos. And with everything stacked against us we made it out of there. Then I followed you straight into hell again through the relay. And guess what, Shepard? We made it out.”

After a momentary pause he swallowed and continued in his usual soft bewitching purr. “We made it past the geth and Saren. Past Sovereign and even death itself when it came for you… We’re going to make it through this too, Jane. We’re going to kick Harbingers ass straight back into dark space and we’re going to make it out alive. We’re going to spend the rest of our lives somewhere warm and tropical and I’m going to remind you everyday why I chose you… Marry me, Jane. Spend the rest of your life with me. Whether it’s tomorrow or in 70 years.”

Shepard closed her eyes tightly biting back the stinging her fresh tears brought. Slowly she opened them, sliding them to his as she begin nodding profusely. As her head move up and down faster and faster with each nod, her light pink lips curled into a wide smile. Pressing her mouth to his before speaking she kissed him deeply.

“Yes… Yes of course, Garrus. I… I’m sorry. I don’t know-” She kissed him over and over again, all around his face on every plate she could reach from her height. “-what I was thinking. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Of course I will.” Kissing him one final time before he grabbed a small piece of fur from his suit.

As he unwrapped it slowly he reveal a small golden ban, atop was a flat circular stone. It was a dark blue, and almost looked like some kind of turquoise. “I needed help with this part… But Joker mentioned you used to have one like it. And something about these being the human tradition? Is it alr-” His worried awkward rambling was cut short by her lips as she kissed him again.

“It’s perfect.” Lifting her ungloved hand to his he placed small pecks on every finger before he slid the ban to its final resting place. Feeling that familiar sting behind her eyes she slid her arms around his cowl squeezing him tightly.

Shepard may have been scared and stressed beyond imagination. Scared that the Reapers would win, scared that she might lose… But now nothing scared her more than the thought of dying before she had the chance to see this through. Nothing scared her more than dying without Garrus knowing that it was him. That it had always been him.

They had something special, something that the Reapers didn’t: Hope. Friendship. Love… Something to live for.

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herpronuonsarefemslash · 3 years

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That Won't Do - TEASER

You've heard of the MCU. You've heard of the DCEU. But have you heard of the DNGAFU? Thrill to a dangerous off-road detour where the only thing crazier than the porn parodies are the women who step in to set them straight.

In a world where retired heroines no longer care what people think, a new villain arises: lazy pornographers threatening to misrepresent their erotic escapades... SEE MORE HERE: https://www.patreon.com/posts/56077671

===== "The Citadel has really changed," Shepard notes, her eyes sweeping the plaza below the restaurant after completing their reflexive check--anyone with guns, then high, then the sides, then anything that could be used for cover--that she's done since Liara met her. Liara shimmies closer, humming happily as the hard metal of Shepard's pistol presses against her ribs. She takes one of Shepard's hands and wraps it around her hip, so that she can feel the far more svelte weapon concealed under her dress and accessible by the same slit in the side that made Shepard's eyes darken when she came out of the bedroom.

"It feels less alive," Liara agrees. "The embassies and offices were re-established but...I don't feel like I'm in a city."

"Two sieges in three years. Can't blame most people for wanting to commute. Rent's cheap and so is land. A few more years and salarians won't have any living memory of the war. Someone will buy it up and build a bunch of silly houses that all look the same and viola! The Citadel rises again, tainted by humanity's worst discovery. Suburbs."

Liara chuckles. "Actually, I believe I bound my wrists to humanity's worst discovery."

Shepard's broad shoulders roll and she tilts her head towards Liara with that sloppy, crooked smile of hers. "Probably."

She chose a table that faces the outside of the presidium's ring. She did it without asking Shepard if she wanted it. It's like how her beloved hates having a door behind her, except now she sees the stars as the gateway through which death might emerge.

"She's late," Shepard mutters, glancing at the chrono that her omnitool projects.

"Ash is a SPECTRE, love. I've never found them to be the reliable sort."

"No?"

"Not about little things. Only reliable when it matters most. Like when they say they'll come back to me."

Liara softens and leans her head on Shepard's shoulder, snuggling her cheek against the cotton and trying to ignore the way it shifts and slides against the armored undershirt. Whatever her bondmate needs to feel safe. The nightmares have been fewer, no longer spilling into her brain across Shepard's sleeping skin. She's not about to complain about paranoia.

Shepard likes to keep tabs in order to rile Ashley, who is so used to the oldest sister role that she bristles at having Shepard check up on her in a way that she instinctively recognizes and resents, but also craves. Ashley can ask someone else for life wisdom rather than being forced to dispense it.

As usual, Shepard found a restaurant that utterly baffles Liara. Edsel, it said on the sign. The theme has something to do with fossil-fuel burning surface vehicles of an era almost three hundred years in the past, to the point where wrecks were recovered, repainted, treated with some alloy called 'chrome' and used to build a maze of booths.

A comedian once said that asari live long enough to do everything once except try every restaurant.

The cuisine at least, is familiar. Greasy. Savory. Meaty. She can smell the oils the cooks use and under the sharp tang of the thresher meat being seared for the pant-suited female krogan at the counter, she can smell cod and potatoes. Fish and chips was the first thing Shepard ever cooked for her. A kindness she did not ask for and would learn only years later was something Shepard liked to do after she'd treated a woman to a wild night and taken her home.

One drunk night, an amused Karin Chakwas explained that digesting fatty food lessens the blow of the hangover, at least in humans.

By using her morning-after routine on Liara before they'd ever even kissed, she was putting the sled before the goat as humans say.

Ashley approaches their table and fires off a salute.

"Commander."

Shepard smiles into her coffee.

"Gunny."

Shepard's hand lands on Liara's thigh and gives a firm squeeze. Her fingers burn where they touch, even through clothing. Whether it's the eezo in Shepard's body that could be debilitating or cancerous in a weaker specimen but she turns it into strength, or the powerful grip of the fingers, or the ten degree spread in temperature between human and asari bodies, it never fails to make Liara pause and suck in a quick breath when her hands make contact the first time in any given encounter.

Scoot," Shepard chuckles, swinging her hips along the bench to bump into Liara's.

"Oh! Of course."

They make way for Ashley on the bench. Sehpard nods to a waiter and the asari scurries over, her eyes carving a hungry path across both the humans present in nearly as lusty a manner as the black flecks growing in her eyes.

She takes beverage orders, cocking an eyebrow at Ashley's request for water. Not since the war, she told them once. Not since her hangover in her quarters after the Citadel coup.

"Never gotten used to that, skip. I don't get hit on by turian women."

"Often."

Ashley sputters into her ice water.

"That was a special circumstance!"

Ashley's nut-brown cheeks darken further.

"It doesn't count if there's burning herbs!"

"And at a fertility festival no less," Shepard chuckles. "Remote colony, good farmland, lots of turian girls who liked hunting..."

"I will pay you 10,000 credits this instant not to finish that daydream out loud, skipper."

=====

"I'll take Harbinger triple burger with the..." She trails off, clicking her tongue as she reads over the menu which was printed on physical paper for some reason. "Why not? Salad."

"Same, gunny?" "Sure," Ashley chokes out.

"One with a Thessian greens side salad, and one with Earth greens. Earth is no-eezo. Fish and chips, pet?"

Liara shivers under the weight of the word.

Is the air thinner, or has the buzzing heat wrapping around her bones from Kate's possessiveness just made breathing harder? She reaches for her neck before realizing she's not wearing a collar. She can't, even in private. Spy drones, planted cameras, any number of things might catch it. Asari audiences wouldn't care their sex is so frequent, so shameless and so often rough, leaving snarled tangles of sheets and Liara's back or her ass outlined in sweat against the windows and slippery smears on walls where the splash of a lover's pleasure was allowed to drizzle down the paint just as it drizzled down the chin. Contrary to Shepard's red-faced vetoes of the idea, surveillance footage of them would massively improve her popularity in those stupid polls amongst maidens, and by extension, Aethyta's clout with matriarchs in the voting forums.

The collar itself would be the fatal mistake.

Human kink communities take a very different view of them. Make believe. Fake danger easily dismissed when removed, or worn throughout the day as proof of a sub's devotion. But humans abolished slavery amongst themselves and have kept to that, neither suffering it nor inflicting it save for a brief encounter with batarian savagery that ended in humanity's victory. Asari have mourned missing kin for centuries. They can't enjoy collars knowing so many of their sisters have suffered under them, or died when their masters flicked a switch. Bondmate necklaces were popular in the earlier periods of the Council era, but only ancient matriarchs who bonded before the batarians were contacted still wear them.

Wearing Shepard's dog tags on Ilium while she mourned and hoped was enough to garner more than a few disgusted glances.

"Yes please," Liara mumbles, lifting her eyes and favoring the waitress with a smile. "We're so close to Earth, after all. Fish and chips sounds lovely."

"It'll be out soon," the waitress promises but not before pausing to use her omnitool's forger to burn her contact information into the side of Ashley's water glass. Ashley stares at it numbly, like it was a grenade and not a proposition.

Kate pats her protege's shoulder.

"There, there. Heard you were doing spot checks on stuff coming in from Omega. Confiscated anything interesting lately?"

=====

Liara has two sorts of anger: fidgety and apocalyptic.

That's day-to-day Liara anger, and Goddess bless but she's getting better at avoiding it. Having lived on a warship or in barracks from birth until retirement a few weeks before their wedding meant she wasn't housebroken.

This is the other sort of anger. The last Prothean nearly turned into a smear of shell and ichor when he derided her after Thessia's fall. A three-jawed skull cracking after a lucky blow with a warp and the Shadow Broker rising with a bellow of agony. Kai Leng's attempted backstab ending with the crack of reinforced arm bones, then his legs, then his spine being broken before Liara's barrier-hardened fists turned his ribs into a lumpy pile of shuddering scraps and she drew a dagger that ate the light around it and slit his throat.

"Love, it's..."

"...it's just a bootleg of some smut. I wouldn't take it seriously."

"Yes, exactly!" Liara cries. "Unreleased. Still time. Still time."

"You're getting a bit krogan-y, love."

"An actress is going to be portraying me. For portraying me making love to you and you think it's nothing?"

"I'll reach out through the network, I'm sure someone can slow them up, or yank a permit they need for the warehouse. And I'm sure no one cares about the porn industry awards."

Liara drops her head into her hands.

"Shepard, have you ever watched asari pornography? And I don't mean that as a trap, love. Yes or no. I won't be angry."

She is tempted to quip that that was more Joker's thing than hers, but she doesn't.

"A few. Back when. I didn't see the point, really. Just felt flat, especially once I knew what the meld was like. After...after our first time, it didn't work. Didn't do a thing for me while you were on Ilium."

Liara's eyes lift from her pacing feet and meet Shepard's. She doesn't seem ready yet to accept assurances that it was all right to pursue the Shadow Broker rather than pull up roots to hunt Collectors.

"Fornax?"

"One of the trendier studios on Earth that was trying to out-lesbian them, actually."

"Goddess."

"Li, what's wrong?"

"Go make popcorn. I'm going to check for listening devices, just in case."

She comes back to find the lights lowered and a naked Liara reclined on a throne made of what might be every pillow they own. She pats the spot beside her.

"Did I miss something?"

Liara laughs in that soft 'you silly human' way that makes warmth and sunlight spill into every crevice of Shepard's being.

"This is how asari couples watch movies together," she explains. "Intimately. So strip."

"Aye-aye, ma'am."

Curling up against Liara is one of the few things that makes organic life worth saving.

=====

"That's Vaenia? It's...it's..."

"A political thriller about the behind the scenes work to integrate humanity into Council Space?" Liara jokes.

"I just wasn't expecting the most talked about erotic film on Ilium to be Citizen Kane, all right?"

"What?"

"Ugh. Bad example."

"Can you see why I want them to get this right, Shepard?"

Her bondmate worries her lip with her teeth and finally nods.

"Yeah. Yeah, I can. I'll make some calls."

=====

Her bondmate spins in place, dropping one of the 'gummy bears' in the process. At least, that's what Shepard calls them. They're actually a mix of thresher maws and kalikosaurs, but apparently the original candies that inspired other races to copy them were shaped like an Earth animal called a bear. Soldier that she is, she lunges and manages to catch it before the syrup-filled atrocity stains anything.

"We're doing what now?"

Liara scrubs her hands across the aching roots of her crests. Kate bats her hands away and digs her strong thumbs in, kneading the muscles until they melt. Overly cautious as she can be when it comes to doors, security VIs and vetting everyone from carpet cleaners to house painters, Liara does love how recklessly she throws herself into giving comfort. Sometimes she slides her shirt off her shoulders and starts working her over before Liara herself is fully aware of the ache.

"You're mad at me," She mumbles, tucking her chin over Liara's shoulder and looking at the comm terminal. "Sorry."

"I wouldn't have expected you to be a prude. We've hosted a Janiris party for our friends. You've fucked me on a dozen battlefields. You fucked me until I melded without askin-"

"Which was hot..."

"Agree to disagree on not-fully-consensual melds."

"Run me through this again. The only Athamic Oaths I'm familiar with are a Justicar's Six Oaths, plus the ones I swore to you."

Liara highlights the text.

"The Oath of Inspiration is what an artist uses to exchange access for information for confidentiality."

"Which is how Vaenia alluded to operations and installations whose very existence was top secret."

"Exactly. It's an oath specifically for artists, those recognized by some guild or institute. And in some cases, portraitists or actresses or writers will swear it just for access. We're expected to behave naturally and let them into our routine and they're expected to avoid embarrassing us and use creative license and common sense about secrecy."

"So you want to invite the actresses who will be portraying us to live with us for a few days."

"It'd take several weeks, Shepard. Any performer on a production like this, asari or human or turian, would have been tutored at the same sorts of universities. Taught to take information in slowly and not to depict our breakfast routine based on one morning, but across many."

"I think I could just explain how you like your pancakes over the vid, T'Soni."

"You could. But I notice you're not complaining about the idea about letting someone watch us 24/7."

Shepard sorts through her handful of candy and picks up one of the maw-shaped ones. It's a sort of blue that shouldn't be allowed to exist, especially since she hasn't been able to find botanical records of any raspberries on Earth that color.

"What's-her-name is cute and I like the blue ones. Council and Allied races have a security review this afternoon, siame. I'll pick up Arty after. Don't wait up."

Her bondmate drops a kiss on her crests, turns on her heel and walks away without further explanation or doing anything about the steady trickle of wet that her tease and that goddess-fucked smirk caused between Liara's thighs.

"Glyph?" The drone boots up and manifests his outer shell from his cradle at her desk.

"Yes, Doctor?"

Kate can't just say something like that and leave her here to drip and shiver for hours on end. Not without consequences.

"Any and all scenes from human actress Emilia Ryder involving romantic partners. Loop. One third volume."

"Stand by."

Liara flops onto the unmade bed, relishing the smell of the both of them that mingles in the silk. She reaches blindly for her nightstand and presses her thumb to the biometrics. A bit more fumbling manages to locate the scarcely used synthcock, which is fully charged, thank the Goddess. Rummaging through the canisters in the bowl, she picks a foam-based ejaculate and presses the nozzle into the hidden inlet.

Kate hasn't used this since her last round of reparative surgery with Miranda. At her request, Miri recreated some hare-brained cybernetic and clone-tissue monstrosity ripped straight from Cerberus's worst ideas in the Lazarus project and then fused it into Shepard's body permanently. Liara argued that it was sheer insanity to implant illegal wetware from a terrorist group's project that proved so morally bankrupt that even the Illusive Man shuttered it.

Then she saw her beloved's smile as she looked at her own outline in the mirror in her slacks and noticed how her posture straightened and broadened to maximize herself in a space. Her shoulders released tensions she'd been carrying for years, so much so that Liara was never aware that the stiffness wasn't natural. She doesn't need to understand human gender to know that Shepard always felt more at ease wearing a synthcock any time she wasn't in armor or about to be, even if sex was nowhere on the horizon. She would sometimes wear one, only to take it out when she bedded Liara. Though the toy served no practical value unless she or Liara touched it, something about it anchored Shepard in her own skin, a precious thing indeed for a woman acutely aware she's wearing a once-dead body around. The permanent addition seems to have an even better effect.

"Film me and in one hour, send it to Shepard's commlink. Blackhole address."

Shepard wants to leave her a lonely, frustrated mess?

Two can play at this game.

=====

"How was school? You still crushing on your math teacher?"

If that whine contained any actual words, she didn't catch them.

"What about that girl who came in last term that runs the student paper?"

Arty's a darker shade of purple than any other asari Shepard's ever known, so when her father embarrasses her, her cheeks and neck flush nearly to black.

"Just remember. Do both your hypos first, make her show you a STD test and wear gloves, don't dive too deep, and remember to help her up because meld or no meld, she might not remember which color her toes are."

"DAD!"

She chuckles. She's seen Arty at student-parent events. She stares at Neema Ullasi's neck like she wants to see if she can suck a hickey into it through her headscarf. Intelligent, poised, kind, fierce activist. Neema grew up on Ilium as an diplobrat whose mother remarried a local matriarch, meaning she's fluent in not only Arabic and Farsi but enough regional asari dialects that her and Arty can have inside jokes around human teachers. What's not to crush on?

Loitering around a coffee shop they have to walk past are the unholy trinity of reporters from Alliance News Network, Westerland News and Stella Incognita Broadcasting. Westerland alone, she could handle. Khalisah Al-Jilani is the second coming as far as the bosses are concerned after being the only one of their wartime correspondents to print anything but racist garbage and she relies on the Shepard-T'Sonis and their friends for that. She can yank a cub reporter's chain so it doesn't need to be swatted on the nose. ANN is a military-funded network without a war to cover, making them a wild card. Stella is trying to become some one-stop shop for all different flavors of sensationalist garbage by employing a diverse workforce of assholes from eight races and using some byzantine corporate structure that probably drove the volus who created it insane.

It's been a while since she punched a journalist. Maybe it's time.

=====

She glances at her daughter.

"That footage uploaded?" Arty looks up at the camera drone's status lights and nods. Shepard pulls her sidearm and puts a round into the drone's thruster pack, making it wobble and smack into the back of Arty's stasis field.

"How dare yo-"

"You ambushed us in a permit-only photography zone. I gave them permission, but not you."

"You said we could!" he sputters.

"I said you two," she reminds him, pointing at the other two reporters. "Not three."

"I don't recall giving verbal approval or signing a release for footage of me or my child. Bill me for the drone."

"What about you?" the reporter demands, pointing at Artemis. "Do you agree with...that?"

"Really?" she scoffs. "After seeing my dad do that, after practically daring her to blackbag you in broad daylight, you're going to come after her daughter?"

Arty flares her barrier so hard Shepard swears she can smell the leathery musk of rachni and the permafrost of Noveria along with the choking ozone of air seared by the sheer intensity of Benezia's biotics.

She levels a volley of profanity at the reporter that would melt Wrex's plates and Kate whistles and offers her fist for a bump.

"Whoa. Learn that one from your grandfather?" Shep aims straight down the drone's lens and pulls the trigger until the pistol's heat vents glow cherry red. Just for the ANN viewers back on Earth, she puckers her lips and blows across the muzzle before holstering it with her best imitation of a cowboy's twirl.

"Mixed and matched between her and Wrex. So. Donuts? I hear there's this place that sells them with ice cream on top."

"My asari and their ice cream. Also, don't tell your mom I filled you with sugar on the way home."

She tosses her arm around Arty's shoulder.

"Glazed donut with rocky road on it?"

"Nah. I'm thinking sprinkles."

#teenagers #liara x femshep #post-war #shepard having gender feelings #liara being thirsty #their daughter being embarassed #asari

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