Is anyone noticing a trend here?

[mm_lettie]

The last few missions they had left before the Omega 4 Relay have been a mix of blessings and curses. Shepard has gotten it into her head that Tali works best with herself and Garrus, and it's been them almost exclusively wrapping up the tail-end of things that need to be done. Things had been going well up until the point of their last mission.

Comments

[turiansnarker]

“Tali.” Garrus banged a fist against the bulkhead behind her. The quarian had been so absorbed in whatever it was she’d been doing on the console, she just hadn’t heard him coming. He moved to look at her, simultaneously checking the safety on his Vindicator rifle, that the thermal clip was fresh. Was she ready to go or not? “What are you staring at? Shepard needs us for the shuttle drop in five minutes. Are you ready

[gofor_theoptics]

She startled more than she'd been expecting to when Garrus appeared behind her, whirling around fast enough to whip her her veiled cover around her faceplate for a moment.

"Oh," she said, absently putting through a few more keystrokes on the console before she turned to face him fully, "Yes, of course. I just needed to make some adjustments so that Engineer Donnelly wouldn't have to exert himself too much while we're gone," she said only a little lamely, nodding and checking over her own weapons as well. It was second nature by now.

She'd vowed to be less distracted this mission. There was no reason to be like she'd been, especially if Garrus was -- as the Commander had assured her -- not interested. Nothing was going to come of her silly little crush, so she needed to just ... drop it.

"Let's go." The walk to the shuttle bay was uneventful, and soon enough they were in the shuttle with Commander Shepard in tow, waiting for a briefing.

[turiansnarker]

The Commander seemed to be in good spirits. Garrus wasn’t too busy looking over the layout for the mining complex that he didn’t notice the very slight uptick at the left hand corner of her mouth. Now, in most humans such subtle expression would have been lost on the turian, but he’d been with Shepard long enough to detect her self-satisfaction. Garrus put aside his datapad, glanced toward Tali who was looking out a port window at the approaching planet fall, then directed his attention to Shepard

[gofor_theoptics]

The Commander was in good spirits - better than she'd been when she'd come to see Tali, at least. She'd tried to avoid eye contact with either of them for the duration of the shuttle ride - tried to focus. They needed her for this and she knew that. She'd been about to say something to Garrus, to reassure him that she was ready and that there wouldn't be any problems with -- anything -- when Shepard interrupted, turning out the door