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The first time it happened, Wrex thought she was joking.
He doesn’t make a point of knowing alien sexual preferences, but he’s been around the galaxy long enough to know that krogan, generally, are not the human type.
And Shepard is nothing if not human. She’s darkly colored for her species and short, her eyes on level with his. She blazes trails like she was born to it, treading the ground of first human spectre with none of its due reverence, killing geth colossi with nothing more than a shotgun and a wrinkle of her forehead. But she covers it all in manners and rules, trappings fit for more social species than krogan.
He hadn’t meant to eavesdrop on her conversation with Williams - and hadn’t been, until it had gotten clearly and entertainingly out of hand and Williams stammered out an inquiry about Shepard’s ‘type’. Between Alenko and the asari, he didn’t see the point. Neither carried a decent gun.
“If I had to pick-” Shepard coughed, clearly out of her depth, and then said, in an artificial whisper, “well, I’d say Wrex, actually. Tell your sister Kaidan’s still on the market.”
Williams protested, something about not wanting to throw Alenko to the wolves, but the concept gave Wrex pause. A human, attracted to him? It would be a first.
Though, maybe it had been a safe answer. A third option to offend neither, a deflection not meant to be taken seriously. That seemed likely.
Puzzle solved, he went back to his gun.
-
The thought goes away after a while - there’s more important things to think about. Shooting sentient plants on Feros, Saren’s ‘army’ on Virmire. And then they’re grounded.
Vakarian and Williams ditch the ship to drink, Williams insisting they pour one out for Kaidan. T’Soni and Tali walk off together - maybe for drinking, maybe for some last minute sight-seeing before everything goes to shit.
Wrex stays in the belly of the ship, cleaning his guns and thinking about the futility of it all. Their mad rush to catch up to Saren: Alenko staying behind on Virmire, T’Soni landing the final blow on her mother, Shepard bleeding out the nose and the eyes after picking up the missing piece of the beacon’s message.
All that for some suit to shut them down before they can sink their teeth in him.
Shepard’s probably thinking of all the lives at stake here, all the people who will die if they can’t stop the Reaper invasion. But krogan aren’t given to messiahdom, and anyways, it’s easier for Wrex to bear it all, if he focuses his dread and anger down to the single point of Saren’s escape.
Shepard slouches down into the hold then, her boots eerily soft on the thin metal of the floor.
“Wrex,” she says.
“Shepard,” he replies, and then, because he gets the feeling she’ll just stand there staring at him if he doesn’t start the conversation, “Thought you’d be out drinking with the others.”
“I’m a mean drunk,” she sighs, taking a step closer, “I’d bite all their heads off and feel terrible about it in the morning.”
“You down here for the company, then?” he asks, frowning. Shepard spends time with her crew, spends time on them, but this feels different.
“Honestly, I’m wondering how you do it,” she frowns, then takes two quick steps to the other side of the table and starts playing with a snowblind mod. “Stay calm, I mean.”
“I’m as pissed as you are, Shepard,” he growls, “This is my fight too.”
“Never said it wasn’t.” She taps her fingers on the surface of the table, not quite looking him in the face, “But you’re not scaring the crew. And I- you know how it feels. To get so far, and then to have it just-” She makes a gesture with her hands, throwing them up and dropping them to the table again.
She’s talking about the burial grounds, he realizes. About his father’s betrayal, about giving up on the Krogan.
And it’s not as though Wrex hasn’t wanted - in stupid, petty spite - to watch Shepard’s idealism crumple under the weight of the real world. But seeing her now, frustrated and helpless, feels like a punch to the gut.
“It’s not the same thing,” he says, and he raises a hand to stop her when she tries to interrupt him, “I gave up, Shepard. I stopped caring.”
“Don’t you think- wouldn’t that be more, I don’t know, graceful, than sitting here and screaming ineffectively at nothing? There’s a time to give up, Wrex, for everyone, and I think I’ve hit it.”
“There may be grace in surrender,” Wrex says, and there’s an edge to his voice he doesn’t like. What should he care, if Shepard is despairing? “But there is honor in the fight. You care, Shepard. Don’t stop because you think it’d look better in the vids.”
Shepard laughs, an unhappy, frail sound.
“You’re right,” she says, through a crack in her voice, “Wrex, you-”
The intercom crackles. It’s Joker, with an invite from the former captain of the ship. Shepard perks up so quickly it’s almost comical, half-heartedly scolding him for spying on her, her eyes already on the door.
But, before she leaves, she puts a hand on Wrex’s arm, in the space between the plates of his armor. It’s absurdly intimate, her in his space, chin tilted up to get a better look at him.
“You care too,” she says, soft and firm, “It’s one of the things I admire about you.”
Wrex’s second heart stutters in his chest. She’s out the door before he can formulate a response, but he’s got a distinct feeling that this- whatever this was, is an again.
-
It’s not that Wrex doesn’t understand human courting rituals.
Or, he’s never performed them, but he understands that they exist, has a good idea of their function in human society. The genophage effectively destroyed the krogan equivalent - though they were equivalent in the loosest possible sense of the word.
What he doesn’t get is why Shepard’s initiating them.
They can’t reproduce - even if they could, Shepard is tiny and squishy and human. Their offspring would be lopsided.
Wrex thinks that statement over. Species has never been a barrier he’s thought about crossing; it’s always been most important to preserve the krogan. But if it wasn’t about reproduction - he can’t say, truly, that he wouldn’t be interested in her. Her body is alien to him, all soft skin and fragile bones. But Shepard is more than her species - she is vicious glee when a thresher maw collapses back into the ground, ironclad determination when they’re fighting a colossus on foot. Her enemies count among the most famous, most strange, and oldest in the galaxy, yet she faces them with the same set to her shoulders as she does common mercenaries. And like the mercenaries, they can’t stand before her.
It would do her a disservice to call her spirit krogan, but it is familiar to him nonetheless.
He respects her - admires her, even. She has more than earned her place in his krantt, he would even welcome her into his blood family. He trusts her more than he has trusted anyone in centuries.
Does all of that add up to a human romance?
Does he want it to?
The drive core pulses, and the Normandy shivers herself to life around him. He stumbles, but somewhere deep down in his second liver, he’d been waiting for this. Their fight is only just beginning, and he trusts Shepard to see it through to the end.
-
Wrex knocks on the door to the captain’s quarters.
It’s a dumbass move and he knows it, but he can’t think of any other way to settle the questions twisting inside him. He hasn’t been so distracted by emotions since before he underwent the rite, centuries ago, and he refuses to bring Saren less than his best.
Shepard seem surprised when she opens the door - but waves him in. She’s made a point of her open-door policy, and he knows that Alenko, at least, had taken advantage of it.
“What can I do for you, Wrex?” She tilts her head in her listening expression.
“You’ve been flirting with me,” Wrex says, and watches with mild interest as Shepard’s face gets a reddish tint and she starts choking on thin air.
“I- um. Yes, I have been. Uh, doing that.” Shepard buries her face in her hands, her embarrassment nearly audible. Maybe it was a human thing. If krogan bothered with sexual embarrassment, they’d never produce any young.
“Is that a bad thing?” Wrex asks, curious and slightly concerned.
“No- just. You weren’t supposed to notice.”
Wrex sighs. He’d hoped Shepard would clarify things, but she’s just making them more confusing. Xenophilia is a terrible idea.
“I mean,” Shepard rallies, taking a big breath, “I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable. I know krogan don’t- I mean, humans don’t look terribly attractive to your species.”
“You killed a thresher maw on foot last week,” Wrex points out. “Some things are sexy no matter the species.”
Shepard sputters again. “Wait so you- you think I’m sexy?”
“Maybe,” Wrex says, crossing his arms over his chest. “I think killing thresher maws is sexy.”
“Then what are you down here for?” she asks, and she’s dragged something like her usual composure back together. It’s odd, that she’s more comfortable picking apart his brain than discussing sex.
Wrex shrugs.
“We are so bad at this,” Shepard groans, and she steps forward, puts a tentative hand on the fastenings of one of his armor plates. “Is this- I mean, is this- what you want?”
“I don’t know what I want,” Wrex says, honestly, but brings up a hand to cover hers. “But I think I could be convinced.”
“And you want me to do the convincing?” Shepard asks, and there’s a mildness to the tone that he’s heard before. Usually when she’s about to give some flabby ground-runner the option to beg for his life. It sends a shiver up his spine - not an unpleasant one.
By way of answer, Wrex guides her fingers to the release of the fastener.
-
The removing of the clothes is interesting, but once they’re both naked, everything sort of grinds to a halt. Shepard is giving him an assessing look, with a slightly puzzled furrow to her brow. Wrex is…
“I have no idea what I’m looking at here, Shepard,” Wrex says, feeling slightly self-conscious.
“Oh,” Shepard snaps herself out of whatever daze she’d been thinking in. “I - well all this,” she gestures to herself, “is pretty much standard issue. Well, I ah- have the male equipment, but it doesn’t make things more complicated-”
Wrex had been wondering about that. “So you’re- male?”
“No,” Shepard says, firmly, “And it’s mortally offensive in human culture to say so.”
“Oh,” Wrex tips his head. “You want me to apologize?”
“Your ignorance doesn’t offend me,” Shepard says, in a bad parody of his voice. She snickers at herself, then adds, more seriously. “Just don’t do it again.”
“Fine,” he says, “what do you want me to do, then?”
“Hmm,” Shepard gives him that considering look again, and steps closer, “You sure do like me telling you what to do, huh, big guy?”
“Before the genophage, before the wars,” Wrex rumbles, watching her press a hand to his skin and trail her fingers down through the armor plating. “Krogan females were the wisest and most famed members of our species. They were the ones that looked to to the stars, and we followed their lead. It is your right, Shepard.”
“Huh,” she says, soft and interested. “Then what I want Wrex, is for you to touch me. We’ll figure things out from there.”
She smiles, sharp and soft at once. “We’ve got time.”
-
After, Shepard traces patterns on his arm and frowns. He makes a questioning noise at her and she breathes out through her nose, asks,
“Do you want there to be more to this?”
Wrex frowns in turn. “We- krogan, that is- don’t really do romance. Not like you humans do.”
Shepard hums, softly. “Would you be okay with- with trying?”
“Yes,” Wrex says, and then he thinks it through, “I can’t promise- I don’t know what you want from me, Shepard. There are things- I might not be able to give.”
She shrugs. “I want- I like you, Wrex. I can lean on you. I want this - what we have now - but with the promise that you’re not going anywhere.”
“I was never going anywhere,” Wrex says, honestly, “your enemies are the best in the galaxy.”
Shepard laughs. “I get the feeling that was very romantic, for a krogan.”
Wrex thinks that over. Maybe it was.
-
Two years later, Shepard pushes the guards on his dais aside.
He can’t see her face through the helmet, but he knows she’s smiling, her arms thrown wide to greet him.
“Shepard,” he says, “I knew the void couldn’t hold you for long!”
He had known, had been sure of it. Shepard had made a point of coming back to him, in the early days. He’d thought it through and known, deep in the marrow of his bones, that she wouldn’t let death keep them apart. Even the darkness of her own grave was no match for her in a fight.
It was what had made him love her in the first place.