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borrowed time like supplication. by thychesters for GoblinOnAHorse
Fandoms: Mass Effect Trilogy
09 Jul 2026
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Garrus had set his things on the desk and she got up to greet him, kissed him, and he hadn’t fully been prepared for the relief he felt too.
The room had been cool and dark and they’d murmured to one another in those quiet hours before galactic standard declared it daytime in the middle of space. He remembers the way her voice trailed off, the gentle sound of even breathing that dragged out her sentences. He remembers wanting to stay up just a little longer, a stolen moment tucked away in her cabin.
Moments like now, where she talks about whatever show she managed to watch while she was under lockdown, head on his stomach and talking with her hands. She’s gotten him another pillow, something better contoured to his carapace, and he looks down at her with fondness and she pauses and then backtracks to explain a side plot she glossed over.
He thinks about asking her to be something official, if this isn’t already; it feels like it. So much of their relationship has been her making moves though, and he feels like it’s time he did.
or, garrus does not wait for the presidium
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You are: Commander Shepard (in name).
You are: human (mostly).
You are: real (enough).Commander Shepard storms back into the galaxy; Cerberus just keeps a closer eye on her than she thought. She finds herself a little more hyperaware of the moving pieces, the ones of her left to string back together. The ones that don’t seem to exist in the exact way she remembers, if she remembers correctly. Good thing Garrus is patient and good with puzzles.
part of the 2026 Shakarian Mini-Bang
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She could tell him yes. She could tell him no. He wishes she’d just say it. He could say something outright, as the stars blaze beyond her and she looks at him with such a sense of relief that it makes him dizzy.
“You know me,” he intones, glancing at his glass. “I get on someone’s nerves long enough and eventually wear them down into some semblance of respect.”
She rests her elbow on the back of the couch, chin propped up on her hand. “That so?”
Garrus tilts his head, tracking every small detail of her expression, cataloguing each of her freckles like he didn’t the last time they got up close and personal. The leather creaks as he shifts his weight, arm spread along the back of the couch until the bony point of her elbow rests in the crook of his. If he’s not mistaken, she leans too.
“I’d like to think some of my impressions have been more… favorable than others. Can’t say I’m never willing to give it another shot though. I wasn’t sure if…”
She draws in a breath, holds it, and releases it until his mouth plate twitches. “Garrus, do you think—”
after an interrupted reunion in the battery, garrus takes the initiative
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A week after the Collector base, a week of trawling around space and mindless errands and revisiting posts they only passed through, Garrus comes up to her cabin like a man on a mission.
They’ve gone back and forth over the past few days, him coming to her quarters or Shepard to his, passing around fleeting touches that carry more intent and are more explorative than anything they would have exchanged months ago. Sometimes, more often than not, it’s to simply spend time together, just as they always have.
For now, whatever it is between them feels real enough.
“Did you need me for something?”
“I—ah, yeah,” he says, and she twists her cheek into the dip of his cowl to look up at him.
Shepard smooths her hands down his chest, enjoying the twitch of muscle, the minute give of plates where they meet his hide, and his gaze flicks around her face. It lingers on a damp bang curled against her forehead before meeting hers again.
His hands settle on her hips and he glances to her bed before asking a curious, “Show me?”
surviving the omega 4 relay gives them a lot of time to themselves.
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He asks if she wants to be serious, with him.
He’s been thinking of her since the last (second last, really) time they parted ways on the Citadel, his bag slung over his shoulder as they stood at the dock. She’d told him to take care of himself, just as she had the first last time, but then she’d stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him. The hug had been too warm to be friendly, her body molding to his, and Garrus had dropped an arm around her waist and tucked his face into her temple. She’d kissed his cheek, and he spent a week wishing he’d kissed her back.
He’s been thinking about her since she came to see him in the battery, where she held his hand and kissed him and told him she thought about him. That she missed him.
He’s been thinking about her since he followed her up to her cabin and the view of her backlit by the aquarium was burned into his memory.
And Shepard laughs in a way that’s warm and with her eyes and is one of his favorites, and when she tilts her head says to her they already were.
the presidium date, and the moments after.
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As she steps away to grab another drink she turns to find herself stepping into the circle of his arm. Garrus leans toward her, under the guise of reaching over the bar for his own glass, and Shepard lets out a breath against the side of his neck. She can feel fingers trailing along her thigh, following the hem of her dress without quite slipping beneath it. Since their date on the Presidium he’s held himself with more surety around her and where they stand.
Emboldened, she tilts to press her shoulder into him, mindful of the murmurings coming from the kitchen as the party winds down. Shepard tilts her head, brushing her lips across his mandible, and then pulls back as Traynor stumbles up to the bar with a grin over her shoulder to Liara before startling at the sudden start-stop snore that is Zaeed asleep on the couch.
His hand tugs her back into the solid curve of his keel, subvocal rumbling against her shoulder.
“So much for fifteen minutes,” she says.
“I doubt anyone’s going to notice.”
the citadel party ends with a bang. so does the morning after.
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“I can come back.”
“No, I want you to stay.”
Garrus moves to meet her halfway, standing at the foot of her bed while she blinks sleep out of her eyes. Still clad in his armor and her in little more than her pajamas she suddenly looks so small in comparison, and he can’t help but feel overdressed.
“I have something for you.” Her voice is softer now, losing its last vestiges of sleep. In the low light her hair looks darker, and he reaches up to brush some away from her chin. For a fleeting moment she leans into his touch, eyelashes casting longer shadows as she lowers her gaze, tracks it across his torso and then up to his cowl for any new signs of wear and tear she didn’t spot a few hours ago.
in a bit of a roundabout way, shepard asks garrus to move in.
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“I wanted to see you,” he says, voice thick. “Spirits, I missed you, I wasn’t sure if you still felt the same way about me and I wasn’t expecting…”
“I thought about you all the time,” she says. His subvocals rumble against her chest, and she tilts her head further as his hand winds through her hair with a gentle tug that draws a sharp gasp from her, warm to her core. Part it almost feels like grief dissipating.
Garrus tucks his face into the side of her neck, nose plate brushing along her pulse and his visor glows in her peripheral as he murmurs, “Yeah? You said that.”
A grin pulls at the corner of her mouth and she drags her nails along the delicate patches dotting the column of his throat only for his hips to twitch toward her and his grip tightens on her own. “I did. I thought about a lot of things though,” she brushes her lips along his mandible, letting everything else fade away just for the moment of Garrus wrapped around her, “you’ll have to be more specific.”
shakarian reunion post-menae.
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Shepard smiles but something about it feels off, like she’s tired but no amount of sleep will help. The scars crisscrossing her cheek betray that, and it makes his own sting.
The look on her face is gentle, something reserved just for the low lighting of the late hours. A trill she can’t hear vibrates in his chest. It’s good to have her back, even if there’s still a dissonance lingering because he spent the last two years mourning her and coming to terms with that, only for her to come blasting back into his life, as is her style.
“I missed you, Garrus,” she says. “That's so weird to say; I feel like it’s only been a few weeks, but… It’s like I went to sleep for a while and when I woke up everything was different.”
“Yeah,” he mutters. “Guess that’s taking some getting used to.”
Shepard must relearn her place in a galaxy that spent two years moving on and living without her; Garrus finds there are three women he must relearn: the Commander, Shepard, and Jane.
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the sea is lovely, dark and deep. by novks (thychesters)
Fandoms: One Piece (Anime & Manga)
01 Mar 2025
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“What’s wrong with you, Zoro?” Luffy asks, stopping him in his tracks and pinning him in place with a simple look. There’s nothing else to it—not anger, no annoyance, just a tilt to his head and that tiny line forming between his brows as the corners of his mouth dip.
He’s already seen their deaths too many times, thought about them all more than he ever thought he would.
It was never supposed to go like this.
I’m sorry I failed and watched you die and I can do nothing to stop it, he cannot say. I know the weight of you in my arms, know what it’s like to cling to all of you and lose you, and I have lost you and will continue to. I can’t stop it, I will stop it. I can’t lose you again, it should be me—“I’m fine.”
time loop.
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nautical dawn. by novks (thychesters) for toxinspired
Fandoms: One Piece (Anime & Manga)
28 Dec 2024
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“Chopper will be fine,” Luffy tells them, and even if Nami believes it because Luffy does, because Luffy has never lied, because he has steered them all over the place but never off course, there’s still a rock solidifying in her gut. Chopper never gets sick.
Zoro makes it out to be like it’s his job to watch the crew, as if it isn’t up to all of them to keep an eye out for one another, to step in when someone falters even just a little. Isn’t that her fault?
Luffy shifts closer and for a second that guilt alleviates, and Chopper is resting and Robin is looking after him, and they will be at the next island before they know it and they will find a doctor and Chopper will be fine. Because he has to be—because Luffy said so, and their captain has never lied to them before.
“You were sick too,” Luffy whispers.
the sun will set and the sun will rise. they just have to get through the night first.
remix of toxinspired’s ‘to carry 210 grams’ -
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He wants to reach out and touch him—his arm, or his hand, something solid, something that tells him Zoro’s still here and tells Zoro he isn’t alone. But there’s barely a part of his body that isn’t bandaged, and with what exposed skin there is he isn’t sure if a simple touch would hurt him even more.
Now he sits beside him, and he is not a patient man, but he will wait for Zoro.
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“Do you think you can bench press me?” Luffy asks, interrupting him in the middle of a crunch, and Zoro pauses and says, “yeah, sure.”
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how to heal a bruise. (in 3 easy steps) by thychesters
Fandoms: Batman - All Media Types, Batgirl (Comics)
20 Jun 2023
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Between the bruised ribs and month-long standoff between Penguin and Black Mask, the latter is dredging up memories Steph would rather not think about. A quiet girls night in with Barbara and Cass is long overdue and could make for the perfect distraction, plus she doesn't feel like hanging out by herself. And if they end up coming up with a few ideas for suit redesigns, well, she doesn't have colored pencils in her bag for nothing.
written for the Legacies: A Batgirls Zine as part of a collab with lookforanewangle!
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for the sea is vast and in your ignorance you know nothing of its depth.
Sometimes Zoro still finds himself looking for a moment too long, his touch lingering and something in him wants before it is stifled.
He wants to reach out with touches that are platonic but with meanings that aren’t. He wants to pinch the back of his elbow with affection, not annoyance, and his stomach churns when he can’t make sense of the thought and tries his damndest not to.
Nothing changes except for everything.
Zoro will pull, and will twist, and will pry and will split himself apart to protect his crew. There are a great many things Zoro would promise Luffy without any hesitation, any number of vows he would make in a single breath. But this cannot, and will not, be one of them.
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It’s like with Nami, hitting him full force, but it’s so much more than that as the reality of it all comes crashing down around him. Zoro, his (first mate, first friend in this world of pirates, first crew member and first one he swore an oath with), his—he isn’t even sure what to call him. There’s too much but too little to describe him.
Zoro. Zoro, who—no, no, no offense to Nami—should have been first. Zoro, who’s a constant, and he’s practically vibrating with the need to reach and touch him, make sure he’s really real. His tongue darts out to wet his lip as he steps forward, crowding into his personal space and finally grinning because I found you!
Luffy wants to call him an idiot, because it figures he would get lost finding his way home.
But Zoro just blinks at him, flushes, one eye still framed by a familiar scar and says, “Oh, sorry,” and makes it so much worse when he says, “Do I know you?”
reincarnation au.
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She doesn’t realize she’s been pressing a hand to her shoulder again until she sits up a little straighter to watch him go.
“Nami,” Zoro says, voice firm in a quiet way. “Your scars are up to you to define. Arlong might have been the reason for it, but you’re the one who says no, those wound are yours and the guy who gave them to you doesn’t mean anything. You own the wound. It’s part of you, not him or anyone else. Your scars are you taking control of your life again. Where things go from here is up to you.”
A late night conversation over tangerines and the tang of salt out on the open sea.
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breakwater; /break·wa·ter/ (noun): a permanent structure meant to protect against tides, currents, and storm surges, reducing the intensity of waves in inshore water to provide safe harborage.
or, Luffy and Zoro have a few things that need resolving after the events of Whiskey Peak.
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Nami is the first one to notice something is amiss, but then given her current competition is Luffy and Zoro, it isn’t surprising.
“Do you love Zoro?” She doesn’t bother beating around the bush. Doesn’t bother with easing into it with any metaphors or small talk, one of which Luffy would have little interest in, and the other of which would go over his head.
He stares back at her, and for a split second she feels like she’s gone and shoved her foot right into her mouth. Something flickers through his eyes, but she doesn’t have time to fully study it before his features shutter again.
Luffy tilts his head. “Of course I do.”
Part of her wants to cheer, shout aha! because she knew it, dammit, but then he proceeds to barrel right over that.
“I love you too,” to which she freezes, and then: “And Usopp, and Sanji, I guess. You guys are my friends.”
She wants to scream.
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the dickbabs baby au. by thychesters
Fandoms: Batman - All Media Types, Batman (Comics), Birds of Prey (Comic), Nightwing (Comics)
30 Jun 2022
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Telling Dick she’s pregnant is much more stressful than she was hoping it would be.
Them telling the rest of their families and friends? Yeah, easier said than done.
(it's the dickbabs baby au, baby!)
INDEFINITELY MARKED AS COMPLETE. 11/11