Chapter Text
An ache blooms in Joker’s chest.
He slides a hand up Shepard’s back beneath the thin fabric of her shirt. She isn’t wearing anything beneath it; there’s just a smooth expanse of warm skin beneath his palm, and he splays his fingers seeking as much of it as he can.
She makes a noise against his mouth. A tiny shallow breath.
Her fingers drift lower, dragging down to his belly button. And then lower still.
And it’s easy… It’s so fucking easy to lose himself in the touch and taste of her. To fall into this heat and just melt there.
But—
“Wait,” he whispers, pulling her hand away with a groan. “Wait, wait, wait. Fuck.”
She stills.
“No, it’s—” Joker makes a frustrated noise. “If we’re going to do this— do something. I have to do it right,” he says shakily, and presses a kiss into the palm of her hand. “I have to tell you.”
He sits up and slides off the bed, suddenly too nervous to sit still. He risks a glance behind him.
Shepard is at the end of the bed, sitting where he had been. She has her long legs tucked up, wearing that expression on her face that’s so controlled it’s almost blank. She could be thinking anything right now. Anything at all.
“Fuck,” he says again, and tugs on his hat in irritation. There’s a viewport in Shepard’s room that looks out into open space. Tonight, there are no celestial bodies in view, just an endless expanse of blue-black pin-picked through with starlight. It’s always seemed like such an odd aesthetic choice, considering how Shepard had died.
But the stars are the first thing he ever fell in love with. And he loves them still.
Never been any good at falling out of love.
Joker takes a quick breath. “So. A couple of months after you died, and for a couple of months after that… Kaidan and I… We... Things were bad. Real bad. Sometimes unbearable. So, um,” he wipes hastily at his face. “So we started sleeping together. To cope. To survive,” he closes his eyes briefly, remembering the shock of that first kiss, the intensity of it. A bolt of sunlight through blinding darkness. “We were drowning, you see,” he says.
Shepard is silent. The viewport has enough reflection that Joker can see that she’s looking at him, but not her expression. He wishes he could see her face, but he doesn’t dare to turn and look at her.
“It was just… physical. Just sex. There weren’t any feelings involved,” Joker says and then makes a short, despairing sound that’s not quite laughter. “Well, actually no. There were a ton of feelings. From me. All the time. All over the place. Kaidan just…” he shakes his head. “He didn’t feel the same way.”
“He said that?”
There’s a whisper of anger in her voice.
“He didn’t have to,” Joker says softly, turning back towards her. “You being dead didn’t change anything. Kaidan is in love with you, Shepard. Always will be," his mouth lifts in a tiny, lopsided smile. "Nothing wrong with that.”
She’s quiet for a moment, resting her chin on her knees. She looks… confused, maybe. “But— Kaidan... Does he know how you feel? Did you ever tell him?”
“Ah, no,” Joker tugs on the brim of his cap with one hand. “Not really, no. No need to bother him with all that. He was pretty clear where things stood. We were just coping,” he grimaces. “I was the one who couldn’t stick to the plan.”
Shepard blinks, just once.
And then she holds her hand out to him. That hand of hers that shapes impossible things.
Joker takes a step forward and skims his fingertips across her palm. But he doesn’t take her hand.
He wants to…
But he can’t.
He’s not sure he’s allowed to anymore.
“Hey…” Her voice is so damn gentle. “Is that what you wanted to tell me? About you and Kaidan?”
He frowns. “Part of it. I didn’t— I don’t want you to think that I was being… opportunistic. You know, you die, and I move in on your boyfriend,” he frowns. “It wasn’t like that, I swear. I don’t want you feeling betrayed. By him. By me.”
“I don’t,” she says, voice soft but certain. “I was dead,” she shrugs a single shoulder, the motion half annoyed. “I was dead. If I’d stayed that way, I would have wanted him to move on.” She shakes her head, almost helplessly, and looks up at him. “I’m glad it was with you.”
“Yeah?” Joker has to blink back a prickle of tears as something unlocks inside him. “Me too. My feelings for Kaidan… I don’t— They’re not going away. And um,” he takes a quick breath. “I’m in love with you, too, Shepard. I’ve been in love with you for a long time. Just so we’re clear.”
He closes his eyes, feeling the shock of vertigo, like he’s just flung himself off a goddamn cliff.
Fuck.
He opens his eyes. Shepard is staring up at him, green eyes huge and unreadable and something— fuck. He doesn’t know what. But he’d give just about anything to know what she was thinking right about now.
A shock of damp red hair falls across her face, and he hesitates before reaching down to tuck it back behind her ear. Really, what does it matter anymore? She already knows all there is to know. The glow of her cybernetic implants fills his palm, spilling golden light. He traces the line of it around her eye socket and down her chin. They make her look so fierce. As if all that fire inside her is bleeding through the cracks in her skin.
He knows she hates them, but he can’t help but love every piece of her.
He can’t imagine ever doing anything else.
“I don’t need you to feel the same way,” Joker says quietly, holding that intense, green gaze. “I just need you to know, because I’ll probably never stop,” he brushes a thumb across her cheek because he can’t help himself. “So,” he says, cracking a smile split with tension. “If you still want this, you can have it. You can have whatever piece of me you want. No matter how small it is, it’s yours.”
She doesn’t say anything. She just closes her hand around his and tugs him closer and into a kiss.
A soft, slow kiss that Joker doesn’t understand.
He hopes it’s not a goodbye kiss.
He has to fight to keep his hands to himself as Shepard kisses him, because if he doesn’t, he’s going to crush her against him and never let go.
But she wraps her arms around him, and then wraps her legs around him, and tugs him back onto the bed and on top of her.
Joker makes a brief whff of surprise.
“I want all of you,” Shepard says.
And somehow, somehow he lands safely at the bottom.
She kisses at the corner of his mouth, and the curve of his jaw through his beard, and the pulse at his throat that is hammering away.
“Oh,” he manages breathlessly.
Her hands slide down his bare back, down until they reach the curve of his buttocks. She pulls him closer, until his hips are flush against hers. Until his cock— fully hard and still in his pants —is notched in place against her.
Oh, shit.
“All of you,” she says, voice certain.
This time, Joker can’t manage anything except a single noise that has a whole lifetime of ache behind it. He rocks his hips against her, just once, almost reflexively, and Shepard arches against him.
“That’s it,” she says. “Do that again.”
“Fuck,” he grits out, and thrusts against her again, feeling that grindy sort of pleasure that’s bright and solid and spreads through his hips and down his thighs. Heat coils in his balls. Her hands are against him, encouraging him on, so he keeps going, rutting slowly against her while she kisses him, until he can feel himself start to leak into his pants.
He sits up and rocks back onto his knees, watching with a breathless sort of laugh as she scooches herself out from under him and up the bed, until she’s fully upon it, head resting on one of the pillows. Then she lifts her hips and slides her leggings off herself, one-handed, and tosses them on the floor.
She’s wearing nothing beneath them.
Joker’s breath catches hard.
Her legs are long and smooth, and crossed neatly at her ankles. And between them is a small patch of shockingly copper hair, several shades brighter than that on her head.
His cock throbs heavily in his pants, and his hand ghosts over it, almost absently.
She looks smug and satisfied and so damn beautiful it hurts his heart.
“What are you waiting for?” Shepard asks.
“Honestly?” He blows out a breath and shakes his head before rubbing a hand over his face. “I’m waiting for you to come to your senses.”
“I want you, Joker,” she says, mouth curving into a smile. One leg bends enticingly. “Get over here.”
Another breath of laughter, and he grins. He may be a dumbass, but he’s not a complete idiot. “Yes, Ma'am.”
Joker slides his fingers beneath her ankle and raises it, carefully pressing a kiss to her foot, just across the tops of her toes, liking the way they splay at his touch. She makes an agreeable sound as he digs his thumbs into the arch, pressing as firmly as he can before giving her another kiss against her ankle. He runs a hand up the underside of her leg, curling the smooth curve of her calf. Shepard has always had the most fantastic legs. It had been the first thing he’d noticed about her. Legs, eyes, and how truly and irreversibly fucked he was.
And now… Now he’s been given permission to touch her, permission to love her, and he’s not sure what to do with himself.
He rubs his mouth against the straight edge of her shin, kissing his way up to her knee, and Shepard’s legs fall open beneath his hands in one easy motion.
“Fuck, Shepard…”
He skims his hands over her hipbones before bending lower and pressing a chaste kiss to the copper curls between her legs, and then another, decidedly less chaste, just below, tongue running up the length of her cunt. He groans as he tastes her for the first time, mouth open against heat and silver slickness.
He learns almost at once that Shepard is not a passive lover. At all. She tugs at his ears, positions his head exactly where she wants it, and grinds up against his mouth, hips demanding and relentless and greedy. And she’s noisy about it. Noisier than he’d imagined. Gasping, moaning. Growling praise and demands in a tangle of words that fall together and stick there.
He rocks back and forth, humping himself against the bed, cock aching. He’s imagined eating Shepard out, so many, many times before, but he usually imagines jacking himself off while he does it. And now, his hands are empty and unoccupied.
Since he can’t easily touch himself, he slides his hands up her torso and beneath the hem of her shirt and cups the fullness of both breasts in his hands, squeezing indulgently before rubbing his thumbs across her nipples in firm circles. She arches with a cry, and for a brief moment her thighs clamp around him before she gets a hold of herself and relaxes her legs.
“Like that?” he murmurs against her skin with a laugh.
“Love that,” she exhales. “Do it again.”
He plays with both of her nipples, teasingly, testing the reactions he can pull from her, the difference between a firm pinch and a gentle flick, loving the way that Shepard’s relentless self-control shakes apart so easily. She’s usually so hard to read, almost inscrutable. But right now, in this bed, beneath his hands, she gives herself away with every breath, every shift of her body.
He could do this, just this, every day of his life and be happy.
Then all at once she falls dead silent, and he tenses, thinking he’s messed up somehow. But her hips shudder and jerk against him, fingers digging into his shoulders with an almost bruising force. Her head is flung back in such an obvious display of ecstasy that he doubles down, sucking at her clit until the breath explodes out of her in a shuddering rush as she comes against his mouth.
For a second, he just stays there, breathing hard, his forehead pressed against the top of her pelvis.
His heart is hammering, and his dick is so hard it's making him a little dizzy.
Shepard is splayed out beneath him, legs flung wide, cheeks flushed, breathing hard and uneven. Her shirt is all rucked up to her armpits, breasts spilling out below, nipples dusky pink and pointed. She looks gorgeous like this, bonelessly satisfied and… happy.
Because of him.
He laughs one, quietly, almost in disbelief, and presses a final kiss to the wetness of her cunt, feeling her shiver against him. He kisses his way back up her body, from the bright curls between her legs, her belly button, the hollow between her breasts, the dip of her throat.
“Joker, fuck— I—”
He licks his way across her mouth as she pants, interrupting her with a kiss because he needs to do something, and giving yourself a high-five in bed is patently uncool.
“I just knew you’d be good at that,” Shepard breathes with a laugh as he pulls back.
Every thought in his head collides at once, jams together, and quietly catches fire.
He opens his mouth.
Nothing comes out.
The corners of her mouth begin to curl as she watches him short-circuit in real time.
Awesome.
Finally, blessedly, one lonely brain cell reports for duty.
"Well..." he says with a chuckle, sounding as dazed as he feels. "You always did have an eye for talent."
She reaches down and brushes a thumb across his cheek, her expression softening in a way that still doesn't feel entirely real. “I really do,” she says, kissing him briefly. “And I’m not done with you yet,” she hooks her fingers into the waistband of his pants. “Off with these.”
He makes a locked-up sound in his chest that’s all need, and rocks back onto his heels and starts working his laces open. It would be considerably easier to manage if Shepard weren't lying there, playing with his chest hair, and being spectacularly unhelpful. Eventually, he gets his fly open and shoves his pants as far down as they’ll go. His cock, newly freed, bobs a little as he shifts, pulling off first one boot, and then the other. He has to do an undignified little shimmy to get out of his pants, but manages without falling over or out of bed. (Victory!)
When he turns back to Shepard, she's just watching him with those big green eyes of hers that never miss a thing, dragging her gaze up and down his naked body with a focus that's as hot as it is unnerving.
Joker wraps a hand around himself and gives his cock a few tugs,
groaning at the sensation. Beneath the relief of touching himself, he feels a familiar flicker of that old unease.
He hasn’t had any problem maintaining erections in a while, but the rest of it…
What if—
Shepard reaches out to touch him. She doesn’t go for his cock; instead, she cups the fullness of his balls in her palm, thumb dragging against them almost tenderly.
He sucks in a startled breath. Her hand is so warm, and just there, touching one of the most vulnerable parts of him. A little precome drips from his cock and onto Shepard’s wrist.
She raises it to her mouth and licks the precome off the inside of her wrist.
Oh fuck.
“You’re killing me, Shepard.”
“Good,” she breathes with a laugh. She leans back against the pillows and reaches out for him with both arms. “Com’ere.”
Joker blinks, dazzled by her, by how much he wants this. He braces himself over her with one hand and uses the other to drag the head of his cock between her slick folds. He shifts lower, knuckles skimming along her thigh as he presses himself between her legs and into her, easing the head of his cock neatly inside.
Shepard is warm beneath him, breathing harder now, her hips rise to meet him, and he slides deeper with a groan.
And then—
He pauses, eyes opening.
Something feels…
Not wrong exactly. Just… unexpected in a way that catches him completely by surprise. Enough internal resistance that instinct makes him stop rather than push through it.
A strange thought flickers through him.
But that’s—
He goes very still. “Um… Shepard? This seems like a funny time to ask, but um… Have you done this before?”
She freezes. “That’s— Yes, I’ve done this before,” her expression flits into a glare. “What kind of a question is that?”
“I don’t mean— Look, it doesn’t matter if this is your first, or your second, or your thousandth time. Not to me. But it kinda… It feels like it is.”
She stares at him.
For one suspended moment, neither of them moves.
Then her expression changes.
Confusion.
Realization.
Then something sharper. Rawer.
“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” Shepard hisses.
Cerberus had rebuilt her cell by cell, organ by organ, dragging her back from the dead, inches at a time. Neatly erasing whatever was there before. Scars. Callouses. Tattoos. Places where her body remembered injury, survival, celebration… and love. Everything had been reset. Even this. This small, intimate, hidden piece of her was quietly reconstructed without her knowledge.
His chest aches at the expression on her face. Not embarrassment. Not really. More like grief colliding headfirst with absurdity and horror.
“Cerberus, fucking assholes,” she looks away, jaw tight. “I guess…" A weary sigh. "I guess I know myself less than I thought I did.”
“Oh, hey—” Joker immediately cups her face, turning her back towards him. “Hey, hey, hey. It’s okay. It’s okay.”
She laughs once under her breath, sharp and disbelieving. “Is it?” Her expression is so hard now, almost a glare, but a single tear rolls down her cheek towards her ear.
“No,” he says firmly. “No. Not the way you mean, it’s not. It’s fucked up in a thousand ways, but… It’s okay, too. For us. Me and you.” Joker brushes his thumb against her cheek, wiping away the tear. “It’s our first time. Together. That hasn’t changed. This is still— Being with you… It’s all new for me.”
She blinks, and her eyes slide away from him.
“We don’t have to do this,” he says gently. “Right now. Ever. Just— Shepard, look at me. Look at me.”
She does, slowly.
He keeps his hips as still as he can, conscious that he’s still halfway inside her. “Tonight is just for us. Cerberus doesn’t get to have a place in this. I’m gonna love you anyway. Either way. Just— Cerberus didn’t make you, and they didn’t unmake you, either. Okay?”
For a split second, Shepard’s expression is miserable before she buries her face against his chest.
“Hey? Do you want me to…” he draws back, just a little.
“No,” her arms lock around him, pulling him back against her, keeping him inside her before he can slip out. Her voice is hard and determined. “No, keep going. I’m not waiting any longer for this.”
“It’ll hurt,” he warns.
“I’ve been hurt before.”
She says it so matter-of-factly, it’s heartbreaking.
“Yeah,” he says quietly. Seriously. “But not by me.”
The corner of her mouth turns up. But it isn't a smile. “Trust me, I can take it.”
The sound he makes is a hollow laugh. “I know you can,” he cups her cheek, briefly. “But… the whole world hurts you, Shepard.”
Another tear spills down her cheek.
"Then show me there's something beautiful on the other side," she whispers.
Christ.
Okay.
He takes her hand and carefully entwines their fingers, holding on as he leans down to kiss her. Then he takes a breath and spikes his hips abruptly, feels himself slide through that internal resistance, and nearly all the way into her.
She makes a tiny noise and clenches around him.
Once.
Twice.
And his breath explodes out of him with a relief that almost echoes orgasm. He feels her pull his hips closer with one hand, wrapping her legs around him.
“Keep going,” she whispers into his ear. “Please keep going.”
God.
Joker slides his hips back, cock sliding almost all the way out before pressing back in, slowly, carefully. Wanting— needing so badly to do this right.
Shepard makes a soft sound against his mouth, one hand locked in his, the other curls against his chest.
He rocks back and forth into the tight heat of her, each time going deeper and deeper until the whole of his cock is buried inside her. He pulls his hips back slowly, slowly, slowly, and drives back into her. Then he does it again, and again, and again, and again, keeping that same careful, steady rhythm.
Shepard pants in his ear. More. That’s it. Yes. God, yes. More. Don’t stop. Don’t stop. The words come in short, breathless bursts— half praise, half command— and each one lands somewhere deep inside him. Joker has to bury his face against her neck to keep himself from shaking apart at the seams, thrusting into her with that slow, steady, relentless pace, caught between the desperate urge to chase his own pleasure and the even stronger need to lose himself in hers.
“Don’t stop,” she whispers.
He’d rather die than stop now, but he hasn’t the breath left to say so.
“Don’t stop,” she gasps again, body arching even as she begs, even as she shudders and breaks against him, clenching around him rhythmically, coming with a quiet, ferocious sound he’ll keep tucked against his heart for the rest of his life.
Don’t stop.
He keeps thrusting, shaking with effort now, but greedy for the sight of her pleasure. Trying to draw it out and make it last as long as possible.
Don’t—
His rhythm falters as his own orgasm crashes into him with breathtaking suddenness. One moment, he’s entirely focused on Shepard and the quiet, ferocious way that she comes, and then next, he shatters against her, with a half-strangled sound, flattened by a wave of pleasure he never even saw coming.
He has the faintest impression of his toes digging into the mattress, cock pulsing heavily. And then he is just gone, coming inside her with an intensity that floods him, sweeping away every thought and every breath in his body.
“Shhh— Shep— Shepard…”
It’s good. It’s so fucking good he’s going to die.
He shudders against her for what feels like hours, though it can’t possibly be. Shepard clutches at his buttocks one-handed, keeping his hips in motion, dragging the sensations out and out until all that raging heat is worn whisper thin and warm.
His hips still. The muscles of his weight-bearing arm and back tremble with fatigue and the full-body aftershocks of the first orgasm he’s had in over a year.
That familiar wash of anxiety crashes into him a full minute too late. That raw worry and brokenness. But it can’t hurt him right now. Not here. Not in this moment, with the eddies of pleasure still lapping at him, lazy and slow and absolutely fucking perfect.
Shepard grips the back of his neck, anchoring him. Keeping him together. Keeping him whole.
His arm buckles suddenly, and he almost faceplants on top of her, turning at the last minute so he collapses down beside her with a muffled “Oof!”
He rolls so he can face her. They’re on opposite ends of the same pillow, so close, he can’t even focus on her entire face, just pieces of it. The long sweep of dark lashes against her cheek. The spray of pale freckles across her nose. The scatter of sweat at her temples.
He knows he’s got the dopiest smile on his face, but he can’t do anything about it. It’d be like trying to smother the sun.
Joker reaches out to trace the curve of her ear with his finger.
God. He loves her so fucking much.
So. much.
“Shepard…”
He feels the shape of the I love you in his mouth, and holds it there, not because it's a secret he has to break his teeth against anymore, not because it hurts him like it used to— because it doesn’t, and through the soft blur of happiness he feels, he wonders what might have happened if he’d said it to Kaidan when he had the chance.
It might not have changed much, but it might hurt less now.
They’re still holding hands, and he drags hers closer, planting a tiny kiss on the back of it to smother the melancholy, small as it is.
Shepard snuggles back into his arms with a sigh. “Told you it was a good day.”
“You were right,” Joker cracks a tired smile and pulls her closer still, burying the hurt against the warmth of her skin. “It did end up pretty phenomenal.”
“Tomorrow can be good, too.”
He tips down and plants a kiss against the crown of her head. “I mean… I do like good days.”
Shepard is quiet for a moment before answering. “Yeah,” she says, fingers twining gently into his beard. “Me too.”