Breathe

Joker heard Shepard's footsteps approaching, but the smell reached him before she did.

"What the…? Why do you smell like you were at a cookout that went horribly wrong?" the pilot asked, wrinkling his nose in disgust. "Were you baking again? Didn't we talk about that?"

"Do I really smell that bad?" Shepard inquired, coming to a stop beside his chair and gazing down at him with an innocent stare.

"Um, well," Joker replied, taking a tentative inhale and choking on it. "Actually, it's even worse that I first thought. And what the hell happened to your hair?" he demanded, regarding the ragged edges she held in her grimy grasp as she sniffed at them, experimentally.

"Um, there was a small fire."

"Shepard, I know you. There's no such thing as a 'small fire' where you're involved."

"Well, a refinery kind of blew up," Shepard admitted.

"Aaaand...there it is. And during this tiny blaze, you decided that it would be a good idea to stick your head into the flames because...?"

"There were workers trapped inside. I couldn't just abandon them. But it wasn't my whole head that caught fire. Just the edges of my hair that were outside of my helmet. And only for a few seconds. Not very long, at all, really."

Shaking his head incredulously, Joker slouched back into the pilot's seat. "How reassuring. And how, pray tell, did this situation - shall we say - ignite?"

"You're going to have to ask Zaeed about that."

"Okay. Get him on the comm."

"I can't. He's no longer with us."

Joker pondered that briefly. "With 'us' - the living? Or 'us' - the crew of the Normandy?"

Shepard shrugged. "The second one."

"Right. Well, that's rather convenient for you."

"Not really. But we are one psychopath lighter now."

"One down, a dozen or so to go." Joker looked her over while trying to breathe through his mouth. She was covered in soot, and her hair looked like someone had taken hedge clippers to it. "Did it ever to occur to you to shower before you stop by for a visit? Or at least hose yourself down with a fire extinguisher?"

Shepard gave him a fake pout. "I thought you missed me when I was gone."

"I do. Terribly. But yet, I would bravely suffer through the extra 15 minutes it would take you to get cleaned up if it meant you'd smell a little less like the stuff stuck to the inside of my dad's grill."

"Fine," Shepard sighed, rolling her eyes and turning to go. Joker grabbed her arm and yanked her toward him, pulling her off balance. Shepard yelped in surprise as she landed awkwardly against the chair's armrest. When Joker kissed her lips, they tasted ashy.

"Please try not to set yourself ablaze anymore," he pleaded when they finally broke apart. Joker fondled a scorched lock of hair. "I liked your hair. It was sexy. This look…not so much."

"It'll grow back," Shepard assured him, gracing him with an additional peck before she stood. "As for the rest, I make no promises."

Later that night, Joker entered Shepard's room, freezing as he caught sight of her. She had showered and was wearing her usual tank top and running shorts. But it was her new hairstyle that stopped him in his tracks – it was cut shorter in the back but angled longer in the front, with soft bangs that swept across one eye.

Shepard eyed him, anxiously. "Do you like it?"

"I love it." After an awkward moment of staring, Joker cleared his throat. "Really. It looks...great." Real smooth, Moreau, Joker admonished himself as he made his way down the stairs to the couch, where Shepard perched with a relieved grin.

"Kasumi cut it for me. And I washed it twice to make sure the smell was gone." Shepard tilted her head in Joker's direction, and his nose filled with the now-familiar scent of coconut.

"You smell delicious. You look gorgeous. I take back everything I said before – you can set yourself on fire anytime you want."

"You moron," Shepard laughed as he pounced upon her, making exaggerated sounds of unbridled lust. Her arms wrapped around his neck as he landed rapid-fire kisses along her neck and she giggled, uncontrollably.

Eventually coming up for air, Joker tucked a strand of her newly-cropped hair behind her ear. "You know that I wasn't really upset about your hair earlier, right?"

"Yeah," Shepard smiled, softly. "I know."

"I can deal with dinged-up armor or singed hair. But sometimes...sometimes..."

"I'm fine, Jeff," Shepard assured him. "Really."

"I need you to stay that way," Joker insisted.

"I'll be careful," Shepard promised. Joker knew it was the best that she could do, under the circumstances. It wasn't in Shepard's nature to offer empty platitudes; although sometimes, he sincerely wished that she would.

"Do I want to know what the hell happened out there today?" Joker asked.

Shepard considered the question, briefly. "No. Probably not."

Joker scowled and looked away, his face tightening in sudden anger. "Fucking Zaeed," he muttered. "He did something stupid that damn near got you killed, didn't he?"

"I don't really want to talk about Zaeed right now," Shepard said in a sultry voice, moving to straddle his lap. The shorts rode up her thighs, showcasing an expanse of smoothly toned skin. Joker's hands immediately settled there of their own volition. Shepard's lips skimmed the sensitive skin of his throat before trailing upwards to nibble an earlobe. "Do you?"

Joker let his head loll against the back of the sofa. "Mmmm. Huh?" he managed, before Shepard's mouth claimed his - soft, and sweet, and demanding his full attention, which he was all too happy to provide. He knew he was being manipulated, and distracted - but damned if he could resist.

He'd been wrong before – it wasn't the stench that had stolen his breath away. It had been Shepard.

For better or worse, it had always been Shepard.

A/N: Some banter, and unabashed fluff.