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Joker doesn’t love having his feet on the ground.
If he did, he wouldn’t be in the line of work he’s in. If he did— If he truly did, if he wanted to settle down on the dirt and stay there for good— then he wouldn’t be himself. He’d be somebody completely different. And, well, he doesn’t know who that person would be, so. Better the devil he knows than the devil he doesn’t, and so he stays up in the air and even further, catapults himself through space and avoids touching the ground again as much as he possibly can.
It’s only after meeting Jane Shepard that Joker learns the value of putting down roots.
Every time Shepard’s down planetside, Joker also learns how absolutely helpless he feels off the ground. She values him for his piloting skills— same as everyone else, she’d be lying if she said he wasn’t a good pilot, when he thinks it might be his only skill. When she’s down planetside and he’s up miles above her, he feels like he may as well be galaxies away, for all the good he can do. It drives him insane.
Even worse is when communications cut out. When he can’t reach down to the planet below them, when he’s slamming on as many switches and buttons and levers as he can reach and the comms still won’t go live, he feels, more than ever, that he should’ve just put his damn boots on the ground when she did.
“Patch me through!” Joker shouts backwards at anyone who’s there, anyone who’s still listening to him and willing to help as the ship is rocked. His heart’s in his throat, but he doesn’t care for himself. All he can think about is Shepard down planetside, maybe already dead and he doesn’t even know; abandoned, stuck down there while he’s up here, unable to do anything to help her.
“The comms aren’t respon—” someone starts to call back to him. He feels a flare of rage so hot and all-consuming he can’t help but whirl around to face them.
“Then make them respond,” he orders them. He’s no Shepard, and he never will be, but people still scramble to do as he says, in the face of his intensity and his panicked fear. His knuckles grip his comm center until they go white as he tries to get communications up again himself. He’s still using one hand to pilot the fucking ship, but he doesn’t need more than that. He thanks whoever’s out there watching him, again, for giving him this one thing. At least he can focus on Shepard when she needs him.
The ship shakes again, the lights flicker, and yet Joker still can’t stop thinking about Jane. He makes himself keep going, makes himself pilot, makes himself push buttons and flick switches and shout orders until finally, finally, the emergency backup lights come back on and communications go live again.
“Shep!” Joker shouts down his communications line. “Hey, hey, J— Uh, Shepard, Commander, hey, can you hear us?”
There’s a crackle of static, then nothing again. Joker’s spine is ramrod-straight, where he’s sitting up over the control panel and the piloting commands. He feels like he’s about to burst into tears and sweat in a second if nothing comes through.
The comms crackle again, and then he hears the greatest thing he’s ever heard in his life: Shepard’s voice shimmering through, distant and faded but still obviously her saying, “Unfortunately, yes.”
“That’s my girl,” Joker says, so excited he could scream, jump up and down, run the halls. He feels giddy like a fucking kid, his hands shaking when he brings them up to wipe sweat off his face.
“Don’t call me that,” Shepard says down the line. Joker huffs a laugh, rubbing at his eyes.
“Sorry, Shep,” he says. “We’re going to bring you right back up here, alright?”
“The sooner the better,” Shepard tells him. “I’ll see you soon.”
“That you will,” Joker replies. He wants to keep talking to her until she’s in the same room as him, but he doesn’t feel like he should do that, maybe. He’s not sure he exactly has that right. This isn’t the first time something’s happened to her on his watch, and the guilt that is constantly eating away at him, chewing on the inside of his chest every time he thinks about anything and everything he could’ve done to save her— it swallows him up whole again.
“Take over,” Joker instructs the closest night-shift pilot. They just picked up a handful of new crew members, and he’s still learning all their names, but that doesn’t matter. All he knows is he can’t be here right now, not after that.
Joker turns over the piloting and the comms and makes his way to the bay dock at the back of the ship. That’s where she’ll come in once she shows up, he knows it. He forces himself to take his time so he won’t have to stand around waiting as long once he actually arrives, because he knows himself. He’ll end up fidgeting and frustrated until he wants to kick something or scream again, and he can’t do that. He’s gotta keep it together.
There’s just enough time for him to make his meandering, agitated way to the back of the ship before Shepard arrives. When the two of them see each other in the dock, though, Joker has no idea what to do. Every cell of his body is screaming at him to touch her, to make sure she really is here and alive and okay, but he— Again, he just, he doesn’t think he has that right.
Instead, he says, “Good to see you in one piece, Shep. I’m horrible at sewing.”
“Oh, you wouldn’t be the one to piece me back together,” Shepard says to him. “I would expect you to be in charge of keeping me on ice until someone useful showed up. Something you could handle.”
“Oh, ouch,” he replies. It almost feels better, just snapping back and forth with her like this. Almost as good as touching her, as far as making sure she’s okay and alive goes; if she wasn’t okay, she wouldn’t banter with him like this, like she always does.
“Wipe that look off your face,” she tells him.
“What look?” he asks. “It’s just my face.”
“Exactly,” she replies. She brushes off the ensign who reaches for her arm, telling them brusquely, “I’m uninjured.”
“Are you sure?” Joker asks. “Maybe they should check you out, just in case, you know. Internal injuries and what have you.”
“And what about you?” Shepard asks. “You’ve got a bruise the size of a moon on your face, you gonna tell me you’ve already had that looked at?”
“Point taken,” Joker says, unable to argue the point. Shepard brushes off the ensign again to cross the last few yards left between the two of them.
“Thanks for your help,” Shepard tells him, once they’re close enough to speak without raising their voices.
“Happy to offer my services, as always,” he replies. She seems like she’s almost scanning him, for a second, studying his face, searching for something. Whatever it is, terrifyingly, he thinks she might have found whatever it was she’s looking for, because she seems to relax slightly.
“Will you come with me?” she asks. He hesitates, and she can tell, because she adds, “I’m not going to chew you out. This one wasn’t on you.”
“Thanks for that,” Joker says dryly. He sighs, then says, “Fine, okay,” as if her asking him to somewhere alone with her isn’t what he wakes up every morning hoping for that day. He has to fight back the urge to take her hand, or wrap his arm around her as they walk. Every day is full of tiny don’t do thats that he has to remind himself of. Genuinely, honestly, he thinks he might be in love with her, if that’s what love is.
Shepard leads him to her quarters. She’s made a couple of comments in this direction before, but he doesn’t feel that repeating any of them right now would be appropriate. The flirting and joking they do normally— he loves it, it’s his everything, but he doesn’t want to spook her off, if she’s about to be vulnerable with him.
When the door slips shut behind the two of them, the silence is deafening. Joker does what he does best, and what he feels compelled to do, and fills it.
“You really freaked me out down there, Shep,” Joker tells her. He makes his way to a shelf near his eye level on one of her walls. It holds a host of shit she’s hoarded over time on it, and it’s nice, this reminder that she isn’t infallible. That she feels and holds onto things and can be sentimental. That she’s more like him than he thinks, when he puts her on the untouchable pedestal he puts her on so he can pretend he never had a chance anyways. It’s easier than being rejected, at least.
“Yeah, sorry about that,” she says. “I’ll try not to do it again.”
“You see to that,” he says. “You’re always taking risks you shouldn’t. Maybe you should think about the fact that this ship would blow up without you on it.”
“You’ve done just fine without me before,” she tells him.
He means to make a joke back, maybe, but what comes out is, “No, I didn’t.”
The two of them go quiet again before, panicked, he adds, “Not that I—”
“Hey, stop it,” she cuts him off. “Just let it hang. Let me think about it for a second.”
“But you—”
“Joker,” she says sharply, warmly. He deflates. “Shut it for a second.”
He does as she asks, just trying and failing not to look at her as she continues to study him. It’s like he’s a specimen, for a moment, before she takes two steps closer and brings herself into his personal space.
“What’d you mean by that?” Shepard asks. “I thought you said—”
“I said a lot of shit, Shep, okay?” he tells her. “I’ve said a lot of shit, and I don’t even know half of it anymore. I don’t even remember. I just say it so I can get through it.” The two of them study each other for another long moment before he says, “I don’t think I’ve ever said that to someone else before.”
“It was a little confusing,” she allows. He laughs, and she shifts just a little bit closer. He doesn’t think he’s totally off the mark by saying she’s giving off definite vibes right now, but part of him is nervous because his heart’s still pounding from just twenty minutes ago. He doesn’t want to misread and, fucking forbid, he does not want to make a move that just makes her uncomfortable. He’s not about to fuck up his entire life over one bad misstep right now.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” Joker tells her. “Should I go and—”
“Don’t,” she cuts him off. “Don’t go, I mean.”
“Why?” he asks.
“Because,” she says. She looks at him, for a long moment, before she looks over his shoulder instead, seeming to gather herself and her thoughts. Once she’s got it together, her eyes flick back to meet his. She steels herself. “Because when I was down there, and there was a second I thought the ship’d gone down, and all I could think was— was about you. And how angry I was I hadn’t said anything, or done anything.”
“Said or done anything about what?” Joker asks, stupidly. He’s read enough romances to know exactly where this seems like it’s going, but it’s him. It’s her. It can’t possibly be happening to them right now, it’s impossible. He’s always known this was impossible.
It seems slightly less impossible now, actually. Maybe.
Shepard shifts closer into his personal space, until it can no longer be considered his personal space. It’s theirs now, their shared personal space. His fingers twitch, and he finally, finally lets himself reach out and touch her.
His fingertips skim her elbow, first, before sliding down to her wrist, then her hand. He tangles their fingers up together and revels in how solid and warm and present she feels, how real she is, how real this all is. He brings her hand up to his face. For a beat, he has an impulse to kiss her hand, but more than that, he just wants to be close to her.
Instead of kissing her, he pulls the back of her hand along his cheek, then nuzzles into her wrist. The fragile skin at the inside of her forearm there is so thin that he can feel how alive she really is, and it’s so grounding and relieving that he audibly sighs, his whole body relaxing, his shoulders slumping. She reaches up with her other hand, cups his other cheek in her palm, her strong, slim fingers stroking up under his eye.
“I was scared, too,” Joker confesses to her, in the quiet middle space left between them. “I was scared for you. That something would happen to you and I’d be too far away, stuck up in the sky.”
“You belong in the sky,” she tells him. She leans in and kisses him softly, just once, before withdrawing again. It’s only a second, a brief flash, and then it’s over, and yet the kiss still fills him with a rush of warmth and energy and joy that he’s never felt before, not quite like this. Maybe the first time he flew on his own, feeling like his stomach was far away and his heart was racing and that he was doing what he was meant to do. Being with Shepard kind of feels that way, too.
“I belong next to you,” he says. “Somebody’s got to keep your ass alive.”
“Shut up, Joker,” she murmurs, drawing him in to kiss again. He’s never been more efficiently shut up by anyone like he is by her kissing him gently, slipping to the corner of his mouth, then to his cheek. He gives in completely to his urge to hold her and draws her in, hugging her tight, burying his face in her throat and just breathing. He can feel her along him, solid and here, all in one piece, and he exhales shakily.
“I’m really glad you’re here,” he tells her. He doesn’t feel like that can even begin to encompass the enormity of all that he feels for her, and all that he feels right now, but she seems to get it anyways.
“Me, too,” she says. She tightens her grip on him, makes their embrace even closer, and he can’t help the grin that comes onto his face. It’s like he’s filled with air, maybe, or just joy, so full of emotion and happy that he squeezes her tight. “Careful there, partner. You okay?”
“Just really, really glad you’re here,” he repeats, firmer this time. She kisses his cheek and pulls back to look him right in the eyes, smiling herself. He loves her smile. He’d do anything to see it — and has, and will again.
“Me, too,” she echoes. He thinks he might have emotional whiplash, but he couldn’t be happier for it. He’s not sure he’ll ever properly let her go again after this; he feels more grounded than he ever has, here with her, and he didn’t even need to get off the ship to do it.