Mass Effect - The Best Poker Night Ever

Nearly toppling over on his chair, swinging back on the back legs, Garrus' eyes widened, his talons twitching with shock as he barely pulled himself upright. Kaidan's surprised start melted into a wistful gaze, as he let his bust hand fall to the table with a soft thump, ignoring the flagon full of alien-friendly beer that flew from Garrus' glass and suddenly drenched his head. Choking on a full shot of tequila, Cortez let loose a spray of alcohol, a wide smile spreading across his face as he suddenly started to laugh heartily. James, in the process of setting a poker chip down on the green table, triumphantly barking about a succesful round, nearly dropped his full house, eyes abruptly whipping their point of focus about.

Commander Shepard, grimacing wearily, stood before them, with naught but a small, thin towel wrapped tightly around her dripping body.

There was a silence before her lips moved, probably saying something, resolutely ignoring the direction of their gazes, but, so absorbed was he in studying the movement of a droplet of water trickling from her neck downwards, James didn't hear, absentmindedly grunting, mouth slack, "Huh...?"

Taking a deep breath, folding her arms over her chest, barring his stare from continuing its path, she ground out, tense, Cortez' hysterical chuckling reaching the point of yelling in volume, "Can I use the men's bathroom."

Another silence passed, as Cortez, stunned for a second, had his laughter renewed with vigour, reaching supersonic levels of sound so that tears ran down his cheeks as he wordlessly gripped the table, his grin shaking as he bent over with the force of his laughs.

Tongue knotting into a useless tangle as he tried to process what she was saying, feeling himself starting to sweat as a beam of light hit just above the towel-line and illuminated the flushed skin, he replied, sounding partially dead, "Uh," he paused, blinking slowly, "Uh." She stood, silent, watching as he tried to push past his muddy thoughts with some difficulty, all of the power of his rush of blood abruptly flowing elsewhere, before he eventually asked, voice half-focussed, "Why?"

He abruptly noticed that there was a gap in the towel at the side, where she hadn't folded the fabric evenly enough. Without a word, he leaned back in his chair, slowly moving his head to the side. Garrus seemed to have the same thought, shooting his Commander a furtive glance before awkwardly stretching his arms out, causing a loud, painful snap to sound, reclining in the most un-casual fashion ever conceived by man.

Shepard's eyes fell away as she sighed, bringing a hand up to slowly rub at her forehead, the other firmly holding the two ends of the only saving grace for her dignity together, "My water's stopped working," she looked up, frowning, "so's the female bathroom. Some kind of glitch. EDI says I've to use to use the men's bathroom - but, to do that, I've got to ask every single male on the ship if I am allowed, individually, to avoid," she flinched as a glob of what looked like conditioner suddenly dripped into her eye, biting her tongue, "inappropriate contact."

They stared at her, unresponsive. Eventually, seeing that they were not going to answer any time soon, she straightened her back like a ram-rod, threw back her shoulders and yelled, her 'Commander' voice coming back in full swing with a furious punch of volume and force, "Can I use your bathroom, soldiers?"

Instinctively snapping to a salute, they all straightened, heads twitching back as they replied in a dazed chorus, "Yes, ma'am!"

"Fantastic." She gave them another look, eyes sweeping over the large, empty bottles of vodka and dextro-based alcohol for Garrus, eyebrow arching as she took in the sight of a lump of congealing cheese falling from a nacho in Cortez' hand, staining the table and dripping onto a pile of chips near James' numb arm. Rolling her eyes with a long-suffering sigh, she turned around, inadvertently giving them a new point of attention, calling over her shoulder, "Thank you."

Just as she got to the doorway, however, Joker abruptly appeared in it, crutches held loosely at his side as he grinned widely, head slowly moving down. Shepard stopped dead in her tracks, opening her mouth presumably to reluctantly ask him for permission to use the bathroom, when he beat her to the punch, "Did your water stop working, Commander?"

She froze. From where the rest of the men sat, they could see her face tighten, her jaw lock in place, and her eyes sharpen - Garrus suddenly experiencing a vivid flashback to the first time they visited Tuchanka and a cock-sure Krogan caused her to unleash all of her hell-blazing, head-butty fury. During a tense pause in which Joker continued to happily smile at her, large grin widening to show his teeth, one of them having been knocked out a couple of months before when he got in a bar fight alongside her, slammed into a table head-first by a furious Batarian enraged by Shepard's insistence that he had breath 'like a vat of coagulating Varren piss', she stared at him, silent. Eventually, she replied, a wet clump of her hair falling onto her face as she spoke, "Were you just completing a shift on the Flight Deck there, Flight Lieutenant Moreau?"

Turning his head slightly away, Joker looked down to his shirt, blowing a stray bit of lint away from his rumpled Alliance regulation shirt, his blithe smile remaining stubbornly where it was, before he looked back up, replying casually, "Yes, ma'am."

"JOKER--!"

Without thinking, the Commander's hands both flew up, grasping hold of her pilot's shirt as he happily flailed about, leaving the top of the cloth and no longer giving any grip of the material.

A soft thump reverberated around the room, with the men abruptly dumbstruck, the air suddenly losing all of its moisture and the temperature sky-rocketing like the Normandy off of an exploding planet.

Vega grinned.