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After the injuries are mostly healed and the whole Blues and Reds mess is more or less taken care of (i.e dropped into Kimball’s lap like a proud cat gifting their horrified owner a mangled dead mouse), the Reds and Blues naturally decide to celebrate with a party. Tucker breaks out “the good stuff” to share with everyone, which is the extra expensive booze that he secretly bought in bulk and hid and hoarded in the walls of their moon base like some sort of alcoholic doomsday prepper.
Tucker’s a sulky bitch about it, too. To be fair though, “sulky bitch” seems to be his status quo some days.
“You’re only getting this because I am magnanimous and awesomely generous,” he says while handing Simmons a bottle. “And also because Grif drank all of the other non-wall booze while we were gone.”
“All of it?” Simmons asks, disbelieving. He wouldn’t say any of them were addicted, he knew what that looked like from living with his mother, but almost all of them liked a beer to unwind with once or twice a week, supply drops were rare and thus always in bulk, and this wasn’t exactly the first time they’d all decided to get absolutely shitfaced together in the name of celebration or boredom. It all added up. There was a lot of alcohol on Retirement Island. Or at least, there had been, apparently.
“Well it’s not like we get cable up here.” Tucker shrugs unconcernedly and opens his bottle.
Simmons was worriedly trying to recall just exactly how much alcohol they’d left Grif with, what his body mass was, and trying to calculate the cubic--
“How do you look more uptight with a drink in your hand?” Tucker asks. “Take a fucking sip, babe.”
“Don’t you fucking meme at me.” Simmons frowned, pointedly did not take a sip even though he was actually feeling pretty parched now that he thought about it, and left Tucker with a glare as a goodbye. Blues were better than strangers or enemies, but still. Blues. Ugh.
He looked around to make sure he wasn’t in Tucker’s line of sight, and then took a sip. Shit, that was good. Even if he started feeling like he should be frantically gargling antibacterial soap instead if he thought about how this bottle had been lying inside a wall for months. That just couldn’t possibly be sanitary.
Well, the drunker he was the less he’d think about stuff like that, so he powered through his light germophobia and drank some more as he looked for someone else to talk to so he wouldn’t be drinking alone, which was almost as bad as drinking with Tucker.
Blue Team seems to have clumped together already, Doc has mixed vodka and orange juice together to create a screwdriver that he’s trying and failing to convince Sarge will help alleviate his arthritis symptoms, and Lopez is… not here. Well, robots can’t drink, he’s probably fine wherever he’s hidden away.
Grif and Kai are still glued to each others sides like they’ve been since they were reunited, ecstatic and regularly finding excuses to touch each other as if to reassure themselves that the other is really there. They’re so blatantly and obviously happy due to each other’s presence that it makes Simmons uncomfortable, like most displays of genuine emotion and vulnerability do because he’s a disaster of a person like that, but it makes him privately and fiercely glad for them as well. He’d been secretly sure that Kai was really dead for years now, dreading the day that Grif, who was clearly in denial, finally had to face that fact. But now he doesn’t, and Simmons hopes they never get separated again.
And he also seriously doesn’t want to intrude on their we’re-a-REAL-family-who-actually-loves-each-other time. They deserve some private time together after all of these years, and Simmons would probably just ruin it, making it awkward and weird and being in the way.
So that leaves Donut, who’s been too busy crafting an incredibly complicated looking but colorful drink for himself to find himself a conversation partner yet.
“Uh,” he says. “Hey.”
And that’s all he has to say, really, because Donut always has something to talk about. It can be grating sometimes, but other times it’s like entering a discussion on easy mode. He can speak up or change the subject if he wants, and Donut will happily follow his lead, but if not then he can go on and on for ages on his own. And Simmons can either focus on the stream of words coming out of his mouth to distract himself or he can zone out at random if he gets caught up in his thoughts and then tune in again just whenever and get the drift of the conversation again pretty quickly.
“--and it was just, like, time stopped for a moment, you know? It was so weird!”
Simmons hums in vague agreement. Yup, no matter what, he’s at least safe in the assumption that whatever Donut’s talking about will never be relevant or important in any way. Ever.
His gaze wanders back towards the Grifs without him even thinking about it, just like he’s been doing all day. He realizes that he’s looking at them again with a start due to the fact that they seem to be doing something different besides just drinking or talking now. They’re--
“What are they doing?” he asks Donut, who looks over his shoulder at them.
“Oh!” he says delightedly. “I think Grif’s weaving a hula skirt. Those are so cute!”
“But Sister’s--” is what Simmons gets out before he has to make a strangled noise and desperately cover his eyes, because Kai just took her shirt off. Everyone’s stripped their armor off so that it's only partially covering their legs and are just wearing normal shirts on their chests, which is standard party protocol, but now Kai has boldly gone forth and broken that protocol and is just wearing a bra and her pants now. In public. In front of Simmons.
“Relaaax,” Donut says. “Don’t be such a prude! Lots of ladies work out in less than that.”
“Efgjsfjgie” Simmons says, which roughly translates too: that doesn’t help.
“I’ve seen you in less than that,” he continues, and no! Simmons is really not in the frame of mind to be able to handle Donut’s false insinuations! He isn’t able to handle it most of the time, actually.
“Oh, look, she’s putting more clothes on! That should cheer you up.”
Simmons peeks cautiously past his fingers to look at the Grifs. Kai is unfortunately not putting a shirt on, but she is putting on the hula skirt as she happily chatters at Grif. He considers whether or not this improves the situation for him.
And that’s when he notices that Grif has his shirt off and how is that worse HOW IS THAT WORSE--
His fingers slam closed again and he looks desperately away, horribly flushed and suffering.
“Who just takes their clothes off in the middle of a party!?” he hisses.
“So you haven’t been to a lot of parties, huh,” Donut says, which, while correct, was uncalled for.
Simmons looks at the Grifs again. It’s like he can’t stop himself, his body moving against his will. The Blues are migrating towards the Grifs curiously, Sarge and Doc held back by Sarge’s disgust for the moment. Pretty soon that horror at Grif’s unprofessional… mischief, or whatever he’s up to, will propel Sarge to act instead of hold back. Violently. Or at least loudly and grumpily.
Simmons would really like to hang back for the moment as well, but Donut approaches and he helplessly follows with the instincts of a nerd who never goes to a party without at least one familiar face to latch onto.
“--trust me this is a great idea, bro--”
“Don’t have to convince me!” Grif replies with that surreal genuine pep he sometimes speaks with now.
“Which is sooo weird,” Kai says, but she says it with an unsuspecting (and slightly inebriated) smile.
“And what is this idea exactly?” Carolina cuts in.
“I need torches,” Grif says. “Do we have torches?”
“Not a great start,” Wash says, voice still a little raspy from his gunshot wound.
“Ah, have you guys ever noticed how we’re not really good at answering questions?” Caboose asks. “Instead we ask another question or say a joke. Which I understand, I-- I definitely understand the jokes.”
“Would scented candles work?” Tucker asks.
“See, like that,” Caboose says.
“You have scented candles too?” Donut gasps.
“They’re sexy.”
“Sure,” Wash says, dry as Bloodgulch canyon. “The suburban mom aesthetic is super hot. Scented candles, Minion memes, a thousand decorative pillows…”
“Wine, bubble baths, MILFs,” Tucker continues. “You know, I think you might be right, Wash!”
“Grey says I’m supposed to avoid talking,” Wash says, which is something he only says when he wants to immediately end a conversation. Tucker snorts at him, unimpressed.
“Never mind, while you guys were talking I just made myself some torches instead,” Grif says. He sets both ends of a couple of very newly made torches on fire.
“What the FUCK,” Simmons says, and he feels like he speaks for everyone.
“And I made us both some wristbands and found a pretty flower!” Kai says, sticking said pretty flower into her hair. “So we were both productive.”
Sometimes Simmons feels like he pays far too much attention to the Grifs, and other times far too little. He just ping ponged between both of those feelings within the span of a few minutes.
“Explain yourself, dirtbag!” Sarge says, apparently over his paralyzed horror by now.
“Circus tricks,” Grif says, which explains nothing at all.
“That explains nothing at all,” he says.
“We’ll explain with our BODIES,” Kai says with a saucy wink, and Simmons gets an image of himself and Kai and Grif in his head that makes him want to kill himself out of guilt.
“Ho, ho!” Tucker says gleefully. “Bow chicka--”
And then, instead of doing something sexy, Kai bends far, far backwards like she doesn’t have a spine at all. Everyone stares in shocked silence for a moment, before it abruptly breaks due to a mix of horrified, grossed out, and extremely impressed torrent of shouts and exclamations from everyone present.
“Carnies for life!” Kai shouts, clearly delighted by everyone's visceral reactions to her body moving in ways no body ever should. “I was the contortionist, and Dex was--”
Grif raises one of the torches and swallows one flaming end of it, and Simmons tries to desperately shout that’s not food, Grif! But all that comes out is a dry croak.
“--the fire eater!” she finishes.
He opens his mouth and removes the torch, and looks back down to grin at everyone.
Kai can, apparently, convince Grif to do very, very un-Grif-like things. Or maybe he’s just drunk. Or maybe this is a side of Grif he just hasn’t seen yet. (Or maybe he’s still messed up from--)
Kai does something terrible with her knees and Tucker makes a sound like he doesn’t know whether he should be shouting pickuplines or gagging, and everyone finds themselves some seats to appreciate the spectacle.
“Huh!” Donut says. “I had no idea Grif had no gag reflex. Did you, Simmons?”
“Eh?” Tucker jumps in, elbowing Simmons in the side as he realizes that he chose the worst possible seat (even if it was the seat with the best possible view, and why should he even care about that anyways--). “Did you know, Simmons? Ehhhh? Wink, wink? Nudge, nudge?”
“I know from the way he crams food down his throat without choking on it and dying,” he grumbles, determinedly not thinking about the Tower of Procreation.
“You’re no fun,” Tucker sighs, and then Kai does something again that makes him utter an undignified squawk of alarm and confused arousal.
They sip on their drinks and chatter as they ooh and ahh at Grif and Kai’s antics for who knows how long until Simmons’ head starts to feel fuzzy and Kai whispers something into Grif’s ear.
“Sure,” he says, and the show… changes.
Before, it had been about morbid fascination and awe. Now the way they moved evoked… other emotions. Kai stopped abusing her poor joints and instead moved in smooth, fluid movements, rhythmic and almost hypnotic. Grif stopped doing dangerous stunts with his torches and instead started doing, well, still dangerous stunts with his torches, they were torches and he was just tossing them around like fire meant nothing, but it looked kinda… beautiful, now, instead of just horribly worrying.
Not that Simmons thought Grif was beautiful. But his long hair was loose and he was wearing a confident, relaxed smile and the ever shifting torch light moved in very, very nice ways over his dark brown skin. Warm lighting did Grif nothing but favors.
Okay, so maybe he was a little beautiful. At the moment. Objectively.
“Psst,” Simmons hisses. “He--hey, Donut, Grif’s pretty, right? You think so?”
Okay, so he might be way the fuck drunker than he’d first assumed if he actually asked that question out loud.
“I think all my friends are pretty,” Donut says wistfully, misty eyed and drinking a fruity cocktail an entirely different color of the rainbow than the last one had been. Oh Christ, was he working his way down the entire Pride flag? Simmons might not be the only fucked up person present. He supposed that was reassuring? Or not. He was too drunk to decide.
“Aw thanks,” Simmons says sincerely. “No one’s ever called me pretty before.” He slumps gratefully into Donut’s side, and yup, considering that he’s thankful instead of awkward and flustered as hell at the compliment pretty much confirms it: he’s drunk. He’s drunk and Grif’s smiling and shirtless and doing sexy fire things. This cannot end well.
When in doubt, stammer out an excuse and run away. It’s worked reasonably well for him so far, and he’d rather prevent a disaster in the making if he can.
“Gonna puke,” he mumbles at Donut as an excuse, and leaves him to slump into Caboose’s side instead.
Simmons then enters a fun real life mini game called ‘try and go back into the base without falling on your ass because you’re such a dizzy drunk’. By the time he manages to stumble into the part of the building that’s got red liberally painted on its walls (courtesy of a rare bonding moment between Sarge and Donut in which they managed to relate over interior decorating and the color red) the way the world keeps spinning around him as he sway-walks makes him feel like he actually does need to puke. Maybe he should’ve just remained sitting where he was, not upsetting his stomach. The view was better there, too. No. Stupid. That was why he left in the first place. And because of potentially saying or doing recklessly stupid stuff because of said view…
He’s just taking a break in the hallway on his way to the bathroom to press his temple to the wall and breathe carefully and slowly through his nose, eyes closed to the disorienting spinning, when Grif finds him. Oh, great. Trouble came to find him. Well, at least he’s not going to be making an ass out himself in front of the entire team.
“Do not puke on the carpet, dude,” Grif says, approaching. “Donut just had it put down and he will flip. Also, Sarge’ll blame me.”
“Not gonna puke,” is all he can manage instead of the snarky comeback about Grif having his priorities in order that he feels like he should be making instead.
“Uh huh,” Grif says, reaching him and shooting his paler-than-usual face an unconvinced look. “Sure. Lean on me and I’ll get you to the bowl in time. Owe you for taking care of me when I was hungover on those shrooms.”
The memory of holding Grif’s hair back while he crouched behind some rocks before they headed towards their final confrontation with Temple comes back to him, and he blinks his eyes open groggily. “But my hair’s short…”
That’s when he notices that Grif still hasn’t put his shirt back on. “Oh no,” slips out of him unbidden.
Grif looks alarmed at this and pulls one of Simmons’ arm over his shoulder immediately, dragging him towards the bathroom. “Seriously though, please don’t puke here. Or at least, not on me.”
Simmons is touching Grif’s bare shoulder with his bare arm. He’s wearing a t shirt. Grif is not. Grif’s warmth bleeds into Simmons’ side.
He makes a strangled, agonized sound, one part of him wishing he was dead and the other wishing that it was his more sensitive flesh arm that was draped over Grif. Grif just picks up the pace and then they’re inside the bathroom, light clicking on overhead, and Simmons is being guided into crouching in front of the toilet. He looks back and forth between it and Grif, completely having forgotten what’s expected of him here. Grif rolls his eyes and helpfully mimes gagging. Simmons wrinkles his nose at him.
“That’s--that’s a middleschool fuck you, just flip me off like a grown ass--”
And then he barfs, lunging for the toilet bowl.
Oh yeah, he thinks as he chucks up the last of it, tears and drool streaming down his face, his mouth rank with bile. I’m so fucking sexy right now.
He finally sits back when he’s finished, exhausted but relieved. He notices that Grif’s rubbing his back, probably was the entire time. He belatedly remembers to scrub at his wet face with his arm.
“And we’re even,” Grif says, and Simmons drunkenly lets himself collapse into Grif’s wonderful chest. Grif squeaks. Simmons laughs at him. See, he’s not the only who can make embarrassing noises on this team! He nestles further into the chest as Grif’s hands settle tentatively on his shoulders.
“Dude,” Grif says. “You’re so fucking drunk.”
“So’re you,” he mumbles into the chest and mmm, yes, nice.
“No one’s as drunk as you are, light weight.” He’s started stroking Simmons’ hair now, hesitant but growing less so as Simmons doesn’t give any reaction besides a distracted, pleased humm.
“Then why’re you doing stupid fire shit,” he wittily retorts. Oh yeah, he’s on fire, much like how Grif would have been if he’d made a single slip up tonight. Not that he was worried or anything.
“Because Kai is a siren that will convince you to sell her your soul, which she’s done to a total of four dudes now, by the way. She’s got the papers to prove it. And I knew what I was doing.”
“Looked like it,” Simmons is drunk enough to admit. “Hot.”
“Yeah, yeah, caveman, fire’s hot.”
Simmons giggles but doesn’t correct him.
“Come on,” Grif speaks up an indeterminate amount of time later. “Gotta get you to bed. You’ll bitch for eternity if you wake up sore on the bathroom floor.”
“Gonna get you to bed,” he says nonsensically, but Grif, thank god, doesn’t seem to be really listening to him. He hauls him up slowly, and Simmons whines at having to change position. He was comfortable where he was, thank you. Grif seems to be reluctant to separate as well, at least, and stays pressed up as close to him as possible as they stumble in the direction of Simmons’ room. If Grif’s warmth had been ripped away from him, Simmons would’ve… he would’ve… probably become overly emotional about it and maybe cried, to be honest.
Grif opens the door to his room, and they don’t stub their toes or trip over anything because Simmons isn’t a barbarian unlike some people and keeps his floor clear.
Grif pushes him onto the bed, but Simmons turns around and clings onto Grif, refuses to be pushed away.
“I do not remember you being this clingy of a drunk,” Grif grunts, trying to pry Simmons’ hold off of him.
“You’re warm,” he sighs, resting his cheek on Grif’s head as his grip tightens the more Grif struggles. Like hug quicksand. He snickers at himself. “And nice. And pretty…”
Grif barks a weird, high laugh and finally manages to get rid of one of Simmons’ hand and gets to work on the other one. It’s fruitless though; it's the cyborg one.
“Youuu must be getting me mixed up with the other Grif. Who super won’t sleep with you, by the way, she promised. So. Just go to sleep already.”
“You should take your shirt off more often,” Simmons says as sincerely as he can, leaning back to look into Grif’s eyes just to make sure he get’s how important this is.
Grif makes a strangled, agonized sound like when Simmons made when he first draped over Grif on the way to the bathroom. “Okay, you know what? You get into bed right now, and that’s a deal.”
Simmons is so delighted he kisses Grif on the cheek. Grif yowls and shoves him onto the bed, and he willingly flops onto it limply. He just struck a deal, after all. He’s so smart.
“Goodnight!” Grif says several octaves too high. Simmons’ slurred response is cut off by his door being slammed closed behind his retreating friend.
He drifts off before he can even think about getting under the covers.
Everyone is hungover and miserable. Well--
“LET’S GO SWIMMING!”
--except for Caboose, who just sticks to juice. And Kai, who calls them all pussies who can’t handle their booze even though she drank more than everyone else. After a whole lot of pleading and promises she takes Caboose swimming and everyone breathes a sigh of relief at getting rid of the only two people without a migraine.
“I’ve heard pickle juice cures hangovers,” Donut suggest hopefully.
“Myth,” Simmons groans.
“You gotta load up on grease,” Grif says wisely, but also with audible pain in his voice.
“Oh, so you’re just trying to recover from a hangover every day, then? I had no idea,” he can’t help sniping. Migraines do not inspire kindness and good will in him. Few things do.
“It’s orange juice, you fools,” Doc weakly argues, sitting down at the kitchen table.
“What’re you doing at red table?” Simmons squints with suspicion at him, and also just squints in general. It’s too bright.
“There’s no neutral table,” Doc says primly.
“Hair of the dog’s the only solution,” Sarge declares, grimly emptying his hip flask into his coffee.
“The orange juice is that as well, fools.” Oh, so the orange juice is just yet another alcoholic screwdriver, then.
“Hangovers really bring out the O’Malley in you, huh,” Grif remarks and Doc sniffs and Simmons zones out of the conversation.
And that’s generally how that whole day goes. Everyone whines and complains at anyone who’ll listen (or someone who won’t but is willing to shut up and be talked at) and try and distract loud, obnoxiously peppy Caboose and Kai with each other. Simmons catches Grif giving him a weird look once, but doesn’t think much of it. He remembers snapshots of last night. Being exasperated by Tucker, talking with Donut, Kai and Grif giving everyone a show, stumbling away to puke and getting his back rubbed by… someone. Probably Doc. Donut might be nice most of the time but he’d rather leave one of his friends to drown in a puddle of their own vomit than than risk getting some of it on him. Doc’s enough of a busybody to pull something like that, though. And then he just vaguely remembers drifting off to sleep in his room alone.
He’s glad he managed to avoid doing or saying anything stupid last night after all.
Simmons conveniently decides to finally swap out of the volleyball game with Donut when Carolina decides her break is over. Donut narrows his eyes at him and Simmons deftly avoids eye contact as he walks off to the sidelines at the same time as Kai. Blue Team has to have one member less than Red Team out on the court at all times because they’ve got two Batmans on their team and Red Team’s only Batman (Locus) is still being stupid about things and running around somewhere in space being angsty on his lonesome.
“I won’t forget this,” Donut promises him grimly, and Simmons pretends that he’s only sweating because of the sun. There are only two ways a Donut revenge scheme can end for someone: either so horribly your life basically becomes just damage control for months, or so insignificantly you don’t even notice he’s gotten revenge in the first place. Donut lives in a strange world wherein a bad hair day is tantamount to being framed for gross tax evasion.
“Please don’t spike the ball again,” Doc says, and Carolina proceeds to spike the ball so hard sand explodes on impact onto his glasses, blinding him. “Oh it is ON, wench!”
What was only seconds ago a rather carefree game of volleyball for fun between friends becomes a grueling competition for honor between bitter enemies, mostly Doc and Carolina. Sarge’s mind is willing but his body is not so he mostly just shouts directions and orders at the medic, Lopez is clearly sick of having to clean sand out of his gears so he moves as little as possible, Donut appears to be hiding behind Lopez, Caboose seems to be getting the rules of volleyball and golf mixed up and is so thoroughly unhelpful, Tucker and Wash are halfheartedly trying to aid Carolina who most definitely doesn’t need it, Doc is cackling and somehow just barely holding his own against the Freelancer, Kai has started cheering for grey team, Simmons is putting on another layer of sunscreen, and Grif--
Grif just took his shirt off, tossing it thoughtlessly behind his shoulder onto the sand.
Simmons stops applying the sunscreen to his calves.
“FORE! BIRDY!” Caboose shouts, distracting Carolina for a split second. She still manages to brutally spike the volleyball, but instead of sending it into the sand just by the right side of the net, she sends it with force strong enough to break the sound barrier straight into Doc’s face. Simmons hopes to god that that crunch he just heard all over from the sidelines was from his glasses breaking and not his nose.
The ball bounces off of Doc’s face and Grif pounces. His arms flex, muscles (that had been there since when exactly!?) suddenly standing out, and he lets out a quiet grunt of effort that’s going to haunt Simmons until the day he dies as he sends the ball over the side of the net. He doesn’t spike it. He doesn’t need to, because Carolina is too busy wincing with guilt to counteract it in time.
“Thank the holy ghost’s tits,” Kai says. “If you hadn’t been able to score at least once I would’ve had to disown you, Grif, you fucking grew up on beach volleyball.”
“I kinda had better things to do, actually!” he shouts back to her, wiping his brow, and for some reason Simmons sees the movement in slow motion and high definition.
“Simmons, quickly, do your duties so I can praise someone besides Grif!” Sarge bellows, and Simmons tears his eyes away from Grif with a start to the goal post he’s sitting next to. He flips the number on the Red Team’s side over, upping their score by one, still seriously lagging behind Blue Team (please, Locus, they needed him. The Blue gloating was unbearable).
As he does so, he catches Kai’s eye.
She’s waggling her eyebrows at him with a smirk.
Fucking Blues. He turns away from her abruptly. And if he’s red at the end of the game then it’s only because he didn’t put on sufficient sunscreen. Never mind the fact that the reason he didn’t put on enough sunscreen in the first place is because he got distracted looking at things he shouldn’t.
Okay, so, the beach might be a reasonable place for someone to casually take their shirt off, but inside the base? In the kitchen?
“Grif, we eat here,” he says, averting his eyes from the sight he walked in on.
“Yeah, me more than anyone else, so really, don’t I kinda got a claim on the place?” Grif continues pouring milk into his cereal bowl.
“No,” he says. “That’s not how that works, Grif. That’s not how anything works.”
“As king of the kitchen I declare a no shirt no shoes absolutely service policy,” he says, ignoring Simmons, rooting through a drawer for a spoon.
His eyes dart down to Grif’s chest despite himself for just a moment, just barely long enough to take in various scars of all kinds accumulated over years of being in the army, most of them bullet wounds, just long enough for him to think I want to touch them, and his eyes snap up again as he starts to feel his blood rush to his cheeks.
“Why aren’t you wearing a shirt?” he grits out.
“Laundry day,” he shrugs in between bites of his cereal. “Don’t got anything clean.”
“Like that’s ever stopped you from wearing something before?” Grif more often than not had at least one food stain somewhere on his person on a day to day basis. You just had to get used to it.
“Hey, you bitch about something, you don’t get to complain when I listen to your bitching.”
“This is not what I meant when I told you not to wear dirty clothes!”
“Well, it’s all in the machine now anyways, and I doubt I’d be able to fit in anything you’ve got, so.” Another shrug. “Nothing anyone can do about it.”
“Don’t act like this entire situation isn’t your fault,” he mutters. He tries to walk by Grif to just get what he came for and get out of the kitchen before he accidentally does any more staring but--
“Oh, hey now, what do you think you’re doing?” Grif says, stepping smoothly in front of him, blocking his way, still munching on his cereal, still horribly shirtless. Simmons moves away a moment before he accidentally touches all of that bare skin.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he snaps.
“Enforcing the rules! I thought you’d be happy about that.” Simmons stares at him, to which Grif rolls his eyes like Simmons is the one who’s being weird. “King of the kitchen, remember? I’m afraid that if you want anything from my realm you’re going to have to take your shirt off.” He looks down. “And your shoes, you nasty mainlander. We’re indoors.”
Simmons sputters. “You’re supposed to wear shoes indoors! And definitely shirts.” He avoids thinking about Grif seeing him shirtless. Has that ever even happened before? It must have, right? It’s been so long. But he’s so body shy… He really can’t recall a time it’s happened. (The Temple of--)
“I don’t make the rules, buddy, I just enforce them.”
“You are the one that made the rules! You’re the king of the kitchen!”
“Oh ho, so you’re acknowledge my rule?”
Simmons narrows his eyes at him. “You know what? Sure, you’re the king. Have fun taking care of the kingdom yourself! I’m not washing the dishes any longer, Donut isn’t making dinner, Lopez isn’t taking care of the appliances, Tucker isn’t washing the floor--”
“Woah, woah, let’s not get hasty here!” Grif backpedals.
“Let. Me. Have. My. Salad.”
Grif narrows his eyes at him in return, considering. “You know what? Fine, you don’t have to take your shirt off. But! Compromise is the rule of negotiation. Take your shoes off.”
“But-- it’s the floor. It’s dirty.”
“It wouldn’t be dirty if you took your shoes off when you come inside!”
“Grif, I’m pretty sure you magically exude dirt into your surroundings.”
“You can keep your socks on.”
“... Fine,” he yielded reluctantly and Grif shot him an unbearably smug look.
He takes off his shoes, gets his salad, and leaves. It’s only afterwards that he realizes that he shouldn’t have had to make that trade at all even if he had bargained his way down, and also that whenever he closed his eyes the image of Grif shirtless immediately came to mind. He groaned in his room, appetite lost.
“If you sit down in the chair you’re automatically agreeing to be a part of Red Team permanently,” Sarge says in a rush, so quickly that Simmons has to blink for a few moments to understand him. Apparently Sarge hasn’t quite given up hope yet on poaching Carolina, who in Simmons’ opinion is obviously already a Blue.
Carolina stiffens where she was preparing to sit down, keeping her position frozen in mid sitting motion with no apparent effort, ass just hovering over the seat. Jesus, her calves must put Tucker’s to shame.
She narrows her eyes at Sarge and stands back up. Sarge slumps in his chair, disappointed.
“I’m not joining either team,” she says firmly. Well, someone was in denial about her Blueness. “It’s stupid. Also, I know you’re all going to make a huge deal about it.”
“Damn straight!” Sarge huffs. “After how long you’ve put off choosing one of us officially, the team that snags your first will be getting some pretty incredible bragging rights.”
“Not gonna happen.” She rolls her eyes. “Anyways. Grif, I came to talk to you.”
“Hmm?” Grif surfaces from his breakfast taco (Simmons had protested that there was no such thing as a breakfast taco and Grif had tried to argue back like he usually would but his mouth had been so full he was entirely unintelligible, so they’d decided to put a pin in it for now, for once.)
“You,” she says, her tone reaching new levels of grave as she stands there holding her croissant, “knew how to throw around sticks of fire this entire time and didn’t tell me.”
Grif pauses. “You can’t seriously be telling me that you wish I’d beaten up space pirates with lit torches.”
Simmons is imagining it now, and he can’t in all honesty say that he doesn’t wish it had actually happened at least a little bit himself. But he is who he is so instead he says, “That does sound a little bit impractical.”
“If you’re not going to hit our enemies with fire sticks--”
“Torches,” Grif cuts in.
“--then I will. Teach me how.”
Another pause. Grif takes a bite out of his breakfast taco. “... No.”
“Why!”
“I dance with and swallow them! I don’t know how to fight with torches.”
Carolina gives Grif a look that clearly tells him that she thinks he’s just being mean, although she’d never phrase it so childishly.
“Okay, look,” Grif tries after being stared at for too long for his comfort, apparently. She does admittedly have some downright hauntingly piercing eyes. “Why don’t you go and try and harness Kai’s ability to defy her skeleton to get better at fighting instead? I’m sure she’d be up for it, she’s been wanting to do a ‘girl hang sesh’ with you for a while now.”
“I’m already flexible.” Carolina looks cautiously pleased about the aside about how Kai wants to hang out with her though.
“Not as flexible as Kai.”
There’s a distinctly offended beat of silence.
“Am too.”
“Are not.”
“Am--”
Just as it seems they’re gearing up for a truly stubborn ‘nuh uh yeah uh’ fight Donut walks in looking fresh as a daisy and almost half an hour late for breakfast.
“Donut!” Sarge exclaims. “Where have you been!? We had to fry our own eggs, like the Blues.”
“Everyone can benefit from practicing their cooking skills some of the time, Sarge,” Donut lightly scolds him, giving the Reds burned eggs a significant look and then the Blue’s unburned ones at the other side of the kitchen one.
“Quit staring at our eggs, Red!” Tucker shouts from the other end of the room.
“Where have you been?” Simmons asks when Sarge’s question isn’t answered, because he’s actually kind of curious. Donut’s always on time for everything. And also before Sarge can throw that yogurt he’s holding at the Blues and start yet another food war. They’re hell to clean up.
And that’s when Doc walks into the kitchen, looking far less fresh than Donut or even the most haggard of daisies. He looks… ravished. Which is a descriptor Simmons has never wanted to have to apply to someone he knows, especially Doc.
“You said you’d clean up!” Donut hiss-whispered to him.
Doc blinks at him. “I did.”
“Yourself.”
“Oh! I thought you meant the bedroom--”
“I’m so sorry Sarge, I’ll fry you up some new eggs!!!” Donut beats a hasty retreat.
“... I’ll hit her up later for a ‘girl hang sesh’.” Carolina makes the air quotes. “And I’ll prove I’m the more flexible one while I’m at it.”
“Don’t pull anything,” Grif snorts, and visibly stops paying attention.
Carolina huffs, offended, and stalks off. “Come on, Doc!”
“Wait, what?” Sarge asks.
Doc grins at him. “We sit together now. At the brand new neutral table.”
Simmons doesn’t think Sarge has ever looked so personally betrayed before in his life, even when he was actually being betrayed.
“I can’t believe Doc won Carolina,” he says.
“I can’t believe that judging by Doc’s limp that Donut tops,” Grif says.
Simmons chokes on his toast.
“Well, Grif’s talking about sex positions, that seals it for me, I’m leaving. Lopez will probably be missing me by now!” And then Sarge leaves and Simmons is suddenly stranded at the breakfast table alone with Grif. What the hell. They had like… seven members total if you counted Doc and Carolina as half a member each.
“We’re on a team full of flakes,” he complains.
Grif hums in vague agreement. At least he didn’t open his mouth to verbally agree while he’s chewing. Is he actually starting to listen to Simmons’ nagging-- constructive criticism?
“Pass the salt,” he says with his mouth still full. Goddamnit.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” he snaps, passing the salt regardless.
Grif rolls his eyes and salts his… breakfast taco. Oh, fucking gross.
“I still stand by that that is not a fucking breakfast food--”
“It is so, probably, I mean statistically at least, right--”
The argument lasts them for the rest of the meal and some time past that, long enough for everyone else to clear out of the room. At the end of it he forces Grif to help him clean up the table, and he’s just getting to the dishes when he happens to glance down at Grif’s shirt.
“You’ve got… taco stains on your shirt,” he points out, and instead of starting another petty argument Grif gives him a considering look, not even bothering to look down at the stains.
“Kay,” he finally says and moves to take his shirt off. Simmons is overcome with a wash of panicked attraction that’s swiftly beginning to grow exasperatingly familiar.
“Not in the kitchen,” he groans, moving forward to try and stop him by force if need be.
“King of the kitchen, remember?” Too late. The shirt’s already off. Simmons stops a short distance away from him, already defeated.
“Why are you taking your shirt off so much?” he finally asks. “Because you didn’t used to, but now it seems like you’ll take any flimsy excuse and--” his brain tries to say can you please stop and can you please do it more at the same time so he just stutters into a silence instead.
Grif looks stunned.
“What?” Simmons asks defensively. He’s not the one who’s being weird here okay--
“You’re, uh,” Grif says eloquently. “Feeling up the goods.”
“What?” he repeats far less defensively now, and then looks down to his hand just kinda casually resting on Grif’s chest oh fuck he is the one who’s being weird Simmons is the weird one abort abort
“Um,” he says, his voice far too high pitched for his tastes, his hand not fucking moving what the fuck. “The thing about that is--”
“Because I don’t mind,” Grif interrupts him in a rush.
Simmons bites his tongue so hard he tastes blood and makes a confused noise in lieu of being able to properly enunciate words or syllables to ask him to clarify himself.
“I mean,” he says, the side of his face that used to be Simmons’ growing redder by the moment. “I missed-- touching. While you were all-- you know. Gone. And I missed people and--” Grif cut himself off yet again and spared a moment to pinch the bridge of his nose to swear at himself.
Simmons was standing there, frozen like a deer in headlights, trying to bring himself to change the topic to something less awkward or potentially painful or at least to stop touching Grif already holy shit (except Grif said he didn’t mind it, that he missed touching so should he maybe--).
“I missed you,” Grif breaks the silence, clearly having to force the words, eyes darting between Simmons and then anywhere else. “Specifically. And touching…”
Grif moves closer, and there hadn’t been much space between them in the first place.
“... you,” he finishes, standing really, really close.
Simmons wouldn’t be able to move even if the Meta itself burst into their kitchen.
“Uh,” Grif says, looking abruptly uncertain. “I mean, not of course if you don’t-- platonically? I wasn’t--”
He starts moving away, and Simmons can by now tell when one of Grif’s ‘I suddenly don’t have a filter any longer’ moments are coming on and no, hey, stop.
Simmons other hand comes around to rest against Grif’s back, pulls him back against him. He can’t meet Grif’s eyes if he wants to be this close to him and not swallow his own tongue so he looks down and to the side as he says, his face flaming, “Me too.”
“You too what?” Grif asks, sounding somewhat breathless.
“Um, all of that. I missed you too. I like-- touching you too. I like--” you.
“I like it when you look at me,” Grif murmured, and Simmons could hear him perfectly because they were still so close, practically pressing up against each other. “Like that, when I take my shirt off.”
“Where’d you get that idea, by the way?” Simmons asks, thankfully finally distracted just a bit, enough for his brain not to melt out of his ears at least. Trying desperately not to think about how obvious he’s apparently been. “It was Kai, wasn’t it. No, Tucker!”
“Like I’d take advice from Tucker,” Grif snorts. “You told me to do it.”
“What?” His eyebrows jump to his hairline. “I think I’d remember that, dying of embarrassment is pretty memorable after all, trust me.”
“You were drunk off your ass.” Grif’s mouth twitches into a crooked little smile at remembering what an ass Simmons made of himself, apparently, and he knows he’s a goner from the way he melts regardless of the cause of that smile.
He’s hugging shirtless Grif in their kitchen, internally cooing over his smile as Grif professes that he missed him and touching him and likes being ogled by him and really, how much reassurement is Simmons going to need before he makes a move? How much encouragement?
He’s a Captain. He’s saved multiple planets, helped uncover a military conspiracy, gotten a medal, gotten his picture taken for the papers, survived the army for this many years, for this much bullshit. He could’ve stabbed his bitchass lookalike in the face if he’d wanted to (and if Grif hadn’t been standing right there with his stupid admirable morals because god had he wanted to) for god’s sake!
If he can do that, he can lean in those last few inches and kiss Grif. Even if it does feel more important than all that other stuff put together.
He takes a deep breath and--
Grif beats him to the punch.
Simmons would call him an asshole, but that’d require stopping the kiss and no. Hell no. He leans into the kiss, leans Grif against the kitchen counter, crowds him in close, one hand still on his back, the other now somehow in his hair, hah, when had that happened, and Grif was warm, warm, warm. They part briefly for breath, staying close enough that their lips still brush, that Grif’s warm breath washes over his tingling lips.
“Well?” Grif breathes, and how can he still sound anxious, how can he still not be sure after that kiss, when Simmons still has his fingers snugly nestled in his hair, still pressed as close up to him as he can manage.
As if Simmons wouldn’t be just about having a panic attack around now if he’d been the one who initiated the kiss.
“I like you,” he can finally bring himself to say, after that kiss, after all of these years. I love you, and hey, woah, maybe a little later? Maybe with a little more than a kiss to bolster his nerve? Simmons’ brain started very unhelpfully offering up various images of the possible different ways Grif could help give him the courage necessary to drop the L-bomb. Having lost the ability to coherently speak, he dives back into another kiss with Grif to camouflage it, to hide his expression. And also, because, well.
Kissing. Grif. Enough said.
Grif slides his hand up the nape of his neck in a way that makes him shiver and smiles into the kiss. For a moment, everything is perfect.
“Guys, for fuck’s sake! We eat here. Also, bowchickabowwow.”
For a moment. (But it’s all he needs, and there’ll be other moments. He’ll make sure of it.)