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Grif comes back, Temple and his men are either killed or captured, and they return to the moon. Everything’s back to normal.
Or at least, it should be.
“No, see, the bomb dropping scene doesn’t make sense because there’s no gravity in space, they’d just float off!” Simmons explains hotly over breakfast.
“There could just be thrusters on them,” Grif says through a mouthful of scrambled eggs.
“Well, they didn’t--don’t talk with your mouth full--they certainly didn’t show that.”
Point made, he neatly takes a bite out of his toast and waits for Grif’s rebuttal. It doesn’t come. Except Grif doesn’t let him win arguments that easily when it comes to movies, so Simmons looks back up at him from his meal to see Grif chewing his food, mouth closed. He swallows.
“The world won’t end if you have to use your imagination to help suspend your sense of belief, Simmons,” he says, mouth empty and clear, like he’s ever listened to Simmons’ nagging before in his life.
He blinks at him, taken off guard.
“What?” Grif asks. Takes a bite of his scrambled eggs, chews open mouthed. Visibly remembers himself and snaps his mouth closed with a quick, weird guilty look at Simmons.
“Nothing,” he says, weirdly put off by being listened to so easily over such a small issue. He’s been trying to get Grif to stop talking with his mouth full for as long as he’s known him, to no success. And now it works? That easily? Why?
And what was with that look?
“Men,” Sarge intones gravely. “Today we show our greatest enemy that we’re not to be trifled with!”
“So by greatest enemy, do you mean the Blues or gravity or what?” Grif asks.
“Cut the sass!” Sarge snaps. “Obviously, I mean gravity. Our shiftiest fiend yet. Clearly, the only reason we haven’t defeated it yet is because we haven’t been able to hit it yet! It’s invisible, constantly moving around, impossible to pin down!”
It seems like Sarge doesn’t entirely grasp the concept of gravity, or a universal law of physics. Simmons is, at this point, not even vaguely surprised. The blatant inaccuracy bugs at him though, calls at him to correct him, but it’s Sarge so the best he can manage is, “I don’t think it works quite that way, sir.”
“Not when we’re done with it,” Sarge chuckles. “Now, Private Donut has been so kind to donate all of his flour to the cause--”
“That’s where my flour went!”
“--and now we’re all gonna open the bags and throw flour around until our enemy’s location is revealed! And then we pounce!!!”
Simmons waits for Grif to say how stupid this plan is, what a waste of food and effort and time it is.
Instead, he gives a token sigh and walks up and grabs a bag without a word of protest, opening it up.
Simmons stares at him for a moment as Sarge opens his bags by way of shotgun, feeling off balance. Something that should’ve happened didn’t. Something’s up. Something’s weird--
Lopez upends a bag of flour over an empty patch of space that turns out to be full of Locus, and everyone squawks about that for a while.
The day is winding down to a close, and Simmons follows Grif to his room with vague plans of asking how he’s doing as if it’ll solve anything. (“Are you okay?” “Yes.” He can’t imagine it going any other way.)
Their rooms are right next to each other, so it takes Grif a little moment to realize that Simmons is standing in his open door way, stopping the door from closing. He turns and raises his eyebrows at him, but Simmons is a little preoccupied staring at Grif’s room.
It’s… clean. Not by Simmons’ standards, not really. But he can admit that by most people’s standards it is. There’s no food or wrappers or clothes on the floor, the bed is sloppily made, and there isn’t a thick coating of dust on everything that isn’t touched every day. Everything is mostly in its place. Grif’s room has literally never looked like this before.
He remembers being tired and sore, terrified adrenaline gone and making way for sheer exhaustion, the Pelican sent from Chorus landing them back on their moon. How sparkly and clean everything had been.
“I was just bored,” Grif had said then after several weirded out looks pointed in his direction. “Just needed something to fill up the time.”
His voice had been uncharacteristically high and quick, like if he said it fast enough no one would question him. No one had, but mostly due to fatigue.
Grif’s a worse liar than he was, ever since he left them and then came back.
“You cleaned,” he says, a little stunned.
“Uh, yeah,” Grif says awkwardly, shifting in place. “So?”
Grif’s obeying orders, complaining about Red Team nonsense less, picking up after himself. These are all positive changes. These are all good things that should be encouraged.
(Are you okay?)
“What’s wrong?” he asks instead.
Grif’s face does something weird but decidedly unhappy for a moment, but then it smoothes out quickly enough. “Nothing’s wrong,” he says.
He’d normally accept this as an answer, except no, something is wrong, and he’d very much like to figure out what it is because this is lowkey freaking Simmons out and he can’t even put his finger on why, which is just freaking him out worse.
He takes a step closer, and the automatic doors slide closed behind him. Grif looks strangely panicked, like Simmons is at all a threat in any way to him.
“Nothing’s wrong!” he repeats, except this time it sounds far less casual. Almost like a yelp. “Really, seriously, I don’t know what you’re talking about?”
“You’re listening to my nagging,” he says. He normally wouldn’t admit to it being nagging, but things are decidedly not normal right now, and he wants to know why.
“Don’t you want for me to?” he asks helplessly, and when Simmons takes another step forward he takes a step back.
“But why are you? And you’re listening to Sarge.”
“Shouldn’t I?”
“And you’re cleaning up.”
“Don’t you like it?” Grif looks at him like he’s looking for something, like--
Oh. That’s what feels so wrong about all of this. Grif, unbothered Grif who doesn’t give a damn about anyone’s opinion of him, is looking for… approval. From him.
That’s what feels so wrong.
Simmons swallows thickly, not knowing what to do, thinking hate glue.
“I’m,” Grif says as Simmons continues not to say anything, his voice just the tiniest bit shaky. “I’m just trying to be… better. You know. Trying not to fuck it up again.”
He doesn’t know what to say.
He didn’t say anything when Grif quit, and they left him. He didn’t say anything when Grif started shit talking himself during their reunion, and now this.
Maybe he should say something anyways.
“You’re already good,” he says, and then feels his face flush fast and hot because fuck, that was corny as shit. That was embarrassing. That was--
Grif is blinking at him, surprised and tentatively lighting up. Grif’s a worse liar than he was before.
Simmons decides to make himself keep talking, which is a first. He’s usually desperately internally screaming at himself to just stop digging his grave already. That vaguely miserable look clinging to the corners of his mouth and eyes and the slump of his shoulders is vanishing though, so maybe digging himself into a grave will be worth it, just this once.
“We’ll never leave you again, ever. Even if you tell us to, I’m not gonna let you go, this time. Being seperated sucked. I can’t talk to any of the others! I mean, Caboose maybe a little, which was surprising, but he gets Star Wars and Star Trek mixed up, so he’s no replacement. Not that I just like you because we like the same stuff, I like you for you.”
Oh fuck, he let his mouth get ahead of himself. I like you. He’d said I like you. He’s gonna die.
Grif has now progressed from surprise and tentative lighting up to looking stunned and amazed.
“You like me,” he says.
Simmons swallows, and makes himself not take it back. Nods bravely, like a good friend.
“I like you too,” he says in a breathless rush. “I like you too! Like, a lot, a lot, probably more than you like me, actually, uh--”
He rambles sometimes now, too.
Grif likes him back. The thought rings out loud and clear in Simmons’ head, and he’s suddenly thinking about how close he’s standing to Grif and how they’re alone and the door is closed--
“--probably not in the way you like me though, which is fine and doesn’t make me sad because you like me and that’s great! Am I talking too much? I feel like I’m talking too much--”
Simmons puts his hands on his shoulders and Grif’s mouth clacks shut on his nervous rambling.
“Can I, uh.” His voice breaks and he clears it, tries again, embarrassed and terrified but determined. “Can I kiss you?”
Grif stares at him, wide eyed.
“Please?” he tries.
Grif nods vigorously. Simmons reaches out a hand to his jaw to stop him, and then he leans down and in, his heartbeat thundering in chest. Grif’s lips are soft, and he kisses him back almost immediately, leaning into Simmons’ space like he can’t resist. Simmons seriously hasn’t had much practice, but the kiss is so good he feels almost dizzy with it, light headed and weak kneed. It’s probably just because of the sheer fact that he’s kissing Dexter Grif, who is kissing him back, neither of them under the effects of alcohol or alien sex pollen as an excuse for once.
After a long, wonderful moment, they part, and Grif sways after him like he’s looking for another kiss. They blink at each other, dazed and flushed.
“You should definitely stay and do that with me for, uh, a hundred more times?” Grif says.
“Maybe I’ll just sleepover tonight,” he says, nodding.
They kiss enthusiastically for several more hours on Grif’s bed.