chase me(and I'll catch you)--(grant/jemma) 2/2
chase me(and I'll catch you) 2/2
fandom: agents of shield
pairing: grant/jemma
summary: It's an ecoterrorist AU.
This was written in like December, so the character personalities aren't necessarily canon compliant. Plus, it's an ecoterrorist AU, I took some liberties.
~~
present
“Do you ever think it’s weird that they do small stuff and big stuff?”
“What?” Grant doesn’t look up from staring down at his case files.
“I mean,” Skye continues, “Most terrorists like to go bigger and bigger-they like to lead up to a grand finale, or they have something huge in mind. It’s like these two do whatever the hell they feel like.”
“Maybe they do.”
Skye sighs. “That makes it really hard to track them. Four years ago they had a web of people underneath them that could be found, but now they don’t. Now, everything is in the shadows. I mean-how do they recruit? Where do they live?”
“I don’t know, Skye.” Grant’s brain latches onto something she said. “How do they recruit?”
“That’s what I just asked you. Clearly I don’t know the answer.”
“Skye, think.”
Skye just stares at him. “Are you having a breakdown? Coulson said that if you ever have a breakdown I’m supposed to buy you cake and let you talk about your feelings, but I’m pretty sure that was just a joke.”
Grant shakes his head, turning to face her. “Last time, they knew I was after them because of all the people who came to them-maybe that’s the key. Maybe they go to the people they want.”
“I can’t imagine there aren’t baby ecoterrorists out there, looking to make a name for themselves, who don’t want to join up though, Grant,” Skye says, biting down on the end of her pen and then frowning at it.
“They’ve been doing this for seven years; it’s like an elite club. Anyone who is a big enough deal isn’t interested in joining up with other people. And anyone who isn’t probably doesn’t have the connections to find them.”
“This is a huge jump in logic, Grant, but-“ Skye’s eyes widen. “You might have a point.”
“So maybe we should try infiltrating the organization again. Find someone, make them an attractive recruit-“ Grant shakes his head. “That’s not going to work.”
“No,” Skye agrees. “It won’t. But I’ve got an even better idea.”
~~
“Put the ear piece in,” Grant tells her, but Skye’s too busy bouncing nervously. “Calm down, Matthews.”
Skye wrings her hands. “What if they don’t believe me?”
“You’ll have to sell it.”
“This was a stupid idea.”
“This was your idea,” Grant points out.
Skye paces around the hotel room.
“I’m just supposed to follow their lead. I’m supposed to just go wherever they want me to-what if they want to kill me?”
“Then you’d probably already be dead.”
Skye nods her head, “Of course, of course. I can’t believe they actually think I’d switch sides.”
“They probably don’t.”
“What if Coulson finds out, and fires us for not following proper protocol?”
Grant shakes his head. “If we tell Coulson, then half the agency knows because of protocol. The Wonder Twins could have a mole in the department or have someone bugged, or the excess of people following you could tell them what we’re up to anyway. It’s just you and me.”
Skye stops pacing, and breathes in deeply. “Once I push the button and put it in my ear, we’re on radio silence, right?”
Grant nods.
“Okay,” Skye surprises him by launching herself at him, hugging him tightly. “Thank you for teaching me so much. Just in case I die, I want to tell you how much that’s meant to me. You’ve been like a big brother to me, and I’ve never really had family-“
Grant just pats her back. “It’s okay, Skye. You’ll come back, and be just fine. Just stay calm.”
Skye pulls away from him. “I am calm, I am calm. I will be fine. You’ve got my back, right?” She’s not even really talking to him anymore, because she’s trying to convince herself of it.
“Yes,” he assures her. “I’ve got your back.”
~~
two years ago
“Don’t you think it’s kind of weird that you’re stalking him?” Leo asks Jemma as she stares at the video feed she has on Grant’s hotel room. She’d seen him earlier in the day, and she’d followed him back to his room. It hadn’t taken much effort at all to get into the hotel’s computers and find out his name, and then hook up a video feed when he’d left again.
“I’m not watching him undress or anything, Fitz. I’m just-he’s in the same hotel as us. I saw him in the lobby this morning. What if he’s after us?” Clearly, she doesn’t have ulterior motives. She’s just being careful.
“First of all, he doesn’t know what we look like, Jem. And second, he’s after the art thief who stole the Monet last week,” Leo flips through a copy of some Italian magazine. “I wish I spoke Italian.”
“Then learn it,” Jemma says simply. “You always want to learn languages, but then two weeks later we’re somewhere else, so it’s a waste of time.”
“That’s why I never learn any new languages-because I have you here to be the voice of reason. How much longer do we have to stay cooped up in this hotel room anyway?” He’s never minded the cooped up bit, but he doesn’t care for living from hotel room to hotel room.
Jemma shrugs, her already messy bun completely collapsing and letting her hair tumble down on her shoulders. “I don’t know yet, Fitz. Maybe we’ll have to cancel tomorrow’s lecture.”
“Good idea, Jemma. I was getting nervous hives anyway. You know I hate public speaking.”
“It’s just a lecture on creating eco-friendly new technology-it’s the entire point of what we’ve been doing, Fitz. Nothing we do matters if we can’t inspire young minds to feel responsible for the fate of the world.” Jemma frowns. “We can’t cancel.”
“You just said we might have to-“ Leo points out, but Jemma glares at him.
“I hadn’t quite decided, but now I have. It’s far too important to continue with the lecture series.”
“What if that’s what gets us caught in the end? Public speaking. It’s the devil, I say.” Leo sighs.
“It won’t, Leo. There’s no connection between you and me, and certainly not a connection between your university visits and anything but a healthy interest in saving the planet.”
Leo shrugs. “I’m just tired.”
“I know,” Jemma is tired too, and they’re far from done. “Don’t worry about this agent-I’ll handle him.”
~~
present
Skye ends up in Brooklyn, and Grant almost regrets not telling Coulson, because managing to follow her to the little pizza place she eventually gets to is a lot more difficult by himself than he’d imagined.
He sneaks in a few minutes after her, perching himself in a corner, and pulling his hat a little more over his face, and picking up a menu.
Skye is sitting barely within his eyesight, but she looks like she’s concentrating on whatever she’s being told.
She stands up, and walks over to the women’s restroom, disappearing inside, and Grant nearly groans. Fantastic. He told her to go before they started this.
Five minutes later, he’s ready to groan for a different reason, because she’s still in there, which means something has probably gone wrong.
He looks around the restaurant, making sure no one is looking at him, but they couldn’t be less interested when he opens the door and ducks inside.
Thankfully, there’s no one in there to report him to the police.
On the other hand, there’s no one in there, which is a problem.
He notes that the window is open, and sighs. He narrows his eyes, and steps a bit closer to the window to see that the earpiece Skye had been wearing is now sitting right there.
Shit. He picks it up and has to stop himself from smashing it, or from punching the wall, which is what he’d really like to do.
When his phone rings, he answers it almost immediately, on autopilot. “Ward.”
“Don’t you worry, Grant. Skye’s just fine. It turns out that she decided to take us up on our offer after all. Try not to be too angry at her. She didn’t know what she’d intended when she said goodbye to you earlier,” she says tartly. “But I’m afraid this isn’t a drill. She’s defected.”
“I don’t believe that.” There’s a part of him that knows that if Skye hadn’t intended to join them for real instead of for the job, she’d have led him to them, and he wouldn’t be standing here having this conversation. A full-fledged infiltration won’t do them any good at this point. His heart is sinking, and he’s beginning to feel sick, because he knows what this means.
“Oh yes you do,” the soft British voice says, almost sympathetically. “Don’t beat yourself up about it. We would have gotten her with or without your support. Some things are more important than the law.”
“Nothing is more important than the law-“ he says, but she tut tuts into the phone.
“You don’t believe that, Grant. Protecting people is more important, don’t you think? Protecting the planet. Laws are supposed to keep people safe, but you operate outside of plenty of them yourself, don’t you?”
The worst part is that she’s right, and he hates her for it. “Let me talk to Skye.”
“I think it’s a tad early for that. We have quite a lot to talk about. Tomorrow, I think.”
With that, she hangs up, and this time he does punch the wall, hissing in pain as he cracks the cheap-looking ceramic, which is apparently a lot less cheap than it looks.
His hand is bleeding, he notes dispassionately.
~~
He doesn’t tell Coulson about this development either.
It’s entirely possible(unlikely though it is) that this is part of her plan, that she’d decided that telling them part of the truth would make them believe that she was actually defecting(there’s no point to this, the rational part of him argues, unless she has a more complex plan than the one they’d worked out).
On the other hand, she might have fallen for their tricks. They’d been her ear for close to two hours before they reached the pizza place, so who knows what they’d said to her?
He knows as well as anyone how seductive they can be.
~~
two years ago
After a particularly annoying case, Grant is ready for a shower. It’s early, early morning, so the sun hasn’t quite risen yet, so it’s still dark. He’s tempted to see if he and his partner can steal a few hours the next day before they fly back to the states-if not to see the city, then at least to sleep.
But as soon as he enters his hotel room, shutting the door to the hallway behind himself, he knows something is wrong, and he pulls out his gun.
The lights are off, so all he sees is a shadowy figure on the bed.
“I’m just curious-“ and he relaxes into the tension. She’s a known entity, even if she’s a dangerous one. “You completed your mission, yes?”
“Apparently I have a new one,” Grant replies, not moving from where he is, even when she seems to scoot up closer to the end of the bed.
“Oh, don’t worry about us, dear. We don’t have anything criminal planned for Italy. At least not now. We’re just taking in the sights.”
“Somehow, I don’t buy that.”
“Believe what you will.”
“Why are you here?” he demands.
She starts at that, as if he’s caught her off-guard, or maybe she’s just not sure which lie to tell him yet, he thinks. “I saw you, earlier. I followed you here out of curiosity. I just thought I’d stop by,” she says casually.
Grant shakes his head, though he’s not sure she can even see him well enough to tell. “I have to take you in.”
“Well, you can try.” She laughs at that, and her laugh is far too warm for a woman like her. Although her words are slightly mocking, her tone is not. Her laugh is not cruel.
“I’m the one with a gun pointed at you.”
The woman sits up on the bed. “True, but I have all the important weapons here.”
He steps cautiously toward the bed. “I know I have a gun, but I can’t see that you have one, so I’m pretty sure you don’t have any leverage here.”
He’s at the end of the bed, the gun pointed right at her, but she doesn’t make a move to disarm him, or roll of the bed to try to throw him off.
She simply sighs. “Do you know, I’ve never seen a man enjoy one of my sandwiches as much as my partner does? You were the first person who actually, even though he was blindfolded and tied up at the time, took the time to taste it. A fine appreciation of food is so difficult to find nowadays. That’s why we enjoy it here so much. Such love of simple foods, elevated with such stunning flavors.”
At this point, he lowers his gun, unsure of himself.
“Sit with me.” He can’t explain the pull she has on him-probably not any more than she can explain, truly, why she’s there-but he sits.
“I don’t like guns myself,” she says conversationally. “I don’t care to kill.”
“But you do.”
“Much like you do, I suppose. Only when absolutely necessary. You are not so different from us, Grant.”
“How’d you learn my name?”
“The same way I learned your room number, silly.” She reaches out and places a hand on his arm.
He aches, but he can’t explain it, and doesn’t want to understand why.
His stomach feels like it’s clenched, like there’s so much tension there he’s about to snap.
That he can explain, and he understands it well.
“Have you ever had sex with one of the people you’ve hunted?” she asks suddenly, moving her hand up his arm to his shoulder, and then his face.
Despite himself, he leans into it. “No.”
“Pity. I’m sure there are all sorts of rules against it.” There’s a humming in his blood at her words, drowning out his ability to think. He should do so many things right now, and none of them are coming to mind.
“I suppose there’s a first time for everything,” he hears himself say, and he’s lost.
Her teeth scrape against his throat, and she leaves scratches on his back, and he’s sure he leaves bruises on her skin too, though it’s hard to remember, later.
It’s a blur of hot, molten lava flowing between them, fireworks in his head, and the taste of every inch of her on his tongue.
That, he doesn’t forget. In fact, that he remembers, from before. But now he sears every single sensation into his mind, and avoids any thought of what should come after.
Later, much later, when he awakens, he’ll realize what a fool he’s been, because she’s long gone, and he’ll never catch her now.
She leaves nothing for him now, except disgust with himself, and maybe even a little self-hatred.
He tells no one.
~~
present
He orders room service back at the hotel, staring down in anger at his hand, which has stopped bleeding, but still fucking hurts.
Maybe he ought to pound his head against a wall next, he thinks. It might dull the pain.
He didn’t break or sprain it, but he already can see a pretty nice bruise forming.
As he eats his chicken salad, he contemplates his next move.
He doesn’t have a lot of choices, as far as he’s concerned.
He’ll just have to-what, he never quite decides, because he passes out, his eyes rolling back into his head, and his eyelids fluttering closed.
~~
He wakes up to the smell of lemon.
“Oh, look, he’s awake.” Skye, he realizes.
He’s blindfolded, he notes groggily.
“I told you he’d wake up soon enough.” The woman whose voice haunts his dreams, he realizes.
They give him some time to reorient himself, because it’s very disorienting to wake up blindfolded, and dizzy from some kind of drug. He’s never been fond of it, and it happens far too frequently in his line of work.
“Did you book the plane tickets?” Grant hears from the Scottish man from before. He recognizes the voice easily, even if it weren’t the most obvious process of elimination he’s ever come up against.
“Of course I did. Don’t worry,” Skye tells him, and Grant realizes she sounds like she really knows him, like she’s clicked with him, like they’ve filled up the space that Grant’s known was empty inside of her the moment he met her. He should have known it would end up like this.
“What’s going on?” Grant asks finally, when he feels like he’s back in control, even though he’s clearly tied to a chair.
“We’ve decided to change things up,” the British woman tells him. “Skye here, and our previous computer expert, have set up a nice little life for us, far far away. We’ll continue to dedicate ourselves to bettering the world in all ways possible, of course. But it seemed like to make a home for ourselves, and scale back some of the flashier work we’ve done.”
“We are scientists, after all,” Grant hears the Scottish man say.
“They’re actually really brilliant,” Skye tells him. “I’m so impressed.”
“We’re very impressed with you too,” he hears the woman say. “It’s lovely to have you aboard.” They’re practically fawning over each other, and it’s disgusting.
“How come I always end up blindfolded with you two, but she gets compliments?” he asks conversationally. He’d rather do it confrontationally, but that won’t get him anywhere, and he knows it.
“Oh, this is the last time that’ll happen,” the woman who haunts his dreams tells him, brushing the back of her hand up against his cheek. “We’re going to work behind the scenes a bit more, now. We have plans. And you, Grant, can be part of that, if you’d like.”
“The answer to your question by the way is that we trust her, but we don’t trust you yet,” the Scottish man says.
“You don’t even know her.”
“Of course we do,” the British woman murmurs in his ear. “And we know you too.”
“You don’t know anything about me,” he hears himself say.
Someone sighs, and he hears movement out of the room.
“The first time I met you, I knew you were special. I felt it in my fingertips, in my chest, in my bones.” The British woman sighs.
“You’re a sociopath.”
“That’s quite rude,” she replies, without anger. “I thought you felt it too, which is why when I went to your hotel room two years ago, I-I lost myself, a little. Just for a little while. I didn’t have to worry about the plan, about making things right. About what we did.”
“What did you do?”
Grant feels hands on his cheeks, and seconds later the blindfold is off, and he’s looking at a woman who looks more like a librarian than a terrorist.
For the first time, he gets a good look at her.
He loses himself, a little, in her eyes, and immediately hates himself for it.
“Not quite what you were expecting?” the woman asks. She’s so sweet-looking, he doesn’t know what to say. She’s even blushing slightly, like she’s nervous about him seeing her for the first time.
He doesn’t have the chance to respond before she sits down in the chair he’d noticed across from him, where someone had probably been sitting and watching him before he woke up.
“When my partner and I entered university, we were a bit younger than our fellow students, and so naturally we gravitated toward each other, and though our scientific aspirations were different, they were complementary. We learned and worked together well.”
“Does he know you slept with me?”
She makes a face at that, scrunching her nose and frowning. “Sort of. It isn’t as if he’d care overly much, because we aren’t involved. Him and I, I mean. Not the two of us, not that there is or isn’t anything between us, I’m simply-“ she trails off, meeting his eyes.
Grant fights a smile, but the corners of his mouth
“What?” She looks around. “Am I missing something?”
“You ramble,” he says. “I’d never noticed that before.”
“I’m very good when I’m in character. But once I drop out, I’m just me. An awful liar, and a rambler.” She isn’t defensive about it. She simply states it as fact, though her cheeks blush pink, ever so slightly.
“So, your story.” He supposes he may as well listen to it while he attempts to form a plan.
“Oh, yes. Of course.” She pushes hair away from her face where it’s fallen in front of her face. He gets distracted by watching her, he realizes. “We were young and impressionable.”
“So, someone came along, taught you how to be good little ecoterrorists, and sent you on your way?”
“Not at all,” she says, surprising him. “The opposite. We were involved in several research projects, which were funded in part by unscrupulous corporations. There were a few things, in particular, which had some disastrous consequences, and-“ she takes a deep breath, as if to steady herself.
He watches her hands clench in her lap. “And you hold yourselves responsible.”
“As we should,” she nods. “We can’t simply wash our hands of the things we’ve done.”
“Don’t you think you’ve done enough?” he suggests lightly.
“Not nearly,” she says softly, looking down at her hands, which are clutching the bottom of the sweater she’s wearing so tightly she’s probably stretching the fabric out, at least a little. “People died.”
“People die all of the time.”
“Innocent people, Grant,” she looks back up at him sharply. “It weighs differently on your soul. And it may not have been our fault directly, but no one wanted to take responsibility, no one wanted to accept that all of us who had been involved led to those deaths. We’ve done what we could about that though-we’re moving on to the next stage. We can’t be vengeful forever.”
He watches her carefully. “It doesn’t get any easier, does it?”
“No,” she admits with a slight, humorless smile. “It doesn’t.”
“When I was a kid,” he starts, and then hesitates, surprise crossing his face. He’d been about to open up about something that he doesn’t tell anyone.
She scoots her chair over, and reaches out, placing a hand on his. “You understand,” she says softly, seeing right through him.
“I do.”
“You know what it’s like to carry that kind of guilt. And no matter what people say, about who is truly at fault, the weight of the world is on your shoulders.”
“Yes,” he admits softly, looking down at her hand over his.
“We have rules. But I-I’ve broken them for you, because I saw something in you. I feel it now too. You understand. You have what we look for-you have heart.”
“I can’t,” he says. “I’m not cut out for this.” He isn't, he tells herself. But when he looks at her, he thinks maybe--maybe, he might be.
She squeezes his hand, and he looks up to meet her eyes again, seeing only kindness.
“Ask me,” she says softly. “Ask me anything you want to know. And if I answer, and my answer satisfies you, join us. You find people, Grant. You’re a glorified bounty hunter, and while many of those people are terrible, imagine how much more you could do with us.”
He hesitates. “What’s your name? Your real one?”
She smiles at that, clearly surprised, but pleased by his question. “Jemma.”
“Okay,” he says, and she lights up at that, pulling out a knife, and cutting his bindings. She’s far too optimistic, he thinks. Too romantic and foolish to trust that that would be enough. (She’s smarter than that, he thinks.)
It’s easy, much too easy, to pull the knife from her grasp, and cover her mouth with his hand, pressing the knife to her throat. He removes the hand from her mouth, because the knife is threat enough, he thinks.
Her eyes are unreadable now. Her open face and heart are closed off to him now, but she doesn’t look disappointed, or surprised, or much of anything.
She looks like she’s waiting.
He remembers what she tastes like, even now, what it feels like to touch her, what it feels like to be teased by her.
He knows her, somehow, though he shouldn’t. There’s no reason for this feeling he has, clenching his heart in his chest.
He closes his eyes, and breathes in deeply.
He has to decide what to do next.
He imagines his life-a nice sized office, with a nice boss, a lonely apartment, a life empty of girlfriends or regular lovers.
He opens his eyes, and sees her-Jemma, he thinks, it suits her--delicate and yet stunningly brilliant and strong, and determined to change the world.
He pulls away, setting the knife on the seat he’d vacated.
He looks around the room before his eyes eventually meet hers. She smiles at him-a full, wide and bright smile. The kind they write poetry about, the kind that fools wax on about.
He sees his future.
~~
Later, when they reach their new home, he’s not surprised to see Melinda May there. “She’d been working with us since before you managed to infiltrate our organization,” Jemma tells him.
“So you got her to delay the rescue team while you, what, tried to make me yours?”
Jemma laughs, reaching her arms around his neck, and hugging him. “You’ve been mine since the night in that warehouse, Grant. And I’ve been yours. I’ve just been waiting for you to catch up.”
~~
the future
And they all live happily ever after.
fandom: agents of shield
pairing: grant/jemma
summary: It's an ecoterrorist AU.
This was written in like December, so the character personalities aren't necessarily canon compliant. Plus, it's an ecoterrorist AU, I took some liberties.
~~
present
“Do you ever think it’s weird that they do small stuff and big stuff?”
“What?” Grant doesn’t look up from staring down at his case files.
“I mean,” Skye continues, “Most terrorists like to go bigger and bigger-they like to lead up to a grand finale, or they have something huge in mind. It’s like these two do whatever the hell they feel like.”
“Maybe they do.”
Skye sighs. “That makes it really hard to track them. Four years ago they had a web of people underneath them that could be found, but now they don’t. Now, everything is in the shadows. I mean-how do they recruit? Where do they live?”
“I don’t know, Skye.” Grant’s brain latches onto something she said. “How do they recruit?”
“That’s what I just asked you. Clearly I don’t know the answer.”
“Skye, think.”
Skye just stares at him. “Are you having a breakdown? Coulson said that if you ever have a breakdown I’m supposed to buy you cake and let you talk about your feelings, but I’m pretty sure that was just a joke.”
Grant shakes his head, turning to face her. “Last time, they knew I was after them because of all the people who came to them-maybe that’s the key. Maybe they go to the people they want.”
“I can’t imagine there aren’t baby ecoterrorists out there, looking to make a name for themselves, who don’t want to join up though, Grant,” Skye says, biting down on the end of her pen and then frowning at it.
“They’ve been doing this for seven years; it’s like an elite club. Anyone who is a big enough deal isn’t interested in joining up with other people. And anyone who isn’t probably doesn’t have the connections to find them.”
“This is a huge jump in logic, Grant, but-“ Skye’s eyes widen. “You might have a point.”
“So maybe we should try infiltrating the organization again. Find someone, make them an attractive recruit-“ Grant shakes his head. “That’s not going to work.”
“No,” Skye agrees. “It won’t. But I’ve got an even better idea.”
~~
“Put the ear piece in,” Grant tells her, but Skye’s too busy bouncing nervously. “Calm down, Matthews.”
Skye wrings her hands. “What if they don’t believe me?”
“You’ll have to sell it.”
“This was a stupid idea.”
“This was your idea,” Grant points out.
Skye paces around the hotel room.
“I’m just supposed to follow their lead. I’m supposed to just go wherever they want me to-what if they want to kill me?”
“Then you’d probably already be dead.”
Skye nods her head, “Of course, of course. I can’t believe they actually think I’d switch sides.”
“They probably don’t.”
“What if Coulson finds out, and fires us for not following proper protocol?”
Grant shakes his head. “If we tell Coulson, then half the agency knows because of protocol. The Wonder Twins could have a mole in the department or have someone bugged, or the excess of people following you could tell them what we’re up to anyway. It’s just you and me.”
Skye stops pacing, and breathes in deeply. “Once I push the button and put it in my ear, we’re on radio silence, right?”
Grant nods.
“Okay,” Skye surprises him by launching herself at him, hugging him tightly. “Thank you for teaching me so much. Just in case I die, I want to tell you how much that’s meant to me. You’ve been like a big brother to me, and I’ve never really had family-“
Grant just pats her back. “It’s okay, Skye. You’ll come back, and be just fine. Just stay calm.”
Skye pulls away from him. “I am calm, I am calm. I will be fine. You’ve got my back, right?” She’s not even really talking to him anymore, because she’s trying to convince herself of it.
“Yes,” he assures her. “I’ve got your back.”
~~
two years ago
“Don’t you think it’s kind of weird that you’re stalking him?” Leo asks Jemma as she stares at the video feed she has on Grant’s hotel room. She’d seen him earlier in the day, and she’d followed him back to his room. It hadn’t taken much effort at all to get into the hotel’s computers and find out his name, and then hook up a video feed when he’d left again.
“I’m not watching him undress or anything, Fitz. I’m just-he’s in the same hotel as us. I saw him in the lobby this morning. What if he’s after us?” Clearly, she doesn’t have ulterior motives. She’s just being careful.
“First of all, he doesn’t know what we look like, Jem. And second, he’s after the art thief who stole the Monet last week,” Leo flips through a copy of some Italian magazine. “I wish I spoke Italian.”
“Then learn it,” Jemma says simply. “You always want to learn languages, but then two weeks later we’re somewhere else, so it’s a waste of time.”
“That’s why I never learn any new languages-because I have you here to be the voice of reason. How much longer do we have to stay cooped up in this hotel room anyway?” He’s never minded the cooped up bit, but he doesn’t care for living from hotel room to hotel room.
Jemma shrugs, her already messy bun completely collapsing and letting her hair tumble down on her shoulders. “I don’t know yet, Fitz. Maybe we’ll have to cancel tomorrow’s lecture.”
“Good idea, Jemma. I was getting nervous hives anyway. You know I hate public speaking.”
“It’s just a lecture on creating eco-friendly new technology-it’s the entire point of what we’ve been doing, Fitz. Nothing we do matters if we can’t inspire young minds to feel responsible for the fate of the world.” Jemma frowns. “We can’t cancel.”
“You just said we might have to-“ Leo points out, but Jemma glares at him.
“I hadn’t quite decided, but now I have. It’s far too important to continue with the lecture series.”
“What if that’s what gets us caught in the end? Public speaking. It’s the devil, I say.” Leo sighs.
“It won’t, Leo. There’s no connection between you and me, and certainly not a connection between your university visits and anything but a healthy interest in saving the planet.”
Leo shrugs. “I’m just tired.”
“I know,” Jemma is tired too, and they’re far from done. “Don’t worry about this agent-I’ll handle him.”
~~
present
Skye ends up in Brooklyn, and Grant almost regrets not telling Coulson, because managing to follow her to the little pizza place she eventually gets to is a lot more difficult by himself than he’d imagined.
He sneaks in a few minutes after her, perching himself in a corner, and pulling his hat a little more over his face, and picking up a menu.
Skye is sitting barely within his eyesight, but she looks like she’s concentrating on whatever she’s being told.
She stands up, and walks over to the women’s restroom, disappearing inside, and Grant nearly groans. Fantastic. He told her to go before they started this.
Five minutes later, he’s ready to groan for a different reason, because she’s still in there, which means something has probably gone wrong.
He looks around the restaurant, making sure no one is looking at him, but they couldn’t be less interested when he opens the door and ducks inside.
Thankfully, there’s no one in there to report him to the police.
On the other hand, there’s no one in there, which is a problem.
He notes that the window is open, and sighs. He narrows his eyes, and steps a bit closer to the window to see that the earpiece Skye had been wearing is now sitting right there.
Shit. He picks it up and has to stop himself from smashing it, or from punching the wall, which is what he’d really like to do.
When his phone rings, he answers it almost immediately, on autopilot. “Ward.”
“Don’t you worry, Grant. Skye’s just fine. It turns out that she decided to take us up on our offer after all. Try not to be too angry at her. She didn’t know what she’d intended when she said goodbye to you earlier,” she says tartly. “But I’m afraid this isn’t a drill. She’s defected.”
“I don’t believe that.” There’s a part of him that knows that if Skye hadn’t intended to join them for real instead of for the job, she’d have led him to them, and he wouldn’t be standing here having this conversation. A full-fledged infiltration won’t do them any good at this point. His heart is sinking, and he’s beginning to feel sick, because he knows what this means.
“Oh yes you do,” the soft British voice says, almost sympathetically. “Don’t beat yourself up about it. We would have gotten her with or without your support. Some things are more important than the law.”
“Nothing is more important than the law-“ he says, but she tut tuts into the phone.
“You don’t believe that, Grant. Protecting people is more important, don’t you think? Protecting the planet. Laws are supposed to keep people safe, but you operate outside of plenty of them yourself, don’t you?”
The worst part is that she’s right, and he hates her for it. “Let me talk to Skye.”
“I think it’s a tad early for that. We have quite a lot to talk about. Tomorrow, I think.”
With that, she hangs up, and this time he does punch the wall, hissing in pain as he cracks the cheap-looking ceramic, which is apparently a lot less cheap than it looks.
His hand is bleeding, he notes dispassionately.
~~
He doesn’t tell Coulson about this development either.
It’s entirely possible(unlikely though it is) that this is part of her plan, that she’d decided that telling them part of the truth would make them believe that she was actually defecting(there’s no point to this, the rational part of him argues, unless she has a more complex plan than the one they’d worked out).
On the other hand, she might have fallen for their tricks. They’d been her ear for close to two hours before they reached the pizza place, so who knows what they’d said to her?
He knows as well as anyone how seductive they can be.
~~
two years ago
After a particularly annoying case, Grant is ready for a shower. It’s early, early morning, so the sun hasn’t quite risen yet, so it’s still dark. He’s tempted to see if he and his partner can steal a few hours the next day before they fly back to the states-if not to see the city, then at least to sleep.
But as soon as he enters his hotel room, shutting the door to the hallway behind himself, he knows something is wrong, and he pulls out his gun.
The lights are off, so all he sees is a shadowy figure on the bed.
“I’m just curious-“ and he relaxes into the tension. She’s a known entity, even if she’s a dangerous one. “You completed your mission, yes?”
“Apparently I have a new one,” Grant replies, not moving from where he is, even when she seems to scoot up closer to the end of the bed.
“Oh, don’t worry about us, dear. We don’t have anything criminal planned for Italy. At least not now. We’re just taking in the sights.”
“Somehow, I don’t buy that.”
“Believe what you will.”
“Why are you here?” he demands.
She starts at that, as if he’s caught her off-guard, or maybe she’s just not sure which lie to tell him yet, he thinks. “I saw you, earlier. I followed you here out of curiosity. I just thought I’d stop by,” she says casually.
Grant shakes his head, though he’s not sure she can even see him well enough to tell. “I have to take you in.”
“Well, you can try.” She laughs at that, and her laugh is far too warm for a woman like her. Although her words are slightly mocking, her tone is not. Her laugh is not cruel.
“I’m the one with a gun pointed at you.”
The woman sits up on the bed. “True, but I have all the important weapons here.”
He steps cautiously toward the bed. “I know I have a gun, but I can’t see that you have one, so I’m pretty sure you don’t have any leverage here.”
He’s at the end of the bed, the gun pointed right at her, but she doesn’t make a move to disarm him, or roll of the bed to try to throw him off.
She simply sighs. “Do you know, I’ve never seen a man enjoy one of my sandwiches as much as my partner does? You were the first person who actually, even though he was blindfolded and tied up at the time, took the time to taste it. A fine appreciation of food is so difficult to find nowadays. That’s why we enjoy it here so much. Such love of simple foods, elevated with such stunning flavors.”
At this point, he lowers his gun, unsure of himself.
“Sit with me.” He can’t explain the pull she has on him-probably not any more than she can explain, truly, why she’s there-but he sits.
“I don’t like guns myself,” she says conversationally. “I don’t care to kill.”
“But you do.”
“Much like you do, I suppose. Only when absolutely necessary. You are not so different from us, Grant.”
“How’d you learn my name?”
“The same way I learned your room number, silly.” She reaches out and places a hand on his arm.
He aches, but he can’t explain it, and doesn’t want to understand why.
His stomach feels like it’s clenched, like there’s so much tension there he’s about to snap.
That he can explain, and he understands it well.
“Have you ever had sex with one of the people you’ve hunted?” she asks suddenly, moving her hand up his arm to his shoulder, and then his face.
Despite himself, he leans into it. “No.”
“Pity. I’m sure there are all sorts of rules against it.” There’s a humming in his blood at her words, drowning out his ability to think. He should do so many things right now, and none of them are coming to mind.
“I suppose there’s a first time for everything,” he hears himself say, and he’s lost.
Her teeth scrape against his throat, and she leaves scratches on his back, and he’s sure he leaves bruises on her skin too, though it’s hard to remember, later.
It’s a blur of hot, molten lava flowing between them, fireworks in his head, and the taste of every inch of her on his tongue.
That, he doesn’t forget. In fact, that he remembers, from before. But now he sears every single sensation into his mind, and avoids any thought of what should come after.
Later, much later, when he awakens, he’ll realize what a fool he’s been, because she’s long gone, and he’ll never catch her now.
She leaves nothing for him now, except disgust with himself, and maybe even a little self-hatred.
He tells no one.
~~
present
He orders room service back at the hotel, staring down in anger at his hand, which has stopped bleeding, but still fucking hurts.
Maybe he ought to pound his head against a wall next, he thinks. It might dull the pain.
He didn’t break or sprain it, but he already can see a pretty nice bruise forming.
As he eats his chicken salad, he contemplates his next move.
He doesn’t have a lot of choices, as far as he’s concerned.
He’ll just have to-what, he never quite decides, because he passes out, his eyes rolling back into his head, and his eyelids fluttering closed.
~~
He wakes up to the smell of lemon.
“Oh, look, he’s awake.” Skye, he realizes.
He’s blindfolded, he notes groggily.
“I told you he’d wake up soon enough.” The woman whose voice haunts his dreams, he realizes.
They give him some time to reorient himself, because it’s very disorienting to wake up blindfolded, and dizzy from some kind of drug. He’s never been fond of it, and it happens far too frequently in his line of work.
“Did you book the plane tickets?” Grant hears from the Scottish man from before. He recognizes the voice easily, even if it weren’t the most obvious process of elimination he’s ever come up against.
“Of course I did. Don’t worry,” Skye tells him, and Grant realizes she sounds like she really knows him, like she’s clicked with him, like they’ve filled up the space that Grant’s known was empty inside of her the moment he met her. He should have known it would end up like this.
“What’s going on?” Grant asks finally, when he feels like he’s back in control, even though he’s clearly tied to a chair.
“We’ve decided to change things up,” the British woman tells him. “Skye here, and our previous computer expert, have set up a nice little life for us, far far away. We’ll continue to dedicate ourselves to bettering the world in all ways possible, of course. But it seemed like to make a home for ourselves, and scale back some of the flashier work we’ve done.”
“We are scientists, after all,” Grant hears the Scottish man say.
“They’re actually really brilliant,” Skye tells him. “I’m so impressed.”
“We’re very impressed with you too,” he hears the woman say. “It’s lovely to have you aboard.” They’re practically fawning over each other, and it’s disgusting.
“How come I always end up blindfolded with you two, but she gets compliments?” he asks conversationally. He’d rather do it confrontationally, but that won’t get him anywhere, and he knows it.
“Oh, this is the last time that’ll happen,” the woman who haunts his dreams tells him, brushing the back of her hand up against his cheek. “We’re going to work behind the scenes a bit more, now. We have plans. And you, Grant, can be part of that, if you’d like.”
“The answer to your question by the way is that we trust her, but we don’t trust you yet,” the Scottish man says.
“You don’t even know her.”
“Of course we do,” the British woman murmurs in his ear. “And we know you too.”
“You don’t know anything about me,” he hears himself say.
Someone sighs, and he hears movement out of the room.
“The first time I met you, I knew you were special. I felt it in my fingertips, in my chest, in my bones.” The British woman sighs.
“You’re a sociopath.”
“That’s quite rude,” she replies, without anger. “I thought you felt it too, which is why when I went to your hotel room two years ago, I-I lost myself, a little. Just for a little while. I didn’t have to worry about the plan, about making things right. About what we did.”
“What did you do?”
Grant feels hands on his cheeks, and seconds later the blindfold is off, and he’s looking at a woman who looks more like a librarian than a terrorist.
For the first time, he gets a good look at her.
He loses himself, a little, in her eyes, and immediately hates himself for it.
“Not quite what you were expecting?” the woman asks. She’s so sweet-looking, he doesn’t know what to say. She’s even blushing slightly, like she’s nervous about him seeing her for the first time.
He doesn’t have the chance to respond before she sits down in the chair he’d noticed across from him, where someone had probably been sitting and watching him before he woke up.
“When my partner and I entered university, we were a bit younger than our fellow students, and so naturally we gravitated toward each other, and though our scientific aspirations were different, they were complementary. We learned and worked together well.”
“Does he know you slept with me?”
She makes a face at that, scrunching her nose and frowning. “Sort of. It isn’t as if he’d care overly much, because we aren’t involved. Him and I, I mean. Not the two of us, not that there is or isn’t anything between us, I’m simply-“ she trails off, meeting his eyes.
Grant fights a smile, but the corners of his mouth
“What?” She looks around. “Am I missing something?”
“You ramble,” he says. “I’d never noticed that before.”
“I’m very good when I’m in character. But once I drop out, I’m just me. An awful liar, and a rambler.” She isn’t defensive about it. She simply states it as fact, though her cheeks blush pink, ever so slightly.
“So, your story.” He supposes he may as well listen to it while he attempts to form a plan.
“Oh, yes. Of course.” She pushes hair away from her face where it’s fallen in front of her face. He gets distracted by watching her, he realizes. “We were young and impressionable.”
“So, someone came along, taught you how to be good little ecoterrorists, and sent you on your way?”
“Not at all,” she says, surprising him. “The opposite. We were involved in several research projects, which were funded in part by unscrupulous corporations. There were a few things, in particular, which had some disastrous consequences, and-“ she takes a deep breath, as if to steady herself.
He watches her hands clench in her lap. “And you hold yourselves responsible.”
“As we should,” she nods. “We can’t simply wash our hands of the things we’ve done.”
“Don’t you think you’ve done enough?” he suggests lightly.
“Not nearly,” she says softly, looking down at her hands, which are clutching the bottom of the sweater she’s wearing so tightly she’s probably stretching the fabric out, at least a little. “People died.”
“People die all of the time.”
“Innocent people, Grant,” she looks back up at him sharply. “It weighs differently on your soul. And it may not have been our fault directly, but no one wanted to take responsibility, no one wanted to accept that all of us who had been involved led to those deaths. We’ve done what we could about that though-we’re moving on to the next stage. We can’t be vengeful forever.”
He watches her carefully. “It doesn’t get any easier, does it?”
“No,” she admits with a slight, humorless smile. “It doesn’t.”
“When I was a kid,” he starts, and then hesitates, surprise crossing his face. He’d been about to open up about something that he doesn’t tell anyone.
She scoots her chair over, and reaches out, placing a hand on his. “You understand,” she says softly, seeing right through him.
“I do.”
“You know what it’s like to carry that kind of guilt. And no matter what people say, about who is truly at fault, the weight of the world is on your shoulders.”
“Yes,” he admits softly, looking down at her hand over his.
“We have rules. But I-I’ve broken them for you, because I saw something in you. I feel it now too. You understand. You have what we look for-you have heart.”
“I can’t,” he says. “I’m not cut out for this.” He isn't, he tells herself. But when he looks at her, he thinks maybe--maybe, he might be.
She squeezes his hand, and he looks up to meet her eyes again, seeing only kindness.
“Ask me,” she says softly. “Ask me anything you want to know. And if I answer, and my answer satisfies you, join us. You find people, Grant. You’re a glorified bounty hunter, and while many of those people are terrible, imagine how much more you could do with us.”
He hesitates. “What’s your name? Your real one?”
She smiles at that, clearly surprised, but pleased by his question. “Jemma.”
“Okay,” he says, and she lights up at that, pulling out a knife, and cutting his bindings. She’s far too optimistic, he thinks. Too romantic and foolish to trust that that would be enough. (She’s smarter than that, he thinks.)
It’s easy, much too easy, to pull the knife from her grasp, and cover her mouth with his hand, pressing the knife to her throat. He removes the hand from her mouth, because the knife is threat enough, he thinks.
Her eyes are unreadable now. Her open face and heart are closed off to him now, but she doesn’t look disappointed, or surprised, or much of anything.
She looks like she’s waiting.
He remembers what she tastes like, even now, what it feels like to touch her, what it feels like to be teased by her.
He knows her, somehow, though he shouldn’t. There’s no reason for this feeling he has, clenching his heart in his chest.
He closes his eyes, and breathes in deeply.
He has to decide what to do next.
He imagines his life-a nice sized office, with a nice boss, a lonely apartment, a life empty of girlfriends or regular lovers.
He opens his eyes, and sees her-Jemma, he thinks, it suits her--delicate and yet stunningly brilliant and strong, and determined to change the world.
He pulls away, setting the knife on the seat he’d vacated.
He looks around the room before his eyes eventually meet hers. She smiles at him-a full, wide and bright smile. The kind they write poetry about, the kind that fools wax on about.
He sees his future.
~~
Later, when they reach their new home, he’s not surprised to see Melinda May there. “She’d been working with us since before you managed to infiltrate our organization,” Jemma tells him.
“So you got her to delay the rescue team while you, what, tried to make me yours?”
Jemma laughs, reaching her arms around his neck, and hugging him. “You’ve been mine since the night in that warehouse, Grant. And I’ve been yours. I’ve just been waiting for you to catch up.”
~~
the future
And they all live happily ever after.