A/N: ilosttrackofthings asked: ""Do you have a cuddle buddy yet?" I honestly don't care who. I mean I think we all know Grant and Jemma need it after what you've put them through, but I'll take anyone."
meghan84 requested the same sentence.
"Do you have a cuddle buddy yet?"
Grant winces a little—partly for the way Simmons' less-than-quiet voice aggravates the throbbing in his temples and partly for the phrasing—and shakes his head. "Not yet."
"Excellent," she says, and makes a pointed gesture towards his chest. "Take your shirt off, then."
He bites the inside of his cheek as he complies. He's not ashamed to admit, if only to himself, that it always gives him a little bit of a thrill to hear her say that. (And between the sheer number of scrapes Coulson gets them into, Grant's role as the one who has to get them out of said scrapes, and Simmons' position as team medic? She says it a lot.)
One of these days, he promises himself, she's gonna say it in non-professional circumstances.
Today, however, is not that day. Today is a day in which, through some bizarre confluence of events, their team and another mobile response team have been infected with—something. A virus. Grant's kind of shaky on the details, what with having been unconscious when the infecting happened (fucking Asgardians; if he never hears another word about them and their fucking magic and advanced strength he will die a happy man), but the long and short of it is that they need skin contact.
Which is why Simmons is in the process of taking off her shirt, too, and he'd be inclined to think that maybe Asgardians aren't so bad after all if not for the fact that she's got some pretty spectacular bruising coming in along her left side.
"That looks painful," he says, nodding at it, and she frowns.
"It is," she says frankly. "And I can't even take any sort of painkiller for it; there's no telling how Earth medicine might interact with Asgardian…nonsense."
He holds back a smile (because Simmons' continuing refusal to accept the idea of magic is just as adorable as the rest of her), and sits back against the couch.
"So," he says. "Cuddling? It'll make you feel better, right?"
"It will make us both feel better," she corrects, dropping her shirt to the floor, and it takes all of Grant's considerable self-control to keep his eyes on hers instead of on her breasts. Her bra is a bright blue deliberately designed to draw the eye, which is just unfair, he thinks. "And how much did it hurt you to say the word cuddling?"
He has to laugh. "Not as much as I was expecting, actually."
"Oh, good," she says and, without further ado, drops into his lap. She wraps her arms around his neck, presses her cheek to his, and adds, "I'd hate to make this any more uncomfortable than it already is."
He bites back on the urge to tell her that uncomfortable is not really the word that comes to mind, focusing instead on pulling her as close as possible—which, considering the way she's straddling him, is pretty close. Her skin is warm under his hands and her breasts are pressed up against his chest, and he doesn't know whether to curse the fact that she's still wearing her bra or be really, really thankful for it.
Some of the pain that's been spiking along his nerves since he regained consciousness is starting to ease, and he takes a deep breath.
"How long did you say this virus will take to pass?" he asks, keeping his voice low in deference to the fact that his mouth is right next to her ear.
Simmons rolls her shoulders a bit and nestles even closer. "Oh, at least an hour, I'd say."
So. He's going to spend at least an hour with a shirtless Simmons straddling him while they suffer under the effects of a virus whose symptoms are alleviated by skin contact.
How long, he wonders, will he be able to hold back on the observation that there are other, more effective ways of maintaining skin contact than cuddling?
More importantly, what are the chances that she'd be amenable to investigating said ways?
