She is tucked up behind him trailing his every step. Her hand is on his shoulder close to his neck for guidance in the dark. "Bugger! I left my phone in the living room. "There's a flashlight." She whispers.
He doesn't know what it is about dark places and churches that make people whispers but still he responds as uses his own phone as a light and holds his gun aloft with the other to be doubly sure."Thought you didn't believe in mercury laden flashlights."
"I don't but that is clearly beside the point at this juncture."
He rolls his eyes and says in a normal tone. "I've got you Jemma. Trust me to do my job. Please?"
Her fingertips trail along his collarbone it's distracting. "Oh yes, of course I trust you! I never meant to imply-"
"It's fine Jem." He cuts off her rambling.
He's liking the way her hands feel on him a little too much. He really needs to find the candles before his pulse jumps underneath the pads of her delicate fingers and he gives himself away. She points to a drawer and he pulls it open with a little too much force. He thrust a squat candle at her. "Can you handle the bedroom if I light up the kitchen and try to contact HQ?"
"Surely." She said sitting the candle on the island to strike the match to light it. For a moment he lets himself enjoy the warmth of the light plays on her face. Damn she's pretty." She catches his stare and gives him a half smile. Before wordlessly gathering the lit candle and spares along with matches.
"Just a shout away." He reminds her.
"Certainly though I am up to date on current guarding procedures." And she takes off leaving him to her cheery yellow kitchen.
As he illuminates the kitchen he can hear her humming and knocking around in the bedroom. When she returns to him his eyes are automatically drawn to her in a Cambridge University hoodie with the hood cut off leaving her right shoulder exposed. She wears tight black leggings with pink and red cabbage roses splashed on them. Her feet are bare toes painted neon purple and newly shortened hair curling about her shoulders.
"Grant…" She said and he knocks himself from his daydream.
"Yes Ma'am." He snapped to attention.
"I asked did you manage to ring HQ?"
"No. The hardline is down and I barely have service at all." He reported slipping his phone into the pocket of his slacks.
"I have a usually obsolete battery powered radio. Maybe we could catch the forecast." She said trying to be helpful.
-/-/-
He fiddles with the lost cause of a radio.
"You can sit. We seem rather stuck tonight you might as well make yourself at home." She said looking up at him from an arm chair by the fire place. She's biting her bottom lip with her front teeth as she awaits his answer.
"You don't snore do you? I can't abide noisy sleepers?" she asked. "I mean I might have to put you out with the rubbish if it's the case…if you do? I'd recommend lying. It'd be shameful to have your six pack frost bitten."
Is she flirting with him? He laughed. "Who says I have a six pack?" He asked sting down on the couch opposite her. Having already removed his suit jacket he loses the tie while halfway watching her.
"Good genetics, your body frame and Skye though she gave an exaggeration…"
"Oh, I'm moderately afraid to ask."
"As you should be. Skye may very well be the best person I know Fitz aside but Skye is a raving loony."
He laughs because it's more truth than joke Skye is certifiable.
-/-
They fall into the most comfortable silences he's found in ages. She sighs and he remembers his grandmother telling him once it was sin to break perfect silence.
She rolls her shoulders and continues to grade papers. He lets his eyes roam over her. The line of her shoulders, the length of her neck. The way her mouth moves as she reads answers and the way she taps her pen on her up drawn leg occasionally. She glances up then back down. He's sure she can feel his eyes but he doesn't really care. He just hopes he's not creeping her out.
Because he likes her, really likes her and not just because she is easier to take care of than Skye.
He thinks back to the first time he saw her dim raucous club. Half drunkenly dancing with Skye grinding up on her. Jemma hadn't seemed to mind. She spun and swayed all to herself occasionally pulling Skye into her for a hug.
Green dress sparkiling in the strobe light as her hair flew around her flushed face. She seemed so free it took his breath away. He finds himself wondering if he could draw that Jemma back out. If he even should. Right now she's so proper and stern.
"What happened to wild Jemma Simmons?" he stupidly finds himself asking.
She looks up at him scowling. "Pardon?"
He leaned forward setting his elbows on his knees. "The crazy girl I carried home because she took her shoes off on Congress Street and refused to put them back on."
"She grew up." She allowed returning to her papers.
"Pity. She lit the place up." He said to her bowed head.
"Yes well, Daddy wants to be Prime Minister. I must behave accordingly."
"See, I've always had a problem with people who hang their life goals on their children." Her eyes snap back up on to his face.
She scowls. "That's not-Then why do what you do? I mean you basically wrangle spoiled brats of people who barely know their children thanks to the way their ambitions fall."
He leaned back into the couch before answering. He's smiles at her very straight posture even while lounging around she's a proper lady. "My Dad is a congressman, my brother is a senator, and my grandfather was a multi term governor. I would rather die than run the world, this is my way to thumb my nose at them and have fun doing it. Besides, this president and the wife too they love their kid, she's wild because they let her be who she is. I admire Coulson."
"So do I. Melinda she's stern…I… anyway I agree."
"You what?" he pushed.
She shrugged. "Just a touch of envy is all."
"Ah, that's right your mother…" He suddenly felt like the world's biggest idiot.
"Is gone…care for a subject change?"
"Definitely."
"Care to explain how all fifty of my students got the exact same question wrong? I taught them they know this!" She holds up the paper pointing to the question.
"All cheated off the same idiot in a previous class?"
She laughed. "Cheater or Studier Agent Ward?"
"Studier. I always want to know more than my peers. It's what makes me good. Have you ever cheated?"
She put the pen down a rested her chin in her hand finally slouching a bit. "Freshman Year off Fitz in geography. There was always a disconnect for me. I'm not good with direction or odd terrain. I always lose my car in the car park."
"We'll work on that, it is after all a precursor for dementia."
She rolled her eyes. "You sound like Fitz."
"The second most annoying bane of my existence."
"Be nice, I love him. Oh bloody hell not like that!" She sighed. "Why does everyone always assume?"
"Because they know you'd be an easy woman to love and they can't imagine why he doesn't." He said in perfect honesty.
She blushed and he decided he liked it. The next time he makes her do that she'll be naked. He's made up his mind. "How'd you meet Skye?" he asked. Skye was safe less sexually tense ground.
"Boarding school the one she almost got me kicked out of in Paris." She laughed. "I'd never made friends with someone my Dad hadn't paid at that point. I was raised by nannies and a governess. Aristocratic kids are smug. I was smart and solitary by nature which didn't help, Anyway I missed my valet, my governess and Skye she was like sunshine and I latched on." She answered smiling fondly at the memory.
"Wait is you titled?"
"Lady Jemma. It's in my file."
"Missed it." He said. He doesn't mention it is because he'd been mesmerized by her photo alone.
"What was it like for you growing up a Ward?"
"A different kind of lonely." He said quietly looking off for a moment
"I'm sorry. Being lonesome is something I'd never wish on anyone." She said in commiseration.
He gave a half shrug. "It made me self-reliant, a good solider."
"I'm sorry I pushed."
He shook his head. "Don't be. I need someone who pushes me to talk, relate, maybe I'll tell you the whole truth someday soon."
"Do you have any secret talents?"
"You'll tell Skye."
"I will not. "She said defensively giving him a little pout that cajoled a truthful answer out of him.
"I can play guitar. Not well but passably. It makes war zone down time pass faster."
"How many tours?"
"Four. Iraq and Afghanistan two tours each for twenty four consecutive months. Every tour extended and the down time shortened. I eventually forgot how much of the world isn't covered in sand."
"Sounds bloody dreary." She says in perfect honesty. It makes him smile if only because she's one of the only people he knows who hasn't tried to sugar coat what serving in the armed forces can be like. It is dreary when you see Iraqi children being victims to war, weather it's being made a pawn or having their innocence stolen. It wasn't always that way, but then again it's hard to find a good day in war zone.
"You're direct Jemma. I like direct women."
She got up to walk to the kitchen. "Men say they like direct women but most when actually faced with assertiveness don't actually fancy it that much.
He catches her wrist gently before she can escape him, "I don't lie Jemma if I say I like you? It's exactly what I mean."
"It's good to know honesty still lives even a little. Are you hungry I'm famished I feel as if it's a duty to eat the Ice-cream before it melts. I just bought a new pint."
He got happily to his feet he really was hungry. "You a Hagen Daas or Ben & Jerry's girl."
"Ben and Jerry's you?"
"Chunky Monkey. Everytime."
She looked over her shoulder at him as she led the way. "Umm mmm Banana Pudding is the best one."
-/-/-/-
"Why the Secret Service?" she asked over her half eaten bowl of ice cream.
"Why not had to do something after the army. Special Forces gave me the credentials I needed for it, I wasn't really set in one field FBI wise I mean I liked the language and decryption thing but with the internet there's less and less need for covert communication. I tried profiling for a while but…it wasn't for me. I know the world is evil; I didn't need the daily reminder. "
She hummed in acknowledgement. "I could have been a CSI but I didn't have the stomach for murder either. I'd much rather cure cancer."
"I think you'll do it too. I got a sense of your determination watching you teach. That thing you and Banner were talking about that your new project?"
"Yes before I took the teaching job I was trying to kill Autoimmune Diseases by using a deactivated virus the body already recognizes to deliver the treatment. So that the body won't attack itself or the virus. Because it's already dead. What do you do when you aren't staring me down from a safe distance?"
He drums his fingers a little nervously on the table. "I renovate properties. Take an old house no one wants and make it some place I'd like to live. When I was little and I wanted to escape I'd build places in my head. Tree houses, forts, bunkers, it eventually became a real thing."
She tilts her head at him her voice is softly conspiring as she asks. "If you were to build something for me what would it be?" And he finds himself admiring the way the shadow and light play on her face for the fortieth time that night.
He gives her a teasing smirk. "Porch swing, maybe it'd get you out into the world a bit."
"I'm not a hermit!" She retorted utterly miffed.
"I have seen your routine Jemma." He tacks on leaning up into her space.
"I'm merely focused"
"Is that what you call it?"
"Yes well you're anal retentive so there." She returns.
"I am organized for your safety. You wound me." He falls back like she punched him.
"No, I don't you like me and yes you are so anal I know you have at least a dozen of that tie. Yesterday you spilled mustard on it. The dodgy bad for you neon yellow stuff and then you'd changed it within ten minutes. Same color same pattern likely same thread count." She points to the undone tie looped around his neck.
-/-/-
Long into the night they talk and he knows fifty to sixty useless facts about Jemma her pet peeves, passions, fears, favorite brand of beer, what she does when she can't sleep they play countless games of scrabble using foreign words and scientific terms.
"That is not a word. I call bollocks." She said looking at his word meaning "Devotion"
"It's Swahili."
"Let me use the American term Bullshit!" She quipped.
"Look it up then Lady Jemma."- He said smirking at her from the floor next to the coffee table. She sits opposite him in lotus position.
She types it in fighting a yawn. "Fuck it, I forfeit." Okay so he apparently has thing for pretty girls using foul language.
"Shall we call it a night?"
"Are you saving face Jemma?" He teased.
"Yes, but I truly am done in."
"Alright I'll do my sweep while you get ready for bed."
-/-/-
He's sweeping the hall a final time using a cinnamon scented candle for light when she catches his eye through the half open door. She's just about to slip a faded tee shirt over her head and he shouldn't look but he can't not look. The pale expanse of her bare back has the breath backing up in his lungs. She catches his eye in the mirror as the shirt hides the skin he's dying to touch. She doesn't look offended just a little turned on and curious.
"I have a question." She said pinning him in place by looking back at him in the mirror.
"Shoot…"
She turns and walks toward him. In a rugby shirt the lettering worn off and frog covered pajama pants. She stands framed in the door way. No more than two steps from him by his estimation. The bits of hair escaping her bun fall into her eyes and on the nape of her neck as she tilts her head at him speculation. There's something calculating in the narrowing of her eyes it's just this side of seductive.
He's not buying this ingénue thing, she knows exactly what she does to him and the power she holds over him and she enjoys it with zeal. "Do you watch Skye and I in the same manner? Do you see us through the same eyes or in a separate light al together?"
He doesn't reply just takes those two small yet significant steps. He dips down just as she goes up on to her to toes their lips touch briefly a barely there open mouthed brush of the lips. It is entirely too chaste…wait the lights are on… he steps away from her because the urge to stay right there and ruin his whole life by drowning in what they call an asset is incredibly and destructively strong.
She leans forward wordlessly to blow out the candle he had forgotten he was holding.
"I should check in!" He says quickly back tracking down the hall.
"Grant!" She calls out. When he turns back to her she's smiling almost triumphantly. "Look as much as you like and feel free to use that intent little stare. I find I've grown to fancy it. " He stands there a little dumbstruck by her blatant confidence in his attraction. "Oh do take the couch. It makes out into a bed. It's much too late to be driving in such poor conditions. Good night."
"Night Jemma." And her door closes.
Okay he may be a little bit in love with her and that presents a slight problem.
AN: ok so I own nothing, I took Jemma's scientific sounding bits from grey's anatomy I don't own the idea or theory much less know if it's real. I own nothing marvel related. The song Jemma was humming was Running by James Bay. I hope you guys liked it. More to come! Leave comments or reviews should you like too they feed my muse. Thanks again!-MM