A/N: safelycapricious asked: "Under-reacting Biospecialist! =D"

Grant Ward has a lot of regrets.

Trying to burn down his parents' house without disabling the outdoor security system first, that's a big one. (It's what got him caught and landed him in juvie.) Taking that left turn in Borås, that's another. The cover he used in Tbilisi—there are no words for how much he regrets that clusterfuck.

But he's never regretted anything as much as he regrets the entire sequence of events that led him to this moment: being cornered into kidnapping his own girlfriend.

He actually had a plan for how to break the whole HYDRA thing to her. It was a good one. He's been playing the long game since before their first kiss—since the moment he realized that he wanted her, he's been setting the foundation of how to get her in love with and accepting of the real him.

He didn't count on Captain fucking America shining the light on HYDRA for the whole world to see. He definitely didn't count on being forced back onto the team less than a week after he left it for what he thought was for good.

(He has to admit to being a little embarrassed by not predicting that Skye would have encrypted the hard drive. But in his defense, he was a little distracted at the time, what with trying to keep Fitz from having a breakdown over Jemma's unknown status while simultaneously attempting to come up with a plan for how to infiltrate the Hub without getting them all killed.)

Now his plan is beyond screwed, as, most likely, is his relationship. There's really not any way to come back from having to shoot your girlfriend (even with an ICER) when she walks in on you hiding the body of a man you've just killed.

He's still gonna try, of course—hence his current position, sitting on the coffee table in the lounge while Jemma is stretched out on the couch—but he's not expecting much success.

He's worried (and, honestly, angry) enough that he's lost track of his internal clock, so he has no idea how long it is before Jemma stirs. It's long enough that Skye—locked in the Cage until she's feeling a little more cooperative—has stopped banging on the walls, at least. (He's pretty sure that last bang he heard was her trying to break the door down with one of the chairs. Luckily, the Cage is built to withstand that kind of thing.)

Jemma is always adorable when she's just waking up, and apparently regaining consciousness after being hit with a dendrotoxin bullet is no exception. He keeps his hands braced on either side of him through sheer force of will; he wants so badly to touch her, but he doesn't know what he'll do if she shoves him away. Better not to risk it.

He knows the exact moment the memory of what happened hits her; one second she's snuggling sleepily into the couch, the next she stills completely. She doesn't open her eyes, but her hand fists in the throw pillow beneath her cheek.

"Grant," she says, voice carefully even.

"Jemma," he says. The wood of the coffee table bites into his palms.

"Did you shoot me?" she asks.

She literally stood there (pale and wide-eyed and stunned; not a good look for her) and watched him do it. There's no point in lying. "Yep."

"I thought so," she sighs, and opens her eyes. She grimaces a little, pressing a hand to her forehead, and sits up slowly. "Ugh. Those ICER rounds really are unpleasant, aren't they."

"They pack a punch, yeah," he agrees, watching her carefully. She's still a little pale, and it looks like he managed to smudge some of Koenig's blood on her neck in the process of carrying her up here (oops), but otherwise she looks okay. Calm.

"So," she sighs, swinging her legs off the couch and sitting forward to pin him with a look. "You're HYDRA?"

"I am," he says.

"For how long?"

Depends on how you look at it, really. "Years."

"I see," she says. "And you killed Eric?"

"Yep," he says. Then, figuring he might as well get the whole thing over with, he adds, "And kidnapped Skye. She's in the Cage."

Jemma glances in the direction of the hall leading to the Cage, frowning slightly.

"Did you hurt her?" she asks.

"Not much," he says. "She went crazy when she saw you passed out there and I had to get a little mean." He shrugs. "She'll be fine."

"Good," she says, drumming her fingers on her knee.

She's taking this much more calmly than he was expecting. Skye called him a Nazi, a serial killer, and a fuckface all in the first five seconds after realizing he was a traitor. She also tried to hit him. Twice.

Jemma's just…sitting there.

The silence stretches out, surprisingly not awkward, and it leaves him feeling a little off-balance. Skye's tantrum he knew how to deal with. He's got no clue how to handle Jemma's weird serenity. He can't work her if she doesn't give him anything to work with.

"So, what next?" she asks finally. "I presume you have some manner of nefarious plan?"

"That hard drive Skye downloaded all of the Bus' files onto is encrypted," he says. "She's gonna decrypt it for me."

"Is she?" Jemma asks skeptically.

"Eventually," he says with a smile. She gives him an odd look, and he quickly blanks his face. He needs to take it easy on the transition between his cover and the real him, give her some time to acclimate, and nice guy Grant Ward doesn't smile like that—sharp and vicious.

She's taking this weirdly well. He doesn't want to ruin it by being too much himself.

"If you say so," she says. "And then what?"

"Then I'll dump her somewhere," he says, making a split-second decision. He'd been flirting with the idea of crossing Skye off, but it's not likely to get him anything but more trouble. "Leave her to find her way back to the team while I get the hard drive back to Garrett."

If she's surprised at the mention of Garrett, she doesn't show it. (So he's gonna go with the assumption that she's not surprised; Jemma's not great at hiding her emotions, although she's doing a pretty good job of it right now.)

"And me?" she asks.

"Well, I haven't decided yet," he admits honestly. "I don't wanna hurt you."

"That's nice to hear," she says. "But?"

"But I'm not gonna let you go, either," he says. It's probably a little blunter than he should be, but there's no point in creeping around the subject. She's not leaving him. Period. "I don't suppose you'd be interested in joining HYDRA?"

"No," she agrees. "I wouldn't."

Well, it was worth a shot.

"Then I guess we're at an impasse," he says.

She's still so calm, and he can't resist the urge to touch her anymore, so he moves from the coffee table to sit next to her on the couch. She makes no attempt to shift away from him—in fact, when he reaches out to brush her hair away from her face, she leans into his touch the same way she always does.

Not that he's complaining, but he's starting to wonder if maybe that ICER round scrambled her brain. Has anyone tested the effects of dendrotoxin on geniuses?

"Feeling okay?" he asks.

"I've a slight headache," she says. "Presumably from the dendrotoxin. But that's all. Why?"

"Just wondering," he says, and—watching her face closely—rests his hand on her thigh. She doesn't shove him away—she doesn't even tense.

This is weird.

"I'm gonna give Skye a few more hours to calm down before I force the decryption issue," he says casually, tapping his fingers on Jemma's thigh. "In the meantime, you wanna help me change? Think I got some of Koenig's blood on my jeans."

He's still watching her carefully, and…she doesn't flinch. She doesn't tense. She frowns a little, but it's her scolding frown—her you should take better care of yourself, Grant frown—not anything really unhappy.

He just made extremely casual reference to killing an ally who gave them shelter in their time of desperate need, and she barely even blinked. What the hell?

"Of course," she says. "I do hope you didn't do yourself any further harm putting him in that vent." She gives him that frown again. "Couldn't you have found somewhere to hide him that didn't involve lifting that much dead weight above your head? You've two cracked ribs, in case you've forgotten."

"I haven't," he promises automatically, because—what the hell? "And I'm pretty sure I didn't make them worse."

"Forgive me if I don't take your word for it," she says tartly, and stands. "Come along, then. Once I help you change I want another look at your ribs."

He lets her tug him to his feet, dazed and a little confused. If he'd had to guess what kind of reaction Jemma would have to catching him in the act of stashing a corpse, getting annoyed about his cracked ribs would not have made the list. At all.

She keeps a hold of his hand as they walk the short distance to his bunk, and Grant decides not to look a gift horse in the mouth. If Jemma's not gonna throw a fit over his loyalties, he's definitely not complaining.

Things are looking up.