A/N: ilosttrackofthings asked: "Woooooooo! (No one is going to understand what that is in reference to. But we do, Amy. We know.) And in the spirit of things... 28: Biospecialist "Did it hurt? ...When you fell from Heaven?""

"Did it hurt?"

Jemma startles so hard she nearly falls right off of her barstool. In fact, it's only the warm and unfortunately familiar hand (to match the unfortunately familiar voice) at her elbow that keeps her in her seat.

As soon as she's sure of her balance, she yanks her arm away and swivels on the stool to face Ward in one smooth motion. He's grown his beard in again since the last time she saw him, and combined with the leather jacket and black jeans he's sporting, he's looking particularly disreputable.

(And also delicious, much to her dismay. She'd hoped that him turning out to be evil would end her embarrassing crush on him—the whole mess was in desperate need of a silver lining, and that would've been a lovely one—but, horrifyingly, it only seems to have made it worse.)

"What are you doing here?" she demands.

"Manners, Simmons," he scolds, leaning against the bar next to her. He's close enough that she can smell his cologne, and she hates herself a little for not moving back—for not wanting to move back. "You should answer my question before you ask one of your own."

Don't make a scene. Those are her orders for this mission—sit at the bar, sip at her drink, and don't make a scene.

So instead of storming away and/or pouring her drink over his head, she forces a smile and asks, through gritted teeth, "What was your question?"

"I asked, did it hurt," he says.

"…Did what hurt?" she asks, a touch incredulously. He cannot be going where she thinks he's going with this.

He is. "When you fell from Heaven?"

She stares at him, speechless. He stares back, face earnest.

"I need another drink," she decides, swiveling back to face the bar. Before she can motion to the bartender, however, Ward's hand lands on hers, keeping it still.

"Oh, you don't wanna do that," he says, leaning in close. "Getting drunk on an op? Really unprofessional. Not to mention dangerous."

Her blood runs cold, because if Ward knows why she's here—if he knows what they're up to—then they're all in serious trouble.

She tries to play it off. "Who says I'm on an op? Maybe I'm just taking a night off."

Her voice is even, which is lovely. She really is getting better at lying—her time at HYDRA did a lot for those skills.

"Dressed like that?" Ward asks, skeptical. He gives her a slow once-over, and she wishes she could blame her flush on anger. "Come on, Simmons."

She tries to tug her hand out from under his, but he somehow manages to turn the motion into lacing his fingers with hers, and his grip is like steel. She won't be breaking it anytime soon.

Her other hand is free, but there's not much she can do without making a scene. And she can't make a scene.

"What's wrong with how I'm dressed?" she asks instead.

"Absolutely nothing," he says, ghosting his free hand along her bare thigh. "It's a great look for you. Just not your usual style."

"What would you know about my usual style?" she demands, doing her best to ignore the goosebumps that spring up in the wake of his touch. She doesn't hold out much hope that he'll have the courtesy to do the same.

"We lived together for six months," he points out.

"A year ago," she counters. "A lot can change in a year. And I was hardly going to dress for clubbing while we were on the Bus, now was I? It would've been unprofessional."

"True," he admits. "But still." He tugs lightly on the hem of her skirt (such as it is), and she bites down on the inside of her cheek, trying not to react. "I've never seen you wear a skirt before. I would've bet you didn't even own any."

"Well, I do," she says. "As you can see."

It's a half-truth. She does own skirts, but this isn't one of them. Ward's right; it's not at all her style. In fact, it's Skye's.

Still, she's hardly going to tell him so. And at least he's been successfully diverted.

As has she, she realizes suddenly.

"You never answered my question," she reminds him. "What are you doing here?"

He smiles. "Would you believe I'm taking the night off?"

"No," she says flatly.

He's still holding her hand. She hasn't forgotten—how could she possibly forget—but she's been able to ignore it, focused as she is on the conversation. Now, though, she's forced to pay attention again, as he lifts their clasped hands to examine hers.

"Been hospitalized recently?" he asks, frowning at the bruise on the back of her hand.

The answer, of course, is yes, and obviously so. The bruise is blatant and distinctively the sort that comes from an IV.

"If I had," she says, attempting (fruitlessly) to tug her hand away, "It would be none of your business."

"I'll take that as a yes," he says, and presses his lips gently to the bruise.

He keeps his eyes locked on hers while he does it, and her heart thumps almost painfully. It's unfair, that such a horrid man should be so attractive. It's just completely, utterly unfair.

"You should take better care of yourself," he says, lowering their hands back to the bar. "Now that I'm not around to watch out for you."

Only by reminding herself that she needs not to make a scene does she resist the urge to kick him. Skye was right; his patronizing, friendly act is just as annoying as it is creepy.

Yet, somehow, she's still dreadfully attracted to him.

This is a problem.

"You were never around to watch out for us," she snaps, trying once more to yank her hand away. He finally lets go, but only after a pointed pause, as though to emphasize that it's only because he wants to and not because she's made him. "You were around to spy on us."

"It's not really an either/or situation," he muses. Though he's let go of her hand, he hasn't moved away at all; he's still close enough that she has no trouble hearing him over the music—close enough that she can feel the heat coming off his skin. He shifts a little, and his thigh bumps against her knee. She tries to pretend she doesn't notice. She fails. "I was spying on you and watching out for you."

She scoffs.

"Come on, Simmons," he says. "You'd've been dead ten times over if it weren't for me."

She wants to tell him that all of those times he saved her life were cancelled out by the time he almost ended it. She wants to tell him that she went undercover at HYDRA and she knows things about the people he works for that make her sick to her stomach, that wake her in the middle of the night—things that make it hard for her to look at Bobbi, sometimes, even though Bobbi is amazing and brave and saved her life. She wants to remind him that she's saved his life, too, that she once performed emergency surgery on him on a fire escape and that he never would've made it out of South Ossetia if not for her and Skye's intervention.

There are so many things she'd like to say to him, but she realizes that he's once again managed to divert her, so she keeps them to herself.

Instead, she says, "You still haven't told me why you're here."

"No." There's an almost cruel twist to his smile, and it should not make Jemma's mouth go dry. It really shouldn't. "I haven't."

Desperately and horribly attracted to a murderous traitor Jemma may be, but she is not stupid, and Ward's sudden change in demeanor is enough to put her on edge.

"Are you going to?" she asks, casually slipping her hand into her pocket. She doesn't have a comm for this mission—the better to blend in—but she does have a panic button, and she's starting to think she should've pressed it ages ago.

In fact, she knows she should've. She and her libido are going to have to have a very serious chat once all of this is over.

(Assuming she makes it out of this alive, that is. But that's just a ridiculously morbid thought, so she decides to pretend she hasn't had it.)

"You know," Ward says, thoughtfully. "I think I'd rather show you."

Then, before she has the time to properly worry about that very ominous statement, he's kissing her. His mouth is warm and insistent against hers, he's got one hand in her hair and the other gripping her waist, and she'll later blame the fact that she spends at least thirty seconds kissing him back on pure reflex (though the truth is something closer to a combination of surprise and lust).

It takes her far longer than she'd like to shove him away, and the grin he's wearing when he pulls back tells her he knows it.

She swallows, reminding herself that she's not allowed to make a scene, and smooths her hair (which he's tangled a bit with his grip) with as much dignity as she can muster.

"You're here to kiss me?" she asks. She sounds a bit more breathless than she'd like, but she's managed not to a) throw herself at him or b) beg him to do it again, so she'll call it a victory.

"Not at all," he says. He's still grinning, and she tries desperately to think of an adjective other than feral to describe it, because that's just off-putting. Unfortunately, the only other adjectives that come to mind are far too flattering to be applied to a traitor like Ward. "It was just a bonus."

There is a not-insignificant part of her which is thrilled to hear Ward refer to kissing her as a bonus. She sternly reminds it that Ward is a manipulative creep who is absolutely playing her right now. It sulks.

(It's possible her brain has been addled by that kiss. This is concerning.)

"Ward," she says, as sharply as she's able. "Enough games. What are you doing here?"

He sighs, heavily, but there's something mocking about it. "You want the truth?"

"Well, obviously."

"I'm here to do your job for you," he says, and kisses her again.

She's hyper-aware of every point of contact between them—of the scrape of his beard and the pressure of his lips and the slide of his tongue against hers, obviously, but also of the rough scratch of denim against her bare skin as he stands between her thighs, of the warmth of his hand as it cups her jaw. So of course she notices what he's doing with his other hand, feels the brush of his knuckles between her breasts as he tucks the thumb drive into her bra. Of course she notices. It sends a jolt of pure lust straight to her core, sets every nerve on fire—how could she possibly miss it?

She lets herself ignore it, though, because if she acknowledges it, she'll have to end the kiss. And if this is the last chance she ever gets to kiss him—and it will be, it has to be, because he's literally evil, he is treacherous, murderous scum—she wants to enjoy it.

And she does.

He does, too, she thinks; certainly he's just as breathless as she is, when they finally part. He presses a final, brief kiss to her lips—soft and chaste where the other two were passionate and intense—and then steps back, out of her reach.

She takes a moment to catch her breath and, now that the highly distracting and (unfortunately) pleasurable contact between them has ceased, finds it completely impossible to ignore the discomfort of having a hard bit of plastic tucked into her bra. She curls one hand along the edge of her stool for balance (she's feeling more than a little light-headed, at the moment) and, after a brief glance around to check that no one's watching (no one is, aside from Ward, and she is not thinking about the look in his eyes), fishes the thumb drive out of her bra.

There's a sinking feeling in her chest as she stares at it, taking in the logo and the serial number etched into the side. This is, without question, the thumb drive she was ordered to retrieve.

She recalls her instructions for this mission, the orders Coulson gave her when he called her into his office this afternoon: sit at the bar, sip her drink, don't make a scene. The doctor whose classified research she needed to liberate would come to her, he said—she's exactly his type. All she had to do was distract him enough that she could pick his pocket, as their intelligence indicated he always carried a copy of his research on him.

It will be encrypted, naturally, but Skye can take care of that.

Of course the doctor in question hasn't actually approached her. He would have to be insane to make a move on a woman who, as she no doubt has, appears to be involved with a man like Ward. Even dressed down in civilian garb as he is, with no visible weapons, he simply exudes menace.

In that sense, her mission has been a complete failure. In another, it's been a complete success.

She has no idea what to say. "I—"

"You're welcome," Ward says. "Let's be honest, you've got no hope of picking anyone's pocket."

"I—" She can't deny it. She's never picked a pocket in her life.

"Gotta go," he says. "But it's been fun, Simmons. We should do this again sometime."

"No," she manages. She curls shaking fingers around the thumb drive and tucks it into the pocket of her (Skye's) skirt. "We really shouldn't."

"If you say so," he says, and leans in close to her once more. "By the way?" He walks his fingers up her thigh to the hem of her skirt, and the touch does not make (more) heat pool between her thighs. It doesn't. "I wasn't kidding. This really is a great look for you."

Then he's gone, disappearing into the crowd like he was never there, and Jemma is left alone, aching for the touch of the absolute last person she should want.

This has not been a good night.

She swivels her stool to face the bar again and motions to the bartender for another drink. Her first is still half full, but she hasn't paid it any attention in far too long, and she won't risk drinking it now.

Once she has her drink, she stays right where she is, sipping slowly at it while she tries to get her hands to stop shaking.

Five minutes after Ward's departure, Hunter climbs onto the stool next to her.

"So," he says. "May was right, was she?"

"It would appear so," she agrees. Her voice is just as unsteady as her hands; Hunter, in the act of making himself comfortable on his stool, manages to bump his shoulder against hers three times in the span of ten seconds, and it helps a little. "Ward has us bugged somehow."

"He knew about the fake mission," Hunter says, slouching against the bar.

"And, I suspect, that my orders were not to make a scene," she agrees. "He wouldn't have gone so far, otherwise."

"Right." Hunter looks skeptical, but is kind enough not to contradict her. "That would mean he has Coulson's office bugged, at the very least. So what are we going to do about it, then?"

Jemma knocks back the last of her drink and motions the bartender over.

"I have no bloody idea."