Leo woke to the blessed absence of pain and a soft humming in his ears interspersed with the regular bleep of a heart monitor. The bed he was lying on was soft and he relaxed into the sheets with a sigh that cut off when he remembered what had happened. The wires tangled when he swung his legs over the side of the bed but he ignored them, yanking at the covers that were getting in his way.

"Easy, dammit, Leo. Take it easy," Grant was at his side pushing at the monitor alarm button to silence the noise that had started when the younger man pulled some connections loose.

"Jemma, where is she," Leo asked, desperately afraid of what the answer might be. His mouth was dry and it left his voice hoarse sounding.

"She's ok," the agent reassured him "She's next door. She's better off than you, in fact but they're keeping her in as a precaution mostly. Ebony used a pretty nasty cocktail of drugs to take her down. They wanted to make sure there weren't going to be any side effects."

"James? What happened to him?"

"He's in custody," Grant said grimly "And he's not going anywhere this time. The gases your robot released put him out for three days you know. None of us had any idea you'd weaponised those things."

"That was Sleepy," Leo smiled shyly "I thought it might come in handy someday to have them aware of threats and have a response to them. I didn't think I'd be testing it so soon, though. Guess it works ok."

"Better than ok," Grant replied "Although if that was sleepy then I'd hate to see what grumpy can do." The laugh he got from the younger man was one of the best sounds he'd ever heard in his life. "Lie back down," he urged "You might be feeling better but you need rest. You caught the tail end of the gas blast your robot gave Ebony. It's probably why you're feeling weak. Between that and the hairline crack he put in your skull, you're recovering remarkably quickly. I guess SHEILD medical teams get all the good toys, huh?"

"I see you're up," came a dry noise from the doorway and they turned to see a woman in nurses' scrubs frowning severely "Back into bed," she ordered the young man and he grimaced guiltily before swinging his legs back under the covers.

"When am I allowed to leave," he asked and the nurse sighed "If I had a dime for everyone who'd ever asked that," she said "I'd have retired a rich woman after a year's work at SHEILD."

"Sorry," Leo murmured as she began to reattach monitoring equipment "Just eager to get back to work, I guess."

"Well, unless the doctor says otherwise you should be out of here by tomorrow," she told him, relenting slightly "Although I'd suggest you leave the saving of the world to someone else for another couple of weeks. I'll find your doctor," she said as she tucked the blanket back around him and her brisk footsteps rang out as she strode down the corridor away from them.

"Do you want me to fetch the others?" Grant asked "They've been waiting. Skye's damn near driven us all mad with it. For someone with a job like hers I'd expected her to have a little more patience."

"Give her a code to crack and she'll sit quietly happy for hours," Leo offered "I wish that was a joke but Jemma actually did it once."

"Well, she's nothing if not practical," Grant decided "I guess we should be thanking her, really. If she hadn't said anything, I'd have probably carried on believing that you two were a thing."

"Nah," Leo shook his head "I'd have said something eventually. It probably would have been something ridiculous, my timing can sometimes be a little off, but I'd have said something eventually."

"Would it be like Skye and you offering to show me your equipment?"

"Did everyone hear that?" Leo asked. He could feel the blush rising in his cheeks and tried to cover it with a cross frown "You all understood what I meant, so I don't understand what all the fuss is-"

"I was jealous," Grant admitted candidly, cutting across the rest of Leo's sentence. "I knew you didn't mean it that way but I was still so ridiculously jealous of her. I felt like an idiot later on because you deserved to have whoever you wanted and if it was her then I-"

"I only want you," Leo blurted out. He could feel the red in his cheeks again but he didn't try to hide it this time. "I never wanted anyone else." He glanced down at where his hands were fiddling with the sheets nervously "That is if you still want me," he said quietly "After James, I would understand if you didn't, you know." He stayed staring down at his white knuckles until Grant's fingers were there twining in amongst his.

"I want you," Grant said gently and Leo looked up to see nothing but truth on his face "However long I need to wait, whatever I need to do. I want you, Leo. Only you." Leo smiled shyly.

"I don't think we need to wait that long," he said decisively and pulled his hands free so he could use them to pull the older man down into a kiss.