Chapter 29.

Clint leaned in the open doorway of the medical bay, watching Jemma tend to Skye, fetching and carrying things for her if she needed them. Jemma asked him to turn his back while she washed Skye and put a hospital gown on her, and Clint immediately obliged.

"Do you think Steve likes Skye?" Jemma asked, once she had her friend tucked in comfortably.

"Likes as in, is he potentially romantically interested?"

"Yes. He obviously likes her as a person. But as a woman?"

"Yeah, I think he does. I hope this episode doesn't fuck them up too bad. May thinks they'd suit each other. So does Natasha."

"I wondered if they were matchmaking again," Jemma commented, drawing a vial of blood from Skye's arm for testing. "All right, let's leave her to sleep. I've set an alert to go off if she starts making noise or moving around."

Clint nodded, moving back so Jemma could dim the lights and close the door. "They're pretty good matchmakers," he slipped his arm around Jemma's waist and leaned in to press a kiss just below her ear. "In my humble opinion."

Jemma turned her head to smile wearily up at him, and he was reminded that she'd only had an hour's sleep before he dragged her out of bed to rush to the Bus. Then she'd been up all night, first worrying over Skye, then synthesizing and testing a new antidote, and now she was off to test Skye's blood.

"Can that wait?" he gestured to the vial in her hand.

"Oh," she glanced down at it. "Well – I suppose I could just put it in the machine and program it to process automatically, why?"

"Because, beautiful girl, you look like you haven't slept in a week. And as I am officially your handler, I am saying that is not okay and you need to get some rest."

"You didn't sleep either," Jemma protested as Clint followed her to the blood-testing machine.

"Yes I did, I snatched an hour in the cockpit while the autopilot was on and another while you were working in the lab. I'm more used to catnapping my way through missions than you, too." He ran his fingers into her hair once she'd finished typing commands on her computer, tipping her head back to make her look at him. "Now, Doctor Simmons, are you going to go to bed quietly or loudly?"

Jemma giggled, her cheeks turning pink. They were quite alone in the lab. "Clint!"

"Jemma!" he mocked her scandalised tone. "If you can't relax enough to go to sleep, I'm quite happy to help."

"Honestly – I think I'm too tired," Jemma admitted, "but would you just come and hold me?"

"Of course I will, sweetheart," Clint didn't need asking twice. "Go get into your jammies. I'll just check on Barnes and I'll be with you."

Clint needn't have worried. Natasha was sitting in the Cage watching Barnes, turning a tranquilliser gun slowly over in her hands. She nodded at Clint when he poked his head in, so he left, confident she'd alert him if she needed to leave Barnes unsupervised.

Jemma was in bed, but not asleep, when he joined her, stripping down to his T-shirt and boxers. She snuggled happily up to him, putting her head on his chest, and he was just falling into a pleasantly relaxed slumber when she spoke.

"Natasha said you once helped someone through one of these drug episodes."

Clint's eyes snapped wide open. Shit. He was really hoping Jemma would have forgotten that remark. He heaped a few silent curses on Natasha's head for dropping him in it.

"Yes," he said, hoping she'd leave it at that. Knowing she wouldn't. Jemma was too curious for that.

"Who was it?"

Clint hesitated, and then sighed. "I'll tell you, but before I do, let me advise you that there are a few unwritten rules about this drug around S.H.I.E.L.D., okay? Which I'm sure will make sense once you think about it. For obvious reasons, it's not something any agent likes to talk about. The majority of the agents who've been exposed haven't survived the experience, one way or another. In one particularly horrible case, the victim survived a brutal gang-rape and managed to get herself back to almost normal. Then she received a videotape in the mail."

"Oh, no," Jemma said.

"Oh, yes. She committed suicide. Skye's been very lucky that Steve got to her before Rumlow did any major damage. So, you see, if someone gets exposed to this drug, every S.H.I.E.L.D. agent knows that you do whatever you have to, to get them away from the bad guys and get them through until the antidote can be procured."

"I see," Jemma snuggled up to Clint more closely. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to. I'm glad you were there to help whoever it was."

"At the time, so was I. It was later that the problems happened. She was married to a good friend of mine – who was on a different continent when the shit went down. I thought Lance would've have wanted me to take care of his wife, but he couldn't get past it. Got all jealous, even though nothing would ever have happened if it wasn't for the damn drug. It's a pretty ugly story: she got angry that he was jealous over something she couldn't help, that might've killed her if I hadn't been there. They ended up getting divorced and neither of them have spoken to me in a few years."

"Oh, Clint, I'm so sorry!" Jemma forgot all about being jealous of the unknown woman from Clint's past. "How awful for you!"

He shrugged a bit ruefully. "Worse for them, sweetheart. I only lost two friends: they lost their marriage, and they were good together. Fought a lot, the way some couples do; they were both strong-willed, but they did love each other. Neither of them would back down from their position, though, and in the end he walked away."

"That's so sad," Jemma murmured.

"It is. This is a foul, disgusting drug, one of the worst. Skye's gonna need her friends, Jemma. Hopefully she won't remember much, if anything. Don't push her to talk about it."

"I won't," Jemma went quiet for a minute, and then she whispered, "Thank you for telling me, Clint."

"You're welcome, sweetheart." He kissed her forehead. "It's not a pretty story. I'm not proud of what I did."

"You still saved someone's life," she contradicted. "Be proud of that. Where there's life, there's hope, remember. Maybe the two of them might even get back together one day."

"Optimist," Clint grinned. "Ah, Jemma. That's just one of the many things that I lo-like about you." He kicked himself mentally again. She was not ready for him to tell her he loved her! When would he learn to keep his big trap shut?

He couldn't see Jemma's face. Couldn't see the smile that curved her lips as she closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep in his arms.

Yes. Yes, the "Lance" in question is Lance Hunter. And his ex-wife is of course – Bobbi Morse.

Dearie me, I sense more plot twists on the way…