(manages to fly through most of his life by the seat of his pants despite crippling executive dysfunction, depression, and dopamine addiction, until he finally colossally fucks up by staying up too late one night and then sleeping 18 hours straight while his squad gets murdered and despite that he somehow STILL gets a second chance. the thing is he actually tried, for that squad. he wasnβt really friends with them, but they seemed to like him, and he got a lot of experience. he stops trying after that, because if anybody else trusts him again heβs going to fuck up again and the guilt might kill him. if everyone thinks heβs a lazy piece of shit, they wonβt ever find out how much of a piece of shit he actually is. he takes the second chance and makes it his last, because nobodyβs ever going to expect anything from him again, because in a war, expecting things from fuck-ups like grif gets people hurt. it almost works. and then he meets another idiot who just doesnβt seem to get the memo. he wonβt stop trying to make grif try, keeps expecting things from him no matter how much grif leaves him in the dust, no matter how much he sabotages himself. grifβs gotten so used to shoving himself out of the way, exiling himself, away from all the normal, well-adjusted people things that arenβt for him because he hasnβt earned it, and now thereβs this guy pulling him into everything, dragging him out on watch, asking grif to cook while he does the dishes, dropping a load of clean laundry onto grifβs bed and telling him to get dressed, weβre going on patrol. he just doesnβt understand what everybody else has had no problem accepting. he doesnβt get that theyβre all better off if grif doesnβt try, if he just sits himself in the corner and stays out of it, if he gets on everyoneβs nerves so much they donβt every even try to get within the no-manβs land that is grifβs social circle. and hereβs a guy barging his way through the very carefully constructed barbed wire fences and brick walls and sitting down next to him on the couch to watch battlestar like itβs nothing. like theyβre friends. and grif hates him for it, and feels guilty, but despite all that he canβt find it in him to tell him to stop. he cooks. he goes on patrol. he maybe does his laundry once. simmons isnβt surprised. he doesnβt get some sort of reward for doing shit. and though simmons gets pissed off when he doesnβt do shit, at the end of the day, heβs still there. he doesnβt leave when grif acts like a dick. he acts like an even bigger dick right back. he doesnβt leave when grif accidentally sets a kitchen towel on fire because he forgot to turn the stove off. he grabs the fire extinguisher and puts it out, and he yells a little at him for it, but he doesnβt tell sarge. and when he does leave, itβs because heβs a melodramatic bitch, and he never goes far away. he always comes back, even when itβs grifβs fault. and when simmons fucks up, grif finds himself picking up the slack. and when simmons stays up too late, grif finds himself getting up out of bed to turn the desk lamp off. and when simmons finally breaks down his last wall, cracks him like a decades-long cold case, stares right into the real him without even knowing it, grif realizes that he didnβt even try to fight it, this time.)
