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This time she has no chance, maybe not even reason beside wanting to ice him, to hide the absolutely incredulous look on her face. The drawer was literally two steps behind them, and up until then he was doing more than what was necessary and she didn’t exactly shoot him for that. “I just let you help!” She’s not even sounding cold or angry as much as genuinely offended and appalled at what he said, and really, she gets it, he wants to help, she knows he’s that kind of person now, and she will focus on the fact that he wants to apologize for what he said to her later, but the way he’s behaving? It’s like he can’t see that-“Oh,” she says in a tone of sudden understanding. After the Bus, he was in vault D and then away. He has been working side by side with them in multiple occasions in the past five months, they have hooked up a lot lately, but he’s missed everything that happened while SHIELD was fighting the big monsters of their lives. He hasn’t been there after missions either, but even if he had the past months have been very low key and he wouldn’t have had to deal with anything like this. Which is something silly in the first place. Yes, she has gotten hurt sometimes, the five months weren’t peaceful, but she’s kept it to herself, it was before hooking up or easy to ignore. “Oh,” she repeats weakly, “You don’t know. You think I was being hard on you. You weren’t here before, you were only here for the Bus…” Sometimes, not often, people and especially Jemma, bring up to him that he has missed a lot. This is one of those times.

“This is me letting you help, Grant,” she uses the name this time to put the fight aside temporarily, “This is more helping than I ever…” she trails off - it’s not just the drain, it’s the tissues, it’s the kiss, it’s the comforting words and the arm around her - and shakes her head, “This is not something I usually do,” she continues, stepping towards the stretcher with a somewhat determined walk, replacing a bag of saline solution with the blood, “Things got… ugly a few times in the past years, and I… Fitz, Daisy… All of us, really, we learned to… pull it together. Sometimes there was no time to mend anything. Sometimes there was no… well, disinfected area or painkillers, sometimes there was no one else there to give a hand, and honestly I’ve always preferred to deal with my wounds by myself anyway. People get protective when it’s me. Must be my size.” It’s half a joke, really, while she positions herself right so she can get her blood transfusion, perks of being a ‘doctor’. “My burns… when I got back to the base after getting them, it wasn’t like this. I was…” she takes a deep breath and looks up because he can’t know any of this, “I needed surgery. It looks way better than it should now because both me and Radcliffe worked on it and you know he’s also a genius specialized in body modification. But the first night I went to the infirmary and I just… gave it a go. Those were third degree burns too, and you know what those are like. I obviously couldn’t fix it all but… I did my best. Alone. It’s what we do. You really think I had someone else… use the drain or put a bandage on me or even just dry my face before? I get hurt, I patch it up, I go back to work. And when I said I had worse? I mean that I still pulled myself together without needing help. I am letting you give me a hand now. I’ve been letting you give me a hand for a while, in fact,” her voice drops a little, and she busies herself with some cotton she had brought to the stretcher with her, to clean some of blood over her skin with her free hand. “Which makes this fight all the more confusing to me. You saying you care, and expecting me to let you in even more, when I came right to you when I noticed you were upset and you didn’t even want to explain why and left me completely in the dark until that text.”

          disagreement bubbles into a lump on his throat as she says she has just let him help. the phrase that’s threatening to spill out of him is tainted with a whine, decorated with bitterness. he’s just about to release it, to exclaim, ❛ yes, you let me hold stuff for you !!! ❜  with    s a r c a s m     (  because what kind of assistance is that ??   useless, is what it is ; she mostly did everything herself  )   when her expression changes, her facade morphing as though a realization has just dawned on her. a quiet ’ oh… ’ issues from her lips and confusion begins to mar his face.

          he listens to her attentively, still alert and following her every step   ( and getting even more pissed off at himself at how he can only follow and be ready to catch her in case she slips or fall ; nothing else, nothing more  )   and the things he hears aren’t exactly ones that unravel the lump in his throat or lift the heavy weight that has settled on his chest earlier. instead, it pulls the weight down all the way to his stomach, tightens the ball of worry on his throat until he’s almost choking on his own breath. unbidden, he thinks back to similar nights when he had no one to do this for him. nobody to help him stop his wounds from bleeding long enough for him to see where he was supposed to stitch. no hand squeezing his shoulder to let him know it was going to be okay, nobody to remind him that he had the strength to survive this. there was no soft voice to shush the screams gnawing on his chest, only the hard ball of cloth he used as a gag to muffle the screams as he fished bullet after bullet from his own side or to pour alcohol with no care or precision at all, just desperation. there was nobody to hold his hand through the pain, just himself and the darkness that always threatened to engulf him.

          it’s through this that he remembers the loneliness he felt before, he remembers what it was like to realize there was never going to be any warmth to comfort him in such situations, just the coldness of the harsh night made worse by his lonesome. it makes him realize how different things are for him now. not that different because he still has days when he runs straight to his apartment at the base and opts to treat his own wounds alone, to stitch his broken skin with his own bloodied hands. but nowadays, those instances are very rare and far in between. because more often than not, he has jemma breathing down his neck if she so much as notices a smudge of blood on his shirt. he has her sitting him down and not letting him leave without checking him up. it’s like all those years ago when he had her as a friend, worried for his wellbeing, caring about whether or not he lives to see the next sunrise. the only difference is now, unlike years ago, she knows who he is, knows how dirty his own hands are of the blood of people he’s harmed. she knows what he is, a monster that deserves every single cut or bruise or wound that he gets. and yet, she’s always there, always ready to pull him forward for death to not be able to catch up to him. in fact, she’s done it all again just today. she saved him once more ; she saved him at her own expense.

          so his jaws clench, his knuckles whitening as his hands tighten into fists as his own worry for her blooms even more in his chest, causing a sharp pain as though his lungs are being squeezed. she never leaves him, she always takes care of him. of course, now that she’s the one in need, he’ll be there for her.   ❛ that was before. before you had me. now that you do, you can let me take care of you as much as i can. i’ll just be returning the favor, ❜he manages to whisper, standing less than a feet away from her, before she brings up their fight again and all of a sudden, the worry twisting his gut morphs into guilt.