#astonishes

Just the fact of Buddy’s presence would be indicator enoughthat Jemma’s awake—he sleeps on the bed with her whenever Grant’s away, andeven excitement over Grant’s return wouldn’t be enough to get him to abandon asleeping Jemma—but the real tip off are the three party hats carefully balancedon his back.

Grant stares. Buddy’s tail wags happily. An incrediblyoff-key rendition of a familiar theme sounds faintly from the kitchen.

Grant sighs.

“You let her drink again, didn’t you?” he asks. “I told youto stop her after two.”

Buddy pants happily up at him, plainly unashamed.

Grant’s just back from a six-day mission in his leastfavorite country. It’s been seventy-three hours and fifteen deaths since helast slept, and showering at the Hub never feels like getting clean so much aswiping himself down with paper towels and hoping no one notices thebloodstains. All he wants is another shower and a good meal and then to crawlinto bed with his wife.

The last thing he needs is another three hours spentwrangling drunken Jemma away from any ill-advised attempts to resurrect thedinosaurs. Again.

Still…staring at his dog and hearing a sudden shout of,“Woman inherits the earth!” from the kitchen, he finds himself smiling anyway.

“Yeah, laugh it up,” he tells Buddy, crouching to scratchhis ears and receiving a lick to the face in reward. Two of the party hatstumble off; the third miraculously stays in place. “You’re not the one who’sgonna have to carry her to bed.”

Buddy barks happily and then bounds back for the kitchen.Still smiling, Grant follows.

He’s not surprised to find Jemma wearing a blanket aroundher neck like a cape, or that her laptop is open and playing Jurassic Park. Drunk Jemma is endearinglypredictable.

That she’s in the middle of mixing herself (another) drinkwith too much gin is a little worrying, though. Depending on just when shestarted drinking, she might already be deep into impossible to reason with territory—and the farther in she is, thelonger it’s gonna take to get her where he wants her. There could be a realbattle ahead of him.

Luckily, there’s an easy way to check.

“So,” he says, and can’t help a smile when she jumps. “On ascale from koala to giraffe, how drunk are you?”

“Grant!” Jemma shrieks, and abandons her drink at once infavor of throwing herself at him.

“Oomph.” Prepared for it or not, the force of impact knocksthe breath out of him, and he takes a second to recover as Jemma clings to himwith all her might, wrapping her arms around his neck and legs around hiswaist. “Koala it is, then.”

“I missed you!” Jemma exclaims, peppering his face withkisses. “You were gone for so long!”

“I know, baby,” he says, shifting his grip to support her—andbring her closer, no point in hiding that. She’s all soft and warm and he’sonly human here. “I’m sorry. Looks like you had fun without me, though.”

She glances guiltily over her shoulder, taking in the evidenceof what’s apparently been a very eventful night (if the empty bottles in therecycling bin and the suspicious purple stain on the stove are any indication),then gives him an angelic smile. “Buddy wanted to watch Jurassic Park.”

“Buddy did, huh?” he asks skeptically.

“Yes?” she tries, and then, more firmly, “Yes. He did.”

“Uh huh.” Grant couldpoint that Buddy has wandered over to nap in the living room and is clearlypaying no attention to the movie he supposedly requested, but he’d rather getto the point. “And was Buddy the one who forgot about the no sciencing when drunk rule?”

Jemma gasps, all wounded drunken innocence. “There hasn’tbeen any sciencing! Not even a little!”

He knows her way too well to buy that.

“Maybe not yet,” he allows, “but you were planning it, weren’tyou?”

“Noooooooo,” she says, totally unconvincingly. “I’d never.”

“Sure you weren’t,” he agrees, like it’s not an establishedpattern that every time she gets drunk, she ends up watching Jurassic Park and deciding that shecould do it better. A night thatstarts with Jemma drinking ends with Jemma in the lab; it’s just inevitable.

Good thing he got home in time to stop it.

“Well,” he says, “since you weren’t planning any sciencing,there’s no reason we can’t go to bed, is there?”

“But…” Visibly conflicted, she looks between him and her laptop.“I just…”

“It’s fine if you don’t want to,” he says easily, moving asif to put her down. “I can always just go to bed mys—”

“No!” She cries, doubling her grip on him. “No. Bed is fine.Let’s go to bed!”

Grant hides his smile in her shoulder, helpless against aswelling wave of affection. Koala-stage-drunk Jemma is clingy and affectionateand doesn’t wanna be anywhere but in his arms. It always makes him goembarrassingly warm inside.

“Bed it is,” he agrees.