#creatrixanimi

Working in restaurants had been… hard for Simmons, but if he wanted to get anywhere in the industry his techniques in molecular gastronomy would only take him so far. Kitchens were loud, chaotic, filled with sharp knives and so much attitude. Every chef he met was a king in their domain who loved to step on their subjects. 

Every job he ever had he got fired or quit. He was too timid, or too slow, or too nervous, or too pissed off by the bullshit he had to go through. 

Until he got hired by Wash. 

On the outside Wash looked like your typical chef. Tattoos all up his arms, and an air of competency and arrogance. 

But Wash listened and watched. He taught.

Not to say that Simmons had never been frustrated in Wash’s kitchen. The man was demanding. He wanted things perfect, he wanted them fast, and he was damn good at doing what he did so he didn’t accept excuses. Simmons had almost quit. He had his apron in a ball in his hand about to throw it on the ground.

“Have a smoke break and come back in,” Wash wiped his face with his forearm, “And then do it again.”

“I won’t come back!” Simmons’ voice was high with anger and humiliation. He had made the dish six times already, and each time Wash would give a frustrated grunt and tell him to redo it. 

“I know you don’t get it but i have talent! I know how food works! I know how it makes people feel! I know flavour combinations! I can cook!”

Wash gave him a confused look. “What?” 

“I can cook damn it! Just let me cook!” 

“I know you can cook,” Wash crossed his arms. “Why do you think you’re here?”

“That seems to be one of life’s greatest mysteries because it doesn’t seem like it’s to get any food out!! It’s just doing the same thing over and over because there’s a carrot out of place!” Simmons squawked.

Wash smiled at him. It was an awkward, but kind smile. One Simmons didn’t expect from his hardass boss. 

“You get nervous and overthink. When you keep doing it over and over it means every time you do it you’ll think less and less about what to do. You’ll just do it. I know you’re good, Dick. That’s why you’re here. I think you’re going to change this industry for the better, but before you can do that, you need to train. Take a smoke break, come back, do it again. You can leave if you want, but I hope you don’t.” 

They had been best friends since then. Wash was a mentor. One that Simmons had desperately needed, and Simmons was an inventor, invigorator, he got Wash interested in food again after working so long in an industry that ground chefs up.

The rare day off they would be at Wash’s apartment planning new menus, talking new ideas and techniques. Planning their restaurant.

Their restaurant. Only a month and it would be the grand opening.

He wanted to be doing something, anything. They had so many things to get ready and no time to do it. 

But their designer Franklin had thrown them out. “I don’t need you two hovering while we install lights. Go have fun. Take the rest of the day off! Fill your hole!”

“What?” Simmons squeaked.

“With ice cream!” Franklin finished cheerfully. “The fair is pretty close. Why don’t you take a look?” 

Simmons sighed. The last thing he wanted to do was have fun. Working was fun!

“It has been awhile… taking a break might help us focus. Fair food might give some inspiration, weren’t you talking about some sort of soft serve technique?” Wash asked. 

“I could… yeah…” Simmons said slowly. Research, research was productive. Their dessert menu still had a few wrinkles. “It is hot… I didn’t wear sunscreen…” He could feel the sunburns forming on his cheeks already. 

“Right, ice cream on me,” Wash lead him up to the booth. One of the employees was turned away ranting at his co-worker.

“–That’s what they’ll be doing tomorrow, that’s what they will be doing for the rest of our fucking lives.”

The one leaning against the back freezer gave Simmons a charming smile and Simmons was lost in it.

*

Within a day, Kaikana digs up a box of orange armor from the back of Red Base. “Ooh, orange is a look,” she says. “You could pick up dudes with this color armor! Hey, is anyone using this? I wanna switch!”

“That armor is—” Sarge begins.

“Yeah, sure,” says Simmons nastily, and doesn’t look at Sarge’s bewildered and alarmed expression. “Nobody’s using it. Knock yourself out.”

“Sweet!” Kai says, and begins shucking off armor right on the spot. Simmons jolts when he realizes that she’s not gonna stop with the plates; she’s going to take off the whole damn undersuit, and he stammers and fumbles and excuses himself from the room as fast as he can. Not fast enough to miss Kaikana’s wide grin and delighted wink.

Now their armor color is the same, too.

*

Sarge seems to be holding some sort of grudge against Simmons for the armor thing, and not only stops speaking to Simmons, but never posts Simmons and Kaikana to guard duty together. Kaikana complains about it relentlessly, because it’s “discrimination” and “the patriarchy” that Sarge won’t let her stand around with “the angry hot maroon guy.” 

Simmons privately thinks Sarge is worried he’ll see the two of them standing there, in the maroon and orange armor, and think that nothing’s changed; but mostly he’s sour because he doesn’t know if he could hold a conversation with her, let alone any conversation that could hold a candle to the talks he and Grif used to have.

Simmons does think it’s funny that Sarge thinks that being on guard duty entirely alone is somehow better, but when he turns to tell Grif about it, he’s not there.

*

“Everyone in this canyon is weird,” Kaikana tells Simmons.

Simmons scowls and tries not to think about how Grif used to say that too.

“That’s okay,” Kaikana says. “Weird is hot, too.”

…Grif didn’t say that so much.

It takes Kaikana about a week to figure out Tucker from Blue Base is also down to fuck, and then she’s disappearing almost every night. The communal dorm room is too quiet without her. Simmons spends a lot of time thinking that she shouldn’t be allowed to go off and fuck a Blue, but Sarge never says anything.

Simmons’s anger gets the better of him: he marches up to her and says it’s against Red Army rules, to which Kaikana asks him if he’s jealous, and edges a little closer to her on the couch. 

He flails and sputters and storms away. 

“Aw, come on, don’t be shy!” she calls after him.

*

Kaikana comes into the kitchen with the full orange armor and helmet on and Donut drops his entire breakfast into the soapy kitchen sink. She laughs uproariously at him while Donut sputters and looks a little miserable, because Simmons knows that Donut had, for a second, thought that Grif had walked into the kitchen.

“Isn’t Donut so cute?” she tells Simmons, like it’s a secret. “Y’know, I could be into that.”

When she takes the helmet off again, her laugh still sounds a lot like Grif’s.

“Donut’s not interested,” Simmons says acidly.

Kai gives him an unimpressed look. “What’s it to you?”

“Simmons,” Donut begins, and Simmons gives him a poisonous look. Donut doesn’t say anything after all.

*

It’s Donut who says that they should tell her, over a quiet dinner while Kaikana is away at Blue Base. “Like, it’s weird that we haven’t told her already,” he says. “We knew her brother! She should at least know what happened to him! It’ll make things weird, but…”

Sarge grunts noncommittally. Simmons just looks down at his plate.

“And it freaks me out when she’s walking around Red Base with that armor,” Donut complains. “Who said she could have that, anyway?”

Another vague noise from Sarge. At the very least, Sarge knows how not to snitch.

“Seriously, I don’t know about you, but it’s not right,” says Donut. “I see her out of the corner of my eye and I think she’s her brother sometimes. Gives me the heebie-jeebies. Like there’s a ghost walking around. It’s not a good feeling, you know!”

Simmons snorts.

“I just don’t wanna keep seeing her and thinking I’m seeing Grif,” Donut complains.

Simmons stands up so fast his chair topples. Donut squeaks. “Do whatever you want,” he snarls at Donut, and leaves.

*

Eventually, Simmons has to go and tell Grif about it. When Sarge isn’t looking, he makes his way to the little cave in the side of the canyon, where the soil had been relatively soft and less likely to be ruined by rain. 

“Your sister ended up here too,” he tells the headstone, which doesn’t respond. 

Figures. The headstone is just a chunk of metal spray-painted with orange. 

“I guess you’d probably hate that, even if she did come to find you,” Simmons goes on. “You spent a lot of time not wanting to be here yourself, so…”

He bites down on his accusations. But then again, if not to a mute headstone, where else can he be as bitter as he likes?

“Why didn’t you tell us you had a sister?” he demands. “All that time, letting me prattle on about my life, and you didn’t even think to mention—hey, yeah, I grew up in Hawaii, like that’s not an easy tidbit to share—not even that you didn’t really have a dad? You let me talk about my dad and you said nothing? Fuck you,” he snaps. “All this time together, you told us nothing about yourself, and now we have fuck-all to tell your own sister.”

The headstone doesn’t respond. 

“Fuck,” Simmons hisses, and nearly kicks the stupid headstone, but he settles for stomping his way all the way back to Base. Fuck Grif. Fuck his stupid, horny sister. Fuck this entire fucking canyon.

When he gets back to base, Kaikana asks, “Where’ve you been?” 

“Shut up.”

“Ooh, a secret? Visiting your secret boyfriend or something?”

“Shut up,” Simmons snaps.

“So angry,” she says. “Very hot.”

Simmons rounds on her, ready to tear her a new one or maybe just hit her because Simmons is a classy gentleman like that, and stops dead in his tracks again: She’s twirling one strand of her long hair around her finger, with that same face Grif had. The same secret glee, the same impish, clever grin, knowing she’s pushing his buttons, and more than a little flirtatious, like she’s daring him to come over here and make her shut up with his mouth. 

It hits him all at once how often Grif used to look at him just like that.

She waggles her eyebrows at him in a clear invitation. He really, really wants to accept, and it’s not because he likes her.

“Stop,” he pleads, and flees the common room.

*

When Simmons goes to see Grif again, Donut and Kaikana are already at the grave. Donut’s got one arm around Kaikana’s shoulders. They must have heard him, because Kaikana whips around. Her eyes are entirely dry.

“You,” she hisses.

“Kai, he didn’t mean to,” Donut says immediately.

“He didn’t mean to? You said they were friends!” She points a finger at Simmons, who flinches. “And he can’t even be bothered to mention that he knows where my brother wound up, and it was in this fucking dirt cave? Couldn’t mention that he’d buried my brother there?”

“I was…” Simmons says, but he doesn’t even know where to begin with defending himself. What—he was afraid? He was ashamed? He was hoping that if he shoved his head in the sand for long enough, Grif might pop back out of the ground asking for a snack cake?

“Were you just not going to tell me?” Kaikana demands. “Were you just going to hole up here with this ugly grave that you didn’t even dig properly—”

Simmons’s stomach drops, because he’d actually done research, he hadn’t wanted the rain to come into the cave and wash away the dirt, he’d at least wanted Grif’s last resting spot to be decent—

“—and let me walk around in this canyon like a fucking idiot while all you chucklefucks pretend you’ve never knew my brother?!”

“So what if we were?” Simmons snaps back before he can think.

“Wait, no, we weren’t—” Donut says.

“We didn’t tell you because we didn’t know him at all!” Simmons shouts. “I have nothing to tell you! He was run over by accident, and he died having done nothing for this stupid war! We didn’t know jack shit about him and he didn’t know jack shit about us! We barely knew him and he died surrounded by strangers! And you know what? Maybe you didn’t know him so well, either,” says Simmons. “We didn’t even know you existed because he didn’t even bother to mention you.”

Kaikana freezes.

“Take that back,” she says.

The funny thing is, Simmons is absolutely going to take it back, because he’s a coward who can’t back up his own worst moments. He won’t mean it when he apologizes, but he’s going to take it back. The reason why he doesn’t is because there’s tears rolling down Kaikana’s cheeks even as she presses her hand up over her mouth, stifling her own pain on reflex.

Just like Grif used to do.

Simmons hesitates too long. 

“Fuck you,” Kaikana says in a raspy voice, and swallows her sobs, and bolts past him and out of the cave.

*

By the next day, Kaikana’s left Red Base and set up camp with the Blues. She takes Grif’s armor with her.

That’s fine, Simmons thinks. He didn’t want to have that to remember Grif by, anyway. He’ll make do with just the grave.