#ftwes

Grant’s surprise is enough of an opening the other cuff is closed around a drain pipe.

“What,” Simmons says more than asks. Luckily her shock’s stilled her too. The fake cop is having some trouble dragging her any closer to what Grant guesses is also a fake police van. She teeters on the high heels she bought for her cousin’s bachelorette party. The same party that brought her and Grant more than a thousand miles from the team that’ll be too far away to help when they don’t check in in a few hours.

“Don’t worry,” the fake cop soothes. “You’ll have all the toys. Everything SHIELD could offer you and more. And you’ll be treated well—so long as you’re productive.”

“What about Ward?” she asks, a touch of hysteria pulling at her voice.

“You’ll have new bodyguards. If you’re good, maybe they’ll be as pretty as SHIELD’s.”

To Grant’s left one of the grunts is unholstering his sidearm. They’ve all backed off now he’s restrained, but not far. All he needs is that moment, the one right before the trigger’s pulled. These guys are pros so they’ll know the sound’s coming. They’ll tense up, the smarter ones will even cover their ears to protect them. That’s the opening. Take out the gunman. Then the big guy. If he’s lucky he can knock Goliath here into someone else, maybe even two someones. If he’s really lucky he’ll manage to hold onto the gun when he takes out the first one. He just needs that opening-

Which evaporates right in front of him when Simmons appears between him and the gun. Somehow she managed to break free and chose to run back to him instead of just running.

They are so having a lesson on tactics in a life-or-death scenario when this is over.

“No!” she gasps. Her breathing’s ragged from the adrenaline but her voice is firm. “If you want me to work for you, you won’t touch him.”

The grunts exchange a few looks. To Simmons it probably looks like they’re considering her demand. To Grant it looks like they’re trying not to laugh.

She sighs. “Listen. Your employers, whoever they may be, want me for my mind. Obviously this means you don’t need Agent Ward-”

“Uh,” Grant says. Simmons reaches blindly back, laying a soothing hand on whatever part of him she touches first. He wonders if he should let her know she gets his peck, not his shoulder.

“-and you also don’t need to leave me unharmed. I’m quite capable of exercising my genius with a broken bone or two.”

“Simmons,” Grant says, voice low enough he’s hoping it sounds to her like a growl. What the fuck is she doing?

“But I assure you, I am quite stubborn when I have a mind to be. If you shoot him or break his bones or put so much as one of his hairs out of place, I will die before I help your employer with so much as a cake recipe.” She tips her chin up and from this angle Grant can only imagine the I’m smarter than you and we both know it look on her face. “Do we understand one another?”

The grunts look more uncertain than before. Uncertain enough that they miss Grant breaking his own thumb and slipping the cuffs. They don’t miss when he shoves Simmons to the ground, but they’re all a little busy being beaten to death with every ounce of berserker rage he can summon up this many months later to worry about her anymore.

“Well,” Simmons says a quarter of an hour later, when he’s standing over the bodies. “That was…”

He rounds on her. “Stupid.”

She recoils. From the insult or his anger or the blood and viscera clinging to him, probably all three and, frankly, he’s glad. She should be afraid.

“What the hell were you thinking?” he demands, looming over her.

She stares, eyes wide. Which just proves how stupid she is. She’s afraid of him but a few minutes ago she didn’t bat an eye at the guys with literal guns who were trying to kidnap her and enslave her to whatever psycho warlord or billionaire wants her mind.

“My job,” he says tightly, “is to protect you. Your job is to be protected. Not to throw yourself in harm’s way just to-”

“To protect you!” she snaps back. The fear’s swept away, replaced by anger of her own. “They were going to kill you. You can’t expect me to stand by and watch that happen!”

“Yes. I can. Because that’s my job. I take the bullet for you. Not the other way around.”

She scoffs and now he gets to see that smarter than you look for himself. “I know that prior to this assignment you were very comfortable playing the lone wolf, Agent Ward-” he struggles not to recoil from the title; it’s been a long time since she dropped it- “but you’re part of a team now. You have friends, whether you like it or not. So you’d best get used to people putting you first once in a while.”

She whirls, smacking him in the face with that ponytail of hers. “Now I’m going to call this mess in to the local SHIELD satellite office. I suggest you start checking for pulses. They’ll want someone to question.” It’s clear from her tone she expects if none of the perpetrators are available, SHIELD will turn their attention to him and his excessive response.

Grant doesn’t bother checking. The local office is run by a Hydra agent who owes him a favor; his little killing spree will be swept under the rug in a few hours and he and Simmons can get back to the Bus.

He grins. She doesn’t know whether it’s because he’s amused by her playacting or just pleased she’s not treating his delusions of godhood as, well, delusions for once. Or, most likely of all, he’s pleased by the way she’s pasted herself even more closely against his side simply because it irritates Malick.

She fought the soulbond between them on Maveth. Not because she didn’t want it but because that initial drive to consummate the bond was getting in the way of her research into bringing them home. When they finally made it, the bond asserted itself quite forcefully and even so many weeks later she can find herself near overwhelmed by a simple touch from him. Though he’s far too pompous to admit it, she suspects Alveus feels much the same.

“I am,” he says patiently.

Jemma turns back to Malick. “He’s a god,” she tells him quite seriously. “Which I rather think means everyone else is on his schedule, don’t you?”

Beside her, Alveus shakes with repressed laughter.

Malick shakes with something else altogether. It takes him several seconds to compose himself well enough to say, “Of course. However, sir-” he looks pointed at not her- “you did say you wanted the report on the ATCU’s progress. I’ve arranged a meeting with the director, who is not aware of your status. I’m afraid she’s not Hydra and, as such, it is in all of our best interests to, ah, play along with her misconceptions for as long as possible.”

The problem, Jemma’s learned, with one’s soulmate being significantly older (if a difference of several thousand years can be called merely “significant”) is that the additional years give them plenty of opportunity to get into trouble. Not, of course, that Jemma’s against trouble as a rule; her friendship with Skye has certainly opened up her mind on that score. But there is a difference between breaking a rule (or twelve) in order to help one’s friends and being the bloody head of all Hydra.

Luckily, however, Jemma has also learned how to work around that particular problem.

Beneath the blanket covering them both, her hand fists in the front of Alveus’ shirt and her knee hooks over his. Even through the fabric of their clothing, her skin buzzes at the contact, eager for more.

“But this is my favorite.”

Alveus’ chest rumbles with more laughter. “They have all been your favorite.”

“But this one is about a wormhole to the other side of the universe. It has a special place in my heart.” She traces her finger over his. “Besides, it’s Jodie Foster.”

Alveus hesitates a moment more (a “god” can’t give in too easily, not even to his soulmate) before shrugging his shoulders. “I am afraid Jemma is right, Gideon. Your director will have to wait.”

Malick’s eyes widen and for a moment Jemma really thinks he might lunge at her. In the weeks since their return from Maveth, he’s grown increasingly aggravated by her presence. That she’s a SHIELD agent is bad enough. That her status as his god’s soulmate gives her unhindered access to him and the ability to distract him from all of Malick’s grand plans will, she thinks soon, become unendurable. What Alveus will do then, Jemma doesn’t know, though she’s privately hoping whatever move Malick makes will be sufficiently dramatic to convince him Hydra is no place for them.

Fortunately (because Jemma really does love this movie), the day of Malick’s inevitable snapping is not today. He marches out, somewhat stiff on his feet, leaving them to their entertainment. Jemma twists to grab the remote from where it fell beside her but, before she can find it, finds herself dragged into Alveus’ lap.

“What are you doing?” she asks, the words coming out rather high-pitched thanks to his hand already slipping beneath her top.

“You have distracted me from my meeting,” he says into her neck. Her head drops back and she clenches her teeth against a moan. This, she thinks, is why it’s customary for the newly bonded to be relieved of all obligations for a few days of endless shagging. Putting it off has left them completely unable to control themselves. “So I,” Alveus continues while moving down her neck, “will distract you from your film.”

“But—it’s—my-” She means to say it’s her favorite, but the teasing statement is lost amidst his kisses.

He buries his face in the pillow beside her.

“You could’ve stood up,” she says solemnly. Then, fearful, “You didn’t stand up, did you?”

“No, I sat down. Which reminds me, I’ve got good news: the plumbing still works.”

“Thank the lord,” Jemma sighs. If they’re to be trapped in here while the space station’s habitat system is being repaired—or at least until the doors can be opened—running water will make it much more endurable.

Not that it’s been a chore so far. She and Will have made the most of it, passing the time as people tend to during power outages, but it’s been several hours now with no sign of letting up and no further word on the repair process through the station’s communication system.

“There’s bad news too,” Will cautions. She feels him shift beside her. He doesn’t rise, but something rattles in the area of the nightstand. There’s a sliding and then a bang. “Whoops.” He doesn’t sound terribly concerned, however, and she feels him roll back in her direction. A finely edged object touches her arm. It’s light, not much weight to it, and concave as well. She’s just identified it as his mask when-

For the first second all she can process is the pain of it and then she recognizes what she’s been missing for the past few hours: light.

It’s dim, similar in scope to what a cell phone would project, but it is light. Thin tendrils of it sent out by the mask. The design etched into its surface has lit up a pale blue.

“Oh, Will,” she says, her straight face not helped at all by the knowledge that this time he can see how her lip quivers as she struggles to hide her laughter. “You’re my light in the darkness.”

He stares at her for a beat and then- “Wooow. That was bad.”

She bats his chest gently, the darting of her arm sending shadows scurrying across the blue-grey the mask has painted the walls. “I thought it was quite romantic. Er. Well.”

He shifts his hand from his ear to his chin, intent.

She rolls her eyes and figures she’s too deep now not to explain. “Back— before, my team had to stop a criminal who had power over darkforce—or dark matter. His transmutation had driven him somewhat mad—quite common, I’m afraid—and he’d grown obsessed with a woman who he credited as his ‘only light in the darkness.’ Admittedly it was a bit … possessive and we did have to kill him to prevent him harming her, but aside from that-”

Will’s chin has fallen off his hand so that he might look up at her somewhat judgmentally. “I— am beginning to see how you fell for a space pirate.”

She shoves him onto his back. “Says the space pirate.”

He grabs her by the hips. Somehow she has ended up on top of him. “And you love it.”