#jemhunter

“What?” she asks, feeling it sums up all her feelings on the situation quite nicely. 

“It’s kind of cold out here,” he says, “and I am kind of conspicuous. So…?” His fangs catch the light from her desk lamp and Jemma hastily backs up a few more steps. She knows he can’t come in, but she isn’t the only one who lives here, better safe than sorry.

“And be murdered for my hospitality? No thank you. Go away!”

He sighs heavily and folds his arms over her windowsill. When he rests his chin on them, he looks like nothing so much as a sad puppy. “Listen,” he says reasonably, “I’m not here for dinner. I’m just here to talk.”

She finally comes level with her desk and plucks a pair of wooden knitting needles from her pen cup. Skye bought them for her after she decided to give dating Grant a go. At the time they seemed silly, now she’s glad for the protection.

“Seriously?” the vampire asks, his annoyance peaking. “Your boyfriend’s a CROSS agent, the girl across the hall’s a bloody werewolf, and rumor has it your roommate’s a corpse you reanimated. I’d have to be brain dead as well as actually dead to try anything.”

She shakes her head. Even if she didn’t have all those supernatural connections, she knows better than to take her chances around a vampire.

“Fine,” he says petulantly. “I’ll make this quick then. I need your help.”

Her grip on the needles slackens in surprise. What could a vampire possibly need from her?

“Bobbi’s in danger.”

The pieces click smartly together in her brain. “You’re Bobbi’s vampire boyfriend!”

He blinks, surprised by the recognition, but grins eagerly enough. “Yeah. That’s me. And she’s kind of got this ‘stake first, ask questions later’ policy about me lately, so I can’t exactly tell her in person that her life’s in danger.”

Jemma sinks onto the corner of her bed closest to the window. “Why come to me though? Surely there must be someone better qualified to pass a message along.”

He shrugs, which is interesting to see from a man hovering in midair. It ends in his whole body rising up a few inches. “Figured you’d be my best bet. Bob’s friends all have an even less generous attitude about the fangs than she does, but everybody knows you don’t mind the living challenged.”

That’s the second time he’s spoken of her like she’s a topic of public discussion and much as she’d like to demand answers, Bobbi is the one in immediate danger.

“You’ll have to give me more than that,” she says. “Her entire job is putting her life in danger.”

He scowls. “Tell me about it. But this is worse. This is a thousand year old vamp who’s come to town for the sole purpose of killing Bob in the bloodiest way possible. She needs to lay low.”

Jemma’s already edging for her phone on her nightstand. “Old enemy of hers?” If that’s the case, CROSS might already be tracking the vampire.

“Of mine, actually. My sire,” he laughs, “she doesn’t like to share.”

Jemma turns sharply back to the window, but the vampire is gone. She runs to the opening, hoping to catch sight of him on the street, maybe call him back. Grant told her that vampires, especially the older ones, regard sire-childe relationships as near sacred and if this one is as dangerous as her age implies, CROSS won’t be able to say no to assistance, even from one of the undead. Only he’s nowhere to be seen, even when she leans her head out for a better look.

“We are standing right here!” He points to the ground under their feet, the ground just outside the lab doors, to drive the point home.

“Stop,” Coulson says, shutting them all up. “No one’s interrogating him today. And Hunter’s right, Simmons may be alone in there, but it’s not like she’s alone.” There are at least a dozen agents standing at the windows, ready to unload on the shithead if he so much as breathes funny.

Privately, Lance isn’t too happy about Jem being in there with the junior psychopath in training. He trusts her and he trusts everyone watching from outside, but still, she’s his baby sister, and she’s never exactly been happy about coming here. 

He never intended to bring her in. Big, shady government - or non-government these days - organizations are naturally something Jemma tries to avoid, but there was a world-ending plague and they needed a biochemist, a damn good one. 

Good news: Coulson was pretty shocked when Lance came back with a world-class scientist and called her his sister, so he succeeded in hiding her - up until that moment. 

Better news: Jemma forgave him, as evidenced by her sticking around long after the crisis has passed. That or she’s just watching his back. Or she’s waiting to get her revenge. That’s a real possibility.

Best news: She likes Bobbi. And Bobbi likes her. They even smile at each other through the window while Jemma stitches up Strucker. So it’s turned out to be a good arrangement all around. 

Except for the part where Jem’s in there with a HYDRA legacy.

“She’ll be fine,” Bobbi says. “He’s chained up. Can’t move more than an inch in any direction. And if he does, I’m pretty sure Daisy’s gonna rattle his bones apart.”

Yep, everybody seems to like Lance’s baby sister. It’s almost enough to make him forget why he kept her away so long. Almost.

“Quiet,” May snaps and turns up the sound on the speaker next to the door.

“You need to tell me if it hurts,” Jemma says, the same way she chastises Lance when he gets himself hurt in the field.

Strucker glares at her. “You can drop the nice cop routine. I’m not opening up to you.”

Jemma frowns and goes back to cleaning the wound. “I’m not the nice cop. I’m the medic patching you up. Well, I’m not really a medic. I learned everything I know fixing up my brother after he got into fights protecting me.” She smiles at Strucker while she steps away to look over her instruments, decide which one’ll work best. In the end, she doesn’t choose any at all, goes for a big old bandage to slap over the cut. “He’s the one who went after your boss last week,” she says like she’s just making idle conversation while she peels the paper off, exposing the adhesive.

“Okay,” Coulson says slowly, “maybe someone is interrogating him today. Did you coach her?” 

The question is directed at Bobbi, but if she gives an answer, Lance doesn’t hear it because Jemma asks, “Do you know why?” and he’s a thousand miles away. He sees - he doesn’t know what he sees. A wall? A floor? There’s nothing special about it, but whatever it is, it’s burned into memory and overlaid with gut-wrenching, soul-tearing pain like his heart is being crushed inside his chest. He can hear his own voice, words he said to Jemma in the early days of Bob’s recovery, while she was still drifting in and out of consciousness. I wasn’t fast enough. 

“No,” Jemma says, smoothing the bandage over Strucker’s temple. “You don’t. But you know where Ward is.”

“You’re cute,” Strucker says, “but I’m not giving Ward up to SHIELD.”

There’s something else too, underneath the pain and heartbreak. Rage. A fiery anger that Lance should’ve recognized sooner - would have if he wasn’t so busy drowning in his Ward hunt.

“Jem!” he roars. He grabs for the door - too slow. Again, too slow. Like it fucking matters what he holds back anymore because Jem’s still got her hand at the kid’s temple and he can feel her hatred in his bones.

“But you’ll give him up to me,” she says. Wisps of red light uncurl from her fingers. It’s almost beautiful for a split-second, and that’s all Lance needs to speed into the lab. Jemma beats him though, she always beats him and she’s always a brat about it too. 

He doesn’t so much pull Strucker away as he catches him. The kid’s screaming and writhing, his hands and feet still cuffed to the stool so he can’t move. He’s gonna break a bone, he’s gonna break a lot of bones.

“Stop it!” Lance yells.

“I can find him,” Jemma says. Her eyes are closed and she’s doing that thing where she listens to other people’s thoughts in her head. 

“Jemma.” Lance grabs her arm and it’s enough to get her eyes open again. 

And then he’s aware of everything else. The agents that are now ringing the room. The guns aimed their way. Jemma’s exposed herself - exposed them both - because of his hunt for revenge. 

Coulson - everyone - is gonna have questions. And those will only get in the way of getting at Ward before he’s gone too far to ground. Lance can’t let that happen again, he can’t let this moment be for nothing.

“Find him,” he says. Jemma smiles and her eyes go red. Strucker screams.

“I’m sorry,” she says, bending over him, “that was mean.”

He falls against her table (not the one the cat is laying on; he’s staying far away from there, thank you). “Please? Grandpa wants it.”

She stops what she’s doing to give him a long, incredulous stare. He didn’t really think that’d work, but it was worth a shot. “You just want it so you can use it to get revenge on that Stark bloke,” she says. “Whereas, I am going to be using it for the betterment of mankind.” And with that, she goes back to work. Discussion closed.

Discussion so not closed.

“Where is it!” he demands, drawing himself up to his full height to tower over her. She’s less intimidated than most people are when he does this. She doesn’t even look his way. He slams his fist on the table to get her attention, causing more than a few of her carefully concocted potions (or whatever she’s calling them) to spill over.

Slowly she turns to face him, and she may be a full foot shorter than him, but he’s getting what other people might feel when he does that looming thing he was trying a minute ago. “I’ve hidden it somewhere you won’t be able to find it and if you keep asking I will never tell you where.”

He holds up his hands in surrender. “Fine. Fine. I’m leaving. Have fun with your dead cat.”

He comes back the next day with several live cats and a smile. She slams the door in his face. 

He may have forgotten, thanks to Jemma being the baby of the family and so much younger than the rest of them, just how long their kind hold grudges.

“How do I look?” Skye asks. She twirls between the men and their video game. Mack and Fitz don’t even complain, just follow the flare of her skirt with their eyes.

“G-g-good,” Fitz says. Lance’s grin widens. He doesn’t think that particular stutter had anything to do with his injuries.

“Damn, girl!” Trip says, coming in wearing a tux. “You make me look like a hobo!”

Skye beams. “Ready to steal some government secrets?”

“You know it.” Trip offers her his arm and, as she slips hers through his, Lance catches a flash of gold.

“Skye!” he calls, his voice going a little too high. He coughs to clear his throat as he stumbles across the room. “Can I see that bracelet?”

Skye holds out her hand. “Sure.” There’s a tightness to her voice he can’t quite place. He wonders if maybe she knows what she’s wearing. 

He runs his fingers over the gold snake circling her arm. The scales are so fine, so perfect, that they cannot possibly be carved by human hands. Because they weren’t.

“Where did you get it?” he asks.

Skye tenses and snaps her arm from his grasp. “Borrowed it. From a friend.” She looks to Trip. “We should go. May’s waiting.”

Lance catches her wrist before she can escape out the door.

“Simmons,” Fitz says behind them. “She got it from Simmons, okay? What does it matter?”

Well, that explains why Skye’s so jumpy about the damn thing. It does not make him feel better about her wearing it though.

“Jemma Simmons?” Lance asks. Skye nods like it should be obvious, when it wasn’t at all obvious to Lance that he’s somehow teamed up with the people his sister used to work with. Would it have been so hard for someone to say her name? “Can I have it?” he asks of the bracelet.

“It belongs to Simmons,” Skye says slowly.

“Yeah, but she left it,” Mack says. “Doesn’t seem like she wants it anymore.” Lance would have expected a dig about his fashion choices, but he supposes sticking up for Fitz supersedes friendly banter.

“Please?” Lance asks, trying to keep the whine out of his voice.

“Why do you even-”

Screw it. He’s wanted this damn thing for sixty years. “Give it to me! Please please please please please!”

“Oh my gosh, fine!” She rips the bracelet off and throws it at him.

It takes Lance more than a quarter of an hour to convince Coulson that yes, he had a perfectly valid reason for attacking Ward, but no, he can’t tell him what it is. He actually thinks Coulson would’ve been satisfied with that answer - does anyone around here really need a reason to attack Ward? - except Lance also can’t promise not to kill everyone’s least favorite turncoat. Finally he makes it out by promising that he won’t murder Ward without first warning Coulson. The man doesn’t even try to confirm that it’ll be a real warning, not some message left on his cell phone just after it falls to the bottom of the ocean, which says a lot about how willingly Coulson allowed Ward back into their lives.

Lance actually hopes he doesn’t have to kill Ward, but he will. Oh, he absolutely will. He just has to make sure Ward’s as scummy as he thought first. Which’ll actually be harder than it might sound, because to do it he needs to be on Simmons’ good side, and she has this thing about him getting needlessly injured.

To that end, he tries to preemptively lighten the mood as he steps into the lab. “So, just wondering here, on a scale of one to ‘I just summoned Lord Voldemort,’ how badly did I fuck things up back there?” He lifts his most charming grin in Simmons’ direction and it promptly falls away. “No. Hell no.”

She’s patching up Ward, actually has her hands on his face while she sees to the lip Lance so carefully split less than half an hour ago. It’s a lot like back in the meeting room, only this time when he sees red, he doesn’t go for Ward. He grabs Simmons around the waist from behind and spins her around, putting himself between her and Ward.

“No,” he says, pointing a shaking finger at Ward. “Don’t you dare come near her. Don’t you even breathe the same air as her, you hear me?”

Ward, the bastard, just looks confused. He tilts his head to look at Simmons. 

“Ah!” Lance says sharply, following Ward’s nose with his finger. “No looking either.”

“Okay,” Ward says, shifting on the stool, “usually I’m willing to own up to whatever shitty thing I’ve done, but I’m just drawing a blank here. What’d I do to piss you off so bad?”

“No talking,” Lance says. Ward just raises an eyebrow. Bloody arse. Lance turns his back on him to face Simmons.

“How bad was this blow to the head?” she asks, reaching for the cut on his forehead. It stopped bleeding while he was in Coulson’s office, but he knows he must look like hell. “And what did you think you were doing? You should know better than to attack someone as well trained as Ward is like that. You’re lucky if a little concussion ends up being the worst of it.”

Lance rests his hands gently on her shoulders and bends down so he’s more on her level. “Simmons, I know. I know what he did to you.”

“He … dropped me out of the Bus?”

“Simmons.” He nods to her shoulder. She’s changed since the meeting into something looser and now the dark, mottled bruise he only caught a glimpse of before lunging at Ward is impossible to miss. He drops his voice to a whisper. “The scratches he’s got on his arms - he didn’t get ‘em during the mission and they’re kind of distinctive.”

Simmons’ eyes go wide as she realizes just what Lance is dancing around. He kind of hates himself for this, but he’ll take it out on Ward for putting him in this position at all.

He squeezes her shoulders, proud of her for putting up a fight and holding it together this well. “Do me a favor? Text Coulson that I’m gonna kill Ward.” He lets her go to do just that.

“Wait!” Simmons yells loudly before Lance can do more than lift his fist. Ward’s already off his stool, backing into the open space between the tables, but he stills at Simmons’ call too. She puts herself between the two of them, her glare fixed on Lance. “You think that if he’d done-” she waves her hand in frustration- “that, that he’d still be alive right now?”

“Well-”

“Actually, he might be,” she muses to herself. “I do have several supposedly dead diseases in storage just in case the worst happens.” Ward, to Lance’s eternal glee, backs up a small step.

Lance tries to relax, but he’s still not sure he can. “So he didn’t…”

“Rape me?” Simmons supplies. “No, Hunter. Ward did not. Drop me out of a plane? Betray my trust? Give me insomnia? All yes. But I’m not exactly Ward’s type.” Lance isn’t as comforted by that statement as Simmons seems to be. Probably because she can’t see Ward’s expression. “And even if I were, I highly doubt he would act on it in such a base manner. As I’ve recently been informed, he does have some standards.” She smiles over her shoulder. It’s a mocking smile, but Lance still hates it. Ward should not have in-jokes with anyone on the team, even if he didn’t attack Simmons.

Now that the crisis has been resolved, she fusses. Ward returns to his stool and Lance is ordered to one on the opposite side of the table.

“And if you even think about leaping across it, keep in mind that I have placed my medical instruments dead center,” she says, setting the tray down loudly. Ward smirks over the top of her head. Lance should’ve killed him in the conference room.

“So how did you get that bruise?” he asks.

She carefully applies ointment to Ward’s lip. “Ward did it.” Lance makes it halfway around the table before Simmons’ yell stops him. “Not like that!” She keeps her arms spread wide, holding both of them at bay until Lance is sitting on his stool again. “You have to promise not to tell Coulson.”

“No good story ever starts with ‘promise not to tell dad,’” Lance moans, but he agrees because he’s gotta know. 

By the time she’s finished with the story and clears them both to go, Lance really, really wishes he’d killed Ward in the conference room. 

He wraps Simmons in a tight hug before he leaves, even dropping a kiss to the top of her head. “I’m proud of you, love, and glad you’re okay. But if you ever do anything that stupid again, I’ll go straight to Coulson and let him take away your science gizmos, see if I won’t.”

“Thank you,” she says into his chest.

When he rounds the corner putting him out of sight of the lab’s windows, he’s not surprised to find Ward leaning against the wall.

“You tried to brainwash her,” Lance says evenly.

“Why do people keep saying that? I tried to activate her. There’s a difference.” The last syllable’s barely even out of his mouth before Lance has him pinned against the wall.

“You stay the hell away from Simmons, you hear me? The only reason I’m not going straight to Coulson with this is that she doesn’t want him to worry. So long as you keep your distance, focus on your other creepy obsessions - which, by the way? don’t - we’ll be good.”

“You sweet on Simmons, Hunter? I guess that’s your type, huh? Woulda thought it was Morse’s rack that did it for you though.”

Lance slams him back into the wall. The worst thing when facing off against an opponent is that moment you know they’re better than you. You can feel the power in their body and how it stacks up to yours and you just know, you don’t got it. Lance is good at what he does, but Ward’s better. They both know it. Doesn’t mean Lance is gonna back down. “Just stay away from her.” He gives Ward one more shove and stalks away.

“You should be careful how you phrase things,” Ward calls after him. “Some people might take that as a challenge.”