Work Text:
The base is too quiet.
Grif (doesn’t suspect anything at first) immediately feels a chill run down his spine, the panicked need to find one of his teammates as soon as possible to make sure everything’s okay flooding his brain. He just needs to find one of his teammates, and everything will be fine. He’ll see them talking and being their usual stupid self, and everything’s going to be--
He finds Sarge (Chilton) first. His chest plate cracked open like a flimsy egg shell, and underneath that the kevlar, frayed and torn to reveal the flesh underneath, the way the ribs protrude like someone--like something-- had reached their/its hands/claws inside and just pulled them out with an easy brutal strength snapsnapcrack he can imagine the wet sharp sound so vividly.
He stares at his sergeant for what feels like a very long moment and thinks (he was so nice to me) he was such an asshole. And it doesn’t feel right. Sarge is larger than life in a way, a regrettable staple of his life as much as the skin grafts and the Warthogs and the constant stupid dramatic fights. He shouldn’t be able to be hurt like this, to be stopped like this. Nothing ever shuts Sarge up.
He (isn’t thinking, is panicking, needs to tell someone else in the base immediately) has a horrible sinking feeling he already knows what he’s going to find, and it makes him want to scream.
He runs through the corridors in a rush, and trips over Donut’s (Gordy’s) body. His face looks like a crater. Literally, his visor a caved in blackened husk, nothing but black soot to see no matter how far in--
What has happened? (He knows what happened.)
Grif runs on because he can’t look at that not-face for a second longer and he needs to tell someone, there has to be someone to tell--
Lopez (Yang) torn to pieces, from limb to limb, wires (blood) spilling everywhere. Looking like a dismantled mannequin (in a way no human being ever should) in a way he has many times before. But Grif knows he’s dead anyways. He knows it to his bones, without having to check. (He shakes Yang anyways, like he’s just asleep, calls out his name in a voice that he doesn’t even recognize as his own. Shaking and low and painful, frail. Calls out louder when Yang doesn’t stir. His eyes are closed, he could just be unconscious, couldn’t he? Couldn’t he?)
He leaves, terrified, not wanting to leave, not wanting to find what he’ll find next but. This is how it goes, isn’t it? This is what he’s supposed to do. Find all of them, too late. And wait. And wait. Hear their voices, eventually. Try and ignore the voices. Stare at the sky looking for Pelicans, here to take him away from the rot.
Sink into the voices when it doesn’t come, because there’s nothing else.
Grif finds Simmons.
(No. Kane.)
His (her) arms are all-- twisted, the skin and the flesh bunching up like a shirt on the unyielding, snapped bone jabbing out of the flesh here and there like white splinters. It looks like someone--something, something tall, something strong, one of those alien fuckers-- had stabbed their hand into his gut, straight through the armor, palm upwards, and then scooped everything upwards and out. Like ice cream.
Why? Why why why why why whywhywhywhywhywhy
“You’re going to have to stay with the rot,” Simmons’ corpse says. It remains limp and sprawled on the ground, not even twitching. Grif can’t see its lips move because of the helmet.
“You’re going to be trapped with us until someone out there finally remembers you,” Sarge’s corps says. It’d gotten up and followed him outside to where he found Simmons. Had it stood up after Grif left the corridor? The second he turned his back? Following him the entire time as he found everyone broken, too late. How hadn’t he heard it?
“We won’t talk to you,” Lopez says, and how is it here? It doesn’t have limbs. “We’ll just lie there and decay.”
“It’s going to get very quiet,” Donut’s void of a face says, its head turned towards him like an inexorable black hole. Grif’s going to get pulled in and torn apart if he gets close enough. “Do you think you’ll be able to stop yourself from going crazy?”
Everyone here knows the answer to that question.
“So,” Simmons says, its tone turning that particular kind of smugly passive aggressive it gets when Grif’s laziness comes back and bites him in the ass somehow, “did you have a nice nap, at least?”
Grif wakes up. He doesn’t scream. Just tenses, just fists his hands in his sheets as his eyes open wide, staring blankly at the ceiling before he frantically looks around himself, but barely moving otherwise. Darkness. A bed.
It was just a dream. That stupid dream again. His dumb fucking brain dreams about the colony a lot, hung up on things he can’t possibly change. So he gets over it a lot. It’s fine. He’s practiced at this. An old hand.
But this is the first time his old teammates have been replaced with his new teammates. He wonders if it could possibly have something to do with the fact that he was recently-ish left behind to rot on an island as he listened to their voices and looked for their Pelican in the sky, surrounded by the evidence of the fact that they’d once been there but weren’t any longer. He comes to the conclusion that he’s been accidentally paying too much attention as Donut goes on and on about his dream journaling and bullshit dream interpretation theories and that he should stop overthinking things. Brains don’t do shit because of any underlying issues or problems, they do it because brains are broken random flesh machines.
He closes his eyes.
(“You’re going to have to stay with the rot.”)
Opens his eyes. Keeps them open until his dark vision adjusts enough that he can see the cracks in the plaster of the ceiling, until his eyes sting with the dryness.
Until Simmons’ breathing finally registers and he remembers that he isn’t alone.
Grif blinks, and slowly turns his face to the side until he sees him. Simmons, curled up on his side and facing Grif, eyes closed and expression peaceful. They’ve gotten a big bed now that they’ve started sleeping together every night, which means that they aren’t pressed up against each other from the very first moment by necessity. Grif doesn’t mind because Simmons is the kind of sleeper that instinctively curls around the closest source of heat, so he always wakes up covered in Simmons anyways. He’s not quite there yet, but very close, close enough that Grif can feel the heat of his body, can count his eyelashes even in the dark of the room.
His arms look fine, metal and flesh both, and his guts seem to be where they should be. His chest rises and falls with every breath, and he’s clearly alive and well.
Something inside of Grif’s chest unknots just a little at that, unreasonably relieved at being able to see that he’s fine despite knowing all along that of course he is, always was. Simmons has never been on a colony attacked by Sangheili. They’re at peace with the Sangheili. Tucker had a baby with them, for fuck’s sake.
That awful, irrational, embarrassingly raw feeling doesn’t ease all the way, though. Are Sarge’s ribs okay? Donut’s face? Lopez’s limbs? Yes. Of course they are. Why wouldn’t they be? No one except for Kimball and the people she trusts knows where their retirement island is, and she’s grown far less trusting since Felix. They’re not going to get attacked. They’re not going to get ambushed. Grif isn’t going to wake up to find that everyone had been slaughtered while he slept.
He wants to go and find the rest of his team and talk to to them and look at them, and then that ball of anxiety in his gut will finally fade away entirely, he knows. But that would be weird and dramatic, to wake them up in the middle of the night just to calm himself down. That would be crossing a line and overreaching and showing-- no one needs to see or hear or realize this particular thing about him. No one needs to know about the colony; it’s in the past, where he can’t touch it and it can’t touch him. Doesn’t matter if that’s the way he likes it, because that’s the way it is no matter what he says, so. Stop dwelling on it, Grif.
(“Did you have a nice nap, at least?”)
Grif feels the lump in his throat grow as his mind uselessly spins its wheels, and he harshly tries to swallow it down to no avail as he forces his train of thought off of that track. Looks intently at Simmons’ face until he calms back down to his former level, which is still a step above his baseline, burning the signs of life into his eyes.
Inhalation, exhalation. He breathes with his mouth when he’s asleep, lips slightly parted. He can’t see his eyeballs moving underneath his eyelids; he isn’t dreaming. He definitely isn’t having a nightmare. His hair, not combed as neatly as during the day, starting to get a little on the longer side for Simmons, falls over his forehead. He wants to run his hand through it.
Without thinking, he reaches out to do so. It doesn’t feel like silk, but it’s Simmons’ hair which makes it special all on its own. It isn’t long enough and Simmons doesn’t toss and turn enough in his sleep for it to tangle, so his fingers run through it unobstructed, and he ends the stroking motion cupping the corner of Simmons’ jaw, thumb on his cheekbone. His palm warms at the contact, and Simmons makes a little sigh and leans into it a little like the cold blooded lizard he is. Like the most heartwarming kitten.
The feelings lesses a little more, overshadowed just a touch by love and aching fondness and… something else.
Grif definitely isn’t going to wake Simmons up to help him calm down. He doesn’t want for him to worry. He doesn’t want for him to know.
But… what if he had a different excuse for waking him up? Something that wouldn’t expose him, or upset Simmons.
Simmons had told him once, blushing and not even remotely looking at his face, that he was fine with Grif waking him up with sex. If he wanted to. Phrased like he was idly giving Grif permission for something it had randomly occurred to him Grif might want while every line of his body radiated that this was probably a longheld, private, favorite shameful fantasy of his, desperately craved.
Grif had nonchalantly replied “cool” and then immediately decided to do just that as soon as physically possible. And then two weeks had passed without him doing anything about it because Simmons kept fucking waking up before him, already freshly showered and dressed by the time Grif was first reluctantly cracking his eyes open.
And now Simmons is asleep and Grif is awake and he doesn’t want to be left alone in the quiet any longer. Wants to touch him.
Grif stops overthinking things and just touches him. His hand, which had been resting on his jawline, slowly slides down to his throat. Lingers there for a long moment, just feeling his steady pulse, just holding lightly and letting his body warmth seep in from that point of contact to what feels like the rest of his body. Slides down his chest.
Grif thumbs at his nipple, slowly circling and pressing just a little firmly down until it hardens and Simmons lets out another of those sighs, until he moves into the pressure a little, asking for more without even being awake for it. He wonders if he could make Simmons start having a wet dream like this.
He moves on, trailing down and down, and this is working. His focus is captivated by Simmons right now in a way he can always be relied upon to do without even trying or realizing it.
His hand slides underneath the waistband of Simmons’ boxers, and he quietly mumbles a breathy, plaintive, “Grif.”
Grif freezes in surprise, his eyes snapping away from his lips to Simmons’ eyes. Still closed.
Still asleep.
Grif’s lips twitch upwards at the corners, before he remembers that he doesn’t have to suppress any expressions right now. He smiles, feeling embarrassingly sappy and kind of giddy. Simmons’ automatic, unconscious reaction to being fondled is to think of him. When he thinks about it, he doesn’t know how he’d respond if he’d said anyone else’s name. Doesn’t matter. He said Grif’s.
God, he’s gonna give Simmons the orgasm of his life for this. He’s so cute.
He finally grabs Simmons’s dick, and runs his hand up and down lightly, regretting that he hadn’t gotten some lube or lotion on his hand first. Ah, but then he might’ve waken Simmons up and the surprise would be ruined. He’ll just have to carefully stroke him until he’s got enough precum to work with, which he doesn’t have a problem with at all. He wonders how far along he can get before Simmons wakes up.
Simmons is biting his lower lip in that way that heats Grif’s blood right up, his brow slightly furrowed. His hips twitch minutely into Grif’s grip. He’s close to waking up, he can tell, and he’s excited for it.
He thumbs at the head of Simmons’ dick and smears the precum beading there down, his strokes slowly growing faster and firmer as he gathers more and more, and he gets close to Simmons’ face, close enough to clearly hear the sleep-even pattern of his breathing getting more strained, hitching with his movements and--
There. A moan. Nowhere near as loud as Grif’s been able to get him before, but the loudest he’s ever heard him while he’s been asleep. Being woken up by Simmons having a wet dream is truly a magical experience.
Grif can’t resist kissing him for a moment longer, and that must be what finally wakes him up because when he moves back from the kiss Simmons is blinking dazedly awake.
“Good morning, sunshine,” he tells him, even though he’d put money on it not even being dawn yet. And then he gives his dick a good squeeze and Simmons’ eyes squeeze shut as one of his hands instinctively comes up to muffle his groan. It really is such a pity that the amazing sounds Simmons makes embarrass him so much. Grif has long since found the solution to that though: just drive him so crazy that he doesn’t have the thought to spare for embarrassment any longer.
“Grif,” Simmons says, and then he hides behind his hand again as Grif starts to stroke him faster, lost for words. How do you respond to being woken up in the middle of the night by a handjob from your boyfriend, really? He imagines it’d be more than a little disorienting.
Not to mention overwhelming, as if Grif had casually started ravishing him in the middle of a normal conversation. He normally ramps things up a little more slowly than that so he doesn’t give Simmons a heart attack; a few obvious pass overs of his eyes, some idle comments that could be taken a certain way, touches that linger more than they strictly have to. Pushing and teasing at the idea until Simmons is antsy with anticipation, shifting restlessly in his seat coincidentally closer and closer to Grif, complexion slowly reddening, mind clearly gradually sliding into the gutter-- okay, so the teasing might be slightly more for Grif’s benefit than he’d let on. Watching Simmons squirm like that is… good.
This definitely isn’t regular modus operandi for them.
“Sorry,” he says as he grabs Simmons’ hand and pulls it away from his face, “you just looked so tempting I couldn’t control myself. You know how handsy I get.” As if he hadn’t resisted Simmons for over a decade.
Simmons rightfully snorts at that, but then Grif’s kissing him, one of his hands occupied with holding onto Simmons’ wrist, the other one busy with his dick. Simmons reflexively returns it, sinking into the kiss and grinding up into his hand and then Grif’s leaving his mouth to trail kisses along his jawline and throat because god does he want to hear Simmons’ noises.
“You--!” Simmons says in a way that clearly indicates he’s struggling for the brain power to insult him in some way, but then he interrupts himself with an overwhelmed little gasp.
“What?” Grif asks. “You wanted this, didn’t you? Asked for it.” He kisses his throat again, lets Simmons feel his lips curl up into a smirk against his skin.
Simmons moans, softly. Grif’s just started riling him up, though.
“How long have you thought about it?” he asks. “Me, waking you up like this. Before we got together? Before we won the war? Before our ship crashed?”
“Nnnn--”
A full body shudder. Grif’s willing to bet that his toes just curled.
“Did you dream about it?”
“I, I didn’t--” Eyes squeezed shut, face red, panting hot breath hitting the top of his head as he sucks a hickey onto Simmons’ throat in between the questions. He’s such a bad liar, especially when his dick’s getting touched.
“Did you fantasize about it? Jack off to it?” Grif’s gotta admit he’s painting one hell of a picture right now; Simmons with his hand around himself, imagining it’s Grif’s, clothes half off in a disarray. It’s such a nice picture, and going by the fact that Simmons just whimpered and thrust into his hand, he thinks it might just be one that actually happened, which somehow makes it so much better.
“Did you hope it would actually happen, every time we went to sleep in the same room?” he asks, his voice a low rumble by now, caught up in his own words, in the way Simmons’ body responds so strongly to his touches. He’s so responsive, it’s beautiful.
He doesn’t even try to defend himself, to deny it.
Simmons’ free hand is fisted in the collar of Grif’s shirt, and his other one isn’t exactly hanging limply in Grif’s grasp. His entire body’s writhing, twitching, flushed, and Grif can recognize by now when Simmons is close to coming. Can recognize it in the way his voice starts to crack on his groans and pleas, in the way his breath hitches and quickens.
He wants to make Simmons feel good.
“You’re lucky you look so cute when you’ve just woken up,” he says, and then dives into another kiss with Simmons, warm and deep, so they won’t wake up the rest of the base with Simmons’ scream as he comes.
His body goes tense and tight with tension as he climaxes, as Grif strokes him through it, and as he finishes he slumps into a limp puddle in their bed, shivering, overwhelmed and making little helpless noises as Grif slips his hand off of his dick. Slides it up his side, to curl around his back and pull him in close.
Simmons, warm and awake and undeniably alive, satisfied and pressed up against him. This is exactly what he needed. To distract him from--
“Why are you awake?” Simmons asks, a slight slur in his voice from his still pretty recent climax.
“Hmm?” he hums to buy himself time to think, put off balance. This is his first sentence since waking up. Why did it have to be that sentence?
“It’s… three in the morning,” he says, blinking, afterglow quickly being overshadowed by his confusion. Fuck, did he have a clock in that cyborg head of his or something?
“Was just suddenly possessed by an overwhelming urge to jack you off,” he casually says, angling to fluster him enough to stop thinking and being smart at the most inconvenient times.
Simmons gently presses his knee up again his crotch, and it’s abruptly Grif that’s too flustered to properly think.
Simmons’ expression is growing more troubled by the moment. “You’re not even hard.”
What? No. No way, he-- there’s no way he could remain soft with Simmons being hot and adorable and right there underneath his hands. Grif had been enjoying it.
And now Simmons is shying away from him in their bed, looking away, looking way too upset for a guy who should still be basking in his surprise afterglow. “You-- you don’t have to force yourself to do stuff you don’t like just because I--”
Grif watches, frozen, as things abruptly spiral out of control. A moment ago, everything had been perfect, and now Simmons’ voice is cracking with something that isn’t anger or just embarrassment, and oh fuck, are his eyes wet? Oh no, no, no, Grif can’t be the reason Simmons cries.
“No, fuck, it’s not like that,” he rushes to get out before-- before what, he doesn’t know. Before Simmons decides the worst-case-scenario he’s jumped to is fact and everything Grif says is just a comforting lie? Before he cries and tears Grif’s heart to shreds? Before he leaves the bed, leaving him alone for the rest of the night?
A bolt of unreasonable fear runs down his spine at that last one, like that’s the worst one of the bunch. Selfish and stupid.
Grif still reaches out and grasps Simmons’ wrist anyways, to keep him in place. He notices that he’s shaking a little, that he keeps swallowing and-- this must be humiliating for him. Simmons is embarrassed easily, frequently, but he still hates it, it’s still his biggest fear.
“I just…” The words catch in his throat.
He imagines their positions reversed. Simmons, doing something incredibly hot for him out of nowhere, something he asked for and thought he wouldn’t receive, apparently so into it. Finding out afterwards, after he’d exposed himself and let on how much he liked it, after he’d comed, that Simmons hadn’t enjoyed himself at all. Just… a forced obligation, for him. One sided enjoyment that he’d been too stupid to notice.
Grif hates it. He doesn’t want to make Simmons do something he doesn’t want to, even accidentally. It makes him feel selfish and dirty. The entire thing, spoiled.
“I just had a nightmare,” he forces himself to say, for Simmons. “And I wanted to wake you up, but I didn’t want to be weird about it, so I did this. Because you wanted me to and I wanted to, I swear. And, I guess, the nightmare’s still got me kind of messed up, since I’m…” not hard.
Okay, so, this is humiliating. Simmons, I had a bad dream and I needed to wake you up for comfort because I’m not a grown man apparently, I mean I can’t get a boner like one, after all.
But it’s worth it for the way his shaking lessens, for the way he tentatively edges a little closer back towards Grif.
“What was the nightmare about?” he asks, voice quiet and a little hoarse. Not entirely convinced? Concerned? He can’t tell, it’s too dark, the situation’s too-- unusual. Unpredictable.
Grif really doesn’t want to tell him, but maybe it’s time he starts thinking about Simmons’ feelings tonight instead of just his own and how to make himself feel better. Will telling make Simmons feel better though, or will it just make him feel--
“Grif,” Simmons says. He’s been quiet for too long.
“Just,” he says, “corny shit. Everyone on the team dying, you know. Overreacting.”
Simmons doesn’t look reassured, but he’s coming closer again. Talking’s good, then.
“Do you have nightmares like that often?”
He bites his tongue to stop the automatic denials. Should he tell the truth, should he lie, what’s the best thing to do here?
Simmons frowns at him a little, which is better than the expression that he’d been making only moments ago. Frustrated Simmons is familiar, almost fondly so. “Okay, so, you’re taking really long to answer that one, so--”
“It’s not that bad,” Grif interrupts him, realizing that he’s already lost that one. “Just normal bad dreams. This was just an unusually bad one.” Not even a lie, that one. Grif just hopes to god it won’t turn into one of the reoccuring ones.
Simmons looks distinctly unhappy at that answer, and Grif sighs through his nose, pulls him back close and into a hug. Simmons lets it happen.
“Just know that I’m always gonna like fucking you, alright?” he says, because while he may have totaled any chance of this night having a happy resolution, he wants to make sure to banish any traces of doubt of this from Simmons’ mind, at the very least. “I’m not dumb enough,” or mean enough, “to pretend to enjoy something with you. You were hot as hell, as usual, and my dick’s just broken tonight, I guess.”
“... Well, if you can’t get hard right after a nightmare, just wake me up normally next time, okay? I like talking distracting bullshit with you. Any time.”
Grif hadn’t minded getting Simmons off without Simmons being able to return the favor. Watching Simmons unravel was all he needed to feel like the luckiest man alive.
But he supposes he can understand if it makes Simmons feel weird. And he likes talking distracting bullshit with Simmons too, wouldn’t have, couldn’t have, fallen for him otherwise.
“Sounds good,” he says, and closes his eyes and begins his attempt to go back to sleep.
“Please,” Simmons says quietly after a long moment of him lying tense and stiff in Grif’s arms, thinking so loudly Grif has to use every fiber of his focus to pretend to be relaxed. “Please wake me up, if you ever need…”
Grif faux sleepily hums and pretends to fall asleep.
Simmons strokes his hair and doesn’t relax for a long time, because he’s an anxious over thinking mess.
Yeah. Grif isn’t going to wake him up again. This was a mistake.
The stench has permeated the entire base by now, even reaching the ceiling where Grif is trying to hide from corpses that can just stand up and follow him anyways.
“No one seems to have remembered you yet, dirtbag,” the Sarge thing says. Grif doesn’t turn around to look at it, or indicate in any way he heard it. He can’t let it know that he’s lost it enough to tell that it’s there yet. “And I don’t reckon they will.”
Grif continues searching the sky for Pelicans, and he continues not to find them.
Simmons keeps shooting him worried looks the next day. Grif doesn’t call him out on it because he doesn’t want to acknowledge why he’s sending him worried looks (which is that Grif was over dramatic and weird and almost made Simmons cry last night), and instead he just acts normal.
“Where’s Sarge?” he asks Tucker the second he enters the kitchen.
It’s just the two of them in there at the moment, which is mostly normal. Carolina doesn’t feel up to dealing with most of them until later in the day, Wash is usually done with his training by now and is probably slowly and laboriously wrangling Caboose from his bed to the kitchen, Doc has gone missing again, Simmons likes to have his breakfast early, and Donut always pleads requiring his beauty sleep and gets up at, like, eleven in the morning, which is a move that would probably get Grif shot. By a shotgun. Because Sarge is always at the kitchen table by now.
“Uh, I dunno, plotting Blue Team’s downfall or something?”
“He usually does that while he’s eating his morning MRE,” Grif says, giving Sarge’s empty chair a look like it’s personally let him down. Sarge claims to prefer MREs to regular food, which is a horror too eldritch for Grif to be able to seriously consider to be true.
“Why do you care?” Tucker asks, giving him a look like Simmons has been doing all morning, except more weirded out than concerned.
“The trick to properly avoiding someone is knowing exactly where they are at all times.”
“Sounds like a lot of work.”
“Hey, if that’s the price I have to pay to avoid work.”
“Hey, where are you going?” Tucker asks as Grif leaves the kitchen without grabbing anything to eat.
“Back to bed if Sarge isn’t here to notice me gone,” he says.
He doesn’t go back to bed. He slept enough last night, thanks. He just wants to find Sarge and… find out what harebrained scheme he’s cooking up now so he’s better prepared to get out of it. Yeah. And he isn’t worried, just because of a little dream.
He checks Sarge’s bedroom, and he isn’t there. He walks through the hallways, and Sarge’s brutally murdered corpse isn’t to be found in any of them, of course. He isn’t in the living room. He is--
He is in the garage. He’s got his reading glasses on and a penlight in between his teeth like a cigar and tiny delicate tools in his weathered hands, and he’s squinting intently at--
--at one of Lopez’s severed limbs--
(“Lie there and decay.”)
Stop. Stop. Dream Lopez hadn’t even spoken in Spanish, which is stupid. And Lopez is only missing his right arm, probably due to some stupid shit Sarge pulled. He hasn’t been torn limb from limb, and it wouldn’t matter if he actually had been because he’s a robot that seems to basically be immortal anyways.
“What are you staring at, bastard,” Lopez says, because he’s taking Grif’s running hilarious ‘I totally don’t know Spanish’ joke in the most offended way possible. Some people just don’t know how to feel included when they’re finally invited into their first injoke.
It feels so good to hear him speak, in the way he’s supposed to, saying something that isn’t some stupid ominous dream bullshit.
“Hi Lopez, I don’t understand you, as usual.”
Sarge turns around in his seat to look at him. “Grf!” he barks through the penlight. “Why ‘rn’t you at br’kfast?”
“Okay, so you talking with your mouth full does make this a little more bearable, apparently,” Grif says, leaning against the doorway (not with relief). “Just a constructive little note for future dressing downs, sir.”
Sarge glares at him and then throws a wrench at him that misses by a wide margin, and it makes him feel embarrassingly like everything’s okay.
Donut has always been the best one on the team at consistently pushing Grif’s buttons, even if he has no idea whether it’s on purpose or not.
Donut doesn’t say anything to him. It just silently follows him as Grif paces the base, trying to distract himself and failing, trying to avoid the bodies and failing. Has he ever succeeded at something?
He catches it in his peripherals as he takes corners, a pink and black blur. It’s driving him crazy. He could turn around to get a proper look, to really know that it's there, but he’s trying not to let them know just how crazy they’ve already driven him. So he just walks and walks, and it follows and follows, and it’s too quiet and he’s going crazy and--
There’s a window, and in its reflection Grif sees the black, ashy hole in Donut’s head widen, the edges crumbling. The hole is growing. The body is being consumed, eaten, whittled away.
Grif doesn’t let on that he saw.
The next day, Grif skips breakfast again in favor of knocking on Donut’s door.
No answer.
He knocks on it again.
No answer.
Okay, so, first of all, he has to not panic. He just had a bad dream. And Donut’s a heavy sleeper. Panicking is everyone else’s thing, Grif’s the calm one. He’s reasonable. He’s normal. He doesn’t have nightmares so bad it’s the only thing he can think about all day, and he doesn’t bother other people with his drama because he doesn’t have drama. And he isn’t a badass Freelancer who can make up for his broken fucking head with super awesome murder skills; he’s just passable. So, he won’t be broken. And he won’t be high maintenance, because people don’t bother keeping things that aren’t worth the effort.
Grif ends up picking Donut’s lock.
He silently opens the door, and an overpowering smell of vanilla wafts straight into his face. Hadn’t his scented candles been confiscated after the water park incident? Never mind, Grif’s just gonna take a quick peek to shut his brain up and then move on with his day with no one the wiser--
“Grif!” Donut gasps, his face covered by a green mask, before he abruptly makes a desperate dive to hide behind his bed, like a soldier fleeing for cover from unexpected gunfire. “How did you get in here!?”
“Why aren’t you asleep!?” Grif defensively returns.
“It’s nine in the morning, Grif, of course I’m awake!”
“Wait, but--” Grif rapidly blinks, putting the pieces together. “Hang on, do you spend hours making yourself ready every morning?”
“No,” Donut clearly lies.
“Why would you lie about that?” he asks.
“My beauty is entirely natural!”
“... You know what, okay. And you totally just accidentally left your door unlocked, I heard a weird noise and came to investigate. Which, thinking about it, was a terrible idea. Who knows what dark horrors I might have walked in on. You shaving your legs, maybe.”
“I was born baby smooth and I’ll die baby smooth. These gorgeous gams haven’t touched a razor for their entire existence!”
“Sure.”
And Grif closes the door because this is a stupid conversation and it was a stupid idea.
And Donut was too talkative and too loud and too silly as always. Nothing like a-- quiet, stalking specter or whatever. Dumb. Dumb, that the reminder, the reality, the clear contrast is so reassuring.
Finally, the smell of the rot drives him outside of the base entirely. To where he found Simmons.
Simmons doesn’t go inside the base. The others don’t go outside of the base. It’s clearly preferable to deal with the entire rest of the team than Simmons. Simmons is…
Simmons has taken of its helmet. So Grif can see it better. Face paler than it's ever been, ever glowing red cyborg eye dim, organic eye glazed over, tear tracks--
It opens its mouth, and he expects it to talk about rot or how Grif had been resting when everyone had been getting slaughtered.
“Please,” it says.
Grif wants to go back inside, but he can’t move a muscle.
It gets its arms underneath it to lever itself up. The arms creak and crack with every small movement, moving in strange, jerking motions. It stands up and it leaves entrails trailing behind it, organs tumbling out and falling onto the ground, discarded, forgotten, unimportant, not-in-use-any-longer, broken, useless equipment. The idea of it would almost be funny if it weren’t happening right in front of Grif, if it didn’t look so graphic, so real.
It starts walking towards Grif. He wants to run away.
“Please,” it repeats, and it has Simmons’ voice, his face, his everything. Because (it can’t be) it’s Simmons. “Wake me up, if you ever need…”
Where has he heard this before.
“You said you’d wake me up if you needed to,” it says. “You haven’t. You lied.”
Grif speaks without thinking about it, his voice scraping out of his throat and past his lips (and still, he can’t move to escape). “I lie all of the time.”
“Stop it.”
The Simmons thing is continually moving closer, but gradually, it’s steps stiff and slow from rigor mortis unlike the other corpses who move silently and smoothly, like ghosts.
“I can’t.” It’s a part of who he is. Too big a part.
“Stop deflecting,” it corrects, taking another hobbling step closer, and it’s dim eyes suddenly blaze with a fury. Like right before he and Simmons have a bad argument. “You’re being a coward.”
That’s a pretty big part of him too.
“You’re not hiding this to protect me any longer,” it continues. “I already know. And I’m worried. The days are passing, and the nightmares are continuing-- it is a recurring one, by the way--and I notice. I know. You can tell by the way the worried glances aren’t abating, the carefully casual questions--”
It’s so close now the stench of the rot is unbearable. It makes involuntary tears spring to his eyes, bile rise up the back of his throat. Slowly, with an awful wet wrenching sound of sharp splintered bones shreddings through flesh, it puts its arms around Grif in a gruesome parody of a hug. It leans into him, a horribly cold weight.
“--the clinginess,” it finishes. “I’m so worried about you.”
A small, desperate sound escapes him.
“You’re a bad boyfriend, Grif.”
“Grif,” Simmons hisses. “Wake up.”
“What?” he asks, confused and scared and-- what? What?
“You were… having a bad dream,” he says.
Simmons has never noticed and woken him up while he’s had a nightmare before. What, had he been awake and watching him the entire night? Oh god, he so would.
“I heard you,” he goes on.
Grif blinks at that, trying to adjust to the dark, trying to gauge Simmons’ expression. “Heard me?”
Grif doesn’t make noise when he sleeps. That’s how your secret napping places get revealed.
“You, uh, didn’t say anything. Just made a little noise. I’m a light sleeper, so…”
(A small, desperate sound escapes him.)
“Right,” Grif says. “Sorry about that. Maybe I’m coming down with something, goodnight--”
“Are you crying?”
“What?”
They both sound equally surprised. Grif raises a hand to right underneath his eye and-- wetness.
(It makes involuntary tears spring to his eyes.)
… He has to get his subconscious back under control. Lucid dreaming, that’s a real thing right--
“Grif,” Simmons says, and there’s that worried fucking tone to his voice again, reappearing like it’s done so many times in the past week. You failed! the tone says, the concerned crease between his eyebrows says. You’re a shitty boyfriend and best friend and teammate and you’re making Simmons upset over nothing that matters, nothing that you can’t handle on your own. “You--”
(“You said you’d wake me up if you needed to,” it says. “You haven’t. You lied.”)
Simmons is going get mad at him, frustrated with him lying and, and-- they’re going to fight, Grif doesn’t want to fight, he has to stop this. Deflect, distract, de-escelate. He’s good at that. Simmons is going to go along with it. No one wants to have an actual serious conversation about feelings, not unless you’re on Blue Team.
He opens his mouth, scrambles for a joke, and comes up empty. Great, now even his sense of humor is letting him down.
“--are you,” Simmons awkwardly stutters, fumbles, voice cracking, “okay?”
Grif’s shoulders untense. An easy out. Simmons isn’t gonna make him do all of the heavy lifting, no one who’s ever asked him that question has wanted an actual answer. “Yeah. Fine.”
And he moves to turn away--
Simmons’ hand shoots out to grasp his shoulder.
“No,” he says. “Seriously. Grif, I-- I know something’s wrong. You look really tired and you’re crying, and-- that’s okay!” he hurriedly backpedals at Grif’s wince. “Just… please don’t act like I don’t know? Because I do. I’ve noticed. Please don’t try and… lie and act like everything’s okay.” His voice falls to a hush: “We’re not supposed to do that any longer.”
Because they finally got their shit together and told each other that they actually like-- that they’re in love with each other.
He realizes something he probably should’ve a long time ago: telling Simmons that everything’s okay isn’t going to calm him down. He already knows that everything isn’t okay, and pretending otherwise just lets him know that shit isn’t okay and Grif isn’t telling him for some reason. Knowing him, he’s probably twisted it into some bullshit like ‘he doesn’t trust me’ or whatever.
Grif is such an asshole.
“I know, so,” Simmons continues, eyes shining and avoiding Grif’s, “so, you can ask me for help. Since I already know. Okay? You can ask me for help for stuff I don’t know about, though! Oh god, is there stuff I don’t know about? How much?”
Grif should probably stop Simmons before he travels down his anxious what-if road too far. That’s his job.
“Dude,” he says, and hopes the tears aren’t as audible in his voice as they sound like they are to him. “Calm down. I get it. Also I do actually have a secret wife and kids, but I’m handling that just fine, so no worries there.”
Simmons’ face rapidly goes through several expressions, before he finally settles on shoving Grif, face flushed and mouth twisted in a wry fond-despite-himself smile. Grif gives him a shiteating grin.
“But,” Simmons says, “you admit it?”
And he waits for Grif to say it himself. Ugh, fine.
“I might sort of need help sometimes, a little bit,” he reluctantly grants.
“Like?” he asks, leaning in like a moth to the flame, eyes intent and expression focused and interested like this is important to him. “What can I do?”
“... I’ll wake you up sometimes. After I’ve had a nightmare. Just to distract myself.” He tries to bite it back, he really does. It’ll just make things weirder. But, they’re already being awfully way-too-honest, and what’s a little more? And, and he really is, “sorry.”
Simmons blinks at him. “It’s fine, Grif. We’ll just sleep in late the next morning.”
“Like Sarge would allow it.”
And Simmons gives him a little smirk. “Nah, he’d be way too afraid to walk in on us, uh, being intimate.”
“... That’s never stopped him before.”
“Yeah, but only because I haven’t been in the room with you.”
A moment.
“Simmons!” Grif cries, betrayed, and Simmons starts laughing. “Are you telling me you had the secret to letting me sleep in this entire time and you didn’t use it because you wanted to-- do whatever it is you do in the morning?”
“Morning knife practice.”
“I-- I can’t even, god damn it!”
Simmons continues to snicker at him and Grif smiles at him, relieved, his exaggerated outraged expression slipping.
“So if you turn off your alarm on the mornings I’ve kept you up all night with my bullshit,” Simmons makes a slight protesting noise at that, but really, it is bullshit, “do you think there’s a chance of me waking up before you? Sometimes maybe?”
“Uh,” he says, and he really doesn’t seem to know where he’s going with this. “Maybe?”
“So if I haven’t just woken up from a nightmare, you’re fine with me…” Cue suggestive grin and a filthy pass over of his eyes.
And Simmons very visibly gets it. And audibly, considering the choked noise he makes. “Grif!”
“What? I liked it! Fun fact: you squirm way less self consciously when you’re asleep.”
A strangled noise, and Simmons hides against Grif’s shoulder to muffle the sounds of dying from being too flustered.
Yeah. Talking bullshit with Simmons can be distracting enough all on its own. He’s looking forward to that lazy morning, though.