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xadoheandterra · 3 years

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@redvsbluesecretsanta of 2020 for @averagejoey2000

This took longer than I like to have written, but in being perfectly honest writing Grimmons is...not something I’ve had a lot of chance to practice, so it was an exercise in focusing on Red Team. It turned...out interesting. Not really so much as being openly gay/bi. It’s really just a lot of Griff pining with supportive Sarge, but...it IS Grimmons. And uh. It’s more mushy then I usually write. Soft red team and all that. And ah, slice of life is HARD. :/ So slice of canon life? (except not?)

I write angst for a reason. Mushy stuff is...hard. Some angst might’ve crept in, but I tried to keep it light and soft. I hope you enjoy it?

Power and Pine

Griff rolled himself over and stared at the ceiling with a tired sigh. He wondered if Simmons was awake; what time even was it? Half a glance at the alarm clock--and he hated the alarm clock; it went off at ass o'clock in the morning--let him know it was 2am. Griff muffled a groan, well aware that his bunkmate was bound to rip into him if he even so much as woke up the hard-ass. Taylor didn't understand anything except regulations and rules. Hell the fucker made the kiss-ass that was Simmons look like a rebellious teenager! Griff scrubbed his hand over his face and contemplated every utter mistake that had led him to this moment, awake at 2am, in a room with a bunkmate who couldn't care less if Griff lived or died, with Simmons just down the hall but unable to even so much as go and bother the ginger haired young man.

For a moment Griff laid then, thought maybe he could roll over and slip back into slumber and pretend that his bunk was the bunk back at Blood Gulch. For a moment Griff contemplated that chance--and then he quashed it a second later as his eyes slipped closed and he could see the way Sarge sat him down, peppered hair cropped short, face helmet free and pulled down into a grimace. It was the last clear memory of the man that Griff had, set in the mess hall of Blood Gulch, in the aftermath of Agent Texas and Blue Team.

"Son," Sarge said, voice gruff but softer than Griff had heard in recent months. Griff was used to Sarge's more callous nature; the man had gruff, toxic masculinity down to a fucking art form, and while at least eighty-five percent of it was pure bullshit, there'd always been an underlaying slight sadistic glee behind most of the insane stunts Sarge liked to pull. This softer, near kind Sarge had thrown Griff for a loop the first time it happened--after the accident with the puma that had near crushed him--and it no less put Griff off-kilter now. "I want you to listen, and listen well."

"Sir?" Griff had replied, voice pitched slightly with confusion. He was in fatigues instead of armor, safe in Outpost One after the bullshit of the last week. A neutral ceasefire had been called by Church, and agreed to amazingly enough by Sarge, in the aftermath of the dropship and the Freelancer Agents. There would be no shenanigan's or chicanery or anything of the sort in the foreseeable future.

"Command is going to relocate our team," the words were blunt, but they settled into Griff like a lead weight. He knew all about being relocated. First it'd been when the UNSC had deemed him unfit to continue service, and then when his service file had been picked up by Freelancer. He'd been deemed unfit to serve a second time and relegated as worth only a grunt, something to be used as potential canon fodder in training simulations. When he'd been picked for Outpost One on Blood Gulch it seemed like a fucking godsend--until now.

Still, Griff decided to be obviously obtuse because fuck they weren't going to separate them, were they? Despite their ups and many downs, the insane trips and troubles they went through, Sarge had been the best commanding officer Griff had ever had--and a part of that Griff knew came from the fact that the man was a failed out old helljumper. Sarge understood the actual horrors that evolved out of the UNSC as much as Griff did; he knew what being relocated to Freelancer, and then relegated to grunt work, actually meant.

"Are we finally getting an upgrade then?" Griff said, and Sarge gave him this look. The man knew what he was doing, and he wanted none of it. Griff looked away.

"As much as I wish we were getting a damn good retirement package," Sarge said, "that is not the case." His words were blunt, not coated in the typical insanity Griff was used to hearing from the man. "The orders haven't come through yet, but it's looking more like we're going to be split apart."

No, Griff wanted to curse, and he spat something out under his breath, something unfavorable, even as he made his protests clear. Sarge raised a hand.

"I know, son." A pause, then softer, "Dexter." Griff swallowed heavily. "I have a request of you, if you will." For a moment Griff said nothing, and so Sarge barreled on. "I'm going to try and keep you and Simmons together. Lord knows that boy doesn't have a lick of sense if it came and bit him in the ass; he'll need you to keep him out of trouble."

Griff snorted; he'd been doing just that ever since he met the skinny ginger haired menace. Half the shit Griff had gotten up to before coming to Blood Gulch had been trying to keep Simmons' ass out of the line of fire. It was far too pretty to waste the way most troopers in Freelancer went, although Griff could hardly tell Simmons that. He hadn't known the man well enough back then. Now? Well now it was because he knew the guy too well.

"I will, Sarge," Griff said instead. "Do you...have an idea of where they might reassign us to?"

"Not a one," Sarge grumbled. "Now I gotta go and try and talk some sense into that weaselly fuck up at Command. Keep an eye on Simmons while I'm out, y'hear?"

"Aye sir."

Griff muffled a sigh and opened his eyes. Yeah he wasn't getting any more sleep tonight.

"Stocking duty?" Griff drawled as he stepped into the storage room of Rat's Nest, a slight grin curled up under the helmet of his power armor. Visor buried in an open crate to manually count each individual roll of toilet paper, one hand wrapped around the PDA inventory list, Simmons grumbled near unintelligibly. Griff leaned himself against the side of the doorway, hip cocked to the side, as he took in the other. Even with the bulky power armor Simmons' lithe form was a treat to see, especially after a hard day stuck cleaning the mess hall in a base that barely let him feel comfortable.

"Shut up, Griff," Simmons grumbled out, voice tinny behind the helmet.

"You know you can do this in your fatigues, right?" Griff said, and Simmons huffed as he pulled his head out of the box.

"Eighty four," Simmons mumbled absentmindedly and marked something off on the PDA. Then he looked up and Griff could imagine him arching his eyebrow above his remaining organic eye. "I could say the same about you. Why are you in full power armor, Griff? I thought you hated the stuff."

Griff shrugged. He didn't say anything in response; he bet Simmons already knew. It was the same reason Simmons was doing something as simple a inventory management in full power armor, after all. Neither of them felt comfortable in Rats Nest. The the way they had back at Blood Gulch with Sarge at their backs. There they could at least trust that the bullet in the back or the explosion off to the side was not truly malicious in nature. Here all they could do was wait for the other shoe to drop. For a moment neither of them said anything, then Simmons turned his head back toward the box which he tugged closed and slipped back onto the shelf.

"Have you heard from Sarge?" Simmons asked. The bitterness that once coated his voice those first few days at Rats Nest were long gone now; Griff had worked hard to get the ginger to accept that Sarge contacted him and not Simmons because it was easier and not due to any failing on Simmons part. After all Kaikaina was allowed to contact Griff since they were siblings. It was through her that Sarge contacted Griff; Rats Nest at least could care less what Griff's sister had to say aside from laughing about what recent drama she'd written about.

They never noticed that over half of the nonsense Kai sent him was just that, nonsense. Griff doubted his little sister was honestly throwing illegal rave parties and orgies in Blood Gulch, or that she was dragging Sarge into that mess by his own damn pubes, forcing pot brownies onto him to get him to chill. Kai got up to some ridiculous shit, yeah, but she knew how to bullshit even better. Griff had taught her everything he knew, after all, before he'd been drafted by the UNSC.

"Nothing new," Griff said instead. "He's been left to do as he will in Blood Gulch. I think Command finally gave up on relocating him as long as Kai's there after the mess he made of the last dropship."

Griff and Simmons had quietly had a laugh about the dropship that had 'mysteriously' crashed while attempting to transport Sarge to his next assignment. The old fucker had survived thanks to not actually being on the dropship at the time. Kai'd laughed her ass silly in the message, words peppered with loud booming rave music that drove any eavesdroppers away from the video.

"What about Donut?" Simmons asked, even as he pulled out another box.

"Some sort of diplomatic mission, it sounded like?" Griff shrugged. "I don't know how he swung that. UNSC doesn't like to touch us troopers for anything." It wasn't a lie; any trooper in Freelancer was a trooper because they weren't worth the hassle in the regular outfit. They were misfits, drop outs, failures of all kinds. Either they weren't fit for actual live combat, or had some other glaring red flag in their file. In Griff's case he knew it was the raging depression and suicidal tendencies that came from being the sole survivor of his unit.

In Sarge's case it'd been the PTSD of his helljumper days. Too good to really let go, too fucked up to keep on the payroll.

Griff couldn't parse where Donut fell on the spectrum of trooper bullshit. The man was a damn good grenadier; good enough to fuck up a Freelancer Agent. How he hadn't been snapped back up by UNSC before now Griff didn't understand. Maybe it was the fact that Donut was a walking, talking lawsuit waiting to happen. He spat out innuendo like it was going out of style--every other word from that man's mouth as filthy as one could get.

"Huh," Simmons muttered. "I thought he'd be shot by now."

"You know, me too." They lapsed into a period of silence. Griff watched Simmons move; he wondered if he could get the other out of power armor for a little a while. They both needed a damn good few moments of R'n'R between the two of them. A chance to destress from being so on alert here in Rats Nest could only do them both a world of good.

Maybe, also, Griff missed seeing Simmons face. The freckles that coated pale cheeks, or the way the mess of red curls went every which way. Hell even the metal graft that surrounded the artificial eye was a sight Griff hadn't seen in far too long. Some days he could catch a glimpse of Simmons, if he looked in the mirror and stared at the left side of his face--the place where Sarge had grafted pale skin and implanted one lone blue eye to replace the crushed and damaged brown one. Sometimes, alone in the wash room, he'd stare into the mirror with that one eye and imagine it was Simmons who stared back at him, who drank in the scars that melded the skin graft to his face, how it blended into the parts of his skin that were caused by vitiligo that he'd once been embarrassed about.

With a sigh Giff shook his head and straightened from the doorway. He came in for a mop and bucket, not to get distracted by Simmons. The base commander was bound to give him another stern talking to at this rate, for being so slow in such a simple task. He couldn't help it, though. Simmons was the only thing that felt even the slightest bit like home these days.

"Mops and buckets?" Griff said, instead of uttering any of his thoughts.

"Back left corner," Simmons replied, distracted by the task of counting inventory. Griff's comment of thanks went unacknowledged. They both returned to work without anything else said between them.

One moment they were in Rats Nest, uncomfortable and unwelcome. The next life turned into a whirlwind adventure that Griff didn't know how to name, with the crazy insanity that came from Blue Team and the AI that they tried to pass off as a human. The drama was something they could practically drown in, and really Griff could do without all the crotch shots from the other AI that had single handedly put them out on their ass. And of course Blue Team got themselves their own crazy Freelancer in the midst of it all, as if the first one hadn't been bad enough. Some days Griff wanted to bash his head into the wall and never wake up.

"Hey Griff have you seen Lopez around anywhere?" Simmons came up from behind him and it took Griff all of his willpower not to jump. His heart rate skyrocketed either way and he clutched at his chest, bare of the power armor because they were safe here even if here was full of insane would-be retiree's who didn't know the meaning of safety if it bit them in the ass. Yet Griff loved it, somehow, even that mad cow Caboose could be a riot when he really got going.

"Have you been practicing being a ninja?" Griff said as he turned around, and then felt his throat close up from another emotion. Simmons had his hair actually down. It wasn't regulation length anymore; he'd let it grow longer and Griff knew that but he hadn't actually seen Simmons with his hair in anything but tied up and out of the way. Today he apparently chose to let his hair hang loose about his shoulders, held back lightly with a tie that did nothing to stop the racing of Griff's heart.

"Griff?" Simmons asked, and waved a hand across Griff's vision. It snapped Griff back to reality and he wondered how long he stared at Simmons. "You okay?" Simmons looked at him, concerned. His eye was wide and so blue that Griff had to shake himself for a moment to get his heartrate under control and to just breathe.

"Yeah, I'm fine," the words came out more squeaked, but could you blame him? He hadn't seen Simmons this relaxed in what felt like years. Was that a smudge of oil across the man's cheek? Heaven have mercy. "Just...ate something bad, I think."

Simmons frowned and reached a hand up to feel against Griff's forehead, to which Griff fought back the urge to stare.

"Hm, a little warm. You should rest. I'll ask Sarge about soup for tonight," Simmons said.

"I'm fine," Griff grumbled. "I don't need Sarge's damn stew. Really, Simmons." Simmons lips quirked up into a little smirk and Griff had to look away.

"I'll tell him you want seconds, then," Simmons said, like a devil, and turned around and left the room. Griff stared after him, mouth agape for a second. He wasn't ashamed to admit his voice hit a pitch that was embarrassing in retrospect, but really. No one could stomach Sarge's stew, and Simmons knew that. By the time Griff got out into the hall, Simmons was long gone.

Griff was not ashamed to admit he whimpered just the slightest bit. Sarge was going to murder him.

Chaos defined their life for what seemed like years, leading all up to this very moment--this place in time. Griff scrubbed his hand along his face as he stared down at his naked lap, the haze of the past twenty-four hours finally washed away with something like regret and longing that curdled in his gut. He couldn't look at Simmons, because somehow despite the years working together and secretly pining after a face he couldn't name Simmons was still Simmons. He was Richard, or Dick, even though he could've been. Just the same Griff wasn't Dex or Dexter even though Simmons ought to know his name now with how often Kai screamed it at him either in rage or out of sheer whining because Griff refused to pay attention to her.

The only other person who used his name was Sarge, but even then it was for rare occasions when the man grew soft enough to speak it. Typically it was son if he was being affectionate, Griff if he was being authoritative, but oh so rarely was he Dexter. Griff swallowed heavily and forced himself to look over to Simmons, who leaned against overturned boxes and breathed heavily, a still somewhat dazed look across his face like he couldn't believe what just happened. Honestly neither could Griff if he were honest. What kind of hell planet had they landed on to have something like this among the civil war insanity?

"Simmons?" Griff said, and when that didn't garner a response he uttered, "Uh. Hey. Dick?"

Simmons wrinkled his nose a little at the nickname, rolled his eyes, and sat himself up with slow carefulness. He didn't say anything at first, and Griff wondered if he should just offer the out, let the man breathe and not have to worry about his sanity or his sexuality or whatever ran through Simmons mind like a herd of cats. Griff imagined what would happen if he did so--he could see how it would play out. They wouldn't talk about it. It'd become a shameful thing, hidden, secretive--and then Griff would be alone. Like always. Maybe he'd go insane. Maybe he'd jump off that deep pool of his barely clung to sanity and just turn into--into something unnamable as life churned out more crazier and crazier stunts raised to attention by Blue Team and how everyone he cared about was just dragged along for the ride.

"I wonder if Kimball knows how that system functioned," Griff heard Simmons mumble, half to himself, and felt his heart jam up in his throat. "Some sort of pheromone maybe? Like a roofie or--"

Griff choked on his spit, and then said quickly, "Dick!" to which Simmons snapped his head in Griff's direction, face flushed red even as he mumbled analytical scientific nonsense under his breath. The words paused at the name, though, which Griff hoped was a good sign until he realized Simmons had his nose scrunched up.

"Don't call me that," Simmons said shortly.

"Okay Richard--"

Simmons looked away and muttered a short, "Don't--you just--it was just--"

Griff swallowed his fear, reached out, and grabbed Simmons by the hand. "It's not...pheromones. Or whatever." Simmons stilled and Griff found within himself the courage to forage on. "I didn't--it wasn't because of whatever that misty shit was, Richard." Simmons looked at him, stared at him with a stiff spine out of the corner of his eye, cheeks as red as his hair. "You--you get that, right?"

A second, a beat, then softer, "What are you saying?"

Griff clenched his hand around Simmons and said, "I'm saying I like you."

Simmons laughed, a bit tinged hysterical. He uttered a short and sharp, "Of course you like me that's how pheromone--"

"I love you."

Silence. Griff breathed out, slowly, and took the chance to barrel on while Simmons froze and stared at him with a face that said something that Griff didn't want to interpret in case he was wrong. "I've loved you for a while honestly. I just didn't want to screw everything up when we were at Blood Gulch and you'd given me your organs. Or when we were at Rats Nest and uncomfortable with things. Then when we got to Valhalla you seemed to finally relax and I couldn't just--I couldn't break that so--I mean this didn't happen from nowhere I'm not some animal. I love you and--and yeah maybe I would've liked to tell you someway other than--I mean the mist was weird but it didn't--"

Soft, plaintive, Simmons said, "You love me?" like he couldn't believe it. Griff ducked his head. He felt like a fifteen year old school girl even as he nodded, cheeks flushed out of his own embarrassment that he just blurted things out like that. "But--"

"Is that ok?" Griff said, and he was afraid at how vulnerable he sounded.

"I--Sarge--" Simmons spluttered, eyes wide. Griff snorted. He could figure what Simmons meant; the man looked up to Sarge like a father.

"Pretty sure Sarge knows," Griff grumbled. The man did keep telling him to man up, and he wasn't subtle with all of his teen girl magazines that he tossed into Griff's face when they were alone.

"And he hasn't shot you?" Simmons hissed, surprised. Griff jerked back, equally surprised by the terror in Simmons' face. Not for the first time he wondered just where Simmons came from, how he got into the Simulation Troopers, to result in sheer terror over--what? Sexual attraction?

"No?" Griff said, voice cautious. "Why would he?"

Simmons looked around, and then hissed, "Because your gay?" and Griff jerked back.

"Bi, actually," Griff said, words shorter. He wondered if he read Simmons wrong. "And so's Sarge. I mean he's got one helluva crush on Master Chief, and then another on those old vids of some chic called Lady Gaga." Simmons jerked back, surprised. "But then you know that because he doesn't ever really shut up about it. Right?"

Simmons looked caught out, surprised. "He's...not making jokes?" Simmons said, a little more hesitant, a little more like the Simmons Griff knew. "It's not a 'man crush' thing?"

Griff let go of Simmons hand and scrubbed a hand down his face. He said softly, "No, it's not. You--you thought he was joking?"

Silence, and then a moment later Simmons asked, "Uhm. Can you--can you call me Rich?" Griff found himself smiling.

"Sure. And it's Dex," Griff said. "Dexter if your Sarge, or mad at me." He reached out, touched Simmons face, and leaned in to give him a kiss then paused. "This ok?"

Simmons blinked, murmured, "Yeah. It's ok."

They spent a few more hours in the closet together.

Two days post the mess of mist-inducing sex on the planet Chorus Sarge walked up to Simmons and Griff and patted them both on the back. He addressed Griff first with a sharp, "Attaboy. About time," and then turned to Simmons and said. "Let me know if he mistreats you son," and then without a word sauntered off with a pep in his step. Griff blinked after him.

"Damn," Griff mumbled, "Sarge got some." Simmons let out a hysterical half sort of laugh like he couldn't believe what Griff said, but Griff knew Simmons caught it just the same. "Wonder who?"

A few minutes later a cheerfully humming Emily Gray danced her way down the hall, dressed in civvies, and Griff and Simmons exchanged a glance. They promptly decided they did not want to know who. It's not like it mattered anyway.

#redvsbluesecretsanta #rvbsecretsanta #rvb secret santa 2020 #grimmons #pining #soft red team #sort of slice of life #slice of life is hard #fic: power and pine #fic: gift fic

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