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buskidsburgade · 8 years ago

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Stand in the Rain

A/N: Skimmons, brotp or otp you can pick. Three times Jemma has a panic attack after the pod. Trigger warnings for panic attacks and ptsd.

~1900 words

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Her breath comes in sharp, wheezing pants that echo like the clatter of needles against the pristinely white bathroom tiles. High-pitched, uneven, searing in her collapsing chest. The metal shower knobs bite into her palms. They’re turned all the way off, but she feels that if she lets them go, the deluge would crash down on her again.

Jemma doesn’t know how long she’s been curled up on the damp, squishy shower mat. Long enough for her hair to dry in matted clumps that stick to her shoulders, for streaks of soap to crust over in sticky stripes down her arms. She scrambles for purchase, but there is nothing in this room to hold onto. White walls, white sink, white porcelain. Rough blue towels from Walmart, off-brand toothpaste, no pictures, no texts waiting on her phone for her, nothing personal.

She drags in another gulp of air that doesn’t seem to hold any oxygen. It’s water in her lungs, in her mouth. She’s drowning again, she is always drowning, why can’t she stop drowning?

What if Hydra found her out? What if they burst in and find her like this and this is how she dies? Drowning in an empty tub, too afraid to make it through a shower. Her chest is so tight and her stomach churns and her pulse roars in her ears like the surf, like wind as she falls, like –

There are footsteps in the apartment above hers. Someone laughs in the stairwell on the other side of the wall. A door rattles open down the hall. But her door is locked, and the bathroom door is locked, and nobody knows she’s here. Nobody’s coming unless it’s with bullets raining, and she has to keep holding back the deluge or she will drown.

She has to keep reminding herself that it’s over. That Agent Morse – Bobbi – saved her, and H.Y.D.R.A. is not going to murder her in her sleep. Probably. And yet, it doesn’t feel over. It doesn’t feel like she’s home. It doesn’t feel like she’s safe.

If she closes her eyes, though, sometimes she will catch familiar scents and know a moment of peace. Skye’s shampoo. Trip’s favorite take-out. The polish Coulson used on Lola. May still buys the same lilac dish soap, and Jemma is concentrating on that and not the sound of water streaming from the faucet as she rinses the mug of tea Fitz hadn’t drunk.

She inhales the scent of lilacs and tries to block out the sound of Trip and Mack and Hunter hooting over video games in the rec room. Trip caught her eye as she lingered in the doorway, trying to find her bearings in this strange place with these strange people. He’d gestured for her to join, but she’d glanced at Mack and shook her head, offering a smile that stretched too tight as she’d retreated down the hall.

She breathes out and pretends not to notice the way Skye skirts around her, grabbing a bowl and a box of cereal and the milk carton and going somewhere else to eat instead of staying in the tiny kitchen with her.

She breathed in and tries to wash Fitz’s voice, demanding an explanation for her disappearance, from her thoughts. Tries to wash away Mack’s hard words, looming height, cutting eyes, turning himself into a human shield in defense of her best friend. Against her.

She breathes out and thinks of Coulson’s hand on her shoulder and May’s relieved eyes and Bobbi standing between her and one of her worst nightmares come to life.

But the water is so loud.

Jemma slams the faucet handle down. The tinny patter of water against the metal basin stops abruptly. She presses the handle down with all her might, leaning into the sink, letting her forearm resting on the lip of the counter bear all her weight. She tries to get a hold on her stuttering breath, tries not to let it echo in the kitchen as it comes high and jagged.

There’s nothing in this room to hold onto. It’s cold and dark and unfamiliar. The mug slips from her fingers and cracks in the sink. She closes her eyes and tries to slow her hammering heart, but everything is spinning. The boys are whooping down the hall and Skye’s loud, boundless laughter reached her from somewhere and there is the ever-present hum of an active base that comes from all around, but no one’s coming . There’s not enough air in her lungs to scream even if she wants to.

Gunshots from the video game ricochet around the kitchen and she feels the whiz of Hydra bullets inches from her cheeks. Their eyes, hungry like wolves, bore into her, their smiles dripping blood. Their stained hands touching her shoulders, her arms, the small of her back. No, this alloy will hold up better … that chemical compound won’t work…I’d like to think I’m on your side . How much damage have her words done by now? How bloody are her lips?

She presses down harder on the handle, but the rushing still fills her ears, and Donnie Gill’s body is crashing into the water and he’s drowning and she can’t breathe.

III

She should have thought about it but she didn’t. Should have checked the weather. Noticed the pearly gray of the overcast sky. Made an excuse not to go, not risk putting herself here in this position. But she’d been too caught up in the mission, in what she was supposed to do, in what good could come out of her time at Hydra.

She doesn’t think about it until the first raindrop hits her face. Sharp and cold. An electric shock.

She’s kneeling in an alley, waiting for their Hydra target to appear, flash bomb in hand, ready for a drop of the right substance to set it off. Waiting until she sees his face. Skye and Trip and Hunter are in her ears, talking about the mark, talking about the mission. Trip says something and Skye laughs and she doesn’t follow because little shining droplets have started dappling the cement around her and the soft patter is all she can hear.

Her breath snags in her chest.

It’s just rain .

She forces her grip to ease on the delicate glass tube in her fist.

It’s just rain .

Rivulets trickle down her scalp like icy fingers.

It’s not just rain. The sky is bursting open, dropping cubic tons of water on top of them. The air is thick with moisture in her throat. Her heart is pounding hard and she would like to run, to seek shelter, to pull the covers over her head like she did in her hydra apartment the few times thunder rattled the windows, but the weight of all that water pins her where she kneels in the alley.

“Simmons, that our guy?” Hunter’s asking, and she tries to see, tries to squint into the storm, but all that’s there are sheets and sheets of water.

“Simmons?” Trip’s voice and she can’t answer, can’t pry words from her lips for him.

“Simmons, report,” Skye, anxious, concerned.

She can tell them nothing. Cannot ask for help. Cannot wave off their worry. Doesn’t know which she’d do anyway.

“Fuck, it is him - could really use that bomb right about now,” Hunter, breathless, probably leaping into combat.

It wouldn’t work well with the moisture even if she could see which way to throw it. She presses her back to the cold brick wall and drags in breath after breath, listens to the sounds of fighting and the others’ voices, all slowly drowned out by the rush of the rain.

There is nothing to hold onto. Nothing to stop the flood. She’s going to drown here.

Her skin has gone numb from the cold and possibly the hyperventilation when movement catches her eye. She doesn’t turn to look, can’t actually respond at all, but she sees the shape of a person emerging from the mist. And then suddenly Skye is kneeling in front of her, biting her lip anxiously.

“Jemma? Hey, can you hear me?”

Her voice comes from a long way away, but Jemma can hear it. She just can’t say so.

Skye slips her icy fingers into Jemma’s. “You don’t have to say anything, just try to squeeze my fingers if you can hear me, okay?”

Jemma tries. She really does. But it’s like the tether between her brain and body has been cut. She can’t even twitch a finger.

“Okay,” Skye says again, rubs her hands up and down Jemma’s arms as though she’s trying to warm her up. “Okay. It’s gonna be okay, alright? It’s gonna be fine.”

She pulls off her leather jacket and leans forward so she can tent it over both of them. Their faces are inches apart and the water has stopped hitting Jemma’s face and she can feel Skye’s warm breath mingling with her own and this is something to hold onto.

And eventually Jemma starts to thaw. Can move, first just to rub her thumb over the pads of her fingers, then enough to squeeze Skye’s knee, and somehow they stand up, and make it into a coffee shop down the block and the rain still coming down but in the back they can’t hear it over the soft rock and the sound of orders being called and she can take her first real breath in who knows how long.

“Dark Cloud says it’ll let up in ten minutes,” Skye reports. Her jacket is over Jemma’s shoulders and somehow there is a steaming cup of tea pressed between Jemma’s palms. She flips her phone around so Jemma can read the radar herself, see the proof that it’s not going to last forever. “The boys are gonna pick us up once it clears up.”

Jemma nods, tries a sip of the tea, blows out a shaky breath. Her stomach is still tight and her chest is still buzzing, but she can move and she keeps moving to remind herself. Drums her fingers on the cup, scrapes the toe of her shoe over the tile floor, jiggles a knee under the table. The clouds are going to pass and they are not going to drown.

Skye’s watching her. She leans forward, her face like she is going to say something, but then she changes her mind and looks over Jemma’s shoulder at the pastry shelf, leans back again, fidgets with hem of her soaked shirt, then the sugar packets.

“Look,” she says finally, splaying her hands on the table between them. “We don’t have to talk about this here - now - if you don’t want to but… has this… happened before?”

Heat rises to Jemma’s cheeks and her insides squirm and she doesn’t want to do this. But it has been so painfully painfully lonely, and here Skye is offering her a hand, a way out of the isolation of her own head and - she nods, can’t help but nod. Her cheeks burn and she stares down at the top of her cup, and she is probably going to regret that, regret admitting what a mess she’s become -

Skye reaches across the table to pry one of Jemma’s hands loose and her grip is warm and tight.

“We’re gonna work on that,” she says, promises, and Jemma grips her hand back and holds onto that.

#aosficnet2 #buskidsnet #misformarch #skimmons brotp or otp #Christa is a writer sometimes #brotp: bad girl shenanigans

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