#there wasn’t any promise of grimmons. everyone just made that up

[leonardalphachurch]

i know this is the found family fandom but honestly. we’ve always been a fan of groups growing up and moving past each other. like i think the ending was a little stupid bc simmons is just… in blood gulch now? the leader of an empty base??? but uh. the idea of grif going home and simmons staying in the army. yeah. like yeah. that’s probably how we would’ve written it too.

[renaroo]

Expecting the Best

Disclaimer: Red vs Blue and related characters are the property of Rooster Teeth. Pairings: Grimmons Warnings: Language, Canon-typical violence Rating: T Synopsis: [Reverse Big Bang Entry!] Grif and Simmons prepare for an award ceremony for themselves and the rest of the Reds and Blues, but those pesky expectations keep getting in the way.

A/N: An entry in on the wire! My apologies everyone, but I was having an absolute blast with this entry which I got to do with the amazingly talented @st-franz! And what better to add to the fandom at large than some Grimmons goodness?

Maybe he should have expected a little more.

As a mandate of sorts, Dexter Grif did not allow himself to carry many expectations. He hadn’t bothered to have any for himself, and he certainly hadn’t held any for the people around him. The day he was shipped out to Blood Gulch and was cementing his time with Red Team, that nonexistent bar had been perfectly place.

If he’d raised the bar, he was pretty sure they were readying to trip over it.

So Grif didn’t set expectations, didn’t raise himself to them, and he definitely didn’t exude confidence in them of any sort. Yet, when he looked in the mirror, and he wondered about whether or not there was enough of that monkey grease hair gel Donut had given him, if he’d be able to drop the look of utter shock from his face before he went out there and made an ass of all of them.

Probably not. He probably didn’t have it in him to be unsurprised anymore. Not even after negotiations and settlements and all sorts of other legal jargon that was being thrown their way before the day had come.

They were free.

And as a draftee, Grif meant that on all accounts.

Free of expectations, free of responsibilities, free of active duty, free of…

Free of duty.

It sounded so fake, even bouncing around inside his own skull. The more Grif looked at his war scarred face, the heavy bags under his eyes, and the mess that his hair was even as he smoothed it down with the gross monkey grease again and again. It wasn’t the face that had been drafted into a backwards, stalemated war. It wasn’t even the face that had stumbled into saving the humanity that was left after the Covenant was brought to a daw.

It was…

It was just him, looking like he had never expected the day to come where he was wearing stripes on his uniform.

In truth… he didn’t even know what the stripes meant.

Giving up on calming down his hair, Grif reached up to his uniform and felt over the stripes with his fingers, pressing hard so that the cool curves of the metal could be imprinted on his fingertips.

Recognition had never been a driving force for Grif. He wasn’t looking in life for promotions or handouts or anything. Again, those were expectations. Grif had none.

But there was something… strangely warm about the feeling he got looking at those stripes. There was something nice about knowing that in a few hours he would be standing in front of all the people in the galaxy who mattered, and a lot more who, to him, didn’t, getting ready to recognize those long ago earned markings.

If he was a sentimental man, which Grif really didn’t want to be, he might have had something profound in his mind at all that.

A speech? A toast?

Dexter Grif was a simple man, though, so instead of profundity or nonexistent resolution in his spirits, he waited until the bathroom door opened and he turned around to face his partner in crime and point at his stripes.

“Fucking finally, am I right?” he said sardonically.

Simmons — because of course it was going to be Simmons — stopped short and raised his eyebrows at Grif’s statement. But the surprise was momentary and he quickly returned to a near stoicism.

A near stoicism with an additional presence of sass.

“Do you mean finally I’m done taking up space in the bathroom or do you mean finally someone’s going to make me leave because I’ve been hogging up the bathroom?” Simmons asked dryly. He then moved forward, lightly pushing Grif out of the way as he got to the mirror. “Seriously, what’re you even doing in here? Putting your head in the sink? Your hair’s soaking wet!”

“It’s — no,” Grif scoffed at the very idea. “You know I don’t wash my hair before big events. It’ll just make it easier for sweat.”

“Which I still tell you is not how human bodies work, but go on,” Simmons replied, straightening his already pristine lines of a uniform.

it was only a few steps from infuriating how used to Simmonsisms that Grif was, he didn’t even bother to make fun of the uniform business.

“Seriously, Simmons, my hair’s not wet. It’s this stupid hair moose that Donut gave to me! It won’t keep my hair down no matter how much I add to it!” Grif explained, irritably running a hand through the slick but still distinctively standing hair. “Believe it or not, I actually don’t want to be a complete jackass at this event tonight.”

“Tonight? It’s in two hours,” Simmons scoffed. He then turned and looked at Grif, really looking at him. “Wait… are you nervous?”

“Pfft, no,” Grif said rotating his wrist candidly. “I’m the complete opposite of being nervous. I’m…  bored. Everything about award ceremonies are boring.”

Simmons squinted at him. “Then you admit that the ending to A New Hope is boring and not as good as Empire?” he asked pointedly.

Scandalized, Grif put a hand over his chest and shook his head. “Did you hear me say that? No. Of course you didn’t hear me say that because saying that would be complete bullshit and against everything I’ve ever stood for as a soldier.”

“I’ve never seen you stand for anything,” Simmons needled further, a sly smirk growing at the corners of his mouth. He was definitely enjoying riling Grif up.

What a fucker.

“No, that award ceremony was great and you’re never going to ruin it for me,” Grif said firmly. “But everything is great with Star Wars and everything is crap in real life. So I can totally argue that this thing tonight—“

“In two hours.”

“—is boringly dead on arrival.” Crossing his arms, Grif glanced around Simmons, looking for anything to freshen him up or otherwise explain why he was in the bathroom but coming up with nothing. “Simmons, what’re you even doing here?”

“Besides moving you along for the sake of everyone who wants this thing to run smoothly and us to get discharged without further complaint from the UNSC?” Simmons asked sarcastically. He paused, eyes rolling up in thought, then he shrugged. “Actually, no, that’s pretty much it. Why?”

“Because I don’t see any confetti on you,” Grif replied in equal sarcasm.

Simmons’ brows knitted together. “Confetti? Grif, what the hell are you going on about?”

Letting out a fake gasp, Grif leaned back and away from Simmons in feigned horror. “Why, Simmons! Surely you’re not serious! You forgot the confetti?”

Though Simmons’ face put on a good front — all scowly and unimpressed — the red tinge to his ears and the general way he seemed to grow tense was giving Grif an entirely different story. “What confetti? You’re not making any sense!”

“Wow, Simmons, this really isn’t like you,” Grif continued to joke. “Don’t you remember? Back in the day, Sarge promised after the war was over I’d be a big war hero! Sarge’s going to drive the float, and you’re in charge of confetti!”

For a moment, Simmons seemed to doubt the entire structure of the universe as he knew it, but he quickly snapped back with, “You’re not a big war hero!”

“Uh, I did save you and everyone else a little big ago, or did you forget?” Grif pressed.

“You mean how you saved us after abandoning us on a mission to save the world?” Simmons asked. “Which was the only reason you weren’t captured alongside us?”

There was a twinge of guilt that Grif couldn’t help but flinch back from when he heard it, but he was then determined to see through the charade just for the accusation. True as it might’ve been in some people’s perspectives.

“Uh, yeah. What else would have made me a hero of this story?” he asked. “Seriously, Simmons, I’m going to be pretty disappointed if there’s not any confetti at this thing tonight.”

“It’s not tonight, it’s in two hours!” Simmons cried out.

“Well, then. You better get moving on that then,” Grif shrugged in return.

He might’ve been going a little too harsh, but Simmons more than anyone should have known about Grif that pushing him into a corner did not yield any expected results. So he shouldn’t have been too surprised to open his eyes and see the swinging of the bathroom door as Simmons headed out in a hurry.

“He… wouldn’t really be getting confetti…” Grif tried to reason with himself. He then snorted at the ridiculousness and shrugged. “Nah, Simmons knows me better than that.”

No one knew him as well as Simmons, and it didn’t exactly take knowing Grif well to know that he wasn’t a man who carried many expectations with him.

If Simmons had to narrow down all of his problems to a single entity, it would probably be overwhelming expectations.

It was something that he had been struggling with before he was even able to put it into terms. And it was something that was putting a stranglehold on him in that moment. But with an hour left before the big award ceremony that was supposed to put some relief to his gnawing feelings of anticipation and claustrophobia, he was in the passenger seat of a car with Agent Washington behind the wheel, taking him to the nearest supermarket.

Man, he hoped there was a confetti aisle in supermarkets.

“Can we move any faster through this traffic?” Simmons half whined, looking to Washington as the man simply stared ahead almost lazily.

“Yeah, let me turn on the propulsion system so this car can fly us above the traffic and take us to the local H-E-B,” Washington answered without even glancing toward Simmons.

Blinking in wide eyed surprise, Simmons tilted his head. “These models can do that?” he asked, his brain already working out the schematics for the vehicle they were in which could account for those additional systems and what mechanism would be responsible for making the transformation.

Washington’s eyes squinted slightly and he actually glanced Simmons’ way before refocusing on the road and traffic ahead. “This is a minivan. No.”

Despite his immediate disappointment, Simmons tried to keep himself from shrinking back into his seat and instead crossed his arms in aggravation. “Right, I didn’t think so. Really, I was testing you. I knew that… well, statistically, most minivans aren’t going to be awesome James Bond cars. Because most of them are Aston Martins and not… Nissans? This is a Nissan right?”  Listing off car things was about the most stereotypical bro thing Simmons could manage to make himself do, and there was no denying that Agent Washington was totally going to respect the amount of faux bro that Simmons could pull off.

Or, at least, in Simmons’ ideal scenario that was the case.

Instead, reality served him with a bored looking former special operations agent driving a minivan with an unnatural amount of concentration on the road ahead of them.

“I’ll be honest, I don’t really know that much about cars,” Washington said almost thoughtfully.

Simmons then allowed himself to sink back into his carseat and look at the unending traffic ahead. A high pitched groan came from him almost accidentally as he saw what little progress they had made. “Do you know enough about cars to make them go faster?”  he asked irritably.

“I know enough to obey the law,” Wash answered. “If you wanted a maniac behind the wheel, I seem to recall Carolina offering to drive you to the supermarket instead. You know. The person who got us a speeding ticket on the way to the auditorium.”

“I said faster, not deader,” Simmons argued, shifting in his seat. “Ugh, we only have fifty-five minutes.”

“Probably should have thought about that before you started demanding someone take you to the supermarket for…” Washington paused thoughtfully before glancing back to Simmons curiously. “Sorry, what are we going to the supermarket for again?”

“Confetti,” Simmons answered flatly.

Washington was already looking at the road again, nodding a bit to Simmons’ words probably before even fully hearing them. Then, as the words really made their impact, his brows furrowed and a frown teased at the corners of his mouth.

After a few sideways glances toward Simmons, Washington surprisingly put on the turn signal and began to pull off the road just as Simmons could utter any objections.

“What— Washington! We’re not at the store yet, and unless gravel is a substitute for non recyclable and incredibly wasteful plastics, I can’t imagine why we’d be getting confetti from the side of the road!” Simmons shouted at a tone that was high pitched even by his own ears. Which, of course, was truly saying something.

“I have learned to let a lot of truly strange and unusual tendencies from you guys fly over the years, usually against my better judgment,” Washington answered as he changed the gear into park. “But sometimes I get the good sense to question something that is unusual even for you guys and usually when that happens, I either listen to it or we end up getting shot by someone we stupidly trusted. The latter happens too much, so I’m going to question this time around.” He tilted his head slightly, looking at Simmons expectantly — as if expectation was the ingredient Simmons’ life needed added to its misery stew. “Simmons, why are we going to a store to get you confetti? And why can’t it wait until after the award ceremony that will try to make the past few years of ridiculousness mean something to our permanent records?”

Simmons blinked a few times in surprise. “Well, when you put it that way it sounds like no amount of confetti could really be enough to ;put some semblance of reason behind what we’ve been doing for, like, fifteen years now.”

“You see my confusion then,” Wash replied with a wave of his hand. “Seriously, though, what’s going on?”

“It’s…” Simmons trailed off before pinching the bridge of his nose and letting out a long, heralding sigh. “Okay, you know how most of what we do doesn’t make any sense on Red Team but holds us to some loose interpretation of logic because of dumb conversations we’ve had?”

“Sure,” Washington said, apparently wanting to move past that point more than anything else.

“It’s one of those,” Simmons tried for subtly.

“Confetti has to do with some conversation you had ages ago that Red Team now wants to uphold,” Washington clarified.

“Not all of Red Team,” Simmons answered, feeling his face heat up for reasons utterly beyond him.

Washington kept staring at him for a good few minutes before he leaned back and began to reach for the gearshift. “So this is for Grif?”

“Ha! Grif Me doing favors for Grif. I mean. Why would you even make that assumption? That’s so weird! And not necessary! I mean, think of all the times I do really weird things for Donut! Or for Sarge! I can’t even make a proper list of all the weird things I’ve done for Sarge!” Simmons then added a rather awkward laugh. “Ah, Agent Washington. You… kidder.”

For a moment, Washington looked like he was just going to let the details pass by, but he shook his head and asked, “Does the confetti have glitter in it?”

“What? No,” Simmons answered.

“Does it explode on impact with something very specific and unhelpful, like banana peels?” Washington continued.

“What’re you talking about, of course it doesn’t!” Simmons scoffed.

“Hm, sure doesn’t sound like it’s for Donut or Sarge,” Washington answered easily.

Realizing his own folly, Simmons felt his face heat up even more. “I… Well. Don’t think that that makes you some kind of expert about Red Team! You.. you dirty Blue!”

The words were so flustered, even Simmons had a hard time listening to them.

Washington didn’t seem overly offended, however. “You good? That out of your system?” Wash pressed.

With a long and frankly disappointed sigh, Simmons eased back into his seat again. “Yeah. I guess.”

“Great, why does Grif want confetti?” Wash continued.

“It’s not that he wants it,” Simmons responded with a shrug of his shoulders. “It’s that it’s… well it’s something we talked about forever ago, and not getting it would basically be, like, admitting that I don’t expect us to be the same people we were all those ages ago back in Blood Gulch when we talked about nonsense and had all these… I don’t know, expectations for what the future was going to be. You know. Before everything was bad.”

Washington showed a bit of concern. “Are things bad now?” he asked.

“No, I don’t think so,” Simmons answered, glancing away from the intensity of Washington’s need for answers. “No? Yes? I don’t know. It’s just… Things are never the way we expected them to be.”

“What’d you and Grif expect them to be?” Washington asked. “And is confetti really going to make the difference on whether or not you’ll ever achieve it?”

“Maybe?” Simmons responded, worrying his lip. “I mean. It’s so hard to read Grif sometimes… It’s like he expects me to be some kind of mindreader and just… know him? Like, how am I supposed to live up to those kinds of expectations? Why can’t he ever just say what he actually means instead of asking for me to get confetti and then getting annoyed when I give him exactly what he said instead of exactly what he wanted?”

The silence that filled the minivan after the outburst was stifling and Simmons took it as an opportunity to sink so low that his shoulder blades were almost resting in the seat. He was certain that his uniform was misshapen and creased in ways that were totally unbecoming of an award ceremony, but the sudden rush of existential panic took over for the generalized anxiety in his bones.

Whether or not it was a worthwhile tradeoff had still not been determined by the time that Washington was pulling them back onto the road.

“We only have forty-five minutes to get confetti,” Simmons informed him before he looked up enough over the dashboard to see that Washington wasn’t merely pulling them back onto the road toward the supermarket but was crossing lanes to get them turned around completely. “Agent Washington!? What are you doing? We haven’t gotten the confetti!”

“Of course we’re not. You just said it yourself, it’s not about the confetti.” Washington answered. “So we’re heading back.”

“Why?” Simmons demanded.

“Because you need to get Grif exactly what he wants and not the thing he says he wants.” Washington said flatly. “Also so we’re not wasting either of our time or my money.”

Simmons scowled in return. “I would have paid for it!”

“You didn’t bring a wallet,” Washington answered. “There’s nothing in your back pockets.”

“I don’t like the way fabric feels against my ass when it’s being pulled taut!” Simmons cried out in defense.

“The rest of the world usually uses that as evidence that someone doesn’t have an ass,” Wash replied with a shrug.

“Hey!” Simmons protested, though he wasn’t entirely sure how else to counter the accusation. Instead he crossed his arms and glared at his driver. “Besides! Didn’t you hear me? The problem is I don’t know what Grif wants! That’s why he drives me crazy!”

“You know he doesn’t want the confetti,” Washington reminded him. “So I’d say the real problem here isn’t that you don’t know what Grif wants, but that you definitely know what you want. And you’re frustrated with Grif and yourself for not doing anything about it.”

Simmons stared at him, somewhat aghast. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying you guys need to talk or something. Preferably after not making asses of all of us at the award ceremony or making it so that our honorable discharges are brought into question by… Basically all of humanity. It’d be stellar if we didn’t have either of those to contend with, honestly,” Washington replied.

At first, Simmons couldn’t even believe what he was hearing, he scoffed at the notion, turning in his seat to swivel away from Washington and his utterly ridiculous charges.

Obviously, the Freelancer had no idea what he was talking about. He and Grif were just fine. And no one was bringing unreasonable expectations to their situation. Definitely not Simmons himself.

It was so ridiculous that it was making Simmons’ entire face heat up once more, like a schoolyard misunderstanding between two kids who hadn’t learned how to talk to one another yet.

And then Simmons almost felt his heart stop.

Fortunately being partially cybernetic made that a relative impossibility even for his organic body parts so his heart kept chugging along even as Simmons’ voice got trapped in his throat in an excruciating manner.

Washington glanced over, seemingly concerned at the noises being made. “Simmons?”

“Oh my god,” Simmons gasped at last.

“See,” Washington said a bit eagerly. “Told you. I’m an expert at Reds and Blues now! I know exactly how you all think. And… Well, honestly, when I say it out loud like that it makes me think I’ve had some pretty regrettable choices in my life to get us here, actually.”

Simmons couldn’t even hear Washington as he continued to slowly sink into his seat much like his stomach was sinking through his person.

His carefully curated expectations for the evening suddenly and dramatically changed in a moment.

Grif might have, over the years, for reasons beyond him and definitely not within his control, allowed himself to have a single expectation. The kind of trapping that would ruin a man of lesser caliber.

Of course, Grif wasn’t really of any caliber, so the situation was just annoying the hell out of him more than it was trapping him in anything.

“Sarge!” he shouted over the stage despite the already mostly gathered audience surrounding their stage.

For maybe the first time since Grif had met the man, Sarge was dressed in completely proper order with the sort of rigid lines to his uniform that would have made every single one of Simmons’ ninety-nine problems absolutely jealous. He was also holding a rather dramatic pose with his cap under his stiffly held right arm and his forceful, toothy smile drawn back so tight his eyes were lost behind wrinkles. Even when he turned himself — as in his entire body so as to not take himself out of his stiff posture — he did not lose a bit of his smile, if anything it grew and his eyes were further lost in the clench. “Private Grif!” he shouted between clenched teeth in what was, ultimately, a rather impressive maneuver. “We are preparing for an award ceremony that you most certainly don’t deserve! All I ask is that you don’t ruin the most important part — the part that’s for me! Your esteemed leader!”

There were many, many opportunities to lampoon his commanding officer that Grif was passing up in the heat of the moment. “Yeah, honestly, don’t care, this is important.” But he then paused and allowed himself at least one response to Sarge’s mania. “Also? Totally a captain now. And it’s in the earned way, not in that whole stupid fake way you became a colonel. But that’s not important right now—“

Sarge’s smile dropped just enough to allow his right eyebrow to shoot up, exposing a bloodshot, unblinking eye at Grif. “The hell it’s not!!!” he shouted before coughing and immediately reestablishing his previous expression, if not scarier. “Goddammit, Grif! See what you’re doing? Making me lose my composure is what you’re doing!”

“Fuck composure!” Grif shouted. “Where the hell’s Simmons? It’s almost fifteen minutes ’til! And Simmons has never been less than forty-five minutes early for something in his entire life!”

“Aw,” Caboose cooed from behind Grif, making the Red jump in place before whirling around to face him. How someone so huge and so dumb could manage to constantly sneak up on other people was completely beyond Grif. “You’re worried about Simmons!”

“Ew, no,” Grif scoffed. “Worried about Simmons? Don’t be ridiculous, Caboose! I’m not worried about Simmons! Who would be worried about Simmons? Definitely not someone like me who was ready to attack Locus if he touched Simmons. That’s fucking ridiculous, Caboose! How could you even ask me something like that?”

Caboose blinked at him and shrugged. “Oh, my bad. Sorry. I thought that was why you were talking about Simmons. And why you always talk about Simmons. And why you always talk to Simmons. Usually about Simmons. Yeah. You’re very close.”

“No, not close!” Grif countered heatedly. “I’m asking about Simmons because I’m worried if he’s not here then we’ll never be discharged from the fucking military and I’ll be stuck doing this stuff with you idiots for the rest of my life!”

Sarge once again dropped his composure and whirled around to face Grif, a serious look on his face. “You mean if one of us accidentally screws the pooch today, that’s an option? Indefinite military solitude!? Well Laaahhhhhrrrrdddeeeee! Why didn’t someone say so!?”

“No! I’m not saying that! No one was saying that and no one would ever say that, except you,” Grif snapped. “I just don’t want this ceremony to be postponed for any reason!”

“But it can’t start before Simmons and Agent Washington come back!” Caboose cried out in concern. “They promised it would not take long! They said they’d come back and it would be because they had to be here for the thingie with the things and the scary people with frowns!”

Grif turned to Caboose with a bit of wonder. “Wait, Agent Washington is with Simmons? What the fuck is he thinking? Doesn’t he know the first rule of Reds and Blues? Going with a Freelancer always leads to problems! That’s why we always kick them over to Blue Team and make you all deal with them and your stupid team kills and backstabs and generally idiotic stuff. Like alien fucking.”

Caboose put a hand over his chest and grew a big, watery grin. “Grif! You are the reason for Blue Team always having new teammates!? I always get new friends because of you! Thank you, Grif! Oh, thank you!”

“I’m not responsible. If anyone’s responsible, it’s you and your constant team kills,” Grif snapped back.

A bit put off — more by Grif’s tone than anything else, most likely — Caboose tilted his head back and sniffed. “Well then! I will just be thanking myself for all my bestest friends! And you can stay with only having Simmons!”

“Good! All I need is Simmons anyway!” Grif snapped back, turning to march off and get to the bottom of the missing Simmons issue, but much to his aggravation, the moment he did so he ran face first into a uniformed chest. It was with enough force to nearly knock them both over, but they managed to save it.

“Hey! Watch it!” Simmons groaned. “Grif, can’t you at least bother to see where you’re going!”

“No, fuck you!” Grif retorted automatically before shaking his head profusely and really accepting the revelation. “Simmons! There you fucking are! What the hell were you doing, taking off right before this whole shindig? I was going to fucking haul you back! And disappearing with a Freelancer of all people! You’re lucky you weren’t killed and then had your body bombed by Mister Destructo himself!”

There was an uncomfortable cough that drew Grif’s attention to Simmons’ side where Agent Washington was standing.

“I’m right here,” Washington pointed out plainly.

“What do you want, a cookie?” Grif demanded in annoyance.

“Grif, I’m here,” Simmons answered, looking at Grif like he was imparting some kind of deeper meaning.

One that was far too deep for Grif to comprehend so he just looked at Simmons in annoyance. “Of course you are! The problem is you almost weren’t! Like what the fuck Simmons?”

“No, Grif! I mean… I’m here!” Simmons restated. “I’m… I’m trying to say… What I mean is…”

Grif squinted at Simmons, uncomprehending. Unsure what Simmons could ever mean by any of it. Which was super annoying since, well, for a man who had lived his life to that point priding himself on living without the burden of expectations, he had — for better or worse — allowed himself to experience one expectation above all of his stoicism and near nihilism.

And that single expectation, his road to certain ruin, was that no matter what happened going forward, he had Captain Dick Simmons there by his side.

“You finally decided to show up to the award ceremony that’s for everyone? Congratulations,” Grif responded thickly, scratching at his chin as he only then realized that he had not shaved despite all that wasted time in the bathroom. “Son of a…”

“No, you big idiot,” Simmons half laughed, a breathy, nasally noise that — no matter how many times he heard it — Grif never felt like he had heard enough. “I’m trying to say I’m here for you. Awards and stuff, sure, but I mean more generally… more… bigger… I’m always gonna be with you. On your side. All that stuff.”

Grif looked at Simmons, brows raising high toward his hairline.

“What? Like… metaphorically? You’re metaphorically showing up to the award ceremony from A New Hope which totally isn’t lame at all and now that we’re pretty close to it, being knighted as a space knight hero is pretty fucking rad?” Grif tried to clarify. “Because if that’s our takeaway I have to say — no fucking duh, and welcome to the right side of the Force. Which, we all agree, is the Gray Jedi.”

Simmons gave what had to be at least in the top ten of the universe’s largest eye rolls before coming forward. “Shut up, Grif.”

“You’re metaphorically here to tell me to shut up?” Grif continued only to be taken by complete surprise when Simmons surged forward and landed a kiss on his lips.

Blinking a few times, Grif wasn’t sure what to do, even as Simmons began to nervously back away. But before he was going to allow any of that, Grif reached forward, grabbing Simmons by the shoulders and bringing him into a deeper kiss, one that was beyond any sort of expectations.

The kind of thing that caused a dozen camera flashes all at once and earned some cheers and jeers from the other gathered award recipients.

“HA!” Sarge howled. “Kept the smile for the pictures! Hot dog!”