Simmons paced in front of the rec room couch, worrying himself silly about the state of his room. It had been way longer than ten minutes; as soon as the countdown ended he had practically thrown himself at the door, only to find it still locked. And damn if he couldn't hear Donut in there now, too, giggling and rustling and talking to Grif in a hushed, excited tone of voice. Grif was replying with his usually sarcasm, but sounded excited. Feeling utterly repulsed, he had retreated back to the rec room to wait for some sign that they had finished whatever it was they were doing in there. He wouldn't let himself imagine what was happening to too much extent, but needless to say, he wasn't planning on sleeping in there for at least a month and several laundry days.
"Simmons?" came a tentative voice from behind him.
He looked over his shoulder. Grif stood in the doorway, hands shoved deep inside his jeans' pockets. He rolled his weight back on the heels of his bare feet, offering a lazy smile as a sort of recompense for the wait. "I'm done in there now, if you wanna go see."
Swallowing the wave of nausea that threatened him, Simmons choked, "I do not want to see the... the end results of you and Donut." He said it bitterly, with more undertones of rejection than the revulsion he'd meant.
Grif blinked. "What?" he started, then, "Oh. Ew, Simmons! There's no way I would do that! That's just gross."
"Well what else do you expect me to believe you two were doing in there?"
The orange soldier walked lithely toward him. "Here," he said smugly, grabbing Simmons' hand and dragging him toward the door. "I'll show you."
Simmons followed reluctantly as Grif led the way down the hall, his grip on his hand tightening as Simmons tried to shy away from the contact.
The door was already open; Donut poked his head out with an eager smile, and Grif shooed him out of the room with an impatient wave of the hand. "Get outta there, I don't want you to fuck this up!" he said, pulling Simmons into the room with him and closing the door on Donut's flabbergasted face.
"Well," Grif started, suddenly breathless and pink with embarrassment. "What do you think?"
Simmons turned his eyes to take in his room. Nothing seemed changed, besides the fact that there was a giant mess of some sort of map crunched into a ball in the middle of his floor and there were about 4 small cardboard boxes ripped to shreds strewn around almost every place conceivable. That's going to be a bitch to clean up later, he thought indignantly. "What--"
"Shh," Grif cut him off, placing a gentle finger to the other man's lips. When Simmons was sufficiently shut up (along with being extremely aware of Grif's finger on his lip and feeling very, very uncomfortable), he moved his hand to flick off the light switch.
The room was immediately bathed in darkness, and it was all Simmons could do not to gasp out loud at what he finally saw.
Above him, spattering the dull grey concrete of his ceiling, were millions of tiny, glow-in-the-dark stars. Glancing quickly around, he saw that not only were they covering the entire surface of the ceiling and some of the walls, but they were put there in some facsimile of the real night sky, constellations and all. There, near his dresser, the Big Dipper... Above, the winding tail of Draco and the Little Dipper... further, Casseopeia, sitting on her throne watching Andromeda getting attacked by the monster Cetus, Perseus swooping in from above to save the princess. Simmons felt his throat constrict with something akin to ecstasy as he turned to look at Grif.
"Do you like it? I'm not sure if I got everything right, it's really hard to read those maps--"
"Grif, shut up!" Simmons exclaimed, choking over the lump in his throat, tears collecting in the corners of his eyes. It was a split-second decision; Grif, who had just spent the whole day doing work -- Grif doing WORK, for chrissake! -- to make him happy, was there in front of him, and the next instant Simmons was crushing him in a giant hug.
"So you like it?" Grif joked after a moment of silence, his voice squished and breathless. When he got no response but a tighter hug, he grunted, "You're kind of killing me, here."
Simmons let go hastily, letting out an uninhibited laugh as he wiped the tears from his eyes. "Yes, you asshole, why wouldn't I like it?"
Grif shrugged, smirking somewhat affectionately as he flicked the lights back on. "Because you pretty much just tried to suffocate me."
A smile tugged at the corners of Simmons' lips. "You don't know how much this means to me, really."
Lowering his eyes embarrassedly, Grif kicked at a piece of cardboard sitting on the ground in front of him. "Actually," he murmured softly, "I think I do."
+++
The next morning left Sarge with a lot of confusion. Simmons was acting as good-natured and excitable as he'd been his first few weeks in Blood Gulch. He was practically skipping through the doorway to the kitchen for breakfast, and he was beaming at the measly pile of reconstituted, army-issue meal slopped onto his plate. Beaming!
And what were all those happy faces and smiles between him and Grif? And Donut's knowing nods? Something in his gut told Sarge he didn't really want to know, but as long as it kept Simmons happy... well, it wasn't necessarily fine by him (did it really have to be Grif?), but he wasn't going to put an end to it.
After all, there was an army policy: don't ask, don't tell.
---
A/N: This thing just about KILLED me with writer's block, but I got past the worst of it and even got an ending that I wasn't expecting out of it! Isn't it crazy how that works out sometimes? Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it! ^_^"
EMO SIMMONS IS EMOOOOOOOO!! God, why are my fics always so ANGSTY? XDD;
