Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply

Category: F/M

Fandom: Red vs. Blue

Relationship: Dick Simmons/Agent Washington

Characters: Dick Simmons, Agent Washington (Red vs. Blue)

Additional Tags: fem!Agent Washington, Genderbending, Post-Season/Series 13, Pre-Season/Series 15, Fluff, not really anything happening just two nerds like ships on the ocean, no betas we die like man, GFY, RvB Rarepair Week 2019

Simmons doesn't know when he stopped being afraid of Agent Washington.

It's stupid because the first time they met, she tore a mounted Gatling gun off of its mount and tried to kill the Meta right there in front of the Reds and Blues and God and everyone, but Simmons accidentally threw his battle rifle at her helmet when he registered her voice. It's stupid because she got blown up by Tex, got her ass kicked by Tex, had to pull herself and her armor hand-over-hand up like a hundred feet of tow chain when the glacier she was standing on got blown up, and then got her ass kicked by the Meta, but Simmons didn't even argue when she told him to hand over their flag. It's stupid because she can survive a room full of pissed off Tex clones, taught him all the scariest knife tricks someone called Connie taught her, and she never so much as batted an eye when the scariest motherfucker in the galaxy had some freaky crush on her, but the fact that she has bouncing blonde curls and uses feminine pronouns meant that Simmons couldn't look her in the eye for like a full year after she joined Blue Team.

Looking at it like that, Simmons should still be afraid of Agent Washington, and he is. Kinda. But after a decade of military service surrounded by fuckoff scary super-soldiers, Simmons has learned to accept a few things about himself.

Like the fact that women scare him, not because he doesn't know what to do with them, Tucker, but because he tends to put them up on a pedestal.

He knows that about himself.

Ever since puberty set in, he's looked around and seen himself surrounded by women and girls who are so much stronger and faster and meaner than he is, that he could never hope to compete. So he just stood aside and let them work, and the combination of intimidation and awe meant that he sorta… stopped seeing them as regular people.

Which is shitty.

Simmons knows it's shitty, okay?

It's not cool to think of women as anything other than multi-dimensional, fully-realized sentient beings with thoughts and feelings of their own, the majority of which don't involve him even tangentially. He gets that whole concept, really.

But the thing about putting an entire gender on a pedestal—not even just one gender, really, and not even actually on a pedestal; more like sectioning off his own gender from all the others and putting them on the opposite sides of the Grand Canyon—is that he never learned how to talk to them. Women, and non-masculine individuals, are people; they just aren't people that he can relate to.

When Kimball told them to pick the best soldier from their platoons to promote and train, Simmons picked Jensen, because she was less scary than Nigri. Sure, Jensen was pretty, but she couldn't spike a volleyball like Princess Azula and if she didn't wear her armor in the motor pool then she ended up covered head to toe in engine grease. She also had allergies, asthma, and a retainer. Now that was what Simmons could call relatable.

So, really, it's less that he doesn't know when he stopped being afraid of what Agent Washington can do, because she can bench-press Caboose for three sets of fifteen reps and then take a five mile jog so the answer to that is a resounding never. He just can't pinpoint when he stopped being afraid who Agent Washington is.

Normally, he wouldn't obsess and introspect about it so much during Nerd Night, but the last thing he remembers is Jon Snow getting stabbed like thirty-seven times by the Night's Watch while he was carefully perched on his side of the couch. Now, Smalljon Umber is handing the baby Stark over to Ramsay Snow and Simmons' head is tucked underneath Wash's chin while she taps out messages in Morse code on his ribs.

It's all very dark and fuzzy and difficult to follow.

He also doesn't know if she's asleep, too, and if she is, Simmons definitely doesn't want to wake her up and possibly ruin Nerd Night with a gruesome murder. Jon Snow didn't give his life just to let Simmons throw his away by leaping off the couch and sprinting out of Blue Base while yelling apologies at an ex-Freelancer for laying on her boobs.

"You haven't groped me in my sleep, so calm down, Simmons," a low, lazy voice says next to his ear, and Simmons tries not to flinch. Tries. The Morse code cuts out and Agent Washington sighs and carefully wriggles them around so that they're both laying down on the couch, her between him and the cushions. She obeyed the one-gun limit this time, it's still sitting on her arm of the couch, but Simmons can feel at least two knives strapped onto her person. "Don't worry, buddy, I'll protect you."

Simmons carefully doesn't move or say anything, barely even breathes, because this easy, playful Wash is almost as rare as the Wash that sometimes wanders into Red Base in her pajamas to steal Donut's "good" coffee. But he can't say nothing, otherwise she'll be all cold and stiff tomorrow, thinking that he thought she'd said or did something not normal. "Hey," he says, voice roughened by sleep and cracking with nerves, "we're supposed to be a team, Agent. Maybe I'll protect you."

Wash laughs, not loud enough to wake the others or long enough make Simmons feel like she's making fun of him, but the same half-cackle that Carolina does sometimes when Grif says something that surprises her. Apparently, all the women in their squad had eventually cultivated the same kind of laugh; something about not wanting to seem meek, but also refusing to come off even slightly as seductive. The military not exactly being nice for women, and all that.

"You gonna fight off any assassins with your 'one-gun limit', Sims?" she snickers, and settles into the cushions even more, her hair tickling the back of his neck.

"Maybe I will," he sniffs, offended and prissy, the way that Grif always mocks but seems to amuse Carolina and Wash. "Maybe you'll be the damsel in distress for once. Switch it up a little."

Agent Washington snorts. "Good luck with that, tough guy," she says while repositioning the M6 next to her so that it's easiest to grab in an emergency. Like just the discussion of an impending threat is enough to trip her PTSD. "I'll wake be sure to wake you if any Faceless Men come crashing through the window, so you don't miss your chance."

Simmons means to jostle her, say something about the entire point of Faceless Men being that you never see them coming, but between chuckling sleepily and taking a deep breath that turns into a yawn, he drops back off to sleep. He thinks Wash probably does, too, because she's still there when they when they wake up to Donut's "good" coffee and singing the next morning.