Making drudgery fun

They were on the far side of the warehouse, the opposite side to the leaking terrigen container. The scanner still said it was safe over here, so they started with the stand-out artifacts on this side.

"So where do we start?" Simmons said.

"E-637," Coulson's voice came through their earpieces. Daisy stiffened; she'd almost forgotten about him. She was getting jumpier. "Good to hear from you Simmons! Meet up with Daisy?"

"Um, yeah, I, er, saw a lot of- I saw Daisy," Simmons stammered.

Daisy grimaced.

"We think we've taken care of the terrigen," Daisy said, quickly taking over. "Onto cataloguing now. We'll get back to you."

"Good luck," Coulson said. "Simmons, this is the one we talked about when you were on your way."

"Oh, I remember!" Simmons said, suddenly excited. "I'll look for the label."

The label E-637 didn't take much to find. It was midway down the aisle, but was on both sides, a large metal unit slipped under the shelves on one side, and a tinier case on the other side. They walked to it, Simmons a few steps ahead, making it far too obvious that she was avoiding turning back and managing to make Daisy somehow feel all the more in-the-open.

Sublety had never been one of Simmons' strengths. When it had been just her in the warehouse, she'd managed to almost get used to the thrill - okay, it would always be harder with someone else here, but if it would be possible for her to get used to going around in just her panties, she certainly wouldn't with Jemma constantly drawing attention to it.

"How did you do that?" Simmons said, eventually. "Keep your voice level like that? I couldn't, and I'm not the one who's... nude."

And Daisy's cheeks were burning again.

"Practice," Daisy said, quietly.

"Practice? When would you have, oh, oh!" Simmons said. "You do this a lot?"

"What? No!" Daisy said. "I meant here. Before you came in, I had to talk to Coulson."

"Oh, right," Simmons said, cheeks going pink. "That makes more sense."

She reached the artifact, and leaned towards the smaller part of it, frowning. She prodded it delicately. Daisy stood a little way behind her, arms still crossed, still squirming.

"So," Daisy said, very eager to change the subject. "What is that? Coulson said he briefed you."

"It was an experiment from years back," Simmons said. "Biological tech inspired by an 0-8-4, a kind of security system that's meant to act as a magnet to small non-biological objects in close proximity to biological. Weapons, basically. I read a little about how it works - the problem is, SHIELD security might just mean HYDRA project. We want to be sure it's safe. I always wanted to have a go on this project though, such interesting ideas."

She prised open the casing, revealing an odd web of strands within it. Simmons pulled out a smaller scanner from her back, peering it at. She seemed to have almost forgotten Daisy was there.

Almost.

Daisy really didn't see why she had to be here. Still, she had to be somewhere in the facility, and solitude didn't feel quite so possible now. Better to know where Simmons was.

"Why were you naked?" Simmons said eventually, still staring at the device.

Daisy faltered. And now she was asking the obvious question, and she really couldn't think of any believable excuse.

"I told you," Daisy said awkwardly. "It was raining when I came in. I thought I was alone, so I took my clothes off to dry."

"All your clothes?" Simmons said, skeptical.

Daisy squirmed.

"Look, I was alone, this was a really boring job," Daisy said. "I had to spice it up somehow!"

Simmons jerked, and bumped her head on the shelf. She turned around, eyes wide.

"Daisy!" Jemma said.

"What?" Daisy said defensively, crossing her arms a little tighter. "You asked!"

"We've all been bored on missions, we don't all experiment with nudism!" Simmons said. She mouthed the last word as if scandalized.

"Trust me, I see why," Daisy said, flushed. "Can we not talk about this?"

Really no good explanation. Daisy swallowed. Simmons hesitated a moment, apparently as confused as to what she was meant to do as anyone - before, eventually, falling back on her old stand-by and turning back to work.

Daisy slumped in relief slightly, face still burning. Okay, she told herself, looking at the positives. If anyone had to find out, it was better Simmons than most of the others. Simmons wouldn't hold it over her head, they were both girls, and it probably wouldn't make their friendship too weird.

Then she remembered how awkward Simmons had been, and started to doubt that. Daisy grimaced. So long as she could avoid telling the story or being too suspicious, she could live with it.

"Oh, this is beautiful," Simmons murmured, peering more closely at the strands of stuff that only she understood.

She prodded it, and then Daisy felt something. She yelped.

She stumbled back, the fabric of her panties catching her off balance as it seemed to tug her back; she bumped into the box under the shelves behind her, the other half of whatever device Simmons was working on; it was flat, cool, and seemed to be glued to her butt given that her best attempts at squirming shouldn't shift her panties.

This was just what she needed... A little more urgently, Daisy dropped one arm to press her hand to the box and try to pull herself away. She made the box jerk slightly, but didn't succeed in moving, nor in freeing herself.

"Simmons! What did you do?!" Daisy said, eyes wide. Simmons turned around.

"Oh! Oh, that must be why it was never put into practice," Simmons mused. "That makes sense. Pseudo-magnetic attraction to non-organic objects in close proximity to... I suppose they couldn't find a way for it to exclusively target plastics and metals rather than cloth."

"I don't need to know how it works, I need to know if you can turn it off!" Daisy said.

She tried to move again. She could shuffle around a little it was just the material of her panties that was stuck to the surface. The sides pulled back uncomfortably, trying to pin her in place, waistband growing thinner as it bunched up, trying to get as much of itself in contact with the security system as it could. All moving achieved was making it all the tighter, both making it significantly less uncomfortable, and making the gusset draw in and become thinner. Almost instinctively, Daisy covered it with one hand, even her panties starting to feel indecent.

Speculatively, Simmons turned back to the object; apparently the alien device had caught too much of her interest for her to be especially distracted by Daisy's situation. It was a small blessing.

Still, Daisy wriggled, increasingly constrained.

And just when she thought it couldn't get worse, she smelled burning.

"Simmons?" Daisy said.

"Shush, this is very delicate," Simmons said. She didn't turn around, peering more intently at the device.

"Simmons. Something's on fire," Daisy said.

She could smell it. She couldn't see any flames, so they probably weren't too big yet, but she knew what it smelled like; if she looked up, she could see a very thin plume of smoke. A fire was definitely starting.

And that was where the door to the facility was. Where they'd left the weather machine on heat mode. And where her clothes were. Daisy suddenly started squirming more.

"Simmons! Kind of important, I think the heat machine's started a fire!"

"There's proper fire safety here, can extinguish it after. Just let me..."

And Jemma was too distracted. Daisy whimpered, then knew what she had to do; she tried for a moment to try and get a leg up, pulling it out of the pinned panties, but she wasn't nearly flexible enough to do that with her limited motion.

But panties weren't nearly as important as, well, pants. Taking a deep breath, Daisy reached down with her hands - content in the fact Simmons was looking away - and tore sharply on the already-strained waistband. Two tears later and her ruined panties were sucked between her legs and pinned to the box, and Daisy was left very naked, but free.

She sprinted without looking back, making it to the end of the aisle just in time to see what she'd feared.

The ice was well and truly gone, and like Simmons had promised, the machine was drying out her clothes, warming them up. It just seemed to have done too good a job of it; she could see her shirt starting to blacken from there. Quickly, she ran closer...

Just in time to see the flames catch and spread. She came to a stop within arm's reach of the table, her pants the last thing still burning. Bone-dry, they were overcome quickly.

Daisy faltered, frozen in place and staring at the small piles of ash on the table. Definitely no ice. And they weren't soaked through any more.

Which left her with absolutely nothing. She'd looked for replacement clothes, spare labcoats, anything when awaiting Simmons' arrival; all she had to wear was either burned up, or panties torn until they were just flat fabric, stuck to some bizarre security device.

"Daisy! Daisy!"

She heard Simmons jogging closer. Daisy squeaked, and span around, clutching her arms over her front again. Now she had one extra spot to cover - and the fact Simmons was waving her unwearable panties around (oh god Simmons was holding her panties) was not going to change that.

"You left these," Simmons said. "What's... oh. Ah. I guess untested technology shouldn't be used as a drier."

"You guess?!" Daisy said.

"I was trying to help," Simmons said.

She waved the panties around uncertainly, then hastily threw them onto the desk, before walking past Daisy. Daisy carefully turned to make sure her front was always to Simmons.

"Well, best to turn this off," Simmons said.

"Is that all you have to say?" Daisy said.

"It's clearly dangerous to keep on," Simmons said. "I figured out the security device though. Interesting premise, but clearly needs a lot of work to make the targeting specific enough, which sort of defeats the point of an all-purpose disarmer."

She was babbling to herself, cheeks pink.

"I'm naked Simmons! Kinda need a bit of help!" Daisy yelped.

And they both heard someone clear his throat. Daisy bit her lip.

"Er. Is this a bad time?" Coulson said.

"No, no, why would this be a bad time? Not at all," Simmons stammered.

"Not helping," Daisy muttered. She fiddled with her arms. "Um. Sorry, I was- talking about a movie. Distracted her. My bad."

Simmons looked back incredulously. Daisy shrugged; what else was she meant to say? Oh, yeah, she decided to do a few tasks naked and now everything had spiralled out of control and she had nothing to wear, was in the bottom of an old SHIELD base ages from civilization, and...

Her face burned just thinking about it.

"Um. Right," Coulson said, plainly not buying it. "Well, I just wanted to see if Simmons had any results yet. We tracked down a misfiled document that could help."

"Oh! I can do this," Simmons said.

And while she babbled science, Daisy took a nervous step back, looking around the vast, very clothes-free facility, arms held tightly against her bare body.