[Pepper is too good to lean on his bad shoulder but she's abruptly very close and he automatically reaches out for her, because she smells very nice and clean, and incredibly female, and very warm and alive.]
The hell with that.
[He forgets about all the pain for a split-second, and in that second he pulls her back down to him and back into the kiss. This time it is not a press, and it is not brief. He holds onto her wrist like a drowning man and tips sideways to run hard pressure over her mouth, licking it open and tasting her tongue. It cuts through hours of red tape, that kiss.
He lets her go only because he moved some ridiculous bleeding broken limb or something and the abrupt pain interrupts the connection with a gasp he can't stifle. A little dazed.]