thinking about jemma, how she's very much not into the whole one night stand/hookup thing, very rarely ever does it, except in the ~year(-ish) after she first leaves shield. she's never been particularly great at dealing with things like emotions and trauma, so she looks for distraction, anything to keep her mind off of what she's seen, been through, what she's left, especially as it all comes crashing onto her after she left and she doesn't have all of shield to keep her busy.

so sometimes she goes to a bar, goes on dates that she doesn't plan on turning into anything serious, and will end up going to a hotel with some guy. sometimes it will turn into a recurring thing, but she only ever plans for it to purely be a distraction, something that will get her out of her own head for a little while.

she's entirely aware it's an unhealthy coping mechanism (especially given it isn't even something she particularly likes to do), but for a while it's the only thing that she can think to do that isn't even more self destructive. however, with the biggest things she's looking for in these interactions being the distraction that it provides, the way it can silence her brain for a while, and the validation it can bring, it can lead to less than healthy dynamics, since she's not great at looking for red flags in the first place, and even more so when she doesn't intend on it becoming anything being serious.

by the time she starts settling into a more permanent place, is no longer so transient (roughly around a year after she's left shield), she's largely left this behavior behind as she is actually attempting to more actively deal with everything.