Chapter Text
Fitz watched as Jemma tightened her grip on the steering wheel.
"So, uh, Jemma, are we here, or . . ."
She looked back at him with eyes he'd seen before, red rimmed and frightened. Those were the eyes that asked him to take her back to Maveth, and he felt himself gasp as his tie began to strangle him.
"Fitz?"
He managed to catch his breath, but he didn't dare open his eyes.
"Whatever you're going to say, just say it."
"Fitz, it's . . ." When he had the courage to look over at her, he found her staring at the hands in her lap. "Fitz, it's not a mission. I lied; I'm sorry."
"Oh."
It seemed that something ought to be said when a person discovered they were all dressed up and sitting in a parking lot for no purpose at all, but Fitz had no idea what those words might be.
"It's just—Fitz, I knew you wouldn't believe me."
"Believe what?"
He watched her as she bowed her head and clenched her fists, feeling at once an urge to comfort her and a need to back away. He compromised by staying still.
"You won't understand until you . . . just, just come with me, alright? If you want to leave, we can, but let me . . . let me show you."
There were tears in her eyes, and he was supposed to be strong enough, he really was, but he wasn't.
"Okay."
When she looked up at him, he knew those eyes, too.
She nodded, just like she did before, and checked her makeup in the mirror before unbuckling her seat belt.
"Okay," she said.
He followed her lead out of the car and through the gravel parking lot, worrying more about her heels than his own dress shoes. When they got to pavement, he felt a lot better about the both of them.
As they continued, he learned that he was not, in fact, in the middle of nowhere—merely at the edge of it. He could see lights up ahead, and the faintest whispers of music that grew louder as they approached. They ended up at, of all places, a restaurant. A nice one, from the looks of it.
Jemma reached for the door handle and looked back at him, almost as if she didn’t expect him to be there. He smiled to reassure her, and it almost worked.
"But you don't understand," came a voice from inside, "my brother has a reservation every year. Can you please look again?"
The voice dripped with poise, and the woman who belonged to it had a smile to match. The man at her side, on the other hand, seemed to be plotting his escape.
“I’m sorry, miss, but there are no reservations under that name. Perhaps you would like to come back another time? Next week, perhaps?”
The woman put a hand over her heart with a gasp. “Next week, really? Are you sure you can’t fit us in anywhere? I’m sure you must have some place—a table outside, maybe? Can you add one? We’ll leave you stunning online reviews, won’t we, Eddie? His father is a senator, you know.”
Eddie was either about to say something or throw up, but before Fitz could find out, the maître d' offered to fetch a manager. Eddie’s date stepped to the side graciously as the maître d' helped the next couple in line.
And it wasn’t until he saw the heart-shaped bouquet of roses that Fitz realized it was Valentine’s Day, and he and Jemma were on a date.
Jemma must have seen something in his eyes, because she chose that moment to turn to him and say something before she was interrupted by an, “Aren’t you the cutest couple?”
They both turned in unison to find the woman smiling at them. Jemma almost managed to thank her before the woman continued. “Tell me, how long ago did you make your reservations? I need a good story for the manager when he comes. Something he’ll believe.”
“Mary,” Eddie gasped, and Mary rolled her eyes at him.
“Oh, come on. I have to give him some kind of sob story if I expect them to bend the rules for us. And how about you, sir,” she said, turning to Fitz, “how much of an early bird did you have to be?”
Fitz opened his mouth, but the words didn’t come.
“October,” whispered Jemma.
Both Fitz and Mary gaped at her.
“October, really?” Mary frowned. “Well, I don’t know if I can make them believe that, but I’ll certainly try.” She smiled at Eddie, who winced. “And I’m sure you two wouldn’t want to give us your table, would you? It’s our first Valentine’s as a couple, and we really want to make it special.”
“Ours, too,” said Jemma.
Mary looked between the two of them, and Fitz was sure that it was pity on her face.
“Ah, well you could have fooled me. You look like you’ve been together forever. Probably because you’re the type that will be. I can tell.”
Fitz could barely breathe, and he wasn’t sure Jemma was doing any better, but thankfully, it was finally their turn. Fitz still had no idea what was happening, or what he wanted to happen, but he was certain that it would be a lot less awkward at a table.
“Jemma Simmons,” he said when asked for a name. “It’s under Jemma Simmons.”
“Actually,” corrected Jemma, “it’s under Fitz. Leo Fitz.”
“Ah,” said the maître d'. “Mr. Leo Fitz. Right this way.”
Fitz’s shock was only intensified when they were lead into an expansive dining area that was beautiful enough to take his breath away. From the marbled floor to the small sculptures tucked in niches in the walls to the reproduction of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel above, it seemed they’d stepped into a dream. Before he knew it, he was seated at a table across from Jemma, who was clenching and unclenching her hands.
“Jemma, did you . . .” He was sure his brain was about to explode. “Has there been a reservation here in my name since . . .”
“Since two days after I told you about Will, yes.”
She couldn’t look at him, and he didn’t want her to.
“Two days?”
She shook her head. “I knew you wouldn’t believe me,” she said, as if that was all the answer he needed, and he was about to ask her what exactly she meant when the waiter came by and asked if they’d like to order drinks. Jemma insisted on water, not wine, and Fitz wondered if she was afraid of repeating past events. Maybe she was worried that if they started drinking, they’d never stop.
Jemma watched the waiter leave, then she turned back, caught his gaze, and dropped it.
“We really can leave,” she said. “Right now. It won’t hurt my feelings.”
“Yes, it will.”
She pinched her eyes shut. “No, Fitz. I—I just wanted you to see, and now you have, so we really can go. I know you don’t . . .” She took a deep breath. “I know you don’t want this.”
“Do you want this?”
It’s a question that he hasn’t dared to ask, not since she got sucked into the rock, and he would never had asked it if he hadn’t been in a state of shock. He’d been sure that those four words would be the end of him.
Jemma swallowed, staring at her white knuckles.
“More than anything,” she said.
“Oh.”
The word just slipped out, like an exhale, and Jemma’s hand flew to her forehead, her lips pressed into a thin line, and she nodded. Fitz found that he was clutching at his knife.
“I, uh, I thought . . .” Jemma trailed off. “We’ve always had Valentine’s Day. Did you know that? After all that’s happened to us—hypoxia, Hydra, all of it—this was the time we had to be together.”
“We’ve never been together, Jemma,” he breathed, and it felt like his heart would be shattered to bits.
"Fitz, you've been my valentine for eleven years, whether we knew it or not."
Fitz tightened his grip on his knife. "Well yes, but that doesn't mean . . . just because it's tradition . . ."
"It's not a tradition, Fitz," she said, and he almost gasped when she put her hand over his fist. "It's who we are." She swallowed, and he wondered what she was trying to keep down. “Fitz, I—I ruined it last time, and I want to do this. For you. Please.”
It was the image of the last reservation he’d had that turned his heart to butter. It was wrong to watch her suffer like this, no matter what happened between them, and he had to stop it.
Fitz shook his head. “You didn’t ruin anything,” he corrected, and then in a tone almost too low to hear, he added, “you make everything better, Jemma.”
She smiled then, a small quirk of her lips as she stared at her hand over his.
“Fitz,” she finally said, and when he saw the tears in her eyes, he let go of the knife hold her hand in both of his.
“You don’t have to say anything,” he soothed, stroking her hand with his thumb.
“No, Fitz, let me just,” she took in a shaky breath, “let me . . . let me tell you that this should be us. I want it to be us. Every year, forever. I know we’re not . . . where I thought we would be by now, and . . . Fitz, I just—”
“Where did you think we would be?”
He didn’t mean it as an accusation, and he was relieved when she didn’t take it as one. She put her free hand over his, so that all four hands were there on the table, and she said, “Here, I guess. Just . . . ready. I didn’t think . . . you were so good to me, Fitz. You have been, this whole time. I thought you’d hate me for what I did, and you . . . I mean, I hoped. I haven’t had hope for anything in a long time. But I couldn’t tell you, because I knew you, you wouldn’t . . .”
“Believe you,” he finished with a sigh. She glanced up at him and nodded. They sat for a while as Fitz’s thumbs caressed her fingers, and Jemma studied him with furrowed brows.
“Fitz, say something. Please.”
She’d made this request before, more than once, and he’d always struggled to obey her.
“Jemma, I . . .”
“I’m sorry for the wait; there was some trouble at the front. Are you ready to order?”
Jemma and Fitz looked at each other before Fitz shook his head at the waiter.
“Sorry.”
The waiter sighed and let out a chuckle. “Okay. I’ll come back in a few minutes.”
They both smiled at him, and he saw her dig into her menu the same time he did, likely feeling the same responsibility to choose something now that the waiter was, well, waiting.
“What should I get?”
Jemma looked up from her menu. “Hmm?”
“Oh, come on. You’ve had months to look at these menus, yeah? You already know what you want and what I want.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, then smiled.
“Well,” he said, “Let’s get that then.”
“Do you want me to tell you what it is?”
“No,” he said, closing his menu. “I trust you.”
That set off a spark in her eyes, and he knew exactly what she was thinking.
You trust me, sure, but do you believe me?
Did he believe that she loved him? That she wanted to be with him, after everything? He’d been sure that she didn’t, and that nothing could change his mind on the matter. After all, she’d learned how to live and love without him. It seemed that he would have to find a way to do the same, as impossible as it was. Maybe he needed space so he could figure all this out.
The only problem was that taking a step back from his best friend always felt wrong.
“I um,” he started, “it’s a lot, Jemma.”
She sighed. “I know.”
“And I don’t know where I’m at.”
There was a pause before Jemma said, “I see,” and she took a shaky breath before asking, “and where are you going?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere that’s not . . . that doesn’t hurt so much.”
She let out a sigh and pulled her hands out of his, and the pain in her eyes made him regret every word he’d ever said. He reached out to capture her hands once again.
“That goes for both of us,” he corrected. “I want us both in a better place.”
She closed her eyes and took a breath. “Fitz, I . . . I didn’t just look at the menus. I’ve been thinking a lot about sculpture.”
Fitz raised an eyebrow at her before noticing the word “Michelangelo’s” printed on the front of his menu.
“Oh.”
“There’s this quote, actually, from Michelangelo himself.” She stared at their joined hands. “‘Every block of stone has a statue inside it, and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.’ Sometimes I wonder if . . . if we’re like that. If there’s something we’ve always been. And if that’s who we really are, then how can we be happy pretending to be anything else?”
She didn’t mean it as a blow—he knew it—but it was a punch to the gut all the same.
“Jemma, you obviously . . . I mean you don’t have to pretend that you weren’t—we both know that you don’t need me.”
Anger flashed over her face in a way that genuinely surprised him. But just as she opened her mouth, the waiter reappeared.
“Are we ready?”
Jemma pursed her lips and nodded. “He’ll have the Milano,” she said, handing over her menu. “I’ll have the Napoli. And, um . . .” She pinched her eyes shut. “A nice rosé, please?” She looked up at the waiter to give him a smile which he returned as he tucked the menus under his arm and disappeared. Her smile vanished just a quickly. She stared at the table cloth as they both listened to the hum of life around them.
“Fitz,” she finally said, as if it pained her, “Fitz, I wish I knew how to make you understand, but I . . . I spent ten years thinking you had an ego the size of a hot air balloon, and I know I should’ve . . . I don’t know what I should have done. Something, I guess. I’ve told you every way I know how.” She reached forward to grab his hand. “I don’t ever want to be without you.”
It was, as always, her eyes that pierced his heart.
“And sometimes . . . sometimes I think that we’re just, we used to have an equilibrium, but we lost it. All these things happened to us, the same things, but they affected us differently. You’re running a fever, I have a chill, and we have to find peace with what happened before we can come to a middle. But Fitz, I really do think that if we find equilibrium with, with our trauma, we'll find it with each other.”
Fitz gaped at her, almost forgetting how to breathe before he finally managed to ask, “Did you just . . quote the zeroth law of thermodynamics?”
He could go halfway around the world, or to the other side of the universe, but he’d never escape the way he felt when he made her smile.
She shrugged. “I've been thinking about that, too.”
He stared at the hand that was still in hers. “You think about it quite a lot, for a biochemist.”
“Yes,” she said, almost in a laugh, “well, you’ve had an effect on me.” Her eyes looked up at him, and he was lost. “Besides, you know more about biochemistry than any engineer has a right to.”
Her smile grew wider, and really, he couldn’t not love her. Not when she had such a grip on everything he held in his heart. There were a thousand reasons to cut and run, but what if they could actually feel the same way at the same time? If there was any heart that could beat at the same rhythm, it had to be hers.
“Fitz,” she whispered, staring at her thumb as it grazed over his, “did you really never think about us? Before?”
Fitz took a breath and remembered the first day he met her, the day he thought he’d never see her again, and so many days in between—late nights in the lab, early mornings in the field, and more stolen afternoons than he’d care to count. He sighed and shook his head.
“I think . . . I think I’ve always been thinking about us, Jemma. I just, didn’t let myself know that I was.”
She nodded then, a wistful smile on her lips as she opened his hand and trailed a finger down his palm. “Me, too.”
He let himself smile back at her, and the conversation meandered away from the present and into the past. Jemma blushed when she told him how she used to scribble their names into her academy notebooks, and he recalled the night she didn’t realize that he accidentally proposed. It felt good to laugh and watch her laugh, to see the glint in her eyes and know it was mirrored in his. There was still pain, of course, but they managed to drown it out until their food arrived. Fitz was practically salivating in anticipation, and he was not disappointed when the waiter presented him with a personal pizza (a fancy pizza, but a pizza all the same), overflowing with meat.
“You have prosciutto on yours,” she said, practically beaming in delight, then gesturing to her own pizza, covered in tomatoes, basil leaves, and what definitely had to be . . . “And there’s buffalo mozzarella on mine, Fitz, aren’t I clever?”
“You’ve always been clever,” he agreed.
She surveyed her pizza and his, her smile fading when she reached his eyes. “I know we’ve got a long way to go, but we’ve gotten this far, haven’t we?”
He nodded, too overcome with emotion to think. The spell was broken when her smile returned.
“I never thought I’d see the day when you would stare at food instead of eat it.” He wasn’t sure, but he thought she winked at him. “Come on,” she said, “I won’t forget to give you a slice of mine.”
He dug in, happier than he’d been in he didn’t know how long, and as a wandering violinist made it to their table to make Jemma’s eyes dance with delight, he decided that happiness was actually possible for them.
And that, he thought, was the most romantic notion he’d ever had.
“So,” he said as he opened the car door for her, “where do you think we’ll be next year? On a mission, maybe? Or maybe Coulson will let us go find a beach somewhere. Or maybe,” he sported a mischievous grin, “we’ll be back in the lab like always, already bored of all this nonsense.”
“Ugh, Fitz,” she said, rolling her eyes exactly as expected, but then she did something truly surprising.
She grabbed him by his lapels and kissed him.
And Fitz, for his part, didn’t mind at all.