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Just a chat I imagine Fitz and Ward have had recently.
Stand-alone drabble. FitzSimmons, but not super overt.
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Jab, cross. Jab, cross. Jab, cross. Jab, cross.
Ward fell into the comfortable rhythm as he hit the bag over and over again. Between the rhythm of the exercises and his music blaring in his ears, he didn’t notice when Fitz approached him in the empty cargo bay. It was only when he decided to take a break from hitting the bag that he noticed the younger man standing across from him, just barely in his line of sight.
Ward straightened and took in the scientist. He looked disheveled, with two-day’s growth on his jaw, his tie was missing, and his pants were wrinkled. It was the least put-together he’d seen him in a while. He pulled his earbuds out and waited for the junior agent to speak.
It took him a good two minutes to pull himself together enough to say something.
“Ye were righ’. I cannae protec’ her if somethin’ happens durin’ a mission.”
His shoulders are slumped and he’s speaking to the floor. Ward can’t see any sign of the man who was in Ossetia with him, the one who refused to leave before the job was done. A pang of guilt shoots through Ward.
He had gotten in Fitz’ face after grabbing the staff.
He had played on his obvious affection for his lab partner.
And he had made sure Fitz felt like utter shit in front of the woman he loved.
Ward’s chest swelled with what felt uncomfortably like guilt.
“Fitz…”
“No, dinna lie ta me. I’s true. I failed fiel’ assessmen’. Han’-ta-han’ comba’ was my wors’ area. I cannae protec’ her.” The blue eyes that met his gaze were inconsolable, but there was something beneath them, a question that the engineer couldn’t seem to vocalize.
Ward didn’t move for a second. Then, he went to his locker and grabbed a spare pair of hand wraps. He tossed them at Fitz, who caught them awkwardly and proceeded to stare blankly at Ward.
“Those are yours now. I train Skye in the morning. I’ll train you 1 to 2, every day after lunch. An hour a day should be enough to get you the basics. We’ll start there. If it won’t interfere with your lab work, and if you want, we can step it up.”
Fitz looked between Ward and the hand wraps for a few moments before a determined look came over his face.
“When can we star’?”
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Fin
This has been dancing around my brain for a while. While I squeal like any good fangirl over the moments where Fitz and Simmons are being adorable together, I personally feel that the strongest canon “evidence” we have come from the interactions between Ward and Fitz. Fitz talks about Simmons in front of Ward almost non-stop, indicating that he thinks about her a good deal more than friends think about each other (he also could be feeling out Ward to see if he has a crush on Simmons, too).
Then you have Ward, who always seems to go to the Simmons place with Fitz, first to reassure him that he’s a good agent and she knows it (“I know you would have jumped out of the plane after Simmons”), and then to goad him while under the effects of the Berserker staff (“Who’s going to save Simmons if I’m not around”).
To me, that indicates the Ward knows far more about what’s going on with the scientists than stated explicitly.