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Somehow, they find a bathroom.
It’s on a lower level of the Lighthouse and is in pretty bad shape: the pipes are rusty, the floor is cracked and covered in dust, and there is only one tap with two empty buckets standing beside it over a mouldy drain. When Fitz turns on the tap to run some warm water, the entire system gurgles and a trail of brown gloop plops into the bucket underneath.
Jemma has to hide her smile at the look of disgust on his face.
‘Throw out the sludge,’ she suggests, setting down the spare set of clothes Elena had sourced for her. ‘The water will come in a little while. I don’t think this place gets a lot of use, that’s all.’
Fitz wrinkles his nose up, but when the tap gives a final splutter and starts producing water he swaps out the buckets and puts one finger into the stream. Jemma watches as the frown on his forehead fades and he nods with satisfaction.
‘It’s warm.’
Sighing, Jemma sinks to the floor and tugs her hair out of its tight plait. The relief it brings her is immense and unexpected – not only does her head suddenly feel so much lighter, but it also signifies that she is no longer a slave.
At last, she thinks, glancing over to Fitz, she belongs to whoever she wants to belong to again.
Once his bucket is full, Fitz turns off the tap and carries it over to her. He kneels next to her and shrugs off his jacket, picking off the glittering broach that had bought him so much prestige among Kasius’ bidders. Jemma notices the distain on his face as he flicks the trinket across the room.
When he looks back at her, she feels her breath catch in her throat at the intensity of his expression and the sincerity in his eyes. Since their dramatic escape back in the exhibition hall, their priorities had been finding their team and getting Daisy to safety, which had left little time to talk about anything else. From the look on Fitz’s face, Jemma realises that they have both come to the same conclusion simultaneously: that this might be as good an opportunity as any.
She sees Fitz swallow, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat, as he gestures towards her.
‘Do you want me to help you?’
The offer of intimacy, so easily given and so welcome to receive, makes tears well up in Jemma’s eyes.
‘Yes,’ she whispers. ‘Yes, please.’
Fitz nods, and when she slips the slave gown off her shoulders he takes it from her and rips a length of the fabric off with his teeth, before dipping it in the warm water as a make-shift flannel. He passes it back to her, and Jemma closes her eyes as she wipes it across her arms and chest, imagining it removing the weeks’ worth of fear and loneliness too.
The top she pulls on once she is dry is a deep evergreen colour, well-worn but clean. It is a welcome change from the white, starch cotton she had been wearing, and Jemma smoothes down the sleeves contentedly. When she glances up, she sees that Fitz is watching her, a far-away look in his eyes. Tilting her head, she gives him a puzzled smile.
‘Fitz? What is it?’
‘Nothing.’ He shakes his head, before returning the smile. ‘The colour suits you, that’s all.’
The words shouldn’t make butterflies dance in her stomach. But they do, and Jemma ducks her head to hide her blush. Clearing her throat, she starts to shimmy out of the wide leg white trousers.
‘Tell me again,’ she says, ‘how you managed to get here.’
Fitz nods obligingly, wringing out another damp cloth.
‘After Hunter broke me out of prison, we tracked down Enoch. He took us to Robin, who helped us unravel the mystery of why I got left behind and then we stole Enoch’s cyro-freeze chamber, which I used. I’ve been asleep for the last seventy-four years, so I doubt I’ll be needing to take a nap any time soon.’
He says the last part as a joke, looking to her expectantly, but Jemma can’t bring herself to even smile.
‘Hunter broke you out of prison,’ she repeats, the fact having been stuck in her mind since his first, hurried recounting of it when they’d met up with their team.
‘Yeah.’
‘Where you’d been for six months.’
Fitz’s shoulders slump as he meets her gaze. ‘Yeah.’
Shaking her head slightly, Jemma turns her face away. It is difficult to grasp the concept that while her team had only been in the future for a fortnight, Fitz had been left on earth for half a year. And he had spent those six months in a high security prison, in solitary confinement, whilst trying to figure out where the hell she and the others had gone and how to get them back.
The poignancy of it, as she understands how scared, frustrated and alone he must have felt, makes a lump appear at the back of her throat and her vision blurs.
‘Jemma. Hey…’
Blinking away her tears, Jemma finds that Fitz has slid across the floor to sit in front of her.
‘I’m not upset about it anymore,’ he murmurs, reaching out to take her hand in his own. ‘I’d rather it hadn’t happened, obviously, but it did and I can’t change that. So please…’ With the ball of his thumb, he wipes away a tear that has dribbled onto her cheek. ‘Don’t be upset about it for me.’
Jemma shivers, imagining him sitting alone in a dark cell.
‘But you didn’t do anything to deserve it,’ she whispers vindictively.
‘No,’ Fitz says. ‘I didn’t.’ He brushes his thumb against her hairline, and it comes away pricked with gold. ‘Just like you didn’t do anything to deserve him.’
A wave of bitterness and subdued fury wash over Jemma as she remembers the way Kasius had treated her and his other slaves. She remembers the cool, burning sensation his silencing device had produced as it had deposited itself in her brain, and the sudden sharp pain it had caused. It had surprised her, how easy it had been to hold the blade of the knife to his throat and draw it across his clammy skin. It had shocked her, how much she had wanted to kill him in that moment.
‘What made him choose…’ She feels Fitz struggle for the right way to ask his question. ‘How did you end up there?’
‘I saved a man from bleeding out.’ Jemma winces at the memory, and how even despite her efforts she hadn’t been able to save his life. She rolls her eyes skyward and shakes her head. ‘Apparently that’s not the done thing here.’
‘In which case,’ Fitz murmurs, ‘I guess you’ll never fit in.’
Feeling tears spring back to her eyes, Jemma stifles a sob and lets her head fall to rest against his shoulder. She folds herself against him, reaching up to loop her arms around his neck and feel his own arms move to encircle her in turn.
He smells different - like worn leather and spacedust - and there is a new firmness to his body that she could have sworn wasn’t there before, but underneath his shirt Jemma can still hear his heart, beating the same, familiar rhythm she has come to trust like her own.
It tells her that he is here, that she is here. It tells her that they are together once more, and that they will both do whatever it takes to prevent them being parted again.
Fitz’s heartbeat has almost lulled her into sleep when she feels his hand on her bare leg. The sensation makes her tingle before she realises he is tracing the scar from where his LMD had stabbed her.
‘This is new,’ Fitz says. His tone is almost casual, but the way his pulse quickens tells Jemma he is feeling anything but. ‘When did you get it?’
Twisting in his arms, Jemma covers his hand with her own and peels his fingers back from her skin.
‘Oh,’ she murmurs. ‘Decades ago.’
She waits, as her insinuation sinks in and understanding dawns on Fitz’s face.
He swallows hard, then asks: ‘was it...mine?’
Unwilling to speak, Jemma nods, and feels him flinch underneath her.
‘Jemma, I’m so-‘
Before he can say any more, she has pushed herself up onto her knees and has spun around so her body is facing his. Carefully, Jemma reaches out to take Fitz’s face into her hands, stroking her thumbs along his cheekbones. He has gone still under her touch, but is steadying her with his hands underneath her elbows, the apology frozen on his lips.
‘I’m not upset about it anymore,’ Jemma says quietly, ‘so please don’t be upset for me.’
A ghost of a smile flickers over Fitz’s face as he hears his own words spoken back to him. He lets out a soft huff as Jemma drops her forehead down to rest against his.
‘You know what, Jemma Simmons,’ he says, ‘sometimes, you really are too smart for your own good.’
Jemma cannot help but chuckle at this, but when Fitz tilts his head up to kiss her all thoughts of a quick comeback are lost to the taste of his lips.
Their kiss back in the exhibition hall had been hard and fast, their veins flooded with the simultaneous highs of adrenaline and one another’s touch. This kiss has quite a different pace, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t just as dizzying.
Closing her eyes, Jemma allows herself to truly feel every aspect of kissing Fitz. Losing her hearing, however temporarily, had given her a heightened awareness of all her other senses and she finds a new thrill in the way his lips move across hers, and in the way their noses rub against the other’s. The smell of his skin is so intense that it makes her head spin.
She marvels at the way their bodies seem to fuse together, as though they were made to be two parts of a single being.
Fitz kisses her slowly, as if he is doing exactly the same as she is and trying to lose himself in every part of her. Tilting their heads to one side to deepen the kiss, his hands slide to her waist and he draws her even closer.
Feeling her lips tug into a smile, Jemma shuffles forward until she is kneeling between his parted legs. As they continue to kiss, her fingers trace the nape of his neck to twist their way into his over-grown curls, eliciting a slight groan from Fitz that only makes her smile harder.
I missed you, she tells him, with another, lingering kiss. I missed you so much.
It feels like a very long time before they pull apart, although it is less of a pull and more of an exhale. Straightening her back to relieve the crick in her neck, Jemma glances down and frowns, wondering if it is possible that they had been kissing for too long.
From this angle, it almost looks like Fitz is glowing.
It is a full beat before she realises what has happened, and when she does she gives a soft, breathy laugh.
‘What?’ Fitz tilts his head at her, a confused expression on his face. ‘What is it?’
Shaking her head, Jemma reaches out two fingers to brush against his forehead before showing him that they are covered in gold paint.
‘Apparently it’s easily transferable,’ she says ruefully. ‘It must have come off my face and onto yours. It’s all across your forehead.’ She grins. ‘And your lips…’
Fitz snorts, and the paint flecked on his upper lip winks at her.
‘Come on, then.’ He taps her, lightly, on her bare thigh. ‘Let’s finish the job.’
While Jemma wriggles into a pair of faded black jeans, Fitz runs a fresh bucket of water from the gurgling tap.
‘Me first?’ He asks, dipping a new rag into the steaming hot water. ‘Or you?’
‘Me, please.’ Jemma pulls her hair back into a make-shift ponytail and sighs. ‘I can’t wait to get this stuff off.’
She sits back on her heels while Fitz crouches in front of her, the cloth in his hand. Gently, he begins to clean her forehead with it, one stroke at a time, before moving on to the thick line of paint on her neck. He uses his thumb to clean her lips, rubbing them back and forth as carefully as he can.
The sensation is comforting, but not as much as the way he doesn’t take his eyes off her as he does it, his gaze tender and caring. Jemma remembers the frank way he had told her he was never going to leave her again and feels her whole body grow warm.
Those simple words had been able to make her feel safer than anything had in a long time.
Once he has finished, Fitz sits back to examine his work and nods approvingly.
‘There,’ he says, leaning forward to kiss her, softly, on the forehead. ‘You look like you again.’
Jemma grins. ‘Not that you had any trouble recognising me, even with all this garb on.’
‘No. But really, I don’t think there’s a lot they could have done to you to make me not know you.’ Fitz pauses, before looking up at her with a look of such honest love in his eyes that it makes Jemma’s heart flip over inside her chest. He shrugs. ‘I know you by heart.’
Wordlessly, Jemma reaches out to take the cloth from him. Fitz relinquishes it to her, and leans back on his hands to allow her to return the favour. The gold paint comes off fairly easily, and he had only had faint smudges of it on compared to her, so it doesn’t take Jemma long to remove it all. If she is being truthful, it would have taken her far less time if she hadn’t been so absorbed in his features, and in the luxury of being able to touch his face, a face that she too knew by heart.
Fitz had closed his eyes as she’d worked but when he hears her toss the shimmering cloth back into the bucket he opens them again. Jemma gives him a light smile, brushing her fingers against his hairline.
‘I love you,’ she whispers.
Returning her smile, Fitz takes hold of her hand and brings it to his lips.
‘Love you too.’
They throw the dirty water down the drain and wring out the rags to leave them in the bucket. The rest of her slave clothes they leave beside it, Jemma tucking the knife she had taken from the table into her boot. As she turns her head, the glint of Fitz’s marauder brooch, tossed into a corner and forgotten, catches her eye and vanishes.
Fitz sighs, and dries his hands off on his trousers. ‘I suppose we’d better head back to the team.’
With a nod, Jemma steps forward and loops her arms around his neck. They stand like that for a moment, swaying on the spot, listening to the drip of the pipes and creaking of the settlement around them.
‘Should we tell them, do you think?’ When Fitz glances down at her, his forehead puckered, Jemma raises an eyebrow. ‘That we’re…you know…engaged.’
‘Oh!’ Even in the dimly lit bathroom she can see how deeply Fitz’s cheeks flush, and he grins, almost to himself. ‘Um, yeah, I don’t see why not. After all, Daisy already knows and I don’t know how long she’ll be able to keep it to herself…’
With a rush of excitement, Jemma leans up on her tip toes to kiss him again. It takes Fitz by surprise, but he recovers quickly and wraps his arms around her waist, pulling her in until their bodies are pressed flush against each other.
‘I can’t wait,’ Jemma breathes out, once they break apart, ‘to be married to you.’
The smile Fitz gives her is bright enough to illuminate all of London. ‘Me too,’ he murmurs in reply, tucking a loose strand of hair back behind her ear. ‘Biggest up-yours to the cosmos we could pull, eh?’
Jemma scoffs teasingly. ‘Oh, and is that your key motivation in accepting my generous offer?’
‘Not at all.’ Fitz ducks his head and kisses her collarbone. ‘I want to be able to call you my wife.’ He kisses the base of her neck. ‘I want to hear you call me your husband.’ He kisses her chin. ‘I want us to have matching rings that we wear on chains around our necks when we’re in the lab because we don’t ever want to take them off, not even for a second.’
Jemma laughs, feeling hot tears prick at the back of her throat again as he kisses her cheek.
‘I don’t want another day to go by,’ Fitz says, his voice so low that it makes shivers run down her spine, ‘that you don’t know how much I love you. How much of me has been built from loving you.’ He kisses the bridge of her nose, and then the corners of her eyes. ‘I don’t want you to ever forget how much you mean to me.’
Never, Jemma thinks fiercely, as his lips meet hers in the sweetest of kisses.
‘I want us to be us,’ Fitz says. ‘In every way that it’s possible for us to be.’
‘Like we’re two pieces,’ Jemma finishes with a smile, ‘of the same whole.’
The kiss they share next is filled with passion, and love, and saturated with inevitability. Fitz’s lips are hot as they press against hers, and his hands on her back cannot seem to stay still; they jump from the small of her back to her shoulder blades, as though he wants to set every part of her skin alight.
Jemma feels her pulse quicken as she deepens the kiss, cradling the back of his neck. She places one hand on Fitz’s chest and almost laughs with delight as she feels how frantically his own heart is beating; they are perfectly in sync once more.
As the pace of their kisses grows faster and more heated, Jemma’s fingers fumble for the zip of the jeans she has only just put on. Fitz gives a stuttered gasp of anticipation.
‘Do we…have the time?’
Jemma snorts, and kisses him, long and hard.
‘As I recall,’ she murmurs, ‘you just promised me the rest of our lives.’
Against her lips she feels Fitz’s mouth stretch into a wide grin, and when his hands slide down to her thighs it is her turn to gasp. As he lifts her up into his arms, she wraps her legs around his waist and takes the opportunity to kiss him again as he carries her towards the wall.
‘I did,’ Fitz agrees, pressing her back against the plaster. He looks up at her, and Jemma thinks her heart may burst. ‘And I do.’
As he kisses her back, his lips taste of love and light. Jemma allows the feeling to flood her bones and, as they come together, she imagines that the promise written on both of their hearts starts to glow, in a way far more permanent than any streaks of gold.