Work Text:
i.
Jemma reaches for the paint roller lying on the floor with a tired sigh. Next to her, Fitz is happily ignoring her while mixing the paint in a bucket, and his enthusiasm irritates her to no end; the fact that they were here was his fault and he had no right to enjoy their punishment while she had to unfairly put up with it.
When she huffs, he turns to look at her. “Really, Simmons?” he asks, glaring. “Now I can’t even enjoy painting a wall without you being angry at me–”
She throws her free hand up. “Fitz, it’s Sunday and instead of catching up on homework–”
“–or sleeping–”
“–I am stuck inside the lab that you and I—mostly you—destroyed! I don’t want to enjoy this, I just want to be done with it and your enthusiasm is really, really infuriating.”
“Well, that is not my fault,” he shrugs, and grabs a brush. “Now if you’ll excuse me I will be enjoying the sweet smell of fresh paint in a newly cleaned lab.”
He steps on a ladder a few feet away from her and extends his arm, swiftly stroking the wall with his brush while humming. Jemma can’t take it anymore: she drops the roller and sits on the newspaper-covered floor, arms and legs crossed, a frown on her face.
Fitz looks at her, expressionless. “Are you kidding me.”
“Well,” she points out, “ you’re the one who enjoys painting, not me, so you might as well do it all yourself–”
“Oh, not this again–”
“–especially since you insist on doing everything yourself, including blowing up a lab!”
They stare at each other for a few seconds, wordlessly, and then they burst into hysterical laughter. Fitz can’t keep himself upright on the ladder so he steps down and crouches next to Jemma, while she’s doubled up and holding her stomach tightly, tears rolling down her face.
“I can’t believe you did it,” she says, in between gasps, “I was not expecting you to actually go through with it.”
“You were panicking badly , Jemma,” he explains, wiping off some of the stray tears on his cheeks and wheezing a little, “and I know you weren’t serious about blowing up the chem lab but tell me if you had any other ideas?”
“I could’ve just called in sick, you know?” she points out, “it’s not like Vaughn wouldn’t have given me the extension if I had asked nicely,” she says, wiggling her eyebrows, and Fitz gags.
“ Gross ,” he mutters, then he looks at the floor, flushing a little, “but really, I have to admit it was partially because you needed an extension but also because I don’t think I’ll get away with juvenile delinquency anymore after we start our jobs at Sci-Ops, so.”
Jemma coos and pinches his cheek mockingly. He squirms away from her hand. “You say that like you indulge in juvenile delinquency very often,” she points out, and he gapes at her.
“I’ll have you know I did plenty of illegal things in my youth, Jemma Simmons.”
“You are seventeen , Fitz,” she points out.
Instead of dignifying that with a response, Fitz just grabs the brush lying next to him and hands it to her. Jemma groans, but takes it anyway, and when he offers his hand to help her stand up, she takes it too.
They sit side by side on the floor of the lab, taking a second to admire their finished work; Jemma has to admit they did a pretty good job, even after the paint fight fiasco that left her clothes covered in white and Fitz looking like the phantom of the opera.
He hands her the bottle of water he had just been drinking from and she gratefully takes it, gulping the remaining water down quickly. Fitz sighs, and leans back.
“I love painting,” he says suddenly, and Jemma turns to look at him with a curious stare.
“Oh, really?” she quips, “because I would have never guessed after the past three hours.”
He shrugs. “When my dad left, mum decided she wanted to repaint the entire house,” he explains, and suddenly, Jemma feels self-conscious about being irritated by his enthusiasm, “I wasn’t old enough to actually do an acceptable work but she let me paint the walls of my room, and I remember it being blue, orange and pink for about a year.” Jemma snorts at that.
“I can see that so clearly.”
“Then she got fed up because even though she wanted me to exploit my creativity, it really was a hideous wall,” he smiles fondly, “but it was really nice, painting with her.”
“And you didn’t have to blow up a laboratory for that,” she deadpans. Fitz nudges her with his elbow.
They sit silently for another moment, watching the paint slowly drying on the wall, and then he clears his throat.
“Do you think they’re gonna like us?” he asks, “at Sci-Ops, I mean.”
She sighs. “I don’t know.”
When she smirks, Fitz knows exactly what she’s gonna say. He holds his hand up. “Don’t you dare , Simmons–”
“As long as you don’t blow up any of their labs–”
“Oh, come on!” he groans, “I’m never going to live this down, am I?”
She shakes her head and laughs.
ii.
She’s holding the can of black spray paint in her shaky hands, and even though she knows she has to do it, she can’t bring herself to press the actuator. It feels like giving up, like this is the final step before they have to admit that S.H.I.E.L.D doesn’t exist anymore, that their cause is long lost and that maybe it wasn’t even their cause in the first place.
She hears some steps behind her, and though she can’t see who they belong to, she knows immediately who it is. She would recognize the cadence of his steps anywhere.
He places a hand on her shoulder and squeezes reassuringly. She takes a deep breath.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” she admits, and turns around to face him. He’s frowning when she notices his face, and she tries to remind herself that this must be as hard for him as it is for her. S.H.I.E.L.D had been his home as much as it had been hers, it had been the place where they both thrived and became the best versions of themselves, a place where they could use their abilities to make a change.
It had been the place where they had found each other.
“We don’t have a choice, Jemma,” he replies, softly, almost trying to convince himself as much as he’s trying to convince her, “you know we have to do this.”
She nods, clearly holding back tears, and turns around again without replying to him; then, she extends the arm and presses the actuator, trying not to look for too long at the eagle symbol she was now covering in black paint.
His hand doesn’t leave her shoulder at all while she works.
She’s thankful that spray paint seems to dry faster than other kinds of paint, because that way she wouldn’t feel compelled to watch it dry and think about what was underneath; instead, she tries to make herself busy helping Trip with whatever he needed to do, then Skye, and then finally, after trying to avoid the inevitable, she had to return to Fitz.
He, apparently, had no problem with just sitting cross-legged in front of the van, seemingly watching the spray paint drying, which was the one thing she was trying to avoid. In the end, she gives up and sighs, sits next to him on the floor; when he doesn’t acknowledge her presence, she realizes he hadn’t been actually watching and, instead, was lost in his own thoughts.
For a moment she’s content to just sit next to him in silence, merely enjoying his presence next to her, listening to his heavy breath—and this is, ultimately, why she is not taking the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D as hard as she knew she could be taking it: in the end, Fitz was still right next to her, and they still had each other, and as long as that was the case she could always be okay; while this fact was reassuring enough for her, after a while it’s clear that Fitz was having trouble with their circumstances beyond what he initially let on.
She clears her throat. “Fitz? Are you alright?” He is quiet at first, and when he finally speaks he doesn’t look at her, gaze still fixed on the drying paint.
“This was harder than I expected,” he mutters.
She hesitates for a moment, then swiftly moves her hand to rest on top of his knee. His hand soon moves to rest on top of hers and he squeezes her fingers.
“I know,” she says, and leans on his shoulder.
iii.
Apparently, Coulson’s idea of “taking it easy” after the mission that had ended in—in that , was making everyone repaint the places of the base that had taken it hardest after Daisy had been swayed by Hive.
Maybe, Jemma reasoned, scrubbing away all the memories this base now held might help all of them. Maybe it even would make it easier on Daisy.
That’s how she finds herself wearing overalls and an old Academy t-shirt, painting the walls of Vault D with Fitz. Or trying to, really, given that he keeps distracting her since he decided to wear those ratty old sweatpants that are now a bit on the small side and hug his ass in the most wonderful way, and whenever he stretches and extends his arm, his shirt rides up and leaves his waist visible and she wants to throw the roller away and take him right there.
She should feel bad, really, not being able to think about anything but her boyfriend, even after what happened. The last thing she wants to do is parade her relationship around while Daisy is going through something she can’t even begin to fathom–
–oh, but she does . She did almost lose Fitz, once. She’s almost lost him so many times, and she can’t bear to think of what it would do to her to lose him for good.
She puts the roller down and tip-toes to him, before wrapping her arms around his middle and burying her face in his neck. He freezes, his arm still stretched up.
“I love you,” she mumbles, the sound muffled by his neck. He lowers his arm and slides it around her shoulders, then presses a kiss to her hair.
“Any specific reason why you decided to do this now?” he asks, his lips still barely touching her hair, and she shakes her head as much as she can given their current position.
“No reason,” she says, “I just do. You know that, right?” she looks up at him, and he sees her eyes are filled with tears. He frowns, then lifts his free hand to wipe her cheek.
“Jem, are you okay?” he asks, then, concerned, and this time she nods. “Is this about–”
“No,” she interrupts him, before he can say Lincoln’s name. Then she sighs, “okay, maybe a little, but that’s not… that’s not what this is, okay? I’m not just saying this because I’m afraid to lose you– I mean, I am , I always will be given our line of work but that’s not why I need you to know–”
“Jemma,” Fitz says, patiently, and she closes her mouth, then buries her face in his neck again and takes a deep breath. “Hey, I get it. I love you too, okay? And I’m not going anywhere, I’ll be right here for as long as you’ll have me.”
“Okay,” she says, nodding, “okay. Good.”
He presses another kiss to her hair. “And to answer your previous question, I know.”
She holds him tighter.
They manage to steal a few moments by themselves once they’re done painting Vault D, so they sit right in the middle of the newly-painted room in silence, simply watching the paint drying in the walls.
After a while, Jemma looks at Fitz. “Do you think Coulson will let us take that vacation time now?”
Fitz looks at her, frowning. “Right now? Really?”
“Well,” she shrugs, “now seems like a good time. I could really use a vacation, and so could you, and I can’t stand to be here right now. I’m just so tired.”
“Do you mean that in a general sense or…”
“I mean,” she says, slowly, “that we should go on a vacation, get sunburned, have lots of sex and, I don’t know, maybe talk about what’s next. Because I know it’s not the best moment to be thinking about this, but I… I don’t want this to be my life anymore. The constant danger and threats and always fearing I’m going to lose you. I think we both deserve better than this.”
“Oh,” he says, simply, and doesn’t say anything else.
iv.
They are granted a brand new, bigger bedroom the day after the wedding, after putting on an official request that Coulson had ripped as soon as he had gotten.
“We are way past bureaucracy by now, don’t you think?” He had told them, and then informed them that level 11 had the biggest rooms and most of them were empty. These rooms, however, had been completely untouched and unoccupied since the 70’s, and that is how Jemma Simmons and Leopold Fitz find themselves renovating a bedroom almost as big as their apartment in Atlanta in their second day as a married couple.
The first item in their to-do list is repainting the walls, and Jemma can’t help but notice how enthusiastic her husband ( husband! ) seems to be about this task and, most of all, how enthusiastic she was herself about it; though she was well aware of Fitz’s love for painting, she also was well aware that the most mundane of tasks seemed now brighter somehow, just because they were now married, and how was she supposed to even try to tone down her own happiness when even the simple act of waking up was a thousand times more wonderful when it was next to her husband, as opposed to her fiancé or her boyfriend?
Not just that, but he had decided to wear only a tank top and sweatpants, exposing his beautiful back and neck muscles to her and, therefore, making himself a prime target for a paint attack: she swiftly grabs her brush, dips it in the can of white paint, and then paints a large stripe from the base of his neck to his tank top. He freezes and she can see the goosebumps forming around his neck, and when he turns around to look at her through narrowed eyes, she only giggles and says “For old times’ sake, huh?”
So he does the logical thing and jumps forward, grabs her by the waist with one hand and rolls his paint roller over the left side of her face, from her chin to her hair, and then plants a loud kiss to her right cheek. She gasps in indignation, and he says, against her flushed skin, “For old times’ sake.”
“My face is supposed to be off limits, Fitz,” she whines, but turns her face anyway to kiss him properly.
“That was before we were married,” he reasons, “but since what’s yours is mine now, and you had no problem attacking my face last time, then–”
“Are you trying to say my face belongs to you now?” she interrupts him, then punctuates her question with another kiss, and he pulls her closer, their chests now pressed together.
“Are you trying to imply it doesn’t?” he asks, and when she opens her mouth to reply he starts kissing along her jaw, effectively distracting her. When he reaches the spot below her ear that always drives her crazy, she places her hands on his shoulders and pushes him away.
“Alright mister, we have to work.”
“Do we?” he adds, quickly, and looks at her with his eyebrows raised. “Because I have made a pretty convincing list of reasons why we don’t have to work: first of all, I don’t want to.”
She snorts at this. “You don’t want to paint? Who are you?”
“A newly married man who would much rather be distracted by his beautiful and very, very attractive wife,” he replies, and kisses her cheek again when he notices her blushing. “Second, we live alone on this level, and even if we didn’t it’s not like we’re inviting people in every day, so does it really matter if the walls are only half-painted?”
“I think it gives the room character,” Jemma jokes, and Fitz smiles brightly.
“Now you’re getting it,” he says, “which is fortunate because I don’t have a third reason.”
“Oh, really?” she teases, and raises an eyebrow. “And what if I hadn’t been so easy to convince?”
“In that case,” he smirks, and steps closer, his face only a few inches from hers, “I would have had to resort to other methods of convincing.”
It’s Jemma who closes the minimal gap between their lips, and then their task is happily forgotten for a few hours.
Afterwards, when the main room is now a lovely shade of white, Fitz sits cross-legged on the floor while Jemma lies next to him, her head on his lap, as he carefully braids her hair.
“I think we should call it a day,” Jemma suggests, her eyelids drooping and her voice barely above a whisper, and Fitz hums in response; after a few additional seconds of silence, she clears her throat. “Fitz?”
“Yes?”
She turns her head a little and looks at him, a tiny smile on her lips. “I love you. Thank you for marrying me.” He laughs a little and bends down, presses a kiss to her forehead.
“Thank you for marrying me,” he replies.
v.
Jemma picks yellow and green for their daughter’s nursery because it reminds her of the sun and nature, both things she intends to have her daughter enjoy as much as possible. Fitz can’t really bring himself to argue, and instead listens to her meticulously detailed plans for the things she wants him to paint on the walls and starts formulating some of the blueprints in his mind.
This time she doesn’t help him paint, only sits on a rocking chair in the middle of the room to watch him work while he sings Wouldn’t It Be Nice off-key and paints the loveliest sunrise Jemma has ever seen.
At first, she isn’t sure how the final piece is going to look, though she implicitly trusts her husband when it comes to art; when she sees the painting slowly taking shape, however, she starts getting teary eyed.
It’s not like she didn’t know he would paint something wonderful, really; she has known he’s an artist, and a very talented one, almost since they first met, even if he had fallen off the habit while in S.H.I.E.L.D. It’s just that even during the few times when she allowed herself to indulge in some harmless daydreaming and imagined what it would be like to paint her first child’s nursery, even at the darkest of times she had imagined something along the lines of exactly this, and the fact that he actually managed to make the reality just as beautiful as her fantasies was a little overwhelming.
When he turns around, she sees that he somehow painted a green mustache on his face without her noticing. She snorts, and the baby kicks, probably startled by her mother’s laugh.
“Well, artists have mustaches,” he shrugs in response, and she only laughs harder.
“You are ridiculous.”
“Excuse you, ma’am,” he says, in a bad French accent, and pretends to twirl his nonexistent mustache, “while you sit there watching and call me ridiculous I have painted a masterpiece, and I do not take kindly to your insults.”
“Well, while you stand there and paint mustaches on your face I am creating a masterpiece right here,” she points to her belly, “so I have the right to insult you and your ridiculousness as I please, mister.”
He steps off the ladder. “I can’t wait until you give birth and can’t hold your pregnancy against me,” he says, before grabbing her face with both hands and placing a loud kiss on her nose. Then, he sits on the floor next to the rocking chair and rests his head on her knee, and finally takes a moment to admire his work. “I think I did good, huh?”
Jemma hums and runs her fingers through his steadily growing curls, then smiles when their baby decides to remind her mother of her presence by kicking her bladder.
“Well, this little lady definitely agrees,” she replies with a huff, which makes Fitz turn and place a hand on her belly, a few inches above her belly button, exactly where the baby decides to kick at the same time. “See?”
“You think dada is an artist, don’t you?” Fitz coos, making Jemma roll her eyes fondly at him.
“That’s pushing it a little, she probably won’t have strong opinions on your artistic talent for a while,” she quips, “me, on the other hand, I think it’s perfect.”
“You really think so?” he asks, looking up at her, and behind his faux-confidence she can see how much he really wants her to like his work, how much he’s striving to be as good as he can for their daughter. Once again, she runs her fingers through his hair and smiles at him.
“I think you couldn’t possibly have done a better job,” she says, softly, “and I think our daughter is going to love it as soon as she knows what a sunrise is, and I think you have nothing to worry about because if our daughter is anything at all like me, she is going to love you more than you can ever imagine.”
Fitz huffs, but then he looks at his wife, eyes shining, and says “Then I did a better job than I thought.”
They watch the sunrise drying on their daughter’s wall, in silence, as the sun outside begins to set.