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She’s sitting in his bed when he comes in from his shower, an open book on her lap and bare feet snuck under the covers for warmth. His face lights up the moment he sees her, the corners of his lips stretching all the way to his ears and he towel dries his hair a bit more before throwing it on the back of a chair and making his way to her.
“Hey,” she says, closing her book and turning to him as he sinks down into the mattress, her hair hung around her face, worn and faded pajama pants and what looks eerily like one of his old shirts. He squints at her but his focus soon shifts to her smile.
“This bed is quite small, you know.”
“I do know. Half my bum is falling out.”
Their bedrooms in the Playground are bigger than their bunks but a single bed is still a single bed. “We better fix this then, yeah?” Fitz wraps an arm around her legs and the other around her shoulders, pulling her to him, her legs over his lap and her side snuggled against his. She giggles as she’s moved, grabbing at his arms in reflex.
“Much better.” Simmons slides one hand up his neck, fingers burying into his hair and grabs it gently, pulling his face down to hers to put more pressure between their mouths. She rises to meet him halfway.
They kiss slowly; a brush of lips sliding lazily against each other, fingers skimming naked skin under too many layers of clothing, but they’re in no hurry. They want to enjoy their proximity, the simmering energy that buzz when they’re together like this, to revel how well their bodies fit together. When they pull apart their eyes meet and they smile like teenagers travelling down a road of discovery, staring as if they’re seeing each other for the first time.
Fitz’s eyes dip lower and he smirks. “This shirt looks familiar.”
Simmons looks down as well, assessing what she’s wearing as if she has no idea what he’s talking about. “Does it?”
“Yes and I must inform you I want it back. Right now.”
Simmons raises an eyebrow but doesn’t say anything, instead she untangles herself from his arms and leans back only enough to pull the shirt over her head. She doesn’t miss the disappointed look he gives her at the realization she’s wearing a bra. “Such a romantic.”
“I can do romance.” He looks slightly offended and she has to force back a laugh. It comes right out in a burst if merry giggles though when he moves on top of her, settling himself between her legs and supporting his arms on each side of her head.
“This is quite good and all but it’s not romance, Fitz,” she says as she pulls him closer, as she wraps her legs around his hips and rests her feet against his thighs, as she runs her fingers through his hair and spikes his curls.
Fitz brings his fingers to her face, runs them down her cheeks, rubs his thumb on her bottom lip, traces every line, every bump, every indentation. He kisses the tip of her nose, the creases between her eyebrows, her cheeks, her jaw, her chin, her lips.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m mapping you out,” he whispers in her ear, “I’m going to commit every single inch of your skin to my memory, I’m going to use my lips and my fingers until I know every strand of your hair, the numbers of freckles on your forehead and nose, all the moles on your body, until I can create an hologram of you down to perfection, until I know that, when we die and our energy moves on to something better, I’ll still be able to recognize you in whatever lifetime we meet again.”
She’s silence for a moment, letting the words sink in, giving her brain time to process what he just said. “Fitz, you better take my clothes off right now, or I swear to God…”
He grins and does just that, pulling her pajama pants down, unhooking her bra with fumbling expertise, and uses his mouth and his hands to make her squirm and tense up under his ministrations, to memorize every intake of breath, every rise and fall of her chest, every sound, every shiver, every clench of her fingers on the sheets as his head dips between her legs.
When she’s done writhing, and is panting on the bed, hands and legs slack, he moves back up her body, slowly kissing his way back to her lips.
“Do you really believe it?”
“I already had you memorized a long time ago, Jemma. I can close my eyes and see you with perfect clarity, down to the smallest details.”
Something floods in her chest: love, adoration, pride, a mix of all maybe, she doesn't quite know. She only knows that if she gets up right now, she’ll find that her center of gravity has shifted and she won’t be able to stay up. She tries to concentrate on what she wants to say and not on the fact that her heart grew wings and took flight. “I mean, meeting me in another lifetime.”
“Yeah, I do believe it.” Fitz brushes a stray strand of hair off her face, running soft fingers down her cheek and jaw, the ghost of a touch that sends the hair on her body to stand in alert. “This lifetime is too short for me to love you enough.”
That does it, the tears she was trying to hold back spill over the rim of her eyes and she quickly covers her face with her hands, embarrassed for being caught crying over something so silly. She’s afraid her chest is going to burst open any moment, that the weightless drop she constantly feels when she’s with him is going to consume her soul and that one day she won’t be able to come back out.
“Oi, that was supposed to be romantic, not to make you cry,” he says, holding her hands and removing them from her face.
She shakes her head, unable to speak and he brushes the tears away. “These are happy tears,” she manages to choke out, biting her lip to stop it from trembling. “I love you Fitz, so much that most times I don’t know how to show it.”
He smiles at her, a bright, wide grin that stretches across his face. Her skin is smooth and warm beneath his fingertips, pale and young and the only marks are the soft crinkles of a quarter of a life. “You do show it, Jemma. All the time.” Because she does, she shows it every time she smiles at him. Every time their hands brush. Every time she crawls into his bed in the middle of the night and they just hold each other until dawn. Every time her mouth kisses skin no one has ever touched. Every time he tells her I love you and she looks like the wind has just been knocked out of her lungs. “I feel the same way.”
She wraps her arms and legs around him, pull him so close his face is pressed against her neck and her lips brush against his ear, until there’s no inch of space between his skin and hers.
“I love you, Leopold Fitz.”
“I love you, Jemma Simmons.”
They lost each other before, minutes and days that stretched out into lifetimes, leaving their bodies empty and hollow until they were back together again, until their strength turned into something ruthless, into something that left them knowing they won't be willing to lose each other anymore.
They fall asleep quickly, wrapped around each other, legs and arms tangled and hearts beating in synchrony, held together by an invisible knot impossible to be undone, by a life energy that has been rewriting their DNA since they met, until there's no force in the universe that can keep them apart.