Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Leo Fitz knows that he sees the world best through drawing. Face-to-face with someone, he's rubbish at saying what he really means but if he draws someone, all of a sudden he can see thoughts in the sweep of charcoal, love in the dabs of paint, pain in the fine lines of pencil. When he was younger, he used to draw temporary masterpieces in chalk on the sidewalk in front of his house. His mother, worry lines spiderwebbing out from the corners of her eyes and hair in a frizzy bun; his sprawling, loud extended family; their tiny flat in Glasgow, complete with copper tea kettle and elastic clothesline; the blurry lines of his absent father. Now he uses sheets of pure white paper, perfectly sharpened pencils, and fat tubes of oils and sometimes he thinks that it was easier when his work was less permanent. He is in art school on a spectacular array of scholarships and he is perfectly aware that everyone expects his work to be just as spectacular.

And that's why he's always the last person to slip into each one of his classes and the first one out the door, so he can avoid the questions and the comments and the eye rolls that bore into his back. But he left his flat a few minutes earlier than he meant to today and now he's one of the first people sitting in his figure drawing class. He sets up his easel and lays out his pencils as slowly as possible, and that's when he notices that they have a new model. She's quietly talking to the professor in the corner and all he can see is a curtain of brown hair and her blue silk robe. Then she nods and turns to take her position on the couch, and he realizes that she is beautiful. Most of the time, figure drawing classes are about learning to draw all different types of bodies—old, young, plump, slim, scarred—but she is simply beautiful. Waves and waves of brown hair, eyes that vary between amber and hazel every time he looks at them, and a mouth that he just knows curves into a brilliant smile. He's so busy looking at her that he has to scramble to keep up when they start the gesture poses.

After class is over, he almost goes over to say hello but she's gone before he can get there, pulling the robe back over her white cotton tank top and shorts and slipping out the door. He tells Skye all about it at the pub that evening, over drinks and an enormous assortment of greasy food. “Only you would describe a girl as having beautiful angles.” Skye says as she steals his fries.

“But she does. Here, look.” Fitz flips open his sketchbook to show her his sketches from class. Skye is one of the few people he lets look at his art while it's still in progress. They lived on the same hall freshman year but they never talked until the day Skye locked herself out. He heard her swearing at her door from down the hall and unlocked her door using his least favorite drawing pencil and her hair elastic. She offered to cook him dinner as a thank-you, after she saw the boxes of ramen stacked in his room, and ended up burning everything. They ordered huge amounts of Indian food, had never-ending conversations where he attempted to explain Doctor Who and she argued that the elaborate computer set-up in her room wasn't technically illegal, and they've been friends ever since. He's pretty sure that she's his best friend.

“Fitz, these are gorgeous.” Skye whispers. “She's gorgeous—do you think she's into girls?”

“Hey!” he protests, laughing. “She's my mystery girl. Besides, where's tall, dark, and handsome?”

“More like tall, dark, and an asshole.” Skye scowls down at her pink drink.

“So we're on to tall, dark, and handsome #2?” he teases. Skye's been dating the same two guys off and on for the past year, neither of whom are very good at sharing her, and there seems to be a new piece of drama every week. He likes one of them better than the other, but he's never told her who—he thinks that it's Skye's decision to make, if she ever wants to make it, and that the guys just need to stop fighting about who throws a better punch. Or whatever manly men like them like to brag about.

“They have names, you know. Grant and Antoine. And I don't like them just because they're all muscly.” she sticks her tongue out at him. “Speaking of, Phil and Melinda are coming by for dinner next week before they leave for Tahiti and I can't bring either of them. Want to come with?” Phil and Melinda are her adoptive parents and possibly the scariest nice people Fitz has ever met. Melinda's a fight coach for big-budget action movies, Phil is a military historian, and Skye is convinced that they used to work for the CIA.

“Depends on when—I have a piece to finish by Wednesday. Why can't you bring the boys?” he asks and Skye lets out a huge sigh and flips her hair around like she does when she knows he's going to tease her about this for weeks.

“The last time they were here, Grant may have accidentally hit on Melinda. He didn't know she was my mom!” Skye says defensively when Fitz starts laughing. “She looks really young for her age! So I definitely can't bring them. And my parents like Antoine, but the last time he met my parents, he spent the entire meal talking to Phil about World War II. I nearly fell asleep in my dessert. Please come to dinner, Fitz? Pretty, pretty please?” She gives him her best puppy-dog eyes and he agrees, mostly because he knows that she'll keep on asking until he says yes. He asks Skye to find out who the girl is for him before his next class, though, because he needs to do research if he wants to do this properly. And even if Skye tells him that he could just walk up to her and say hi, she promises that she'll do it. Because he fixes her car when it inevitably breaks down and she makes sure that he eats when he's in the middle of a new piece and neither of them question each other's cracks and flaws. That's what friends do.

“I found your girl.” Skye declares triumphantly a few days later. “Jemma Simmons, youngest student in the med school. Practically a genius, according to the entire chem department. They've got her entire senior thesis tacked up on the wall of the department office. Extremely nice person, according to me when I semi-accidentally ran into her and spilled coffee on her book. Sex goddess, according to my friend Jamie who dated her last year.”

“I didn't need to know that.” he groans and buries his head in his hands. So she's not only gorgeous, she's brilliant and nice and...he's probably going to make some garbled noises and then run like mad if he ever tries to talk to her.

But when he finally has figure drawing class again, it is surprisingly simple. He takes longer than usual to pack up his things and when she comes out again, wearing a blue cardigan and carrying an overstuffed book bag, he blurts out a thank you.

“For what?” she asks, the corners of her mouth curling up in surprise.

“A lot of our models are students and they're not always the best at staying still.” he shrugs. “But you're still as a statue. How do you do it?”

“I work on memorization. I've got nearly all of Gray's Anatomy down by now.” she says with a little flash of pride. Then she starts buttoning up her coat and, almost too casually, says “I was wondering if I could take a look at some of the sketches from today? I understand if you don't want anyone looking at your work so early but I was curious and I've heard that you're...anyway, I thought it would be interesting to see. If you don't mind?” He barely hesitates before opening up his sketchpad to a drawing of her leaning against the curve of the couch, eyes half-shut, tendrils of hair escaping her bun. She looks at it quietly for nearly five minutes, letting her hand hover just above the paper as she traces the lines of his drawing, and finally she turns to him with wonder in her eyes.

“I haven't messed you up too badly?” he asks anxiously and tugs at his curls.

“No, no, it was wonderful. It was me on that page. A little strange to see myself like that, but...I'm Jemma.” she sticks out her hand to him.

“I'm Fitz.” he takes it.

Chapter Text

He runs into her in the library a few days later, looking for books for his art history class. She has a stack of medical textbooks that's taller than her, a pile of color-coded notes that's almost as tall as the stack of books, and a row of pencils and highlighters neatly lined up in front of her in a study carrel. He mumbles a quick hello as he passes her, and she looks up and says his name like she wanted nothing more in the world than to see him. “How are you?” he asks.

“All right. We've got an exam on Friday, so I've been studying.” she sweeps a hand around her study space. “Luckily, I managed to claim this carrel on Monday.”

“Have you left it since Monday?”

“The librarians had to kick me out eventually around closing. But they like me so they let me eat in the library.” she says, voice bright and cheerful. He notices the wrinkles in her sweater, though, and the dark circles under her eyes.

“I was just going to get something from the cafe in the student union. Do you want to come along?” he offers and to his surprise, she nods and sweeps all her stuff up into her bag. They sit there for hours, drinking cups of tea and working their way through a huge pile of sandwiches and cookies—she looks like she was once too thin, he thinks, and so he makes sure that she always takes the bigger half. Talking to her is easier than he ever imagined it would be. They exchange pieces of themselves, slowly at first, then faster as the words tumble out like water, and the more she tells him, the more she wants to know. How she takes her tea, which of her classes she likes best and which ones she likes least, the experiments gone wrong with her childhood chemistry set, the books stuffed into her bag that she's reading just for fun, the movies she's watched twenty times...he holds on to each fact like it's the missing piece of a puzzle. They spend so long talking that he doesn't remember his promise to Skye until his phone buzzes and he jumps up, surprised. “Sorry, I forgot about dinner with Skye's parents.” he says. “But I'll see you soon?” She just nods and for a second he thinks that she looks disappointed but then she smiles and he's convinced himself that it's just a trick of the light.

The last time he had dinner with Phil, Melinda, and Skye, they found the only Ethiopian restaurant in a fifty-mile radius where they watched Phil try to fit every dish they were served onto one piece of bread and almost succeed, Melinda glared their way into finding a parking space, and Skye showed her parents ten different ways she could hack into the school's computer system while they looked on with pride. This dinner is slightly less eventful. Only slightly. They're on their way to Tahiti for a vacation-- “It's a magical place”, Phil says—and Fitz thinks that Tahiti has no idea what's coming. Phil is intent on spoiling Skye, so they go to about five different restaurants, each of which she claims is her favorite, until Melinda finally sits down and refuses to leave. Melinda makes Skye prove that she's been keeping up her tai-chi, while Phil happily talks at Fitz about his latest book on the Battle of Britain, asking him if he could lend some of his native expertise. Fitz (politely) points out that he's Scottish, thank you very much, and he mouths You owe me at Skye. She just smirks back but it's her turn to wince when her parents start grilling her about Grant and Antoine. After twenty minutes of questioning, she finally blurts out “Fitz met a girl.”

“Oh, really?” Phil raises an eyebrow and gives Fitz his best wise-dad look. “Have you asked her out yet?”

“I'm working on it.” Fitz admits.

“Find a situation where you're absolutely sure that she's going to say yes. For instance, I asked Melinda out for a drink while we were dangling off a cliff in Canada, if we got out of it, and of course she said yes. Then I managed to cleverly lower--”

“I lowered us down.” Melinda interjects, laying her hand over Phil's and shooting him a quiet smile. “But you made the jokes that calmed us both down.” He smiles back at her, both of them in perfect understanding, and watching the way that they effortlessly balance each other, all Fitz can think is that, more than anything, he wants something like that.

Meeting Jemma at the cafe becomes a ritual. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, after he's done in the studio, he goes to meet her in the library and no matter what she's studying, she gathers up her books and they head to the cafe, where they talk for hours. He's never been very good with words but with her it doesn't seem to matter. She'll wait while he circles through five different words to find the right one and even when he doesn't find it, she seems to understand what he's trying to say. He lets her laugh when accidental innuendos spill out of his mouth, like his promise to show her his (art) equipment, and after a while he starts laughing too. They talk about something different every week and he can't imagine ever running out of words for her. Or out of drawings. He sketches her every time, always asking first, and the pages of his notebook are slowly filled with Jemma. Jemma sipping her tea, Jemma as she makes the winning point in one of their arguments, Jemma turning the pages of her book. “Why do you always draw me?” she asks.

“You have a wonderful face.” he says simply. “Everything that you think is written across it.”

“Everything?” she raises an eyebrow. “I bet that I think lots of things you can't see.”

“Maybe not right now. But if I keep on drawing you, I'll figure them out eventually. It's only fair—you figured me out ten minutes after we met. Grumpy Scot who can't stop drawing.” he says.

“You're more than that.” For a moment, she looks like she's on the verge of saying something else but then his phone rings and he has to dig it out to answer it, whispering an apology to Jemma.

“Skye's car broke down again and I've got to go help her. Her car is so ancient it probably hung around with the dinosaurs.” he explains to Jemma. “I'll see you next week?” This time when she says goodbye, he knows that it's disappointment on her face, though he has no idea why.

A few weeks later, in the middle of January, he mentions that he's going to go see The Princess Bride at the local movie theater and asks if she'd like to come along. “They've got this great caramel popcorn, and because it's not a chain theater, they bake their own cookies. You have to try this one that's like a gingersnap and a snickerdoodle combined.” he says. She is less thin than when he first met her, but she still forgets to eat sometimes, too caught up in her lab work or in studying to remember that she needs to buy groceries, and he is still always pushing food towards her. He knows that she used to be much worse, and she reassures him that she's better now and he knows that it's true, but she lets him worry anyway. And he finds the fact that he's allowed to worry oddly comforting, hoping that it means he's allowed to care as much as he does.

“I'd love to but won't Skye mind?” she's twisting her teacup around and around and not meeting his eyes.

“Why would Skye mind?” he asks absently.

“Isn't that the sort of thing you should be doing with her?”

“With her?” Then he realizes, the switch flipping inside his head, and for a genius, he can be awfully stupid. “We're not...we've never...Jemma, I'm not dating Skye. I've never even thought about dating Skye—she's one of my best friends, that's all. She's actually dating two different guys, it's very complicated and--” He realizes that he's rambling and shuts his mouth with a sharp snap.

“Well, that's...that's good.” she says and smiles at him as he has to keep his hands behind his back to stop himself from drawing her at that very moment.

They go to the movie together, sharing massive amounts of caramel popcorn and laughing at all the same parts, and afterward he walks her home. It's cold and bright out so they've been huddled together all the way back after she claimed she needed his heat and buried her mittened hands in his coat pockets. She unlocks her door and turns towards him, cheeks flushed pink with the cold. “Good night, then.” she says and tilts her face up towards his.

“Good night.” he replies and leaves. It's only later, when he draws her from memory, that he realizes he's missed something.

Chapter Text

“She obviously wanted you to kiss her!” Skye shrieks the next night at the pub. A few people glare at her and she lowers her voice to a fierce whisper. “She let you walk her home, she was standing in the door. Obviously, she hoped you were going to snog her senseless, go inside, and engage in some scientific experimentation. If you know what I mean.” Skye waggles her eyebrows dramatically at him.

“Snogging? You're turning into a Brit.” Antoine Triplett, the fun half of Skye's tortured love triangle (as Fitz privately likes to call him), drops down in a seat besides Skye and plants a kiss at the corner of her mouth. “Does this mean we can finally have afternoon tea?”

“We have afternoon tea all the time.” Skye leans into the curve of his shoulder and stretches up to kiss him properly.

“Real afternoon tea, with tiny sandwiches and scones and clotted cream and you in that pink dress. I'll even wear my suit.” Trip offers and makes disgustingly adorable puppy-dog eyes at Skye.

“All right.” Skye sighs. “I'll give in to your Anglophile ways. But if you start making me eat blood pudding, all bets are off.” Skye can only mock-glare at Trip for a second or two before she starts giggling, and he kisses her, and Leo lifts his eyes to the ceiling and tries to hide his smile. After Skye's let Trip talk her into rewatching the first season of Downton Abbey with him, she leans across the table and asks Fitz precisely when they're going to meet this wonderful mystery girl.

“Soon.” he says at first and then when Skye scowls at him. “Tomorrow?” So the next day he brings Jemma to their usual booth in the pub, where Skye, Trip, Grant Ward (who Skye is telling to smile), and several enormous platters of food are gathered. When he sees Trip and Grant in the same place at the same time, Fitz knows that, for Skye, meeting Jemma is officially a Big Deal. She practically leaps out of the booth when she sees them, running over to say hi and barely restraining herself from hugging Jemma.

“It's so nice to finally meet you after hearing so much about you.” Skye gushes, linking her arm through Jemma's and steering her back over to the booth.

“Good things, I hope.” Jemma says laughingly.

“Fabulous things. Did you know that when I first met Fitz...” And Skye's off, pulling out a wealth of embarrassing freshman year stories about Fitz, making jokes in every other sentence, asking questions and listening to the answers. Ten minutes later, she and Jemma are talking like they've been friends for years and Fitz is trying to mediate a conversation between Grant and Trip. After exhausting their classes, the food, and the weather, he's seized on the topic of cars and they're all talking semi-pleasantly about classic Aston Martins and James Bond movies and in the end they all manage to get through dinner with no fights, five different kinds of pizza, and thirteen stories about Fitz that make him turn a new shade of bright red. Afterward, when Skye has kissed both Grant and Trip good night, and Jemma's safely in a taxi home, Skye slides into the booth across from him with two drinks.

“So...” he's strangely nervous.

“So she's amazing. I approve.” Skye grins wickedly at him. “And if you ever get the balls to ask her out, you guys can have the cutest couple name. Fitz and Simmons. Fitzsimmons.” He thinks that he likes the sound of it.

“I...I'm not scared. Or maybe I am. She's just so much,” Fitz blurts out. “She's so perfect...and I'm me.” He is the boy whose father walked out without looking back, the boy who kept his head down through years of grade school teasing, the boy who still hears people loudly speculate about how he got his scholarship, the boy whose paintings say more about him than he sometimes wishes they did. And he knows the rules and they tell him that boys like him do not end up with girls like Jemma Simmons.

“Yes, you're you. And you're my best friend and I happen to think you're pretty fabulous, and I would even if you weren't my best friend.” Skye adds softly. “And I'm 99% positive that she thinks so too. So ask the girl out on a date and make us all happy.”

He's going to, he really is, he tells himself. He has the phrasing all worked out, casual but not too casual, when he starts sneezing and coughing in the middle of his oils class and by the time he gets back to his flat to check his temperature, he knows he has a fever. He manages to swallow two aspirin and a glass of orange juice before he wraps himself in his comforter and collapses in the middle of his bed.

He wakes up to endless knocking on his door and a voice that sounds like Jemma's, shouting at him to let her in. “Fitz, are you okay?” she shouts. “Please let me in if you can hear me. Skye called me when you didn't show up at the pub and she was planning to break down your door—I think Grant found her a drill somewhere—so I convinced her to let me stop by instead. We're both really worried.” He stumbles his way to the front door, his blankets still wrapped around him, and opens it to reveal Jemma Simmons, knocking on his door like she can beat it down with her bare hands. “You look terrible.” she gasps, then immediately apologizes.

“Sorry, I should have called.” he mumbles. “I think I've got a flu.”

“You didn't get your shot, did you?” she plants her hands on her hips and when he admits that he didn't, she puts on her best crisp future doctor voice and orders him back to bed. She starts rummaging around in his kitchen and he nearly stops her, remembering the water glasses filled with paintbrushes and the sketchbooks stuffed in cabinets, the mess of his life that lies scattered throughout his flat, but he's too woozy to do anything besides swaying back to the bed and watching the whirlwind that is Jemma. His apartment is not quite a studio, with paper screens that he puts up between the living room and his bed when Skye invites herself over, and most of it is filled with his art. He's got a space at the school where he keeps most of his completed work but it's almost overflowing and now canvases lean up against his walls in neat stacks, sketchbooks stacked on top of them. Half of his kitchen cabinets are filled with tubes of paint, and jars of brushes and pens and pencils. Jemma turns around, taking it all in, and that's when he remembers the wall. He's been painting a mural of the town, all the different places that map out his life, and she's in it, sipping her tea in the cafe. And she's radiant in that painting and all he can think is not here not now, not like this. Because he's afraid that she'll see the painting and see right through him and, more than anything, he wants the chance to get it right when he finally tells her.

Jemma just looks at the painting and smiles, and he breathes a sigh of relief. “Wasn't your landlady furious when she saw it?” she asks.

“No, I promised her that if I ever became famous, she could charge admission to see it.” he replies and coughs before he can laugh. Then Jemma swoops back into doctor mode, piling blankets on top of him and making him drink more fluids and asking him if he has any food that isn't Chinese or Indian takeaway. He's not sure if he answers before he falls asleep again.

Jemma is there when he wakes up again. She must have gone out because now his apartment is fully stocked with tissues and medicines and chicken soup that she's made from scratch, and he's pretty sure that she's some kind of guardian angel. With science. When he tells her that, she informs him that he's probably delirious from the fever but her cheeks still turn pink with pleasure as she stirs the soup on the stove. They turn even pinker when he announces that it's the best soup he's ever had and no, Jemma, he's not delirious. Before he falls back asleep, she tells him that she's staying the rest of the week, her suitcase already sitting by the door, and that she won't take no for an answer. He thinks that he'd have to be an even bigger idiot than he already is to say no to her.

When she isn't in class, Jemma is with him. She makes them both dinner, textbook propped up in front of her as she stirs the sauce on the stove or checks the garlic bread in the oven, and her pesto is almost sinfully good. She studies while he naps and reads until one of them throws their book in the air and declares that it's movie time. Then they watch movies on the couch underneath a blanket fort, commenting all the way through it, and if he starts to fall asleep before it's done, she pauses the movie and guides him back to bed. She knows that he'll complain loudly about non-accurate time travel, he knows that she has to wash all the dishes by hand but that she'll let him dry, they know when they need to talk and when they don't need to, and they slip into each other's rhythms without noticing it. She makes him tea, he tries to teach her to draw when he feels well enough to hold a pencil again--he sometimes imagines that this could be his everyday life, one where he isn't sick. And one where Jemma wakes up beside him instead of on his pull-out couch.

When she comes back on Friday night, he asks “Shouldn't you be going out? I don't mind if you do.”

“I don't want to go out.” she says firmly. “I want to be here just in case.”

“What did I ever do to deserve you, Jemma?” he thinks and then realizes that he's said it out loud, flushing bright red. “I meant thank you. For everything this week. I don't know what I would've done without you and I--”

“You're still feverish.” she interrupts. “You don't have to—if you're going to say something, say it when you're absolutely sure that you mean it. Just don't do this to me...please” She turns away and starts running the water in the sink, loud enough to drown him out, before he can say anything. So he buries his head in the pillows and he can't find the words for everything he wants to tell her. He almost gives her his sketchbook, the one where the way that he feels is written in the planes of her face, but no, he thinks wildly, none of those are right. None of those are her. So he offers an apology instead, though he's still doesn't know what for, and slowly her voice softens and her back relaxes.

She climbs into bed with him later that night, when he starts shivering and doesn't stop. He feels the warmth of her back press against his front and his arms go around her almost automatically as she tucks her head underneath his chin. “We can share some of my heat,” she whispers. “You'll never stop shivering otherwise.” He whispers his okay into her neck and, half-asleep already, he nuzzles against her and holds her tighter, because she is warm and she is Jemma and she fits into his arms perfectly. She lets him.

His fever breaks early the next morning and the cool weight of her hand against his forehead wakes him as she murmurs that she thinks she can go back to the couch now and, ignoring his mumbled protests, presses a kiss to his cheek and slips away. The bed feels empty without her and the last thing he hears before he falls back into sleep is her voice from across the room.

“Happy Valentine's Day, Leo.” she says.

Chapter Text

It isn't too hard to make up the classes he's missed—a few extra hours in the studio, an extension on his art history paper—except for figure drawing. He's missed a week of drawing full-figure nudes and his professor tells him that he'll simply have to find a model outside of class, now that they're moving on to drawing bodies in motion, or he'll take a zero on the assignment. Fitz bites back all his sharp comments about how he's supposed to find a model and just nods his agreement. Three days later, after he's approached seven of the former models from the class and been turned down seven times, he's complaining about it to Jemma and Skye over drinks at the pub. “No one wants to be drawn naked by a stranger.” he says. “And I don't blame them. Even when I mention the professor, it just sounds creepy.”

“Have you used the words 'paint me like one of your French girls'? It worked for Jack Dawson.” Skye suggests. “Apart from the whole fictional character thing, and being on board the Titanic, and kind of doomed...” She trails off, then catches sight of Grant bringing her a drink from the bar and brightens. “You know, if I asked Grant in the right way, I'm sure he would--”

“No.” Fitz cuts her off. “Nononono.” Although Grant would be fascinating to draw, with all those complicated muscles, Skye would probably insist on coming along, and making loud comments, and then they'd both be a part of Grant's tragic backstory, and it would be awkward until the end of time. And Fitz has spent half of his life being awkward. He's in the middle of trying to explain all of this to Skye, who's suddenly decided that figure drawing is the perfect new way to show off her boyfriends, when Jemma puts her drink down on the table and declares that she'll do it.

“What?” Fitz and Skye's heads turn in unison.

“I'll do it. I've already modeled for Fitz and I don't mind. We'll do it Sunday morning before we meet you all for brunch—will that be soon enough for your professor?” she asks Fitz. He nods and she drains the rest of her drink, setting it down again with a loud thunk. “There. Now that that's settled, I'm getting chips.” Fitz is still staring after her as she goes to the bar, watching the way that her skirt sways around her hips as she walks and now he's imagining her hips and god he has no idea how he's going to make it through Sunday.

“You should really ask her out.” Someone says and he looks up to see Grant with a tray of drinks. “I ship it. So does Trip.” Grant adds. Skye starts humming “Kiss the Girl”, Fitz thumps his head against the table and wonders just when a Greek chorus started commenting on the state of his (nonexistent) relationship. And when he needed a Greek chorus to tell him what he already knows.

She arrives on Sunday wrapped in her long wool coat, scarf around her neck and high heeled boots clicking on his floor. It's when she unbuttons her coat and lets her scarf drop to the floor that he snaps the pencil he's holding in two. She's wearing a thick wool sweater that he thinks is his and a lacy slip underneath it, and it's going to drive him insane. “I didn't want to have too much to take off.” she explains as he stifles a groan.

“There's a robe for you.” he forces out. “I thought that we could do it on my bed. Pose you, I mean. It's the most comfortable place in the flat and since it'll be a long pose, I thought—would that be all right?” She goes to change into the robe, his fluffy blue bathrobe, and he slowly sets up his easel as he tries to remember how to breathe. In, out, in, out. This is like any other drawing, he tells himself, just like any other model that he's drawn.

“Is this good?” Jemma asks and he turns only to be robbed of breath again. She's spread out across his bed, pale skin against pale sheets, and she tilts her head back to catch the sunshine from the skylight in a way that makes him want to kiss down down the long curve of her neck. She's taken down her hair so it fans out around her face and tumbles across the pillow, the only spot of color in the giant brass bed. And looking at her, he's reminded of why he loves to draw, of the dazzling ability to capture exactly how he sees her in this moment, of the fact that the sweep of his pencil can somehow sum up all the things that make her Jemma.

“It's perfect, Jemma.” he whispers. “You're perfect.” He starts to draw, slowly at first as he tries to simplify her down to a series of lines and curves. Breathe, Fitz. In, out, in out. Then after a while, he gets lost in the drawing itself—the contours of her half-parted lips, the faint curl to her hair, the curve of her waist. For over an hour, the only sound is the scratch of his pencil against paper and the occasional soft rasp of an eraser. He's adding in the last few details when he stops for a moment to look at his work and suddenly everything is crystal clear. He's in love with Jemma Simmons and every line of his drawing tells him why.

“Can I see it?” she asks when he finally puts down his pencil, tying the robe around herself and wandering over. He turns the easel to face her and when she starts to smile, he knows that she sees it too. “For the longest time, I was so afraid that I wouldn't be enough.” she says eventually. “Not clever enough, not charming enough, not thin enough. Modeling for the class...it was terrifying but it was also wonderful. Knowing that I was fine—better than fine—just the way I was. And then when I met you and you started drawing me, and you seemed to like drawing me better than anything else. And when you draw me, I'm beautiful and I'm smart and I'm strong, and looking at the way you see me makes me see those things in myself too. It's like that voice in my head just shuts off when I'm with you. And now this...it's...I'm...”

“The way you are is wonderful. So wonderful that I can't even find the words for it.” But he knows he has to try anyway. “Jemma, are you doing anything Friday night?”

“No.” Her smile grows wider.

“Would you like to have dinner with me, then? I promise I won't try to cook.”

“I'd love to.” Jemma says and for a moment they stand there hopelessly smiling at each other until he gives in and kisses her like he's wanted to for months. One hand tangled in her hair and the other curved around her waist, pulling her closer; mouth molded to hers and his tongue sweeping across her lower lip as she sighs against him; all the angles of her pressed against him in a way that makes him never want to let go. He sweeps her hair up so he can kiss down the line of her neck, finding the spot right over her pulse that makes her gasp, and the edge of his bathrobe slips off her shoulder. He bites down lightly on her shoulder and she moans just loudly enough that he's glad he doesn't have any shared walls.

“Are you sure?” he gasps out when her hand goes to the button of his jeans. “You don't mind doing things the wrong way round?”

“I think this is the right way round. Unless you're worried about our brunch reservations?” she grins wickedly at him, flicking the button open and sliding her hand inside and suddenly he can't think at all.

“Fuck brunch.” he manages and tugs on the tie of the robe until it comes undone and then she's right there, stealing his breath and his heart and taking up all of his thoughts until all he can do is map her out with his hands and try to tell her in as many ways as he can that he thinks she's perfect.

Four months later, it is summer and Leo Fitz is drawing chalk masterpieces again on his back patio. Jemma has her feet propped up on a wicker chair, wearing a floaty blue sundress and drinking sangria with Skye, who claims it's a top-secret family recipe. Grant and Trip are poking at the ancient grill, which they've managed to procure a giant can of lighter fluid for, and he thinks that he should probably do something about that but then Jemma drifts over to see what he's drawing and the thought floats out of his mind. Phil and Melinda are dropping by anyway, to give Skye her graduation present, and if anything bursts into flame, they can handle it.

“You're drawing all of us.” she comments. “Is this supposed to be today?”

“It is. There's the blank space for Phil and Melinda, when they arrive and I see what kind of super-spy outfits they're wearing. There's the grill going up in flames and Trip and Grant with fire extinguishers. And there's Skye eating all the guacamole—I don't know why today is Mexican-themed but apparently it is—and there's you. Being Jemma. And me drawing you.” He pulls her down beside him and gives her the same adoring look that his chalk self is wearing, kissing her long and soft and breathless. When they finally break apart, Jemma takes the chalk from him and finds some empty space in the patio.

I love you, she writes and offers him the chalk.

I love you too, he writes back.