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When Jemma Simmons returns from being undercover, Mack isn’t feeling the most charitable towards her. He feels a need to protect Fitz, and this girl has clearly hurt him badly. He tells her that. He tells her that she wants Fitz to be someone he isn’t, that she left him because he confessed his feelings for her. She responds as expected, trying to deny it. But then—
“From what I’ve seen, the only thing that makes him worse...is you.”
“I know. Why do you think I left?”
That catches him off guard. It doesn’t seem to fit in with everything else he knows about her, but the sincerity on her face is unmistakable. Maybe she’s just deluding herself, trying to justify in her own mind why she left Fitz to struggle on his own, when she was actually just scared of his feelings for her. Mack sees her wanting everything to be like it was before, not wanting to recognize that Fitz’s feelings and Fitz himself have changed. What he doesn’t see is the way her composure breaks as soon as she makes it out of the garage, how she keeps her head down and quickly walks to a bathroom to wipe away the tears before they can mess up her makeup.
———
One night, the team has some free time, and they’re watching a movie. It’s some action movie, and Skye suggests a drinking game — take a shot every time you’ve done something that happens on screen. It’s mainly just Bobbi and Hunter getting hammered over all the stupid stuff they’ve done in the field, with Skye taking several shots in quick succession when one of the characters has to do something confusing with computers to get some information. Mack isn’t really paying attention to the movie, more content to watch his friends’ antics. He and Trip have barely had to drink because apparently they aren’t crazy enough to act like action movie characters. Fitz and Simmons are sitting on opposite sides of the room; Simmons next to Skye, and Fitz next to Mack. Neither of them have had to do any shots yet, but he caught Simmons muttering to Skye about some scientific inaccuracy, while Fitz smiled fondly at her, not realizing Mack saw. But then—
“Hey Simmons!” Fitz gestures to the screen with the beer he’s been sipping. “You gotta drink for that!” Everyone looked up at the screen to see the main character jumping out of a plane, not activating his parachute until it looks like he’s about to hit the ground.
“You did WHAT?!” Hunter is looking at Simmons like he’s never seen her before, his mouth open in surprise, Bobbi and Trip with similar expressions on their faces. It would be funny if Mack wasn’t sure his jaw had also dropped.
“I mean, it definitely wasn’t as cool as that,” Simmons says, nervously tucking her hair behind her ears and looking down at the floor. “I didn’t have a parachute and had to be saved by Grant Ward.”
“Oh c’mon,” Skye replies, nudging Simmons’ shoulder with her own. “It was pretty damn cool.”
“You were trying to save the team, even though you did knock me out with a fire extinguisher to do it.” Mack looks to Fitz in surprise, not expecting him to speak up. He’s usually quiet in front of the whole team, but right now he’s smiling, looking at ease.
Looking a bit embarrassed, Simmons smiles back at Fitz and takes the shot offered to her by a still-gobsmacked Hunter. Mack is still a bit gobsmacked himself — he didn’t peg Simmons as the type to sacrifice herself. She had always seemed more of the type to let others protect her when it came to danger, preferring to do her work from the safety of the lab. Maybe he didn’t know her quite as well as he expected.
“Why’d you knock Fitz out, though? Wasn’t he just trying to help?” Mack can’t help the bit of judgement that creeps into his tone; he wants to defend his friend. Skye shoots him a look that he can’t quite decipher.
“I was infected by a Chitauri virus, and I thought I hadn’t been able to find a cure, so I needed to get off the plane before I died and infected everyone else. Fitz was trying to help me, but I couldn’t let him stop me and get infected too.” Simmons doesn’t seem as phased by talking about her own near-death experience as she is by talking about how she and Fitz used to be. The rest of the team goes back to watching the movie, clearly a bit impressed by the story. As often as they all almost died, none of them had expected a story like that from the small British scientist. Mack is still trying to fit this new piece of information into his picture of Jemma Simmons. Maybe she did genuinely want to help and protect Fitz.
———
On another of their rare free nights, Skye suggests they play some card games. Hunter suggests poker, which Simmons immediately vetoes. Everyone turns to look at her in surprise except for Fitz, who doesn’t look up from whatever he’s tinkering with but smiles knowingly, and Skye, who immediately bursts out laughing.
“I, um, don’t have the best poker face,” Simmons says, blushing and looking down at her hands, which are twisting in her lap.
“That’s putting it lightly,” responds Fitz, still not looking up, but laughing a bit himself.
“I honestly have no idea how she survived undercover!” Skye says, still laughing. “She iced a superior officer one time because she was trying to lie and panicked. She tried to flirt with him and complimented his head shape — it was honestly sad to watch.” Simmons is now covering her face with her hands in embarrassment.
“Skye and I were trying to get information about a mission that Fitz was on without us! We were worried and wanted to make sure he was safe,” Simmons replies, her words slightly muffled by her hands as she tries to defend herself.
“Why were you so worried about Fitz, though? Turbo can take care of himself.” Skye gives him that look again, the same one from movie night that he can’t quite understand, but Mack thinks Simmons doesn’t trust Fitz enough. For some reason, she can’t see that he’s perfectly capable of doing things on his own, without her. But then—
“This was pretty early in our days on the bus — it was the first mission he’d ever gone on without me. The first time we hadn’t been together in the field.” Simmons removes her hands from her face to say this, looking over at Fitz, who hasn’t looked up for the whole conversation. “He was skeptical about joining a field team in the first place.” A bit of an awkward silence falls over the group.
“How about we play hearts?” Bobbi suggests, and conversation resumes. Mack doesn’t join in again yet, still processing this new information. It’s becoming clear to him that Simmons genuinely cares a great deal for Fitz, but it seems to be fully platonic. He reasons that she was probably afraid of losing that, which is why she left.
Later that night, as everyone is starting to head to bed, Skye pulls Mack aside.
“Look — I know you care about Fitz, and I do too. But you don’t know what fitzsimmons were like back when they were fitzsimmons. You don’t know what things were like when Fitz woke up from his coma. You only have Fitz’s side of the story too; you don’t know how Jemma feels. I know you want to protect Fitz, but Jemma cares about him just as much as he cares about her. Back in the day, they were so inseparable, it’s like they were one person. A little distance wasn’t the worst idea in the world for them. You might not agree with her actions but you should know that she has Fitz’s best interests at heart, just like you do. Good night, Mack.”
She pats him on the shoulder as she walks away, and he stays standing there for a long time after she leaves.
———
A few days later, Mack does learn a bit of how Simmons is feeling. He overhears a bit of a conversation between her and Bobbi as he’s walking by and, in an uncharacteristic move, loiters outside the lab a bit to listen in. After what Skye said to him, he’s feeling a little too curious to pass up the opportunity.
He hears her talk about how she was caught off guard by Fitz’s confession, how she hadn’t had time to process it, how she’d never thought about him like that before. But then—
“That said, I couldn’t imagine my life without him.” He has half a mind to go in there and ask how she could leave Fitz to suffer alone if that were true, but he continues walking down the hallway instead.
Those words stuck in Mack’s head for the rest of the day. He tried to rationalize it, but the only explanation that made sense was that she had told the truth all those weeks ago, when she said she left because she made Fitz worse. Skye was right — Mack didn’t know what it had been like when Fitz was newly dealing with his brain injury. She was also right that he didn’t know what their relationship had been like, but he was starting to understand how much Fitz meant to Simmons. And understanding that, the only thing that made sense was that she truly thought she was doing the right thing in leaving him. He hadn’t been there, so he couldn’t say if it was. But, also remembering what Skye had said about how inseparable they used to be, maybe the fact that Fitz is so capable of doing things on his own now was in part due to her leaving. Maybe it really had helped him.
He also heard how confused she still was about how she felt about Fitz. He was right that she was afraid, but she seemed to be more afraid because she doesn’t know how she feels than because she does know how Fitz feels. Maybe the reason things are so awkward between them right now are because she doesn’t know how she feels, and neither does Fitz — he doesn’t know how she feels about him, nor why she left.
Mack realizes that he finally does understand why she left.
———
He’s walking by the lab with Skye when he hears it. He has no idea what they’re talking about, but it’s clearly something scientific that they’re problem solving something together. But what makes Skye stop in shock and whisper excitedly to him is that they’re finishing each other’s sentences, talking quickly, but on the same wavelength in a way he’s never seen before.
“They’re fitzsimmonsing!” He gets it now.
All the hurt feelings and lack of communication between them can obscure it, but the bond between them is unmistakable. Jemma is confused and scared and doesn’t always know the right thing to do or say, but she truly does want to help Fitz. She isn’t trying to make him be whoever the “old” Fitz was, nor ignore how he and his feelings for her have changed. She just doesn’t see that she loves him too. The fact that she doesn’t want to live without him, how deeply she clearly cares for him, the way that their minds can work in complete synchronicity — if that isn’t love, Mack doesn’t know what is.
“How are they not together yet?” He isn’t even aware that he said it out loud until Skye responds.
“Wanna join the betting pool? If they aren’t together within a year, I’m going to lose a lot of money.”