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The day that Jemma learned that Deke had never experienced Christmas, she set her hands on her hips and promised she would give her grandson the best Christmas anyone had ever had.
“Fitz, he’s never had Christmas ,” she said later that night in her rooms with Fitz.
“So?”
“So!” she gasped. “So! He’s never had Christmas. He’s never hung up a stocking, or cracked open a Christmas cracker, or watched the Queen’s speech.”
“He didn’t have the Queen growing up,” Fitz said.
“Yes! That’s the point!”
“I don’t know if I get the point.”
She sighed
“I’m going to change that. We’re having a Christmas in July next week. Go buy me and Deke a present,” she said, taking out a notebook from their bedside table and started jotting down things she’d need to do.
“What?”
“You heard me. Go on.”
She set up their living quarters with a small fake Christmas tree she’d bought from a second-hand store, and strung it up with lights, and tinsel. She’d hung up garland around the room, and dimmed the lights just a touch to give it a homier feel. There were candles burning, scented like pine and cinnamon, and she’d made a Christmas dinner that they’d eat with the rest of the team after presents. But she wanted the first bit of their Christmas together to be just them. Fitz still didn’t quite understand, but then again, Fitz had never been into Christmas the same way Jemma had. She always brought the Christmas spirit into their apartment and living spaces every year, and had since the Academy. There was a record playing of old Christmas classic songs, and overall, Jemma was pleased. She normally agonized over Christmas decorations, but everything came together so well that she hadn’t had to.
She’d taken a day to herself to go shopping, and picked out gifts for her boys. There wasn’t much in the small town of River’s End, New York, but she’d found something for each other. She’d also wrapped and set each gift below the tree. When the real Christmas came around, she’d probably go overboard on gifts for Deke. Fitz always said she was a little too Extra about the holidays, but honestly, it was Christmas. You have to be extra at Christmas. That’s what Christmas was all about.
Fitz opened the door and came in with Deke in tow, and Jemma beamed at them both.
“Hello! Welcome! Welcome!” she said cheerily.
“What is this, Nana?” Deke asked, looking around. The Christmas lights from the tree reflected in his eyes, and Jemma was delighted to find the wonder she found there.
“Well, it’s Christmas, silly.”
“It’s July,” Deke said.
“I didn’t want to wait until December for you to have your first Christmas with us, for us to have a Christmas all together as a family. There’s a lot you missed out on, growing up in the Lighthouse, and I want to help you experience some things. You know, picnics, going to the beach, laying outside, tossing a ball. That kind of thing. Christmas has always been my favorite time of year, and I want to share it with you.”
Deke smiled at her, and it warmed her up to see his joy. There was something still hard and scared about Deke sometimes, a fighter who had learned how to survive in the harshest environment. When they’d met, he’d been living on scraps, keeping himself alive on the good graces of his captors. But here and now, he was full of smiles and warmth, a boy who was learning how to live, not just survive. She wanted to help him see all of the bright spots of life and be there for him.
It was unlikely that her child with Fitz would be Deke’s mother, and even more unlikely that if she was, she’d meet Owen Shaw to have Deke, but she wanted to give him a good life anyway.
“This is really nice, Nana, thank you.”
“Come on in,” she said, gesturing him in. “We’ve got some presents for you, and we’ve got some other traditions from England and Scotland. I’ve got a dinner warming in the kitchen when we’re done so we can have a proper family Christmas dinner with crackers and everything.”
“I don’t have any gifts for you,” he said.
“That’s alright. You’re gift enough. Come on.”
Fitz scoffed but followed them over to the tree. She set them down next to each other and then took her own seat on the other side of Deke.
“This isn’t quite the typical Simmons Christmas,” she started.
“It’s July so obviously,” Fitz interrupted.
“Obviously,” she said, shooting him a look to quiet him, “beyond the fact that it’s July and we’re not in England, normally, we’d have cups of cocoa and brunch of Mum’s Chelsea buns. But since we’re going to eat dinner right after this, those we’ll save for actual Christmas, yeah?”
She reached for a present she’d wrapped in paper she’d picked out specifically for Deke, and passed it over to him, and then did the same for Fitz.
“It’s not much,” she started, but Fitz quieted her this time with a look.
She’d gotten Deke a pocket watch, and had it engraved with his own initials on the back and the phrase he’d remembered from her and his mum, “the steps you take don’t need to be big; they just need to take you in the right direction.” She’d purposefully avoided a wrist watch as she knew there was a little bit of panic every time he saw something against his wrist, the trauma of the Metric going through his body still inside of him.
He opened the box and paused at the watch set against the tissue paper.
“Jemma,” he said softly. It was an old ornate thing, and she’d had Fitz fix it up so it worked. “This is beautiful.”
He took it out and turned it over in his hands.
She watched as he touched the engraved initials, and turned it over to open it. They’d cleaned it up as well, so it shone like new.
“Thank you,” he said. She grinned at him. “I wish I had something for you in return. This is wonderful.”
“My gift is an excuse to have Christmas twice in one year,” she said with a shrug.
Her real gift, though, was the way Deke turned the watch in his hands, holding it close like it was something precious. She didn’t like flashy gifts, or expensive ones. Her favorite gifts were always personal, something old taken and fixed, something new made personal. She spent the rest of the year learning her friends and family, what they wanted without them ever having said it, what they needed without them ever knowing it.
Deke wanted a family, a connection.
So did she.
For Fitz, she’d gotten him a watch to replace the watch he’d lost when they’d buried the Alternate Him. She’d kept his wedding ring, but she’d laid him to rest with his watch. The watch she’d picked up was similar, but not exact, and she’d also had the back engraved with his initials and the date that they’d met all those years ago at the Academy, when they weren’t broken and reformed, scarred and healed. It was hard to believe that they’d made it this far, that they’d ever been those kids.
“Thanks, Jemma,” Fitz said with a soft, pleased smile.
She grinned at him, and wiggled a little, pleased with herself and her choices. Fitz wrapped the watch around his wrist and buckled it in place while she watched. She did love the way his hands worked, always had, even before she knew how she felt about him.
Then, Fitz reached for his own presents, wrapped haphazardly the way his presents always were, but he passed them over without having to check a tag. He knew which one belonged to who, and that was delightful in and of itself.
She nodded to Deke to let him rip his open first, and she took her time tearing the paper, just so she could watch his child-like delight as he opened it. She wondered what Deke would have been like if he’d never grown up in the Lighthouse, in that post-apocalyptic world where he had to scrape and scrounge to survive, who’d lost his mother so young to tyrants. She wondered if he would be just as bright, a sunshine spot despite everything he’d been through. Would he still be full of life and love and willful goodness? She liked to think so, that her and Fitz would have instilled this sweetness in their daughter, and then in him.
When they had kids someday, she decided she absolutely was going to work to make them just as sweet and kind and loyal as Deke. She wondered if he would help her.
But then, she knew that of course, he would.
Fitz had gotten Deke a key chain with a key on it, and Jemma looked at it perplexed for a moment.
“What is this?”
“Jemma and I own a house,” Fitz offered, “in Scotland. A little cottage tucked into some trees. There’s a couple spare bedrooms there, and one of them, if you want, is yours. Or it can be. It’s relatively unfurnished right now, and needs an update to most of the plumbing, and heating, and electrical systems, but if you want it, there’s space for you.”
Jemma had a key on her own keychain, tucked away for later, that matched that key. Fitz had engraved HOME on it, and she had a tendency to run her thumb over it whenever she needed reassurance that this wouldn’t be forever. They’d build their family, their home, their lives away from SHIELD.
“Bobo, this is – this is too much.”
“You are our family,” Fitz said. “You have a place with us. I know there’s a lot you want to do, a lot you want to see, and I – I encourage you to do it, but you have a place when you come back, with us.”
Deke wrapped Fitz in a hug, and Fitz sighed, but pat his back lovingly. Jemma grinned at him.
“He’s quite right, you are part of us and your home is with us if you want it.”
“Of course,” Deke said, releasing Fitz and wiping a tear from his cheek. “Thank you so much. This is the best present anyone could give me. Both of you.”
Fitz gestured for her to open her gift now, and she sat back to finish unwrapping her own gift. It was a book, small and square. She looked at him and he mimed opening it.
Inside, he’d filled it with pictures from their life together, from the first picture taken of their class at the Academy to a photo Daisy had taken of them the week before, Deke and Fitz huddled together over Simmons’ work space while she stood back to let them chat, smiling. It was a chronicle of everything they’d been through, with pages left empty in the back for the journey they had before them.
They’d fill it with family photos, of pictures of their home, their children, Deke there in each step of the way. They hadn’t asked for a grandson long before they had children, of course, but Jemma was so glad to have gotten him anyway.
She dragged the boys into the kitchen where she’d had everyone gather, and grinned as she saw they’d dressed in Christmas sweaters in varying degrees of ugliness. Yo-Yo had outdone herself with a sweater that she’d pinned Christmas bulbs and sparkling garland around. Mack was wearing a Santa hat, as was Daisy, although Daisy’s had a piece of mistletoe stapled to the white ball at the end. Even May, resolutely a Scrooge the same as Fitz, had a green and red striped sweater on, which matched Coulson’s.
There was something so warm about her friends, her family coming together in July in order to celebrate and give Deke this experience. There was a stack of presents underneath a chalk Christmas tree someone had drawn on the wall like this was Winnie the Pooh.
The smile was permanently painted on her face.
“Happy Christmas, Deke,” Jemma said, nudging him into the festivities before heading to get dinner out of the oven where it was warming. One by one, she set dinner up along the table, and stood back for a moment to look out over her family. Deke and Daisy were chatting in one corner while Fitz, Yo-Yo, and Mack were in the other. People moved from conversation to conversation, drifting together and apart while she worked.
“Jemma,” Daisy whined, coming over with her eggnog half-empty. Jemma never understood the appeal of eggnog, but most of the team liked it so she made it every year, and they drank it all excitedly. It helped that she made it quite strong, according Mack and Coulson who got absolutely shit-faced one year off it. “Can we please eat now?”
“Yes, yes,” she said, bringing over the last dish to the table. “Come grab plates, you heathens.”
Everyone took a seat and they passed dishes left and right, laughing and teasing, chatting about what they’d done recently, and telling holiday at home stories. Fitz told Deke about his first Christmas at SHIELD, unable to get home to Scotland in time due to a massive snowstorm, and how Jemma had stayed with him and made SciOps feel like home. Mack talked about his Christmas with his family before his parents died. Yo-Yo talked about Christmas traditions in Colombia. Daisy sympathized with Deke, saying she hadn’t really had a proper, loving Christmas until she’d joined the team too, and that she was glad he was with them.
Daisy and Deke pulled the first Christmas cracker, and Deke won. Daisy put the paper crown on his head, and he set the little toy car in front of his plate.
Deke’s crush on Daisy had subsided into admiration and friendship, but there were still times Deke glowed under her attention. Of course, that was certainly a trait he’d inherited from both Jemma herself as well as Fitz. They’d both harbored crushes on Daisy at one point, Fitz’s ending just as Jemma’s had started.
This was their family, Jemma thought, staring out at the different faces. They all had different backgrounds, different skills, different dreams. They’d end up in different places, they’d lead diverging lives, but they would always be family, blood or not, from the same time period or not, human or not. They would always be family, and that was what Jemma loved the most about Christmas, that they’d always come back together, and they’d laugh, and they’d joke, and they’d cry about having been apart and missing each other. This is the Christmas she wanted Deke to have, the family, the life, the love, all of it. This is the kind of life that her grandson deserved, and she promised herself that she would be there to give it to him every single year.