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The first time someone at the Academy refers to them as FitzSimmons, Jemma just stands there and glares at them until they go away.
She doesn’t even like Leo Fitz, she just keeps getting paired up with him on projects and it’s never her choice. He’s smart, to be sure, and he works hard, but he’s so condescending for someone with only one Ph.D. and it drives her absolutely mad.
But even she must admit they work well together. Or, at least, they work well together once they get through the sixty to ninety minutes of arguing that kicks off every single project they’ve been paired on. Once they stop stubbornly butting heads, they still finish everything faster than anyone else in the Academy and do it ten times better at that. They’ve even made a few discoveries that have professors three times their age baffled.
She’ll work with him, because she has to, and because she’ll do whatever it takes to be a SHIELD agent. But she doesn’t have to like it.
Jemma doesn’t want to be FitzSimmons or even Fitz and Simmons. She wants to be Jemma, or Simmons, or Dr. Simmons and someday, hopefully, Agent Jemma Simmons.
+++
The day before their winter break, Jemma is forced to suffer through another awkward and upsetting call with her family back home in England. She’s lonely here at the Academy, but she’s not happy at home either. So she makes the decision to stay there through the break. Better to be sad at SHIELD than sad in England she supposes.
She goes down to the boiler room for the last party of the year, but she never gets comfortable there. It’s too crowded, too loud, and everyone wants to ask about her holiday plans, which she decidedly does not want to discuss.
Jemma bails early, grabs a book from her room and heads to her favorite spot, a rarely used stairwell between the third and fourth floors of the dormitories. She’s been there for nearly an hour when she hears a door open from the third floor and immediately tenses up.
“Oh, it’s you. Of course it’s you. I just can’t seem to get away from you, even in a nearly abandoned stairwell.”
“Hello, Simmons.” Fitz sounds so friendly that it makes her feel a little bad for being less than welcoming.
“Fitz.”
He doesn’t bother to ask if he can join, just sits on the step next to her, forcing her to slide over a few inches to make room. It’s a moment that encapsulates their entire relationship thus far. Fitz where she doesn’t want him to be, and her giving just a little to let him in.
Jemma tilts her head towards the water bottle in his hand and asks, “So did you just come to my stairwell to hydrate?”
“It’s not your stairwell, it’s a communal stairwell. And no, it’s gin.”
“What? Gin? In a water bottle?”
“Gilbert built a machine to make it down in the boiler room.”
“But Gilbert is old enough to buy it, why would –“
She pauses and then laughs because she knows why. Scientists can never do things the simple way if there’s something to be built or invented or experimented on.
Fitz holds the bottle in front of her. “Drink?”
Both of them are still only seventeen, but she’s had a few drinks in college and in the boiler room. Jemma has taken to beer pretty well, but has never even tried most of the hard stuff.
She takes the bottle and tries a small sip that makes her shudder. “Oh no, I think Gilbert did a bad job. A very, very, bad job. This is terrible.”
Fitz laughs, something she’s never heard him do, and she’s surprised by what a pleasant sound it is. “Actually, this is what it’s supposed to taste like. I think it just has to grow on you.”
“Echhhhh. No thank you.”
Jemma runs a finger over the cover of her book and Fitz can’t help but take a look. “Dorothy Hodgkin biography?”
“Yes, one of my favorites. I think I’ve read it at least a dozen times. I’m sure it’s silly to keep re-reading but it’s just sort of comforting, you know?”
Fitz nods, and then because he’s terrible at seguing, says, “You don’t like me much, do you?”
Jemma pulls back with a surprised look on her face. She didn’t think he realized it, but apparently, she was bad at hiding it.
“I – I don’t even really know you.”
“Simmons, come on –“
“I don’t. I know your credentials and how smart you are. I know you’re stubborn to a fault. And I know your age and that you’re from Scotland, but that’s it. So I don’t know enough about you to know if I don’t like you.”
“Well, you never talk to me unless it’s about work –“
“You don’t talk to me either!”
Fitz nods solemnly, and she knows it’s because he doesn’t talk to very many people outside of the classroom or lab. Jemma’s definitely the more outgoing one, though she hasn’t made any real friends here yet.
Jemma sighs and continues, “Okay, tell me something about yourself that has nothing to do with work or school. And then I’ll do the same in return.”
Fitz replies in a near perfect American accent, “I’m not really from Scotland, I’m from Missouri.”
“No way.”
His accent flips back to his normal lilt and he grins just slightly, “I’m just joking. I just watched a lot of Friends growing up and practiced the accent. Now, you?”
She taps the cover of her book and smiles, “I tell everyone this is my favorite book, but it’s really Harry Potter.”
“That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“I know, it’s just not what people expect out of me. But I think it’s part of why I wanted to work for SHIELD so badly.”
“Because the Academy is like Hogwarts?”
Jemma laughs and shakes her head, “No, because of magic. Some of the things I’ve read about that they’ve done here, it sounds like magic, but it’s not. It’s science and technology that just looks like magic.”
Fitz nods and says so softly that she’s not sure if he’s saying it to her or to himself, “See, that wasn’t so hard.”
There’s something about his expression that hits her oddly. He’s usually so tense and focused on whatever he’s working on, but suddenly he looks so peaceful. It’s kind of sweet and reminds her that they’re both just teenagers. No matter how smart or accomplished they are, they still go through all the same angst that regular teenagers do.
“Sometimes I forget how young we are.”
He looks at her with a confused glance so she continues, “I just mean we’re doing things that people twice our age have never done. But we’ve also never done half the things that other seventeen year olds have.”
“Like what?”
“Like be impulsive or stupid or make mistakes. Have you ever done anything impulsive in your entire life?”
“Of course not.”
Jemma smiles at how seriously he says it and that’s when the urge to act like a seventeen year old overtakes her. She comes at him too quickly and he starts to dodge her on instinct, so Jemma puts her hands on his face and pulls him towards her, smashing her lips against his.
There’s a long moment where Fitz does not respond and she’s worried that he’s suddenly turned to stone. But when one of her hands moves back to touch the soft hair at the base of his neck, he relaxes and kisses back. There’s a fair bit of teeth where they shouldn’t be and tongues not knowing where to go, but she strokes the base of his neck again and it’s like she’s found the button that makes him relax.
It goes from awkward to nice and then to really nice. Jemma doesn’t exactly have a ton of experience in kissing, and she imagines Fitz doesn’t either, but just like any of their scientific experiments, they quickly find their way. His mouth tastes like that terrible gin, but it’s sweetened by something minty, probably those candy canes another freshman was passing around.
She hears the door on the floor above them open but keeps going, because, what the hell, this is Jemma Simmons being impulsive and it feels good. But when she hears the sound of laughter followed by three classmates singing, “Fitz and Simmons sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G…”, she jumps back from him like he’s suddenly caught fire.
Jemma rolls her eyes, looks up to see who it is and shouts back, “Is that the best a group of engineers can come up with?”
She quickly looks back at Fitz and mutters, “No offense.”
They laugh some more and then run up the stairs to the fifth floor exit while Jemma grumbles, “At least they didn’t call us FitzSimmons. Didn’t fit the rhyme scheme, I suppose –“
“You don’t like that, do you?”
“And you do?”
Fitz is still red in the cheeks, flushed from that interrupted kiss. He shrugs and there is a hint of a smile on his lips. “It doesn’t bother me.”
And now she’s thinking about his lips again, and she should most definitely not be doing that. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. Shouldn’t have kissed you.”
Fitz shakes his head and fumbles his response magnificently, “No, no, no – it’s really – I mean – you should have – no, what I mean is – I don’t – no, wait –“
“Fitz? You okay?”
“It’s fine. I’m just trying to say that – I – I didn’t mind it.”
Her face suddenly gets warm and she smiles. “It’s just that we’re supposed to be professionals, and I don’t want to be distracted from work by, well, you know. And if they’re going to keep pairing us together, I’m not sure it’s a good idea for us to do that again.”
Fitz’s expression gets very serious for a moment like he wants to argue with her or tell her something, but she can’t quite figure it out. Eventually he just nods in understanding and says, “So now that we’ve agreed to act like professionals and you’ve kissed me, can we try being friends?”
“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to try.”
He gets that hint of a smile again, and Jemma mentally slaps herself, but it’s not a hard enough slap because she still leans in to give him a very brief kiss on the lips. When she backs away she puts her hand over her mouth and looks at him with her eyes wide.
Fitz is as red as she’s ever seen him, kind of quietly furious, and his voice echoes through the stairwell, “SIMMONS. What was – why would –“
“Blame my youthful impulsiveness? But I promise, that is the last time.”
They both laugh, together, at the absurdity of it all.
And that’s the moment she decides to become Leo Fitz’s friend.
+++
Things are completely different after that. The stairwell becomes their place and they have one rule, no talking about their classes. They talk science occasionally, but mostly they talk about their families, books, movies and a lot of Doctor Who.
They still bicker like crazy when they’re working, but it’s different, less contentious, like they’ve grown accustomed to each other’s quirks.
The kiss never gets talked about and if it ever feels like the conversation might be heading in that direction, Fitz turns bright red and Jemma changes the subject.
By the end of the school year, Fitz isn’t just her best friend, he’s the most important person in her life.
She’s not even bothered when people call them FitzSimmons any more. Truth be told, she kind of likes it.