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As Fitz led Jemma into the banquet hall, she took several deep breaths to calm her nerves. These kind of events had never been her style. Although she knew that truthfully they weren’t Fitz’s either, she couldn’t say that he looked out of place in his dashing tux. He adjusted his bowtie, raising his eyebrows at her before scoping the room for the nearest tray of champagne and signaling the server over. “Keep ‘em coming,” he whispered, before handing Jemma her flute. “I’m sorry about this again. I don’t actually remember what this party is for, but supposedly every party is important enough that I have to go.”
“It’s really fine, Fitz, I’m glad that you wanted me to come with you.” She sipped her drink delicately, desperate not to spill anything on her dress. Skye had searched with her all over the city for the floor-length silver number, which had blown her clothing budget for rest of the year, but she had wanted something to impress at the Stark Industries event.
“There’s no one else I’d want to come with,” he said, wrapping his arm around her waist. His warm hand settled low on her hip. With a disgruntled sigh, he swallowed back the rest of his drink. “Come on, if I don’t start saying hello to the board members now, we’ll be here all night.”
They mingled for a while, chatting with heads of the various departments at Stark Industries, people that Fitz only knew by name, reputation, or parties like this. Luckily, everyone else seemed to realize that this was a formality and after a few minutes they seemed to be able to part ways and move on, grabbing drinks and h’orderves before they had to move on to the next multimillionaire. “You’re really quite good at this,” Jemma said as she bit into a stuffed mushroom cap.
Fitz piled his mini-plate with appetizers. “You seem surprised.”
“I guess so. You just weren’t that great with me when we first met.”
“You were someone important,” he said with a shrug. “These are just work people.” Popping an escargot in his mouth, he added, “Plus, I’ve met all these people before, it’s sort of like a family reunion where all the wives are like great aunts who want to pinch my cheek and talk about how much I’ve grown.” Jemma tried to hide her laughter behind her champagne.
“I was dreadful when I first started here,” he said, a hint of nostalgia in his tone. “Everyone wanted to meet Tony’s new prodigy and I just wanted to hide in the corner. Pepper used to have to take me by the hand and walk me around the room like a child. But it was good experience, no one’s good at this like Pepper is.”
Shaking her head, she said, “I’m glad we don’t have to do these things at S.H.I.E.L.D. Most people can’t talk about their work anyway, so we’d all probably be talking about the weather or something. And I’d go broke buying dresses.”
Fitz eyed her appreciatively. “Have I mentioned how absolutely beautiful you look?”
“Only when you picked me up and again after we got here,” she said, giving him a light kiss. “But it’s nice to hear.”
“If I give you another kiss, am I going to smudge your make up?”
Giggling, she shook her head, and Fitz leaned in to kiss her slowly. Despite the excitement and bustle of the room, she felt she could easily get lost in him until she heard a familiar voice from behind her say, “There he is!”
Fitz groaned in frustration against her lips before pulling away, turning towards the voice. “Hello, Tony.”
She had never been more thankful to have invested in long wear lipstick as she smiled at Tony Stark and Pepper Potts. All of the nerves that she thought had settled instantly came back, buzzing under her skin like electricity. Fitz’s hand on the small of her back was firm and his thumb stroked against the skin bared by her dress. She tried to time her breathing with the slow, rhythmic motion. “Hello, Mr. Stark, Ms. Potts.”
“You look nice, Fitz,” Pepper said, smiling proudly as a mother would. She looked radiant in black silk, somehow looking infinitely more sophisticated than Jemma thought she ever could.
“You bought me this suit,” he said with a laugh, stepping forward to kiss Pepper’s cheek without his hand ever leaving Jemma. “It’s nice to see you, Pepper.”
Tony looked inquisitively at Jemma. “And who are you?” He raised an eyebrow at her, and she desperately tried not to squirm under his gaze. Turning to his girlfriend, he said, “Is she one of your friends?”
Pepper shook her head, corner of her mouth quirking up in a smirk. “No, she’s not. Though maybe she might become one.”
“Could it be?” Tony said, looking at Fitz over the top of his glasses. “Did Leopold Fitz actually bring his own date to an event for once?”
Huffing out a breath of exasperation, Fitz gestured to Jemma with his champagne flute. “This is my girlfriend, Jemma. Dr. Jemma Simmons.”
“When did this happen?” Stark demanded, but there was amusement in his tone.
Ignoring him and clearly indicating that everyone else should do the same, Pepper offered out her hand. “It’s lovely to meet you, Jemma. We’re glad that Fitz has met someone he likes.”
“I’m glad to have met Fitz too. And it’s nice to meet you, of course,” Jemma said, shaking her hand. When she offered it to Stark, he brought it up to his lips for a light kiss. Next to her, Fitz rolled his eyes.
Tony didn’t release her hand right away, looking at her imploringly. “I know you. Do you work for me?”
Sighing, Fitz said, “She was at the charity auction, that’s where we met.”
“See, I told you that thing would be good,” Tony said, grinning. “But no, that’s not it. Dr. Simmons…” It seemed to come to him in a flash and he let her hand drop to snap his fingers and point at her. “You work for S.H.I.E.L.D. You’re a chemist, right?”
“Biochemist, but yes,” she said, utterly pleased that her name was recognizable. She glanced over at Fitz quickly to check to see if this was his doing, but he seemed just as stunned as she was. “I’m one of the heads of their science division.”
Tony nodded, taking a sip of his drink. “Your work is good. We try to keep up with what S.H.I.E.L.D. is doing, what we can find out, of course, and some of their things are…they’re good. And your published work is remarkable. Fitz had some of your papers in his office and I flipped through them for some light reading and there was nothing light about them, you’ve got a brilliant mind.” Tapping his fingers against his chin, he said, “Would you like to work for me?”
“She likes her job!” Fitz interjected, then stopped and glanced over at Jemma. “You do like your job, right?”
“I’m very happy at S.H.I.E.L.D., yes. And it would probably be a conflict of interest, considering, you know.” She waved a hand back and forth between herself and Fitz. “But if I stop being happy at S.H.I.E.L.D., I know who to turn to.”
Shrugging his shoulders, Tony grabbed a quiche off a passing tray. “Worth a shot. I don’t like it when the best minds work against me.”
Pepper placed a hand on Tony’s shoulder and smiled at Fitz and Jemma. “Well, we have a lot more people to go talk to, so we’ll leave you two. It was very nice to meet you, Jemma. Please come see us at the office anytime. And maybe we’ll get lunch sometime.”
“I would really like that,” she said. Then, on the spur of the moment, she added, “I really love your dress!”
Visibly touched by the compliment, she said, “Thank you. It’s a new designer I found. I’ll send Fitz the information so he can pass it along.” She touched Fitz’s shoulder fondly. “We’ll see you on Monday. Oh, and Jemma, your paper on the structure-function studies of the nuclear pore complex and the histone-modifying machinery was absolutely amazing, I loved it.”
“Thank you,” she squeaked, but saved her incredulous look for Fitz until after Stark and Pepper had already turned to speak to another guest. “Pepper has read my paper too?”
“I’ve learned not to underestimate her,” Fitz admitted, though he looked rather dumbfounded nonetheless. “But I think that went well? You seemed a little nervous.”
“It was Tony Stark and Pepper Potts, Fitz!” she said, swallowing down the last bit of her champagne. “And they’re not just the heads of Stark Industries and amazing people in their own right, they’re also your bosses and your friends.” Fitz pried the flute from her fingers and set them down on an empty table, taking her hands in his. “I just…I just wanted them to like me.”
Fitz kissed her knuckles, his blue eyes serious as he looked at her. “Jemma, it doesn’t matter if they liked you or not.” When she opened her mouth to protest, he quickly hurried on. “No, really. I mean, I think they did, but it honestly doesn’t matter to me. Even if they didn’t like you, it’d just mean they were wrong. Tony has never known what I’ve wanted out of a relationship, always trying to force women on me that were not for me—mostly because I’d been waiting for you, but still.” He cupped her cheek gently in his hand, looking at her so sweetly she thought she actually felt her heart flutter in her chest. “There’s no one in this world that could change the way I feel about you.”
Taking hold of the lapel of his jacket, she pulled him in for a kiss. Fitz put both of his hands on her waist as he kissed her sweetly, nose brushing against hers. “Thank you,” she whispered when she pulled away, nuzzling her nose against his jaw.
“Thank you again for coming with me.” As he grabbed two new champagne flutes from a passing tray, he handed one to her. “Maybe a toast? To us.”
Jemma tapped her glass against his, but waited until he had taken a drink before saying, “So I’m your girlfriend now?”
Choking on his champagne, he coughed several times before he managed to talk. “Well, I mean—I was—what I was doing was—we’ve been seeing a lot of each other?” His voice was at a significantly higher pitch than normal. “We’ve been dating a lot and I sort of spend more nights at your place than I do at mine and I’ve never brought a girl to one of these things that wasn’t hand-picked and mandated by Tony. And you’re my date tonight, so I thought that was the best way to describe our relationship. Since it seems like that’s what this is. And I know Skye is just teasing when she calls me that, but I’ve always liked it. But if this is casual for you or you’re not into labels, I could…I could do that too…”
She felt breathless as she stared at him, but couldn’t help cutting off any more potential ramblings with a kiss. He seemed to relax once her lips were on his. Squeezing his shoulder, she said, “Fitz, I would very much like to be your girlfriend.”
His shoulders sagged as he let out a large breath of relief. “Thank god. Because I’ve been thinking you were my girlfriend since basically our first date.”
“I told my mum you were my boyfriend,” she admitted, giggling against his neck as a flush of embarrassment rose on her cheeks.
“Yeah?” he said and it was clear he was excited.
She nodded against his shoulder before meeting his eyes, her heart beating double time at how bright a blue they were, how much they shined. “She wants you to be there the next time I Skype with them so she can ‘meet’ you.”
“I’d love to,” he said and the sincerity in his voice made her ache with happiness.
Jemma ran her fingers through the back of his hair before guiding her lips over his. His tongue parted her lips at the seam, as if trying to test the claims of her lipstick’s staying power, but she couldn’t find it in her to care as she tasted him. When his hand returned back to the base of her spine, the rough calluses of his fingers rubbing against her bare skin, she moaned into his mouth. Pulling away before she could get truly indecent—and with Fitz, it was really only a matter of time—she leaned her forehead against his shoulder to catch her breath. “When are we allowed to leave?” she said, looking up at him imploringly.
His eyes were dark with desire and she felt his fingers brush inside the edge of her dresses back, skimming over her hip before settling back outside. “There’s a few more people I have to talk to and we should probably dance once to make it look like we participated. Maybe a half hour, tops.” He pressed his lips to the tender spot right below her ear, whispering, “But then my flat’s only three blocks away.”
Shivering from the heat she felt throughout her body, she nodded. “I think I can wait just about that long.” Nipping playfully at his jaw, she warned, “Any longer and we are going to have to find a closet.”
Holding back a groan, he nodded. “Understood. Thank you.” He kissed her one last time, then ran his thumb over her lower lip slowly. He forced himself to pull his eyes away from her, gazing out over the party. “Bruce!” he called across the room as he spotted someone, waving. “I’ve got someone I’d like you to meet.”