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"...Speaking of- what was your point?”
She nipped at his shoulder, giggling when he made a noise of protest.
“When I was in the shower that night, after we had given Daisy the GH-325, I thought about going to your room after,” she admitted. “I wasn’t even sure what I wanted. But there's another timeline where I kissed you, and everything changed.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Did we- on the actual Bus?”
“We sure did. From what Daisy told me she saw, it was a little shaky while we figured things out, but we never were apart again.”
“Lucky kids,” he muttered.
From Chapter 16 of “every me and every you”
The shower was hot, but it didn’t feel hot enough.
As always, the pressure from the stream of water wasn’t nearly as strong as Jemma wanted it to be. It got her clean but it didn’t pound against her skin. She couldn’t make it strong enough to sting, to ground her, to remind her that she was awake and could feel the world around her. To remind her that she was real.
Fitz had all but shoved her into the stall after he’d forced her to eat, insisting that she would feel better once she had washed the day off. An odd, incongruent thought had flickered through her head as he closed the door- stay with me? The stray idea had left her feeling even more unsettled, even though she knew it wasn't about sex. That had nothing to do with it. It was just that she was loath to be away from him at all and if there was a way to platonically shower with the person in the world you were closest with, she would have suggested it, but there just wasn't.
The thought of that level of intimacy with anyone, but especially Fitz, was entirely too much to handle.
Mentally, she scolded herself. Skye had gotten shot and all she could think about was Fitz.
She dumped an excessive amount of body wash onto her washcloth and scrubbed at her skin, ignoring her mind’s running warnings about her skin’s delicate stratum corneum in favor of trying to get the feeling of the dried blood that Fitz had helped remove from her hands hours and hours ago to finally disappear. She didn’t feel clean. Her whole body was covered in suds and she’d washed her hair twice and she still didn’t feel clean.
She turned the hot water up to the point where it was almost too uncomfortable to stand in and watched the bubbles slide down her body and into the drain.
Fitz could have been shot. Fitz.
And she’d had to wait by Skye’s bedside, hoping against hope that Coulson and Fitz would return with a miracle.
She didn’t want to be alone. It had been hours and hours since they’d found Skye- or was it days? Minutes? She hadn’t been alone after that until Fitz pushed her into the bathroom, and the short time she’d had in the shower was more than enough to be alone with her thoughts.
She could go see Fitz. She was allowed to do that.
She shook herself, and turned the water off. He was probably asleep.
She moved on autopilot, drying off and putting on lotion. She opted for work appropriate comfortable clothing, half convinced that she'd be called to Skye's bedside again and not wanting anyone to see her in pajamas. Lost in thought, she wandered back to her bunk.
A few days before, Skye had tugged her into her bunk for girl time. This was something totally foreign to her- she’d never had real friends before the Academy (before Fitz). They’d attempted to create complicated braids in each other’s hair, failing miserably but giggling like teenagers and gossiping about the others on the Bus until they’d fallen asleep on top of Skye’s bed. Jemma had skipped so many grades that she never had experiences like sleepovers. Skye was a girlfriend, a girl best friend, possibly the first one she had ever had and she had nearly-
Stop, Jemma.
She pulled a jumper over her head, still cold. She hadn’t felt warm in days. The only time she had since they had found Skye was when she had broken down in Fitz’s arms.
Fitz. Fitz, who hadn’t seen the man pointing a gun at him, who Ward had barely stopped from being shot. She could have had to triage them both. She might have had to make a choice.
She could have seen Fitz get shot. He could have been taken away from her. He could have…
It had circled in her head for hours and hours as she sat waiting in the room at the hospital and at Skye’s bedside, until it was a refrain, a heartbeat, the underlying feeling of every step she took.
Fitz, dying.
The familiar bubble of the feelings she could never quite shake started to expand in her chest and she automatically stiffened, trying to push it down. She always had to push it down. She didn’t want to think about it.
But Skye had gotten shot today (yesterday?). She’d had to hold herself together to the breaking point, until she’d fallen apart in Fitz’s arms. The breakdown she’d had felt literal. When she stopped crying and opened her eyes, she had half expected to be shattered into real pieces on the floor. Instead, she had him, holding her together when she couldn’t do it anymore for herself.
Fitz, with his curls and eyes and handsome features, pasty and grumpy and cocky, sweet and funny and kind, a socially awkward mess that made her laugh, who pushed her, made her better, smarter, faster. Clearly jealous of all her boyfriends, but always available for a hug after a breakup. Bringing her snacks when she forgot to eat and cleaning up after her and not mentioning all the shirts and cardigans she’d stolen from him, looking at her like she was an angel when he first tried her cooking, scowling at the mention of Christmas but putting together a light show for her in her living room. Fitz.
She squeezed her eyes shut against the images. She didn’t know if she was ready for this. She didn’t know if she even wanted to be ready for this. She didn’t know how he felt.
Yes, you do.
She didn’t want to think. She grabbed her tablet and tried to read, picking up Hamlet where she’d left off a few nights before, but her decision to reread Shakespeare’s plays in the order they were written seemed incredibly foolish in retrospect. She should have excluded the tragedies. Ophelia was tossing flowers and Jemma’s mind buzzed through their metaphorical meanings.
Rue: sorrow, regret, repentance.
She had to turn her tablet off, wishing she could feel the heavy, satisfying snap of shutting a physical book instead.
She thought too much all the time.
Her hands were shaking. Her stomach was churning. She didn’t want to be alone.
So don’t be alone.
She left her bunk, walking determinedly to his door and knocking before she could let herself overthink it.
“Jemma?”
She half smiled. “Yes.”
“Come in.”
She tapped his code in and slid the door open, pulling it shut behind her before letting herself look at him.
And there was Fitz, his curls a mess, dressed in an old SciOps shirt that she frequently stole and flannel pajama bottoms, looking exhausted but wide awake, sitting up against the wall with a tablet abandoned next to him on the bed. Fitz, alive and well.
“I thought you’d be asleep by now,” he said. His voice was hoarse. She wondered if she sounded the same.
She shrugged. “If you want to sleep, I don’t have to…” She half turned but stopped herself. She wanted to be polite and her body moved automatically but she didn’t really want to leave. She was afraid to leave. She didn’t want to let him out of her sight.
Fitz shook his head at her. “I am so far from sleep, Simmons.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
She hesitated.
“What is it?”
She shrugged again. “I don’t know.” And she really didn’t.
“Well. Do you want to sit down?”
She nodded and walked over to the bed, carefully climbing on top and sitting with her legs pretzeled, leaving what little space between them she could on the small twin sized mattress. Fitz reached across to his desk and grabbed the plush monkey she’d gotten him on a trip to the DC zoo. He handed it to her with his eyebrows raised.
“You look like you need a friend,” he said quietly.
She choked out half a laugh. “Thanks.” She hugged the small stuffed animal to her chest. “Haven’t had a cuddle like this in ages.”
“Well, he’s a very busy man. Typically he oversees my work.”
Jemma nodded solemnly. “A business man.”
“Monkey business.” The smallest smirk touched his lips.
She actually laughed that time, caught by surprise. “I walked right into that, didn’t I?”
Her heart ached a bit at the affection in his eyes. It was lovely, when she let herself acknowledge it was there. “Yes,” he said.
She fidgeted with one of the toy’s paws. “I don’t remember seeing him in here before, actually.”
The bunk was dark, but she could guess that the back of his neck was red. “Normally he’s in my closet in storage, but I figured we all could use some soft things right now.”
Her heart ached a little more. “I agree,” she said.
He tugged on his ear like he did when he was deeply considering something that he was having trouble parsing out, his eyes a bit distant. She waited.
A few moments later, he sighed heavily. “Are you doing okay? I’ve never…” he trailed off.
“What?” she said.
“I’ve never seen you cry like that before,” he said quietly. His eyes dropped to the mattress.
She winced. “I don’t know if I’ve ever had a reason to before.”
He nodded, still not looking at her. “I get that.”
They had been so sheltered for so long, and now they were out in the world, and still her mind rattled on, loud and complex, always spinning.
She didn’t want to overthink things anymore. It was all she did- the constant stream of thoughts in her head, made of complex equations she was endlessly solving and her theories about the Clairvoyant, layered with worries about her friends and family, fears that she wasn’t strong enough for the field after all tangled with the knowledge that really, she was, she just hadn’t expected to need to be strong like this, and the constant refrain throughout: Fitz. She had to keep Fitz safe.
She was so tired.
“Can I stay here tonight?” she breathed out. She spoke so softly she wondered if she had actually said it out loud, but he stiffened and his gaze snapped to her. He looked shocked.
Why did he look so shocked? They’d fallen asleep in the same bed plenty of times.
But this is deliberate, she thought. She was changing the rules on him. Her heartbeat picked up.
She wanted the rules to change even more.
My best friend. My best friend in the whole world.
So caught up in the swirl of affection she felt, she nearly missed his nod.
He cleared his throat. “Yeah, okay.”
But he seemed frozen. So she was brave and reached to put his tablet away before turning down his covers. She tucked the stuffed monkey in the corner of the bed, between the pillow and the wall. He watched her, unmoving.
Her hands were trembling. “Can I…uhm.”
“Jem?”
The affectionate diminutive of her name, the one he had so recently started to call her, soothed her. She didn’t have to be scared. Her mind and her heart were a mess but this was her and Fitz. They’d be fine.
“Can I sleep between you and the wall?” she asked. I want to feel safe, she finished silently.
She was flooded with anxious affection at the blown away look on his face. She’d told him he was her hero. She saw now that he hadn’t believed her when she said it.
“Of course,” he finally said. “Whatever you like.”
They shuffled around each other a bit awkwardly- a new dance, one they hadn’t ever performed deliberately together- but he turned off his lamp and they managed to get under the covers, on their sides and facing each other. Her eyes adjusted quickly to the dark and how the light spilling over the top of his bunk door cast shadows over his bed. Her heart was in her throat.
She hated feeling this vulnerable. She was supposed to be the strong one, she was never supposed to show a softer side, she couldn’t, being a woman in the field she had chosen, but if she couldn’t let her guard down around Fitz, when could she ever?
He looked like he couldn’t quite believe she was there. He was stiff, as if he didn’t trust himself to relax while they were like this.
“Hi,” she whispered.
His lips twitched. “Hi.”
“What are you so nervous about?” she asked, and bit her lip when his eyes widened. She wished she could reach out and pluck the words out of the air between them and place them back in her head where they belonged.
He cleared his throat and there was something incongruous about it, Fitz with his mess of curls in his pajamas, in bed with her but acting like he was preparing for a speech.
“I don’t know,” he said.
Liar, she thought, but not with any malice. She was the one pushing at their carefully drawn boundaries. She was the one who had decided not to shove her feelings back down and to go to his bunk. She could read him enough to know that something had changed for him, with them. She just didn’t know if he was actually ready for this.
But she was so tired.
“I don’t want to overthink my entire life, Fitz,” she said.
His eyes softened. He got her, as always. He cleared his throat again.
“That’s new,” he said. It wasn’t funny but she laughed anyway, glad for the grab at normalcy.
“True,” she agreed.
And she decided to be brave again and go for what she really wanted. She turned away from him, catching the disappointment that appeared on his face, but when she was settled on her other side she looked over her shoulder at him.
“Can you- can we-” She clamped her mouth shut, feeling a frisson of nerves.
His shoulders slumped. “Whatever you like,” he said again, with a touch of sadness in his tone, like he was expecting her to kick him out of his own bed.
“Oh, Fitz,” she whispered. And she reached for him, gently coaxing the arm that he was holding stiff at his side around her waist. She pressed his hand against her stomach over the covers, lacing her fingers over his. The bed was so small that there was hardly any space between them. He inhaled, sharp and loud.
She looked up at the ceiling, nervous.
“Is this okay?” she managed. And she was sure he could hear the tremor in her voice. The vulnerability. She couldn’t look at him.
But then he was tugging her back tight against his chest and curling around her, dropping his forehead against her shoulder and tangling their feet together. The affection that flooded her system was overwhelming. She felt like she might cry again at the feeling of Fitz holding her like this. It was terrifying and wonderful and everything she’d ever wanted and maybe part of her wanted to run away screaming at how scary this was, but she never would. It was entirely too much to handle and exactly what she needed.
She finally felt warm again.
“Yeah,” he said, and she felt his breath puff against her neck. “This is okay.”
She could feel the pounding of his heart against her back. “Okay.”
She felt him take in a slow, deliberate breath and she matched her breathing to his. Fitz was fine. Fitz was alive, he was holding her, and it was a miracle.
“Good night,” he murmured against her skin. She fought a shiver. She didn’t know what to do with the burst of heat inside her that his words pressed against her neck created.
“Good night,” she whispered back.
It didn’t take long for him to fall asleep. Exhausted Fitz could sleep anywhere, even when his mind was a mess, and she knew it must be. She closed her eyes and dozed, trying to memorize the feeling of being close to him like this.
She must have slept, because she needed to open her eyes. She was being moved. She seemed to have turned to face him again at some point and he was rolling onto his back, still dead to the world but pulling her to cuddle into his side while he slept.
Her heart stuttered. Completely asleep, he still wanted her close like this.
He looked so peaceful while he was sleeping. She’d seen him like this before, but she had never really looked at him. His lips were parted and she could hear his soft, even breathing.
She wanted-
She could just-
She draped her arm over him, letting her hand rest on his heart, and tucked her head against his shoulder. Decisions made in the middle of the night weren’t reliable. She should just go back to sleep.
She managed to doze for a while longer until he shifted, sighing. She opened her eyes and glanced up to see that he was awake.
The affectionate way he was looking at her, like he couldn’t believe she was there with him but he was thrilled to find it was true, made her stomach flip and her chest get tight. Warmth flooded her from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. Fitz.
She wanted-
They could just-
She didn’t want to overthink the rest of her life.
She tilted her head up and caught his mouth with hers, barely a press, a whisper of contact, but enough to be deliberate, enough for him to know it was on purpose. Her heart was threatening to pound out of her chest. Somehow, the small motion was momentous. After their lips parted she didn’t move, feeling their breath mingle together, before letting her eyes flutter open so she could look up at him. She didn’t know what she wanted. She knew exactly what she wanted. She watched him think, and she watched him make the decision.
He nudged her nose with his and then leaned in, kissing her back, a firm, deliberate press of his lips against hers.
Oh.
This was what the stories were always talking about.
She felt like a live wire, like her skin was buzzing, like all that mattered was the soft slide of their lips together. Her brain blanked out and her body and her heart took over. She could never get bored doing this like she had with other boys, her attention would never wander and she’d never wish she was with someone else, because he was the someone else she always wanted to be with.
For the first time in her life, her mind was blank of everything but the man kissing her.
Kissing him was slow and aching and lovely and a million other things she couldn’t express but most of all it was easy, it made sense, it was the final piece of her life and their relationship clicking into place, put there by Fitz’s skillful hands.
She sighed against his mouth and felt him smile into the kiss. The sound of their lips parting made her smile, too. Slightly ridiculous smacking noises courtesy of her kissing Fitz. She was wide awake and content.
Home. She felt like she was home.
How had she missed the way his feelings were written all over his face? He loved her. She had been in denial for so long, she was so bad at reading people and she didn’t want to assume anything and she had been so afraid, but of course he loved her. He was Fitz and she was Simmons and some things were just inevitable.
She gently ran her fingers through his curls, smiling when he briefly closed his eyes at the sensation.
“Jemma,” he said, and her heart ached a little bit at the waver in his voice. He was smiling too but there was something tremulous about it. He was still waiting for her to kick him out, or reject him, or in some way tell him that this wasn’t for her what it was for him. “What made you do that?”
She turned and pressed her lips against his shoulder through his shirt, relishing the little shiver it sent through him.
“I wanted to,” she said simply. “Honestly, Fitz. When have I ever done anything I didn’t want to do?”
His lips twitched. “Never.”
She nodded firmly. “Never. What made you kiss me back?”
“I wanted to.”
Of course.
His voice was steady again but he still looked scared. “What are you thinking?” he asked.
She had to be brave, for both of them.
“I’m a little messy at the moment,” she admitted. “But this? Us? I’m not messy about that, Fitz. I want to figure it out. I want to see what’s here.”
She saw him relax a fraction. He still didn’t completely believe her, but she could understand that. She didn’t entirely believe it, either.
“I want to see what’s here, too,” he said, and it sounded like it cost him a bit to admit it.
This was so much bigger than them, she thought. All the ways their lives were tangled together would now only get more intertwined.
She realized she wasn’t scared. Not anymore.
“Leopold Fitz,” she said. “You and I are always going to be us. It’s the way the universe is. We have nothing to be afraid of.”
“I don’t want to lose you,” he said. His hand flexed against her hip, like he wanted to tighten his grip but he wasn’t sure if he was allowed.
She was shaking her head before he finished speaking. “You won’t. You couldn’t. There is nothing that could happen that would mean us losing each other.”
She watched him think again. His eyes flickered from her face, to the way their bodies were entwined together, to her lips before meeting her gaze again. The look in his eyes changed from fear to something softer, warmer, that made her want to press her body against his until there was no space left between them. She settled for squeezing her arm around him a little tighter.
“I think this could be something magnificent,” he whispered.
And for the first time in what felt like days- certainly for the first time since she’d gotten on that blasted train, she felt light.
“A solid hypothesis, Doctor Fitz,” she said. “Lots of supporting evidence. I think we’re ready to test the theory.”
He was laughing before she finished speaking. “I quite agree, Doctor Simmons,” he said, mock solemnity in his voice. “What would you suggest for our first step?”
She had actual butterflies in her stomach. Well, not literally, but she felt it, that fluttering feeling she’d heard other girls talk about, the excitement and joy and good nerves, fun nerves, nerves she wanted more of.
“Well,” she said, trying to sound confident, “you could kiss me again?”
His eyes lit up.
“Yeah,” he breathed out, and he did.
His lips were steady against hers, and she was warm in his bed, and his heart was beating under her palm. She was surrounded by him- by the way he smelled and the way he held her and the sure knowledge that this, that them, was worth it, worth trying. Their lives had gotten harder but now they had something wonderful that was just for the two of them.
She stopped thinking, and she kissed him back.