Chapter Text
When Antoine Triplett sat across from her at her table in the student union, Skye first wondered if she was hallucinating. After determining that it was actually him, she glanced around the room, counting the dozens of other empty tables, and wondered if she just happened to pick the one that the basketball players had claimed as theirs. Maybe this was the spot where the fluorescent lighting hit their muscles just right or was the best place for everyone to see them spin a ball on their finger. Skye didn’t really know what basketball players prioritized.
As he leaned back in his chair and smiled at her, she crossed her arms over her chest. “Are you lost?”
“You’re Skye, right?”
“Yeah.” She clenched her jaw, hackles raised. She didn’t like it when people knew her. She’d gotten where she was in life by not being known. “Can I help you, LeBron James?”
He winced, shaking his head. “LeBron, really? C’mon, girl, it’s all about Kobe. Look, I’m Ant—”
“I know who you are,” she said quickly, staring at him over the top of her laptop screen. “Everyone knows who you are. I’m pretty sure they’re redesigning the university seal to put your face on it.”
He grinned at that and somehow it didn’t even come across as smug. She reminded herself that it probably was anyway. “You’re Jemma Simmons’ roommate, right?”
Oh, god, of course this was about Jemma. Skye had assumed that if Jemma had had a one night stand with Antoine Triplett of all people it would have been mentioned, but that detail had probably gotten lost in things that Jemma had thought were more important, like dissection and watching geek shows with Fitz. “You should let it go, dude,” she said, doing her best to be sympathetic and knowing she was failing. She was starting to think she should just print up cards to give to these poor bastards: This is going to be a onetime thing. You’re probably going to be inevitably disappointing. Jemma’s not going to call you again. Move on. Stop bothering Jemma’s roommate, it just makes you look pathetic.
“What?” he said, frowning.
“I know Jemma is super good in bed—I mean, or so I can surmise by the way you guys keep bugging me about her, I haven’t actually partaken, not that I don’t think I’m not next after that hot blonde from her org chem class—but she’s not looking for a relationship. Or even like…another round. Because if she did, she let you know.” She shrugged and leaned over to pat his hand. “But you’re Antoine Triplett, so I’m sure you’ll get over it.”
It seemed to take him a while to process that information. “I—I’m friends with Fitz?” he eventually said.
“You are?”
“You sound like you don’t believe me.”
“Because I kind of don’t. Fitz doesn’t really have any friends, especially friends I don’t know about.” The only people Fitz hung out with on a regular basis were her, Jemma, Mack, and Hunter, and Hunter was only because he was Mack’s roommate, he sort of just tagged along by default and was also trying to bang the hot blonde from Jemma’s org chem class. Skye wasn’t entirely sure that Jemma’s interest wasn’t just to beat Hunter and watch him cry over it, a goal which Skye entirely supported and often encouraged.
Antoine Triplett shrugged. “We had stats together last semester. I needed it to fill my last math requirement, but Fitz was just taking it for fun.” Okay, that was true, god her friends were such dorks. “I needed a little bit of help and rather than me having to get an athletics tutor, Fitz studied with me. Guy knows what he’s talking about. I eventually helped him set up a fantasy basketball team. With his knowledge of statistics and modeling, dude’s gonna make bank.”
Fitz had been offering to pay for movies a lot more lately… “Huh. Okay. So, what’s that got to do with me? Just coming to introduce yourself? You want to hang with our gang, Antoine Triplett?”
“Trip. Everyone calls me Trip.”
“Trip,” she said, licking her lips.
“So, I don’t know if you realized this about Fitz, but he kinda has a thing for your roommate.”
Skye snorted loudly, not even a little bit ashamed at Trip’s shocked expression. “A thing? You don’t know if I realized Fitz has a thing for Jemma? You don’t know if I realized that Leopold Fitz worships the very ground that Jemma Simmons walks on and would probably marry her if we drove them to Vegas right now and would bear her children and cries himself to sleep at night thinking about her, that thing?”
Rubbing the back of his neck, Trip nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, that thing. I was just, you know, kind of wondering if maybe she was into him too? But if you said she’s not looking for a relationship—”
“Whoa, okay, whoa.” Groaning under her breath, Skye shook her head. She closed the screen of her laptop so she could rest her arms on the table and lean closer to him. “Okay, look, you are clearly new here. Jemma Simmons loves exactly two things in this world other than me and that’s science and Leo Fitz and not even in that order. Jemma is crazy about him. I don’t think I’ve ever had a conversation with Jemma that has not somehow led to talking about Fitz and I live with the woman. The way they feel about each other is gross.”
“Okay, so it’s not just me,” he said, laughing lightly and bouncing a bit in his seat. “Because I’ve seen her a few times when I’ve hung out with Fitz and I thought she was his girlfriend, they’re basically on top of each other all the time. Sometimes I talk to him and he’s not even listening because—”
“He’s too busy staring at her? Welcome to my freaking life. You try to tell that kid something and it’s like you have to put horse blinders on him to get his attention.” She let out a long suffering sigh. “I’d have completely given up on him at this point if he didn’t do my college algebra homework for me.”
Smirking and resting his chin on his hand, he said, “So why aren’t they together then? I mean, it’s pretty clear to literally everyone else.”
“Because they’re stupid,” Skye grumbled, kicking her feet up on to a free chair. As Trip waited patiently for her to elaborate, she tugged a hand through her hair, wincing at a particularly snagged knot. “Okay, like, Jemma is very, very in love with him, it’s the worst, but she doesn’t even bother to think of herself being in love with him? It’s all, ‘Fitz is my very best friend—you know, except for you Skye—we have such a perfect relationship!’ As if it’s not clear on her face that she wants to jump his bones too. I had her help me with my final paper for my Intro to Psych course and she still didn’t understand that she is a living representation of denial. She just wanted to talk about brain chemistry like a nerd.
“And Fitz—ugh, Fitz. He knows he’s in love with Jemma, everyone knows Fitz is in love with Jemma. He’s just too…too Fitz to do anything about it. I’m not entirely sure he hasn’t already made an engagement ring, he is so far gone for her. But he doesn’t want to risk screwing anything up, or so he’s told me when he’s too drunk to keep his mouth shut, and so I guess he’s just going to wait until she does something instead. It’s like if a rock fell in love with a hard place.”
Trip pressed his lips together and made a deep noise in the back of his throat that made goosebumps prick on her arm. “So, what are we going to do about it?”
“Excuse me?”
“I told you, Fitz is my friend,” he said, resting both of his arms on the table, wide fingers spread flat across the Formica surface. “I don’t think the guy is miserable or anything, but he’s clearly not the happiest Fitz he could be. I want to help him out.”
She was quiet for a second, regarding him carefully. “You really want to help them out?”
“I do. But I’m not sure what to do.” He leaned forward, brown eyes shining under the lights as he smiled at her. “You know them better than I do, what do you think?”
She found her words caught in the back of her throat as she stared at him. It was only the sound of the alarm on her phone that snapped her out of her reverie. “I’ve gotta go to class,” she said, silencing the alarm and grabbing her laptop to slip it back into her bag.
His shoulders slumped as he sat back in his seat. “Oh, yeah, class. Well, if you think of anything that we can do to help them, you should let me know.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket, swiped it to unlock and then held it out to her.
Blinking at the device—and a bit amused that he thought she couldn’t figure out his password—she stuffed her hands in her pockets. “Isn’t there like…a basketball signal on the roof of the gym that we use to get your attention or something?”
Trip laughed, then licked his bottom lip slowly. “I’ll suggest it to the boosters when I get a chance. But until then, if you give me your number, I can text you if I get an idea.”
Skye drummed her fingers against her thigh from inside her pocket for a second before making her decision. She reached for the phone quickly before she could change her mind, tapping her number in and then handing it back to him. “Yeah, okay. If you can think of anything to help those super dorks, you know, I’m in.”
“Cool.” He looked down at her number and smiled before fixing his warm gaze back on her. “I’ll let you know. Have a good class.”
“What? Oh, right.” Who the hell was supposed to think about bio at a time like this? “Uh, bye.” She turned around quickly to head to the science building, her heart thudding in her chest. She couldn’t believe she’d just given basketball god Antoine Triplett her phone number. He would probably never even text her, he was just messing with her because that was what jock guys like that did.
She hadn’t even reached her lab table before she felt the vibration in her pocket. Fishing her phone out with fumbling hands, she saw the text with the unknown number: Hey, it’s Trip! Just wanted you to have mine too. :)
Skye swallowed hard and stuffed her phone at the bottom of her bag to exchange it for her textbook. Looked like she was actually going to be paying attention in bio today. Jemma was going to be so proud.
-----
That night, she was lounging on her bed with her American History textbook, the one class where really neither Jemma nor Fitz were any really great help to her, other than pointing out her grammatical errors. It almost wasn’t worth it most of the time as it usually descended into a rant about how Microsoft Word didn’t think “colour” was a word because it had a “u” in it and the imperialism of American software.
She glanced over at Jemma’s side of the room, where her friend was remaking her already perfect bed, setting up her pillows and backrest and body pillow, smoothing out her white and pale green bedspread. Face twisted in confusion, Skye pulled her headphones away from her ears. “What are you doing?”
“Fitz is coming over—”
“Of course he is, it’s a day of the week.”
Jemma shot her an unamused look before continuing, “Fitz is coming over and we’re going to watch the old ‘Star Trek’ series while we do our Calc 2 problems. I just wanted to make sure everything was nice.”
Fitz was in their room far more than his own (which, to be fair, his roommate Seth was mostly a douchebag), but it still made Skye’s stomach go warm that Jemma went through all the trouble. It looked like she had even brushed out her hair and put on a little lip gloss. And she still pretended she wasn’t in love with the guy. “Hey, isn’t that sweater you’re wearing Fitz’s?”
Blatantly ignoring the question, she said, “You’re welcome to join us if you’d like, he’s bringing snacks.”
“Of course he is, it’s a day of the week.” When Jemma just rolled her eyes, Skye grinned at the back of her head. “I’d like to join your geekfest, but I have like 80 pages of reading to do and I have to figure out a proposal for this paper and I don’t even know what my topic is yet. But you guys have fun.” She added a little bit of emphasis to “have fun,” watching Jemma’s face, but her roommate didn’t seem to get the hint. She never really did.
Her phone lit up on the dock next to her bed and when she saw that it was just Miles, she decided to ignore it. It did remind her, however, of the text she had received earlier. “Hey, Jem, what do you think of Antoine Triplett?”
Jemma turned to look at her with a face of surprise, which was fair because if she was going to make a list of everything Skye would have said at that moment, asking about the captain of the basketball team probably would have ranked very low on her list. “He’s a good basketball player?” Jemma suggested, tapping her finger against her chin. “I’ve spent a bit of time with him with Fitz, did you know they’re friends?” Skye made her best face of not knowing this brand new information. “Fitz actually helps out the basketball team by doing some statistical analysis for them. Trip—his friends call him Trip—says that Fitz’s input has really helped them improve this year, that he’s one of the prime reasons why the team is undefeated.” Jemma gave a happy little sigh and Skye couldn’t help but beam at how cute she was when it came to that dumb Scottish boy.
“Fitz is sorta, kinda smart sometimes, huh?”
“Sometimes I think I’m smart, but then Fitz will do something that just blows me away. He’s really an incredible genius, I’m lucky to be able to get to study with him,” Jemma gushed, her eyes bright. She seemed lost in her thoughts for a moment until she came back to herself. “But, oh, Trip, right. He was very nice the few times I’ve met him. Seemed down to earth despite his rather celebrity status around here. And he’s very nice to Fitz, which is important to me.” Skye nodded in agreement; people being nice to Fitz was pretty much her baseline for whether or not they were assholes. “He doesn’t seem anywhere near as entitled as he could be.”
Skye nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, right.”
“Why the sudden interest in Antoine Triplett?” Jemma said as she sat on her bed with her laptop, organizing it along with her calculus book, notebook, pencils, and calculator. Skye vaguely wondered how she was going to fit Fitz on there too, but then figured that was why she wasn’t the science nerd.
Trying to shrug nonchalantly, she said, “You see a guy’s face everywhere enough, you start to wonder about him. That’s all.”
Jemma wrinkled her nose. “Yes, they do seem to have posters of him everywhere, don’t they? It’s as if there aren’t any other players. But he is our top scorer by far and has quite a lot of rebounds and assists—Fitz sometimes talks to me when he’s doing the stats for the team. I suppose the school thinks he’s going to lead us to the championship and based on the numbers so far, they’re not wrong to think so. And you know I’m not one to really care about sports, but it’s good for the school. Championships mean increased alumni funds and donations, which get spread to every part of the campus. It could mean more money for the science department!”
Skye could easily think of dozens of things that could use the money more than the science department, but she just nodded. Luckily, she was saved by a knock on the door as Fitz arrived, as if drawn to them by talk of sciences and the departments that held them. “It’s me!” he called from outside the door. Like it’d be anyone else.
Bouncing up from the bed eagerly, Jemma absentmindedly ran her fingers through her hair and wet her lips with her tongue before she opened the door for him. “Hi, Fitz!” she said, her voice high with excitement.
“Hey, Jemma,” he said, lingering in the doorway to smile at her. It wasn’t until Skye waved to him that his gaze left her face to nod back. “Uh, hey, Skye.” He moved further into the room, shoulder brushing against Jemma and Skye tried to keep her laughter internal as she noticed the pink blush on his cheeks. “Got you something.”
Skye caught the Flaming Hot Cheetos as he tossed the bag to her and she moaned happily. “Oh, bless you, Leopold Fitz. See, this is why we keep you around.”
He seemed pleased by that assessment from her as she tore into the bag. “You watching ‘Star Trek’ with us?”
“Skye has homework to do,” Jemma said as she took the bag with the rest of the snacks from Fitz, unloading them on to her nightstand. She took the root beer that she found and handed it to Skye, rightfully assuming it was for her since neither of them drank it. “But if you need a break, the offer still stands, Skye.”
“Thanks, guys. And thanks, Fitz,” she said, toasting him with the plastic bottle. “You guys have fun.” She pulled her headphones back over her ears before turning back to her history book. Everything was a little bit better with Cheetos at least.
The next time she glanced over at Jemma and Fitz, her eyes practically rolled out of her head: they had managed to figure a way out of the lack of space situation by sitting basically on top of each other. Fitz’s right side was pressed against the wall with his notebook propped up against his knee so he could still conceivably maybe do equations. Jemma was pressed against his other side with his arm wrapped around her, her head comfortably settled against his cheek as she watched the Star Trek episode playing out in front of them. Skye wondered if either of them noticed the way Fitz’s fingers were gently stroking her arm in thoughtless patterns.
She briefly considered telling them that they were already dating and should probably just start making out as soon as she found another place to finish this paper proposal.
Then she imagined the looks they would give her: Fitz’s red embarrassment and stuttering denial; Jemma’s exasperated face and complete dismissal of the idea, which would only serve to upset Fitz, even though Skye would be the only one to notice. So okay. Maybe not just come out and say it. Maybe it needed a more delicate hand. A little bit of skill. An actual plan.
Groaning lightly under her breath, she reached over to the dock and pulled off her phone. She opened up her text messages and scrolled to the one she had gotten earlier from Trip. Typing quickly before she could lose her nerve, she responded: I think we need to come up with some ideas. I know a place we can meet whenever they can spare you from Olympus.
The response back was almost instant: I’m free from 3-6 tomorrow. What’d you have in mind?
Smirking lightly, she glanced over to where Jemma was pointing out something in Fitz’s notes, her face gently nuzzling his neck as he turned redder and redder. She sent her info to Trip and then tossed her phone aside to pick up her textbook. There was pretty much only one reason she was willing to hang out with Antoine Triplett, and it was to make these two dorks happy. She always knew she’d do basically anything for that.
Of course, the universe would call that bluff.
----
The Hub was a small bookstore and coffee shop on the complete opposite side of campus than she usually hung out at; it took a shuttle bus to get there. It usually serviced the medical school and those sorts of graduate programs and wasn’t ever particularly busy. Skye assumed they had a morning rush and she’d seen a bit of a lunch rush from time to time, but she’d never had a problem grabbing one of their few tables or even one of the comfy chairs while enjoying a latte and one of their sandwiches or a muffin or two.
When Trip showed up, he was wearing a sleeveless tank top and mesh shorts, and his skin was glistening with sweat. He waved to her, pulling his headphones out of his ears as he came over to the table she had claimed in the back corner. “Hey, I’m glad you came.”
“Yeah, of course I came,” she said. Her eyes lingered on his bare arms as he stretched them over his head. “Did I catch you on the way to the gym?”
“Just came from there, actually,” he said with a grin. “I’ve got early classes today and then I’ve got weightlifting. Ducked out a little early to get here, but I figured if I ran, it’d make up for it.”
Skye narrowed her eyes at him. “You ran? It’s like…it’s at least three miles from the athletic center to here.”
“4.5, actually. So I’m kinda thirsty, I’ll be right back.” She watched him get in line at the café counter, indulging herself as she eyed his butt in his workout shorts. It didn’t take him long to return to her, carrying a large iced coffee and two plates with sandwiches. “Have you ever had one of their paninis?” he asked, setting one of the plates in front of her. “They’re delicious.”
She stared down at the panini, trying to ignore the growling in her stomach as she inhaled the scent of pesto, roasted peppers and melted cheese. “You didn’t have to get this for me.”
“I know, but so few people have had them, I feel like I get to show off when I share for the first time.” When she just continued to look at it, he shrugged and bit into his own. “I mean, if you don’t want it, that’s cool. I can easily eat two.”
Never a person to turn down free food, she picked it up and took a bite out of the end. Moaning with pleasure, she didn’t even care that it was burning her mouth as she licked up the excess pesto on her lip, the mozzarella stringing from her mouth to the sandwich. “Holy crap, that is good.”
He smiled as he swallowed his own bite. “Right? I don’t get out here very often, but when I do, I always get one of these. Or three. Don’t tell my coach.”
“I was surprised you knew what this place even was,” she said, taking another bite and savoring the flavors. “Most people have no idea that this even exists.” Jemma knew what it was, but also knew that it was Skye’s place when she wanted to get away from the main part of campus, so she had never been there.
“I’m over at the med school as often as I can be, shadowing the doctors and the med students. The Pre-Med Club meets in a room over here, so I get over here for those meetings whenever I can.”
She stared at him, startled. “You’re pre-med?” When he just laughed under his breath, she blushed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like…”
“It’s cool, I get that a lot,” he said, stretching his legs out under the table, his shin brushing against hers. “I’m studying Exercise Science so that I can eventually do something like sports medicine or physical therapy.”
Skye tapped her nails against the wood table. “Isn’t that what all athletes say? Oh, all I do is work out in the gym so I’m gonna study physical education?” She lowered her tone to try to mimic some of the men she had heard, “‘I’m gonna go pro and then be a personal trainer!’”
Snorting, Trip shrugged indulgently. “I mean, you’re not wrong. But I’ve seen enough guys ruin their careers, if not their health for good on the field, in practice, even just in the gym because they wanted to be out there supporting the team, supporting me. Figured that I wanted to focus my life on a way to give back by studying some real medicine and being able to support them.”
“This instead of going pro?”
“Oh, after I go pro.” He grinned widely at her and she rolled her eyes and looked away, but couldn’t help the way the corner of her mouth quirked up. His smile had that effect, it was why it was posted literally all over campus. “But if or when the pros call, they always stop calling eventually. There’s gotta be a backup. I’m not the kind of guy who thinks baseball is a backup career.”
“Hey, you lay off Michael Jordan, I really liked Space Jam.”
Laughing under his breath, he said, “Girl, I would never, he’s a living god.” He took a bite of his sandwich and wiped his mouth. “You’re computer science, right?”
Raising her eyebrows at him, she nodded, completely sure she had never mentioned that. “Yeah. I like computers.” His eyes never left hers and Skye suddenly found it way too intense. Looking down at her panini, she took a huge bite and swallowed it down before saying, “So, about our dorks.”
He grinned at her. “Yeah. Our dorks. What are we going to do about them?”
Licking her lips slowly, she met his gaze and forced herself to hold it as she shrugged her shoulder nonchalantly. “I’ve got a few ideas.”