Work Text:
skye glances over at jemma, a small wistful smile on her face as she watches the british biochemist talking with fitz, completely unaware of skye’s own thoughts. she’s given jemma every single part of her, every single moment of her day, all her jokes and her unwavering attention. she’s done everything she can think of. but it doesn’t work.
jemma’s hopelessly and completely in love with fitz. skye thinks they had a chance to have something, a chance to be something more than friends maybe. or maybe that one kiss, that one drunken confession meant nothing. or maybe she’s just selfish to want more, even when she’s not jemma’s… but she can’t change the brit’s mind.
she thinks maybe she should’ve known. all the things that she did for jemma not to notice; giving her little flowers, her little flirty comments, those few kisses that they traded. but she didn’t notice, and now she’s here. it’s just dumb love. puppy love, maybe. but she knows it’s more than that, even when she tries to bury the truth far down in her heart.
she can’t even hate jemma for it. because fuck jemma, she’s so sweet and kind and she wouldn’t ever hurt anyone on purpose. and even with all of this she hasn’t given up. that little spark inside of her hopes maybe, just maybe, jemma knows that she’s more. more than just a friend or a colleague. that jemma would look over and skye would see that spark in her eyes and it would just happen.
and sometimes she wishes jemma would just tell her to go, would tell her straight to her face that skye is just her friend. she can’t decide whether the crushing rejection or this painful teetering edge of does she love me, does she love fitz?!! is worse. at least with one of them, she has that stupid fucking hope she can’t ever seem to get rid of.
so skye resigns herself to sitting in the lab, hearing jemma’s soft laughs, that sweet british accent, the familiar dimples that appear when she smiles. and she resigns herself to knowing it’ll never happen. she’s not jemma’s, no matter how much she wants more, and she can’t change that fact.