Chapter Text
It’s a tradition, or a rite of passage, or just another way for the upperclassmen to fuck with them, probably. They don’t do it that often, to be fair, and their attempts are usually pretty mild: one time Fitz woke up to find his mattress suspended in midair above his bedframe, but he knows Reese stole that from a prank someone pulled on him when he was a freshman, and the satisfaction of knowing that Reese couldn’t figure out midair magnetic suspension on his own was enough to last Fitz until he figured out how to get himself down. Actually, it lasted well into the following afternoon. Other than that, the hazing has been pretty mild.
And it’s not that this is hazing exactly, even though Reese has that prick-ish look in his eyes Fitz is well used to by now, and even though Susan keeps sniggering into her half-full pint of beer. It would be fine, really, except he can feel Simmons’ forearm ramrod straight against his own, like every bone in her body has gone dead still and frozen.
Fuck, he thinks. But they’re freshman, aren’t they? At least until next semester, when Weaver’s bumping the two of them up to the sophomore curricula—which, to be honest, is probably why Reese and Susan are looking at the two of them with a slightly kinder version of murder in their eyes.
They’re paying their dues, basically.
Susan leans forward to the middle of the table and picks the top card off the deck. “It’s just not fair,” she says in a syrup sweet voice that has only ever meant trouble. She holds up the seven of hearts and Katie Jeffries very badly hides a smile behind one of her hands. On his other side, Ariana at least has the decency to roll her eyes. “You guys missed out on so many things the rest of us got to do when we were at school,” Susan says. Which is bullshit, Fitz thinks. As if they aren’t all geniuses in their own right, as if anyone at the table is older than twenty-two.
“Just think of it as filling the gaps in your social education,” Danny says, nudging Fitz’s foot under the table. For the record, Danny’s as antagonizing as fuck; Fitz is sixteen, not twelve, and frankly the gaps in his social education are nobody’s goddamn business, least of all an asshole who’s gotten caught wanking in the showers every week since orientation.
Fitz moves his foot away from Danny’s and sighs. So maybe there are gaps in the things he’s learned over the years. He’s gotten away with it so far, mostly through sheer bravado and what he considers to be a particularly Scottish kind of smarminess. Fitz shrugs casually, even though Simmons is still taut as a wire beside him and his heart feels like it’s come completely loose from his rib cage. “Not my fault I was building particle accelerators while you all were feeling each other’s bits at Eton.”
Out the corner of his eye, he can see Simmons smirk into glass, her laugh a biting thing that makes his hand clench around his knee beneath the table. They’ve only actually been friends for a month and have only been speaking for a few weeks longer than that, and this is a laugh he’s never heard from her before. He’s cataloguing them all, to keep track. This makes five.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Connor says, grabbing the card from Susan’s hand. Connor is Fitz’s particular nightmare: his thick-framed glasses don’t make him stand out in the Science division, but the breadth of his shoulders make him look like he stowed away from Operations. Fitz hates every square inch of him. “It’s Suck & Blow, it’s not fucking rocket science. Are we playing or not?”
Simmons is straight and still beside him until her chin jerks down, just barely. Fitz answers with his own voice but someone else’s confidence. “Whatever,” he says. It’s not fucking rocket science. Fitz would know.
Connor turns in his seat to face Susan, an eyebrow arched over the top of his glasses. It makes him look like an asshole, Fitz thinks, even though Susan’s suddenly much redder than she was ten seconds ago. For fuck’s sake.
Connor presses the seven of hearts to his lips and inhales, leaning closer to Susan who puckers up and presses her half-open mouth against the card. Fitz isn’t an idiot. He understands basic things like respiration and airflow. And he’s seen films, he knows how this game works. Susan shifts away from Connor and leans in toward Reese, and then the card moves from Reese to Katie and from Katie to Danny and then to Ariana, sat right next to Fitz.
When he leans toward Ariana, he can feel a strip of cold where Simmons’ arm had been pressed against his, but then Ariana’s leaning closer, all curly hair and warm eyes, her cheeks hollowed as she inhales against the card. Fitz tries to remember not to close his eyes, not to suck too hard, not to turn too red, but he can’t help it, he can feel heat on the back of his neck and behind his ears and up through his cheeks and he can smell Ariana’s perfume and the sweet fruity scent of her drink when she leans toward him.
He remembers to inhale, to suck the card against his mouth, but only just, but only barely, because now he has to turn toward Simmons, toward Simmons, and whatever heat spread across his face when he was so close to Ariana doubles, triples with every inch he leans toward the girl who he’s only recently realized is probably his very best friend.
He’s thinking about Zeno’s paradoxes instead of the way Simmons’ eyelashes throw shadows against her cheekbones, about the distance between them being halved and halved and halved again so there’s always some distance left, so he can never really get there. He’s thinking about infinite divisibility instead of the way her mouth looks when she leans toward him, her lips rounded and soft and—
—when Reese kicks him underneath the table, Fitz lets out a huff of air and the card falls away and—
—Simmons’ mouth and Simmons’ lips and—
—halved and halved and halved and—
It only lasts a second. Fitz’s bottom lip lands on Simmons’, her mouth surprised and soft and pressing upward, pressing toward him, and he feels something catch deep in his throat, almost a gasp. The next instant, she’s pulling away, bright red heat spreading from the apples of her cheeks up to her hairline and along the back of her neck. The Boiler Room is too dark for Fitz to see himself in any of the mirrors, but he knows he looks the same, can tell he’s fifteen different shades of embarrassed just by the way Connor’s looking at him.
He reaches down and picks the card up from where it fell between them, the backs of his fingers just barely touching the top of Simmons’ thigh. She’s staring into her drink, like she's trying to find some deep, knowable something at the bottom of her glass.
It’s fine, Fitz thinks. It’s nothing. Theoretically, there was still space in between them, in between their lips and open mouths and—
“I’m going to get another drink, do you want one?” Simmons’ voice sounds almost exactly like it usually does except for how it doesn’t. She’s talking to him, he knows, but she’s looking somewhere just above his right ear. Her cheeks are still pink. Across the table, Katie’s almost laughing.
Fitz fumbles for his wallet—his hands are shaking a little, since when are his hands shaking—but Simmons waves him off. “It’s fine,” she says. Maybe her hands are shaking too. Maybe the thing they’ve built up between them these past few weeks is coming loose in their hands, which is great, which is just fucking perfect. Fitz drinks the last of his beer, warmer and flatter against his lips than Simmons had been. Jesus. Not helping. He tries not watch her while she walks to the bar but he does anyway.
Everybody else moves on without him. Now that the children have been properly embarrassed, Fitz thinks, the rest of them are free to bitch about their practical exams and their room assignments and whatever the hell else is bothering them. He spins the card between his fingers, the seven of hearts flimsy and red in his hands. He doesn’t listen to their conversation. He doesn’t even remember to glare at Reese, to glare at any of them, their sly grins half-hidden behind their pints of beer. The card’s got seven red hearts and Simmons has five great laughs and he’s wondering how many others he might’ve discovered when she sets his beer down in front of him.
Her face isn’t red anymore. She slides in beside him just like before, her elbow a warm strip of skin against his arm and maybe—maybe she’s smiling? Just barely, just at the corner of her mouth where only Fitz can see.
So maybe they’re fine, he thinks. They’re still going to get hazed, probably, but Simmons is still next to him and her elbow’s warm and her smile is too. Fitz smiles back, just a little, and sets the seven of hearts on the table between them.
Later, Ariana tells a story about her applied mechanics class, her hands spinning through the air in front of her. Fitz’s eyes are alcohol bright and hazy. Simmons tips her head back and laughs and he smiles to himself and thinks, six.