Archive of Our Own

"We don't have much time," she teases, causing his eyes to snap open.

"No," he agrees, "we don't."

And she's right—they came here for the symphony and they don't even have tickets yet—but she can't help but adjust his tie and let her hand rest lightly on his chest.

"I miss your ties," she says.

He ducks his head, blushing. "I miss yours." 

"Do you really?"

It's not something she's thought about before, but when he explains it, things start to fall in place. He fell for her before everything changed, back when Ward was their grumpy older brother and they thought they knew everything. He guides her down the stairs towards the Tube, and her mind starts buzzing.

"Do you think they would have noticed?"

He turns to her, and he must be in his own world, too. "Hmm?"

"If we'd started all this back on the Bus. Do you think we could have gotten away with it?"

"We're doing okay now."

She rolls her eyes at him. "Everyone knows, Fitz."

"Do they?" He looks at her, bewildered. "Do we want them to know?"

"Well, we did beg Coulson for a night off together."

They stop at the turnstiles, and Jemma produces her Oyster card right away, but Fitz seems to have trouble finding his. 

"Yeah," he says, searching his pockets, "but we did that before."

"Yes, but that was before. We haven't done it since everything changed."

He stops searching to look at her. "Well, I . . ."

She shakes her head at him, stepping forward to open up his jacket and retrieve the card hidden inside. She hands it to him with a knowing smile.

"So," she continues, "when this was normal, do you think they would have thought anything of it? Or do you think they already assumed?"

His eyes go wide at that, and he tries to swipe his card and misses. "You think they assumed things?"

She shrugs. "Why wouldn't they? We were inseparable."

He swipes his card again and hits his target this time, but the turnstile doesn't open.

"We were friends, Jemma."

"We're friends now."

"Yes, but . . ."

He's swiped his card four times now, and it's obvious that he forgot to refill it. She swipes one of her spare cards, and he goes through without noticing.

"It's different now," he counters.

She swipes her own card and follows him. "Of course it is. But it could have been different back then, couldn't it? If you told me how you felt?"

"If you noticed how I felt, you mean." He almost walks into someone, and she has to steer him away. "It's not like I was good at hiding it."

"Okay," she allows, "say I noticed how you felt, and I had time to realize that I felt the same way. Say we figured it out around the time Daisy got shot."

He winces. "That was awful."

"Yes, and you were there for me when I was falling apart, remember?" He's looking up at the signs, so she can't see his face, no matter how hard she tries. "You always have been."

That makes him stop and blink at her. He opens his mouth, then closes it. "You weren't falling apart," he finally says.

"Of course not." She squeezes his hand. "I had you to hold me together."

He looks at her like he doesn't believe that she's real, and she knows the feeling. He takes a breath and looks up at the signs again.

"It's this way," he says.

They arrive at the platform, and when the train comes, he guides her in with hand hand on the small of her back, but she doesn't have her answer. They find two seats together, and she waits for him to put his arm around her. 

He does.

"They would have been distracted," she prods, "with Quinn on the loose and everything. I think we could have gotten away with it."

He smiles at her, shaking his head. "No," he says, "you were a terrible liar. Remember all that business with GH-325? May found us out before we even started."

"But we wouldn't have had to lie, Fitz! That's the beauty of it. We acted like we were together, even though we weren't."

He looks at her, and she knows that he'd fold his arms if she hadn't claimed one already. "Well, we're together now," he says.

She opens her mouth, then thinks better of it, choosing instead to rest her head on his shoulder. "Of course we are."

They sit in silence for the rest of the trip, and Jemma thinks that there is nothing better than these peaceful moments they have together. She's almost sad when they reach their stop. But then, she still gets to hold his hand as they walk out.

She swings their hands between them as they emerge onto the street. They don't expect to get great seats at such short notice, but they're early enough that they should be able to get something. Besides, does it really matter where she sits, as long as she has Fitz sitting beside her? And he's in a suit, no less. She'd be lying if she said that the suit wasn't half of the reason she insisted on going to the symphony in the first place. Luckily, no one would ask.

It's when they get to the box office that her perfect mood deflates a little.

"What do you mean, all the seats are gone?"

The man behind the ticket booth shrugs. "It's a popular night. And there are two seats; they're just not together."

Jemma and Fitz look at each other in synchrony, and she's just about to tell him they can do something else when Fitz says he'll take them. Before she knows it, they're standing inside the doors, and she's missing him already.

"I'm sorry," he says, "we should have bought the tickets online or something."

Jemma rolls her eyes, mostly at herself. She's about to tell him it's really her fault when he starts going on about how much she wanted to do this, and she should be able to have a night off for goodness sakes, and it won't be so bad. She finds herself in her seat before she knows it, and when she reaches out for him, he's already gone.

Still, her heart swells. He probably didn't want to be here in the first place. And now, he not only dressed up, but he's going off to sit next to strangers, all because he thinks that's what she wants. 

What would she ever do without him?

She stops herself before she can attempt to answer the question, choosing to focus instead on her program. She's still turning pages as someone takes his seat next to her, and when she looks up, she realizes that she has a terrible view. Why did all the tall people choose to sit directly in front of her? She supposes that the view doesn't matter so much at the symphony, but her mood still sours. She finds herself folding her arms and picturing where Fitz is, since she can't see him. Is his view as obstructed as hers? She hopes not. He's probably grumpier than she is already.

She's still trying to figure out where exactly he is when the music starts. She's so distracted that she can't enjoy the music at all, because she's sure she saw some curvy blonde stalk off in his general direction, and what if she's sitting right next to him? 

Is she being ridiculous? She's being ridiculous. But, when all is said and done, she'd feel a lot better if she could simply see him. Isn't that what she'd been trying to say earlier? That they've somehow managed to return to what they were before this happened? That the chasm between them seems to have been permanently bridged? Well, maybe he understood that much, but she worries that he didn't.

She finds herself aching for it to be over, and when it is, she rushes out of her seat as soon as she can do so politely. She weaves through the crowd, and when she sees him, it's like the room lights up.

"Fitz!"

His eyes dart right to her at the sound of his name, and he grins. She reaches out for his hand, but he grabs her by the waist instead, pulling her close. 

"How did you like it?"

She closes her eyes for a moment, ducking her head into him to hide her reluctance to answer. "I loved it," she lies.

"Yeah? Me, too."

She snakes an arm around his waist and decides that if he loved it, she loved it, too.

They walk back to the Tube in something of a daze. She's exhausted somehow, and he must still be in awe of the music. He hums a little as he walks, keeping her close to him. There's something magical about the way his voice resonates through the night, and she chides herself for being so needy, for worrying so much, because doesn't he always come back to her? Doesn't she always come back to him?

She has to swipe her spare card again, but he still hasn't noticed, and somehow, she loves him all the more for it. He wraps her up in him as soon as they sit down, as if they had never been separated, and all she can think is that some day, it will always be like this. 

"I wish you'd just kissed me then," she says, not even realizing the words were hers at first. He lifts his head up to look at her.

"When?"

She shrugs. "When they fished me out of the ocean. When we lost Coulson. When we found out about Ward." She chuckles. "You could have kissed me back at SciOps."

She feels him take a deep breath in and out. "You would have slapped me if I'd kissed you back at SciOps."

"Oh, I'd like to think I'm much more civilized than that," she teases. "A stern lecture maybe, but nothing so violent." She smiles against his chest. "Besides," she says, "I'm sure I would have come around." She raises her head to look at him and finds him looking down at her. She kisses him slowly, gently, bringing her hand up to cup his face and feel his stubble under her fingertips. When they break the kiss, she smiles at him, rubbing circles into his skin with her thumb. He looks back at her in stunned amazement.

"If anything's inevitable," she says, settling back into his shoulder, "it's us."

She waits for him to say something, but he doesn't, and somehow, he doesn't have to. His silence is filled by the noise all around them, by the sound of his heartbeat, and she finds it soothing enough that she drifts off to sleep with his arm around her, and her hand in his.

"Jemma?"

"Hmm?"

Her second wake up call is a kiss, and she's so surprised by the passion behind it that she sits up and blinks at him. 

"Come on," he says, and his cheeks turning pink, "this is our stop."

She's still in a haze as he guides her out of the train and up the stairs. She leans on him more than she should, but he doesn't seem to mind. How did she get so tired? Or is it simply that, for a moment, the weight of the world was off her shoulders?

"It's okay if they know?"

"Hmm?"

Somehow, they made it to their rendezvous point.

"It okay if they know about us? I mean, if they find us like this . . ."

"Fitz," she says, "I told you. They already know. They probably knew before we did."

She feels him nod.

"It was inevitable, huh?"

She laughs then, still drowsy with sleep and the heady feeling of knowing he is hers. "Isn't that what I said?"