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It was depressing. One minute she was on the cusp of success, the next she was stacking shelves at Tesco. How was she to know that testing the mysterious GH325 on the lab’s budgerigar population would have such devastating consequences?
Her temporary employment solution to enable continued rent payment and general sustenance had lulled her into a stupor. Now, it seemed, she found it quite satisfying to fill a whole shelf with tins of home-brand baked beans in tomato sauce, the labels all turned perfectly forward. Almost as satisfying as she’d found sticking it to Milton, her aggravatingly condescending lab supervisor.
Towards the end of a shift (close but not close enough), unstacking a shelf-full of recalled infant formula, she was counting quietly by atomic number as usual - Titanium, Vanadium, Chromium, Manganese, Iron, Cobalt - when from the aisle on the other side of the shelf she heard a male voice, undoubtedly Scottish in origin, continue counting where she left off.
Nickel, Copper, Zinc, Gallium, Germanium, Arsenic, Selenium, Bromine…
Then silence.
Jemma was intrigued. She moved a few of the canisters aside to see if she could spot her fellow chemistry enthusiast.
Nothing but yet another interminable row of canisters. Might as well keep up the counting.
“Krypton, Rubidium, Strontium…”
“Yttrium, Zirconium…”
“Niobium.”
“Molybdenum.”
“Technetium.”
“Alright,” said the male voice. “Who are you?”
“Dr Jemma Simmons,” she replied, somewhat haughtily, perhaps, for a late-night shelf-stacker at Tesco. “And you are?”
“Dr Leo Fitz,” the male voice shot back. “I’d ask what you’re doing here but then you’d ask me the story of how I came to be here and it’s too upsetting to relive just now.”
She found herself feeling unexpectedly indebted to this disembodied voice.
“What would you do if you could be doing anything you wanted right now?” she asked.
“Oooh,” he replied with a tone that spoke of two hands rubbing eagerly together. “Building jets or miniaturising stuff. I love miniaturising. You?”
“The Human Genome Project,” she replied without hesitation, stacking another pair of canisters neatly into the box at her feet. “Or the Svalbard Seed Bank. Or curing cancer. I’m not really that fussy.”
“And yet here we are,” he replied.
Jemma stood up to find light shining into her aisle from the shelf she’d just been unstacking. There was nobody there. Only an unobstructed view of the gardening supplies.
For a moment she began to fear that she really had spent too long in the late-night shelf-stacking game. But then she spotted a head of sandy blonde curls, ginger scruff and the most piercing pair of blue eyes she’d ever seen.
“Phew,” he said. “You are there! I was beginning to think I was hearing voices!”
“Me too!” she sighed, a relieved hand on her chest. “So, Dr Leo Fitz, what’s being recalled tonight from Home Maintenance?”
“Dodgy mop heads,” he replied. “And what about from Your Baby and Child?”
“Toxic baby formula,” she said.
He pretended to look put out. “Seems they’ve entrusted the life-threatening containment job to someone else, again.”
Jemma giggled. “Don’t doubt the importance of a functional mop-head in the perennial battle against malignant microbes.”
“So I’ve been charged with a worthy quest after all?” he asked hopefully. “Hate to think my considerable talents continue to be wasted even in my new line of employment.”
“Depends on what you dunk your mop into. Many, armed with anti-bacterial wipes, will preach to you of the evil of germs and slop hospital-grade cleaning products all over the place. The saner ones know that much of the stuff aimed to arm us on the domestic front in the “fight against bacteria” is misguided and could promote the growth of drug-resistant “superbugs” - no one needs their immune system compromised like that.”
Fitz made a face. “Do you think we could move on from discussion of immunity and bugs? My stomach’s rumbling.”
“How long ‘til your shift ends?” she asked, obligingly changing the subject.
“Only another half-hour,” he sighed. “Though I’ve found that the length of a minute inexplicably increases exponentially the closer one gets to one’s clock-off time. I think there’s a PhD thesis in it but I have to keep reminding myself that one is enough.”
“For some people, I suppose,” replied Jemma airily.
“Of course you have two.” He shook his head. “The one thing that has comforted me in this hell is what turns out to be an ill-founded sense of intellectual superiority. I’m smegging shelf-stacking in the local supermarket and I still come off second best.”
Perhaps it was time for another change of subject. This Fitz character seemed to be a never-ending font of bitterness.
Reaching back into the shelf while simultaneously looking down to count the canisters in the box at her feet, Jemma felt a sudden rush of electricity shoot up her arm. She froze in the realisation that what her fingers had just brushed against was not, in fact, another tin of infant formula but, rather, the decidedly warmer fingers of her new acquaintance and colleague.
She came over all uncharacteristically flustered and kept her eyes averted for a while, channelling far more than the required amount of brain power into painstakingly lifting canisters and carefully lowering them into a box.
“So,” he offered, fifteen or so minutes of awkward silence later, “do you stack shelves in your free time also?”
So tense had the intervening period been that Jemma laughed far louder than the lame joke merited. Perhaps caught up in her relief, Fitz laughed along.
“Actually,” she replied, even allowing herself to flicker her gaze upwards to briefly catch his eye, “when I’m not at work, I try to avoid shelves entirely. I think I might be developing a work-place related phobia.”
“Mmm, sounds serious,” Fitz nodded along. “You should investigate worker’s compensation.”
“I should,” Jemma agreed, thoroughly enjoying this new experience of flirting with a total stranger. She thought she was being funny. She hoped she was being funny. Either way, she soldiered on. “In fact, it’s really gotten quite debilitating. Given the choice, I try to avoid placing any items on any surface at all.”
Fitz chuckled. “I can see that getting awkward.”
“Oh, yes. It’s quite the social impediment! Snap is completely out, as are most card games and, as you would no doubt be aware, Dr Fitz, Saturday nights are hard to fill when one can’t face cards.”
Though he was standing just out of view, she could see the reflection of his face in the gleaming stretch of bare shelf.
He was grinning madly.
She liked his smile.
“What are you going to do when you get out of here?” she asked, leaning down to pack another pair of potentially deadly canisters. When she righted herself Fitz was staring back at her, one eyebrow cocked in an infuriating manner.
“You asking me out, Simmons?” he challenged.
“Certainly not,” she shot back. “I shall be exiting this nefarious establishment and going straight home the instant this snail-paced minute-hand makes it to the twelve.”
“The bakery boys said they had a glut of danishes tonight,” said Fitz in a sing-song voice. “You wouldn’t want to miss out on that bounty, would you?”
She eyed him warily through the make-shift window their recalled products had created.
“What sort of danish?“
“The only sort worth considering. Apple with custard.”
Just the mention of it sent a stab of hunger through Jemma’s stomach. She considered him a moment.
“Is this you asking me out?”
“No,” he replied quickly. “Err… unless you might say yes.”
She smiled. “I’m saying yes to the danish. You I’m not sure about just yet.”
“I can work with that.”
The electronic chirp of his digital watch broke through the silence, setting them free from their drudgery.
“Stay there, Simmons,” he said, and strode off out of sight.
Less than six seconds later, a figure rounded the end of the aisle in which Jemma was working. He strode towards her purposefully, the cheap tomato-red tie the supermarket chain had them wear now hanging loosely, his top few shirt buttons undone. As he walked, he folded the cuff of one white sleeve back to his elbow and then the other.
Fitz’s face through the shelves had looked fairly appealing.
The whole package, though, partially undressing as it moved towards her, was thoroughly intriguing. He even somehow made a supermarket shelf-stackers uniform look debonair.
He held out the crook of his arm and Jemma slipped her hand through it.
“Science and custard,” Fitz whispered, leaning his head down conspiratorially. “They’re two of my favourite things.”
“That’s nice to know,” she laughed. "I enjoy being paid a minimum wage while engaged in sparkling repartee at three in the morning.”
“Along with meeting new people, water sports and dancing the night away?”
Jemma laughed. “Something like that.”
“I don’t know about you, Simmons, but by ridding the local Tesco of dangerous goods, we’ve potentially saved the world on multiple fronts. I think we deserve those danishes.”
“Oh, certainly,” she agreed. “Surely selfless acts the like of which we two have performed this evening-“
“This morning,” Fitz corrected her.
“Right,” she nodded. "Selfless acts the like of which we two have performed this morning, should be rewarded with one’s body-weight in danishes. We’ve definitely deserved at least that.”
He looked fondly down at her. “You’ll give me some tips, won’t you, Simmons” he whispered. “When you feel the time is right?”
“Some tips on what?” she asked, confused.
Fitz gave her a shy smile. “Some tips on how to go about deserving you.“