Work Text:
Fitz was slumped against his kitchen bench, absent-mindedly dangling a tea bag in what was probably, by then, an almost tepid cup of water when he heard the first of the aggressively cheerful e-mail notifications.
By the time he’d sat down with his disappointing beverage, another seven chimes had sounded and he knew that the dreaded Jemma-Simmons-Smug-Parade had begun in earnest.
Yes, eight individual “Reports are done!” memes featuring everyone from Leonardo DiCaprio as Gatsby with his champagne glass to some small African children in amusing dance-like poses.
And then another meme-free e-mail:
I’m getting the pizza. See you in fifteen.
And then one more:
Don’t worry if you’re not finished yet. I’ve packed some lesson prep.
He replied:
Door’s unlocked.
then got up to unlock it.
Only Jemma Simmons could still stomach planning lessons after the bi-annual festival of death-by-report-writing that rendered every other teacher on the planet a drooling mass of sub-human lethargy.
And though it was wonderful that his favourite person was coming over for their usual Friday night ritual, since last Friday night’s bombshell, things were decidedly weird.
When Jemma had moved into town and taken a position as the other fourth-grade teacher at his cosy elementary school, it had quickly been established that, though she was wonderful and beautiful and everything he’d ever dreamed of in a woman, she was also definitely unavailable.
She had moved, found a house, made it a home and settled in to town ahead of her boyfriend, Will, who was supposed to have been finishing up a final project at his work before he took up his transfer position nearby. Jemma excelled at preparation so when the ideal place for them had hit the market, he’d encourage her to snap it up with the promise he’d fast-track the work.
But then six months had gone by. And then another six months.
Will had visited. More often, Jemma visited him. Fitz had met the man twice, maybe three times. But mainly Will worked on the weekends and it seemed to be getting worse.
Their shared Friday nights started two months into Jemma’s employment. Will had cancelled a visit on her at the last minute and Fitz had found her crying into her box of construction paper.
“Wanna come to mine?” he asked tentatively, heroically, still not entirely over his terror of weeping women since his dad’s death. “We can get some pizza and a bottle of wine and watch a movie or something?”
She’d looked up at him with such gratitude and hope that he knew he’d done the right thing.
After that it had become a joke between them. When Will came through, it was Jemma’s loss she had to miss their movie night. When he bailed, they tried to frame it as their secret win.
Fitz was under no illusion as to who was the loser on the increasingly rare Friday nights he was left to spend alone.
But last Friday night when Jemma had arrived at his door with pizza and wine there had been an uncharacteristic brittleness to her smile that Fitz had picked up right away.
“Are you okay?” he’d asked, concerned, as she crossed the threshold.
By the time she’d deposited the box and bottle on the table, the tears were streaming down her face. Fitz had guided her to the couch, gathered her into his arms and held her as she wept.
“I broke up with Will,” she’d sobbed at last. “He was never going to come. He might as well have been on another planet for all the interest he showed in the life I’d set up for us here.”
“He never deserved you, Jemma,” Fitz had murmured into her hair.
She’d silently taken up the remote and scrolled through Netflix until she found The Cabin in the Woods. Perhaps she’d felt the need for a blood-letting.
Either way, she hadn’t disentangled herself from Fitz’s embrace and the pizza solidified untouched on his kitchen table.
After the credits rolled, she’d gently extricated herself from his arms and shuffled about, reheating pizza and pouring wine. When she’d handed him a plate and a glass and plonked herself down again with her own, they’d talked more deeply than they’d ever talked before. They’d left behind the usual school complaining and classroom anecdote swapping and spoken of their hopes and dreams.
And then she’d left, pressing a soft kiss to his cheek and the realisation had hit him before he’d even closed the door behind her.
He was utterly in love with Jemma Simmons.
Thanks to the general craziness of their classrooms and the looming threat of reports, there’d been no opportunity for Fitz’s awkward crush to present itself at work that week. But now she was on her way over with pizza and wine and there was no invisible boyfriend-shaped barrier between them.
What on earth could he do?
He could write his reports in a timely fashion for once in his life. His odd bird of a best friend had lesson planning to do.
Knuckling down to his work with more focus and determination than he had ever brought to the task before, Fitz began “quiet and conscientious”ing and “valuable contributions to class discussions”ing and “to the best of his ability”ing and “not fully applying herself”ing with everything in him.
He didn’t even hear her open the door behind him, so intently were his fingers flying over the keys.
She ruffled his hair as she walked past and it hit him like eight hundred volts to the spine.
“Pretend I’m not here,” she whispered in his ear.
As if, he thought to himself, still tingling.
It was no better when she sat down next to him and opened her laptop, two glasses of wine between them and her warm knee resting against his under the table.
He tried to clear his throat but came out as a sort of strangled cough.
Her eyes snapped to his. “Are you alright, Fitz?” she asked, eyes wide.
He nodded, taking up his glass and gulping back a too-large mouthful of wine.
She looked back at him sympathetically. “You poor thing. I could see you typing like a hurricane when I came in.”
Before he knew what was happening, Jemma had gotten out of her seat and moved to stand behind him, resting her hands on his shoulders.
“This might help,” she said and began massaging his tense muscles, her tiny hands surprisingly efficient.
He immediately regretted the moan that escaped him but Jemma only laughed. “I’m glad it’s doing the trick.”
But it was certainly not going to make him more productive.
His head lolled forward as she gradually worked her fingers down his back.
Bloody Hell. This was a single woman. A single, beautiful woman. A single, beautiful, wonderful woman with whom he was unequivocally in love. And she had her hands all over him.
He was a terrible person. Here she was thinking he was her friend, and he was, but she was so much more to him than that. And now he was letting her rub his shoulders while he involuntarily let out sounds the like of which one probably shouldn’t make in the presence of a purely platonic friend. Especially when that friend had just broken up a long-term relationship and you happened to be in love with her.
“Jemma,” he croaked, reaching behind his back to still her hands. “Jemma. Jemma, stop.”
“What is it?” she asked. “Was I hurting you?”
“No!” he cried. “No, that was lovely, thank you!”
“You don’t want me to keep going?”
“I do,” he said eagerly. “But I’ll never get this done if you keep that up. It’s too nice.”
“Oh,” she said, letting her fingertips trail lightly across his shoulders as she went back to her seat. “Well, you’re making good progress.” She dropped back into her seat, her cheeks somewhat pink.
Had he embarrassed her? That was the last thing he wanted to do!
“Maybe I can give you another massage as your reward for finishing them all,” she continued brightly.
Oh, no. “Err, yeah.” He shrugged, trying his best to look nonchalant. “Yeah. That’d be great.”
NOW how was he going to write reports? Her knee was resting against his again and all he had was the tantalising yet agonising promise of another massage to spur him on.
Should he drag it out? Or power through?
Being in love was the worst.
Somehow, through sheer grit and bloody-minded determination, Fitz managed to get the horrid things done.
Jemma must have been more attuned to his movements that he thought because she even noticed his shoulders dropping in relief.
“You’re done?” she asked. “Brilliant!” She went to stand up to get the pizza re-heating but not before pressing another of those baffling kisses to his cheek.
He watched her move around the kitchen with an expression that he knew might as well have been a giant neon-pink “Love Me!” sign flashing above his forehead but she merely smiled back at him now and then, bustling about his kitchen with a heart-wrenching domesticity.
He got up to help, if for no other reason than to stop himself staring at her, but within a moment she turned to face him with their two re-filled wine glasses.
“Take these to the couch will you, Fitz?” she asked sweetly.
He obediently wandered back across his apartment, her wish his command, placing her glass carefully on the floor on her usual side of the lounge and settling himself on the opposite end.
She was right behind him with the plates, resting his on the wide arm rest beside him and then settling down on the couch pressing herself right against his side. She leant her head against his shoulder.
Jemma must have felt his body stiffen.
“Is this okay, Fitz?” she asked, sounding more nervous than he’d ever heard her sound, even when their intimidating Head of School was breathing down their necks over missing meeting minutes or a late submission to the school newsletter. When Jemma continued speaking she sounded like she was harnessing all her bravado. “Then after we eat you can pop onto the floor and I’ll finish giving you that massage.”
What on earth was going on? She’d never been affectionate with him before. Not that he was complaining!
“Alright,” he laughed in his discomfort and it sounded false and unnatural even to his own ears. “Who are you and what have you done with Jemma Simmons?”
She leapt away from him as though she’d just been burned and half tossed her plate onto the floor by her feet.
“I’m sorry, Fitz,” Jemma murmured, sliding to the very edge of the couch and keeping her face turned away from him. “Maybe I should just go.”
He was an idiot. “Go? Why? And sorry for what? For offering to give me a massage? That’s nothing to apologise for, Jemma, that’s just you being lovely.” He floundered about as he carefully placed his wine glass down, searching for some way to redeem what he had said, anything to make her snuggle back into him. “I was just joking, Simmons.”
Fitz reached out his arms for her and ever so gently, timidly, falteringly touched her waist, trying, while exerting as minimal force as possible, to tug her back into his embrace.
“You can come back here if you want,” he half-whispered, motioning towards his chest.
She turned to look at him, her eyes searching his face.
“Do you want me to?” she whispered back.
Fitz nodded, completely uncertain as to what it was that he was agreeing to.
When she snuggled back into him, she no longer faced away from him. This time, she looked up at him hopefully.
He wound his arms around her shoulders like he’d done the week before and hoped that this was what she wanted.
“Fitz,” she said quietly. “I should probably confess something to you.”
“Do you need me to bury a body, Simmons?” he asked, desperately trying to find his footing. “Because I’ve probably had not enough sleep and too much wine to drive.”
Jemma didn’t laugh. She just looked more concerned than before.
“I should just go,” she whispered, dropping her head into her hands.
Fitz took a deep breath. “Don’t go,” he urged. “I want you to stay. I’ll just shut up and you tell me whatever you need to tell me.”
“Alright,” Jemma replied a new determination infusing her voice. “Alright, I’ll just tell you and then we’ll see what happens.”
Fitz was on edge after that – see what happens!? – but he’d promised to be quiet so he swallowed down his poor jokes and waited for her confession.
“You know how I broke up with Will last week?”
“Hogface?” Fitz shrugged. “You’re well shot of him. Only an idiot would take for granted a stunning human being like yourself. I haven’t given him another thought.”
“Neither have I,” said Jemma. And after a moment of silence she added timidly, “I’ve been thinking about you instead.”
Well, this was a turn up for the books.
“Err, how so?” Fitz asked.
“This year that I was supposed to have spent starting a new life for myself and Will, I would have spent entirely alone and depressed had it not been for you, Fitz,” she began. “Remember that first night I came back here? That night you found me crying at work? You asked me back here for pizza, wine and a movie and all I could think was ‘Why has this almost total stranger offered me my dream evening when the man I’m meant to be living with never once agreed to it even when I suggested it?’”
“You never watched movies with Will?” he asked incredulously. “You love movies!”
“I know,” she agreed, “but he hates them. And he says pizza is fattening and he only drinks beer. But you even let me pick the movies we watch. And you always get really into them regardless of the genre.”
“You have good taste,” said Fitz. “You’ve never yet picked a film I haven’t loved.”
“And that’s another thing!” Jemma cried. “You notice when I’m upset and you do anything you can to help me feel better. If you appreciate something I do for you, you thank me profusely. And even just this evening you’ve called me a stunning human being, you’ve correctly observed that I love movies and you’ve congratulated me on my good taste. All of these things are courtesies never afforded me by Will.”
Fitz snorted. “Didn’t you say you haven’t given him another thought? Let’s not regress. Let’s drop Hogface entirely. He’s out of the picture.”
“That’s right,” nodded Jemma. “He’s out of the picture. So, I guess that means there’s nothing stopping me from doing this.”
And then her warm hand was on the side of his face and her lips had found his and Jemma Simmons was kissing him and everything was amazing and simultaneously not okay at all.
“Jemma,” he whined, pulling away from her.
Her eyes were pools of hurt.
“Do not get me wrong,” he said quickly. “I want nothing more than to spend the rest of the night kissing you but, Jemma, I can’t be just a rebound guy, okay?”
“Is it because it might ruin our friendship?” she asked. “Or is it maybe because you’d want more?”
Fitz sighed. “I’d want so much more, Jemma; I’m in love with you.”
Her smile was like the moment the sun bursts through an overcast sky.
“That’s why I broke up with Will,” she said. “It wasn’t just because I realised he was a jerk. It was because I realised that I’d fallen in love with you.”
Well, he just had to kiss her then.
Foreheads pressed together, smiling shyly at one another, Fitz pushed his luck. “But it was mostly because Will paled in comparison to me, right?”
Jemma nodded, grinning, and leaned in to kiss him sweetly. “Everyone pales in comparison to you, Fitz,” she replied. “You’re a thoroughly delightful young man who makes valuable contributions to discussion. Quiet and conscientious, you make the most of every opportunity-”
Fitz saw his cue and took it, cutting her off with a kiss.