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Jemma Simmons had not spent her entire life clawing her way to Number 10 Dowling Street only to be drunk under the table by her counterpart (and old university rival/crush), Scottish Prime Minister, Leopold Fitz. She motioned to Coulson, her faithful aide, who ensured that, after she’d downed the first whiskey, from then on her glass was filled with a passably similar looking non-alcoholic substitute until he left the pair alone in her private study.
There were issues to be discussed, of course, there always were. Another threatened referendum for Scottish independence loomed, various parts of the EU was in its usual state of chaotic disarray, and sometimes it seemed as if the four horseman of the apocalypse had begun their slow ride across the globe. But the two of them had been one another’s sometime ally, sometime sparring partner for so long that occasionally they almost forgot themselves.
Fitz was well aware that he wouldn’t survive the next election. Simmons too had begun to take stock of her slowly declining approval rates. So did it really matter if tonight, when the official meetings were done and their officious staffers had departed, the two of them talked of old times and maybe even dreamed of a future free of their weighty responsibilities?
“What will you do, do you think, when it’s over?” she asked, setting her glass down on the priceless table between them and leaning back against the armrest of the opulent lounge, almost going so far as to kick off her heels.
Fitz watched her contemplatively. “Been married to the job all these years,” he mused. “I think I’m probably ready to graduate to an actual wife.”
Jemma felt her eyebrows attain new heights.
“What?” he asked, mock-offended. “Don’t believe anyone will have me?”
“She’d have to be a brave woman!” she laughed.
“You’re a brave woman, Simmons,” he observed. “Have you ever thought about taking on an actual husband once the country turfs you out on your ear?”
“If I doubt anyone would be prepared to have you, I certainly can’t imagine the man who’d be prepared to shackle himself to me!”
Fitz looked her over appraisingly. “You’re not without a certain appeal, Simmons,” he mused. “In fact, back at Cambridge I had a searing crush on you.”
“You did not!” she shot back, enjoying what had to be one of the most adolescent conversations she’d ever allowed herself to have.
“I did!” he insisted. “I was all psyched up to ask you that ruddy ball they used to have and then I heard that ponce Milton had gotten in ahead of me. Drank myself into a stupor that night and paid the price in my rugby game the next morning.”
Jemma eyed him warily. “You’re playing a trick on me.”
Fitz shook his head and placed his hand over his heart. “On my honour as a Scotsman,” he swore. “All through college and well after, I may as well admit, it was you or no one at all.”
“Are you sure you’re not having me on?”
“It’s a fine state of affairs if even the Prime Minister can’t rely on swearing by his own country to be taken seriously!”
“Well, then,” Jemma said shyly, “I might as well confess that I had quite a thing for you all through my university years as well.”
Fitz’s eyes could not have gotten any wider. “Then why on earth did you agree to go to the ball with that tosser, Milton!?” he asked incredulously.
“Because Leopold Fitz never asked me!” Jemma huffed. “And the feminist movement didn’t make one inch of difference to me because my mother had impressed it upon me that I was to wait until I was asked by a boy and never, ever, ever do the asking myself.”
Fitz chortled. “And here you are, Prime Minister of England, claiming that you weren’t sufficiently advanced in your feminist awakening to throw over Milton in favour of me.”
“You were lovely at Cambridge,” she said wistfully. “So pasty and handsome. So incredibly smart.”
“Am I not still pasty?” he asked, holding out a lily-white hand. “And I think I’m still fairly smart. As for handsome, well, no one’s ever called me that before.”
Jemma scoffed. ”Apart from every women’s magazine on the planet.”
“Unlike you, Simmons, my feminist awakening was complete enough to free me from the lure of those insidious tools of the patriarchy,” he declared airily. “Though I am delighted to learn that the women of Britain think I’m a bit of a dish.”
“See you think you’re being winsome,” Jemma said, shaking her head. “But you are, in actual fact, the very opposite. Dad humour is utterly unattractive on a childless man.”
“Ha! That only goes to show how out of touch you are with your constituency! No wonder your polls are so atrocious! Dad humour is when the child says, “I’m hungry,” and the father sticks out his hand and says, “Pleased to meet you, Hungry, I’m Jim.” Or he asks his daughter if she wants some sausage with her tomato sauce. See, Simmons? I have an expert grasp of the genre but I do not deploy it due to my non-father status. But that’s another thing! The pitter patter of tiny feet! Don’t you want to have a go at that once all this is over?”
Jemma looked back at him incredulously. “We’re in our fifties, Fitz! My child-bearing years are well and truly over but I suppose you could always embrace a future as a cretinous old man and marry a fertile twenty-something supermodel.”
Fitz shook his head. “Actually, Simmons, I’m a loyal old dog. There’ll be no twenty-somethings for me.”
An enigmatic silence followed.
“So with whom are you hoping to start this family?” she prompted.
“It could just be a puppy, you know; they also have tiny feet. But it was merely theoretical,” he replied, turning his glass in his hands. He raised his blue, blue eyes to find hers. “Unless you’re interested of course.”
“You mean…” She stared back at him. “When you said all that about a wife…”
Fitz shrugged. “It’s still you or no one for me, Simmons” he said. “I’ve done pretty well for myself on my own. I can keep going fairly cheerfully. But if you wanted to have a shot at a life together when we’re divested of all this weight of the world, I’d be eager to give it a try.”
“I’ll admit, Leo, this is not where I predicted this summit going!” she laughed.
“But you’ll think about it?” he asked, practically boyish again in his hopefulness.
“I suppose that I shall find it rather difficult to think about anything else,” Jemma replied.
He smiled. “That sounds promising.”
“The UK press would never leave us alone!”
“I hear the Seychelles are very nice. Good temperature for one.”
Jemma felt almost giggly. “That sounds lovely, Fitz, but we’re not done yet.”
“No,” he said, looking back at her across the room with undisguised affection. “But I think I shall find the last stretch immeasurably easier knowing you’re thinking about it too.”
She went to take up her empty glass but Fitz reached for her hand before she could get to it.
“Just so you can be sure,” he said quietly, “I love you, Jemma. I always have.”
She nodded, finding herself blinking away tears.
“I don’t need you as such,” he continued. “The last thirty years alone bear witness to that. And you similarly have no need of me. That’s why I think we could have something wonderful, Jemma - learning how to need one another, how to fill one another’s deficit, how to enjoy one another’s strengths.”
Jemma smiled. “It’s sounds as though you’ve been thinking about this for quite some time.”
Fitz grinned back at her. “Only since the day we met.”
“But what happens now? You have to fly back to Scotland and start your campaign. I have to fight to hold on for the sake of the party. We won’t see each other again until-”
“I’m back in London in a fortnight. When has anyone raised so much as an eyebrow over a meeting between two British Heads of State?”
“Never, I suppose,” she replied.
“Then shall we have dinner? Somewhere nice?”
Jemma caught her bottom lip between her teeth.
“Come on, Jemma,” he urged. “It’s hardly as though there’s nothing to discuss.”
“But aren’t we suddenly dating on the nation’s dime?”
“Courting on the Commonwealth sounds a little more British wouldn’t you agree?” Fitz asked cheekily. “And after all, it is marriage I’m proposing.”
Jemma dropped her head into her hands. “What have I gotten myself into!?” she sighed.
“A romance, Simmons! A dalliance, an intrigue, an entanglement!” he crowed.
“Well,” she raised her eyes tentatively. “Are you going to come over here and kiss me then?”
“Err,” Fitz stammered, suddenly bashful. “I suppose I could do that, if you like. Though I’ve never really managed to gain any experience in that particular arena.”
Jemma gaped at him. “You’re fifty-six years old and you’ve never kissed a woman!?”
“How many times, Simmons?” he cried. “You or no one! You’d think the English Prime Minister would be a bit quicker on the uptake, honestly.”
“Shut up and get over here,” she ordered and, unlike the Scots of old, he was swift to acquiesce to the demands of the English.
A little later, Coulson, heading in to tidy his employer’s study, was privy to yet another state secret he’d take to the grave.
He smiled to himself as he closed the door quietly behind him.