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Jemma Simmons was perhaps sorting and folding her washing a little over zealously, even by her own meticulous standards. At least it gave her something with which to occupy herself while she waited for the moment of truth.
Upon hearing the news that her entire dorm was to be closed for renovation over the summer, Jemma had leapt to the task of finding alternative accommodation. A newly established online message board seemed to have been set up for this very purpose and Jemma was thrilled to quickly find herself the summer-long resident of a modern and nicely-furnished apartment extremely handy to campus. But Daisy, the girl who was sub-leasing her room, turned out to have a room-mate, Mack. Mack, was leasing out his room too.
Now Jemma nervously awaited the moment her summer room-mate would arrive and give her a hint as to whether her summer would be the productive season she desperately needed or an irritating, unproductive, sleepless hell.
It wasn’t that Jemma had done badly in her first year of university. In fact, she’d come first in almost all of her subjects. But she had not been at the top of her game and she knew it. The student who’d come second in almost everything and beat her in two of their shared classes was just so interesting. She’d let him distract her from her total focus on her studies and this was why she’d foregone her vacation and enrolled in the university summer program. With no handsome, pasty, incredibly smart boy around to take up her mental energy, summer school would be a chance to get her bearings again, to throw herself into her studies and to excel.
Leo Fitz hated her anyway, which was extremely disappointing. He couldn’t even seem to make himself look her in the eye. She’d walk into a room and, unless he absolutely had to remain, he’d hover awkwardly for a moment and then flee for the door. For the very briefest of moments, she had contemplated taking her cue from some of the other college girls her age and letting everything else slide for the sake of gaining his attention and approval. The thing that stopped her was the fact that he only gave his attention to her in the lab when she was fully focused on her work. It was a very frustrating set of circumstances.
He was a genius and his eyes were very blue and his smile (on the one occasion she had seen it) was dazzling and he had lovely hands and wore comfortable looking cardigans and his accent was dreamy and… Who was she kidding? She adored him! But she might as well have been the dregs left behind in a test tube post-experiment for all the interest Fitz showed in her; she doubted he even knew her name.
So what she needed now was a summer of focus, a summer of study, a summer of achievement, and whoever was about to walk through that door held the power to make or break the entire experience.
She was hoping for another similarly studious girl, perhaps a history major. History majors would be sure to spend most of their free time in the library. Though Jemma had classes and planned to spend a lot of time in the lab, she was in desperate need of some quiet home time to consolidate her ideas and to think. The dorms had never been particularly conducive to that. She also planned to take advantage of the full kitchen and cook herself wholesome foods, take advantage of the quiet and sleep like the dead and even take advantage of the absence of Leo Fitz and let herself go, just a little bit. She’d already fully embraced her last goal, pulling out an old pair of thread-bare denim shorts and the navy MIT t-shirt she’d coveted but never really found the opportunity to wear. It didn’t seem to go with the nubile-young-prodigy-with-above-average-fashion-sense image that she was earnestly trying to project.
She heard a key turn in the front door.
At last.
Giving the person a moment or two to actually get inside the apartment, she continued neatly folding her underpants for the count of 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1, then ever-so-casually sauntered out of Daisy’s room to say hello.
The sight that greeted her was enough to make her want to weep: tousled curls, electric blue eyes, an extremely comfy-looking cardigan, lovely hands and a dropped jaw.
“Jemma Simmons?” Fitz yelped, his expression one of horror.
Well, at least he knew her name.
His obvious revulsion aided Jemma in disguising her hurt. She assumed her haughtiest tone.
“Sorry to disappoint you, Leopold,” she said coldly. “I’ll try to keep out of your way as much as possible.”
“No!” he replied, horrified. “I’m not disappointed! I just… I can’t believe this is happening.”
“Why?” demanded Jemma, arms folded over her chest. She cursed the shorts and t-shirt and her generally slovenly appearance. One needed some defenses up in the presence of such a handsomely hostile man. It would have to be strictly business casual and proper make-up from this moment on.
He dropped his gaze and watched his feet scuffing against one another. "I’ve found you so distracting all year,” he confessed. “You’re so brilliant and you’re… umm…” He reached up to rub at the back of his neck. “I was just hoping to catch up to you over the summer is all. Now that you’re here, now that we have to live in the same apartment, and I assume we’ll be in all the same classes, I’m probably doomed.”
This was a revelation. Jemma was sure she could make the best of this situation. Making the best was her forte.
“Well, actually, I’ve found you quite distracting all year as well,” she admitted.
“You have?” Fitz asked sounding genuinely baffled. "Why?”
Jemma shrugged and only told him half the reason. “You’re the smartest person I’ve ever met!”
“Not as smart as you,” he said shyly.
She offered him a tentative smile. “Is it possible that I just do a little bit more homework than you?”
He grinned back. “Yeah, I suppose it’s possible.”
Oh, dear. There was that dazzling smile again. Jemma was putty. She might as well tell him everything then start hunting for new accommodation.
“Actually, Leopold-”
He held up one hand with a wince. “Please, Jemma. Just Fitz.”
“Alright, Fitz, there is one other reason I find you distracting.”
He sighed morosely. “Yeah, I have one of those too.”
This gave her pause. What if his other reason for finding her distracting was the same as her other reason for finding him distracting?
“You know what?” she said instead. “Let’s just keep those reasons to ourselves for now, shall we? We’re probably going to be in all the same classes over the summer. Maybe we could, I don’t know, help each other out?”
“You mean we could work together?” he asked hopefully.
Jemma laughed. “Why not!? After all, we’ll probably end up going to classes together, cooking together, eating together and sleeping together!”
It took her a moment to process what she’d said and make sense of Fitz’s sudden apoplectic fit.
“No! I mean… Ugh, Fitz! You know I didn’t mean it like that,” she huffed, but the endearing cherry redness of the tips of his ears at the very suggestion was enough to ensure she was not ruling anything out.
“So I can stay?” he asked, taking another tentative step into the apartment.
“Of course you can stay,” said Jemma, rushing over to help him with his bags. “I hardly have the right to throw you out.”
“But I’d never want to make you uncomfortable,” Fitz replied earnestly, retaining his grip on the backpack she was trying to take from him. “You’d tell me if I were, wouldn’t you?”
“You don’t make me uncomfortable, Fitz,” she insisted, succeeding in pulling the bag out of his hand and turning with it towards Mack’s room. “Surely there are valuable life lessons to be learned in forcing oneself to live and work with a colleague to whom one is attracted.”
She placed the bag down on the bed and waited nervously for his reaction. How would he cope with her confession?
“Am I that obvious?” he asked quietly from the other room.
Jemma painstakingly joined the dots back from his answer to her original comment to ensure she hadn’t misunderstood. She wandered back to the door of Mack’s room to face him but he kept his eyes fixed on his shoes.
“Are you that obvious?” she repeated. “I was talking about me.”
Now it was Fitz’s turn to join the dots. “You?” he asked incredulously, finding her eyes. “You think… Me!?”
Jemma laughed. “I do think you. And don’t go and ask me why again. It seems I’ve got the whole summer ahead to divulge my reasons at my own pace.”
“Err… tea then?” Fitz offered, grinning.
Jemma beamed back at him. “And that right there shall be Reason Number One.”