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Fitz snuck another side-long glance at the beautiful woman sitting further along the bar and sighed.
How had it come to this?
Yes, it was his thirtieth birthday; yes, he was almost entirely friendless; yes, he had struck up the closest thing he had to a friendship with a total stranger over tumblr, but none of that justified the fact that he was here alone in an unfamiliar New York bar waiting on said total stranger for a birthday drink.
Perhaps he was being trolled.
He looked once more to his left just to keep his mind off it.
She really was lovely. Wavy dark brown hair, a very attractive figure, full-looking soft, pink lips and those especially capable-looking hands that toyed first with the stem of her glass, then her phone, then her hair, then flitted back to her glass. She was wearing a deep red dress but it was sort of casual somehow, comfortable looking, and on her feet she wore ankle boots without too much of a heel.
She was either meeting a friend or, more-likely, her well-built, hero-type boyfriend. Hell, a girl like that could be dating an astronaut and Fitz wouldn’t be the least surprised. Either way, there was definitely no point in him trying to talk to her, not that he’d have the faintest idea how to go about it. Fitz and women just did not seem to mix.
Come to think of it, he and people just didn’t seem to mix. Fitz had a good job - a really good job - and his colleagues sort of seemed to respect him, but no one ever invited him to hang out with them or even get lunch.
Perhaps that was because he put his head down the minute the banter started, always too nervous to try and join in.
Online he’d found a sort of community. It was embarrassing to admit to real people, but Fitz loved this particular TV show. There were these characters that had started out as friends and he and his online community of fans had cheered together when at last they’d become more than that. He’d tried his hand at writing some fanfiction and found himself enjoying moderate success. People seemed to genuinely like his stuff. This had bubbled over into little chats here and there with potentially kindred spirits with whom he’d engaged in the banter he never felt brave enough to engage in with his colleagues.
One particular guy, another UK expat in a STEM field with the witty handle englishmaninnewyork, had become a significant friend over the years. They read each other’s fics, left glowing comments and chatted together online for hours about anything and everything - the latest episode of their show, current affairs and politics, football (the UK kind) and video games amongst other things. They’d even started exchanging their favourite recipes for one.
So when English, as Fitz had taken to calling him, had asked if he had any plans for the weekend, and Fitz had let his guard down and admitted to the significant birthday and to his total dearth of plans, his mutual had refused to leave it alone.
englishmaninnewyork: What city are you in? We could celebrate!
scotsinskirts: Nah, I’m gonna order a pizza or two all to myself, get a six pack and binge-watch Season One. It’ll be sensational.
englishmaninnewyork: Scot, that will not do. Ok, you don’t have to say where you are but, just in case, (surprise, surprise) I’m in New York.
scotsinskirts: Funnily enough, English, I am too.
englishmaninnewyork: I knew it! Oh, PLEASE, Scot, come out with me. You’ll be doing me a favour too, you know I’ve barely left the house for fun since I moved here.
scotsinskirts: What if I don’t turn out to be much fun in person?
englishmaninnewyork: You’ll at least be as much fun as this and we do this for hours every day! Plus the birthday drinks are on me. We’ll meet somewhere nice and public so neither of us has to worry that the other is a serial killer.
scotsinskirts: Alright, English. Have it your way.
And then the furious planning had begun. But now it seemed that even the tumblr mutual with whom he’d been about to attempt crossing over into actual real life friendship seemed to have rejected him too. He should never have expected anything else.
He toyed with his phone, wondering if it would just add insult to injury to go online and have English laugh at him for ever taking it seriously.
Beside him, the gorgeous woman had taken up her phone again and was texting intently. He took advantage of the opportunity to admire the way her hair gleamed in the dim light.
His own phone buzzed in his hand.
englishmaninnewyork: Scot. Could it possibly be the case that you are a massive wanker who has just trolled me into turning up to a New York bar by myself?
Fitz almost laughed in his glee at learning he had not actually been stood up. He looked around the pub earnestly.
scotsinskirts: Thank God, I was about to say the same thing to you! No, I’m here at the bar beside the most gorgeous creature I think I’ve ever beheld. If you can’t work out which one is me, at least let that image guide you.
englishmaninnewyork: So funny you should say that! Where I am, there is an incredibly tasty specimen just to my right. I’m hoping I haven’t been caught leering. People this good-looking should not be allowed!
scotsinskirts: Is there another bar in here? I must have misread your instructions.
englishmaninnewyork: Nope. Only the one bar. Are you in the right place?
scotsinskirts: The Clover Club?
englishmaninnewyork: That’s the one.
Fitz looked up and noticed that the beautiful woman further down the bar was craning her neck to look for someone also. They locked eyes a moment and both quickly looked away.
His phone buzzed again, three times in quick succession.
englishmaninnewyork: Scot? Odd question:
englishmaninnewyork: Under the circumstances, even odder I never thought to ask it before.
englishmaninnewyork: Are you, by any chance, a man?
Fitz raised his eyes hesitantly to find the woman on the other end of the bar watching him intently.
Oh, heck.
"I - I thought English was a man,” he said out loud. "You know, ‘cause of Englishman."
"It's a Sting reference,” she said. She raised her eyebrows and recited, “I don't drink coffee I drink tea, my dear."
“Ah,” replied Fitz awkwardly. “I see that now.”
“And I thought…,” she stammered, “‘cause of the skirts…”
“Kilts,” he murmured lamely. “It was a joke.”
"Right then,” she said brightly, picking up her glass and moving tentatively down the bar to sit beside him. “So you are Scot. Not at all how I imagined you."
"And you're English,” he observed, noticing how close she was. “Bit of a surprise to me too."
"It's Jemma actually,” she said, sticking out her hand for him to shake.
“Err, Fitz."
Jemma’s eyes narrowed. ”But you are a scientist, right?”
Fitz nodded eagerly. ”Yeah! You?"
She smiled. “Good.” She was even more beautiful than he’d thought at first. “And Happy Birthday, Scot.”
…
They’d eventually moved on from the bar to a diner where Fitz had watched delightedly as Jemma had easily matched him burger for burger, fry for fry and gone back for a massive slab of chocolate cake and ice-cream without the remotest suggestion that they should share a dessert. Their conversation flowed just like their hours of messaging but both refused to acknowledge the awkward assessments they’d made of each other at the beginning of the night.
It hadn’t been at all difficult for Fitz to draw a line under it as an amusing fiction. As if any woman, especially one as stunning as Jemma, could ever have found him that attractive.
Jemma scraped the last drizzles of chocolate ganache off her plate and sighed.
“I’m so glad you let me talk you into this, Fitz,” she said. “This has been the best night I’ve had in years.”
“Me too,” Fitz agreed readily. “Thanks for refusing to take no for an answer.”
“Would you… I mean… Do you think you might, maybe, want to hang out again some time?” she asked hopefully.
He nodded earnestly. “I’ve been pretty upfront with you about not really having any friends. I’ve got all the time in the world to hang out.”
“Me too!” Jemma said excitedly. “And there’s so many things I want to do in New York that I haven’t done because I haven’t had anyone to go with and I sort of hate being out and about alone and awkward.”
Fitz grinned at the depth of fellow feeling. “What’s first on your list?”
…
Their list had gotten quite out of hand. Fitz had begun jotting all their ideas down on a napkin and ended up filling three and spilling onto a fourth.
When he looked up eagerly for the next suggestion, he found Jemma looking worriedly back at him.
“What is it, English?” he asked quickly.
She shrugged. “You wouldn’t want to do all those things with me,” she said quietly. “Forget it. I don’t want to make you feel like you’re stuck with me for the rest of your life.”
“What if I want to be stuck with you for the rest of my life!?” The words had come out of him in a rush without giving him time to build neat little self-protective fences around them.
Jemma’s eyes were wide.
“English, I know we’ve only just met, but it’s not like we haven’t known each other for years. There are nights when I rush home to my computer and find you online because you’re the only one I want to talk to.”
“Me too,” she whispered. “But now…”
“Now what?” Fitz demanded.
“I was picturing you as this lonely girl trying to make it in Science like me. I thought maybe you’d turn out to be the best friend I’ve always hoped I might find. But look at you!”
“You are my best friend!” Fitz argued. “There’s no one else in the running! What does looking at me have to do with it?”
“But you’re so handsome,” she whined. “You must have hundreds of women in love with you.”
Fitz snorted. “Leaving aside the sheer ludicrousness of that statement, if it were even remotely true, not one single one of them has ever gotten near enough to me to tell me as much. Besides, look at you! I’d expect you to gracing catwalks and magazine covers and red carpets…” He waved the stack of napkins. “Not going to museums and baseball games and hunting out the best English pubs with someone like me!”
“But that’s all I want to do!” Jemma insisted. “Going to a museum with you, who turns out not only to be as much of a kindred spirit in person as you are online but also this stunning human being, is my idea of the perfect day.”
As she spoke, Fitz had been gradually allowing the reality of the situation to dawn on him.
She really wanted to spend time with him.
She found him inexplicably attractive.
She thought he couldn’t possibly want this as much as she did.
And he was going to darn well prove her wrong.
“Why are we arguing, English?” Fitz challenged. “If I’m hearing you right, you want this to be just the start of our friendship - our out-in-the-open, real life, fresh air, face-to-face friendship. I can’t think of anything I want more than that.”
Jemma sat back a moment blinking. Then she nodded decisively. “Then that’s settled.”
“Good,” he said. “What do you want to do first?”
Jemma grinned. “Can I throw in another suggestion?”
“Sure,” he said, taking up his pen with a relieved smile.
“No.” She shook her head. “This is a suggestion for what we do tonight.”
“Alright,” he replied. “I guess the night’s still young.”
“And it’s not your thirtieth birthday every day.”
“True.”
“So let’s go out dancing!”
“What?”
“I was going to suggest it anyway when I thought you were a girl! Because of what you wrote in Shake It Off! Remember? When Len Fallon and Jessica Smith go dancing?”
“That was fanfiction, Jemma! And don’t say the title out loud like that! I’m sure Taylor has her lawyer spies everywhere.”
She looked back at him, disappointed. “But that scene was one of my favourites! You must have liked the idea of going dancing a little bit to write so much of that fic about it.”
She was right. He did like the idea of it. A lot. And he danced around alone in his apartment all the time so he knew he wasn’t too bad at it.
“I’ve always wanted someone to go dancing with,” she said wistfully. “I was sure tonight was going to be the night. I’ve even worm my comfy shoes. And that’s another thing! You can hardly blame me for thinking you were a girl when you name your fics about going out dancing after Taylor Swift songs.”
Fitz cringed. “In my defense, no one was supposed to put that stuff together with real-life me!”
“And yet here we are.”
“Here we are.”
“You totally want to go dancing, don’t you.”
Fitz hesitated then thought he might as well tell the truth. He nodded.
Jemma beamed. “Let’s do it!”
…
In the pulsing darkness of the club she chose, where he could feel the bass thumping in his chest and Jemma’s hands in his, Fitz had to admit that actually dancing with a beautiful girl was significantly better than writing about it. He loved dancing. He loved the loose swing of her movement and the ecstatic grin on her face that told him he wasn’t the only one having the time of his life.
In the crush of people she was moving closer and closer to him, sometimes even grabbing the lapels of his jacket so as not to get swept away in the crowd. He’d never thought to write that sort of thing into his story but, now that he had some real life experience to inform his fiction, he’d damn well be writing it into the next one.
Except… what if Jemma read it? Then she’d know he was really writing about her.
Would they just go back to what they were after this? Would he return to messaging English as if nothing had ever happened? Would they keep commenting on each other’s stories and pretending that nothing between them had changed?
But then Jemma was moving towards him even though they had sort of found themselves a pocket of open space.
She was grabbing at his lapels even though there was no imminent danger of them being separated.
She was stepping right up close to him, anchoring a foot between his grey desert boots.
And when the roving lights strayed over her face, she was looking up at him with a hunger in her eyes.
He’d read and written enough stories to know that this was his cue. This was when you kissed the girl.
So he did.
And suddenly all those lines made sense. Phrases about a soft fullness, phrases about finger tips ghosting across cheeks, about hands winding into hair, about a warmth blooming in one’s chest, about having to come up for air - he knew those phrases now with a resounding reality that made the fiction pale in comparison.
Maybe he didn't want to write fiction anymore. Maybe now that they stood with their foreheads pressed together, chests heaving, he wanted to write a real life instead, with Jemma by his side.
"You kissed me," she observed, somewhat breathlessly.
"I'm glad you noticed," he laughed. "Erm... how was it?"
Jemma's eyes were sparkling. "Just enough to make me want a whole lot more."
Fitz smiled wider than he thought he’d ever smiled before. ”Me too."
And then she kissed him again, sliding both arms tightly around his neck and pushing herself up on her tiptoes to give her better access.
The music continued to swell around them, from beneath them, inside each one of them, but they paid it no heed.
When at last Fitz caught his breath enough to ask, "Where to next?"
Jemma purred in his ear, "Oh, you're coming home with me, birthday boy.“
"Brilliant," Fitz whispered. "Oh, and English?"
"Mmm?"
"Not a hint of this shows up in our fics. Deal?"
Jemma smiled indulgently as if acknowledging she too had thought about it.
"Deal."