"Wow. They've really been avoiding it for three years, huh?"
"I don't think it seems like that long considering she was on another planet for six months."
Lincoln fixes a withering look on Daisy. "Okay. Two and a half years of -"
"She was undercover at Hydra for three months. Then they could barely speak to each other for like three months after that. He was pissed and she felt guilty, and..."
"Okay, so two years -"
"And don't forget that the hypoxic aphasia made him literally unable to say anything to her for another few months -"
Lincoln's eyes cannot possibly roll farther back. "One year and nine months of being hopelessly in love with each other and not doing a single damn thing about it?"
Daisy shrugs, frowning slightly. "I suppose. Oh! But then there was the fact that he had a crush on me for several awkward weeks, and -"
Lincoln knows the ballsy Scot isn't real competition for him, but he bristles all the same. It's almost enough for him to miss the end of Daisy's sentence.
"-and then he didn't even tell her he loved her until he was about to die for her at the bottom of the ocean."
"Wait. So, he has told her?"
Daisy shrugs again. "Sure. Plenty. Her, too. I mean, never in so many words, but yeah. Always in the face of a goddamn near-death situation, too. Which they always seem to end up in together..."
"That's it!" Lincoln crows, slamming his hand down on the stainless steel galley counter, rattling Daisy's nerves. "We just have to make that ....that...certain-death thing happen again!"
"Whoa, there. I don't know what crazy adrenaline-fueled romantic-god plan is running through your head right now, but I am not orchestrating a super-dangerous mission just so Fitz and Simmons will finally be forced to talk about their feelings again."
"Of course not. That would be ridiculous. We're just going to pretend there's a life-or-death mission that we need Fitz but not Jemma for, and give him like ten minutes to suit up and meet us on the jet."
"Okay, and then what happens when he gets on the jet and there's no mission?"
"He won't make it to the jet. Call it off when there's like one minute left. Say there's an issue with the mechanics or something. Maybe even get Mack to play along."
"You mean Director Mackenzie?"
Lincoln shrugs. "You don't think he'd say a few words over coms at just the right moment if it's for true love?"
Daisy sighs heavily. "I hate that I'm even thinking about saying yes to this. But you're so damn adorable when you give me those puppy dog eyes."
Lincoln grins, stepping up to Daisy and grabbing her hips so he can notch them against his own. She gives a pleased grunt when he does.
"But you owe me," she murmurs as she pushes up on tiptoes to brush her lips against his.
"Oh, believe me, I have a few very good ideas about how I can thank you."
***
Lincoln was almost too good at lying to Fitz and Simmons. Daisy listened in through his com as he skidded into their lab, fake-frantic, ddelivering the news. "Agent Fitz, Daisy needs you for this mission. Something about your tech being indispensable for urban warfare. Some really out-of-control new Inhumans running around L.A., could be dangerous. Suit up, man. Wheels up in 15."
Daisy can just imagine the gaping look on Fitz's face, followed by that brave determined expression that she's sadly used to seeing after the past year of shit the team has been faced with.
"Right then," Fitz says, his voice twisted. It could be a transmission issue with the coms, but Daisy knows better. "See you in ten."
Daisy rolls her eyes and smiles at Lincoln's ridiculousness, and soon enough his hands are sliding around her waist and his breath tickles the back of her neck. "See? Easy. Now let's see if she follows him."
"And how are we going to do that?"
"Can't you hack into their com feeds?"
"Isn't that the least ethical thing I could possibly do?" Daisy deadpans.
"Pfft. They'll thank us later."
****
Sure enough, two minutes later Simmons has followed Fitz to his bunk, shutting the door behind her.
"Thank God for embedded coms," Lincoln stares at the screen that shows Fitz and Simmons standing at opposite sides of his small sleeping quarters, just four minutes after Lincoln had called him to the mission.
"What in the world do you think you're doing?" Simmons asks Fitz, her voice high and breathless.
"Eh...my job?" The unmistakable whump of Fitz yanking on his combat boots means he's already gotten into tac pants. After this, it's just the jacket and then he'll leave the room. It's a damn small window to get the two of them to come clean about their feelings. For real, this time.
"I'm sure Daisy could do without you, especially now. But of course you didn't ask, of course you wouldn't stop to consider -"
"Consider what, Jemma?" Fitz voice is filled with exhaustion, tinged with impatience. Something Daisy hasn't heard from him in a very long time, not toward Jemma. Especially considering everything she's put him through in the last couple months.
"Consider that I need you here. Things are bloody difficult for me as it is, and you should know that -"
"Difficult for you, yes, Jemma, we all know. Okay? Will is gone, it's tough. Have you ever considered how difficult the whole Will thing has been for the rest of us? Ever considered that the best bloody thing might be for me to get out of here for a bit?"
Daisy winces. She knows that Jemma has done nothing but consider how the news of her space boyfriend had affected Fitz. Fitz knows that too.
"Okay, this has gone too far. We've gotta interrupt."
Lincoln looks sad, but nods his assent.
"Uh, no. I would not recommend that."
A lab tech Daisy has never really noticed before happens to be passing by the work station where she and Lincoln have settled, carrying a clipboard and some dangerous-looking liquid sloshing around in a beaker.
"What did you say?" Daisy asks, flustered, before remembering her own senior position on this team. "This is none of your business."
"She looks like she knows something, babe," Lincoln mutters out of the corner of his mouth.
The tech smiles and pushes back her shoulders at Lincolns words. "Thank you, Agent - uh - Sir?"
"Lincoln," he says, sticking out a hand for her to shake, then drawing it back with a laugh when he sees how full hers are.
"Hannah," she replies. "So, yeah, anyway. You don't want to interrupt them when they're screaming at each other like that. That's the only way they ever get anywhere."
"What do you mean?" Daisy is genuinely clueless as to how this girl knows more about her two best friends' relationship than she does.
"Well, a couple weeks ago, Dr. Fitz came into the lab shouting at Dr. Simmons, and then she started shouting back. Another tech, Alison, didn't hear much except for something about the cosmos and whether Dr. Simmons loved some other guy, and then all of a sudden stuff was hitting the floor and they were making out on top of Wilson's lab bench.
"They were WHAT?"
Hannah nods, her mouth twisting into a sheepish smile.
"Then after you guys got back from England, it was the conference room. Director Mackenzie had just debriefed everyone and they were the last two left in there. I just went in to get my coffee mug, and I didn't hear them arguing until I was already halfway in the room."
"What were they yelling about then?" Daisy asks, crinkling her brow. She thought the scientists had been overjoyed to be back together.
"Something about how she didn't understand how he could possibly think she cared about some guy they left behind more than she cares about him? It was all kind of confusing, but when he got up to storm out, she ran after him and basically mauled him. He ended up slamming her against the entrance doors and kissing her back, and then they started feeling each other up and...and I had to pick the lock to the only other door out of there. Thank God Agent May wasn't in her office when I burst through that door behind her desk." Hannah shuddered at the memory.
"My God, how do you work under all this stress?" Daisy asked, her brain still not fully processing that Fitz and Simmons were making out all over the base and she had somehow missed it. Some spy she was.
Hannah shrugs. "Unless you get caught in the same room, it's actually kind of entertaining. There's a whole pool on when they're going to...um...you know..."
"Become official?" Lincoln offered.
"And other things," Hannah said, ducking her head in embarrassment. She nods at the speaker, which is now blaring the sounds of Fitz and Simmons screaming at each other full-tilt. "I mean, just listen to them. It's either foreplay or pure hate."
"So that's all they've done then? Just the angry kissing?"
Hannah nods.
"And never an 'I love you?'" Lincoln's expression is a strange mix of sad and fascinated, and now it's Daisy's turn to roll her eyes.
Hannah shrugs. "Yeah, because they've always been in some other spot on base. But now that they have some privacy, maybe...."
Something about the edge in Fitz's voice grabs the three eavesdroppers' attention back to the argument.
"Then give me one bloody reason why I can't obey orders and go on a mission to save lives, which happens to be our real job, Simmons -"
"Because I love you, and you're the only man I've ever really loved, and also," she gives a rueful laugh, "one of the few people I care about who I haven't managed to kill, so if you could just please stay alive and in the same location as me and non-comatose for a few weeks at a time, that would be lovely."
Hannah squeals and does a little dance. "You did it! She said it! Lincoln, you're a genius!" But the two inhumans are still listening, rapt and tense.
"He hasn't said it back, though," Daisy murmurs.
Shouts have given way to heavy breathing, Fitz and Simmons stepping closer together inside the narrow bunk's walls. And then Fitz's alarm blares. "Well it's too late for all that now, isn't it?"
"Lincoln! Get down there!" Daisy hisses, but Lincoln has already torn through the door and down the hallway to the residential quarters. Daisy says a silent prayer that the two scientists are too clueless to say or do anything for the seemingly interminable seconds between Fitz's alarm and Lincoln's arrival at Fitz's door.
His faint knock comes through on the coms, then his voice. "Mission got pushed back, man. Something wrong with the...uh..."
Hannah buzzes into Lincoln's com. "Say there's a compressor stall."
"There's a compressor stall on one of the engines and we'll need a couple hours to fix it," Lincoln rushes out, his breaths ragged from running so fast.
It's silent on the other side of the door, but Daisy and Hannah can see Fitz and Simmons' heat signatures stepping closer to one another.
"Thank you," Fitz calls to Lincoln as his arms loop around Jemma's waist.
Then, he speaks to Jemma, his voice soft and sweet. "You know I wouldn't ever leave to spite you. M'sorry I said that. It's wasn't true."
Simmons pulls in a ragged breath, followed by unmistakable sounds of lips smashing together, pulling back and diving in for each other again.
"Okay, we should definitely..." Daisy reaches out to cut off the scientists' com feed.
"No!" Lincoln shouts, skidding back into the room. "Did he say he loves her yet?"
Daisy rolls her eyes. "You are way too invested in this."
He just gives her a look. "The whole base is invested in this. We've been tortured long enough. Right, Hannah?"
"Yeah, and if he tells her after she tells him, I win a month's worth of someone else taking over my night shifts."
"Hannah's got a lot riding on this, honey," Lincoln says sweetly.
"Okay, but if I hear pants unzipping, it's over," Daisy warns.
"It really wasn't true," Fitz's brogue grinds out. "I've been waiting for you through it all, because I love you too, Jems. Y'must know that."
Hannah silently pumps her fist and dances in a little circle.
"But..." now Fitz's words are clearer, louder, less clouded by emotion.
"But what?" Jemma strangles out.
"Now we can't do or say anything else until Daisy and Lincoln stop listening in on our coms."
"What?" Jemma's voice is all confusion. Daisy's guilt makes her want to puke.
"Well, there never really was a mission," Fitz explains softly.
Lincoln curses.
"You knew? And you went along with it?" The bite of anger to Jemma's words makes Daisy feel that much guiltier.
"No, I seriously thought I had to be leaving for L.A. on an emergency mission. But when Lincoln knocked and told me the most ridiculous thing about the compressors malfunctioning, forgetting that I designed those jets, and that I'm the first to know about anything going wrong with one of my babies' engines, I knew they'd faked the whole thing. Those compressors were running perfectly an hour ago."
It's Daisy's turn to curse. "If I'm going to lead a whole damn team of superheroes, I should work on my spy planning capabilities."
More kissing noises slither through the coms, and Daisy just looks adoringly up at Lincoln with a soft "Aw," pushing up on her tiptoes for a kiss.
Hannah can't believe she has to slink out of another room to avoid a whole different pair of agents tongue-mauling each other. Wasn't this supposed to be a professional environment? Didn't S.H.I.E.L.D. have any rules about this sort of thing?
"Where'd Hannah go?" Lincoln gasps moments later as he pulls away from Daisy, his eyes flicking to the screen where Fitz and Simmons' heat signatures have melded together, accompanied by very heavy breathing on their coms.
Then, clear as day, the sounds of zippers being undone and shoes thunking on the ground after being hastily kicked off come through the coms.
"Thanks for the inspiration, FitzSimmons," Lincoln growls as he disconnects the com feed and hoists a squeaking Daisy into his arms.
She giggles the whole way to Lincoln's bed.