I’ve waited a hundred years
But I’d wait a million more for you
Nothing prepared me for
What the privilege of being yours would do
If I had only felt the warmth within your touch
If I had only seen how you smile when you blush
Or how you curl your lip when you concentrate enough
Well I would have known
What I was living for all along
What I’ve been living for
Your love is my turning page
Where only the sweetest words remain
Every kiss is a cursive line
Every touch is a redefining phrase
I surrender who I’ve been for who you are
For nothing makes me stronger than your fragile heart
If I had only felt how it feels to be yours
Well I would have known
What I’ve been living for all along
What I’ve been living for
(from Turning Page, Sleeping At Last)
-
Fall2003
“Have you ever kissed anyone?”
She doesn’t mean to be so blunt about it, but it’s well past three in the morning of their first midterm and they’re both on her floor (god knows why, when there are several perfectly functional seating options, such as the still made bed their backs are pressed against) and it just comes out that way. Her filter clearly fell asleep two or three stacks of color-coded flash cards ago.
“Where is this coming from?” Her lab partner recently turned best friend grumbles, but she can see the light blush fading into his cheeks.
“I don’t know!” She covers her yawn and grins at him. “I get curious when I’m sleep deprived.”
“You’re always curious, Simmons.”
“Maybe I’m just always sleep deprived.”
Fitz glances over at her too-organized and more-elaborate-than-the-textbook-itself notes binder open in front of them and nods reasonably. He wouldn’t doubt it to be honest.
She stares at him expectantly. “Well? Have you?”
“Have I what?”
“Kissed anyone?”
“Why do you need to know that?”
Rolling her eyes, she says, “Because we’re best friends now! And best friends know these things about one another. It’s one of the understood laws.”
“Laws of…”
“Best friendship.” The duh at the end is implied. He sighs and she swats lightly at his arm. “Come on, Fitzy! Out with it! This is practically a sleepover.” Then, lighter, sweeter, “You can tell me anything. I swear I won’t judge.”
And she means every word she says too; he knows her well enough now believe it.
“I haven’t, alright?” Finally turning to look at her, he watches her nod to herself, as if concluding what she had previously suspected.
But, to his surprise, Jemma simply says, “Good.”
“Good? How’s that good?”
She shrugs uncharacteristically. “Because I haven’t either.” Now that really surprises him. “Well don’t look so shocked about it!”
“I’m not! I mean, I am, but you’re…I…why, exactly?”
“I could ask you the same thing.” He meets her knowing look with an oblivious expression and she just shrugs again. “Anyway, as you know, it’s rather difficult to upkeep platonic relationships let alone romantic when you’ve always been four or five years younger than the rest of the class.”
“Ah.” It makes sense. Why else would his brilliant (not to mention gorgeous, and he can make that observation as her best friend) not have kissed anyone by seventeen? She didn’t have time for those average blokes, and his lips quirk upwards at this conclusion.
She turns back to the cards in her hands for roughly three minutes before dropping them abruptly. “I think we should kiss.”
Timing her declaration with Fitz raising his tea mug to his lips was poor on her part, because he spits seventy-five percent of his sip back into it and promptly chokes on the remaining twenty-five. Well then.
“’M sorry…what?”
“Well I can see you’re repulsed by the idea!” She huffs sarcastically.
His eyes grow to the size of dinner plates. “No no no no no. I-“
“And now you’re eager.”
He blinks. “And you’re very blunt when you’re tired.”
“It adds to character. Now, what do you think? Just to get it over with?”
He ponders it for a long moment, weighing the good and bad outcomes, and he’s about to speak up when her big doe eyes, sleepy and brown and awaiting his response, hold his own, wide and probably illuminating the gears in his mind reaching a stopping point.
“Just to get it over with,” he repeats. Jemma nods without releasing her eyes’ hold on him.
“And it never has to come up in conversation again,” she agrees quickly.
They’re still sleepy and brown and expectant when he makes the decision. It’s three in the morning, so what the hell.
Fitz sits up a little straighter as she scoots nearer. Their knees touch and he can see the light dusting of freckles on her face far better now in this close proximity and he kind of wants to tell her that they really suit her but instead he mumbles, “So do we just…”
She bows her head, leaning forward millimeter by millimeter, squinting her eyes adorably to study his features like he’s her latest class experiment and she hasn’t yet read the corresponding chapter weeks in advanced like usual.
Which is more or less what the situation is.
Without warning at all, she leans in a little to quickly, too boldly, nose ramming straight into his.
“Christ, Simmons!”
“Fitz, I’m so sorry-“
“What was the bloody intention there? Jousting my mouth?”
“I said I was sorry!” She says it lightly, playfulness in her voice, but he can tell she’s sincere. She’s just as nervous as he is. “Try again?” she whispers after he releases his injured nose.
“Yeah, just, maybe not so enthusiastic this time. I’d rather like to smell still.”
“Sorry.” She grins bashfully.
Her eyes flick to his lips briefly, a silent question, and he responds by hesitantly brushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear. She stills at the gentle contact, but leans her cheek against his hand, letting him know that this is fine. She isn’t going to break under his touch. She’s much stronger than she looks. He knows this too. Jemma Simmons could probably touch the sun with her bare hand and live to tell the tale should she ever decide to.
And though he’s only known her for a short time, Fitz has a feeling somewhere in the back of his mind that he wouldn’t hesitate to follow.
She mimics his hold on her face with her own hand at his jaw, tilts her head to the right to line them up (careful not to repeat the first trial), and slowly closes the distance between them.
He’s soft against her, that’s the first thing to come to mind. Soft, just as unmoving as she, a little hesitant, but not entirely uncomfortable. Using her knowledge of what she’s seen others do, Jemma slowly, gently moves her mouth against his and he follows her lead, matching her precision as always.
Definitelynot uncomfortable, she thinks.
It’s short, just a small give and take pattern of lips ghosting over one another softer than either party would have assumed beforehand, but she breaks it with a sigh and Fitz unconsciously chases her mouth, only to retreat when his senses are no longer clouded with every part of her he could touch. They stare at each other for a moment, both breathing heavily and exhausted from the late hour and blushing vigorously. After it passes, he abruptly removes his hand from her cheek to scratch at the back of his neck, finding sudden interest in her decorative world map rug beneath his feet.
“That was…” she finally says.
“Good.” He risks.
“Yeah, good.” Jemma pats his shoulder awkwardly. “G-good work.”
“Yeah you too.”
The uncomfortable silence lasts ten minutes before she picks up her flash cards again and calls out the first one, snapping the pair back into routine like nothing had even happened between them. Like the low flame in the back of their minds had never existed, let alone rose at closing of eyes and the brushing of lips.
They make it through two more sets before Jemma tips over in her tiredness and settles her head in his lap, neither thinking anything abnormal about it. One more and her words fall out slower and his answers draw out more leisurely. And he gradually pries the last few cards from her stilled clutches and sets them in the floor, leaning his head back and slipping his eyes shut as sleep overcomes him too.
Fall2004
They’re walking towards the boiler room exit and he’s in the middle of explaining why they shouldn’t include Dopey on the list of possible name for their next project in the making (“You can’t just leave out a dwarf, Fitz.” “But it’s Dopey.”) when-
“Fitzsimmons!” someone exclaims from the booth adjacent to the pair. A few Operations recruits had evidently weaseled their way into the hidden place and are currently squished into a round booth with a few older Sci-Tech students, giggling and lolling heads and gathered around an empty beer bottle. “Come plaaaay!”
Fitz shakes his head vigorously. Sensing his discomfort around the merry band of drunks, Jemma raises a condescending eyebrow at their game. “How old are you exactly? Fifteen?”
“Y’re not far fromit, short stuff,” the girl slurs. Jemma rolls her eyes. “C’moooon, just one round! Don’t be shut-ins for ooooone night!”
Poor Fitz looks white as a sheet as the rest of the table starts chanting their joint nickname. Not knowing what else to do, she unceremoniously plops down on the seat with a huff to shut them up, shooting her friend an apologetic glance and he nods, settling hesitantly beside her. “One. Round.”
The biochemist spins the bottle and it lands on the ox-sized man across from her. The group cheers and she sighs. It’s short-lived, because said ox man has clearly had a little too much and stumbles trying to clamber over the table to her, thus collapsing over three other recruits and waving his hand like a white flag. Another round of laughter erupts and Jemma’s turn is thankfully forgotten in the process.
They turn expectantly to the Scot, who quickly rotates the bottle and looks anywhere else but the table after he does the math and calculates its decline in speed around the tipsy twenty-something-year-old Ops girl on the other side of Jemma who is looking at him like a three course meal.
It’s been exactly three-hundred and nineteen days since she kissed her best friend (not that she counted for symbolic reasons, but because it’s something Jemma Simmons just so happens to know). She’s had a few partners since then, nothing serious, just there, while Fitz went on a few dates here and there but nothing more.
But she knows him, and how he ticks and when enough is enough for him, and even though he willingly followed her into this silly game, she knows that that time happens to be now. And it’s her duty to rescue him.
She can’t help but wonder what other circumstances he’ll be so open to following her into against his better judgment as she also does the math, nonchalantly leaning on her elbow in front of the girl just in time for the bottle to halt.
The group oooooohs loudly but everything goes mute against the sound of his whispered thank you and his tender eyes before she pulls his mouth to hers for the second time in history.
Fall 2015
He’s pacing around their lab trying not to leave one word of his thoughts behind as she instructed him to, a toy train in motion with a nervous child hugging the lever, debating internally whether or not to change the route at the last second, spare the passengers by veering left or let it roll off the tracks at his feet.
She blinks through her tears, nodding for him to continue. It’s still his turn. She wants it to roll off. She wants it to crash and burn in the middle of the floor with her own train of thought. At least they can repair it together from scratch if they’re on the same ground.
“I’ll do whatever it takes for us to stay in each other’s lives, but there is no universe in which I’ll be entirely over you.” He concludes with a shaky breath.
Jemma glances up at him in surprise. This was his fall, his crash and burn, but it’s not what she’d expected.
And fondness is all she can feel.
“There’s no universe where I’d want you to be.” She it says quietly, but it echoes around his mind as if she shouted it from a rooftop.
She takes his stunned silence as a good thing with his expression and moves closer, toe to toe. Placing a gentle hand on his chest, she can feel his heart hammering against it just for her.
“It’s you, Fitz. It’s always been you.” She holds his gaze fiercely, as if she could brand her words into his retinas. His breath hitches and she continues. “Before I even knew it myself, it was you. And that will never change.”
“Even-”
She moves her hand to his jaw, so his sightline can’t leave hers for even a second. “Never.”
They’re both switching their levers now; tracks lined up and ready to collide.
That is, until a very literal crash booms through the base just as their lips barely brush and they spring apart, panting heavily without breaking eye contact.
He turns to move and investigate the source, but not before she clasps his hand with her own, squeezing tightly.
There will be time for that one day. But for now, duty calls.
Winter2015
Soft.
It’s the only way she can describe how she feels at this moment.
It’s been approximately ninety-six days since her dramatic return to Earth, thirty-six since the second return, this time with a deeply confused but very grateful astronaut in tow, and fourteen since witnessing a fourteen years awaited reunion between mother and son on the front porch of a small house in the middle of nowhere.
And after promising to write, a chaste kiss on the cheek in thanks for everything, and a knowing look paired with a nudge when he caught her peering at another certain someone waiting patiently in the car, she had smiled and let them be, hands in her coat pockets as she descended and reached the passenger side. When she buckled herself in he had given her a fond smile that warmed her to her toes and something familiar swelled in her chest and remained there the whole way home.
And it’s taken her every second until this moment now to put it into one little word. Soft.
She was soft; it feels like a lifetime ago, but that she was. Life thickened her skin while loss hardened it and learning to survive roughened it up so much she was painful to the touch and she didn’t recognize herself.
For some time, anyway.
But here? Now?
Ninety-six days stronger, she’s curled against him on the sofa. Head pillowed on his shoulder, hands playing with his fingers on her lap. His arm is slung around her waist (she moved it there after it started falling asleep squished between them and pretended not to see his cheeks tint pink) and she’s suddenly feeling so soft it tingles all over. She’s not even watching the movie anymore, far too busy studying every detail of his profile.
He is watching it, however, with his full attention. And she loves him for it. She loves watching him focus and the way his eyebrows raise and lips quirk up when he likes a particular line. She loves the way he squeezes her fingers when something happens he knows she’d find amusing and how he smells like home. She loves the feeling of his arms around her, tying her down so she can’t drift away. She loves it when he’s beside her.
She loves him for the reason he will always remain there; he loves her too.
She just loves him, and it’s that simple.
When he turns his head to point out the subtle foreshadowing he’s caught onto, he is noticeably surprised to find her eyes on him rather than the screen, soft and genuine and paired with a lazy smile just for him.
He studies her back, confusion painting his face. She’s never made this expression before. Not directly to him, anyway. She almost laughs.
She loves him for his adorable obliviousness. She also loves him for his patience and his kindness. She loves him for making her feel this soft again.
She wants to inform him of this, but no words can describe it. Life hardened him his share and she wants him to feel soft again too.
So, she does what they do best.
Jemma shows him instead.
Her eyes flutter shut with ease as she leans in. He freezes at the contact. At the back of her mind she worries if she’s spooked him, but the tenderness of his lips shoos it away. Neither make an effort to move, just stay soft.
Returning her head to his shoulder, she pulls back to check his expression.
It takes Fitz a moment to remember how to breathe like a normal human being again. Face flushed, eyes snapping back open to lock on hers and she can’t fight the closed-lip grin on her face, chuckling a little to herself at the reaction she hadn’t realized that she was capable of pulling from him.
“Alright there?” she asks casually.
The effort to make a reply is there, truly, but he ends up mumbling something completely unintelligible and winces, curses himself for it.
She chuckles again, untwining their fingers to slowly run them over his jaw. He visibly relaxes against her touch.
“You don’t have to say anything,” barely above a whisper, she repeats the reassurance he told her ninety-five days ago. Then, growing serious, “I want to thank you, for…well, everything.” He looks confused again and tries to speak, but she interrupts. “Do not say it was nothing because it was. And it means so much to me.”
“Well,” he says quietly after a beat, “you mean so much to me.”
She hugs him then, and he’s warm and soft as his arms encircle her.
“You mean more than that to me,” she whispers against his chest, and she can feel the gentle thump-thumps pick up speed against her ear.
“Jemma, I-” he murmurs at the same time she lifts her head to face him and says, “So I want-” She clamps her mouth shut but he just nods, gesturing for her to go first.
She can’t look him in the eye, so she plays with the unfastened buttons of his collar. “I’m ready, is what I’m trying to say.” Her eyes flick back up to his and the look on his face brings that tingly feeling back once again. She adds hopefully, but almost shyly, “If…if you are.”
Fitz doesn’t respond right away, so she moves to scoot back a little to give him some room, but his arm tightens around her waist and his other hand cups her cheek and he reels her back in. Not forceful; soft. Familiarity abound.
The first real slide of his mouth against hers brings her swirling emotions up to speed. She sighs and tilts her head, arms quickly winding around his neck. He can feel her smiling as her fingers card through his hair. This causes a shiver to run down his spine. Coupled with the feel of her lips prying his open, he is suddenly aware of every cell in his body, and each one seems almost magnetized to her touch.
She’s really here and they’re both safe and he won’t let go again.
And by the way she shifts her legs over his lap to move in even closer at the same time her tongue grazes his, he can tell that she’s undeniably alright with it.
Jemma eventually breaks the kiss with a gasp, both of them panting unevenly and eyes still shut. Not yet ready to lose the moment, she leans in again and touches her forehead to his, blindly kissing the tip of his nose as well. He smiles lazily at the sensation and it takes him ten seconds to realize that there are tears on her cheeks. He springs back to reality upon this.
“Jemma? Hey, Jem, it’s okay,” he thumbs them away gently. “What’s wrong? Did I do something? Is that not what you meant? Jemma, I’m so-”
“Fitz, please,” she lets out a watery laugh, shaking her head and rubbing her nose against his affectionately. “This is definitely what I meant, I promise.”
“Then why are you crying? Am I still that bad of a kisser? I mean I know I’m out of practice but-”
Laughing harder, she pushes lightly against his chest and finally reopens her eyes.
He’s joking, but it doesn’t disguise the earnest look on his face. Oh, Fitz. He actually thought he’d overstepped his boundaries.
What boundaries there even are at this point, she hasn’t a clue, but that’s beside it.
“It’s just, over there,” she can tell he notices her breath hitching so she caresses his jawline with her thumbs in reassurance, “I was gone for so long, and I was so broken when I returned...we....I thought it would, I would…it would never get easier." Clearing her throat, she adds, "For a long time I thought I would never have this. You.”
“You weren’t broken, you were just different. Like me.” He grins, then says, “It took me a long time to realize that too.”
“We’re both different,” she acknowledges.
Fitz nods. “And look at us now.”
She beams at him gratefully before climbing fully into his lap to cuddle closer, arms looped around his neck. He kisses her forehead before resting his cheek on top of it and she hums in contentment.
“And you’ll always have me, in any way you want.”
She presses a small kiss to his collarbone. “Same goes.”
The movie is long over but there they remain, safe and sound and irrevocably soft.