“Thank you, Sir. Yes, that’s quite helpful. Well, no, you don’t have to digitize them, if you only have prints – m’ happy to wait for them to arrive. Really? Alright then, yes. Talk soon. Thank you. Erm, Sir.”
“Coulson off base?” Daisy plunks down in one of the rolling chairs in the large conference room and glided across the slick floor until she runs into Fitz’s chair. Fitz jumps at the noise and quickly tucks his phone into his pants pocket.
“Erm…no. Wha – I mean, I don’t know?”
“Then who were you talking to? You’re not working for HYDRA, are you?”
Fitz scowls. “That’s not funny.”
“Aw, c’mon. If we don’t laugh about it, we’ll cry. Right? And we’ve already done enough of that.”
Fitz drums his fingertips on the long table, staring across the room at nothing, but Daisy isn’t giving up that easily. “Who were you talking to, then? If not Coulson? Who else are you calling ‘Sir?’”
Fitz’s eyes flick to the door once more, then stare into Daisy’s, serious as death. “You’re not good at keeping secrets. Especially not from Jemma.”
Daisy’s eyes flare wide. “You called Jemma’s Dad? Mr. BigWig Roxxon Exec? Is he scary?”
“Jemma always says he’s a big teddy bear.” Fitz lets out a long breath. “It’s not the impression I ever got of him. To put it mildly.”
“Well….what did he say?”
“You don’t even know what I asked him!” Fitz hisses in a harsh whisper.
“There’s only one reason to call up the father of the girl you’re in love with and call him Sir,” Daisy says. “You’re going to ask her to marry you!”
Fitz’s face blooms red from his neck all the way to the tips of his ears. “No. No no. Not quite.”
“Not quite? Then what? Now you have to tell me.”
Fitz wonders if the entire Playground will soon feel the effects of Daisy’s bouncing and wriggling in her chair. He blows out another breath. “Actually, I may need your help with something. Let me just…”
He tugs his phone back out of his pocket and taps into his email inbox. “Ah. Yeah, he already sent some of ‘em.” He turns the phone to Daisy to display a picture-of-a-picture, the timestamp in its bottom corner reading ‘1998.’ A freckly little girl with a spatter of freckles and windblown wisps of hair squints into the camera against the sunlight. Behind her is a white country house, walls covered in climbing ivy and roses tumbling out of a garden on its side.
Daisy leans in to peer at the picture. “Holy crap. Is that…Jemma?”
Fitz lets his lips form a rare smile. “She was adorable, wasn’t she? Anyhow, it’s a photo of her on holiday, and that,” he says, stabbing a finger at the screen, “is a cottage in Perthshire that she fell in love with.”
“Perthshire?”
“Scotland. Rolling hills, lots of green, small-town pubs and a big lazy river.”
“Okay…” Daisy says. “I’m not following.”
“Jemma loves that cottage. And I’m going to buy it for her.”
Daisy wriggles in her chair and claps a hand over her own squealing smile. “Holy shit, Fitz!”
“It’s not what you’re thinking. It’s for…someday. When she wants. If she wants. It’s irreplaceable to her – a memory she was still talking about when she was on the other planet.” Fitz leaves out the part where Jemma said she’d thought about settling there with him. He didn’t want the Playground to completely collapse.
Daisy’s grin could light a small city. “So okay, what does this have to do with me?”
“Well, the only thing I know about this cottage is that it’s in Perthshire and whatever is in these pictures. Do you think you can find it? Like, the address?”
Daisy leans back in the chair, looking smug. “Fitz. Really. Who are you talking to? Of course I can find it.”
Fitz settles his elbows on his knees, locking his eyes onto Daisy’s. “Do. Not. Breathe. A. Word. Of this to Jemma. I don’t want her to feel…obligated.”
Daisy hooks a muscled arm around Fitz’s neck and bends him toward her in a rough hug. “Aw, Fitzy. You are such a cinnamon roll.”
Then she bounds out of her chair toward the exit. “Send those over to me, okay?”
“Thank you!” Fitz calls weakly after her, his stomach twisting and flipping, wondering if this is the point that marks where he’s completely gone for Jemma Simmons, whether this is the moment people will look back on, saying, “Yes, that’s when Fitz really went crazy.”
He doesn’t know what to make of her, of what she said. Not yet. He knows that most of the missing six months of her life – and, let’s face it, his life as well – on that alien planet is still a mystery to him. He knows scant things – she was being hunted, but not by any beast. She survived for quite some time on her own. She stumbled across Will Daniels. He can’t find much information on Will Daniels, can’t quite make the years that he trained and the age he’s supposed to be and the hog-faced picture from Jemma’s phone match up into a cohesive narrative.
But, between Jemma giving him her phone and watching the sunset with him, remembering what she said about Perthshire and settling down and wondering about the two of them a lot…it’s enough. It’s enough for him to know that she still might choose a life of quiet, after this journey into mystery. A life with him.
He lets out a shaky sigh, then plants his hands on the conference table, levering himself out of his seat.
The sight of Jemma Simmons at the door, with a cup of tea in each hand, stops him in his tracks. She’s still wearing his hoodie. They’ve never spoken about it. He’d brought it from his bunk and left it for her after the first night she was back on Earth. She hasn’t been seen without it since.
It’s one of the few things that has made him smile since she told him about Will. Maybe it meant something, maybe it didn’t, that she wore the blasted thing every day. But she was still holding onto Fitz, in some way.
“Any idea what’s going on with Daisy?” Jemma’s smile is a little less tense than it was a week ago.
“Uh…no. Why?”
“She’s just…I don’t know. Bouncy?”
“Like always?”
Jemma laughs. “Yes, but more. She gave me a hug. Just now. Unprovoked.”
Fitz can’t help but laugh at Jemma’s expression – confusion and slight dismay over someone hugging her without cause.
“I’m sure she’s just happy to see you.”
/
Jemma seems happy enough over the next week working on the Inhuman index, analyzing DNA samples from what they’ve been able to find of Lash’s victims and cataloguing them in the meticulous and thoughtful way only she can do.
Fitz is still working with Jemma’s phone.
The battery had been a labor of love, an attempt to find a birthday gift suitable enough for a girl he loved but who didn’t love him back but who he still hoped would be in his life. After ten birthdays together, there wasn’t much gift-giving territory left uncovered.
If he was honest, it had sort have saved him, in a way. It was the first engineering project since he nearly drowned, since his brain was plunged into irreversible hypoxia, that he had felt things starting to click for him again. The first time his brain and his hands seemed to be communicating.
Fitz has never been good at documenting the steps he takes to arrive at invention, constantly chasing after the heady rush of success too blindly to remember how he’s done it. The everlasting cell phone battery is no exception, and it’s killing him, just now.
It’s not everlasting, not strictly, but he’s sure that whatever ridiculous name it’s given for the consumer market will make it sound that way, and will use a much better word than Mr. Wonka used for his gobstoppers.
He’s never been very good at naming things, anyway.
Suddenly, he sees it. He recalled the composition of the battery, but it was the structure that had escaped him, and now, with it in his hands, he sees it clear as day. He slams his palm on the desk and then pumps his fist, grinning from ear to ear. Now he’s just got to write it all up.
Jemma’s head whips around and she crosses the lab to him in that quick, quiet way she’s done so many times. “Did you find something?” Her fingers twist together and her lips press tight.
She thinks he’s found a breakthrough on the portal.
“Ah…no, Jemma. I’m sorry. I was just looking over your phone again…remembered how I got the battery to last that long.”
She beams at him and his heart jumps. Even when she’s hoping he’s found a way to rescue another man, a man she loves – she can still do this to him. Hopefully, one day, it won’t be followed by the painful twist at the end, when he realizes that she’s not all his.
“That battery saved my life,” Jemma says quietly, resting her fingertips on the back of his hand. He fights the shiver that wants to run up through his arm. It’s her touch that does it, yes, but it’s also those words – he saved her life, even if just with a piece of his tech. He can’t be sure what it means to her, but it means everything to him.
/
“I have to say, Fitz, when I agreed to make those modifications to your contract, I didn’t think that it might lose me $1.4 billion.”
“Pardon me, Sir, but if you didn’t think that an American tech company would be willing to invest that much in a two-month cell phone battery, you haven’t been paying much attention.”
“Gotta admit, I thought you were pretty exclusively in ICERs and DWARFs. Not much practical application for that in the commercial market.”
Fitz smirks. “With twenty-four hours in a day, I’ve had plenty of tinkering time on my hands. Sir.”
When Fitz had entered the Academy at age seventeen, he’d signed away his rights to any inventions that he made while working for S.H.I.E.L.D. It was a fair trade – he was swapping his genius for the best engineering education in the world, access to any materials and tools he could dream of, and the most prestigious career prospects an engineer could hope for.
He’d made so many discoveries, invented so much tech in the last twelve years, likely billions of dollars worth. When he approached Coulson about the change to his contract, he’d only asked for rights to this one thing. It was more than fair.
“Alright. Well, I’ll send over the final papers for your records in a little while, including the patent certificates. Make sure to look over everything one more time.”
“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this, Sir.” Fitz is almost choked up over Coulson’s generosity. If he does end up leaving, and if – if – he is lucky enough to take Jemma with him – Fitz knows what a great loss it’ll be to S.H.I.E.L.D.
He also knows the two of them have earned it. Far and away, many times over.
It’s been six days since Fitz and Jemma watched the sunrise together. Fitz tries not to think about the symbolism there – it just boosts his expectations for things that may never be. If he’s learned anything in the last couple years, it’s to keep those in check.
Still, things are improving, day by day. This is the third day in a row Jemma has ordered dinner in for the two of them, and messaged him to meet her in the kitchen. She piles his plate with too much green stuff and too little delicious fried and sauce-covered things, but he can’t bring himself to complain. ‘Normal’ has become something precious, something to be cherished. He won’t argue about broccoli when things could be a million times worse.
Fitz’s tablet sits open beside him while Jemma portions out the food – he can’t let his eyes sit idle, or they’ll land on her. It’s too hard not to take her in, not to try to memorize everything about the way she looks, moves, sounds, while he still can.
He tries not to think like that – in terms of Jemma’s leaving him again, inevitably. He tries, and he always fails.
She arrives with plates of Chinese food, a bit of kung-pao beef on white rice and far too many steamed vegetables. Jemma sighs as she sets his down before him. . “Honestly, Fitz, you shouldn’t leave your tablet just lying about, no cover on it, with all this food around.” She reaches out two fingers and tugs it over to her by the elastic strap of its case, when the screen lights up with a new email.
Fitz snatches it back, hoping he was quick enough so she didn’t see the subject line – Phil Coulson: Final Revised Contract.
Jemma gives him a few funny looks over dinner. He tries to fill the space catching her up on the Doctor Who developments she’s missed, promising they’ll watch the newest episodes together soon.
/
It takes two days for Daisy to find something on the cottage, and half a day for Fitz to shake Jemma long enough to talk to her about it. When he finally runs across her in an empty hallway, her eyes spark as she pulls out her tablet, hooking her hand into the strap at the back. “Okay, Fitz. I have good news and bad news. And then more good news and more bad news.”
“Okay,” Fitz says, fidgeting as his eyes dart around. “Just…you know. Tell me. I’ll work with whatever.”
“Good news, I found the cottage.” Fitz grins, even though expected she could. Daisy’s always going to be a computer genius and hacker extraordinaire, no matter how incredible her superpowers become. “Bad news, it was condemned by the county two years ago and scheduled for demolition.”
“Aw, shite,” Fitz says, pressing his palms to his forehead.
“There’s more good news!” Daisy says. “Geez. Okay. Good news, it was auctioned off to a developer who totally gutted it and rehabbed it, added a basement level, and is putting it up for sale…next week.”
Daisy spins the tablet around to Fitz and shows him the realtor’s page, swiping through pictures of gorgeous hardwood floors, a sweeping kitchen, a deck that looks out to a gorgeous Highland view, open and airy bedrooms.
His heart stills. Jemma was right, from childhood, even before she met him. It would be the perfect place for the two of them to…
Fitz swallows hard before he can finish the thought. No sense getting ahead of himself. She could change her mind. She may have changed it long ago.
“Perfect,” Fitz says, taking all his doubt and hesitation and fear, insistently pushing it down until it’s smothered. He scans the page with his watch, sending all the contact information to the queue of his phone. He’ll call as soon as he thanks Daisy. He really can’t waste a moment, not in a situation like this, with it going up for sale so soon. He can’t waste a moment.
“Whoa, hold on. There’s still bad news.” Daisy’s eyes are so sad, he almost wants to hug her.
“What? What could it possibly be?”
“Well, Jemma’s memory isn’t as flawless as she might think. This piece of real estate she remembers as a ‘small cottage?’ It’s actually a ‘small mansion.’ Six bedrooms. Four thousand square feet. Three acres of land including gardens and a stable.” Now she’s frowning.
“So?” Fitz asks.
“So it’s selling for $1.4 million pounds.”
Fitz laughs. He hasn’t shared the news on his inflated bank account with anyone but his mum, only because he had to in order to send her the funds to buy herself a little house in Glasgow. There’s been no reason to tell anyone else. “It’s no problem, Daisy.”
Now Daisy’s eyes are saucers. But Fitz doesn’t have time to explain. He has a small Scottish mansion to buy.
/
Fitz is only gone for eighteen hours, but he’s got to do a bit more work before kipping out. He has to put in the order for the lab equipment if it’s to arrive in Perthshire in time for the contractor he hired to properly install all of it. Without a mass spectrometer and a good electron microscope, there’ll be no point in having a lab at all. He slides into the Playground lab, at six in the morning, to make the necessary arrangements from his desktop.
Jemma’s always been quiet as a mouse when working at her microscope. She’s scared him more than once, coming up behind him in a quiet lab, and this morning is no exception.
“Could’ve told me you were leaving.”
“Jesus, Jems!” Fitz yelps, spinning around in his chair.
“Listen, Fitz, I know that things aren’t…the same between us. I know I’m to blame for that, and I’m sorry.”
“Where’s this coming from?” He stands up so he can look her in the eyes. He’s been operating for the last week and a half on the assumption that they were doing okay, that they’d reached an understanding. Maybe on hold, yeah, maybe unsure about the future. But definitely past the point where either of them needs to apologize, for anything.
“It’s just…I know you don’t want to talk about it, and I understand. I…might not tell you if I was leaving, either. In fact,” she says, quickly wiping a rogue tear from her cheek, “I s’pose I didn’t tell you, when I did leave. Not really.”
Fitz’s gut twists at the memory.
“Anyway. I understand. But, Fitz. I’ll miss you. Promise you’ll – promise we’ll –“ and then Jemma is gasping for air, and tears are trickling down her cheeks in wild, divergent rivers, and her pain becomes his.
“Hey, hey now,” Fitz says, moving closer to her, letting his arms hang free so that he can wrap them around her if she indicates that’s what she wants. “Where’d you get that idea.”
“Ugh, Fitz!” she says, throwing her hands in the air and rolling her eyes the slightest bit before staring at him. They blaze even brighter through her tears. “I may still be in a bit of shock from being…on the other side. But I’m not blind. Or stupid. I know you have a new contract with Coulson, and I know you’re building a new lab. Obviously you’ve been gone for several hours, I can only imagine to meet with your new employers. And –“ she takes a shuddering breath and shuffles on her feet for a moment. “I don’t know. I know this isn’t easy for you, but I thought that after you heard my messages, and after we talked, I thought you knew. And I suppose I thought…you’d want to stay. You’d want to be near me.”
“You thought I knew what, Jemma?” A surge of confidence pushes through him, something he’s rarely experienced, and he doesn’t want to push Jemma, doesn’t ever want to hide anything from her. But oh God, the honesty she’s spewing now, her emotions so raw, her words coming so easy, it’s so rare. He wants to see if she’ll say anything else.
She stares into his eyes, then her gaze flicks to his lips, then back again. He can’t help his tongue darting out to wet them. Jemma steps closer, right into his space, so close he can feel her heartbeat vibrating against his skin. Carefully, reverently, she pulls her hands up and rests them on his chest, fixing her eyes on his.
“I thought you knew that I love you.” Her words are breathy and sweet and soft. They are everything. “Please, Fitz.” He’ll never get tired of the whisper-light way she says his name. “Please, don’t go.”
Fitz’s heart beats frantically. Even if he wanted to tell her the whole truth about what he’d been doing, the words wouldn’t be able to eke their way out of his throat. Not here, not now, not with her touching him like this and all but begging him not to leave her. This would be the most beautiful situation he could imagine, if he wasn’t hurting her.
Jemma pushes up on her tiptoes, her forearms still flush against his chest as it pulls in shallow breaths. Her lips are a centimeter from his, and he knows that this last tiny distance between them is his for the taking.
So he does, leaning into her, savoring the warm sweep of her breath against his lips a millisecond before using them to claim hers. She gasps and pushes up farther, pressing into him, like he’d pressed a button and changed the mood from afraid to frantic. His tongue sweeps out, desperate to taste and to test, and she meets it with her own. Her fingers twist in his shirt so hard he’s surprised a button doesn’t pop off, but he doesn’t care. His fingers are busy digging into her sides, memorizing the locations of every grabbable curve and the outline of her bones, ribs to hips.
Too soon, she pulls back, gasping for air. Her head presses to his chest and he feels like her rock and protector and oh god, there’s no better feeling in the universe.
“Jemma, sweetheart.” The endearment flows out of him, natural as anything, even though he’s never called her that before. She answers with a sob and he holds her tight to him.
“I’m not leaving,” he reassures her. “Not without you.”
She sniffles and it’s so adorable he has to keep himself from smiling. He pulls back from her and cups her face in his hands. “Come on, then. You’re not going to understand unless I show you.”
/
It’s easy enough to get the private jet he hired to take him back to Scotland, for the second time in 24 hours. Jemma falls asleep on the plane, her head lolling on his shoulder, and he thinks that he’s never felt more at peace. She wakes with a sleepy yawn, asking where they are, and Fitz bundles her into a rental car.
They drive through the rolling hills leading into Perthshire, and he can tell by the gleam in her eyes. She knows. Maybe she remembers. But by the time they pull up to their cottage/mansion, she’s crying all over again.
He helps her out of the car and they stand there for a long moment, just looking. The sun is already starting to set again on their little piece of the countryside.
“You found it,” she whispers. She sidles close to him and links her fingers with his.
He answers her with a smile and tugs her toward the gardens. They walk quietly for awhile, letting the dark start to wrap around them.
When they come to the front of the house, Jemma looks into his eyes, and hers are full of wonder. “D’you think anyone lives here? The lights are on.”
Fitz laughs, and Jemma looks confused. “I thought you knew,” he says, his smile stretching wide. Then he digs in his pocket and pulls out a key.
Jemma’s hands tremble as she brings them to her mouth, taking a step back. “What did you –“
“Please, don’t worry. There’s no obligation. It’s just here, if you want it. If we want it. You can come or go as you please, but I didn’t want to miss the opportunity…it was going up for sale, you see…”
“You bought my cottage.” She leaps toward him and flings her arms around his neck, then draws back, pressing hurried kisses to his lips over and over.
“Strictly speaking, it’s a small mansion,” he explains. “And it’s your cell phone battery that bought it.”
She’s laughing now, and he lets go of her only to open the front door. She runs her fingers over the smooth wood, the shining kitchen countertops, the tiled bathroom shower. When she finds the first bedroom, she hooks a finger into the waistband of his trousers, and kisses him soundly with a mischievous wink.
It’s a damn good thing the stagers left all the bedroom furniture in place. Tonight, they’re going to need it.