“Did you manage to wrangle the blueprints for the base?” Bobbi asked softly.
Mack nodded as he took a bite of popcorn. “Yeah, we’re almost clear to go.”
“Okay,” she acknowledged. “I’ll make contact soon.”
As they rejoined the group, a pall settled over them as the loss of Trip sunk in.
From his vantage point, Mack cast a glance down at the couch where the three youngest agents sat. Simmons on one side, and Fitz all the way on the other, tucked into the corner, almost as if he was trying to squeeze himself away from her.
As an added measure, Skye was seated between them. But Mack hadn’t missed the glances that the two had kept casting towards each other. He sighed to himself; this whole thing was going to get messy.
These weren’t bad people; they were just following the wrong man. Coulson’s involvement with powered people had clouded his judgment, and Trip had been lost as a result.
Now Fitz was going to discover that he had been … betrayed seemed the wrong word, but it wasn’t far off, Mack knew. Turbo was a good kid with a big heart, who had the misfortune to be constantly taken advantage of.
First Ward, then Simmons, and now by him.
-
“This whole business with Skye … it just confirms in my mind that we’re doing the right thing.” Bobbi said as they stood in the passageway of the Iliad.
Mack flinched guiltily at the mention of the hacker-turned-agent-turned … weird alien experiment .
“I don’t know how to apologize to her … what I said may have been right, but … it didn’t feel good.” he sighed heavily. “And it drove an even bigger wedge between Fitz and Simmons.”
Bobbi smiled at him. “They’ll find their way back to each other, have a little faith.”
He smiled wryly at her. “You’ve always been a hopeless romantic, haven’t you? That’s why I’m $20 richer.” He said, waving the bill at her.
Bobbi should have known better than to bet against her and Hunter winding up back together again.
“How about you give me a chance to win that back?” She challenged as she raised an eyebrow at him.
He regarded her for a moment. “On what?” he asked.
“Them. $20 they get together.”
Mack looked thoughtful for a moment. “I feel kind of bad, betting on them that way.”
“No outside interference. Things have to happen naturally.” She says, pointing at him and glaring.
Mack merely shrugs.
“Hey, he asks me for advice, I'm going to tell him what I think.”
“Mack, I’m serious.” Bobbi warns. “Those two are in love, even if they’re oblivious to it. You can’t go tipping the scales in your favor.”
“Bobbi, he may be in love with her, but she doesn’t feel the same way. I’m not going to help him do something that’s going to get his heart broken.”
Bobbi considers her friend, then puts her hands on her hips and glares at him. “How do you know that she doesn’t love him?”
“He told us. It was after that May imposter tried to blow up the bus. First time he ever spoke about anything personal. I think that’s when he started coming out of his shell. Said there was a girl that he liked, and she didn’t feel the same, and she left. Hunter told him that it was her loss, and she was missing out.”
Bobbi rolled her eyes at the mention of her ex-husband/current … whatever he was.
Definitely not her boyfriend. She wasn’t going down that road again. And after Mack had kidnapped him and chained him to the bathroom sink, she knew that their always fraught relationship had taken yet another blow. Whatever was going on between Fitz and Simmons, Hunter could be guaranteed to get it wrong.
And Fitz had also gotten it wrong.
“I was there. I didn’t know the full story then, but the night she came back from HYDRA, she saw Fitz in the lab. The look on her face …”
Bobbi glanced down. She was trained to read people; to mine their body language and facial expressions for any hint, any clue as to what was swirling in their brains. It took a conscious effort for her not to do it, and with her close friends she tried to respect their privacy by not analyzing them, but she hadn’t really known Simmons well at that point, and she found herself effortlessly reading her.
When they had first entered the base and were greeted by Coulson and May, relief had rolled off her in waves. Her elevated heart rate, her dilated pupils, her nervous rambling as she kept complimenting Bobbi was the verbal manifestation of her elation at escaping certain capture and death, the natural result of the adrenaline rush she had from her escape. And then her eyes stopped darting back and forth as she peered into the lab. Bobbi had followed her sight line, and saw that Jemma’s gaze had come to rest on a slender figure with piercing blue eyes and tightly curled blonde hair.
So many expressions flitted across her face. Hope, longing, and a little of what Bobbi thought was fear. Who was he to her?
Director Coulson’s voice was gentle as he nodded towards the door. “Go ahead.” There was a look of sadness and compassion on his face as Jemma glanced at him with a look of trepidation tinged with hope before she took a halting step towards the door leading into the lab.
And then MAY, Melinda May of all people, the goddam CAVALRY herself reached out to squeeze Simmons’ elbow in a gesture of support as she walked by with a faint look of concern in her eyes.
-
It wasn’t like Bobbi was actually snooping, or looking for gossip. She wasn’t even gathering intel for Gonzales.
At least that’s what she told herself. She had found herself taking a shine to the brilliant scientist who had the courage to go undercover at HYDRA with minimal training or field experience.
She had looked out for her while she was undercover, and she had just sort of naturally continued it back at S.H.I.E.L.D. She knew that when the ground fell out from underneath them it was going to be tough, and she wanted to protect Jemma as much as she could.
These weren’t bad people, they were caught up in a situation beyond their control, following a man who may very well have been unknowingly compromised, obeying orders that may put them in danger.
No, Bobbi wasn’t snooping. She was gathering as much intel as she could so that when the time came, she could protect these bright-eyed innocents. And plus, she was just so curious about the situation.
As soon as she asked about Fitz, she knew that she had stepped into an emotional quagmire. Jemma had stammered, her voice had risen several octaves, her speech had sped up, she had turned away from her and was avoiding eye contact… all the classic signs.
Bobbi would have needed flip charts to document how many different ways Jemma was lying to her. And as she looked into her eyes and studied her facial expressions, she immediately knew that Jemma was lying to herself.
Fitz was a hell of a lot more than her best friend, even if Jemma didn’t realize it yet. Bobbi had drawn it out of her so gently that Jemma wasn’t even aware of it, but at the end of the conversation, Bobbi could tell that she was starting to think of Fitz in an entirely new way.
“I’m telling you Mack, whatever feelings he has for her … she reciprocates them, even if she can’t express them or acknowledge them. Yet.”
The painful events that had led to the dissolution of his own marriage years ago had shown Mack that in affairs of the heart, who was right and who was wrong wasn’t always a simple thing.
So maybe, just maybe, he and Turbo had both misread Simmons.
“Well I guess we’ll see. In the meantime, I’m going to hold on to this.” he says, placing the $20 in his pocket.
“In the meantime, let’s get this over with.” She responded and they headed down the hallway where Gonzales was waiting for them with Hunter and the rest of the board.