"Bloody fucking hell."
Written for Day #2 of FitzSimmons week. All characters belong to Marvel and AoS.
"I said I was sorry!"
She's actually said she was sorry approximately 100 times, but based on the expression she sees in the rearview mirror, Jemma decides it's likely not in her best interest to point out such a thing to Fitz.
Fitz her generally grumpy and pessimistic friend whose base-line, level 4, irritation is quickly approaching double digits.
"'Let's go out,' you said. 'It'll be an adventure!' That's the last time I listen to you Simmons. The last ruddy time."
Jemma understands Fitz's irritation, after all, this had been her idea, and she had also been the one to assure him that there was enough gas to get them back to their shared flat.
Of course, she'd been wrong, but despite Fitz's complaining he had flat-out refused to let her get out in the rain to help him push the car claiming that she, "Gets the flu if the bloody aircon is too cold and will probably end up with pneumonia if she's cold and wet."
She was initially grateful for Fitz's chivalry, but said gratitude began to diminish as her best friend became increasingly vocal about his frustrations. And, as is often the case, Fitz's irritation with her seems to ignite her own irritation with him, and Jemma scoffs, rolling her eyes while concentrating on the tiny black speck down the road that she hopes is a building.
"Oh honestly Fitz. No need to be dramatic. So we ran out of gas... it's not that bad."
Of course, just as she says this, a particularly threatening flash of lightning streaks across the sky as though deliberately going out of it's way to disprove Jemma's statement. It seems that even the heavens are Team Fitz on this one. Not that he really needs any more teammates since his solo act is more than enough to give Jemma a headache.
"Easy for you to say. Sitting up and steering the wheel while I'm back here, in the rain, pushing the damn car down a fuc…"
The rest of his annoyed shouting gets drowned out by a loud clap of thunder that has Jemma jumping in the front seat of the lifeless car and letting out a marginally embarrassing scream.
"Fitz… Fitz!"
"Jesus, what Jemma?"
She turns around in her seat, far preferring to look him in the face rather than attempt to catch his eye in the mirror. The tendons in his neck are straining against skin and, through the buckets of water that are pouring down, Jemma can see the muscles of his forearms bulging as he heaves himself forward against the car, using his body weight to maintain the slow crawl of the vehicle.
"Come back in the car!"
She watches Fitz pull away from said car in irritation, giving her an incredulous look while running his hand through a few errant, and terribly soaked, curls.
"Are you bloody mental?! You've spent the past twenty minutes talking about the gas station we passed on the way here and now that we're actually close to it you want me to stop?! No way!"
He moves back into his earlier position, leaning forward and placing his hands in the positions he'd previously determined would be the most conducive for pushing the car forward, and Jemma groans in frustration at Fitz's stubbornness.
Another flash of lightning turns the black sky an ominous violet and Jemma flinches at its proximity, envisioning it coming closer and striking her best friend down in a fiery heap.
"You're the tallest thing around and the lightning's getting closer. Fitz please get back inside the car. At least until the storm passes a bit."
His hands move to rub at his face and Jemma once again feels a pang of guilt for their situation. His clothes are spattered with mud and even through the window and sheets of water that separate them, Jemma can see that Fitz is exhausted and shivering.
"Please Fitz?"
His eyes lock on hers at the desperation in her voice and Jemma feels a shock of electricity run through her that has nothing to do with the lightning around them. She bites her lip, watching as Fitz debates what to do, and feels her body slump in relief when he moves around the car, clambering into the passenger seat and slamming the door shut behind him.
They're silent for a few uncomfortable moments, Fitz's teeth chattering from the cold and Jemma shifting in her seat as she tries to figure out what she can do to make her friend less miserable.
She reaches forward to twist the key enough to turn the car on and blast the heat as high as she can make it go. She can see Fitz moving his hands to rub some more heat into them and feels another wave of guilt wash over her at the paleness of his skin.
"I really am sorry."
Her voice is quiet and Jemma focuses her gaze on where her hands are twisting in front of her so she doesn't have to see Fitz's reaction.
She can certainly hear it though as his sigh seems to echo in the car, the rain hitting the roof the only other noise to be heard.
Her hands still when one of his reaches over to squeeze them gently and Jemma feels her body relax at Fitz's soft, "I know Jem. It's just been a long day is all. I'm irritated in general, not at you. Never at you."
Her heart thumps erratically at the last bit of his sentence but just as she finds the courage to look at him, Fitz rips his hand away and moves to run it though his hair again. He gives her a sardonic grin and says, "You know, except when you move my things in the lab… tell me to do my laundry… are generally bossy…"
Despite the brief flicker of disappointment at Fitz's hasty retreat from sincere tenderness to his usual sarcasm, Jemma can't help but grin at his list of the mother-hen moves that she often does just because she knows it'll rile him up.
"Yes well… I, likewise, am never irritated with you. Not when you chew with your mouth open, not when you pause the TV every two minutes to discuss it, and certainly not when you finish the ice cream in secrecy after I've already gone to bed."
Jemma arches a brow at the last one and bites her lip to fight the grin threatening to break free at the sight of Fitz giving her a bashful look and turning as red as he can with his low body temperature.
"Yeah well… I won't be going near anything cold for a while so… You can knock off the rest of the pint tonight."
She gives a small smile at the end of his statement but it doesn't last long when she fully processes the beginning. Despite the blasting heat, Fitz is still shivering and Jemma once again nibbles her lip in worry. She turns around in her seat, hand reaching blindly for the blanket that she knows is piled somewhere in the back seat, and grins in triumph when her fingers wrap around the soft flannel. She pulls back around and twists so that she's facing Fitz.
"Take your shirt off and wrap this around you."
She holds out the blanket in his direction and can already feel the inevitable eye roll at Fitz's scandalized expression.
"What?! No!"
Sure enough his borderline squeak causes Jemma's eyes to do a full 360 degree rotation and she stares at her friend in exasperation, trying to shut down the part of her mind that is thinking of what her take your shirt off demand will lead to in order to focus on the logical side that is simply showing concern for her best friend in the world and trying to help him stave off hypothermia.
"Honestly Fitz, you're shivering to death and staying in your wet clothes won't do you any good."
He looks at her for a long moment, likely warring with the logic behind her point and his personal desire to ignore her completely, before he snatches the blanket from her outstretched hand and turns so his back is to her as he begins to unbutton his shirt.
Jemma feels her own cheeks grow warm at the sight and quickly turns her head to face out the windshield to avoid letting Fitz see her blush when he finishes up. She takes a shallow breath and fiddles with her hands again in an attempt to distract herself, finally deciding that the best form of distraction is simply to talk away her tension.
"I realize you don't want to do this, but it really is your best option for staying dry and keeping warm. I'm only trying to help Fitz."
"Yeah well, most people actually say that body heat is the best way to keep warm so maybe you should strip as well if you want to help me so much."
Jemma freezes at Fitz's words and whips her head to look at him in shock as she processes the fact that, yes, he did just say what she thinks he did.
Fitz seems to realize as much at the same time she does because his own head snaps around and his eyes widen in mortification. "No, no, no," his bumbling is coupled with the vehement shaking of his head as a crimson blush spreads across his cheeks.
"I didn't… That's not… I was just… I'd never suggest…"
His stammering is as endearing as the desperation on his face and Jemma finds that her heart is beating wildly in her chest. She knows he'd never intentionally suggest such a thing, but the almost instinctual way that the words left his mouth gives Jemma a small inkling of hope that, perhaps, it was because Fitz actually did mean them. That maybe the feelings she's kept in check for years might actually be reciprocated. There have been moments in the past where his hugs would last a second longer than normal or his fond grins would be a bit softer when directed at her, but Jemma hadn't let her mind latch onto the flicker of hope that such moments would ignite.
But now?
Now her best friend is doing everything he can to ensure her that he would never be so forward and Jemma finds herself wishing that he actually were. That's always been their issue. Both will jump to fight for a theory or argue an issue, but neither has ever been courageous enough to take a risk where their relationship is concerned, too worried about shifting the status quo to make any sort of advancement.
Jemma decides that this is the moment. This is the moment to risk everything. She's been handed the chance to confess on a silver platter and she's finally going to take it.
She sucks in a shaky breath, hoping to calm her nerves and make her voice sound more confident than she's feeling as she looks Fitz in the eye and says, "Maybe later."
"…didn't mean it the way it soun… wh… I'm sorry what."
Fitz blinks at her and Jemma can actually see his mind begin to whir, shifting through all the possibilities of what her words could mean and trying to piece together whether or not the glaringly obvious meaning could actually be true.
"Maybe later, you know, when I'm cold from the ice cream you've promised me."
She raises a brow and bites her lip, hoping that Fitz's level of genius will mean that he'll understand what she's implying.
"I… I don't… I don't understand."
Of course he doesn't.
Jemma takes another breath, turning her body slightly to face Fitz fully, and tries to explain herself in a way that he might understand. "I'm not going to warm you up in a car, on the side of a road, in the middle of a rainstorm Fitz but…"
His eyebrows raise at this, mouth dropping slightly, and Jemma feels her nerves begin to overtake her feigned confidence.
"…but maybe tonight after having dinner and ice cream some… somewhere nice… we could see if that thing about body heat holds true."
Jemma flinches slightly at the way her voice seems to putter out at the end and feels as though she's a recently deflated balloon, no longer capable of holding Fitz's gaze and wholly uncomfortable with putting herself out there.
It's silent for a few long moments and Jemma feels an overwhelming amount of regret wash over her. She should have just kept her mouth shut. The thought seems to roll over in her mind a million times as the seconds begin to stretch out and Jemma takes a shaky breath as she prepares her quick, "Never mind, just kidding, let's stay friends," speech.
She shifts her head up, ready to speak, but the words don't get a chance to escape before Fitz is leaning against the center console and pressing his lips to hers in a searing kiss that Jemma is certain will do them more good than the flimsy car heater.
His hands cradle her face and Jemma's gravitate towards Fitz's recently exposed torso, running lightly over his chest before her fingers find themselves tugging through the curls at the back of his neck.
The kiss is frantic, as though the years of pent-up emotions are exploding out of them both in this moment, but Jemma finds that she doesn't mind all that much. The idea of soft and sweet is all well and good but can't really compare to the raw passion that Jemma feels as Fitz's tongue tangles with her own.
They kiss until they both pull away, gasping for the breath that they'd robbed of each other. Their chests are both heaving and it takes Jemma everything she has to keep her gaze from drifting lower than Fitz's neck. He's staring at her in slight astonishment and Jemma is certain that her own expression mirrors his.
She's definitely certain of it when the shock seems to fade from Fitz's face, replaced with a beaming smile that causes more tendrils of heat to work their way through Jemma. Her responding grin seems to snap them both out of their momentary stupor as they crash back together in time with the rumbling thunder around them.
Jemma feels a bit giddy at the realization that her and Fitz's synchrony seems to extend to kissing. It's a give and take of tongues and lips that she's never felt with the symmetrical meatheads of the past, and Jemma revels in this new shift of the FitzSimmons relationship.
She's not sure how long they've been kissing, fully snogging to be more accurate, and she doesn't even notice the new silence until Fitz pulls away slightly with a ragged breath and says, "Storm's passed."
The words are whispered against her mouth and Jemma ignores them in favor of capturing Fitz's lips again to see how quickly she can make him groan. She counts to three before she hears it and pulls back with a smirk, nodding her head slowly as her fingers scratch through the stubble on his chin. "Mmmhmm."
Her smirk grows when Fitz's eyes zero in on her lips and his throat bobs as he swallows. When he manages to look back up and catch her gaze, his eyes narrow briefly at her smugness before he pushes forward again and embarks on a mission to make her groan.
She's a bit embarrassed at how quickly he succeeds.
All it takes is one nip at her pulse point before Jemma is fisting her fingers through Fitz's hair, silently urging him to continue, and gasping breathily into his ear.
"Should probably get out and start pushing the car to that gas station…"
Jemma shivers at the way his words feel against her neck and shivers even more at the way he presses gentle kisses against the column of her throat, working his way back up to her lips. He hovers over them for a long moment, leaning forward as if to continue their rather heated exchange, before pulling his head back and looking her in the eyes.
"…so we can actually go to that somewhere nice place you were talking about and… and then do the other stuff too. Test that body heat hypothesis."
Jemma knows that he's teasing her a bit now, in more ways than one, and decides that such a thing simply won't do.
"Right. Best be going now."
She plays his game, pushing Fitz away and turning forward, making a show of checking her mirrors before turning back to him with an eyebrow raised in expectation.
His mouth opens slightly at her quick acceptance of putting a temporary pin in their activities, and Jemma has to use most of her willpower to maintain the neutral expression.
"Right. Oh… okay. I'll just… I'll do that now."
Jemma waits until Fitz has turned around completely, fingers on the door handle in preparation to resume his task of pushing the car, before she grabs him by the bicep and pulls him back towards her. She clambers over the console, settling down atop him with her knees bracketing his hips, and gives him a grin before saying, "Perhaps we should at least stay in the car until your shirt is dry."
Fitz's answering grin makes it clear that he finds this to be a very good idea, so Jemma doesn't hesitate to press her lips against his once more, wholly eager to wile away the time.