Disclaimer: I own neither the Marvel universe nor the characters of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Leopold was lonely, though he'd never admit it to his mother. When he'd called her that morning, as he did every Monday, he'd planned on asking her when the soonest he could come home was, but she'd sounded so proud of him for having a new experience and excited to have him following his dreams that he couldn't bring himself to tell her how awful he felt inside. The conversation just left him feeling more alone and homesick than he had since coming to the Academy here in America.
He did what he always did when he was feeling exceptionally blue, he threw himself into his engineering. He sketched an idea he'd had for a few days, but ran into a problem pretty quickly. The device should be able to turn all the surrounding moisture into ice, but he couldn't figure out how to calibrate it for varying masses of moisture, it would *theoretically* turn small amounts of moisture in the air to ice, but something as heavy as say a gallon of water would only be able to get to the beginning of crystallization.
After far too many adjustments, restarts, and head banging problems he just couldn't solve, Leo realized he was about to be late for his Science Ethics class all the way across ran faster than he's though he's so-far-from-in-shape-he-might-as-well-be-a-line body could go. He arrived in the lecture hall 2 minutes from being late, red in the face with papers flying wildly out of his bag. He was forced to take an aisle seat in the very front row where his only company was a girl who was furiously typing notes from a chemistry text book and had a bookish look about her. He made a clumsy pile of papers at the corner of his desk, which included his newest design, before taking out his laptop for notes.
An hour and a half, two near nap attacks, and at least fourteen hand cramps later, the class was dismissed and Leopold started shoving various blueprints, sketches, and formula filled papers back into his bag and a pace that meant he was probably destroying them all. The girl who had been sitting right in front of Professor Vaughn for the lecture started towards the aisle beside him. Unfortunately, her foot caught a snag in the carpet and she fell onto his desk, scattering the remaining papers onto the stairs.
Immediately both Leopold and the mystery girl clattered to the ground to gather up the papers, she muttering apologies as he assured her it was okay. Eventually all but one paper had been messily squeezed into his backpack. As the girl picked up the paper to hand it to him, she took a moment to observe the device. Without thinking she muttered, "This is brilliant."
His face turning an unnatural shade of red, he grabbed the paper from her hand and just mumbled about how it only worked on small amounts of water and sheepishly shoved the blueprint back into his bag.
"Well of course it wouldn't work on large amounts of water," the girl replied matter-of-fact-ly, "Your power source has a 1:9 ratio when what you need to do is double the device size and increase the power source ratio to at least 1:14." He just gaped at her. The solution had been obvious, it was the kind of chemistry they taught freshmen year of college.
As his mind grasped for the reason he had missed it, he began to take in the girl's appearance. She had curly brown hair that was pulled lazily back into a ponytail and already had a few strands falling out towards her face. She was pale and her eyes were a rich chocolately brown. He recognized her vaguely from the few times he'd tried to work up the courage to venture into the boiler room. He'd only realized that he'd been string for an uncomfortable amount of time when her face flushed red.
Trying to avoid being rude he stuck out his hand and gathered himself enough to say, "I'm..." Did he want to tell her his name was Leopold? He could go with Leo, that's what his Mom called him. "I'm Fitz."
The girl smiled and stuck out her hand, "Jemma Simmons. PhD in Microbiology, working on a second one in Biological Chemistry. And I've already said too much haven't I? I always have a tendency to overtalk around new people. And I didn't mean to pry with your paper, I just thought it looked fascinating. So, is Fitz your first name or your last name?"
'Fitz' didn't answer, he merely asked Jemma if she wanted to help him build the device and she said yes. As months passed, one project turned into another and another and eventually the two became nearly inseparable, save for their separate classes and dorms. At some point, Fitz had become as much of a regular in the boiler room as Jemma was in the engineering lab.
Eventually Jemma found out Fitz's actual first name and insisted that if he went by his last name, so should she and so he called her Simmons and she called him Fitz. Time passed and suddenly they were best friends with all the same upper level classes, making preparations for life after academy graduation and everyone decided saying 'Fitzsimmons' would be faster and easier than 'Fitz and Simmons' and people were starting to make bets about trivial things such as when they would start dating, who would kiss who first, and when wedding announcements would be sent out. And as Fitzsimmons gave their graduation speeches and accepted the titles as the youngest graduates of the S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy yet, they couldn't help but think about how it all started with a device that had a power problem.