His hands were still shaking.
So were hers.
It took him three tries to get the key into the ignition. He kept looking out the window at the man slumped on the ground outside the car, arm at an awkward angle from where Coulson had wrenched keys from his grasp, a knife lodged in his heart. Each time Fitz allowed his attention to be drawn, the shaking of his hands became more pronounced. Her fingers ached to latch on to his, steady them, but she couldn't make her arms move up and away from her sides. She watched him, the fierce determination marring his features, but she sat very still in the passenger seat. Her lips parted as though she could allow words, however unintelligible they might be right now, to spill out, but nothing happened. Her heart rate had finally begun to slow from the chase, but it seemed like everything else had as well. Maybe she was coming down from an adrenaline high. That was it.
The bright lights from another vehicle flashed over his face as their other team members sped in the opposite direction. That seemed to jolt him into action. Fitz turned the engine over without looking at her and Jemma felt her heartbeat begin to race all over again.
There's a cut above his left eye; innumerable bruises probably lined the rest of his body after what they've been through. She could be his funhouse mirror with the cut along her cheek and someone else's skin under her fingers. She'd rather not think about that. There's mud and muck on their trousers. Her sweater is shredded. And for the first time that she can remember in a very long time, he wasn't wearing a tie under his vest.
No, she had screamed at him to take it off and had used it to tie off someone's wound. A former SHIELD agent that she didn't even know. He hadn't made it. Jemma didn't know his name. And Fitz wasn't getting his tie back now. It was back there, in a hallway somewhere, still tied around someone's thigh, soaked through with someone else's blood. The unbuttoned neck of Fitz's shirt somehow made him appear even more unkempt.
He looked like he had just been through a wood chipper. Or worse. He looked like he had just experienced a battle in a particularly cutthroat war. He was very un-Fitz like, crumpled, even rugged. His hair was all over the place, his skin slick with sweat. And god help her, but her body was reacting to it.
She knew it was the adrenaline, the circumstances in which they had found themselves. It was scientifically proven that the body interpreted the chemical reactions of stressful situations as attraction over time. That's why people thrown together in tense scenarios, like hostages in a bank robbery, bonded so quickly, even dated for a while. It's part of what influenced Stockholm syndrome in kidnap victims. That's what this was. Not that this was Stockholm syndrome. It's not like Fitz was kidnapping her. The physiological symptoms were the same though.
That was the real reason SHIELD rotated team members and partnerships so often. The higher ups didn't want agents getting too attached to one another. They didn't want emotions complicating their field work. There were only a few exceptions to the rule – Maria Hill was Nick Fury's second in command and had been by his side as long as Jemma could remember, Romanoff and Barton worked with one another more than anyone else because they were the top agents alone but together they were unstoppable, and Fitz and Simmons. She knew why they were allowed to stay together – their work overlapped one another so effortlessly that most of the scientists who outranked them couldn't tell it wasn't being done by one person. It was like they had one brain. But they didn't. If they did, Fitz would know everything.
How many times now had they been in the same place when there was an attack, an explosion, a hole in the side of the plane, an alien virus or artifact at play? How many times had they been searching for one another through the smoke and the gunfire? She had lost count.
The nerve endings in her stomach tingled and created muscle contractions to cause a fluttering sensation - butterflies. It was because she was nervous that someone else was still coming after them, that the others hadn't been successful in drawing the Hydra agents away from them. That was what made the most sense. But the fluttering sensation in her nerve endings increased whenever she looked over at him and saw the cut on his skin, the dirty smudges on his face, and the stubborn set of his mouth.
Jemma's heart lurched and she stopped looking at him.
She tried to ignore the fact that his usual scent of solder from his work and cinnamon from his toast and honey from his tea was mingling with sweat and blood and everything male. She made a concentrated effort to not notice the way it was making her breathe shallowly, her lungs expanding and contracting at an alarming rate. It was human pheromones, she told herself. Her biology was simply noticing his biology. That was all.
Besides, they had just been through hell escaping from a group of Hydra agents. She was allowed to experience the shallow breathing and tight chest that would ordinarily accompany a panic attack. Even if she didn't feel remotely panicked now that she was in a speeding vehicle with him. Not where Hydra was concerned. They weren't an immediate threat.
Her gaze swept over his fingers as they tightened their grip on the steering wheel and god, if she couldn't just tell that her pupils were dilating. She could still remember the grip of his fingers on her arm as he grabbed her and wrenched her out of the room to follow the rest of the team. She could feel each of those fingers as if they were burned into her. Pressure exerted on her skin and muscle and even bone. It was forceful and protective and frenzied. It was exquisite.
She was used to the feel of his hands. Grabbing onto her own during a particularly tense mission. Pressed against her shoulders during a rare hug. Tapping on her bicep when trying to get her attention. They were usually encased in gloves though. But now, the pressure of his grip in panic without any gloves to hide the feel of his skin? She wanted to know what that would feel like on her bare hips in other frenzied circumstances. Fitz always teased her about how much he liked to use his bare hands.
She couldn't stop the images from assaulting her mind. It was too much.
She drew her knees together and struggled to buckle her seatbelt, but her shaking hands made it all the more difficult. A strangled sound emerged from her throat that she was sure he would think was a sob born out of fear.
"It's going to be okay," Fitz told her softly.
Jemma snapped the seatbelt into place and nodded mutely, knowing that he would be looking at her for some sort of reaction. She turned her face away and stared out the window. One of them should keep a look out to see if they were being followed, right? That's what she was doing. Not avoiding his intense stare at a red light. Not trying to hide the shiver that went down her spine at his tone of voice, low and comforting.
What was wrong with her?
She'd had years to react to him this way. Years. And sure, she had been attracted to him. She wouldn't deny that. But this was ridiculous. She was always able to control her physiological reactions around him. It was the single area of her life where she could lie effortlessly. Pretend that she had never been remotely interested in him as more than her friend and colleague. It had always been easier that way.
She could feel it when he turned his head away, his eyes focusing on the road ahead just before they pulled off. He was weaving in and out of traffic, trying to stay in the thick of it, make it difficult for anyone to catch up to them. Fitz had actually done very well in the evasive driving course they had taken at the Academy so many years ago. It had surprised their instructor, but Jemma knew that he would do well. Someone like Fitz, who could beat just about any video or computer game with ease, would have no problem with the control it would take to outmaneuver a shadowing vehicle.
She remembered the smirk he had leveled on her when he beat her in that course, the way she rolled her eyes in response, shoved his shoulder gently to stop his goading. Maybe that was when it had started. When she started reaching out to him more, fingers ghosting over his in the lab, hip setting against his when they sat on the couch in the common areas, shoulders touching when they bent over notes.
Jemma wasn't completely blind, contrary to what someone like Skye might believe. She could see the way he looked at her, even if she pretended she didn't. It was different from his gaze on everyone else. It was special. It was focused and lost at the same time. It was intense. It was the way a child looked at their favorite toy. It was the way an artist viewed their best work. It was the way a parent gazed on their only child. It was like his eyes were holding on to their dearest secret while announcing it to the world at the same time. Most of all, it was the way a lover would stare when waking up next to their other half. It should have all made her uncomfortable that there was so much emotion wrapped up in that look.
It didn't. It made her feel special. Unique. Cherished. His.
It was the reason she had been providing Hydra with incorrect information for the better part of a year.
They had gotten to her the same time SHIELD had and Jemma had never fully committed to one side or the other. It had never been about good or evil for her. She just wanted to help people. She wanted to change the world. She wanted to participate in scientific breakthroughs. She wanted to make a difference. And for a while, she hadn't cared what side she had to be on to do it. She had never had to lie about it. No one had outright asked her if she was providing intelligence to a group long thought dead, and she wasn't volunteering that information. She only provided them with bits and pieces of disconnected research, nothing major. Until she was put in the field. The things they asked her for became more and more dangerous. And she became more and more suspicious. She started holding back.
Working with Coulson's team, watching Fitz become braver on missions, befriending Skye, coming to understand why May was the way she was, seeing Ward becoming darker and darker as time went on, she knew where her loyalties really lay. And it wasn't with a group based on a mythical creature hell bent on power. It was with the man next to her and his firm belief that there were good people in the world who needed to be saved. He trusted her completely. And she wasn't going to let him down.
Heat rose to the surface of her skin and Jemma hung her head, wishing her hair was down to hide behind. She ducked, opening the glove compartment, hoping to find a weapon of some kind, just in case. If they got caught on their way to the rendezvous point, well… They were out of ammo. Trip had a knife in his boot, but he was sleeping off a tranquilizer of some kind in the back seat. May's fists and feet were deadly weapons, but she was doing the same.
It was unusual that she and Fitz were largely unscathed.
Maybe not so unusual though. They weren't a threat. Not physically. Hydra knew that. And they wanted Fitz's brain. She wasn't going to let that happen. She wasn't going to let him be used in a power struggle the way she had been. Under no circumstances was she going to let them torture him into submission. And they likely knew that now. She had just helped he and Skye rig an entire facility to explode without giving any warning to anyone on the other side. They would come after her. Eventually. They probably had other bigger things to worry about right now. But when they found her, there would be no more promises of a secret lab for her. They would kill her. Probably slowly. They'd probably make Fitz watch, use it to motivate him.
In the glove compartment she found a clip full of small caliber rounds, but no gun. Who would leave bullets in their vehicle without something to use them? The man Coulson had stopped from getting in his car hadn't even had a gun on him; he had favored knives. She turned the clip over and over in her hands, looking for anything out of the ordinary, and she found it. A tiny symbol etched into the bottom. She popped the clip open, worrying one of the bullets between her fingers.
"What is it?" His voice was hushed, concerned, and she felt the stupid butterflies kick up again. She was a grown woman. She shouldn't be reacting to this situation like some sort of love sick teenager during finals week.
She could save her own life. Right now. All she had to do was keep one of the bullets on her at all times, alert Hydra to her location. She could turn the rest of them in and never look back.
"Get on the bridge," she snapped, gesturing to a turn in the road ahead. Something in her tone must have worried him because he didn't question her, just pulled the car into the next lane, heading onto the stone structure over the river. There was less traffic here, easier for them to be spotted, but she didn't care. The river flowed in the opposite direction of the safe house an old friend of Coulson's was providing them. When he reached the middle of the bridge, she lowered her window, arched her hand back, and threw all of the bullets as hard as she could into the rushing waters below, followed by the clip itself. The individual rounds should flow at the same speed, but go in enough different directions as the river widened to confuse anyone who might be trying to find them on the Hydra end. "Tracker rounds," she muttered to him.
She didn't explain how she knew what they were. She couldn't. They looked completely different than the ones he had designed on the bus. Fitz took her word though and kept driving.
"Clever." He sighed, one hand coming off the steering wheel to run through the unruly curls on his head.
She swallowed. She wanted to make him feel better. She wanted to be the one running her fingers through his hair, soothing away his troubles. She wanted to make him forget. But she couldn't. She gripped the console between them with her left hand instead, her eyes back on him. She couldn't tear her gaze away now. She hadn't seen him look like this since they failed their first set of field assessments. The lines on his face tensed as he clenched his jaw. Her hand twitched with the need to smooth them all away.
"It's going to be okay," she whispered, echoing his earlier statement. "Everything is going to be okay."
He nodded, eyes not leaving the road, and dropped his hand on top of hers on the console, squeezing her fingers gently. Jemma's heart thumped against her rib cage, and she opened her mouth to say something, anything other than the thoughts plaguing her. Instead, a groan from the back seat alerted her to the fact that one of their team members was regaining consciousness.
Thank goodness.
Another voice in the darkness would calm the emotions inside of her, give her something else on which to focus.
"Simmons?" May asked groggily from the back seat. Of course it was May. Her smaller body mass meant the toxins that had been fired on them worked their way through her system much faster. She hoped. She wasn't certain what had been used on them. There were actually several options, and none of them were particularly pleasant. "Where's Coulson?"
"He and Skye took another car," Simmons whispered, her voice a higher pitch than normal. She unbuckled the seatbelt she had worked so hard to snap in place. Twisting around, Simmons climbed to her knees and reached into the backseat to check May's pulse. "You and Agent Triplett were unconscious, so he thought it would be best if you-" She cut herself off as May's eyes closed again. "Damn."
"What's wrong?"
"She's out again." Simmons tried to take a deep breath, but she couldn't draw in enough air, so she clenched her jaw and pressed her fingers to the other woman's pulse point instead, taking unsteady breaths through her nose. The heartbeat was steady, if slow. She didn't bother to check Trip. According to the rise and fall of his chest, he was breathing. And right now, that was enough. "I need to figure out what they dosed them with."
"Coulson said we can't stop."
"I know."
Jemma sighed again, sitting back on her heels, but not turning around. If she turned, she'd be in his line of sight again. Here, hovering over the head rest of the seat, her eyes on the sleeping teammates, she could pretend they were on some sort of twisted vacation ride. She could pretend that this was an enjoyable trip, not a stressful one. She could forget for a moment that she hadn't told Fitz the truth about who she had been in contact with when they were at SciOps, even on the bus. With her chest pressed against the seat, she could almost imagine that she was a little girl again, curious about what made the world work, not yet introduced to the cruelty of it.
But then she could see the knife wound in May's shoulder she hadn't had a chance to stitch and the way two of Triplett's fingers were sitting at an angle that wasn't quite right.
"Jemma?" Fitz's hand awkwardly graced the small of her back in an effort to get her attention. She answered with a noncommittal noise, not moving, but her body stiffened under his touch. She could feel every movement of the back of his hands on her spine. It woke up every cell in her body in the way that the adrenaline of running for her life had not. "You should put the belt back on. If I have to speed up again-"
Without looking at him, she knew he was shaking his head as if trying to rid it of bad thoughts as his fingernails caught on the fabric of her sweater. She leaned back into his touch, holding her breath and counting to ten, before turning and flopping back into the seat. Fitz squeezed her shoulder in thanks and dropped his hand back to the console.
Unable to swallow down her guilt anymore, and sure that May and Triplett were not going to wake immediately, Jemma asked, staring straight ahead through the windshield, "what do you think would have happened to us if we had never gone out in the field?"
Fitz sighed, turning onto another street, then bringing the car to a stop at another traffic light. "They had agents everywhere, Jemma. According to Garrett, I'd be missing my kneecaps and forced to work on whatever projects Hydra handed to me."
Jemma shuddered, and she couldn't stop herself from reaching out to his hand on the console, twining their fingers together tightly. That was the one thing that had kept her feeding them false information, the worry that the anger at her just halting the stream of content would be taken out on Fitz instead of her. Her affection for him, however platonic she may have thought she made it seem, had been obvious as soon as they had worked on their first Academy assignment together. She tried to stop herself from glowing when she spoke of him. She tried to temper her excitement at finding a mind that challenged her. She tried to downplay their closeness. But her handler had found her feelings obvious enough and had suggested she try to recruit him numerous times. That was when the first flicker of doubt about what she had been doing entered her mind, but she kept supplying information anyway.
"Hey," Fitz drew their connected hands closer to himself, "we're not going to let that happen, right?"
"Right."
They didn't say anything for a very long time. Every so often, Jemma would gesture ahead if she thought they should make another turn, just in case. They drove until the gas tank was nearing empty before they finally took the stretch that would actually lead them to the safe house. Fitz kept her hand securely tucked in his own, and she appreciated it, she really did. She appreciated the way he would give her fingers another gentle squeeze every time she sighed to reassure her, or how his thumb would sweep across her skin every so often, reminding her that he was there for her, as if she could forget. It had the effect of both grounding her and keeping her floating above it all. She was torn amongst her relief at their seemingly easy escape, her guilt at the betrayal that she never wanted him to know about, and the overwhelming attraction she was finding she could no longer set aside so easily.
She needed to get out of this vehicle. She needed a task to focus on. And she needed one soon.
As they drove through a quiet neighborhood on a lane without the glaring streetlights of the city, Jemma pointed up ahead to a two story house with boarded up windows and a for sale sign in the front yard.
"I think that's it."
"Does it look like anyone's awake? Coulson said not to draw attention."
Jemma twisted from side to side, eying windows with fancy curtains, dark corners by garages, and parked cars under trees. Her imagination made her think that one set of flowers was planted to give the outline of the Hydra symbol. She thought for a moment that she saw the flicker of a porch light a few houses down, but it was just a bug zapper.
"It looks clear," she murmured, "but maybe you should cut the engine and coast in, just in case?" Fitz did as she suggested, taking the worn grassy path to the side of the house that rested at the end of a slight hill before he put the car in park. Hopefully, they wouldn't wake the neighbors. Especially since they were about to carry two unconscious bodies into the backdoor of an empty house in the middle of the night.
Getting into the house even proved difficult. There was no key hidden under the unicorn statue in the backyard like Coulson said there would be. Simmons had to take pins from her hair and pick the lock, something she hadn't done since she first learned how at 18 during year one at the Academy. It took too long, and it made her uncomfortable, like there's someone watching her. Fitz standing at her back, keeping an eye on May and Triplett in the car, the fence around the perimeter, her fumbling with the pins, it all made her nervous and antsy until she could finally hear the click signaling an unlocked door. She breathed a sigh of relief, but it was short lived as Fitz quickly stepped around her, armed with nothing but a pocket knife, and entered the house.
"Fitz!" She hissed, but he waved his arm behind him to ward off her concern. There was no sign of Coulson and Skye, but seeing as how they had a Hydra agent tied up, gagged, and drugged in the backseat of their vehicle, there was the possibility that they had run into a complication. Jemma twirled wildly, wanting to know if there was anything she could use as a weapon, anything to help their situation. She shouldn't leave May and Triplett alone in the car, but her desire to keep Fitz safe won out, and she picked up the unicorn statue from the ground, brandishing it like a very heavy baseball bat. "Fitz!" she hissed again, stepping through the doorway. He didn't respond, but she saw his back disappear around a corner up ahead.
The back door had led her into a kitchen. Surprisingly, even with boards over the windows and a layer of dust covering everything, there were relatively new appliances, dishes, even magnets on the fridge. Jemma crept forward, keeping her eyes peeled, as she allowed her feet to take her instinctively after Fitz. She stopped directly behind him in what must have been the living room. The furniture was all incredibly ornate and old fashioned from what she could make out in the darkness. There was even a hat rack with curling feet by the front door.
Fitz wasn't paying attention to any of that though. His head was cocked to the side, his ear trained on the upstairs, listening for any creaking floorboards, even the smallest movement. Jemma stilled her movements behind him, waiting as well. Neither of them heard anything. There was no hum of electricity, no spinning of the air conditioning fan, no signs of life.
Fitz turned, not at all startled by Jemma's presence at his back. "Let's get May and Trip out of the car. We should be able to put them in here," he pointed to the furniture.
It took both of them to pull May from the back of the car, and she was the smaller of the two. They struggled to carry her through the kitchen and into the living room, her hands almost slipping from May's shoulders several times. She wasn't sure how they were going to make due with just the two of them carrying Triplett.
"Here," she grunted, directing Fitz to place May in an armchair that had seen better days. Out of breath, she leaned forward, prodding at May's shoulder to see try and see the extent of the damage in the dark. She couldn't get a good look at it though, so she reluctantly stood back up, following Fitz through the house to get Triplett from the vehicle.
It was just as she feared. The two of them were not exactly field agents, and as such, they weren't as strong as someone like Triplett. Carrying him into the house was much more difficult that Fitz had anticipated, and he banged the other man's side into first the doorjamb, then the edge of the dining room table. The comically stricken expression on Fitz's face was enough to make Jemma giggle and have to set Triplett's feet down on the floor in the hall. It soon became full blown laughter, bouncing off the walls, echoing in the quiet of the abandoned home. She couldn't stop, and tears began streaming down her cheeks.
"I'm sorry," she gasped as Fitz unceremoniously dropped Triplett and jogged back to shut the door, leaving them in almost complete darkness. "I couldn't-" Jemma gasped again, trying to draw in air. She knew her laughter was a response to the intense relief that she was feeling combined with a reaction to Fitz and the look on his face. She knew now was not the time for it, but she couldn't make herself stop. Maybe it was a good outlet for all of these pent up feelings.
Fitz stood in front of her, arms crossed, a scowl gracing his face, and he waited for her to calm herself.
"Are you finished?" he asked her with something of a smirk that she could just make out in the darkness. "Because I think we should just leave him here for now. We need some light."
She hiccupped. "Yes. I'm quite finished." She giggled though before she could stop herself, and Fitz rolled his eyes in the darkness, turning from her to return to the kitchen and open cabinets and drawers, attempting to find anything they could use as a light source. When he turned back to her, the light of a flashlight aimed at her, she took a deep breath and cleared her throat. "Okay." Another deep breath. "I'm okay now." She nodded her head in Fitz's direction, using her hand to shield her eyes from the light. "I need to find some first aid supplies, needle and thread, we probably need water-"
Fitz turned from her and stalked back to twist the knob of the faucet, but no water flowed from the tap. "No water," he reported. "But we'll probably be able to find gauze or something, antibiotics, in a bathroom. I mean, look at this," Fitz opened a cabinet, letting the light from his flashlight illuminate the fully stocked shelves. There were various cans of vegetables and soups, oatmeal, trail mix, crackers, beef jerky, protein bars. It was all items that would hold up over prolonged absences. There was no molding loaf of fresh bread or disintegrating fruits. "Somebody planned ahead," he remarked.
"Yes, it would seem so…" Jemma's thoughts trailed off. Just who did this house belong to? It was boarded up so that no one would see if someone inside turned a light on. There was enough food to last a small family for a few weeks, or maybe a week if that small family included someone with Fitz's appetite. Coulson knew where the key was supposed to be. The lack of electricity and water made her pause though. If this was supposed to be one of SHIELD's safe houses, it hadn't been used in a very long time. There were no high tech key pads or security cameras. It was much more likely that once upon a time, someone Coulson knew had lived here.
Following Fitz from the room, Jemma carefully stepped over Triplett, searching for a bathroom. Most of the doors they came across were locked, and it didn't seem smart to waste time unlocking them.
"Upstairs?" Fitz asked her when all they found was a closet of blankets and the door that led down to the basement.
"Upstairs." She agreed, the two of them taking the steps side by side. "Do you think Coulson and Skye will be here soon?" She wondered aloud, her hand catching Fitz's as they climbed. She stopped herself just short of wrapping her fingers around his, settling for a quick brush of skin before she began to climb the stairs just a bit faster.
"Yeah…" Uncertainty was clear in his voice, so he amended it with, "I'm sure Coulson took a less direct route than we did."
"A less direct route? Are you serious?" Jemma sputtered. She had thought the drive here took forever. But then again, she had felt incredibly trapped in that car. Fitz had done exactly as he was supposed to do – lots of turns, double backs, and staying in the midst of other traffic. She couldn't fault him for that. They had managed to get here without being followed, hadn't they?
When they reached the landing, Fitz moved in front of her yet again, handing her the flashlight and brandishing the pocket knife in front of him. Jemma smiled at his back and resisted the urge to roll her eyes. The first two doors were bedrooms, empty closets and dressers in them, but queen sized beds with covered mattresses took up the bulk of the floor space.
"This is ridiculous," Fitz muttered, mostly to himself, "where is the bloody bathroom?"
Jemma let out another giggle as she moved to the door across the hall and tried to reign in the inappropriate humor response again. It shouldn't be funny that the two of them were having such a hard time finding a bathroom when they had two teammates downstairs suffering from more serious injuries than their own.
"Here," she called to Fitz after she pushed the door open to reveal marble counter tops and gorgeous tile flooring. Someone had spared no expense in the bathroom. It was like the kitchen with the modern faucets, towels stacked neatly on a shelf, a black and white shower curtain in place, there was even a toothbrush and mouth wash by the sink. Someone was definitely using this house. She opened the cabinet under the sink while Fitz took the one above it behind the mirror.
"I've got a sewing kit, a roll of bandages, and assorted bandaids," Fitz remarked, surprise evident in his voice.
"Well, there's no antibiotic cream or hydrogen peroxide, nothing like that. I've got something better though." Simmons stood back up to her full height, almost colliding with Fitz, and showed him what she found – a full handle of vodka. "It's the good stuff." Setting the flashlight down on the countertop next to the sink, the light spiraling around the room until it settled in place, she twisted the top from the bottle and poured a stream over her hands. She used the tips of her fingers to pry dirt and skin from under her nails, shuddering a bit at the memories it evoked. "Hands," she commanded of Fitz when she was done. She might need his help with May and Triplett. And who knew what kind of injuries Skye and Coulson might be coming back with. He dropped the knife to the counter with their small bounty of medical supplies and held his hands obediently over the sink. She rinsed his thoroughly as well, her fingers slowly running over his without conscious thought. After a moment of thought, she rinsed the blade of the pocket knife as well. She gave a little hop of surprise when Fitz's hand grabbed her chin, tilting her face to the side.
"We should probably get that cleaned up," he remarked, his gaze running down her cheek where the scratch marred her skin.
"I – I'm sure it's fine." Jemma tried to take a step back, very aware of his breath ghosting over her cheek.
It's not that they hadn't patched each other up before. It's that they're in a strange house, in the dark, and it feels more intimate than it should. Fitz ignored her though, finding a pack of cotton swabs – the longer ones used in doctor's offices, and pulled apart the packaging to grab one. He poured the vodka over the tip and eyed her with trepidation before gently scraping it along the scratch on her face. She winced at the sting of the alcohol, closing her eyes so she didn't have to see the apology in his expression. She swallowed as he pulled the swab away and opened one of the larger bandaids, spreading it neatly across her cheek and using his fingers to smooth out the adhesive fabric. She wasn't sure how much good it would do her since they had nothing to put in the wounds to prevent infection, but she did appreciate the gesture. His finger tips lingered on her skin for just a moment longer than necessary, and Jemma finally turned her head away, setting about getting the materials to clean Fitz's own wounds.
He stayed very still as she worked, his eyes on her the entire time. She didn't know how he managed to not flinch from the vodka on his open cuts, but there was some sort of resolve that's settled over him since they got here. She used the butterfly bandages over the few larger cuts and left the smaller ones uncovered. They would heal faster on their own. She didn't look at him when she finished, instead gathering their garbage and stuffing it into an empty garbage bag she found under the sink. Jemma knew that she needed to look at May and Triplett sooner rather than later, but a part of her very much wanted to stay hidden in this bathroom with Fitz until Coulson and Skye would get there and tell them everything was going to be okay.
Her vision swam for a moment as tears pooled in her eyes, the possibility that Coulson and Skye weren't coming hitting her like the hand of the Hydra agent she had run into earlier.
"It's all going to be okay," Fitz repeated his earlier mantra to her, one hand reaching out, fingers grazing her elbow.
It's like it all hit her at once. The running from Hydra, the unconscious teammates, Coulson and Skye not getting there before them, this abandoned house that someone clearly uses (who knows who at this point), the lying she's been doing by omission, all the feelings she's been burying… Everything was just too much for her, and she voiced a thought she had weeks ago when they were hidden in the supposed safety of Providence base before she could stop herself.
"We could just leave." She drew in a breath at his wide eyes and open mouth. "We're not trained for this. We're not agents anymore. Not really. We could just leave it all and disappear and never look back." The words tumbled from her mouth faster than any argument she had made with him in the past. "We could start over. And I –" Jemma stopped just short of telling him that she was afraid of what the repercussions would be for them if she was caught. She remembered his reaction to finding out that Ward had betrayed them the entire time he'd known them. Selfishly, she didn't want a similar result to be because of her. She didn't want to hurt him. She didn't want to lose him.
"You'd really abandon them all because you're scared?" Fitz asked her, not angrily, just curiously. He had always thought Jemma brave, foolishly sacrificing herself for her teammates. More than once he had chastised her for it, and she knew that's what he was thinking about now.
"I don't know," she admitted honestly, eyes pleading with him to help her make a decision. "I – I'd miss them. I'd worry about them. I'd feel guilty. But if you said yes, I'd leave. Right now." Her voice shook when she admitted it to him. "Fitz," she whispered, "If Hydra finds us…" She shook her head, not sure how to explain the way her fears had been compounding the last few weeks, how what she just did at the Hydra holding facility was likely the last strike for her.
"Jemma," he interrupted, hands settling on her shoulders, resignation in his tone, "I know."
"What?" Her voice was thick with the tears she hadn't been able to cry yet. "What do you mean?"
"I know," he repeated, his thumbs rubbing soothing circles on her shoulders trying to keep her calm. "You've never been a very good liar."
"Fitz…"
"You've been sending encrypted files out to someone for years, Jemma. We share a work station. Did you think I wouldn't notice?" He almost smiled then, but at the horrified and ashamed look that crossed her face, he didn't. "The data you've been sending them for the last year though, it's all been wrong. You've been fighting them all on your own, and we didn't even know it."
Jemma gaped at him. He had known this whole time and he hadn't turned her in. He hadn't said anything. He didn't hate her? She couldn't help herself. She threw herself at him, tears finally falling, and wrapped her arms around him tightly.
"I'm so sorry," she whispered into his shirt, clutching at him.
"For what?" His hands ran up and down her back, trying to find a way to calm her.
"You asked me… and I said no… It wasn't always the wrong data," she admitted. "But I didn't know what they were doing when I started, I swear!" She sniffed, pulling back to look him in the eye. She was grateful that he didn't seem angry, but she didn't understand it. If their roles had been reversed, she would have been terrified, betrayed. "I just wanted to help people."
"I know."
"You do?"
"Jemma Simmons always wants to help people," Fitz told her matter-of-factly. "She can't seem to help it. It's why I asked. I had to know." He tightened his arms around her. "Neither of us would be cut out to work for them, would we? I think I would have done the same thing if it was me."
"They'll kill me," she murmured, another flood of tears slipping down her face. She was going to ruin the bandage he had just fixed for her.
"I'm not going to let that happen."
She shut her eyes, burying her face in his shoulder and willed the world to stop spinning for just a moment, just long enough for her to grasp the fact that Fitz had known what she was doing this entire time and had still trusted her to be his partner, to work on his experiments, even to not kill him in his sleep.
"We can't leave, can we?" She questioned, her words muffled in his shirt.
"I think," Fitz said, dropping a kiss on the top of her head that made her heart flutter all over again, "I think our best chance at beating these bastards is by Coulson's side. What do you reckon?"
"You're right." She sighed, breathing him in, but didn't let him go. Not yet. She wasn't ready to.
"It's okay to be scared though, yeah?"
"Are you?" She knew it was a stupid question, but the words left her mouth anyway. She needed to hear his response.
"I'm bloody terrified. Just don't tell anyone."
The creaking of a floorboard from the hall stopped her laugh short, and Fitz moved faster than she thought possible, pushing her behind him, picking up the pocket knife, and turning to face the door all at the same time. His stance was likely flawed, the logical part of her mind told her, but he wasn't going down without a fight. She picked up the only thing within her reach that would likely do enough damage, the plunger, and stood at his back.
The brunette woman holding an ICER that stood in the doorway took in Fitz's determined expression and Jemma's tearstained cheeks quicker than most.
"What'd we miss?" Skye asked, flabbergasted that they were both brandishing weapons at her. She held up her hands and then stored the gun in the back of her jeans.
Simmons looked at the floor, putting the plunger back in its rightful place.
"Nothing," Fitz answered for both of them. "We were just sorting some things out." He picked up the medical supplies from the sink and nodded at Jemma. He would keep her secrets, just like he had all along. Warmth and affection surged through her, and she kissed him on the cheek as she grabbed the bottle of vodka.
"Come on," she said, her hand wrapping around his wrist, "let's go patch up May and Triplett."
Jemma felt Skye's eyes follow them from the room.
"Seriously? What did I miss? I know I missed something!"
-o-
A/N: So many theories about Jemma Simmons have been floating around since the last new episode, not just concerning Hydra, but also concerning whether her feelings for Fitz are platonic or not. I want to make it clear that I don't think Jemma is Hydra. Well, I hope she isn't. But the writers on the show did a good job at planting the seed for the possibility of it. Instead of her going dark and betraying them all as some fanfic writers have done, I thought I'd take a different approach to the possibility. And this is what happened. It became much longer than I originally thought, but I had a lot of fun playing with Jemma's mind. I hope you all enjoyed it!