"Give me a kiss, and to that kiss a score; Then to that twenty, add a hundred more: A thousand to that hundred: so kiss on, To make that thousand up a million. Treble that million, and when that is done, Let's kiss afresh, as when we first begun."
-Robert Herrick
-o-
It wasn't that they had set out to hide things from the people around them, not really. Hiding your personal life from the rest of the world was just second nature for actors. By the time Fitz and Jemma reached an understanding that they were more than friends, the idea of going public with a relationship just didn't occur to them. (Said understanding was punctuated by a lot of laughing at how ridiculous they'd been and plenty of lip-to-lip and skin-to-skin contact.) To the public and to people in the industry, they were friends, a relationship born by years of being on the same movie sets, but cemented when their television series was canceled, and they were supposed to go their separate ways.
Jemma did as she said she would for the first few months after they crossed the event horizon - she seeked out projects that kept her far from Fitz. She spent a week on a shoot as a detective chasing a dangerous conspirator who was killed 20 minutes into the movie to give the main character the push she needed to pursue a lead. She spent three weeks on an independent film that shot in the middle of nowhere in Louisiana and made her run up her phone bill calling Fitz every night to see what he was working on. Or at least, that's why she pretended to be calling him. She even spent a solid week reading pilot scripts, none of which she wanted to work on.
Fitz did the same, trying to respect her wishes. He shot a horror movie where he finally got to play a villain and decided the experience wasn't really for him. The amount of times he was told to just be a little bit creepier and the things he had to say to the other actors in the script made him take long hot showers every night to wash the experience out of his hair. The phone calls from Jemma afterwards meant he was following it up with cold showers too. She had been the one to say she didn't want to work with him anymore and that they should keep their professional and personal lives separate. He just missed working with her.
But after working together on and off for so long, no casting director was going to keep them apart forever. They should have known.
They also should have known that working together would be very different for them once they'd passed the point of no return.
-o-
Annie and Frank
-o-
"I never understood why anyone would have sex on the floor. Until I was with you and I realized: you don't realize you're on the floor."
-David Levithan
-o-
Fitz scratched absentmindedly at the stubble on his cheek as he watched Jemma's hair get twisted back into a complicated style that involved additional extensions, curls, and, from what he could tell, more hair product than would ever have existed in the "old west." It was all pulled carefully back and secured in place with a single pin so that it would fall just so when the piece was removed. Jemma was ranting quietly, for about the twentieth time, about the historical inaccuracies in the movie they were making.
Nose twitching as he tried not to smile at her, or worse, kiss her to make her stop with the same points she'd already made to him repeatedly, he ducked his head and pretended to be examining his belt, acting like he was worried he'd missed a loop.
Be professional. Be professional. Be professional.
He repeated the litany in his mind while she talked. It had been much easier to be professional when he didn't know what it was like to be completely unprofessional with Jemma Simmons in the privacy of one of their apartments. It had also been much easier to be professional with her since they'd spent months not working in close contact with each other, only being paired up to do a few press days, and when you're in front of a complete stranger answering questions about a movie, you don't usually stop to think about spending quality time with your girlfriend.
Girlfriend.
He still didn't quite believe it.
He glanced back up and tried to straighten his posture when he caught Jemma watching him with a smile on her face. The makeup artist in front of her gave her cheek a final swipe to give her just the right amount of "sun kissed" for a woman who did a lot of target practice outside in the days before sunscreen was available at every corner store.
"Ready," the makeup artist told the director, scrambling out of view of the cameras.
"You guys want to run through blocking one more time?" The man behind the monitors asked them.
Fitz chewed on the corner of his mouth and shook his head while Jemma blew out a breath. "No," Fitz said shortly. They had stretched the limits of professionalism by stalling long enough. "I think we're good."
Good wasn't exactly how Fitz would describe his feelings at the moment. He hadn't done a scene like this one in a very long time. He'd been lucky enough that there was no time for scenes like this in the movies he'd done recently and that a kiss or two at the climax of the film had been enough.
"Yep." Jemma nodded her head, careful not to jostle her hair. "Good." She took two steps back to place her feet on her mark without even looking at the floor. Fitz moved to the doorway of the set that replicated the "powder room" of an old house they had been shooting in on location. It had been expanded by another meter or so, but the space was still cramped with shelves and chairs and tables. Add the cameras in front of them, and he'd never felt so closed in before.
"Alright. Action!"
Jemma immediately went into the headspace of Annie. Fitz could tell the moment she shifted as her posture became just a little less perfect and her head tilted just so as she picked up the basin of water and set it on top of the vanity in the small room. Fitz sauntered in like the cocky sharpshooter he was supposed to be, and she spun on him, letting loose with the beginnings of an argument that Fitz, like Jemma, was sure was mostly fictional. It was meant to be a typical lover's quarrel between the married couple. Every step he took toward her as "Frank" countered her arguments and caused the heels of his boots to click on the wooden floor. He was momentarily glad they wouldn't have to go the whole nine yards for this scene. Getting the boots on had been difficult enough. Getting them off would be a pain.
"I don't like the beard," Jemma snapped at him with the drawl she had been working weeks to perfect. She didn't quite sound like someone who had spent their formative years on a tour of the wild west with Buffalo Bill, but she had become much better at feigning American accents than she used to be.
"I was jus' tryin' it out," Fitz remarked casually, fighting the urge to wrinkle his nose at the Irish affectations he tried to employ. He was of the opinion that he was the worst at adding an Irish lilt to his words of any of the actors he'd known, but he didn't want any critics taking aim at his his natural voice. "Hasn't even grown in yet."
"It hides your face."
She rolled her eyes when she scoffed, and it was such a Jemma gesture of annoyance, that Fitz had to dial his smirk back a bit.
He nodded to the old fashioned razor on the shelf. "Are you goin' to make me shave it off?"
"I could make you. You know how good my aim is." Jemma smiled suggestively as her gaze flickered down his form.
"You want it gone so badly, you do it." He took a seat in the chair Annie used to do her makeup before the vaudeville shows, removing his hat and placing it on her vanity before crossing his arms over his chest expectantly.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw one of the cameras shift slightly to get a new angle.
Jemma's smile stayed in place as she grabbed the razor and all of the shaving materials from the shelf next to him. The director would likely grab closeup shots of hands and the razor moving across skin with doubles, if he hadn't already, but for the rest, she would actually shave off the stubble he was sporting. It wasn't a full beard, and there had been some talk about it being a safety risk from producers, but Fitz had told them all it would be fine. What he didn't tell them was that he and Jemma had already practiced this particular scene on their own a few times when they had breaks from shooting. The warm lather and Jemma's hands on his cheeks made him take in a quick breath, his heart rate skyrocketing. When he and Jemma had gone through the mechanics of the scene in his apartment, it hadn't been in front of anyone, and it had always ended the same - and not in a way they could repeat on set. Jemma licked her lips, meeting his eyes before she picked up the razor and got to work.
It hadn't occurred to him how awkward this would be. No dialogue, just Jemma carefully shaving his face as they exchanged looks that were meant to create the heat in the scene while nearly everyone else involved in the production of the movie looked on. He had been more worried about what happened after the shaving, but this was torture. He anticipated the music that would accompany it would be truly horrific, and it almost made him laugh, but he forced it down. They would only have one chance to do this part of the scene, so he had to make it work.
Jemma rinsed and wiped the razor carefully after another swipe before leaning back in, her breath fanning over his cheek. He closed his eyes briefly before snapping them open again to try to watch her face as she worked. The slight crinkle to her brow and the way she set her mouth as she focused made him grin.
"Don't smile," she chided, even though they weren't supposed to speak, "unless you want to get nicked."
He obeyed, uncrossing his arms, hands braced on his knees instead, letting his gaze drift to the dip in her neckline created by the way she was leaning before travelling back up to her face. Jemma gave a frustrated huff when she straightened from her bent position. By his estimation, she had about half of his face done, which was the point the scene was supposed to escalate to, so he waited for her to rinse the blade again, before he reached out for her waist and pulled her to his lap, tilting his chin farther up.
"Better?"
She hummed in agreement and he wondered if they would cut all of the audio from this completely or leave it in.
He waited while she completed the job, their eyes meeting repeatedly at this close range, and every time she shifted to reach the basin to rinse the razor, Fitz mentally cursed the blocking of the scene, wishing one of them had come up with a better suggestion. When it was done, Jemma gently patted his cheeks with a towel, one that was likely more plush than what Annie and Frank would have had.
"And there you are," she whispered as she pulled the towel away, tossing it somewhere behind her. She poked him in the chest with one finger. "I like this much better."
He was supposed to push her hand away and make a joke, but instead, he made the decision to grab it and twine their fingers together. Jemma raised her eyebrows slightly, indicating her surprise at the change, but she kept going, reaching up with her other hand to run her fingers over his cheek. She smiled when Fitz pulled their joined hands up and kissed her knuckles lightly before using his grip to pull her closer, cradling her hand to his chest.
"Do you want to add the new bit to the show tonight?"
Jemma shrugged, her eyes roving his face.
"We can do whatever you want," Fitz insisted.
"Anything?"
"Sure."
Jemma closed the rest of the distance and placed a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth, crushing their hands between them.
"I don't want to talk about the show," she whispered before kissing him again.
Fitz tried very hard to make sure they didn't topple in the chair, but Jemma continually pushing up against him as the kisses got more and more heated was making it very difficult to be sure they stayed in the right position. Reaching one hand up when she had stopped to take a breath, he removed the pin from her hair and tossed it aside, giving the stereotypically sexy moment the director wanted even though not a single article of clothing had been removed yet.
Jemma blinked down at him, and Fitz didn't feel like wasting the time reminding himself that they were on a movie set anymore. With her flushed cheeks and her mussed hair filling his eyeline and the way she was breathing against him, it felt more familiar than most of their other work in the movie had been. When he leaned back in to kiss her again, Jemma maneuvered herself to give a little more space between them, quickly pulling his shirt from where it had been meticulously tucked by the costume department. Bunching the fabric of her blouse between his fingers, Fitz had to force himself to not tear off any of her clothing. Jemma didn't have that same restriction though as she went to work on his belt, her fingers nimbly removing the leather strip without her having to stand. Fitz was almost certain they were supposed to stand at some point, but he didn't really care when Jemma was dropping the belt onto the floor and pulling his lower lip into her mouth.
In fact, he decided as everyone else in the room faded away, he was just going to keep following her lead.
It was Jemma who shifted, pulling him to his feet with her, and shuffling until her back hit the vanity table. Fitz pressed into her as her fingers returned to his waistband, curling around the edge, but not moving to the button. Luckily, her kissing was enthusiastic enough to swallow the groan he made. His hands moved to her back, then slowly down to her hips, ready to lift her onto the table.
"And, cut!"
Jemma gently leaned her head back from him, giving him a look that was clearly meant to convey that she knew just how much he was enjoying the scene. Fitz squeezed his eyes shut and rolled his shoulders as if shaking off the character. Thankfully, she took her time walking around him when he stepped back, and moved discreetly to stand in front of him as the director rattled off instructions he was only half listening to until he got himself under control.
"Touch ups on makeup and reset Jemma's hair. We'll go again from the towel and through to Jemma up on the vanity. Make sure you hit the basin on the next take."
"You alright?" Jemma muttered to him out of the corner of her mouth before hair and makeup reached them.
"Oh, sure." Fitz rolled his eyes.
They were going to be doing this for hours. He might just die.
She very carefully covered the mic nestled in the collar of her shirt and Fitz did the same under a pretense of stretching.
"Think of it as foreplay," she teased him.
That didn't help him at all.
-o-