#1 I think I fell in love again. Maybe I just took too much cough medicine

Go to karaoke, Skye had said. It will be fun, she'd said.

"Come on, Simmons." Skye nudged her with her elbow. "Relax and live a little."

It was the fifth time that day that Skye had used this argument. Apparently Simmons' usual way of spending the evening, which was going through her reports from work and watching movies or tv shows, was not acceptable. Today her roommate had decided that it was time for a break and that Simmons should get out and socialise a little. According to Skye, it should have had a good influence on her mood.

It hadn't.

Jemma Simmons was bored out of her mind by the lack of any intellectual stimulation, irritated by flashing lights of the bar, and on the verge of a headache from all the noise around her.

This was definitely not her ideal Friday evening. To think, she could have been doing something fun, like reading the latest scientific articles or even watching Discovery Channel! But no, she had to sit here and listen to people insulting popular songs with their untrained voices.

"Oh, look!" Skye poked her arm a few times. "Look, look, it's Fitz! The one from the lab, you know, the new engineer? We've talked about him, remember?"

Simmons looked in the direction her friend was pointing. Of course she remembered, her memory was extraordinary and the one of him was quite and intense and recent one.

Simmons was sitting at her desk, trying to look casual and remember what people normally did in their work when they had some free time. It wasn't looking at their monitors and checking their e-mail inbox every twenty seconds, that's for sure. She looked away from the screen and tried to focus on something else- for example, Skye's happy babbling about new computers. Or were they servers? She drummed her fingers over the desk's surface, reminding herself to stay calm and not raise her hopes too high while she was waiting.

This was more important to her than it should have been and she was well aware of that. The whole situation shouldn't have been complicated and she shouldn't be paying so much attention to it. It should have been simple: there was a new employee in the S.H.I.E.L.D. scientific division and they were supposed to work together on a new project. It hadn't passed the designing phase yet, so they were both working on their own parts, adjusting theoretical calculations and making their own simulations, but soon they would have to enter the practical stage. In three weeks the prototype would be built and they would start testing. Together. She didn't even know who she would be working with, since he had started working there just a month ago and was hired only for this one project. It was very important, so she had been doing all she could to appear nice and open, even though she wasn't too much into socialising. They had been exchanging opinions via e-mail, making sure that each of their fields were fully covered.

And there the problem started: Simmons was trying to give some input. She was trying to be professional, and treat their task with the attention it deserved. First, she had written about things that needed to be done for her part to work. Then she had started adding more details and suggestions. When this too hadn't worked, she had finally added a suggestion about a modification to his part of design. Now she was nervously waiting for his reply.

There was a soft ping sound from her computer, signaling new message. She looked at it quickly, with impatience and a hint of excitement.

Thanks.

That was all it said.

She slowly exhaled.

Well, at least this time it was not plain Okay.

"What's up, Simmons?" Skye stopped babbling and came closer, throwing a look at Simmon's hand clenching on her lab coat.

"The guy I'm supposed to work with hates me?" She tried to explain.

"What? Why?"

"I don't know, we haven't even met yet!"

"Then why do you think he hates you?"

"Well, it's either that or he thinks I'm really dumb. Which can't be the case since I'm quite smart and I made sure to make that apparent in my messages."

"Oh." Skye nodded her head in understanding. "You're just overreacting like always."

"I never overreact!"

"Yeah, sure. Remember when Morse took you for that random security check? Standard procedure?"

"That was different!"

"Mhm. So, what did this hater do to you? Spit in your tea? Switched it with coffee? Pushed you down the stairs?"

"He's ignoring my messages," she said.

"Not responding?"

"No. He's giving me one-word answers." She pointed at her screen accusingly.

"Oh, I get it. Pure hate. Totally. Let me see." Skye stood behind her and read the mail.

"Oh, you're talking about Fitz, the singing engineer. I met him when he started working here. I had to make a few adjustments to the computers in his lab. He's okay."

"Singing?"

"Yeah, he's always humming something under his nose. Really, a nice guy. And what were you expecting from him anyway? An elaborate reply similar to yours?"

"It's a perfectly normal message."

"It's like a milion words, Simmons."

"Actually, it's barely over two thousands, but it's meaningful! Wouldn't make sense if I wrote it shorter." She puffed and turned away, because Sky was great, but sometimes she just didn't get things.

Simmons pushed her lips into a thin line and looked at the stage and the enigma of a man walking onto it, wondering what would he sing. Was there a song with lyrics containing only one word? Or maybe he would just hum the whole thing. Or will it be a "4'33" kind of thing, just standing there for a while and turning the audience into a music instrument?

She heard the first sounds of her favourite song and looked more carefully, with hope shyly emerging from the bottom of her mind, that maybe they weren't so different after all. Maybe they had something besides science in common and their cooperation on that project wouldn't end in a complete disaster.

"Let's get down to business, to defeat the Huns..." Fitz started in a voice that was so devoid of emotions that he almost sounded like he was trying to pass as an artificial reading machine. Nobody would be motivated by this robotic war cry. Simmons was trying to be understanding, thinking that maybe he would warm up in the middle of the song.

He didn't. If anything, he was even worse. At one point his deadpan reached its peak and he was all but speaking the lines of a song.

By the end of it, Simmons was sitting at the edge of her stool, trying not to let her anger get the better of her. Skye was throwing glances at her every now and then, but Jemma was too furious to even notice, focusing on sending Fitz intense glares instead. It was not just an insult to the song- her favourite song. No, it was an insult towards art and everything in the world that was pretty and divine. It called for action.

Skye must have interpreted her actions all wrong, since the moment Fitz stopped singing (if the word even applied to the situation), she took Simmons' arm and practically dragged her off the stool, saying something about how the two of them had to finally meet each other.

She went willingly since the alcohol inside her whispered that the situation called for action and that she should be the one to defend everything that was good in art. This would be the right moment to start.

"Fitz!" Skye waved to him when she got near.

There was a tiny part of Simmons trying to remind her that she should behave like a proper lady, like she did every day. But this wasn't every day, since she was not in her room. She should have waited for Skye to make introductions or some nice small talk, but when Jemma looked at his unruly hair and slightly wrinkled shirt and sweater in nice grey colour and the world around her was still a little wavy because of the alcohol she had drank, she forgot all about politeness and social protocols and said the first thing that came to her mind.

"You sang my favourite song, but you sang it all wrong!" She poked his chest with her finger accusingly, not really thinking about what she was doing.

"Well, thank you for this encouragement, Nightingale." His voice, Scottish, she noticed, sounded more surprised than offended and he even smiled a little at them.

"Hey Skye, good to see you," he greeted her.

"Hi! This is Simmons." Skye gestured to her with amused expression. "Biochemist from the science division. You guys will be working together soon, from what I've heard."

"Oh, so that's you. I'm Fitz. Nice to meet you." He offered his hand out to her.

"No, you don't understand. I'm not saying that your singing abilities are bad." Somehow her brain was still sticking with her first line of thought. "I'm saying that you sang it wrong. You weren't even trying!"

"Let's sit somewhere, we can't talk in the middle of the bar," Skye was enjoying herself way too much in Simmons' opinion, but she was too occupied with other things to deal with it now.

"True, I wasn't." Fitz nooded in agreement without any trace of shame.

"So you're admitting it!"

"Indeed I am. I lost a bet and had to sing, so I went and sang. No rule that the performance had to be perfect. Besides," he continued as they all sat at the table in the corner, "I don't like this song very much."

"What? This is one of the best Disney songs!"

"Depending on what you like. There's a lot of better songs."

And that was how Jemma Simmons reached the conclusion that Leopold Fitz was not only rude, but also really dumb. Too dumb to engage into a discussion with.

"No, no, you obviously just never listened to it closely. It's a great song," she couldn't stop herself from adding. So much for not engaging.

"I did. I know the lyrics. This song is all about how you are not good enough and you have to change or hide who you really are-how you can't achieve anything the way you are and you have to pretend to be someone else. Change or hide your true self. Not very good motivation for a motivational song."

She opened her mouth to protest, but Skye patted her arm.

"Come on, Simmons we didn't come here to argue over songs. We came here to have fun! Who wants something to drink?"

"I'll have to pass. I have to find Hunter or he'll think that I ran away in embarrassment," said Fitz, rising from his seat.

"Bring him here, the more the merrier." Skye smiled and Fitz just shrugged and nodded.

"Okay, I will be right back." he said before leaving their table.

"See, he's not that bad," Skye told her. "And now you know each other, so you don't have to worry so much about your project. Now excuse me, I will bring us some more drinks. Just wait here, don't do anything I wouldn't do!" With that she was gone, leaving Simmons all alone in a crowded bar.

Not for long though, since soon Fitz rejoined her along with a guy she didn't recognize.

"Simmons, Hunter." He introduced them, and she nodded. She remembered Hunter's face his relationship with Bobbi Morse was as famous in S.H.I.E.L.D. "He's my roommate and the one responsible for my singing over there."

"Hey, you're the one who lost! You can't blame me for taking the most of it."

She was silent, a little uncomfortable sitting there with two strangers, so she just smiled politely and tried to locate Skye among the crowd at the bar.

"Still mad about the song? Why do you like it so much?" asked Fitz.

She looked at him again, trying to gauge if he was trying to make fun of her or just trying to be polite.

"Because it's a great song. Not only the melody and the singing, but also the meaning. It's all about becoming stronger and fighting the obstacles and winning over them if you try hard enough."

"Really? You're finding something positive and motivating in 'the saddest bunch I've ever met', 'you're a spineless pale pathetic lot' and the fact that Mulan was afraid of showing her true face the whole time?" Fitz didn't look convinced.

"But she had won in the end! She was smart enough to take the arrow and they let her stay."

"Simmons, I told you not to talk about this song," Skye scolded her playfully while handing her a drink. Simmons looked at her surprised that Skye has managed to come back unnoticed when she was busy talking with Fitz. "No overanalysing stuff, you're not fun this way."

"I can be fun when I want to."

"Okay, lets be fun then and sing a duet!"

"No way, I'm not singing and you know it, Skye."

"Even for me?" She tilted her head the way she thought made her look cute.

"Even for you. No singing."

"Fine then, just watch and learn." With that, Skye stood up from her stool and went to the stage, leaving Simmons alone. With two guys. Again.

She started playing with her straw, pushing the ice all around the glass and trying to think of something that she could be doing in this situation. Should she say something or wait for them to start the conversation? Should she keep looking at her glass or should she look around? Why did social interactions have to be so complicated? He'd probably realised she was a boring loser by now. It was worse than when they'd just exchanged e-mails, but now there was no denying that Dr. Jemma Simmons was not a good companion to have. Their project would be ruined for sure, all because she couldn't manage to make simple small talk.

Skye was still singing and Simmons threw her a look. It was Skye's fault. Really. If it wasn't for Skye, she wouldn't be there. If it wasn't for Skye she wouldn't have made a fool of herself during her introduction to Fitz. If it wasn't for Skye she wouldn't be sitting there desperately trying to figure out what to do. And here was her friend, singing happily with no care in the world about the disaster she had started. Skye was making a show, following the melody and adding to it when she felt like it, not caring about the fact she was out of tune, to the point that it was hard for Simmons to even identify the song.

"What is it?" She muttered under her breath, trying to figure it out.

"Spice Up Your Life" said Fitz and sung the next line along with Skye. The difference was too huge to miss it.

"Oh, so you do have a voice," she said, surprised by how differently it sounded compared to earlier.

"Yeah, I used it for talking all night." He furrowed his brows a little.

"No," she tried to explain. "I mean that-"

His smile interrupted her, because there was something in it that told her to relax and force her own lips to curl slightly. And was that a wink? Had he just winked at her?

"So, you're not singing?" he asked and she just shook her head, still trying to crack the meaning of the his almost-wink. "Why come to karaoke then?"

"Skye," she pointed. "She dragged me by force."

"What were you planning to do this evening instead?"

"Well, uhm..." She was trying to think of an answer that would not make her look like a weird nerd. Shopping was discarded pretty fast as impossible to do in the evening. Going to the bar followed its footsteps, as the one she was currently doing, well, technically. All she was left with was the truth. "I was going to read the latest issue of Science Fair," she admitted. "I just got it this afternoon." She added lamely.

"Oh, you're gonna like it, it's really good," he said. "There's this article about methods of cloaking objects so they can't be seen, which is quite interesting."

"Really? Who wrote it?"

"Anne Weaver."

"Oh, she's great, I love her articles!"

"Yeah, she's really good. Too good for one column, they should give her like five pages. Would be much better than Dormer. His pieces look like they're just copies of the previous ones with minor changes in the hope nobody would notice that it doesn't make sense."

"He's not that bad, just inexperienced." She tried to defend young scientist.

"Then he shouldn't have had so many pages. Is it a scientific magazine or a writing workshop? It was called Science Fair, not Science Fiction the last time I checked."

She laughed a little and asked him about the articles from the last month. And some other things. And then something else. And somehow she stopped focusing so hard on being poilte and social and friendly and was just talking with him, like it was the simplest thing in the world. There was no way that Skye managed to come back, finish her drink, sing again, eat a whole bowl of pretzels, sing again and finish another drink during their conversation, like she claimed later. Simmons would have definitely noticed if any if that happened.

Skye's teasing later that night, when they were both in their pyjamas, was completely unreasonable. Absolutely. The suggestions that she had caught Fitz's eye were just ridiculous. Really, all Simmons did tell Skye just after they had left the bar, that Fitz seemed funny. She didn't deserve the wave of meaningful glances she got in return.

"Oh come on," Skye shouted from the bathroom, her mouth full of toothpaste. "He was so friendly with you! You can't deny that one."

"He was snarky all night long!" she protested while making her bed for the night.

"That's Fitz's version of friendly," came the muffled reply.

Simmons sat on her bed trying to ignore her friend.

"And he's not so outgoing with anyone, believe you me," added Skye.

Simmons hid her feet under the duvet and looked down at it, not really seeing it, and smiled to herself.

Friendly, huh?

A/N:

Huge thanks to my partner from Better Together exchange, EclecticMuse for helping me with the outline, songs, playlists and beta reading the whole thing! This fic is completed and posted on Ao3 along with pictures and links to playlists, so I'll advise to read it there ( /works/3960628/chapters/8882122) I'll update it here daily.

Some songs will be mentioned in this fic and there will be opinions about them. I wanted to point out that they are not my personal opinions- in fact I really like most of mentioned songs.

The title of this chapter is from "American Psycho" by Fallout Boy. Simply because I listened to this song a lot while writing this fic.