So it's currently Fitzsimmons Week on Tumblr, and for that, I'm writing a series of drabbles based on the prompts, with all of them part of a timeline of Fitz and Simmons' life from the Academy to present time. The day 1 story is told in two parts, and kind of serves as a prologue. Part 1 is Fitz-centric, and part 2 is Jemma-centric.
Hope you guys like it.
Day 1: Stargazing
reach a little higher: leo
The door creaks only slightly, but his head still whips around in search of any approaching shadows. There are none, thankfully. He doesn't hear any approaching footsteps either; so he swings the door wide open to let himself in and drops his bag unceremoniously as he enters the kitchen. He goes straight for the freezer, then pulls out the ice tray, empties half of it into a small plastic bag, and holds the bag of ice up to his face.
In the morning, his mother is going to notice the ice is gone, and she's going to see the dark ring around his eye when he comes down for breakfast. But for now, in the dead of the night, it's just Leo and his makeshift ice pack.
It wasn't like this was a rare occurrence for him anyway. He was used to the bullying. At this point, the only part about it that he couldn't stomach was the look on his mother's face whenever she saw the physical evidence of his loneliness and isolation at school. But other than that? He'd long resigned himself to his status as nerdy punching bag.
What would you expect, after all, when you're two months shy of fifteen and graduating secondary school at the top of your class?
When the ice melts, Leo empties the plastic bag into the sink, and loads the rest of the ice in the tray into the plastic bag and brings it back up to his bruised eye and cheek. The silence and darkness of the house unnerves him, so he leaves the kitchen, ice in hand, and steps out into the garden and the cool Glasgow air.
Apart from the occasional barking dog and passing car, it's quiet outside too. But this quiet is more peaceful, less eerie. He takes a deep breath and lets the cold air enter his lungs, takes a moment to savor the breeze on his face, before lying down on the grass.
He lives in a small town, where hardly anything stays open past 10PM, so there's no artificial light to hinder his view of the stars. He remembers being six years old and begging his mother to take him to the library, so he could check out big, heavy books on constellations. He'd bring them out to the garden at night, flashlight in hand, using them as his guide to finding patterns, understanding the shapes in the night sky. He'd built his first telescope when he was ten.
Sometimes he'd imagine himself inventing some sort of jetpack, one that could fly him away from his little town, from his misery, and he'd fly up to the stars and trace them with his fingers.
It's impossible, he knows. He knows that a mere jetpack won't take him to the stars; and that they'd be too big and burn too bright to approach. But he still thinks about it. He still dreams about leaving.
Just a few more months, he reminds himself. A few more months and you'll be off to university, you'll leave them in the dust. You'll leave them all behind.
And maybe it won't be to the stars, but it'll still be far away.
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