So this was an idea that I came up with after the fallout of 3x05. I feel like everyone thinks Fitz is a saint for being such a good-natured, selfless person, which he pretty much is lol. But I wanted to explore a more painful, bitter, secret side of him in this two-shot. He is only human, after all, and he is bound to have some not-so-nice thoughts initially about possibly losing the woman he loves unconditionally to another man. So I hope you all enjoy my short little interpretation of Fitz's and Jemma's viewpoints after Jemma tells Fitz her story.

Loving can hurt, loving can hurt sometimes.

But it is the only thing that I know.

While Fitz worked on the portal simulations, not a minute passed by when his heart wasn't aching. It was a dull pain, a mild irritant that he put aside for later but it would always linger there, just waiting for the opportunity to grow stronger and more intense. And eventually, it did.

It had first been planted there by Simmons, of course; he had thought that the two of them were making progress before she told him about Will. So many emotions and gut-reaction thoughts, initial inklings that he had chosen to keep to himself, had flooded his mind as Jemma reflected back fondly on the time she had spent on the alien planet with him.

A part of him was jealous, though he would never openly admit that to her. Of course she just had to fall for the guy who was his exact opposite: swarthy, muscular, "not very sciency," as he remembered her quoting in her play-by-play account of the last six months. How was he supposed to compete with that? She had never seen him as anything more than a friend until he went to finish off the Inhuman war with Coulson and Mack, and even that could've just been said in the heat of the moment, when she was concerned about him going out into the field.

He knew that he had always loved his best friend, but he didn't realize the depth of his love for her until she jumped out of the plane after contracting the Chiutari virus. Out of all the heart-stopping, frozen-in-fear moments that Fitz had experienced during his time working for Coulson, that one had to be by far one of the most heart-wrenching ones of all. Well, besides Simmons being sucked up by the monolith and him finding the ancient scroll that told him the true purpose of the monolith: "death."

All of the times where he faced the very real possibility that he would have to live without her were without a doubt in his mind the worst moments of his life. If he had to choose between losing Jemma and going through the TAHITI project to erase the bad memories or keeping the tumultuous relationship between the two of them despite the hardships they had been through, he would've chosen the latter in a heartbeat; despite all of the physical and emotional trauma the two of them had gone through since joining Coulson's team, it had just brought them closer than ever before in the end.

When it gets hard
You know it can get hard sometimes
It is the only thing that makes us feel alive

And the worst part was that no matter how hard he tried, Fitz couldn't hate Will; he had saved Jemma's life, after all, and he had treated her with the respect and tenderness that she so rightly deserved. How could he find it in himself to disapprove of the man that was the very reason that Jemma was still alive today, warm-blooded and breathing beside him as they glossed over pages of calculations together? No amount of jealousy and bitterness in him would ever affect his decision to save Will for Jemma- not only because it was the right thing to do, but because it would make Jemma happy.

And all Fitz ever wanted for Jemma, for himself, was for her to be happy, gradually immersing herself back into science again with a clear conscious and with the man she loved at her side...even if that man just so happened to be Will and not Fitz.

However, his hidden heartache became increasingly worse while Hunter was constantly hanging around the lab, and being punished by Coulson for sacrificing Andrew just to get a shot at Ward was clearly making the Brit more annoying than usual. As much as Fitz liked the company, he wasn't exactly pleased to hear Hunter echoing the faint slivers of doubt that already existed in his mind.

He wasn't going to lie- losing Simmons to another guy had suddenly become more painful than he ever could've imagined. Seeing the pictures of Will and Simmons on her phone had brought back the whisper of an old mentality that he hadn't thought about since he was younger, when being smart and quiet had ultimately put him in the "loser" category in school. He had always been the stereotypical nerd in high school and at the Academy, the guy that always got friendzoned because he was "too nice," or "too awkward," or whatever other pathetic excuses his past short-lived crushes had made back in the day. But those were just temporary, flitting specks in the corner of his mind that didn't matter to him at all. And after all of those ridiculous, meaningless crushes had passed, it was Jemma who was reassuring him that those girls were missing out, that any girl would be lucky to date him.

He knew this one was real, this all-consuming, uncontrollable, tender love that he had for Jemma, and for the longest time, he had hoped someday that his feelings for her would be requited. It was like a dream come true when she had suggested the possibility of an actual romantic relationship occurring between them, and he swore that his heart had danced briefly in his chest when he finally worked up the courage to ask her out on a date and she had said yes.

But then, she had disappeared. And then she so happened to fall in love with another guy on another planet while she was gone. Once again, he was the nerd that never got the girl.

And ever since their first date, after she had cried on his shoulder while he stroked her hair and whispered sweet nothings into her ear, his heart had refused to dance again.

"Maybe I was destined to forever fall in love with people I couldn't have. Maybe there's a whole assortment of impossible people waiting for me to find them. Waiting to make me feel the same impossibility over and over again."

A/N: The first two quotes were from "Photograph" by Ed Sheeran and the third one is from a book that I don't know the name of, but I found the quote online and thought it would fit nicely into here :)

Also, this is describing the moments before Fitz hears Simmons's admittance of her feelings for him in 3x07, if anyone noticed that I hadn't put that tidbit in there. But it just might come up in Simmons's point of view next, who knows ;)