Written for the lovely Tiff and also as a filler for the FitzSimmons day of the #maoshiatushug on tumblr, which you should all check out if you haven't already - it's a fantastic idea!
This isn't the promised fluff that I said would serve as an apology for my last fic, but that is on its way, I promise.
As ever, please do let me know what you think with a comment. Thank you!
It seemed as though she came along on the summer wind one night, a breeze through the open window that ruffled his hair and smelt of desert flowers.
He sat, as he always had, in his regular spot in a booth towards the back of the diner, head propped up on one hand, absently spinning his pencil in the other. He scribbled over a few notes he'd made on a scrappy piece of paper smeared with dirt and greasy fingerprints. He never seemed to be able to scrub all of the oil off his hands, no matter how hard he tried.
He laid his pencil down as Sam, the night waitress, came and offered him a refill for his coffee. She always offered, and he never refused and it was a performance that had been rehearsed many, many times as the summer came to an end. He smiled nervously and she threw him a friendly wink and every time she asked him about his day he would try to sound like he wasn't flustered when he replied. Yet it was a rehearsal for a performance that would never come. She hadn't once made a further move, even if she made it clear that she would like to (delivering hints that even he, with such a scant experience of girlfriends and dating, could not miss), and he would never pluck up the courage to ask her out.
He told himself often how foolish this lack of bravery was, not just at this diner but everywhere. He would think often of how lonely he felt out here, but couldn't seem to find a way to change the situation. Even though he told himself he'd do anything for a friend to share everything with, all evidence pointed to the contrary. He had been teased and bullied and alone for as long as he could remember. From the day they laid his mother to rest when he was eight, there had been no one who had wanted to take the time to coax him out from under the veil with which he covered himself, too shy and nervous to show the real Leo Fitz to anyone. He had waited so long by now and wished so hard for someone, anyone, to take an interest that he had expected it to happen with a bang, if it ever happened at all.
And yet, it did not happen that way at all. It came in the early morning gloom in a run-down diner in the middle of nowhere. It came, as he had mused a hundred times since, almost silently on the warm October breeze, and not with the metaphorical roll of thunder he had expected, but a squeak of clean white plastic against shiny ceramic tiles. Her black converse shoes, so clean it looked as though she never wore them, were the first thing he noticed about her. Her accent was the second.
She ordered tea and a sandwich when Earl asked what he could get for her, and her voice was pleasantly soft, melded with a lilting northern English accent that rang through him like the strum of a guitar. Loneliness hit him again for what felt like the hundredth time that night, only this time it was accompanied by an irrational burst of homesickness (despite his not missing home at all) and he ducked his head to return to his sketches.
His father had laughed himself to the pub and back when Fitz had told him about the letter from SHIELD, saying that his Doctoral research was highly impressive and of interest to the organisation. Fitz had been delighted at first when he'd been offered the opportunity to continue studying at this place called the Academy, but his father had quickly wiped the smile off his face. It had been the 'impressive' part that had amused his father so much. Simple matters of engineering were not something deemed impressive by a man who had seen the Gulf War and come out the other side. He would not use his army pension to send Leo off to the States again to 'play around with wires and screwdrivers'. He'd had a full scholarship and paid travel expenses when he went to MIT, but SHIELD had offered him nothing of the kind this time around.
Still, when he'd rejected his offer, citing financial difficulties, he'd received an email the very next day that waived his tuition fees. It would be a struggle, but he was determined he'd manage it. And so, when his classes were over he would ride straight into the city almost every day, and work the evening shift at a garage, repairing motors and upgrading car parts. For someone like him, the work was mind-numbing but the money he earned meant he could afford to sponsor his own extra-curricular inventions, a mandatory part of working at SHIELD.
Then, one night the late bus he took back home broke down and the passengers had all traipsed to this diner to wait for the replacement vehicle. They had waited for hours, and he had found he enjoyed the time there, staring out into the night and mulling over a power problem he'd been having. He came back once, then again, and again until his visits made him a frequent enough customer that Earl knew his order, and Sam knew his name. The cost of coffee was minimal, and worth the breakthroughs he had made in his inventions. He liked being alone here far more than he liked being alone at the Academy. He didn't object to being alone when he had no other choice, it was the solitary breakfasts in the crowded dining hall and the occasional, hopeful but ultimately fruitless trips to the Boiler Room that made him feel so small.
He began fiddling with his pencil again, spinning it quickly over his thumb again and again until he forgot himself and it went skittering across the tiled floor, ending up at the feet of the girl who had just entered, now sat at a nearby booth and reading a book. He briefly considered going over to her to ask for it back, but decided against it, rummaging in his jacket pocket for another. He would collect it when he left.
He had barely reconsidered the design he'd made for a piece of field tech that would allow agents to see through solid obstacles when a slender shadow fell over his papers and he blinked once, twice, before looking up.
"I think you dropped this," she said, holding out his pencil and smiling prettily at him.
"Yeah, sorry…thanks," he murmured, taking it gently from her and cursing his inability to talk to strangers (especially pretty strangers with dimples and a scattering of freckles across their forehead) without blushing.
"What are you working on?" she asked after a moment's pause, nodding at all his sketches.
"Oh," he blushed more deeply, sure she would find this inventor's tendency of his strange or silly and surer still that SHIELD wouldn't want him talking about his work with complete strangers. "It's, uh, nothing."
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pry," she said quickly, but hovered for a moment longer. She bit her lip and, apparently having made a decision, pointed to a piece of paper at the far end of the table. "It's just that that looks like a design for a firearm with bullets intended to create a form of instant unconsciousness or paralysis in their target."
For a moment, he stared at her in silence.
"It…yeah, it is," he told her, surprised.
"You might need to adjust the volume of Dendrotoxin. Point one microlitres wouldn't be enough to knock anyone, or anything, out for all that long and certainly wouldn't create any form of instant paralysis," she told him gently, no hint that she thought his mistake stupid, or foolish.
"Oh, okay – thanks," he mumbled, noting this down.
"Of course, there are plenty of alternatives, from a biochemical point of view," she went on and looked quickly at the empty seat opposite him.
"Yes, uh, please sit down," he replied instantly, cursing his lack of manners. "I – I mean if you want to, obviously."
She flashed him another smile and fetched her bag from her own booth, settling opposite him a moment later. She looked at him pointedly before saying,
"I was just in town because there was a lecture there, given by Professor Simon Ravelhofer, have you heard of him? It went on for hours longer than it was supposed to. I didn't mind though, it was fascinating."
A sudden memory of a SHIELD circular informing them of that very talk flashed through his mind. Startled, he met her gaze and she nodded slightly, answering a question he had not yet fully formed in his own head.
"I go to the Academy too," she whispered. "I've seen you around there, your contribution to Dr. Vaughan's class the other day was great!" He felt a small thrill of pride at that and a smile played at his lips.
As he watched the way her wavy hair settled on her shoulders as she tucked it behind her ears, revealing a simple pair of earrings, set with a tiny stone that sparkled gaily under the glare of the diner lights, he wondered how he had never noticed her before, especially if they had classes together. But then, he usually kept his eyes pointed down wherever he went at the Academy these days.
He watched as the little diamonds threw tiny dots of colour here and there, a pleasant rainbow display on the warm honey brown of her skin, which had begun to pale in places as the summer weather slowly began fade away. He quickly drew his eyes away, and back to his papers, when he realised he was staring. It's just that, well, she was beautiful and she was sitting opposite him like she didn't have a hundred better places to be.
"Thanks," he muttered, a beat too late as he realised that her compliment had been left hanging in the air. He glanced up to see if the sentiment had gone as stale as the words, but she gave no indication of offence.
"Simmons, by the way," she told him, offering her hand. "Jemma," she clarified once he took it.
"Leo Fitz."
"So, this gun," she said, pulling the paper to the centre of the table and proceeded to ask him to explain his design to her, nodding fervently at points, humming at others and interjecting with further questions. He spoke to her with barely-masked enthusiasm, trying and failing to keep himself in check. The last thing he wanted to do was frighten her off. And yet she listened to his ideas in a way he had only dreamed someone would.
Eventually, her food was dropped off, and the two were careful to hide the design from Earl as he went by. The old man was kind, and turned a blind eye to a lot of things in his diner, but Fitz suspected that two young kids designing a gun would push the boundaries of his tolerance.
They fell into a casual back and forth, exchanging ideas, and she quickly slipped a bound notebook from her bag, and began writing down some equations.
All too used to sitting and eating alone, he forgot himself at one point and snagged a fry from her plate without thinking. He realised instantly and his face suddenly felt as though it was on fire.
"I'm so sorry, I'm so used to it being just me eating and working here," he apologised quickly, stumbling over his words and holding the food uselessly.
She merely flicked her fringe out of her eyes and laughed.
"Go ahead, I'm never going to eat all of this anyway. Take as much as you want."
He had never had anyone to share food with before.
"Do you always come here on Friday nights?" she asked once she'd balanced a few more equations, picking up on his earlier choice of words.
"Not always Fridays, just when I feel like it. I work in a garage in town most evenings to earn a bit of money and sometimes it's tempting to have a change of scenery."
She nodded as she pulled apart her sandwich with her fingers, eating a small piece.
"I offered to find a job to make things easier on my parents," she told him. "My sister will be going to university in a few years, and I don't want to make things harder. But they told me to focus on my studies at least for the first year. I don't know how you find the time," she finished, sounding impressed and eating another piece of sandwich.
He shrugged. "I'm tired most of the time," he answered and she laughed sympathetically.
"Talk to Weaver?" she suggested, dropping the 'Agent' as Sam passed, offering him more coffee again. "I'm sure SHIELD could help you out with materials, if you told them about the situation."
"Oh, I'll manage," he said vaguely. He shouldn't have been embarrassed by his lack of money, but he had seen the label in her jacket when she'd shrugged it off, noted the diamonds in her earrings and on a ring she wore on her right hand and he didn't want to admit that SHIELD were already paying for his tuition.
Whether she was acutely sensitive or simply didn't feel the need to pry, she let the subject drop and opted for a safer question.
"Whereabouts are you from?" she asked, "I mean Scotland obviously, but which part?" She laughed again, and he found he delighted in the way her amusement bubbled within her, the noise seemingly always close to the surface.
"Glasgow," he told her and they spoke about home and then a whole host of other things in such a way that made him forget that he had ever been lonely enough to wish he was back in his semi-detached house with his angry father.
In the end, they spoke for hours, almost drinking Earl out of tea and coffee and ordering more food when hunger drifted over them at about four o'clock. Neither noticed the time passing until the sky outside brightened and traces of pink began to weave their way amongst the tapestry of light clouds.
"Maybe we should go, you're probably exhausted," she told him sympathetically and as if encouraged by her words, the first feelings of fatigue began to itch at that spot beneath his eyeballs.
She helped him collect his papers and even carried their plates to the counter, to the vocal appreciation of the newly arrived morning waiter. They traipsed into the cool morning air and she suddenly turned to him, eyes bright.
"Come with me?" she asked, and pulled him to a crumbling wall at the back of the diner, hidden away from the road and open to the expanse of nothing that reminded him just how isolated the place was. She immediately hoisted herself onto a solid-looking part of the wall, her legs dangling just above the ground. He threw her a questioning look, but she did not offer an explanation, instead casting her eyes out over the horizon. The tiredness gradually settled into his bones as sat beside her and waited, although he had no idea what for. He took a moment to survey Jemma Simmons as covertly as possible while she stared out into the distance and he felt a thrill of fear that he had given so much of himself away to someone he had known only for a few hours.
He could think of no good reason why he would suddenly defy years of practiced, studious wariness, so ingrained into him that they had become as much a law as gravity, both keeping him firmly grounded. Years of bullying had taught him to play his cards close to his chest, and yet he had laid more than one hand down on the table over the course of the night. Even throughout all of the nights he had wished for moments such as this, he had never imagined he would have thrown caution to the wind quite so quickly.
Soon enough, the reason for their wait became clear as the sun appeared on the horizon. They watched its slow but steady ascent together in silence for a while, its reliability and adherence to scientific principles a comforting reminder that even though meeting someone in an all-night diner was a startling cliché that he hadn't yet fully understood, the rest of his world was still governed by something a bit more mathematical. It was just another summer sunrise after all, and Fitz's world looked almost exactly had it had twenty-four hours ago, but it already felt different in about a hundred new and rather alarming ways.