Jemma Simmons knew from a very young age what she wanted to do in life. Her memorization skills were near perfect. Her drive was above reproach. She could dissect dialogue and analyze emotion faster than anyone she knew. She was born knowing where to find her marks and could identify her best lighting with ease. What she didn't know about acting when she was a child was that there would be so much kissing. Or how kissing one person in particular would affect her.
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Leopold Fitz didn't care what he had to do to get to pretend to be someone else everyday of his life. He'd do anything. He'd sell toothpaste in adverts and smile through his hatred of mashed peas and he'd even learn to SCUBA dive. Anything at all. What he didn't know about playing pretend though was that eventually someone was going to ask you to use those skills to fall in love. Over and over again.
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Romeo and Juliet
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How did it happen that their lips came together? How does it happen that birds sing, that snow melts, that the rose unfolds, that the dawn whitens behind the stark shapes of trees on the quivering summit of the hill? A kiss, and all was said.
-Victor Hugo
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She didn't even particularly like Romeo and Juliet, or Shakespeare for that matter. Studying the tragedies all through school had put her off them. But when up and coming director Antoine Triplett offered you the chance to audition for his stripped down version of the play while you were still a lowly drama student, you took it.
Of course, that also meant that Jemma, as the lowly drama student, skipped her morning classes to race across town, got caught in a downpour, and had an equally drowned rat of a boy spill his orange juice and breakfast sandwich all over her as they both sprinted for the doors of a train. He mumbled his apologies, eyes on his shoes the whole time, and with a roll of her own eyes, she pushed past him and accepted the fact that Juliet was going to turn up to her audition looking like she'd actually been in the middle of the Capulet and Montague family feud, and had possibly been pushed into Verona's Adige River instead of poisoned or daggered.
Trip, as he insisted she call him, didn't even seem to notice the fact that her blouse was ruined, that there was orange juice on her jeans, or that her eyeliner and mascara had ringed her eyes so that she looked like some sort of feral animal. Instead he put his arm around her shoulders affectionately and introduced her to a few of the people producing the play with him that would be sitting in on her audition. He felt like a friend instead of a potential boss, and Jemma was glad she'd had the fortune of being sat next to him in a stage fighting class before he graduated.
"Shakespeare," Trip informed Jemma with a wide smile and a sparkle in his eyes, "is all about the chemistry."
She resisted the urge to roll her own eyes and remind him that she was from England, birthplace of The Bard, and had grown up learning all of his works long before Trip did.
"So, I was planning on having you audition with Romeo, but he's running late."
"Oh. I see."
How unprofessional.
"You want to run through Juliet's monologue for me instead? Just until he gets here? Because I have a good feeling about you guys, but it doesn't hurt to show everyone what you can do."
Jemma gave a sharp nod and Trip left her standing with a well worn copy of the text in the middle of the stage as he ran back to his seat. Glancing down at the page in front of her, the words came back from her secondary school readings of the play, so she closed the book with a snap and began, "Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband?"
Half way through her speech, the back door to the rehearsal space opened to reveal rain sloughing off the roof in sheets. She spotted the same boy who had caused her ruined blouse hurrying through the door and across the floor to whisper something to Trip. He left a trail of water as he did. She didn't let his presence faze her beyond a narrowing of her eyes in his direction, and she hoped that the people watching her audition would just think she was doing that for effect as she talked about Tybalt. As she watched the boy straighten up and look at the stage at Trip's nod though, his mouth dropped open and he turned an alarming shade of red, stuffing his hands in his pockets. It was kind of cute - not that she thought he was cute.
He must have been another one of the producers? But he looked awfully young for that.
She kept going, putting her curiosity in a box at the back of her mind - her fingers gripping the spine of the book like it was the railing of a balcony, her head tilting just so, her brow furrowing as she thought, her gaze drifting to the boy every so often who watched her with rapt attention - and she was fairly certain when Trip called for her to stop that she had nailed it. She was also fairly certain the smile on his face meant he thought so as well. But she still had to be a convincing part of a pair.
"That was great, Jemma. I'm going to have you read with Romeo now, okay? This is Fitz."
"Sure." She licked her lips nervously as the boy, soaked to the skin from getting caught in the downpour again, slowly made his way over to her, giving her a tight smile before looking back down at his shoes. This was Romeo? He couldn't even look her in the eye, much less make her fall in love with him in front of crowd. He hadn't even been able to talk to her on a train, how was he going to do it on a stage?
Now that she saw him up close, she thought there was a chance he was in the lecture class she'd been taking on the psychology of the theater. He looked vaguely like the boy who sat at the back of the auditorium with his head always trained on his laptop screen. That boy's hair was always sticking up at odd angles though, and he always looked like he'd just rolled out of bed. She let her eyes drift over his t-shirt and jeans and decided that yes, this was very likely the same boy. Who never participated in class discussions. At all.
She sighed, resigned to the fact that they probably wouldn't have any chemistry, and she'd skipped class for nothing. At least she'd made a very valuable connection for the future in Antoine Triplett. Everyone said he was going places. He was sure to keep in touch. She hoped.
But when Trip had them start from the first meeting of the characters, Fitz's eyes snapped up to hers and it was like he was a completely different person as he recited the lines purposefully, even flirtatiously. His posture changed, his hands moved with his words, and his lips crooked in a self satisfied smirk. Her lips curled in amusement and she answered him in kind. It was not the kind of breathless and innocent Romeo who fell in and out of love so quickly that most directors asked for, so she wasn't going to play the naive Juliet. By the time he was convincing her to kiss him, Jemma was leaning forward eagerly, letting him press his lips to hers firmly, his soaked t-shirt brushing against her arms and giving her goosebumps.
It was, of course, a typical stage kiss, in that there were no open mouths and no sneaking tongues. It was made to look showy and romantic while being anything but. She still found herself a little breathless when he pulled away though and they both turned to face Trip without another word. The butterfly feeling in her stomach, she was sure, was the result of her nerves. She also had the fleeting thought that she was glad her clothing was already damp or the entire front of her would have been soaked through from the way she had pressed into him on instinct. She hoped she hadn't looked too forward as Juliet. She might have gone a step too far.
She wanted the part desperately.
"Great." Trip beamed at them and nodded. "Rehearsals start Wednesday at five. Don't be late."
She wasn't.
He was in her psychology of the theater class though, as she realized when she walked into the lecture the next week. She caught his eye, and he smiled before quickly looking back down at his computer screen. She had a slight war with her conscience - should she sit with him, try to bond over their new project, or should she take her usual spot at the front? She chose the spot at the front. He still didn't speak up in class. For once, neither did she, busy going over lines and stage direction at the back of her mind.
But she did spend the next two months of her life in rehearsals with someone who barely spoke to her unless there was a script in his hand. On stage, Fitz was a force to be reckoned with and he made her feel alive even when she was pretending to plunge a dagger into herself. When the stage lights were turned down and the makeup came off though, he went back to stammering, not looking her in the eye, and even avoiding her at every turn.
Much to Jemma's surprise, they would do several more plays together before stepping onto a film set opposite one another as well.
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You all have StarryDreamer01 to think for this one as she both beta'd for me and gave me the idea for this story when she introduced me to a series of Youtube videos by the same name. It's already written. There are nine chapters total and I'm considering posting one a day since most of them are so short.
