The first time he sees her, she's giving a presentation on the benefits of combining a lithium battery base with a solution of 2% chlorine to burn your way out of handcuffs.
It's not the kind of love-at-first-sight cliché that is so frequently used on the rom-coms that his sisters used to make him watch. He is not immediately swept away by how beautiful she is, nor does a heavenly chorus start up when she looks out into the audience and casually meets his eyes.
If that first, unexpected eye contact makes his heart jump into his throat a little, well. That's nobody's business but his.
The first emotions that he does feel about her are, primarily, awe, because that's actually a really clever idea, and then mild annoyance, because he wished he had thought of it first. As he leaves the lecture hall, he doesn't make a vow to search until he learns more about her like he would if he were the tragic hero in so many movies. He doesn't even think about asking after her name, because he'd seen it printed neatly, over and over again, on the bottom left-hand corner of every slide in her tidy PowerPoint presentation.
"Simmons" it says, "Simmons. Simmons."
He doesn't think about her for a week.
The first time she sees him is equally unremarkable. He's bent over a pool table and, from the looks of it, losing miserably.
"That's Leo," her roommate whispers into Simmons' ear. Jemma didn't particularly like her, but it was proving hard to make friends in the competitive atmosphere of Sci-Tech, and the roommate was the only one so far who both understood that she would never be as smart as Simmons and didn't hate her for it. Simmons appreciates that, even though it's a little annoying that she had been dragged away from her research and out to The Boiler Room tonight just so that the roommate could whisper incomprehensible things to her.
"Who's Leo?"
"The cutie you're ogling, duh!" she winks and nudges Simmons in the side, "Don't pretend that you weren't just checking him out!"
"I wasn't!" protests Simmons dumbfoundedly, because she hadn't been.
"Yeah, okay, whatever you say, Hot Stuff," the other girl winks again, more outrageously this time, "They say he's the smartest one here. Besides you, of course. He's a shoo-in for the Sandbox. You should totally, like, talk to him. You guys could be nerdy together, if you know what I mean." Another wink. Simmons hums noncommittally and then makes her escape to the library. She has a test tomorrow, after all.
Fitz discovers that she's also in his neurobiology class, and so, when the professor announces that their next assignment is group-mandatory, he asks to be paired with her. She's clearly the only one there who is capable of keeping up with him, so it makes sense on an academic level. His professor hems and haws, but comes back to Fitz the next day and says that although he prefers pairings to be random, he'll make an exception this time.
Fitz will later discover that Simmons made the same request.
They work together well enough- they are civil and distant, working on the project and nothing else. She finds him dull, he dislikes the way that she clicks her pen when she's thinking, but at least they each have a partner who's willing to pull their weight. The project is deemed a success, some of the best work the Academy has ever seen, but each privately thinks that they could have done better on their own.
Weeks pass. She eats lunch outside on the lawn, he passes by with an awkward little wave. He sets fire to the chemistry lab, she glares at him murderously from underneath her hair, soaking wet from the fire sprinklers.
Neither of them makes many friends.
Fitz has just resolved to himself that this will be his life from now on, always isolated, always too far ahead to be able to relate to his peers, when it happens.
He's walking through the library late at night, deep in the basement stacks searching for a specific book that he wants to reference, when he hears voices.
"Whatever insult you think I have made against you, I can assure you, you are mistaken," comes a crisp, upper-class English accent, "I meant no offense. I barely even recognize you, I can promise you that a slight was not deliberate-" her voice is firm, eager to please, eager to be polite, but nothing more.
"Oh, yeah, like you haven't been looking at this." The answering voice is rough and harsh, the latent anger in the man's voice sending goose bumps up Fitz's spine, "Like you haven't been watching me, wishing you could have a piece. I bet you dream about me, sweetheart, and today is your lucky day."
Simmons' voice has an element of fear to it now- she's starting to panic, "What? No, I-"
"Do yourself a favor and shut the hell up," the unseen man interrupts. There's a loud thump and then silence, and Fitz is running, running as fast as he can towards the voices and thanking the gods that he'd already taken Basic Combat 210. He rounds the corner and there they are; Simmons crouched in a low fighting stance, fists in front of her face to block the blows that are raining down from the hulking third-year that Fitz thinks he might recognize. She's holding her own, throwing a punch in here, connecting with a chiseled cheekbone there, swinging a leg out to knock Big Guy off his feet. But she's no field agent, and the man must have a hundred pounds on her, and he hits her sharply on the back of the knee and she's down too, and he's rolling to lie on top of her, and she's so small that Fitz can't even see her anymore and his vision goes red and then things become very, very clear. He's jumping on the big guy's back before he's quite told his body to do so, and the other man is so shocked that he pulls away from Simmons and starts turning around, trying to find the leprechaun on his back. Fitz slides off and around and, in the coolest combat move he will likely ever make, kicks the guy square in the chest. There's no way that his weak muscles can do anything in a hand-to-hand fight against the third year, but the bastard was caught off guard and addled with lust, so his stance is off balance just enough that Fitz's kick sends him flying backwards.
Fitz grabs ahold of Simmons' arm where she's pulled herself up against the bookshelves and pulls her along beside him. They run and run and run until they've reaches Fitz's dorm and she clings to him as he fumbles with the keys, and then they're inside. They're safe, and the horrible thing that Fitz knew would have happened did not happen, and there's no way that asshole could have followed them. They may not be the best fighters but both he and Simmons are light on their feet, and they ran like hell. He collapses, gasping, onto the floor and only then does he realize that the tiny woman beside him is shaking.
"Simmons, right?" he asks, and she looks up at him from where she's huddled in a ball on the floor next to him, "Simmons, we have to get you to Health Services. You're going into shock, and who knows how many ribs you've bruised. We need to tell someone what happened."
She's gasping these huge gulps of air and, god, she won't stop shaking as she grabs his forearm again, her eyes blown wide with fear, "No! No, please, please, let me just stay here for a little while. I can't go out there again, not yet, I can't-"
"It's okay. It's alright, we'll go in the morning," He tries to reassure her, curling his free hand around the back of her head gently. He tugs her in and she lets him, squishing herself up against his side and resting her face against his neck, "You can stay for as long as you need, Simmons."
"Jemma.."
"What?" He doesn't understand.
"It's Jemma. My name. Please call me Jemma."
"Okay. Okay, I will, Jemma." She breaks then, and sobs these horrible quiet little tears into the collar of his shirt for what seems like half the night.
He holds her, and lets her cry.
In the morning she calls her roommate to let her know that she's okay. The roommate is shocked, horrified! and Jemma is suddenly very glad that it was Fitz who found her, so that she didn't have to deal with this hysteria. The roommate agrees to go with her to Campus Police to report the incident, and they hang up after agreeing to meet back at her dorm. Fitz sits beside her on his bed silently staring at his clasped hands. There is an uncomfortable pause.
Simmons looks around at the walls of his single room and realizes that they're covered with schematics. Blueprints, calculations- he's even got a set of glassware on a desk in the corner. For the first time since this all began, the nausea in her stomach lessens slightly, and she feels a little less like she's going to be sick. She stands to walk around the room, looking at each of the papers in turn, her mouth slightly open with awe. Fitz comes to stand next to her. He points out a few of the finer details of his ideas, and soon they're having a rousing debate over which element is the best (She says phosphorus, he's sticking to hydrogen). Simmons can't stay for long- she has to meet her roommate- but as she stands on the threshold of his room she says, "May I…may I come back? There was something you said about the atomic threshold of the speed of light that I'd like to talk more about. And I think I might have something to add to that layout for the de-emulsifier?" She smiles up at him shyly.
"Anytime, Jemma." He beams back, and Simmons feels that, maybe, she can find a way to get rid of this weight lying on her chest. She touches his hand and says, "Thanks, Fitz," and feels just a little bit lighter.