In which Fitz turns out not to have the strength of his convictions.
Oddly, it's the tangle of sheets around his legs that first alerts him to the crumble of his resolve, a giant stone castle of principle, the ruins of which loom over him in heavy disappointment. But as he fully reinhabits his body, his awareness trickling down from his brain and up from his toes, the ruined castle fades straight to black.
She is here in his bed, one arm wrapped possessively over his shoulder, her hand splayed across his collar bone. The soft swell of her, just one aspect of her physical perfection that he now knows with a new and staggering intimacy, is pressed against the bare skin of his back, her legs entwined with his, knotted up with him in his crumpled bed linen.
When was he supposed to have prepared himself to fend off the advances of the only woman he'd ever loved? How was he meant to have perceived all the inherent danger in her pleading with him not to make her sleep alone? He'd foreseen the tip of the iceberg alright. He'd known that a night with her in his arms would do no favours for his shattered heart. But how could he have said no to her? His beloved Jemma – dissolving at his feet – the woman he'd proved more than once he would go to the ends of the universe to keep safe, to protect, to satisfy.
When her tears on his neck had turned to soft kisses, he was already jelly. When her lips had first melded with his, a new universe to chart exploded into being. When her affection had turned urgent, he was nothing but urges. When her fingers ceased gripping the fabric of his shirt and started undoing the buttons, he was already dangling over a precipice. When she tugged off her own shirt, looked him straight in the eye and gently but insistently guided his hands to places he'd always fought not to let his mind wander, he was falling to his death.
For the first time ever, his brain only had white noise to offer. He was pure instinct – all heightened sensation and passion and gasping breaths and tender emotion. And he'd just gone and proved it to her again and again, though she already knew the lengths to which he would go to satisfy her, and he was rewarded by the singular sweetness of hearing her moaning his name.
There was raw honesty in the way that she'd refused to turn away from the worship of his gaze. Even as she'd writhed above him, her head now and again lolling back as she lost herself to sensation, her eyes had always found their way back to his and all his urgency and pleasure had only increased in its intensity.
He could remember words falling from his lips and he knew what they'd meant. He couldn't be sure that they'd formed anything comprehensible but he knew she'd understood. She'd suddenly stilled, just watching him helpless beneath her. He'd never known such aching intimacy. She'd leaned down to place the softest of kisses on his lips and then drawing back, just far enough that their eyes could focus, she'd whispered of her love for him, fresh tears forming from an entirely different well inside her.
He'd smiled and wept and launched himself off the mattress, pulling her deep into his lap without even breaking their crucial connection. She'd moved again, and he'd risen to meet her, tugging on her shoulders so that the intensity between them exploded into something cataclysmic. They'd simultaneously gasped for air, her arms clasping tightly around his back to anchor her as she rose up once more on her knees, the softness of her chest pressed against the hardness of his.
They'd stared into one another's eyes as they crashed together over and over, their tears co-mingling between them and running down in rivulets into the undulating valley between them. When he'd reached the highest of heights she was right there with him, the pair of them spinning out with the stars while tethered to the earth in one another's arms.
And now he was here, tangled up in the arms of the woman with whom every other part of him, physical and metaphysical, was utterly and all-encompassingly, forever and always entangled. These knots were the kind that could never come undone.
He remembered a misguided attempt of his mother's when he was a small boy, trying to assuage the rejection of his father's departure by bringing him home a puppy from the pet shop when they offered free home trials. They could never have kept the tiny chocolate labrador, they couldn't have afforded to feed it, but Fitz got to experience what it was like to have a tumbling ball of energy to play with, a friend to cuddle up to that loved him back and licked his face as if to prove it. The experience delivered every joy that the pet shop marketing had led his mum to anticipate. But for whatever reason, she did not anticipate the force of passion with which her son had pleaded for the puppy to stay. Having tasted such sweet companionship, handing the puppy back was a task too large for such tiny and already-grieving shoulders to bear. Fitz still occasionally felt guilty for mourning that puppy longer than he mourned for his dad.
"Fitz?" Jemma murmured, nuzzling her cheek against his shoulder blade. He felt the gentle press of her lips on his skin and her arm tightened around him, pulling him back against her.
It was far better than what he expected in the hard morning light. He was afraid she might leap out of bed, a look of horror on her face, cursing herself for her stupidity as she hunted for her clothes. If that was yet to come he probably wouldn't survive it.
He turned in her arms to face her, unable to keep the trepidation out of his expression. But when he met her eyes she smiled at him in a new way. It fed his hope rather than stealing it.
"Mmm," she murmured. "I love you, Fitz."
Fitz smiled back. He wondered if his was new too.
He had never seen her quite like this. Her hair was wild on the pillow, her smiling lips slightly swollen, her body bare before him. In her eyes a playful challenge twinkled. He wanted to live up to it. He wanted to behave as if he really did have the total access to her that she seemed to have granted him. He wanted to gather her up in his arms and kiss her soundly and know with certainty that this was their future.
He couldn't know anything of the sort.
But she was twinkling at him. And her hands did seem to be straying boldly back into you're-more-than-that territory. And his body was responding in ways that made her smile seem that much more lascivious.
There were complications, sure, but Fitz couldn't be expected to solve everything. Not while Jemma was doing that anyway.
He just had to cling to what she'd told him. And she'd told him that she loved him.
well, so, apparently there's that...
My first attempt at this (Ship of Fools) had him being the stone castle of principle. And then I thought, well, what if he couldn't manage it? The poor guy has been through a lot. I mean, as the woman-in-question herself said to the man-in-question: "I'm not saying you're weak, I'm saying all men are weak." Leo Fitz, human man.
And though I'm yet to write actual smut, I seem to find myself dancing along the edge of it an awful lot these days... It must be all that Regency Era AU.
So, what did you think!? Love to hear your thoughts?!
NOT MANY HOURS until we probably see Fitz crying in a corner somewhere. I propose this as an alternative. Can you imagine how badly tumblr would explode!? It would take the planet with it!