Favourite Leo Fitz Moment:
It's been so long coming. He may not have the courage to talk about it but somehow, in this moment, he has the courage to show her.
This isn't oxygen, this isn't risking an alien virus, this isn't sheltering her with his own body while a castle disintegrates around them. This isn't even diving into the terrifying unknown which, in hindsight, may have been slightly less complicated.
This is placing his hands on her. This is pressing his body against her. This is finally feeling the intimacy of her long-imagined kiss.
It's the most powerful idea he's ever communicated. The most powerful and the most complex. And though, theoretically, a kiss itself is simple, it shows him that nothing else about them is.
When she looks at him, breathless, and reaches for him, her hands gentle on his face, he doesn't react the way he'd always thought he would. He imagined he would whoop for joy. That he'd lift her off the ground, spin her around, pepper her face with tiny elated kisses, kiss her for the rest of the afternoon and forever, responsibility be damned.
But he is all responsibility. Sometimes he wonders if he's made up of anything else.
He doesn't feel elated. He just feels terribly sad, as if the original plan of kissing her forever might gradually scrub away at him until there would be nothing left, just a few particles of sand that predate the Earth by a billion years.
He ducks his head, steps out of her embrace, walks away.
He never imagined he could find such super-human strength.
It builds in him an odd sort of resolve. A man needs strength like that when it's him against the cosmos.