AN: So after the epic that was In the Garden, I planned on taking a break. That lasted for about two days.

Story and chapter titles taken from Carole King's song "Jazzman."

Inspired by amusewithaview's Words on my skin, love in my heart, found on Archive of Our Own.


The mark appeared one September morning when Phil Coulson was in his early twenties, scrawling itself in neat handwriting around one bicep in the space of time it took for him to pull off his t-shirt.

Be careful, that's hydrochloric acid.

"Well," he said after a moment, so used to having his skin unadorned that he had made peace with his lack of a soulmate. "That's surprising."

His roommate laughed for a solid minute when he heard the story later, looking both terribly amused and rather pitying. "Never struck me as a cradle-robber, Phil."

"Never wanted to be one," he said in return, in an ill mood after a day of having his new adornment pointed out by everyone who caught a glimpse. "By the time she's an adult, I'll be- hell, Tommy. I'll be twice her age."

"Or his," Tommy replied easily.

"Point." Phil considered his mark. In his opinion, the slanted cursive looked feminine enough, but that might have been wishful thinking.

"You are going to have one hell of a mid-life crisis."

"Shut up, Tommy."


The novelty faded after a few weeks. Somewhere in the world his soulmate was being rocked to sleep in her mother's arms, but he had classes to attend and instructors to impress, and in a few short months he would be a full-fledged SHIELD agent. So he studied and trained and (occasionally) relaxed with his friends, thinking very little of his mark.

He continued to casually date a fellow student, who shrugged when she saw his words for the first time. Mind that step marched in orderly letters down one of her thighs, the 'h' unnaturally elongated. That their relationship was temporary was quite clear on both sides, and Phil saw no reason to play the monk for twenty or so years.

"Could be platonic," Rebecca pointed out one night in bed, her finger tracing over the 'y' on his arm. "Even if it's not, practice makes perfect."

"True." He considered that point for a minute, realizing that even though he rarely thought about his mystery lady, he had already begun to reshape his life in small ways for her. "Am I a good lover?"

Rebecca thought longer on the question than he was comfortable with. "There's always room for improvement."

There was no disputing that, really. Already inclined to please his partner when possible, Phil began to seriously reconsider his technique. A year or so later, when Rebecca nearly tripped on an uneven staircase and was pulled back by someone from communications, they ended their relationship cleanly, with good feelings on both sides.

There were other women, but Phil took care to keep his relationships light, and to keep his relationships safe, because he found that he was fond of his unknown other half, and didn't think it would be very fair to potentially bring disease into her bed. Despite his best intentions he had built up an image of her, knowing that it would be shattered. Smart, most likely, and young (obviously). He thought of her in vague terms, in the way that the future always seemed vague, keeping tabs on the time as it passed- five years, and then ten, and then fifteen.

He tried to stop thinking of her in the depths of the Guest House, when the GH325 trials went from being an unprecedented success to a legitimate nightmare. She didn't fit amidst that tragedy, not his innocent girl with her warnings about hazardous chemicals. Phil was fairly sure that he didn't deserve her, at that point, and was certain of it the night that Agent Greene hung herself with a bedsheet after covering the walls with that strange writing that Phil was no closer to understanding than he had been when it had first appeared. He ended Project Tahiti, and he took to avoiding the sight of his arm in the mirror, and refused- refused- to step foot in any labs he might come near.


Audrey's soulmark read You're my light in the darkness, and if that wasn't an advertisement about how shitty soulbonds could be Phil didn't know what else was.


Despite the amount of time Phil had spent trying to run away from his fate, his last thought as he hovered on the brink of oblivion, blood quickly evacuating his body, was of his science girl and the words he would never get to say to her fading from crisp black to gray on her skin.

He hoped they had been good words, at least.


Life, take two.

Sort of.

Phil leapt at the chance to take on the mobile unit, relieved at the idea of finally, finally escaping the close quarters he had been keeping at the Hub. He wasn't a prisoner, but trying to keep up his cover as a dead man made him feel that way, half the time. He had his sights set on his team: May, obviously. Grant Ward, vetted by Hill, and the infamous Fitzsimmons duo that he had been hearing whispers about ever since he returned from his beach vacation. The rumor mill said bonded pair, and nothing in their files disproved that theory, and so Phil went to make his offer without a qualm.

And then, of course, he took a step too close to a particular table, and the petite brunette who had looked up at his entrance said, "Be careful, that's hydrochloric acid," completely oblivious to the fact that the words meant anything other than the warning that they were.

His gaze sharpened, taking in neatly pulled back hair and her crisp, collared shirt before moving to her mouth and stopping there. He liked that mouth, and the part of him that wasn't stymied by this revelation was wondering what she would taste like.

"What are your feelings on jazz?" he asked, which was not the question he had intended to ask at all, but it slipped out all the same.

She blushed, and it was one of the most fascinating sights he had seen in… well, in a while, anyway. "Hello." She rubbed her hands nervously against her jeans, taking a step toward him. "You know, I've actually put some time into trying to answer that question," she said, tugging her shirt to the side just enough for him to see What are in his handwriting, sloping along her collarbone toward her shoulder. The writing was somehow still bold and black against her skin. "I'm not sure I've been listening to the right jazz."

She smiled, but it was anxious. "Were you sick?"

"What?"

She took another step toward him. "My mark- it nearly grayed out." She kept edging toward him as he stood still, apparently braver than he was. "I was worried about you."

"Injured." She was close enough, now, to reach out and touch, and he held out a hand, remembering how his mother had raised him. "Phil Coulson."

"Jemma Simmons." Her hand lingered in his, small and warm, and he thought of SHIELD policies and how hazardous it could be to have soulmates on one team- soulmates with very differing levels of authority, at that- and was on the verge of saying goodbye and (authoritatively) fleeing the scene when a young man walked in.

"All right, Simmons?" he asked, raising a brow, and Jemma turned to smile at him, her face alight with some emotion that kept Phil standing where he stood.

"Jazz," was all she said, and he really couldn't bring himself to leave her after that.


They kept separate quarters on the Bus. It was only appropriate, after all, and he wasn't the type of man to invite himself into his soulmate's bed right after their initial meeting. She was a little bit shy of him, Jemma was, and after waiting so long he didn't mind taking the time to do a bit of wooing- or at least as much wooing as he could get away with, as her superior officer, which was precious little. He had tried to have her reassigned, after their meeting, but for whatever reason Fury had barked out a laugh and told him to deal with it.

So he did deal with it… sort of. First there was Skye, and then a 084, and then Reyes of all people had shown up and blasted a hole in the damn Bus. He managed to find the time to speak with Jemma off and on- light, casual conversations, about families and hobbies and favorite movies. He liked how enthusiastic she was about her chosen field, and the warm consideration she extended to everyone on their team. He wouldn't have minded getting closer, but bided his time, waiting for her to make the first move.

And then she had jumped out of the fucking plane, and his timeline went out of the window.

"What did you expect me to do?" she asked later, after his official reprimand, after she had appeared in his quarters at midnight in pajamas. Without asking for permission she sat on the end of his bed, tucking her bare feet underneath her. "Take everyone with me? Fitz and Skye and- andyou, just plummeting into the ocean? How could you think that of me?"

She was upset, and understandably so, but he had been focusing intently on keeping calm ever since the Moroccan office had confirmed that they had fished his two agents out of the ocean, and on impulse he reached out and dragged her into his lap, curling around her and pressing his face against her marked shoulder. "I don't give a fuck, Jemma," he mumbled against her shirt, considering pulling the fabric aside to press his lips against the script crawling along her skin. Weren't soulbonds supposed to be easy? Maybe his death had sent everything cock-eyed. "I've been waiting for you."

She had tensed at her sudden shift, but relaxed as he spoke, and finally pressed a hand against his hair. "I've been waiting for you, too," she said softly. "My jazz man."

It was the closest they had ever been, and distinctly inappropriate, considering their respective positions. "May I sleep here tonight?" she asked after a few minutes, her fingernails scraping gently against his scalp. "Just sleep?"

She was shaking, slightly, which made him remember that he was hardly the only one who had been given a scare that day, and hers had been much, much worse. "Yes," he said, easing her down onto his bed, thinking that she was a very welcome addition. "Curl up with me, sweetheart. Everything's going to be okay."

Probably a lie, he thought ruefully, but she pressed herself up against him anyway, tucking her head under his chin. He had wondered, over the past few months, what she might like in bed, and he was no closer to a hypothesis now than he had been on first meeting her. She was warm, at least, her body slowly relaxing against his. It had been a long time since he had last held a woman, and she was a nice fit.

"I would do it again," she said quietly in the dark, and he sighed.

"I know."


He should have stopped it the moment he realized what was going on, but he allowed realization to creep up on him. She kept appearing in his room in the middle of the night, slipping under the covers when he sleepily reached for her. At first she would stay for a few hours before disappearing to her own bunk, but then she started to linger, slipping away at the last moment.

Before he knew it, her collared shirts and cardigans shared space with his suits, and he wasn't entirely sure when that shift had happened. The team didn't seem to give a damn that Jemma was sleeping in his quarters rather than her own, but then, soulbonds were given a surprising amount of leeway, even in SHIELD.

"Have we gone at this backwards?" he asked her one night as she emerged from his (their) bathroom in her pajamas. "We've never even kissed."

"And why is that?" she asked tartly, dropping onto the bed with a thump as he continued to stand at his desk. "Don't I lean enough?"

He stared at her, bemused. "You've lost me," he admitted, pulling at the knot on his tie.

Surprisingly, she blushed. "Never mind."

He couldn't make heads or tails of that conversation, but it did make him pay a little bit more attention, and the first thing he noticed (at a mission briefing, of course, halfway through his opening spiel) was that her blouse was open one more button than usual, and that she was leaning against the holotable. Not very noticeably, but just enough to give him an excellent glimpse of her cleavage.

Her cleavage was very distracting, Phil found, and after that first glimpse he realized that she was doing it all the damn time, and only in his general direction.

"AC," Skye finally said with a sigh one afternoon, shortly after their encounter with the ghost who was most assuredly not a ghost, "just kiss her already."

"Skye-"

"Or fuck her."

"Skye."

"She's warm for your form, is what I'm saying, AC."

He left the room at that. There was only so much indignity he could take. It was bad enough he was sharing quarters with a junior agent, but introducing sex into the equation would be (wonderful) a very bad idea.

He wasn't Tony Stark, dammit.


In the end, their first kiss was after his adventure with Raina's memory machine, and it was more painful than pleasurable, because they were both a little desperate and he had a split lip.

"Ow."

She tsked over him, dabbing more ointment on his lip. Her professional demeanor was completely outweighed by the way she was crowding onto his lap, pinning him to the bed. Thankfully, he had not been planning to go anywhere for the remainder of the night. "So, I don't jump out of planes, and you don't get kidnapped," she said in seeming lightness, her eyes fixed on a bruise on his cheek. "A fair deal, I think."

She was wearing one of his sweaters, and by the looks of it, she had been secretly raiding his side of the closet during his time away. "Miss me, Jemma?"

"Of course I did, you git." She sniffed, and her voice took on a distinctive quaver. "Months of throwing my perfectly decent breasts at you, and it takes a near-death experience to get a bloody kiss."

"Decent? Decent?" He stared at her, flummoxed. "Jemma, who the hell told you that your breasts were only decent?"

"It's not like you've taken the time to look at them."

A dare, definitely. It was clear that he had full leave to pull off her layers, but he had hoped for a better setting than post-abduction and covered in bruises. "Perhaps you would let me do a thorough inspection on furlough." He caught her gaze, his hands itching to push up her sweater anyway and touch skin. "Fury's practically begging me to take the time."

She looked surprisingly hesitant. "Not if you're going to back away, afterward. Will I have to go back to my little pod, Phil?"

Jemma had entrenched herself far too deeply into his life for that to happen. "No, sweetheart." He wrapped his arms around her, trying not to grimace as he pulled her against his bruised ribs. "You stay right here."


It was a little town in the middle of nowhere in Greece, with a small house to themselves and a bed as big as he might have wished.

"Perfect," he announced that first afternoon, tracing his finger down the slope of one breast as she blushed. "Your breasts are perfect, Jemma."

He moved closer, taking her in his arms as he pressed his lips against the word on her shoulder. The final 'z' in jazz swooped almost whimsically across her skin, and he slid his tongue against the word, making her shiver. "My penmanship got a bit sloppy there, I see," he murmured, tipping her back onto the sheets. "Yours is much neater than mine."

She made such pretty little sounds, he was delighted to find, and the curves she hid under her cardigans were lovely and warm under his hands. He willingly rolled onto his back when she pushed upward, and she knelt beside him on the mattress, placing her fingers lightly on his scar.

"Do you mind me touching it?"

"Not you." He watched as she examined the scar carefully, running her fingers over the edges.

"I just happened to be near a mirror, that day," she said quietly, her gaze still on the ridge of scar tissue. "May I see your back?"

He rolled onto his side without a word.

"I was getting dressed after a shower, and I noticed that the words looked lighter. Day after day, lighter and lighter- and then one morning I woke up, and they were black again." He rolled onto his back, staring up at her. "I was worried about you," she said, her eyes soft. "My jazz man."

He slid his hand over her hip, easing her down to lie beside him. "I'm sorry." And he was- sorry that he had been the cause of her worry, for however long he had been stuck in the hell that was Tahiti. "What is it like?" he asked suddenly, stroking a finger along her curve of script, thinking of those words on an infant's shoulder. "To know, from the beginning?"

She looked thoughtful as she considered the question. "Oh, it depended on my age," she answered finally. "As a child I barely cared, and by the time I was a teenager I was very, very busy… too busy to dream overmuch, though I did end up curating a rather extensive jazz collection," she admitted with a laugh. "I didn't wait for you," she said with sudden solemnity. "I hope that doesn't matter to you- though frankly, Phil, I think it would be a bit hypocritical of you to expect a virgin, seeing as you obviously have experience."

"I would have felt guilty if you had waited." Phil knew a few people who had been born with their marks and still hadn't met their soulmate until nearly half a century had passed. "I hope you had fun."

She laughed again, snuggling closer. "It was pleasant enough," she said. "And we're both clean, so that isn't a problem." She stroked her fingers along her handwriting on his bicep. "Were you disappointed, to have the mark appear so late?"

"Not disappointed. Just surprised. I wasn't sure that it would be fair to you, to be stuck with an old man." He grinned, remembering her words. "A man of my age, even."

Jemma blushed. "I'm very bad at flirting," she muttered, pressing her face against his chest. "You're lovely and fit."

His work required him to stay in shape, but he couldn't deny that he pushed himself a bit further than might have been expected, and did so with her in mind. "I'm glad you approve," he murmured, stroking a hand down her side. "And you are… lovely. Warm and soft… responsive…"

She pulled him into a kiss and he rolled her underneath him, careful not to place all of his weight on her.

"Took you long enough," she said softly once he finally slid into her, her breathing quickening and her hands pressed firmly against his hips. "You've been trying my patience."

His only response was a strangled gasp, and she smiled triumphantly as she wrapped her legs around his waist, pulling him even closer. "My jazz man," she murmured in his ear. "My Phil."