That this part exists is mainly because of Brady TJ. He got all guilt-trippy and claimed that I owe him. Maybe I do. Nobody likes an unfinished fic – especially not at Christmas! There will be more but not for a week or two!

The song is called "At Last" and yes, it's by The Oh Hellos whose Christmas album inspired this fic.


It had never occurred to Fitz that this band rehearsal of Hunter's might be residential in nature. Apparently, it hadn't occurred to Hunter either. According to him, it just meant that Jemma had attained new but unsurprising heights of mental.

The pair were shown to a large bare room on the top floor of the warehouse that had been incongruously panelled and painted white, Swedish cabin style. Two enormous red hammocks swung from the ceiling on either side of a giant knitted moose head that had been mounted on the wall. The floor had been painstakingly tiled with individual sterling pennies. It made Fitz feel oddly comforted.

They left his instruments and prepared to head back to their dorms to pack for the fortnight. At least Fitz suddenly found himself with Christmas commitments that surpassed his plans to get drunk alone.

"Better pick up some strong booze," Hunter observed as Bobbi flipped him the bird in response to his friendly wave. He looked Fitz over as they headed out to the Mini. "And perhaps we should just stop at an op-shop, mate. Get you a wardrobe that Jemma would approve of."

Fitz rolled his eyes, already half-way through the window. "I'm not bloody well-"

"Shh, mate," Hunter hissed across the roof of the car. "Here she comes."

Jemma had exchanged the scarlet beanie for a woolly scarf so bulky on her slender neck that Fitz imagined it must have stretched for miles when unravelled. Her chestnut hair blew free in the breeze as she approached.

She gazed directly at Fitz. He felt her eyes boring into him. And yet she sauntered past without saying a word.

Fitz looked back at Hunter in alarm.

Hunter shrugged and got into the car.

"What was all that about?" Fitz asked irritably when his bum hit the cold leather of the car seat.

"I told you, mate," Hunter sighed. "She's mental. All these boho birds are completely out of their tree!"

"So how did you pick up with them? If I were you I would have run in the opposite direction."

"Ah, you haven't seen them on stage, mate," said Hunter enigmatically. "Now that is a sight to behold."

"They're alright?"

"Alright?" Hunter laughed. "They're brilliant."

"Right," Fitz declared through gritted teeth as he worked his way through his car-starting ritual. "They've auditioned me. Now I'm bloody well going audition them."

"Ten quid you'll sign on whatever dotted line Jemma Simmons dangles in front of you. She has an uncanny knack for-"

"Ha!" scoffed Fitz. "Make sure you're good for that ten quid. I'll be out of here before tea time. And no I will not stop at a flipping op-shop. I've got plaid for days. It's all my mum sends me. That'll have to do."

Hunter snickered to himself.

"What?" Fitz demanded as the Mini chugged onto the freeway.

"Jemma's not going to let you slip away so easy."

"Oh yeah? And why's that?"

"Because she likes you, mate. It's as plain as the nose on your face."

"She what!?" Fitz spluttered.

"See, where all I can get out of Bobbi is angry side-eyes and middle-finger salutes, Jemma gave you actual, continuous eye-contact."

"I felt scrutinised," cried Fitz. "It was very uncomfortable. It was like she was trying to peer into my soul."

"And what about that makes you so convinced she doesn't like you? You could have taken that line straight out of a YA novel."

Fitz glanced at Hunter askance.

"Not that I'd know anything about those, obviously."

"Obviously."

Somehow, on their return, Fitz had managed to look Jemma Simmons in the eye and come as close as he possibly could to demanding that The Aesthetics perform for him that evening before he would agree to play with them.

He could not have imagined the to-do that ensued.

The main open space of the ex-warehouse was cleared of furniture. The already copious amount of fairy lights was quadrupled to the extent that Fitz actually went out to pre-emptively check the fuse-box. Wine was mulled, jugs of Pimms No. 1 punch were prepared, kegs of craft beers appeared next to a table of gleaming empty mason jars. Fitz was offered a quick succession of roasted Brussels sprouts, kale chips, artisanal pickles and kombucha. The platters were then placed on an odd table, which Fitz realised had once been a billiard table but now sprouted an actual lawn. The grass was littered here and there with tea lights in smaller mason jars and bowls of foraged berries. He thought he even heard two men in suspenders discussing the virtues of green-tea doughnuts. He found it all highly disconcerting.

Without warning, hoards of people seemed to suddenly arrive. Many of them brought picnic rugs tucked under one arm. Some arrived alone, most arrived hand-in-hand in pairs, some arrived in large groups.

A stage area had been demarcated at one end with several ropes of the ubiquitous fairy-lights. He wandered up to have a look. At the back of the stage, someone had erected Victorian street-lamps standing at various heights, glowing with misty candle light and looking like they'd been stolen straight out of Narnia. Between the lamps dangled elaborate wrought-iron bird cages hung with colourful paper cranes and butterflies.

Fitz shook his head and sighed.

When he turned around he was stunned. The room was suddenly filled with oddly-styled young men and women, reclining on the picnic blankets that protected them from the cold concrete floor. There was a smattering of fedoras, bowlers and Annie Hall-style broad-brimmed felt hats among the more standard beanies. Many of the women seemed to wear silver tribal style temporary tattoos that reflected the light.

He was baffled. An hour ago he'd demanded to see The Aesthetics play. Now he stood in the middle of a fully-fledged music festival.

Hunter beckoned to him from front and centre of the crowd. He wore an unlikely flimsy white shirt under a tan-coloured waistcoat and a duck-egg-blue linen jacket with tan leather patches on the elbow. His moleskins were skinny and his chocolate-brown brogues were polished til they gleamed. He had liberally brill-creamed his hair such that he looked, beard aside, like a passable Algernon Moncrieff.

"Oh, Hunter," Fitz tutted. "That is quite the look."

"Shut up, mate, and just bloody-well sit here will you? Jemma's had this spot reserved all evening just for you."

Fitz looked down to find a mismatched pile of comfy looking crocheted blankets and three raw linen cushions pretentiously emblazoned with the words Live, Laugh, and Love. Not for the first time that day, he rolled his eyes.

"Quick, mate," Hunter hissed. "Hit the deck will you? Here she comes."

Just as Fitz made himself comfortable, appreciating the pint-sized mason jar of dark ale and the little basket of sprouts liberally sprinkled with bacon that had been left for him, a hush came over the crowd. Eight individuals got silently to their feet from various spots within the crowd and padded purposefully on bare feet toward the stage.

Jemma immediately drew his eye in a flowing burgundy gown, her gauzy skirts billowing behind her as she strode through the draughty warehouse. Resting over her gleaming hair was a crown of perfect white daisies. Fitz idly wondered where on earth she'd found them in the wintery slush.

The band members took their places across the stage and stood in poses more akin to the dramatic finale number of a musical rather than taking up the instruments that waited for them on stands. Hunter played one note on a giant triangle and all eight of them began to sing in haunting a Capella melody.

It struck straight to Fitz's heart.

Gradually, one by one, the men and women on stage picked up their instruments and the sound swelled into a rich and celebratory cacophony that filled the cavernous warehouse space. It seemed to Fitz as though he could feel the joyful vibrations in his very bones.

As the first track died away, Lincoln, one of the tall man-bunned guitarists started finger-picking alone. Jemma, who had pulled up a four-legged wooden stool and taken up her tambourine, began to sing.

I was sleeping in the garden when I saw you first
He'd put me deep, deep under so that he could work
And like the dawn you broke the dark and my whole earth shook
I was sleeping in the garden when I saw you

A male voice joined her for the refrain, his harmony enhancing her bell-like song.

At last, at last
Bones of my bones and flesh of my flesh, at last

A banjo picked up the thread of the tune, played by the other singer, the well-built man in a tight-fitting navy t-shirt Fitz remembered being introduced to earlier. Trip? he thought, and Hunter took his brushes to the snare and cymbals. The chorus of singers – Bobbi, plucking at the double-bass that somehow managed to be almost her height, Daisy, holding her piano-accordion tight to her chest, Joey clutching his custom acoustic guitar, as well as Lincoln and Trip augmented Jemma's lone lead for the second-verse, enlarging the melody and letting it resound in the concrete hall. Behind them, an enormous man had his name been Mack? judiciously applied licks on his electric guitar.

You were the brightest shade of sun I had ever seen
Your skin was gilded with the gold of the richest kings
And like the dawn you woke the world inside of me
You were the brightest shade of sun when I saw you

The chorus of yodel-like ahhs and vocal trills that followed when the band cut back made Fitz want to weep.

Jemma's voice, pushed into the spot-light by the deeper harmonies of all the other singers had an other-worldly quality. As if she knew that to be the case, she kept her eyes tightly closed – her only movement the light tap of the tambourine against her thigh.

The tune then slowed – held only by Lincoln's acoustic guitar a moment while Jemma sang alone:

And you will surely be the death of me
But how could I have known?

Then the folksy beat surged back in earnest, all the voices, all the instruments and Hunter's drums raising up a toe-tapping rhythm that felt rich and earnest and earthy and satisfying. The eccentric looking twirly-moustachioed percussionist that Fitz thought might have been called Grant, resplendent in an unseasonal yellow singlet and clearly feeling he'd been underused in the song thus far, threw himself into the beat with a frenzied zeal.

Damn it, Fitz inwardly cursed. They're getting to me.

The band cut away and just Jemma's voice rang out once more.

At last.

You will surely be the death of me.

How could I have known?

And then it all came surging back with Trip and Jemma singing together over the raucous celebratory beat.

The enigmatic closed-eyed smile that Jemma gave the crowd as the dying strains of the song faded away seemed to encapsulate for Fitz the mood of the entire night.

He was a goner.


Love to hear what you think, beloved readers! Have a great Christmas!

Oh, and look out for my Secret Santa fic that goes up on Boxing Day!