A/N: I know this is completely unprecedented, but I'm updating on time. Because I promised and it's the holidays and you shouldn't break promises during the holidays. SO, here is Part II.

Part III's coming at you by Wednesday and will be all about Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in the cottage.

Thanks so much for reading. And thank you all for being so nice and saying nice things and generally being great. You're all so very lovely.

Enjoy! 3

Part II

December 23rd, 2 days before Christmas

The house is silent now, save for the odd 'pop' and 'crackle' from the from the fireplace. Through the trees outside the window I can see the sky beginning to lighten steadily.

I've always been a morning person, which is why I find myself on the couch in my glasses and a large wool jumper, reading over the guidelines for the grant again before the sun's even fully risen.

I'd slept on the couch last night, after a bit of a debate with Skye. She tried to insist on taking the couch. I think she really thought she might win, too. But a lifetime with my mother, the queen of insistence, trained me well for a battle of wills and I won out relatively easily in the end:

"Skye, I don't want to hear another word about it. I'm taking the couch. That's it. I insist."

"Jemma Simmons, you are not sleeping on the couch. Not when you've let me stay here and fed me dinner and showed me the stars for Christ's sake. I'm sleeping on the couch."

"You're not."

"Oh, but I am."

I huffed in frustration. "Skye, please. I'll be incredibly unhappy if you make me sleep in that bed."

Knowing there was no real response to that, Skye narrowed her eyes at me. "Fine."

I felt triumphant, though my prize is a night on a couch rather than a proper bed.

"Good. It's settled," I'd said, and set about making my bed on the couch.

Skye, like a normal person, is probably still asleep in the other room.

As if on cue, I hear footsteps from the room behind me.

"You're up early," I say by way of greeting.

"You're thinking so hard it woke me up."

"My apologies. I've had complaints about the 'whirring' sound before, believe it or not."

Skye smirks and heads straight for the coffee.

"I thought that stuff was garbage?" I remark, raising an eyebrow at her over the top rim of my glasses.

"It is garbage. But if I don't have coffee, I will turn into garbage."

"Interesting," I nod, turning back to the papers in my hands. "That sounds like a serious affliction. You may want to get that checked out by a doctor."

Skye chuckles as she scoops the coffee into a filter. "I'll take that under consideration." She turns around on her heel. "Wait, you're a doctor right?"

I mean to answer immediately, but my mouth and brain stop communicating entirely when I look up again and see Skye leaning casually against the counter in a too-large white t-shirt and a pair of square plastic glasses. Her hair falls around her shoulders in soft waves and sits a little disheveled on top of her head.

"Simmons?" She smirks.

I shake my head and chastise myself silently. "Hmmmm?"

Skye ducks her head and laughs. "Nothing. Nothing at all. Sorry I interrupted you. Read away."

Looking down at the papers in my hand, I decide that reading more of them this morning is pretty much the opposite of what I want to do. Placing them back inside my bag, I get up from the couch and move into the kitchen to get the bread out of the cupboard.

"Toast?" I ask.

Skye nods, "Thanks. Driving back on an empty stomach would be pretty brutal."

Right. I'd almost forgotten that she was leaving.

"Where will you go?" I ask, try to sound nonchalant.

"Home."

"Which is where?"

Skye hesitates. When I look at her questioningly, she points to the van slowly, clearly embarrassed.

"Skye, no." I must admit that of all the things that I would've assumed Skye to be given her appearance and our interactions thus far (however limited), someone who lives in van would not be one of those things.

"Jemma, seriously, it's all good. I've spent every other Christmas since I was sixteen in that van. It'll be great. Home sweet home." Her voice is bright, but she won't look at me. Her eyes are focused intently on the ground.

"Skye," I put down the toast and take a step closer, ducking slightly to catch her eye until she looks at me. "Please. Stay. I want you here. If that's not too weird." It might be a little weird. We only met yesterday. Afternoon. "Or even if it is, really."

She doesn't answer immediately, but turns to look out the window at her van.

"No one should have to spend Christmas alone," I add as a last attempt.

Skye looks up, her expression thoughtful.

I think that possibly I'm more nervous than I've ever been, standing in front of her under her scrutinous gaze.

After approximately one whole eternity, her mouth breaks into a small smile.

"The roads are still pretty bad. And I don't know if I could live with myself, leaving you alone on Christmas."

I can feel my shoulders relax as I laugh. "Brilliant," I grin. "Now about that breakfast…"

"I'm following you into a heavily wooded area by myself in the snow with no cell reception or any neighbors while you're wielding an axe. It's like I've learned nothing from every horror movie ever."

Skye is following close behind me as we make our way into the trees behind the cottage.

"You can wield the axe if it'll make you feel better," I turn around, offering it to her.

Her smirk tells me that even though I'm quite sure she wasn't actually nervous, she does, in fact, want to carry the axe.

"All yours," I say as I hand it over.

She seems unduly impressed by it and proceeds to hoist it up, resting the middle of the hilt on her shoulder as she holds the handle.

"It's heavy," she observes, nodding appreciatively.

We go a ways further in silence, Skye marveling every so often as a large clump of snow falls from the high-up branches of the surrounding trees with a satisfying 'thud' on the fresh flakes that cover the ground.

After a few minutes, I see what I'm looking for in the form of a large tree that's fallen on the forest floor. Judging from the damage to the trunk, I'd guess that it was damaged by an animal, then brought down by a relatively recent storm.

"This is the one," I say, stopping.

"Yeah?" Skye looks at it doubtfully.

I nod. "Yeah."

"It's already on the ground."

"Exactly," I nod enthusiastically. "See, it would be very irresponsible of us to just come into the woods and cut down a perfectly healthy tree. This one's fallen due to its age and a particularly rough bit of weather. It's still green, though, and if we take a bit of it for decoration, we won't be leaving too large a footprint in the forest."

I move to the top of the fallen tree and inspect it, trying to decide where to make my cut.

"Have you done this before?" She asks, sounding a little nervous.

I can't help the smile that spreads across my face. "Every year," I answer, holding my hand out for the axe. "Simmons family tradition."

Skye hands me the axe and, with a few sharp swings, I liberate the very top of the tree-a 4ft tall section that's dense with needles.

"Impressive," Skye nods appreciatively as she grabs ahold of the tree at the top to help me lift and carry it back to the cottage.

"Simmons?" She asks from behind me as we start making our way back through the snow.

"Mmm?"

"How are we going to set this thing up?"

You know, I actually hadn't thought about that.

The tree is propped in the corner of the main room, close enough to the fire to be pleasantly illuminated by it, but not so close that we risk setting ablaze.

We don't have a stand or anything remotely stand-like to hold up the tree, but ultimately decided that propping it in the corner would do just fine. And so, we'd sat on the couch and as we ate dinner (nothing special and certainly not very different from last night's, but nevertheless highly complimented by Skye), we remarked several times that it was a very good tree, even if we didn't have lights or ornaments or anything to make it stand up straight.

Now the dinner dishes have been washed and dried and returned to their appropriate cupboards and we've returned to the couch, lapsing into silence as we focus an undue amount of attention on the fire.

As someone who has plenty of difficulty holding conversations with people she knows quite well, I'm finding it nearly impossible to find the right thing to say to Skye. I'm still trying to come to terms with the fact that she's lived in a van for the better part of twelve years.

That's a long time to stay in one apartment, let alone one vehicle.

I would expect that anyone who had lived in a van for that long might be somewhat maladjusted. I would expect that they'd lack things like social skills and proper hygiene and discernible curves and bones and muscles.

Skye, however, is rather well-adjusted. She's quite fit, picks up on social cues that I've struggled with my entire life, and seems to have a relatively firm grasp on the goings-on of the world. And it must be said that she's certainly a more talented conversationalist than I.

"So, Simmons, where are you from?"

Case and point. A relatively obvious conversation starter, and one that I probably shouldn't have struggled to supply.

"Sheffield. Well, near Sheffield. Very small. You probably haven't heard of it."

"I'm relatively confident that I couldn't point to Sheffield on a map if my life depended on it, so I'd say yeah, you're probably right," she laughs. "What brought you to the United States?"

"School," I shift slightly on the couch, pulling my feet underneath me. "I wanted to study medicine and when Stanford offered me a scholarship…" I trail off, searching for the right way to explain why I left my friends and my family and my home behind, but only manage to come up with, "Well, you don't say 'no' to Stanford. Besides which, my best friend-Fitz-was selected for Stanford's engineering program. It seemed an obvious choice."

"I see. And after school? What brought you to Portland?"

"Work," I say simply. " Fitz was offered a job at PacTech. And, because we'd scarcely been apart since the first science class we took together in primary school, I found a lab here that was willing to give me a shot and let me prove that I'd be ready to run my own lab and conduct my own research within five years." I duck my head and push a stray strand of hair behind my ear. "It only took three. Which is wonderful. I'm furthering the work that I did on my thesis and it's great. I couldn't ask for more, really."

As soon as the words leave my lips, I can feel their bitter aftertaste in my mouth.

It's true that professionally, I couldn't be happier. I have everything they tell you to hope for in a career in medical research. And my career's really just beginning. I'm incredibly lucky.

But no matter how well the lab's doing or how well the research is going, it doesn't change the fact that at the end of the day, I come home to a dark apartment, leftovers, and reruns. Up until relatively recently, I was over at Fitz's place for take-out and television on a regular basis. Now, though, Fitz was seeing someone and while I was happy for him (if a little irked that he wouldn't tell me who he was seeing), he was spending all of his time with her, which left me with nothing to do most evenings.

"Earth to Jemma," I hear Skye say.

I look up to see Skye smirking and watching me closely.

"You alright?" she asks. "You disappeared for a minute."

"Fine," I plaster on a smile and nod. "Just fine." I shake off the fog of self-pity and re-focus my attention on Skye, who's busy wrapping one of the blankets around her shoulders and settling back into the cushions.

"What about you? Were you born in Portland?

"Nope," Skye shakes her head. "Born in Boston. Shipped off to Albuquerque at thirteen, then Sacramento at fifteen. Got emancipated at sixteen, bought a van and drove until I felt like stopping. Which wasn't all that far, because I ended up in Portland. Been living here in the van ever since."

When she says it like that, I'm quite taken aback.

"How do you do it?" I ask.

"Do what?"

"Live in a van. How are you so…"

"Clean?" she smirks.

I nod and feel my cheeks warming.

"I get that a lot," she laughs. "Pretty simple, really. I joined a gym. Work out early in the mornings, shower and get dressed at the gym, go to work, get take-out, go to sleep in the van and do it all over again."

Fascinating.

"What about brushing your teeth?"

Skye looks taken aback, then laughs heartily. "That's an incredibly specific question, Jemma Simmons. Should've expected no less from a no-doubt very detail-oriented scientist," she nudges my knee with hers and I try really hard to keep my focus on what she's saying. "I use the locker room at the gym. 24-hour unlimited access. Probably not really what they'd intended the membership might be used for, but the staff know me. It works out very well, actually."

"Unlimited access gym membership," I nod. "Isn't that really…expensive?"

I cringe at how tactless such a question is once it's out of my mouth.

"Sorry," I back peddle, "I didn't mean-"

"It's totally fine, Simmons," Skye smiles kindly. "And yeah, it is. But it's not as expensive as rent."

She has a very good point there.

"You see," she continues, "a lot of people confuse living in a van with being homeless. I'm not homeless. I have a job. Or jobs. I do consulting and freelance work, but it's steady and quite lucrative, if we're being honest. It's not that I couldn't afford an apartment," she adjusts the blanket so that it covers her feet, "it's that I don't want one."

I wish I could say that I understand, but I'm afraid I don't. Theoretically, I get it. Paying rent is no fun. But I can't imagine that the savings really outweigh the challenges of living in a van. For over ten years.

"You don't get it," she smirks, watching me closely.

Though I don't want to be impolite, I have to admit that I don't, in fact, 'get it'.

"Not really, no."

"Commitment issues, I guess," she shrugs. "I don't like being tied down. I get panicky when I hear words like 'lease' and 'credit check' and 'utilities'," she says the words laboriously, as if to illustrate her point. "I have everything I need in the van. I built a little electrical set-up, hacked my way into some wi-fi, even managed to get a few monitors mounted on the side panels. Never have to worry about making rent or paying on time."

When she says it like that, it makes perfect sense, actually. A bit odd, sure. Definitely not for everyone. But she hardly seems worse off for it. It's about the most massively interesting thing I've heard from another human in a very long time.

"So," I ask, "you wanted to rent the cabin to…?"

"Spread out a little, I guess. I don't mind the van, but sometime's it's nice to stay someplace where there's a couch and a bed and a coffee maker." She looks around the room, seemingly appreciating its size compared to her home on four wheels. "The fireplace and the company make for nice bonuses, though," she winks.

I can feel myself blushing as I turn my attention toward my hands, which are clasped in my lap.

"Not to mention the tree," Skye continues. Her voice is amused and I get the distinct impression that she's acutely aware of the effect she has on me. "My first Christmas tree," she looks at the tree in the corner and sighs wistfully for comedic effect.

I'd probably laugh if I wasn't absolutely shocked to hell.

I know she didn't exactly have a blissful childhood, but this admission still comes as a surprise. My family's had a real tree every year since my older brother was born. Before I was even old enough to walk, we went to a Christmas tree farm and cut our own tree and decorated it with hundreds upon hundreds of lights and handmade ornaments. I can scarcely imagine one Christmas without a tree, let alone a lifetime of them. I'm suddenly quite happy that we went to the trouble of getting the tree, but equally sad that it isn't much. It's only a little over four feet and we don't have any lights or ornaments. Not even a popcorn string or candy canes.

"Simmons, I can hear you being sad from over here," Skye sits up and scoots a bit closer to me, bumping my shoulder with hers. "Listen, it's great just not spending Christmas alone this year. It's the best gift I've had in…well, ever." She tosses part of another blanket over our laps and adjusts the one around her shoulders slightly. "So thank you, Jemma."

I don't know quite what to say to that, but I manage to smile and nod.

"Good. Now," she switches gears, leaning back into the couch and yawning a bit, "tell me about your family. Spare no detail. What would you be doing with them if you were home?"

And so, I do. I tell her about my brother and my mum and dad. I tell her about our tree and my nan's shortbread and my grandpa's on-going battle with a fox that keeps eating vegetables from his garden. I tell her about our house and our dog and the way my dad sings Christmas carols when he's had just a little too much brandy.

She listens intently and with amusement, nodding and laughing, asking questions here and there. In that moment, with her next to me and the fire crackling steadily and our goofy little tree propped up in the corner, I'm so very glad that I'm not alone this Christmas.

A/N: Look! You made it to the end. Thanks for reading and look out for Part III (Christmas and Christmas Eve) by Wednesday. Take care and happy holiday prepping to everyone! 3