"So, Jemma," Rosalind Price grinned before taking a sip of what had to be her way-too-many-th cup of coffee. "The show has been garnering a lot of attention. Critics love the show, you've been growing a pretty intense fan base… Did you see all that coming?"
Jemma didn't have to force her answering smile. "Of course not. We're very proud of what we're doing, and the stories we're telling, but the reception has been… miles beyond what we were hoping for. I'm really humbled to have been given the chance to be part of Cosmic Curse, and I hope people keep enjoying the show. It's going to be a wild ride."
"What is it like, working with Leo Fitz? He was so good in The Pod."
"So good," Jemma nodded politely and sat up at the edge of the couch, waiting for an actual question.
"Did you two know each other before?"
"Not really, no. I know it's counterintuitive, but not all British actors know each other." Curb your passive aggression, Simmons, she thought to herself. "It's been great. He's excellent at what he does, obviously, which pushes me to be better, too."
"O-kay," Rosalind blew out a breath, raising a curious eyebrow before skimming through her notes. "So, there's been a lot of speculation about the Oracle's true identity…" She let the sentence hang in the air with a significant tilt of her head.
"Honestly, your guess is as good as mine," Jemma laughed.
"There's a popular online theory that you might have a traitor in your ranks. What do you think about that?"
"Oh. Well, that would be quite dark, wouldn't it? Even for Cosmic Curse…" She gave a single-shoulder shrug. "I have my theories, but this is way above my clearance level."
"Hey, I had to give it a try," Rosalind said with an incisive smirk. "So, what can you tell us about what's in store for Abigail and Trevor? Any chance of a romance?"
Jemma began absently wringing her hands together. The question wasn't exactly a surprise; it seemed to be all people wanted to know about, but instead of getting used to the scrutiny, she was growing increasingly uncomfortable with the level of interest. It felt‒ personal, somehow. Private.
"I'm sorry, what?" she stalled.
"Oh, come on, you've got to give us something . Everybody ships Trevigail! They're adorable together."
"Are they?" Jemma took a large gulp of tea to ease her drying throat. "Well, you know there's a lot of reasons why that wouldn't be‒ I mean, sure Trevor is rather‒ well formed and symmetrical but… they're such good friends! And literally each other's only friends in the entire universe, at this point. You wouldn't want to‒ it would be a shame to mess that up. And they don't get on so well, anyway. I mean, they're constantly bickering‒"
"Looks like foreplay to me," Rosalind snickered.
"I don't know about that," she gulped, covering her warm neck with her hands. "Sometimes bickering is just bickering," she added with a wavering smile. Isn't it?
"Just another day at the office," Jemma muttered under her breath as she watched the scene unfolding before her eyes.
Daisy was dangling from a wire cable high in the air in front of a green screen, with a fan blowing in her face and sending her hair flying everywhere as she pretended to be sucked up into a mysterious whirlwind.
From where Jemma was standing, it looked both really silly and seriously impressive.
"I wish they would let me do something like that," she said wistfully. "Just once."
"I don't," Fitz grunted. "You wouldn't hear me complain if they never made us leave the lab."
Jemma turned to him sharply, her face scrunched into a scowl. "Really? You'd rather have us locked in a room speaking gibberish when we could be doing all sorts of amazing things we might never have another opportunity to do?"
"Gladly," he replied in the same provoking tone he always used when he was keen on picking a fight. "You realize the insurance would never clear you for that kind of stunt work, right? You're not exactly Athletic Spice‒"
"It's Sporty Spice," she scoffed. "And you're one to talk! Remind me again which one of us almost passed out that time we had to run 100 yards?"
"You're going to blame me for getting heatstroke? Nice, Simmons. Really nice."
"Oh, don't be dramatic. It was maybe a tiny fit of heat exhaustion, although I'm not convinced‒"
"Please," Hunter begged, hands clasped together. "Please, for the love of our collective bloody sanity, will you two get a room? A backseat? A broom closet? Anything?"
Fitz completely froze, and for a brief moment Jemma thought he might run, but he quickly animated again and began shaking with rage.
"That's completely out of line," he sputtered, his entire posture jumping to the defensive while his neck grew a deep shade of pink.
"He's right," Jemma concurred, her arms crossed over her chest and a deep frown on her face. Embarrassingly, she could feel her own neck and cheeks heating up as well. "That really is quite an inappropriate thing to say under any circumstance, but this is a professional environment‒"
"Alright, alright!" Hunter smirked, raising his palms in a pacifying gesture as he retreated to the edge of the set. "It's nice to see you two agreeing on something."
Jemma glared at Hunter as he walked away. She was being ridiculous, she knew. She was an adult, one who usually could take a joke.
A thick, uncomfortable silence settled between them as they both stared straight ahead rather than at each other. On set, Daisy was back on solid ground for now, sipping water with a straw while her hair was being tamed down before the next take.
"So…" Jemma said with a sideways glance, eager to dispel the silence but not willing to back down from their squabble. "Looking forward to our first convention?" She knew he wasn't, of course; he hadn't exactly kept it a secret. Public speaking wasn't Fitz's favorite thing‒ his voice came out a little weird and high-strung, and he couldn't help blurting out embarrassingly lame jokes. As such, he was decidedly unenthusiastic about the convention, to say the least.
Jemma was mildly terrified herself. It was a low-scale, sci-fi only gathering, but the schedule was dense and some planned events were far out of her comfort zone, especially the direct interactions with fans for autographs and pictures. The fact that anyone would pay real money to have their picture taken next to her still felt entirely surreal.
"Don't remind me," Fitz shuddered. "I wish they would let Coulson do all the promo work. At least he seems to enjoy it."
"You're still upset about the photoshoot, aren't you?"
"I just wish we didn't have to waste time on that kind of stuff." He glanced her way then, only to turn in the opposite direction the moment their eyes met. Looking suddenly self-conscious, he crossed his arms across his chest. "I doubt anyone but my mum has any interest in collecting pictures of me, and I'm not exactly an inspirational speaker."
"You're not so bad," she said before she could catch herself. 'Not so bad' wasn't exactly the most glowing of endorsements. "And I heard your Meet & Greet was actually the first to be fully booked."
"My‒ what ?" Fitz instantly turned green. He shook his head, looking increasingly nauseous. "I‒ I'd better go and, huh‒" The sentence trailed off as he gestured unconvincingly, eyes wide, clearly on the edge of panic.
Jemma instantly regretted her earlier teasing. "Do you want to get some tea?" she offered, placing a calming hand on his shoulder and giving him a gentle push. "Catering's awful, but I have some of the good stuff in my trailer."
"You're not propositioning me, are you?" he half-heartedly joked as he followed her outside, still looking concerningly pale. "Cause I'm rubbish at reading the signs."
"Oh, please. I have standards," she snickered, guiding him to her trailer. He didn't say a word again until he'd downed his second cup, but at least some of his color returned while they fought over which tea‒ Earl Grey or English Breakfast‒ could rightfully be called the good stuff.
Jemma was rehearsing her lines, the text so full of approximative science lingo that it was nearly impossible to memorize, when Daisy knocked excitedly on her trailer's door.
"Ta-da," she practically shouted as she presented Jemma with the upcoming issue of TV Guide. "It's finally here!"
She pushed inside and went straight to Jemma's narrow couch, dangling her already well-worn copy in front of her, until she took a glance at Jemma's script and stopped dead in her tracks.
"Mmh, Simmons?" she said warily, staring at Jemma as if she'd just grown a second head. "Why did you rainbow-flag your script?"
"I didn't. It's just, I have a system, alright?" Jemma said, feeling the colors rise up her cheeks. People always took issue with her system. The system worked , though, and she had to learn her lines somehow. There was nothing wrong with being organized and, yes, possibly a little fastidious. "B is for Blue is for Backstory. C is for Canary is for Comedy. D is for… well, you get the gist of it," she said, shrugging self-consciously. I really need to come up with something for D.
Daisy chewed on her bottom lip and it was clear that she was dying to say something. Instead, prioritizing their friendship over her perpetually sharp tongue, she shook her head and sat up, handing Jemma the magazine. Jemma could feel her friend's expectant eyes on her as she flipped through it.
There were 6 full pages devoted to the show, and the page in question had an nearly full-page photo of her and Fitz, followed by a very condensed version of her talk with Rosalind Price.
It had been a tense shoot, during which they'd managed to annoy each other even more effectively than usual, for no reason beyond the fact that they could . Within 15 minutes, the photographer was at the end of his rope. "I don't know if all that glaring at each other is considered sexy in the UK, or if it's meant to be edgy," he'd huffed, gesturing between the two of them. "But this is not what I'm commissioned for. Can you try pretending you actually like each other?"
Jemma skimmed through the short article, her eyes jumping back and forth between the interview and the picture above.
"This is so heavily edited it barely looks like us."
"You two look cute," Daisy assured her, nodding toward the page.
"If you say so." They were standing side-by-side in a cheap cardboard approximation of a spaceship, and although they wore lab coats similar to the ones they sported on set, their faces looked completely off. For starters she was wearing about three times as much makeup as she usually did in the show‒ a full-set of mile-long fake lashes, bright pink lipstick, the works. Completely inappropriate for working in a lab, honestly. His eyes looked different too‒ even more strikingly blue. And while she was facing the camera and looking straight ahead, Fitz was inching toward her and staring at her intently, almost longingly.
"Very 'daytime soap star-crossed lovers'," Daisy continued. "The Trevigail crowd is gonna love that."
Jemma scrunched her nose with distaste. "Can you please never say that word out loud again?"
"Hey, I didn't make it up!" Daisy held up her hands. "You have to admit it's an excellent ship name. And anyway, it's only gonna get worse after this episode. Like it or not, Trevigail is a thing. "
In the episode they were shooting, Abigail was kidnapped by a crew of space pirates and Trevor went above and beyond, disobeying an array of direct orders and risking his own life to rescue her.
It was a challenging shoot, and not just because they had twice as much screentime as in a typical episode. The nature of their scenes was different too‒ for the first time, their characters acknowledged they shared a deep emotional attachment that bled into their professional partnership.
A few days before they were handed the script, Victoria had summoned them both to her office and informed them that, depending on the public's reception, they might explore that connection further‒ meaning Abigail and Trevor could eventually become romantically involved.
"This is not what we had in mind originally, but there's an interest," she stated dryly. "It's a competitive world out there. We don't want to neglect a potential fanbase. Besides, the studio's pushing for it."
Jemma grimaced, recalling her conversation with Rosalind.
"I thought we already had a fanbase." Fitz didn't sound overjoyed with the news, either.
"Enough to achieve cult status. You know what happened to every single cult sci-fi shows in recent years?" Victoria took a dramatic pause, staring them both down. "They were all cancelled within the first two seasons. I don't want Cosmic Curse to be fondly remembered, I want it to live on. Are we in agreement?"
And now, there they were, holding back tears and exchanging awkward proclamations of fondness.
"You could have been captured," Abigail said, her lips trembling, as she tightened her hold on the lapels of his coat. Trevor's face became blurry as her eyes filled with tears. "You could have died."
"Yeah, well." He looked down, but not quick enough for her to miss the mirroring emotion on for face. He shrugged gawkily, and when his eyes found hers again, he forced a lopsided smile. "I didn't have a choice. It's pretty hard to find a decent lab partner in space."
This was not what Jemma had signed up for when she'd taken the part of a space traveling lab-bound scientist, but she had to hand it to Fitz‒ he was good at this. He made it easy for her, too: all she had to do was to respond to the subtle notes of love, relief and awkwardness that played on his face. The way his voice cracked at times, as if he could barely contain his feelings, made her heart jump in her chest. It wasn't what he said‒ the dialogue was quite plain‒ but the way he said it. She was stunned by the obviousness with which Fitz laid down Trevor's feelings. That was not hinting at a possible romance‒ he was laying the ground for it. It was almost as if he knew something she didn't about the future of their characters.
Once they were done for the day, it was a long time before she felt entirely grounded in herself again. Usually Jemma felt tired but satisfied after a long day of shooting, but this episode left her feeling distracted, agitated and, even though it pained her to admit, quite lonely.
It must be nice, she thought to herself in the privacy of her trailer, as she waited for the kettle to boil. It had been a while since she'd last had a serious boyfriend, or any kind of boyfriend for that matter, and her relationships so far had all been rather underwhelming.
She inhaled the comforting steam of her tea and sighed. Yes, it must be nice to have someone feel that strongly about you.