Decisions, decisions.
Fitz looked up at the clock - 8:01 p.m. - and back down to the phone in his hand. Four missed calls, multiple texts, even a voicemail. Fitz tinkered with the broken camera - no sense in not fixing it, not when the simple repair gave him something to do with his hands as he worried - and scrolled through Jemma's texts, even as a new one arrived with a chime.
[From Jemma: one last data point come on fitz]
[From Jemma: where are you!]
[From Jemma: if you get here in five minutes i'll clean the lab for a week]
Amateur, he scoffed. It would take a lot more than a week of cleanup duty to sway him.
He tried to think the situation through logically: Kibbles, potentially, had a very upsetting block of footage featuring his 'six-inch sub'. And regardless of what Jemma said, the threats against their partnership worried him as well. Sure, Weaver was the sort who would investigate and ask for both sides of a story - but most of the higher-ups? They'd just see two people kissing, call a duck a duck, and flag them for an anti-frat violation. Not to mention, the thought of the whole school looking at Jemma's bare chest had him close to smashing the tiny camera even worse than before.
As for Jemma's argument - well, it was hard denying her something when she was passionate about it. And this project was her baby. 'Just think of all of the wonderful stalling tactics this will open up!' Though Fitz had tried not to picture the specifics, he could imagine agents like Romanoff dosing a crime lord with the Limpstick, then promptly consoling him about his performance. In one move, the undercover agent could appear supportive, acquire leverage over their mark, and bond emotionally, all without having to undergo sexual intercourse. It really is a good product.
And he always wanted to help Jemma, or more specifically, he never wanted to disappoint her. He wasn't sure if the Limpstick was so important to her because of the competition, or because she believed in the product, but he couldn't stand knowing he was letting her down. Her increasingly panicky texts, each one a sharpened trowel, scraped away with every ping at the hole in his chest.
[From Jemma: look i know you're upset but hear me out]
[From Jemma: we have to finish the experiment because if we don't]
[From Jemma: we won't have anything to show for our time and everyone will think we were just having sex in the lab anyway]
[From Jemma: it will be exactly what she wants]
That was… actually a good point. Finalizing the data, entering the competition and making their prototype public - it might lead to some humiliation, but at least it would support their version of events. If only he could be as unaffected by the prospect of everyone seeing his limp science noodle.
He sighed, putting down the now-functional camera, and rubbed his fingers through his curls. Whether he went back and finished the trial or not, he was going to need to tell Jemma something. The phone buzzed in his hand.
[From Jemma: ]
Oh, good grief. This time Amy Pornd was decked out in a handful of strategically placed bow ties.
[From Jemma: you like that? plenty more where that came from. right here in the lab]
Despite the soup of nerves boiling in his stomach, Fitz couldn't help chuckling. She thought putting badly cropped pornography on his phone was the way to get him to play ball? He couldn't resist sending back a quick text poking fun at her Photoshop job.
[To Jemma: I've seen better]
He'd meant it innocently, just a small mickey-take, but as soon as he hit the green button, Fitz realized how it might come off to her. He nearly swallowed his tongue. All ten of his fingers morphed into thick, jellied tentacles as he frantically tried to follow up with an explanation, but before he could, he received one more text.
[From Jemma: ]
Fitz stared in surprise at the picture message glowing up at him. He'd know those nipples anywhere. God damn it.
He grabbed his backpack and headed to the lab.
-o-
"I'm here!" Fitz panted, practically doubled over, one hand flat on the wall beside the laboratory door. "I'm here, let's do this."
Simmons looked up from her computer desk, hand going to her mouth to hide her amusement. "You can take a minute to catch your breath." Her eyes traveled his bent form, lingering on his arse…? Nah, must be imagining things. "Bloody Hell, Fitz, you look like you just ran a marathon."
The warm, late-spring night had left him drenched in sweat, and he wheezed, "Couldn't… wait t'..."
Her shoulders lifted hopefully, and a fluctuating smile took over her face. "Fitz…" She stood up.
He got his lungs back enough to straighten his torso, and caught her gaze. He licked his lips. I love you. "Jemma." I'd show the world my penis if it would make you happy. "You've got a lot of faith in me, sending that to my phone."
She nodded simply. "I know you wouldn't do anything nefarious with it." Stepping closer, she paused in front of him, smoothing her hands down her front. "And, well, actually." Simmons hesitated, toying with the hem of her jumper. "I had some time to think tonight." She breathed in deep and held onto it for a beat. "You've done so much for this project - we both have - sometimes I forget it was my idea." She shrugged, nose wrinkling sympathetically. "And I might have trusted you with a photo, but you've been putting your trust in me all month." She grabbed the last Limpstick from its storage case and tapped it idly against the lab table, mulling over her next words. "I just want you to know that I appreciate it."
Fitz, still breathless from the run over, got exactly zero words out before his senses were suddenly flooded by her, wrapped in a quick hug.
Drawing back, she smiled up at him hopefully. "I know we argue sometimes, Fitz, but your feelings are important to me. I'm sorry if I made you think I didn't care."
"Yeah, no, that's fine, I knew that." Truthfully, he had been angry, but seeing her like this, apologetic, vulnerable, affectionate - his rancor sublimated like dry ice. "I do have t' wonder," he added playfully, "if I'd taken even longer showin' up, what else you might've sent me a picture of…"
Simmons punched his arm, laughing lightly. "Cheeky." She shooed him with a quick gesture. "Go get situated; I'd like to start." A wave of her hand indicated the monitor setup as she moved to scan the Limpstick's randomly-generated bar code.
Still feeling overly warm, Fitz stumbled over to his usual chair and secured the cuff around himself. Only then did he realize that, too preoccupied with everything that had happened, he'd forgotten to go home and change. In his dark jeans - the same clothes he'd worn to the meeting with Weaver - rather than the roomy shorts he was meant to wear over the monitor, he couldn't decipher exactly how to keep himself modest. If he sat very still and didn't fall out of the flap, his boxers would conceivably manage, but that was the extent of it. Fitz sat with his jeans on but his zipper open, a barely-covered bulge poking up from his lap. Under the plaid cotton of his underpants, man and machine cooperated to mortify him in a rather sizeable way. "Erm, Simmons? I've got a wardrobe malfunction."
He could hear the eye roll. "I swear, you use that expression far too liberally."
She walked shamelessly around the screen, painting her mouth with the Limpstick and not bothering with a mirror. "Oh, Fitz," she tsked. "I can't see anything. Besides, I double-checked the room - there aren't any cameras on us anymore."
"Oh. Er… I suppose that's all right then." Simmons had already seen everything anyway.
She bit her bottom lip and advanced on him, dropping the stopwatch on the desk next to his chair. "Do you want to stand, or…?"
"Y'know," he squinched up his face, thinking about what fleshy bits would certainly tumble out of their precarious hammock if he so much as crossed his legs, "I think I'm good here?"
"Okay." She pushed her hair back from her face, tying it into a loose ponytail as she walked forward. "I can work with that."
Good God. Putting her hands behind her head like that should be illegal. Fitz felt his face go slack and reminded himself that he had a lovely new photo he could ogle anytime he wanted. So stop leering at her in person, you perv.
With no further preamble, Jemma stepped forward and sat across his knees.
Fitz bit the inside of his cheek, stifling an indecent yelp at the sudden move. "Ahhh… what're y' doin' there, pal?" Pal? His whole personality groaned self-consciously.
"Well I'm hardly going to bend down to kiss you for the entire time. Can you imagine how uncomfortable that would be?" She wrapped her arms around his neck, and his eyes flew to the ceiling, hoping she'd attribute the half-hard press of him against her thigh to the texture of the cuff.
"Am I disturbing anything?" Her voice, her skin, her breath were soft against his cheek.
A quick glance down was enough to confirm that, while he might risk popping out of his boxers, she wasn't interfering with any data transmission. Fucking Hell. The same glance made him nearly bite his tongue in half, struck by the unexpected front-row access down her normally conservative blouse.
"Er… nope. We're all good. Good to go. Goin' strong. I mean-"
He stopped speaking when her lips crashed into his. Jemma seemed intent on making up for every minute she'd spent waiting for him that evening, all questing tongue and hungry teeth, edacious and demanding. His arousal spiked into high gear as she squirmed against him, and before he forgot himself, before the gaunt hidalgo ran off to become a knight, Fitz forced himself to pull away, cradling her cheeks to hold her in place.
Remember Weaver's warning. Keep it professional.
After a half dozen heartbeats, he leaned forward again, pressing his lips to hers carefully, keeping his mouth closed with deliberate effort when he felt the warm, tempting slide of her tongue, begging an invitation. Chaste. Clinical. He remembered the little speech Simmons had given that afternoon, decrying even the possibility of anything between them, as if the concept itself were laughable. The hurt sat fizzing in his chest, a bitter soda tablet of expired hope, and his lips glued themselves together in defiance of her needy whimper.
At least, until he felt the hot breath of his name against his face.
"Fitz…" she pressed a peck to the corner of his mouth. "What's wrong? Why aren't you kissing me?"
"I am kissing you." His expression studiously blank, Fitz picked up the hand he'd been resting on Jemma's leg to examine a chip on his pinky nail.
She sighed, tipping her forehead to his temple while one hand played with the curls at the nape of his neck. "I wish you could just tell me."
Everything in him twitched, wanting to hold her, to kiss her the way he knew she meant, and he pulled back slightly before blurting out, "I don't know, Jemma. I think…" His eyes darted to meet hers, then down to her mouth, back to his hand. "I think it's just hitting me that this is the last time we'll be doing this."
Her brows met adorably in the middle - is that disappointment? - mouth tantalizingly close as her tongue flickered out over her bottom lip. "What if… what if it wasn't? The last time?"
For a moment, Fitz stared into her eyes, the golden flecks within them a dragon's hoard he would starve to hold onto. "Jemma?" He was proud he'd kept her name from turning into a squeak. "Are you hittin' on me?"
She chuffed a soft laugh. "Trying to." Her breath was coming in shallow puffs, and she dropped her head forward to rest on his shoulder, fingers playing with the button of his shirt collar.
"Oh." He held the notion in his mind, catching it in a jar like a lightning bug that could fizzle out at any second. "But you told Weaver-"
"-what I had to to get us out of there, obviously." She nuzzled into the safety of his collar, one more beat of silent uncertainty. "So… what do you think?"
Words darted into his head and out, too fast to capture, flying fish leaping in the salty spray, and in the absence of coherent thought, he simply nodded. Slowly at first, then the quick up-down of a sinusoidal wave, Fitz nodded all the way into the kiss, until his movement met hers and became the push and pull of dancing mouths, the tilt and shift of noses and chins in gentle negotiation.
Where his last kisses had been quick and firm, this new rhythm was positively luxurious. Her mouth moved over his, building his need higher, layering texture onto an already breathtaking canvas. They fit together like a game of Tetris, heartbeats rising, hands traveling from cloth to skin to hair, tongues creating a secret handshake in the relentless summer swelter of their bodies. The drums between them were thundering heat and fog, and the cooling sweat on his skin begged for the exploration of her lips.
Just in case this never happened again, he meant to draw it out, and so he kissed her past the point of breath and wisdom. All too soon, the buzzer for the alarm was sounding, and Fitz flung a hand out, blindly reaching to turn it off and succeeding only in clattering the stopwatch farther back and out of reach. "Fuck," he growled, tearing himself away just enough to pick it up and, rather vindictively, smash it silent.
"Hmm?" Jemma's wordless question, full of sandpapery want, set his brain on fire, and he felt the jolt of his erection against the monitor cuff.
"Jemma." Her name was a strangled groan as she wiggled in his lap. "I think we got a placebo."a
"Did we?" Her hand trailed down his chest, and before he knew it, her fingers were brushing against him through the thin fabric of his boxers. "Hmm…" she teased with a note of faux assessment. "I doubt we have enough evidence to make that determination at this point, don't you think? In fact I'm fairly certain," she leaned forward, ghosting her lips over his ear, "we need to collect more data."
Fitz moaned, an obscene sound in the sterile room. It was a constant in his and Simmons' daily existence that the lab was for work. Fitz was a professional, after all, a man grown, responsible for many of the upgrades to the tech in that very lab. For God's sake, he didn't even keep food in there anymore. Obviously, he told himself, nothing's gonna happen. We're just doing research like Simmons said. There was no way he was going to 'pop the champagne' tonight - at least, not sitting at his workstation, on a Tuesday, in full view of the centrifuge and the autoclave.
Tell that to Simmons. At the moment, Jemma seemed intent on seeing exactly how far she could take him with nothing but her tongue in his mouth and her slender fingers wrapped around his cock. If he'd been in a wagering mood, he'd have said, pretty far indeed.
She did something with her thumb that left him gasping, unable to reign in the clench of his brow, cursing the limits of the human body as he broke off the kiss to fill his lungs.
"Oh, my giddy aunt-" he choked, at the sight of her wet, kiss-red lips and the fierce look of accomplishment in her eye.
"Need something?" she teased, releasing him long enough to run her tongue across her palm. Jesus Bungee-Jumping Christ. With a glint of mischief in her eye, she started up a torturously languid pace that set him off in entirely different ways, and it took him a minute before he could speak again.
"Oxygen," he managed. "I did run all the way over here, y'know." Never mind that was almost certainly not why he was breathing so hard.
She snorted delicately, a knowing smile in place, and let go of him with a light shove. "Only because you were hoping to catch me with my top off."
"I beg your pardon," he said in mock indignation, now that his mouth was forming words again, "but I came back here to finish our project. Which I care about deeply."
She rolled her eyes. "My hero." Leaning in for a gentle kiss, Simmons moved her hands to the top button of her blouse and arched an eyebrow. "I was thinking…"
Oh, Hell yes. "Uh-huh?" Is that really what my voice sounds like? He sounded like a cartoon character. No wonder Simmons hadn't ever tried to kiss him before.
She kept talking, though, and Fitz was more than happy to ignore the odd pitch his larynx seemed intent on producing. "We could, potentially, get even better results with a new set of conditions."
Right then, Fitz would've traded away the rights to his future intellectual property just to get his hands on her set. Of, er, conditions. The way she was toying with that button was driving him half mad with the itch to take over. He swallowed. "Erm," he licked his lips, "What did you have in mind?" Good. Not so squeaky this time.
Instead of answering, Jemma stood and walked down to the end of the room. Near-instantaneously, every one of his molecules protested the loss of her warmth in his lap, the breeze of her movement flickering over the bare head of his cock where it poked up from the flap in his boxers. Fitz clapped his hands over himself instinctively, ill at ease with the idea of being so exposed in public, and felt his stomach drop in unsteady guilt when he saw her stop at the sink.
Of course she'd want to wash the ball sweat off her hands. He opened his mouth to apologize for the state of his crotch, but stopped himself when, instead of turning on the tap, Jemma grabbed a stack of napkins from the dispenser and the bottle of hand lotion they kept next to the gloves to ward off dry skin. Hello. Wait, no. No, he'd made a promise to himself. This was their lab, their place. He couldn't very well let Jemma tug him off in front of the same table where she'd once left a cat liver next to his lunch. Could he?
Jemma set her cargo on the desk by the stopwatch and arranged herself one more time in his lap, dropping all pretense of propriety and bringing her hip right up against his erection. Damn these single-person chairs. If he'd been on a bench, she could have straddled him, the mental image of which was enough to make him practically go blind. But Fitz wasn't about to complain about a goddamn chair, not when Simmons was right there, leaning slightly back and eyeing him wolfishly.
"I just think," and finally, for the love of all things holy, she undid that button, "we should test as many variables as possible." Then the next one. "Just to be thorough." And the next. She does like to be thorough.
Her left hand came out to take his right one, slipping it into her bra cup and pressing his fingers over her nipple. He followed her lead, listening to her whimper and squirm, and pinpricks of glorious sensation crept across his skin as she writhed against him. When she went back to kissing, nipping at his bottom lip in wild exuberance, he swore he might have stopped seeing colors for a second.
"I lied to you before," Fitz gasped. "Your boobs are fucking incredible."
She smiled and left soft kisses in a trail down his jaw before dragging her teeth across his earlobe. "I kind of knew that," she breathed, leaving the shell of his ear crackling with staticky bliss. "Your cock's not so bad either."
And with that, she pushed his boxers out of the way, pumped herself a handful of lotion, and set about proving once again that Jemma Simmons was the best at everything.
Fuck it. The lab could be for work tomorrow.
-o-
Fitz woke to an unfamiliar alarm and a lock of hair tickling his nose, and spent a moment cataloguing his senses to make sure his scumbag brain wasn't playing a trick on him. The rise and fall of Jemma's breath came in against his rib cage like the tide, the scent of her almond blossom shampoo welcomed him faintly from the sheets - and Fitz, satisfied that she was real, reached over and punched the snooze button with gusto. "Morning, sunshine." His eyes were cathedral windows as he craned his neck down to kiss her forehead.
With her sleepy smile pressed into his chest, Fitz sent a silent prayer of thanks to the penis god for favoring him with such bounty. Must be all those sacrifices finally payin' off. A month of interrupted boners was nothing, if it made Jemma happy. Maybe Simmons was the penis god. He'd certainly seen enough in the last twelve hours to convince him of the possibility.
He was just working up the nerve to ask her what she wanted to do - for the rest of our lives - for breakfast, when a musical ding went off on Simmons' phone, indicating a new email.
Furrowing her brow, she sat up and checked the screen, letting the sheets pool around her waist. Christ on a cracker. The hypnotic sight of Jemma's bare breasts sent a flurry of recent memories, in which those boobs had starring roles, skittering to the forefront of his brain. This is so much better than that time she wore a bikini last year. Floating on the pleasant hum of having an Actual Female Girl naked in bed with him, it was only when she wrung her hands into the sheets and brought them anxiously up to her neck that Fitz processed the look of clear trepidation tightening over her face.
"It's Weaver. She wants to meet with us again."
Author's Note
The line "Jemma Simmons was the best at everything" is paraphrased from Nothing Important by snarkysweetness, which is awesome and a much better hand job scene than this and you should all check it out.
Also this is my first smut and smut is hard. Er, difficult. So, y'know, judge away, but please be kind. (I was lucky enough to have a smut pro beta-ing, lavendergaia - thanks, hon!)
