Conversation Hearts.
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Keys.
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A soulmate is someone who has locks that fit our keys, and keys to fit our locks.
-Richard Bach
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He didn't mean to eavesdrop. Really, he didn't. Coulson had asked to see him. It wasn't his fault that Coulson and May were having some sort of meeting when he got there. It wasn't his fault that they were talking about something that maybe wasn't supposed to be for his ears. It also wasn't his fault that May wasn't using her super-secret spy powers of knowing where everyone was at all times just then.
The not knocking on the half open door right away and announcing his presence though, that was definitely his fault.
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"Do you think we should send them out together?" Coulson's words drifted from one hotel room to the other, but Fitz edged closer. Skye said Coulson wanted to talk to him about one of the pieces of Howling Commando gear. Something about it being near sacrilege to modify it, but they might need it. He raised his hand in preparation to knock, but lowered it at the next words.
"FitzSimmons will be fine. They're just going to get a line on the plane. No combat involved." May's voice was low and soothing, like she was trying to calm Coulson's nerves about this plan. Fitz hadn't really known Coulson to allow the plans, at least not of his own making, to cause nervousness. "I'd rather have them there than sneaking into the base with us. Fitz won't let anything happen to Simmons, and vice versa."
"That's what I'm afraid of."
He froze in place, just on the other side of the door, his body out of sight, even his shadow hiding behind him, not making a sound. Wasn't that part of the deal when you were on a team? You were supposed to protect one another?
"Phil?"
The silence stretched out in the other room, and it grabbed Fitz and took hold, filling his mind with worry. Fitz wished he could see the expressions on their faces. He wanted to know what they were thinking, why it was suddenly not a good idea for FitzSimmons to be FitzSimmons. They had been a package deal right out of the Academy; they worked best when they were together.
"Do you remember," Coulson finally breathed out, "what happened when Simmons contracted that Chitauri virus?" A creak of a bedspring followed his question, indicating one of them had taken a seat on one of the old mattresses.
"No, I have absolutely no memory of Skye falling apart while she watched her only friends in the world try to solve a near impossible problem that could result in death, and no, I don't remember Simmons deciding to save us all by jumping to said death, and I definitely don't remember Ward going out after her just to prove how valuable he was to the team."
Fitz had to give credit where credit was due. May, in these rare unguarded moments with Coulson, had the sarcasm thing down. She was even better than he was.
There was an exasperated sigh after that, and Fitz couldn't say with 100% certainty, but he was pretty sure that was Coulson. He was also pretty sure the senior agent was giving May one of his patented school principal looks right then. She kind of deserved it.
"Fitz… he went into the lab with her even though it was quarantined. He was going to jump out after her…." Coulson trailed off, but just as May made some sort of noise in the back of her throat, something akin to a sucked in breath and a cut off word, he added, "Simmons shot Sitwell when she panicked, trying to get information on the Ossetia mission… I just wonder if Hill was right about me –us – bringing this team into the field after all."
"Hill?" There was a series of clicks, like May was loading bullets into a gun.
"Yeah. She said Ward was prickly. He didn't play well with others. She didn't want him on my team."
"Ward fooled us all," May said stiffly, another sharp click echoing in the room after her statement. "Even beat the unbeatable lie detector." He wasn't sure if May was talking about the high tech chair they had been introduced to at Providence or if she was talking about herself. There was a bitterness to her tone that wasn't there before, and Fitz wondered if Skye was right about May and Ward having been sleeping together. He hadn't really thought Ward would be May's type. Who was he kidding? Ward was everyone's type before he revealed himself to be a traitor.
"Still, Maria caught something I didn't there. I should have seen something."
"Maria trusts less people than Fury does, especially men from the Operations side of SHIELD."
"Did."
"Please. I'll believe that man's dead when I see the body. And even then, I'll want a DNA test."
"Fair enough."
The duo lapsed into silence again, and Fitz thought they had glossed right over the problem at hand. Coulson didn't think he and Simmons would be able to safely get eyes on the bus? What was wrong with-
"What did she say about FitzSimmons?"
Ah, there it was. Fitz strained, leaning closer to the door, nearly scared to breathe lest they catch him in the act. Being caught eavesdropping by a pair of highly trained SHIELD agents (or former SHIELD agents, whatever the case may be) was not going to be a good way to earn respect.
"There's a codependency issue there." He paused. "There was a Section 17 flag in their file. I had it scrubbed to get them in the field together. Maria didn't approve."
Fitz's heart stopped momentarily in his chest. That was impossible. Neither of them had ever said or done anything to… well, nothing had ever actually happened between them, and it seemed entirely unfair that someone at SHIELD had been able to see how he felt before he did.
Damn spies.
Unless the flag hadn't been on his end? But of course it would have been.
"They were involved?" May's voice held an edge of surprise to it. "I mean, the feelings are obviously there, but they both seem too stuck on the rules to act on anything inappropriate. They are both more focused on the job at hand than any agent I've ever seen."
Fitz vehemently shook his head before realizing that neither of them could see him, that he was still hiding behind the door in an adjoining motel room.
"No, there's no evidence that anything physical happened. The flag was from one of the psychologists that evaluated both of them at the Academy."
A zipper sounded, then a thud as May removed equipment that Fitz couldn't see and placed it on the table in the room.
"Evidence." May snorted, a sound Fitz had never heard come from her before. "SHIELD did like to gather as much evidence as possible. Watched our every move. They were thorough."
"Not thorough enough, it seems."
"Maybe operatives assigned to watch their own agents should have spent less time spying on possible Section 17 violators and more time on possible terror threats." May's bitterness echoed again, and Fitz had a feeling there was a story there too, something about May the rest of them didn't know.
"We all thought Hydra was dust. You know why the anti-fraternization policy is in place. People get too close, they focus on one another instead of the mission at hand. They lean on each other too much to get the job done." It was Coulson's turn to take on the low and soothing tone, attempting to placate May on a road he hadn't intended to travel.
"It's been my experience that the best agents, the ones who do the job at all costs, are the ones who are closest with their partners, think of their teams as family. They're the ones who experience life with the whole of their hearts, even if it kills them." Fitz hadn't known May to be so poetic. "Caring doesn't make you weak. It motivates you. It gives you something to hold on to when you're hanging from a ceiling being tortured by a psychopath for information. It makes you stand in front of a man who's going to shoot out your kneecaps and insist that he do his worst. It makes you point the gun and pull the trigger even though you've never used a weapon in the field before. "
"Melinda-"
"I know."
Fitz's world spun and dipped dangerously as he thought about what May said. She cared much more than he thought. She thought they were family. She didn't think his feelings for Simmons were a weakness, but a strength he could use. He kind of wanted to run up and hug her, but he thought that wouldn't go over very well. Especially since his feelings were a little jumbled right now.
There was some shuffling of papers before May said, "I don't remember seeing anything in their files when I assembled the parameters for your team."
May had read their files? Fitz cringed at the thought. He wondered what it said about how he had been recruited, the trouble he had been in as a child, the attitude problem, the difficulty with authority initially… It was probably a pretty thick file for a relatively young agent.
"It was a result of one of their final field assessments. Must have been done after you vetted them."
"Did they fail badly?"
"No, quite the opposite. Passed with flying colors on the early logistics and strategy portions of the test. Written explanations to problems were pretty by the book. Not surprising considering the two of them excel at games like Chess and Risk. Simmons excelled at identifying and reversing the effects of toxins. Fitz was especially adept at escaping sealed facilities."
"Ironic," May muttered. The scent of oil came to him, and Fitz gathered that she was cleaning one of their few weapons now. Maybe it was one of the ways she stayed so zen.
"It was on the practical application that they lost points."
"Makes sense. You can solve every problem in the world on paper, but when you're actually thrown into a dangerous situation, everything you've learned can go out the window."
Coulson sighed and Fitz could picture him rubbing his hand across his forehead, maybe loosening his tie to stave off the irritation or stress he was feeling. "They did surprisingly well for a pair of agents who didn't want to land fieldwork before they made it to SciOps. They made it all the way to the end of the simulation, were set to break out, but they didn't see one of the Ops agents playing the assassins until it was too late. Simmons jumped in front of Fitz to take the bullet."
"Sounds like Simmons."
Fitz's heart clenched in his chest and he grit his teeth at the memory. For a moment, he had forgotten it was a simulation and that everything they were doing was to gauge their reactions to real threats in the field. He forgot that their progress was being monitored. He forgot that everything was being recorded and marked down. He forgot that they were doing this because he and Simmons had agreed to try for their field assessments together. All he knew was that Simmons had jumped in front of him, and there was suddenly a splatter of red on her standard issue SHIELD t-shirt. He forgot that it was basically a paint ball, that it would do no real damage but bruise, that real blood wasn't quite that bright of a red. All he saw was the stunned expression on Jemma's face as she clutched at the mark on her chest. She probably hadn't expected it to hurt. He suspected she was simply reacting on instinct, that Fitz getting out was the way for the mission parameters to remain intact with the least amount of casualties. The problem was that once she got hit, Fitz could focus on nothing else.
"Simmons sacrificing herself for the mission would have been one thing, but she didn't do it for the other field agent candidate that was shot at earlier in the test. She did it for Fitz. And Fitz wasn't able to complete his final task. He was too focused on Simmons. The two of them, they just fell apart."
They fell apart was a massive understatement on Coulson's part, but Fitz appreciated the man not going into detail, even if he was certain that May was never going to bring this up with him. He had blocked most of what happened after Simmons being "shot" from his mind. He remembered not being able to get his hands steady. He remembered telling Simmons afterwards that it had all just been nerves. His nerves got the better of him. It was the first time he lied to her.
"They have more experience in the field now."
Fitz noticed that May didn't add that half of their experience in the field involved the two of them knowingly putting themselves in harm's way for one another. There's a part of him that realized Coulson was right. He was never going to go into a mission with Simmons and not put her first. It wasn't how this was going to work. Ever. He took a step back from the door, inhaled deeply, attempting to calm himself down. He didn't want to hear anymore. He didn't want to think about his feelings anymore. He wanted to get back to work. He wanted something else to draw his attention.
Coulson didn't respond. In fact, the other room is so silent that Fitz worried that the more experienced agents had found him out. He froze again, half way between knocking on the door and backing away.
"You read the earlier entries into their files too?" Coulson must have nodded his head at May's question because she went on, "What do you think would have happened to them if SHIELD hadn't recruited them, if they hadn't found each other during their training?"
Fitz allowed May's question to take him back to his early days at the Academy, days of loneliness and isolation when he was too nervous, too used to being the odd man out to join in. He had allowed himself to sink so far into himself that he had almost been completely unaware of the girl his own age who tried over and over again to befriend him. He had almost missed out on Jemma Simmons completely. Luckily, Jemma was a stubborn one.
"I think they would have found each other eventually. They might not have wound up in the same fields, but their work complements one another. I think it would have only been a matter of time before their paths crossed," Coulson allowed. "The way they work together is… it's not like anything I've ever seen before," he admitted to May. "It's like neither of them even have to finish a complete thought around one another. Everything just clicks right into place and the ideas come flowing out. I knew it was a risk bringing them on, but I did it because I think that together, there probably isn't any problem we could come up against that they can't work out a solution for."
"Then why are you hesitating to send them out on this?"
"I'm not prepared to lose either of them." He paused. "Do you think they're prepared for combat at this point if they run into any trouble?"
"I think Fitz is more prepared than you think. He saved me, remember? And I think Jemma is made of harder stuff than we've given her credit for. They'll find a way around anything that gets in their way. Or through."
Fitz swallowed hard. He couldn't take any more of this kind of talk right now. He wiped the distraught expression from his face, raised his hand, and knocked.
"You wanted to see me, sir?"
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The full extent of the quote at the top:
"A soulmate is someone who has locks that fit our keys, and keys that fit our locks. When we feel safe enough to open the locks, our truest selves step out and we can be completely and honestly who we are; we can be loved for who we are and not for who we're pretending to be. Each unveils the best part of the other. No matter what else goes wrong around us, with that one person we're safe in our own paradise. Our soulmate is someone who shares our deepest longings, our sense of direction. When we're two balloons, and together our direction is up, chances are we've found the right person. Our soulmate is the one who makes life come to life."
It felt like an apt description of FitzSimmons if I ever heard one.
