A/N: I don't own Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Simmons watched stricken as Fitz, heedless of the scrape and bruise he would incur, shoved most of his left forearm through the cage bars and grasped Pacino by the scruff of his back. The crazed monkey twisted out of the sloppy grip, but released a whimpering Sweet Pea and sank his teeth and nails into the meat just above Fitz's wrist. Her lab partner's forceful intake of breath cut through the room as he hissed in agony. His voice was strangled. "Simmons!"
She was frozen. She'd never prepared for this. Why had Pacino flown off the handle? It was clear when it happened; she'd seen the change come over him immediately after Fitz tested the surge - the Zakadel's jaw going slack before morphing his simian face into a Halloween mask. What dumbfounded her was that, in her own lab, she didn't know what was inside Pacino to make him react that way.
Oh, no, no no! Fitz's face was crunched in pain, pinpricks of blood starting to pool where Pacino had hooked into him. He gasped jaggedly, his voice barely carrying, and she could have sworn she misunderstood the message. Did he really say…
"Simmons- the- the gun!"
Her eyes flew to the tech table. Fitz's prototypes were there, strewn about as usual. Could he mean… She didn't know if it would glitch, or even if was loaded, but her friend's cries were becoming too much. Simmons' hands had gone up to her neck, on both sides of her jaw as she shook under the weight of indecision. She picked up the heavy, unfinished pistol. "Fitz! It's going to be okay!"
Fitz watched through slitted, burning eyes as Simmons picked up his highly dangerous working Advanced Weaponry prototype, disbelief coursing through him as much as adrenaline. "Not- that," he choked out. "The tranq gun!"
She dropped the pistol like a snapping piranha. "We don't have- we use injections!" Her eyes were beginning to fill, and she hurried to a drawer, rummaging frantically through a heap of disposable syringes. "Empty… Fitz! There's no sedative! It's gone!"
Pacino was biting at Fitz's extensor muscle, sharp fingers digging into his elbow and palm, bracketing rabid fangs. "How can you not- aaaarggggh!" Fitz grimaced, his nerves on fire as a spasm stabbed up his arm to his shoulder blade, forcing his neck to hunch and lock up. He roared in frustration. "-have a contingency plan!"
"Found it!" She grabbed a syringe and spun towards the cages, clutching a small bottle. Within seconds she was in front of Fitz, sticking her own slender arm into the cage. "Just hold on a little longer…" She drove the needle into Pacino's leg and depressed the plunger before extracting her hand in the space of a heartbeat.
"Fitz…" she grabbed the cane-like rod that sat next to the cage, the one she'd used to sweep his phone out on that first night, seemingly a lifetime ago. Pushing it through the slats, she used the curved section to press gently against Pacino's torso, although at that point the Zakadel's aggression was already starting to flag. His head lolled against his chest, his little hands twitched and released Fitz's arm, and the traumatized monkey flopped over in a shivering heap, his haphazard convulsions growing weaker as the drug took over.
Fitz dragged his arm back through the steel bars, wincing and trying his best not to voice the torture filling his entire side.
"God, Fitz… I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry…" Sorry for what? None of this was her fault. Simmons was trembling, voice cracking and eyes brimming, but she inhaled deeply and brought herself under control. Her hands, however, had remained steady throughout. Look at that. Simmons, if she wanted to, would make a great field agent someday.
"Rinse your arm off. Keep it elevated." Fitz was two steps ahead of her, the cool water blessing him with its distraction as he watched Simmons in action mode. She had the uncanny ability to press on, even while toeing at the cliff face of shock. Simmons scrabbled around inside a cabinet until she produced a much-used key ring, which opened the padlock on the Zakadel cage. Pulling on extra-thick black rubber gloves, she slid open a small square in the front of the enclosure and reached in, lifting out the unconscious Pacino.
"What do you need me to do?" Fitz's arm was a stinging misery, but he set his mouth in a line and turned to his partner, ready to help with the extraction. If she can keep goin', so can I. And they definitely should sort out the monkeys first, make sure they could isolate Pacino before he woke up and had a chance to keep fighting.
"Just open th-the hatch on that one," she hiccupped - so maybe she's not fine - pointing to the smaller cage where Pacino had been contained after his surgery. She placed the limp creature inside before swiping her sleeve across her eyes. "I should check over the small one, too, in case she's hurt. Unless you need me-"
"No, take care of Sweet Pea. I can wait." He gritted the words out. "Just tell me how to help." I need a task. He thought he might go off the deep end unless he had something to focus on.
Simmons seemed to understand. "The first aid kit - it's on the wall by the door."
"Got it."
Simmons picked Sweet Pea up in her gloved hands. "Shh… shh… it's all right…" Her quiet, reassuring clucks didn't much calm the little female, who was still shaking like a rickshaw and gibbering out tiny sobs. "This doesn't look too bad," she declared finally. "I think he just scared her, maybe some bruising. But I'm not a vet…" Simmons put Sweet Pea back in the Zakadel cage, where she was immediately surrounded by her two friends in a protective, hugging pile-up. She started to replace the padlock.
"Wait, wait, hang on." Fitz retrieved Pacino's towel cape, then draped it across the sleeping monkey. "Now you can lock up." Simmons, if anything, looked more on the verge of tears than before. Oh, don't do that. If there was one thing Fitz did not want to have to worry about at the moment, it was rule-loving Simmons crying because he hadn't thought to put a glove on before sticking his good hand back into the cage.
"Hey, hey now. It's okay. See?" He showed her his uninjured arm. "No problem."
She was shivering, words coming out cracked and raw. "That's not- Fitz, we need to get you to the infirmary." She gingerly plucked at his left hand and brought it across her body, looking over the damage. The skin was already turning purple around the puncture marks, angry whitish splotches contrasting with deep red along the rest of his forearm.
"No! Simmons, not the infirmary. They'll want to know what happened." And they'll put Pacino down, or open up his brain and dig around and then put him down.
"I know." She took a deep, ragged breath. "I'll most likely never be allowed in a lab again, and possibly be expelled, but we have to get you checked out by a proper doctor. That monkey could have been infected-"
"But we don't know that!" He had to get through to her; his Zakadel friend's life was on the line. "Simmons, it's Kibbles and Bits we need to talk to. They've been keepin' somethin' from you, that's clear enough." This isn't just brain activity sensors. They'd done something to his little monkey head. "And I don't think he does, but if Pacino's got some strange disease, they're the ones who can help. They owe you a favor, yeah?"
She looked at him, fear and worry and guilt and duty skirmishing across her face. She was chewing at her bottom lip, but unlike the last time, it wasn't comely. Rather, the combination of her tremulous jaw and red-rimmed eyes made Fitz's insides wrench to see her so upset. If possible, it hurt worse than the pangs he was already feeling. Ow. My arm. Simmons was still holding onto his elbow and wrist, carefully palpating at the swelling skin.
"Look," he wiggled his fingers to show he could. "Hey, 's not that bad. Just needs a bit of alcohol and a bandage, right? You can do that. Please? At least while we're decidin'?"
Sniffling, Simmons nodded microscopically and set to work cleaning and wrapping the affected areas. Something she'd said a minute before finally caught up to Fitz. "And what's this about you not bein' allowed back in the lab? It's me they'll be kickin' out. This is on me, Simmons. I won't have you takin' the blame."
She swallowed heavily. "No, if I hadn't pushed you to prank Jonesy in the first place none of this would've… it's my name on the sign-up form for the lab. This happened on my watch."
"Don't be daft. I've been in charge of the pranks since the start, so don't go takin' on responsibility that doesn't belong to y'. And you couldn't have known this would happen. Hell, if I'd just listened to you and kept to our own ideas instead of usin' Chet's design…" Oh, crap. I shouldn't have said that. I should not have said that. Simmons didn't know - well, didn't know before - that the wireless pulse was based off one of Chet's schematics, though the original concept was much harsher, intended to produce migraines. He suddenly felt a spike of anger towards the older Sci-Tech cadet. Why was he building a migraine machine anyway? Fitz understood the desire to retaliate against bullies, but if what had happened today was any indication, the path of violence and revenge could only end in darkness.
"But I was useless earlier, Fitz! I can't believe I grabbed your gun. What was I thinking? What if I'd-"
"Don't think about that. Something terrible might have happened. But it didn't." Fitz couldn't listen to Simmons berate herself anymore. Watching her get worked up over the idea of losing her spot at the Academy; the fact that he'd pushed her out of her comfort zone by asking her to ignore standard procedure for an accident report; the throbbing from his wounded arm rivalling the hurt in her eyes as she methodically applied gauze and pressure and tape; it all conspired to hollow out his heart on a night when his insides were already full of holes. "You've been right about everythin'. I'm the one who was too stubborn for my own good."
She finished her doctoring, and the realization that there was no immediate emergency to deal with seemed to break something inside her, crumpling her shoulders like kite paper and shrinking down her svelte frame. Fitz hesitated a moment before reaching for her, unsure if the gesture would be welcome, not certain where exactly to commit his hands, but discovered that the act of drawing Simmons to him felt as natural as the gravity between a planet and its moon. She folded into his embrace, sobbing messily against his shoulder, her narrow fingers clutching at the chest pockets of his new plaid button-up while he soothed elliptical orbits onto her back.
It wasn't her fault. She did pick up the gun though. Fitz understood now what Simmons had been telling him - sometimes, in a crisis, people went for whatever was closest, and didn't pause to think of the consequences. If Simmons, the least violent and most rational person he knew, could pick up a gun in the heat of the moment, clearly it could happen to anyone. If I hadn't stopped her… "Tomorrow, let's start sketchin' out that dendrotoxin rifle you dreamed up. Okay?" He wished it hadn't taken something like this to open his eyes, but he was a smart guy. He knew who his friends were now. He knew who to trust. And Leo Fitz learned from his mistakes.
Through the ordeal, Simmons had been quite abashed by her lack of self-control. You stop that, Jemma! You are not some stereotypical damsel in distress, and you will not break down in front of Fitz! If either of them had a reason to splinter at the edges, it was him, anyway, after he'd made himself a human shield to save the Zakadels. His arm… what if Fitz lost movement in his hand? She wanted to yell at him for being so foolish, for risking his dexterity, but that was Fitz. Idiotically brave, even when it meant taking a beating he couldn't afford. Simmons didn't know how she had possibly ever seen him as anything else, roiled at the thought that she'd once compared this selfless boy to a stray animal or - what kind of person thinks this way? - a project to take on.
In the midst of that self-flagellation, there were other, more relevant points of shame. The steel weight of her guilt for this particular fiasco - I should've seen he was too close to the cages, should've fought harder against that last prank… God, I don't know how to shoot a gun, what if I'd shot Fitz! - kept her from falling apart while there were fires that needed dousing, but once her hands stilled, and she was confronted by the cactus racking up her throat, and the cold-pasta quivering in her legs, any composure fled entirely. The mortification of crying only made the tears worse, and Simmons hunched in on herself, eyes and nose spewing a decidedly unladylike cocktail of sorrow. It was only when she felt Fitz's hand drop onto her shoulder, tugging her into his space to give her comfort, that she felt herself shatter.
Simmons knew that she was fortunate to have grown up the way she had, to have had siblings to play with and parents who encouraged her academic whims. She'd always felt fortunate, always been thankful. But heaving and sputtering into Fitz's neck, hands grappling at his shirt, feeling her paroxysms melt under the smooth circles he'd patterned across her back, it was the first time Simmons had felt lucky. Fitz was a flower among weeds, a golden ticket in a Wonka bar, and for some reason she'd been the one to find him. Well then, finders, keepers.
The truth of Fitz's warm cheek against her forehead made her want to stay safe within the closed loop of his arms forever, where she was free to collect the pieces of herself, to stack and mortar the bricks she needed to feel solid again.
"Tomorrow, let's start sketchin' out that dendrotoxin rifle you dreamed up. Okay?" Fitz's unexpected question, soft as it was, burst through the blue and dislodged a fresh wave of tears as she nodded into his collar. She knew this proximity was abnormal for him, she knew it wasn't like Fitz to pet and comfort, yet here he was, her foothold in a waterfall, and now, of all the things he could say…
She didn't know what was going through Fitz's head, the only motif in her own insisting that whatever he wanted, in that moment, was his. Anything. She would call in every favor, every connection, every dirty trick she knew. She would own responsibility for tonight's catastrophe in front of S.H.I.E.L.D., or wring answers from Kibbles and Bits, or steal their research and get the facts for herself. She would take him to hospital, or find a discreet med student, or bloody well synthesize the drugs to take care of his injuries. She'd keep those monkeys alive and out of trouble, if she could, for as long as she could. She would protect her best friend, her surrogate family away from home - no matter what it took, to guard his sweetness and vulnerability. Anything, and everything. A memory crashed into her, Fitz tucking a blanket around that wretched creature minutes after his vicious attack, and the cracks in her heart exploded, saturating her body with gratitude and serendipity and awe. In the residue of the blast, in the ringing silence and floating dust, one simple notion remained.
I should get him a present.
A/N: Thanks to amandajbruce for being the bomb diggity beta.
I just can't seem to stop with the Potter quotes! Any love for Hagrid?
So this was late, for the "Stereotype" prompt anyway, but eh. Next time - "Ribbon"... well she did say something about a present.
I'm sure I'm forgetting someone or something, but I wanted to get this chapter up tonight, so I'll stop here.
I'm glad my life isn't as exciting as Fitzsimmons'.