FITZ

Leopold Fitz was sitting in first period Advanced Physics, hunched over his laptop and doggedly coding the schematics for a new Quinn Jet design he'd thought up last night after classes. It should, when it was done, be twice the size of the current models and be able to stay up without touching down for fuel for much longer. From the first time he'd seen the current S.H.I.E.L.D. Quinn models he'd known he could do better. Humility was not one of his strong suits - but, he figured, when you could design a giant awesome jet all by yourself, what good was humility?

Fitz only looked up when the girl who now sat next to him in class, which was a bit annoying since he'd sat in the back on purpose, dropped her books down on the table and took her seat. She was wearing a plaid tie that was sort of similar to one in his own closet. As he was noticing that, she opened up her notes and tucked a piece of hair that had fallen out of her headband back behind her ear. She seemed to do that a lot.

Fitz blinked and quickly looked back at his laptop before she could accuse him of staring at her, which he actually wasn't, he thought to himself. Then he realized that he had written the entire last paragraph of code wrong, he'd have to completely redo it. He made a small, aggravated sound and went to work fixing it.

"All I did was sit down..."

He turned to look at the seat next to him, Simmons was looking at him with an annoyed expression on her face.

"That's not – I didn't – never mind". Evidently, she thought he was irritated with her, not the code, but it didn't seem worth explaining. He had to fix this paragraph before class started anyway. They just sat together in class, he didn't know her, there was no reason he should be bothered if she didn't like him. He found himself repeating that sentiment several times over in his head, trying to believe it.

"Alright everyone", their professor walked in, "Could somebody please tell me what Hannes Alven's 19th century discoveries mean in the context of the arguments laid out in the last several chapters of your primary text for this class?" She had a habit of doing this, Fitz thought, throwing easy questions at them before she'd even taken her seat at the front of the class. He looked down and closed out the window on his schematics, he'd finish it later, when Simmons wasn't around to be all annoyed at him and distracting. A student in the third row was giving a particularly ignorant response to the question, Fitz wanted to roll his eyes.

"It's like they didn't even finish the textbook last night", he muttered to himself under his breath.

He heard a soft laugh to his right and turned to see, to his complete shock, Simmons pushing down a smile. He felt the corners of his mouth lift incrementally, and he shifted – a bit uncomfortable – in his seat.

She raised her hand and, when the professor called on her, gave the exact right answer. The very words Fitz would have said himself, in fact, if he had felt like answering the question. It was nice to know that he wasn't sharing his table, their table, with a complete moron - even if she didn't like him.

"Excellent, thank you Jemma", the professor was saying, "Now I want everyone to look to at the person sitting at the table next to them" – Fitz shot Simmons a quick glance, but looked away as soon as he met her eyes – "this will be your lab partner for the remainder of the year". Now Fitz really did have to suppress an eyeroll, it wasn't Simmons' fault, he just hated working in groups. There was nothing worse than having to slow down for people. "I'll give you a few minutes to get acquainted, seeing as you're going to be working closely together in this class from now on", the professor finished.

There was a short pause and then the class broke out into fifteen different conversations, chatter quickly filling the room, as everyone got to know their new lab partners. Fitz sat there awkwardly until he remembered he should probably be doing the same thing and turned to face Simmons – who was waiting for him.

"Umm, well I guess we should exchange notes?" She tucked that strand of hair behind her ear again as she talked to him, and then held out her notebook.

"What? Oh, right, yeah okay".

He dug his notes out of his crowded backpack and passed them over to her. He focused very intently on not touching her hand when he took her notebook.

"Okay, uh, I guess I'll just read these then." She said, a little awkwardly, and started leafing through his pile of papers. He felt a bit defensive watching her, he knew it might seem messy, but he had a system. It all made sense in his head, although nobody ever seemed to be able to recognize that. He looked down and opened her very orderly notebook, trying to suppress a sigh. He wasn't particularly good at lying to people and he was already anticipating how much Simmons would dislike him when he explained to her how incorrect her notes were bound to be.

Fitz read the first page, and then – blinking quickly - read it again. He felt a smile light up his face, a real smile this time, and began flipping excitedly through every page in her notebook. He couldn't believe it, there in front of him was line after line of brilliant theory. The endings to ideas he had only started to think of, the most intricate drawings of biotech he'd ever seen - far more advanced than the ones in all the texts assigned for first years at the academy put together. There were places where she disagreed with the same arguments he did, and random biochem musings that had nothing to do with this class but that set his mind off on a thousand different ideas of how he could engineer her designs. And, best of all, her notes were funny, there were all these little doodles and comments in the margins, he never would have expected that. He looked up at her in disbelief, only to find his expression mirrored on her face as she did the same.

Simmons laughed out loud, "This…", she put her hand down on his pile of notes, "Fitz, this is genius."

Fitz felt a warm sensation turning in the pit of his stomach, "You could follow all of that random stuff?", he asked. He reached a hand up to touch his hair, a nervous habit, but caught the gesture and quickly brought his hand back down again.

"Random?! This isn't random, this is excellent", she was still smiling at him, "I mean you could stand to get a binder or a folder at the very least, of course, but the ideas are all there."

"Yeah yours, Jemma, it's, well it's not like anything I've ever read before", He suddenly remembered a particularly exciting model and flipped to find it and hold it up to her, "I mean this", he said tapping the drawing rapidly with his finger. "I can make this!".

"You can?" she said excitedly, "That was just a random idea, but I thought –"

"No I can, I'm engineering, you're biochem – clearly – there's so much here we could work on". Fitz almost couldn't believe the words, even as he heard himself say them. He hated working in groups, he was better on his own, but then again…he'd never had this kind of lab partner before.

Simmons was looking at him with a curious expression on her face, he couldn't tell what she was thinking.

"What?", he asked, suddenly nervous that he'd been too eager and weirded her out. He fidgeted, twisting his fingers in his lap.

"Nothing", she gave a little smile, "I just thought you…never mind, but yes let's be lab partners."

"Well", Fitz said – relieved she wanted to work with him, "I'm not sure that we really had a choice."

"Oh, right", She laughed again and Fitz felt that same warm turning sensation in his stomach. He had no idea what that was about, but he really wished it would stop, it was exceedingly uncomfortable.

"So, do you want to come over to my dorm later?", He asked.

"Uhh-", She looked surprised.

"- For school!", He interjected quickly, a bit louder than he had meant it to come out, he could feel his face getting warmer. "For class, to, like, work on this stuff? I have some projects going that you might be able to help me with.". He waited nervously.

Simmons was giving him that curious expression that he couldn't decipher again, like he was a math problem she hadn't solved yet. But then, "Yeah, that sounds fun actually", she said, "I'll come over after dinner, just um, write down your dorm number for me." She tore a corner off of a piece of paper and slid it across the table to him.

He breathed out a little sigh of relief he sincerely hoped she didn't hear and started scribbling on the piece of paper. Things were looking up for Leopold Fitz, it might just not be the dreadfully boring, solitary year he had expected after all.