"I saw you trying to hit the "door close" button in the elevator but I made it in and then I pushed every single button to make you later for work, but now we're stuck in this fucking elevator as it stops at every single floor and I don't know what to say other than "you started it" AU skimmons omg"
disclaimed
...
There's not a lot of people that Jemma Simmons dislikes on sight. But the tech support girl from three floors up? She dislikes her.
It's not really anything against her, really. It's just that Jemma holds herself and her colleagues to a certain standard and the tech girl seems to…not.
She must sound awful.
It's just that the tech girl—Skye?—she's rarely on time, and Jemma knows this, because when she's on her break, Skye's running into the building, looking tired and rushed and probably a little over-caffeinated. And while her work is always good—or so Jemma assumes as their network is always fast and her computer, when it glitches, is fixed the next morning—Jemma's heard Ward grumbling about how tech never fixes anything on time.
It's perfectly reasonable rationale.
And it has nothing to do with the fact that the one time Jemma interacted with her, the girl smiled and Jemma managed to drop all of her files and her tea.
It's awful.
She's awful.
So—if one day she sees Skye running into the building, just as Jemma's getting into the elevator, no one can really blame her for hitting the door close button as many times as she can.
What can she say?
It's been a long week already.
/
Skye's a little late.
Like, only thirteen minutes late. And it's mostly because her van started making weird noises about five minutes out, and Skye knows that it's safer just to pull over and let Henny work it out, so that's what she did.
Which brought her right into a freak traffic rush.
Which leads her to running into work, praying that the bun she threw her hair into doesn't come undone because she took a shower like seventeen minutes ago and her wet hair is kind of a whip and kind of dangerous.
When she swings into the building, slowing to a jog, there's an elevator open, and there's only one person in it—
of course, that person is Jemma Simmons, the really cute scientist that works three floors down that Skye thinks hates her a little.
Which sucks because Skye has a tiny little crush on her.
That crush, however, gets shoved by the wayside when she sees Jemma slamming the 'door close' button.
Skye breaks into a dead sprint, mostly out of spite, a tiny bit out of desperation, because there's only so long Coulson can be nice about her tardiness.
The doors are nearly closed and Skye risks losing her hand in the process of stopping them, but the doors slide open and Skye smirks triumphantly at the look of disappointment that crosses the scientist's face.
Jemma's level is already pressed. Skye leans over and presses her floor. And then all of the floors beneath it.
Mostly out of spite.
When she leans back, Jemma's staring at her, shock obvious. "Honestly—," she hisses out in disgust, sipping her probably ridiculously fancy coffee drink meanly. "You're such a child."
The doors slide open on the first floor. Skye shrugs, smiles. "You started it."
/
Skye realizes very quickly that this was a terrible idea. When the doors slide open on the tenth floor and Skye feels Jemma's eyes boring into her, she feels the shame.
This was a terrible, terrible idea.
Why did she think this was a cool idea?
The doors close. The elevator moves along, dinging when it reaches the eleventh floor.
Only twenty one more to go.
"So—uh—," Skye stammers, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. "I'm not usually vindictive."
"Really?" Jemma sneers, adjusting the files in her arms, shifting the weight to rest against her hip. "That's a surprise."
Skye gapes at her. "You were literally trying to close the doors on me!"
"It's not my fault you're running late!"
There's about ten really terrible things that Skye can say in response, but Jemma's blushing, she thinks, a light pink staining her cheeks and she won't make eye contact and it's kind of the cutest thing ever?
So—
"Well, it's not my fault you're a stick in the mud," Skye mutters.
"I can be fun!"
"Prove it."
They've passed thirteen more floors in their interaction. The doors slide open to the fourteenth in the silence.
They remain in silence, and Skye thinks that maybe Jemma just actually hates her and that the blushing was just anger induced? In which case, she must seem like a colossal asshole.
The time and the silence stretches on. Skye checks her email nervously, fiddling with the edge of her phone case that's starting to rip. How many more floors?
Right.
A lot.
Finally, they reach Jemma's floor. The scientists straightens and huffs self righteously, stepping towards the door. She's halfway gone, the doors sliding shut behind her and Skye kicking herself as they do, when suddenly Jemma whirls around and stops the elevator door with her foot.
"Royal Pub, tomorrow night at seven," she tells Skye, smiling slightly, the blush back in her cheeks. "We'll see who's the stick in the mud."
As soon as she's finished her sentence, Jemma turns, marching away purposefully and leaving Skye in a stunned silence, staring after her long after the doors have slid shut once more.
Holy shit.
Holy shit.
/
So maybe dislike was mistaken for intense attraction with very little chance of interaction.
Jemma ignores Fitz and Bobbi's teasing as she heads to her section of the lab, smiling wide and trying not to replay Skye's shocked face over in her mind.
When she looks up after setting her things down, Fitz is grinning at her like a moron. "Oh, shut up," she mumbles, blushing. "She started it."