Fitz looked up at the ceiling and willed his face to stop burning. "Why is this necessary, again?" He couldn't see her face, but he could imagine her flat look from the slight exasperation in her breath.
"If we're going to have any chance at reliable data, we need to identify the most promising conditions for-" she colored slightly, "-for your arousal. Please answer the question."
Fitz made a noise that was somewhere between a wheezing pug and a kazoo. He couldn't very well explain that it shouldn't be difficult to get himself aroused as long as she was in the room. Better to seem uncooperative than a pervert. Still, he forced himself to look at her, and found her gazing at him with undisguised sympathy.
"I know it's a bit strange… but we're both mature adults, respected professionals in our disciplines. There's no reason this needs to be awkward unless we let it."
"Okay. Yeah, you're right." He exhaled. "Let get this over with."
"All right, then." She shifted the clipboard in her hands and faced him brightly. "How long does it normally take you to achieve an erection?"
Fitz bit the inside of his cheek, hard, and pressed the pads of his thumbs over his eyelids. This is gonna be a long day.
-o-
'Preferred hair color.' Twisting his pencil like a washcloth, Fitz thought of Simmons' dark caramel curls and carefully wrote down, "Brunette." This was actually pretty easy. Yeah. Yeah, I can do this.
A few questions down, he swallowed roughly against the quiet of his bedroom when he read, 'Specific sexual proclivities.' His mind jetted straight to an image of Simmons, her hair swept up into a messy ponytail, vigorously scrubbing out the graduated cylinders at the conclusion of an experiment. Not that, you creep. God. He filled in, "Not applicable."
He couldn't blame Simmons, not when he'd hardly been able to look at her as she spoke. After an hour or so of prying the answers from him, with Fitz squirming and blushing at every turn, Simmons had decided perhaps it would be best if he answered the questionnaire on his own. And it wasn't that he minded the homework, even if he didn't love homework enough to marry it like some people.
But though it might be easier to answer without an audience, the form was covered in hastily scratched-out answers and pinkish-black erasure marks, a byproduct of Fitz's awareness that Simmons would be reading this later. The thought alone made the fabric of his shirt collar stick a little tighter to his neck. And sitting here, faced with an array of photographed breasts and buttocks, tasked with rating them in order of sexual attractiveness, Fitz wondered yet again if this had all been the worst mistake of his life.
-o-
"That's ridiculous! No. Absolutely not."
Fitz planted his hands grumpily at both sides of his waist, wondering if he wasn't just picking a fight because it was familiar territory. Unlike the next phase of this project. "What? I think it's the perfect name. You've had more than your share of the work on this project - names are a sort of specialty of mine, Simmons, and you're not exactly being very supportive."
She tossed him a withering look. "We are not calling it the No Mo' Erectus, Fitz!"
He scoffed, mouth hanging open in offense and his voice driving up a notch. "Give me one good reason why not."
"Oh, my God- the objections are innumerable, but for one, we need a name that could conceivably be printed on the lipstick cap without drawing undue attention. Or at least one I can say without my eye twitching." Simmons brought her hands up to her collar, burrowing them into the curls on both sides of her neck and fitfully combing her fingers through. "And if you're looking for something to do, you still haven't adjusted the FirmTek machine."
"Yeah, well, that's because I'm not putting, er, y'know, myself-"
"It's one of the more important pieces of data we'll be dealing with, Fitz, I should think you could say the word 'erection'."
"-Alright, fine, I'm not putting my erection inside that thing!"
"But we're going to need the readings, Fitz! Consistency is important! If you won't use the modified penetrometer-"
"No, I won't, Jemma! I don't want any part of me anywhere near the-" he shuddered, "penetrometer, thank you."
"Modified!" she added defensively. "It doesn't actually penetrate anything!"
He stared, face puckered in horror. "Wow. Not a good enough reason to use the word penetrate."
-o-
"The Cold Shower."
"No."
The Bone Saw."
She sighed. "No."
"The Soft Serve. The Limp Cocktail."
"No."
"The Dick Nixin'?"
"Fitz!" She looked mildly scandalized.
"Well I don't see you coming up with anything." He arched an eyebrow. "So I suppose we'll just have to go with one of mine."
She set down her notebook and breathed in deeply, capping her pen and twirling it between her fingers. "Fine. Agent Carter's version was called Sweet Dreams; how about, erm, Soft Blush?" She bit the end of the pen. "Wilting Rose?"
"See? Now you're gettin' it!" He shot her a cocky grin. "Clearly, mine are better, but good effort, Jemma, really."
She threw a crumpled-up piece of notepaper at his chest.
Then inspiration struck. "The Limpstick."
Jemma fought off a smile. "If we must."
-o-
Fitz checked to make sure the privacy screen was up, tugged down the waistband of his one-size-too-large gym shorts, and wondered if there was any way in Hell he could get out of this now. Odd, that they were designing a product so that S.H.I.E.L.D. agents wouldn't be forced to do things they didn't want to, when here he was. In the lab where he did his most responsible, sophisticated work, staring at his own genitals while his best friend in the world waited a few feet away. Taking a deep breath, he maneuvered his reluctant penis - oh, merciful Mother, there's a fun phrase - through the flexible fabric cuff he'd designed, pulling the head through before sliding the device up to rest just above his testicles. Next, just a quick tug to make sure he still had enough access to go to the bathroom or… well, anything else he might need to do. Simmons sounded in his head - Masturbation, Fitz, it's a perfectly normal biological process. The last step was to carefully thread the attached wires down his thigh to keep them from getting tangled up in… well, anything important.
Hmmph. It hadn't even been that tricky to come up with a viable alternative to Simmons' precious durometer or - yick - penetrometer. Just because he vehemently refused to have his knob smashed inside the FirmTek machine, didn't mean he wasn't going to help her collect the necessary data. This new device was relatively comfortable, even if it did look a bit like the world's least appealing scrunchie, and the way it sat around him, it could measure both stiffness and blood pressure, as well as take a 3-D scan to show the angle and fullness of his… just say it. Erection. There. He was fine with it, obviously. Erection, erection, erection.
Fitz groaned internally at the sound of his brain, and tried to focus on the positives. The best part about wearing the monitor cuff was that he could keep his shorts up over it, as long as they were loose enough and wouldn't interfere with the readings. This cut down drastically on the chances of Simmons catching an eyeful of his 'unappreciated genius'. And though the cord tethering him to the readout wouldn't let him go far, at least he could get some other work done in between testing points. Thank Heaven for small miracles. Fitz rolled his lab chair into the corner by the counter, plopped a pair of textbooks onto the desk alongside it, and sat down to wait for Simmons.
-o-
"Okay. So now that you're… all suited up, we need to get a baseline for what kind of ranges we'll be dealing with. We'll start with the easiest task: an at-rest reading. Simple enough, yeah?"
"Sure, yeah, okay." Fitz swallowed against the lump in his mouth. "What, er… what do you need me to do?"
"We'll just spend a few minutes sitting and talking, so we can collect enough information from the monitor for a good average. We need about ten to fifteen readings. Assuming, of course, you're not aroused right now," she joked, her voice making it clear how laughable she found the notion in this clinical environment.
"Yeah, no. This isn't exactly my fantasy date, no offense." God, he was such a fucking liar. This was 100% his fantasy date, except maybe Simmons would like him back, and there wouldn't be any hardware attached to his… software. "Yep. Totally at rest."
They were both in for a rude awakening.
-o-
"Ugh, Fitz!" A frustrated Simmons threw her hands in the air. "You're out of spec again! Now we've got to start over."
"Hey, don't put this on me! I can't- it's got a mind of its own, alright?" After all, she was the one who'd had the gall to snap on her lab gloves like some kind of sexy veterinarian.
Her eyes pleaded with him as she reset the values. "I mean, can't you just- sit still, or something?"
Fitz was fairly certain he looked like a squashed poinsettia. Oh, sure, just 'sit still'. "That's not how it works!"
-o-
"If you wouldn't mind, er," Simmons' voice hitched just the tiniest amount, "maxing out, then we'll have our complete baseline and can move on to the actual testing." She dropped a Playboy into his gobsmacked hands, and drew the screen closed once again.
What. The Hell. Fitz wanted to sink down into the ground like Atreyu's horse in The Neverending Story, but he made his vocal chords work long enough to squeak, "Erm, Simmons? What should I… that is, what exactly d' you mean by maxing out?"
"Oh!" It sounded like she was chewing on her pen again. "I- Well, I didn't know if you needed to- I suppose it's- er… whatever's most comfortable for you? I could give you a few minutes alone."
Please. Or just stop watching my stats while I'm nursing a semi. "Yeah, I think- could I have a moment? That actually would be quite helpful, thank you."
As the door slipped shut, Fitz found himself cursing Simmons' near-obsessive need to gather as much information as she could before starting an experiment. Baselines. Who needs'em, anyway? (They did. They'd require a good baseline to accurately interpret any future results.) To that end, Fitz would have to wear his monitor cuff while he got as… turgid... as possible, doing his best to stay professional. As professional as he could be with basketball shorts on his legs and a Playboy in his hands. It wasn't impossible to 'max out' without channeling Old Faithful, he told himself. Just hard. Er, difficult.
He could do it, though. He wasn't an animal. Besides, the last thing he needed was to end up trapped in place by a mess and machine of his own creation. He could picture it now, fingers sticky with his genetic legacy, tapping out a Text of Shame to Jemma in the hall. Data collected. Please bring tissues.
Yeah, that's not gonna happen. He shuddered and forced himself back on task. Agents like Holloway were relying on him to avoid being compromised in the field. This was for the project, for the win, for the good of the entire organization. For Jemma. Simmons needed him to prove that he could get hard and stay hard? No problem. You're welcome, lady agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Leopold Fitz was here to help.
Author's Note
A FirmTech machine is actually a penetrometer used to measure the hardness of fruit for agricultural and scientific purposes. Not penises, though.