Ugh, it's been a hella stressful workweek full of coworker drama and bullshit...so it's time to take a breather and do some writing!

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It was the sunlight streaming through the window that woke Jemma the next morning, but it was the warm weight pressed against her back and draped across her stomach that made her want to stay that way. She smiled to herself as she remained still and silent to take in the peace and perfection of the moment, something she'd only ever read of in those silly romance novels that Bobbi had lent her now and again.

She felt the heat of her partner's breath against the back of her neck as it issued from his nose in long, slow and steady intervals; at some point in the night he'd nuzzled right into the base of her skull and, now that she was awake, Jemma felt a bit ticklish at the sensation...but she didn't want to risk waking him so she just bared it in silence. Glancing down at the weight over her side and stomach she found his right arm wrapped around her loosely, the heavy blanket they were under was gripped firmly in his hand and she frowned slightly, knowing all too well the way one would clutch in their sleep during a nightmare.

They were both still plagued by them after all they'd been through, she knew this even if he wouldn't admit it out loud...but they had definitely lessened significantly since they'd begun sharing a bed, the company of someone next to you whom you trust more than anyone else in the world had made all the difference. She twisted carefully just enough to be able to reach his hand with her own and she worked the material of the blanket out of his fist to be replaced with her fingers, tracing his palm soothingly as she watched the tension disappear.

She was struck by an entirely new realization then as she traced her thumb over his knuckles: she loved his hands. After all, these hands had saved her life more than once...skilled and nimble, these hands had created incredible things, impossible things! They were calloused enough to be proof of the hard work he put into the creations he loved, but delicate enough to show the precision required for the tasks he performed; strong enough to take a life and gentle enough to save many more. Also, they were definitely just right for holding her tight and caressing her skin as they moved together in a harmony all their own when he made love to her...because , if there was one thing Leo Fitz was even more amazing at than engineering, it was that.

The memory of the night before made her smile even wider and she was struck with the need to look at him and take in the sight of him like this. Very cautiously, she wiggled to put some space between them so she could turn onto her other side underneath his arm. Luckily, he was too deeply asleep to notice what was happening and he just let out a little unhappy sound and shifted closer to her again in an unconscious search for the lost body heat. Jemma stilled for a moment to be sure he wasn't waking and then propped herself up slightly on her elbow so she could rest her chin on her palm and observe her sleeping bedmate.

She doubted she would ever get tired of this sight: tight brownish-blond curls all in a sex/sleep induced mess, long eyelashes resting on pale cheeks, a day's worth of dark stubble speckling his face, full lips parted slightly as almost imperceptible little snoring sounds issued from between them. Jemma wished she had a camera to capture him like this, he never looked so calm when he was awake...oh, wait, her phone!

Grinning, she twisted and stretched her arm behind her to pick up the device and bring it back around to focus the screen on Fitz's face. Unfortunately, she forgot she had the shutter sound on and the obnoxious sound of a duck quack shattered the silence, causing Fitz to wince and grumble deeply for a moment before his brilliant blue eyes cracked open and locked gazes with her, looking rather annoyed and confused.

" 's there a duck in here?" he slurred sleepily.

Jemma laughed and shook her head as she turned the phone's screen around for him to see the snapshot she'd captured. He frowned and blinked slowly a few times as his eyes adjusted to the light of the sunrise and the harsh LED of the screen, but once he had seen the image he moved more quickly than Jemma would have thought possible in his current state of half-awakedness and snatched the phone out of her hand, finger hovering over the screen to delete the picture.

"Fitz, please, don't erase it!" the panic in her voice must have surprised him, because his hand stilled and he looked at her questioningly.

"Jemma, come on, it's terrible," he whined, self-consciously reaching up to attempt and flatten the curls he knew were sticking out because the picture told him so.

"No, it's not...it's...perfect." She wasn't sure just how to explain to him why the image meant so much to her, but she realized then that losing it would be losing something irreplacable and she felt honest-to-goodness fear welling up in her chest, making unwelcomed tears well up in her eyes.

"A perfect mess, you mean...hey, whoa!" Upon glancing over at her, the phone was immediately set down and he turned to face her completely, looking horrified and guilty, "Jemma, what's the matter? I won't touch the picture, I promise..."

She took the phone off the blanket between them, saved the image and locked the screen for good measure, setting it aside she gave her worried friend a teary smile to let him know it was ok.

"I know it's silly, Fitz but...I always want to remember you like that. I just...we've been torn apart from eachother again and again and I've been so close to losing you so many times...I just wanted to have it..."

Bewilderment was replaced with comprehension on Fitz's features and he cocked his head slightly to give her an empathetic look. Without a word, he scooted closer and put his arms around her to pull her close and bury his nose into the hair just above her ear so he could speak to her from this angle clearly.

"Remember, we promised we wouldn't let that happen again," he told her, his tone was deadly serious, "I've got you, Jemma, and I promise nothing could ever make me let go. The cosmos can go to Hell."

Jemma immediately felt safe again, like the world could come at them full force and never even touch them. Fitz had a way of making her feel that way every time she found herself in his arms...funny, when you considered how small he may seem compared to most of the men she was surrounded by on a daily basis. But she knew better, Fitz's strength was internal and far stronger than anything physical training could ever even dream of comparing to.

She nodded into his neck and leaned back to give him a smile and assure him she was alright.

"You can keep the bloody awful picture too if it makes you happy, a'right?" he said, cheekily, before she could say something else to dampen the mood.

"It's not awful," Jemma argued immediately, feeling a silly need to defend him from...himself? "You're adorable like this."

Fitz just rolled his eyes and leaned in for a kiss to distract her from talking about it anymore. It worked and Jemma felt the stress of the previous moments melt off her like ice on a hot sidewalk.

The potential for that kiss to become so much more was, sadly, halted when Fitz's stomach growled so loudly that Jemma burst into laughter. The moment sufficiently ruined, Jemma felt her own stomach twisting with the need for a good breakfast as well so a mutual decision was made that food outweighed sex in this particular instance and they reluctantly rolled out of opposite sides of the bed to get ready for the morning...although Jemma wouldn't deny herself taking in the view of a totally bare Fitz stumbling sleepily toward the door to the hallway on his way to claim the bathroom before she could.

"You know, a gentleman would let his lady take first turn in the loo!" she called after him, teasingly. She was graced with a glance over the shoulder and his tongue sticking out at her as a reply.

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A half hour later the pair were perched on the front step of their little home (which Jemma was still trying to grasp the reality of), watching the last remnants of the sunrise on the horizon, coloring the distant highlands with a slightly pinkish hue. Jemma sipped her morning coffee slowly and just took it all in with a heart full of happiness...another perfect, picturesque view. Two in one day, this was.

She glanced up at Fitz where he was leaning back against the stone wall of the house, hands wrapped around his coffee mug to absorb the heat of it, looking relaxed and happy with his eyes heavily lidded with the last remnants of sleepiness as he stared across the valley towards the rising sun. He was wearing blue jeans and a well worn grey t-shirt with a faded circular pattern that used to be Captain America's shield under a dark blue zip-up hoodie.

Guess I better make that THREE perfect views.

"So...I should probably tell you now before you find out later when she gets here, but my mum wanted to come see us."

He said it apologetically, as if she would be upset about such a thing. Quite the opposite! Jemma adored Mrs. Fitz and was always delighted to have her around or to be yanked into the Fitz household, literally, and treated like a part of the family.

"Really? Oh, good!" she smiled up at him honestly, "When will she be arriving then?"

"Not till after noon at some point. I hope you don't mind but...I mean, I haven't seen her in months so I thought..."

"Fitz, honestly, it's perfectly alright. You know I adore your mum!"

"Yeah but..." Fitz scuffed the dirt with the toe of his Converse and ducked his head shyly as he sometimes did when he was nervous about something, "She doesn't really know about us. You know, being together...?"

"Oh...well, good grief, why didn't you tell her yet?" Jemma wondered. She'd told her parents almost immediately after they'd made it official, and had listened to at least three dozen "I told you so"s and much squealing as a result along with her dad's firm but loving advice on never letting love blind you and being sure he's as good as he seems to be. Oh, daddy, you don't even know the half of it...

"What are you looking at me like that for?" Fitz's amused voice broke her from her thoughts and she realized she'd been staring at him for far too long, and that her expression had become somewhat wolfish near the end. She shook herself slightly and dropped her eyes to her coffee cup.

"Just thinking," she responded a bit too quickly. She may have been getting better at lying, but she was still terrible at it by normal standards.

"Maybe try not to think too hard while my mum's here unless you want to be teased about it for a lifetime," Fitz informed her with an unhappy huff of air from his nose. Mrs. Fitz was well known for her inability to keep her thoughts to herself, which may be why Jemma had always gotten along well with her since it was a trait they both shared, although she'd come to learn to control it a bit better recently.

She didn't grace Fitz's comment with a reply and just continued taking in the view of the land around them. Scotland truly was lovely, and she was of the mind that it produced some very lovely people as well; she had meant every word of her confession on that video she'd taken on Maveth, she could definitely see herself settling down here...see THEM settling down here. The distance from here to Sheffield wasn't too bad, she mused to herself, visiting her parents would be easy and Glasgow was even closer so seeing Fitz's mom would be an even easier trip...yes, she was liking the idea more and more.

"You look like you're thinking hard," Fitz commented quietly, his tone sounding like he was thinking just as hard as she had been.

"I was just...enjoying the view." It wasn't a lie, she truly was doing so, but she didn't want to share her domestic thoughts with him and give him the impression he was under any sort of pressure to fulfill these little ideas of hers. A ring...dressed in white...her dad leading her down an aisle...all these things she'd been dreaming of for a while now but was too afraid to say out loud in case he wasn't ready for that, or even if he wanted it at all. He loved her, she had no doubt about that, but they'd never actually discussed the idea of making this relationship a legal, binding union...Fitz always said he hated change so maybe he liked the way things were now and wouldn't want it to change anymore.

Shaking her head to clear her thoughts, Jemma downed the last mouthful of coffee and stood up, brushing off the seat of her pyjama pants with a quiet sigh.

"Well, I should probably see what we've got to make for lunch then," she announced, "Anything in particular your mum likes?"

"I wouldn't worry about it, Jemma, if I know my mum she'll start cooking the second she walks through the door."

"Fitz, I am NOT letting your mum do her own cooking when she's a guest!" Jemma scolded him as they made their way to the kitchen. She didn't know why, but she felt a strong need to impress Mrs. Fitz this time...

"A'right, then, don't bite my head off over it," Fitz muttered, taking on the safe task of filling the kettle in the sink, knowing better than to get in Jemma's way when she took it in her mind to cook, not that she did very often.

"I wasn't biting your head off over it!" Jemma snapped and then immediately looked sorry for her sharp tone, giving him a sheepish and apologetic smile, "Sorry, Fitz, I guess...I'm just a bit nervous."

"Jemma, you've known my mum for years, you've never been nervous around her."

"I know, but this is..."

"Different?"

"Yes!"

Fitz sighed and set the kettle on the stove before turning around to lean back against the counter and cross his arms, giving her an amused look.

"Oh, so NOW you're worried about making a good impression? I'd say you're about ten years too late for that, Jems."

His use of the rare nickname made Jemma smile, she had always very much liked it but hadn't ever told him...because if he knew then he'd use it all the time and it would probably lose it's charm over time.

"Fitz, can you please just bear with me? If nothing else, you should want to make your mum feel welcome!"

"Alright, alright...what can I do to help?" Fitz knew a losing battle when he saw one.

"Would you please go make sure the lounge is in order? Maybe mop the floor a bit by the doorway since we tracked in a bit of mud yesterday...oh, and set up the table in there for tea?"

Fitz gave her a tiny salute with two fingers and pushed off the counter to attend to his given tasks while Jemma gathered ingredients for lunch. When she'd thrown together the ingredients for a soup recipe she looked up on her phone, something hot and comforting on what promised to be a chilly, overcast day, she left it to it's self to cook over the hours until Mrs. Fitz would arrive and joined Leo in the lounge where he was sweeping the floor.

"I could get used to that view," she teased.

"What? Your boyfriend doing slave labor?" he shot right back.

"I wouldn't exactly get that overdramatic about a little housework," Jemma rolled her eyes, "But, considering I didn't even ask you to sweep the floor, I think I got a pretty excellent deal when I got you."

"Excuse you, if I remember correctly it was me who put most of the effort into this whole getting together thing." Fitz argued, halting his work to point the broom handle accusingly in her direction, "Little miss jumping out of planes and running off to join Hydra and getting sucked into a monolith and living with some other guy for months."

For a moment, his words struck her as a bit harsh for the situation, but when she looked up at him from where she'd bent to straighten the couch pillows she saw the teasing twinkle in his eyes and felt relieved. Sometimes she thought back on their history and it made her a bit sad to think of everything she'd put him through on her journey to discovering her feelings for him...she felt as if she'd wasted a lot of time when she knew deep down all along he was the one she truly loved. Will...well, she still thought about him sometimes, their time together hadn't been insignificant, after all; he had definitely been special to her, but now she saw that what she'd felt for Will had been a different kind of love completely that what she felt for Fitz. Losing Will had hurt and left an empty space behind, but losing Fitz would leave her with nothing but an empty shell of herself.

"I know you did," she said softly, almost to herself more than to him, "And I'm so glad you didn't give up on me, Fitz."

"Never."

He leaned over and kissed the top of her head before resuming the sweeping while Jemma went trotting to the kitchen to pull the now squealing kettle off the stove and make them both another cup of coffee to sip while they worked on cleaning the rest of the house.

She had just finished putting fresh sheets on the guest bed when the knock on the front door announced the arrival of their guest and the butterflies that rose in her stomach at the thought of facing Mrs. Fitz with the title of "your son's girlfriend ", it made her a little bit sick feeling...and that only got worse when she heard the familiar voice bellowing out a delighted yell of "LEO!"

Straightening her clothes and running her fingers through her hair quickly in an attempt to look even a tiny bit more presentable, Jemma mentall prepared herslef for a moment and then headed down the hall towards the stairs...only to find Mrs. Fitz standing at the bottom with her arms wide open in invitation to come into them.

"Jemma, you lovely lass, come on down here!"

Jemma smilled genuinely at the thick Scottish accent the lady possessed. Fitz's accent had been this thick at one point as well when she first met him, but over time in America it had tempered out a bit...which she found just a little bit sad. However, she had little time to think about it before she reached Mrs Fitz and was enveloped in a tight hug that took her breath away.

"Hello, Mrs. Fitz, it's so nice to see you again!" she managed to wheeze out.

"Oh my, yes, it's been far too long! But here you are and you two look as if you've been very well taken care of!"

Jemma figured it was best not to mention the amount of times she and Leo had nearly been killed, or the torture, or the portals they'd gone through...Mrs. Fitz would probably not think that they'd been very well taken care of at all if she knew.

"Of course," she lied, her smile just a bit too wide and voice a bit higher than normal, "Fitz...Leo and I, we watch eachother's backs."

"Yep," Fitz agreed from his newly taken spot at Jemma's side, "Always have and we always will, right, Jems?"

Jemma nodded and Mrs. Fitz looked between the two of them with a wistful expression before giving them a somewhat sad smile before it faded into a full blown grin.

"So, Leo, you told me you'd bought a place to come home to but I had no idea it was such a lovely spot!" she changed the topic quickly as if something about the previous moment she wanted to move on from, "It's a nice little place for you to come take your breaks at...not that you get too many of those. Why Perthshire, though? I can't ever remember you mentioning it before."

"Ahh..well..." Fitz's hand went to the back of his neck self-consciously and his eyes darted everywhere but his mother's face, afraid to make eye contact as if she'd know every secret he possessed if they did, "It was...I found it on a retail site I was looking at and it just...seemed nice."

Mrs. Fitz clearly didn't believe her son's lame response and her hands went to her hips in an authoritative way that made Leo's fidgeting halt and he bit his bottom lip for a moment before his mouth opened as if of it's own accord and he began spilling everything out.

"I bought it for Jemma, not me...well, I mean it's for me too, I guess since we're...together now. She loved this house ever since she was a kid and I sold a patent and used the money to buy it and take a few weeks off so we could spend a little time together away from work!"

Jemma felt a blush rise in her face at his hurried confession and suddenly felt very self conscious about the fact Leo would do such a thing for her...and the fact that he'd just spilled their news before she was even prepared.

Silence stretched over a long moment following his blurting session and the two young scientists waited on pins on needles for the oncoming reaction from the abnormally quiet woman in front of them. She wasn't silent for long, however. Her face lit up like a child on Christmas morning and her smile was bigger than Jemma could ever remember seeing before.

"It's about bloody time!" Mrs. Fitz's delighted holler made Jemma laugh in relief as the tension disappeared from her shoulders. She found herself and Leo pulled into another tight hug and she heard him chuckling too, obviously relieved as she was by his mother's exclaimation. "Oh, you two! Goodness sakes I've known for years you two would be perfect together, what the hell took you two so damn long?!"

"Hey, ask Jemma, not me," Leo gave his girlfriend a wink to let her know he was joking, "She's the one who took forever to make up her mind."

"Well, a girl can never rush into these things, you know, Leo," Mrs. Fitz defended even before Jemma could respond herself, "I imagine it does take some time to see past the fact you two are best friends. But we all know best friends make the best partners, don't we?"

The way she said that last part, her expression soft as she looked directly at her son made Jemma feel as if there was an unspoken understanding occuring between the two of them. She knew very little about Leo's father since he had been very young when Mr. Fitz had passed, but the little things he could remember had always made Jemma wish she'd gotten to meet him...perhaps his parents had been best friends as well as lovers too.

"So..." the playful and teasing tone Jemma was so familiar with was back in Mrs. Fitz's voice, "When do you think I should start planning on grandchildren?"

"MUM!"

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Well, this took way longer than planned. Today was my first day off in two whole weeks so I had a little writing time!

Oh, hey, by the way, SEASON 4 STARTS TOMORROW!