A/N: Big thanks again to everyone for reading and reviewing :D I really appreciate you all indulging my Fitzsimmons spiral :')
This chapter is still set in college, but a year later. Hope it's okay!
Their first flat together is so cold and damp that Scotland feels agonisingly close for Fitz. He spends the winter evenings waiting for Simmons to finish teaching her night class, in the company of several unreliable electric heaters and a mysteriously dwindling supply of extra layers, until one night, all he can find is a tartan hat and scarf. Fitz reluctantly resorts to his duvet and a half-eaten tub of Ben & Jerry's (to test Simmons' theory that the fat content would warm him up), and by the time she comes through the door at nine o'clock sharp, he is shivering his way through a third episode of Doctor Who and absent-mindedly making her Tardis fly across the room.
"Honey, I'm home!" Simmons chuckles, before narrowly avoiding a collision with her own flying blue box. "Fitz, if you hit me with that one more time, I am demanding sole custody."
Looking up, she spots his duvet, the tub of ice cream and countless tissues strewn across the floor, and chokes down a laugh. "Who dumped you then, Bridget?"
"I'm just cold."
"Oh Fitz," and Simmons gives an affectionate sigh. "I'd have thought a Glasgow boy would be able to handle the cold better than most."
"I can't help that humans are not designed to withstand sub-zero temperatures without sufficient insulation!" He punctuates the sentence with a sneeze. "If only the ruddy landlord would let me sort the heating out – it would take five minut…"
"I think the day we waved goodbye to the chance of the landlord letting you do anything, was also the day you set fire to the kitchen."
"I was trying to perfect the portable tri-vection toaster for a certain someone, who always complains that her bagels are too cold by the time she gets to class."
"And I am very grateful, but I didn't think that meant you were going to toast the entire flat! Hold on." Simmons drops her satchel in the doorway and rushes into her bedroom, only to return a few seconds later with a woolly cream jumper in hand. "Here, take this and stop moaning like you're sixty years older than you are."
"Hey, that's mine! Are you offering me my own sweaters now, ay?" he asks, sounding progressively more Scottish with every throb of the vein in his temple.
"I was cold at New Year's and you said I could take something from your wardrobe!"
"Jemma, you do realise that when people say 'you can wear my cardigan' or 'you can read my first edition copy of A Brief History of Time' or 'you can use my prototype X-ray vision goggles', they do not mean 'you can keep them forever and never give them back'. Are those –" he gestures wildly at her outfit "even your real clothes? Or did a shop assistant once say that you could try them on?"
Simmons watches this display with somewhat wearied amusement. "Are you quite finished?"
"Yeah. I am actually," Fitz replies defiantly, making a point of putting on his cardigan in the angriest manner possible.
"Put a movie in then, and I'll be right back," Jemma says, disappearing into her room once more.
"It's Thursday – it's your day to pick," comes his disgruntled call after her.
"Wonderful! How about…Frozen?" she shouts from her bedroom.
"You're funny."
"Ooooh, I know. Cold Mountain!"
"No really, you're a regular Billy Connolly."
"You're being so fussy! I think we have Ice Age in the cupboard somewhere."
"Talking of ice, you're skating on a very thin patch of it right now."
Jemma's delicate laugh echoes loudly down the corridor as she walks back into the lounge in a change of clothes. "Fine. I'll be serious."
But sure enough, her choice of film soon earns her a cushion blow to the head when the opening credits of Frost/Nixon appear on the screen.
"Jemma Simmons, you are ridiculous," Fitz says, with an involuntary grin. "…But I actually really like this film so you've had a lucky escape."
Any lingering grumpiness he has, vanishes the moment Jemma turns around, with several strands of hair out of place and an impossibly wide smile. She is wearing a worn beige cardigan that is almost definitely his, too, but somehow, it doesn't matter to him this time. Fitz opens the duvet up to allow her to sit beside him and she's there instantly, covers tucked under her chin. There is the whole sofa and yet, they're on one cushion, rubbing elbows again.
It takes Fitz ten minutes to break the contented silence. "Sorry for snapping earlier," he mutters and he means it.
"Don't be silly. How's your mum?"
Sometimes he wonders whether the psychic link everyone jokes about, might not actually be too far from the truth.
"She sounded a little better today. The doctor's given her some new antibiotics, but I should-"
"Be there?" Jemma finishes his sentence out of habit and he nods. "You will be soon: it'll be Christmas before you know it. Your mum would never want you to feel guilty for being here, doing what you love. Besides, she's going to be absolutely fine, Fitz. I promise."
Jemma squeezes Fitz's hand and he knows she's right. She's always right.
"Look at us in matching cardigans. We couldn't look more like an old married couple if we tried."
He lets out a light chuckle that doesn't quite meet his eyes, desperately trying to ignore how cute she looks in a cardigan – in his cardigan – with the long sleeves teasing the tips of her fingers, millimetres away from his own. Fitz never thinks of it as his again; it looks much better on her anyway.