Jemma decides that she's not going to mope around while she waits. She's satisfied that Fitz will come to her when he's ready, so she immerses herself in her work, makes sure she gets enough sleep, and even has girls' nights with Skye.

The first of those nights fell the day after her confrontation with Fitz.

"So," Skye begins, pouring out two glasses of rosé. They're sitting opposite each other at the breakfast bar in the kitchen, the lights low and a single, fat candle that Skye had pinched from storage sat between them. "To help you relax," she had told her. Jemma stares at the flickering flame, watching its alluring dance, lost in thought, and only realises that Skye is talking to her when a glass of wine is thrust in front of her.

"What?"

Skye rolls her eyes, and takes a sip of her drink before speaking. "Look, this should probably be coming from him - in fact, it should definitely be coming from him - but you need this, so I'm going to tell you. Just, keep it to yourself, okay?"

"Skye, it's fine, honestly. I'm happy to wait, I'm happy getting on with things until such a time as-"

"-Stop." Skye holds a hand out in front of her, and Jemma immediately shuts up. "If you're so 'happy', then why haven't you told your face?"

Jemma's mouth drops open in surprise. "Skye!"

Skye waves her hand. "Sorry. But let me tell you this, please, because I think it will help give you a bit of hope. Fitz - and he was surprisingly open with me once he got going-"

"-Did you give him much of a choice?" Jemma knows that Skye has a habit of getting people to open up, even people as stubborn as Fitz.

"Hey!" Skye pouts at her before continuing. "Anyway, he told me that he's always felt something for you, that he'd always been aware of his attraction to you, but because you were his best friend, he paid it no mind. So he tucked it away. It was only when you jumped from the Bus that it showed itself again and identified itself as love. He said it felt like he'd been running along, everything normal, and then all of a sudden a brick wall had sprung up from nowhere and he'd smacked right into it. He said two things happened that day: one, he realised he was in love with you, and two, that it was deeper than that, that he literally didn't know how to survive without you. Now, I don't know about you, but to me, that doesn't sound like someone who's going to fall out of love easily; you can be mad at someone, hate someone, even, and still love them - not that he hates you," Skye reassures, quickly, at the look of horror on Jemma's face. "Of course he doesn't hate you."

Jemma stares down at her shoes, her loose hair falling around her face, a curtain of protection, except she knows that now isn't the time to hide away. After a moment, she glances back up at Skye with questioning eyes, sending out a plea for her friend to tell her that it's not just want she wants to hear, but that it's actually true. "He still loves me?"

"Are you kidding? He's crazy in love with you. Beyoncé-level crazy-in-love. No, more than that... You're... You're the Ginger Rogers to his Fred Astaire, the Scully to his Mulder, the..." Skye smiles, and points a finger at her. "He's the Fitz to your Simmons, and he always will be."

Jemma shakes her head sadly at her friend's enthusiasm. She wants to believe that more than anything, but... "I don't know, Skye. We've always bickered, we've had disagreements, but we've never fallen out before, not ever. And this isn't just falling out with someone, it's... It's a catastrophic nightmare of betrayal and hurt and suffering and-"

"-Simmons, you sound like you're describing one of those angsty, made-for-TV dramas on Lifetime. I'm gonna need popcorn and tissues if you keep it up. Listen," Skye leans across the counter and puts her hands over Jemma's, squeezing them comfortingly.

Jemma tries not to think about how much she wishes they belonged to someone else, someone with curly hair and bright, inquisitive eyes and a smile that could light up even the dullest of days, the darkest of nights.

"No, you didn't think," Skye continues. "Yes, you did a number on him. And yes, he's seriously pissed off with you, and he might be for a while, but give him time, let him heal a bit, and then he'll come to you, I know he will. Stop beating yourself up - he'll forgive you."

Jemma's about to say that she really hopes so, more than anything, when Trip walks in. He pauses when he sees the two women sat at the counter with a bottle of wine and a candle between them.

"Ladies," he says, raising an amused eyebrow. "Am I interrupting something?"

Skye flaps a hand at him. "Only if you stay for longer than necessary," she says, smiling sweetly. "And by that, I mean grab your beer and scoot."

Trip salutes her. "Yes, ma'am." He pulls four bottles from the fridge and holds them by their necks in one hand. "Fitz and I are having a 'man's' night." He puts a faux, gruff-emphasis on the word 'man's'.

Jemma's heart quickens at the mention of Fitz's name, but she tries to retain an air of nonchalance in an attempt to try and cover up any indication that it's affected her.

"Aw, are you painting each other's nails and breaking out the face masks? Are you watching Pretty Woman?" Skye teases, her tongue between her teeth.

"Hey, it takes effort to look this good," he smirks, and Skye rolls her eyes at him. Then he looks at Jemma and his face softens. "You know, I'm sure it would be okay if you both wanted to come into the common room - we're just watching a movie."

"No, it's all right," she replies, giving him a small but appreciative smile. "I said I'd give him time, so if I don't have to be in the same room as him, I won't be."

"Isn't avoiding him the reason this all happened in the first place?" Skye points out, not unkindly.

"This is different. He'll know why, this time."

Trip nods in understanding, and pauses next to Jemma on his way out, squeezing her shoulder comfortingly with his free hand, before continuing on his way.

Jemma lets out the breath she didn't know she'd been holding. "I thought he hated me, too." She gulps down a mouthful of wine, as if to steady her nerves.

"Trip? No. I mean, he and Fitz have become pretty good friends, and, well, we thought the same as he did."

"But you didn't-"

"-I've known you longer. Not that much longer, granted, but I've spent enough time with you to know that there was something else going on, that it didn't add up. I did try and tell him, but..."

"It's all right. And I'm glad Fitz has bonded so well with him, especially after he didn't start out liking him so much, and especially after..." Jemma trails off, not wanting to mention Ward's name out loud. Fitz had looked up to him like the older brother he'd never had, and Skye...

"It's fine," Skye dismisses lightly, swirling the wine in her glass. "Anyway, enough boy talk." She tops up their drinks, then lifts hers up. "A toast - to friendship and love and..." she bites the inside of her cheek as she thinks, "... Moving on."

They clink their glasses together.

xxxx

It's nearly two weeks before he comes to her. Up until then they'd passed by each other, had still had to collaborate on missions and tests and when Fitz needed her biochem for their weapons and gadgets, but it had been strictly professional. Still, he'd managed the odd, small smile, had spoken to her without the previous chill in his voice, and she'd been grateful for it, despite how it was tearing her up inside to not have him truly beside her.

"Hey."

Jemma just stares at him at first. She doesn't mean to, but she knows, from the tone of his voice, that this visit isn't for work purposes. Then she catches herself and smiles softly, praying that she doesn't look too hopeful - the last thing she wants to do is scare him off. "Hello," she breathes, surreptitiously reaching out to clutch onto the edge of the lab table. She slips her protective glasses off with her other hand and places them down.

Fitz's lips twitch, barely, like he wants to return her smile, but he just can't quite get there, probably because he looks so unsure with what he's about to say. However, his eyes are soft as he holds her gaze. "I, um... I'd like to come back to our... Your... This lab, if that's all right with you?" He asks the question cautiously, and she can tell that he's not one-hundred percent sure about it, but he's asking anyway - he's making the effort for her, clearly before he's ready, and she wishes she could tell him just how much she appreciates it without the threat of her gushing verbal diarrhoea at him.

Jemma digs her nails into her palms to stop the beam that's threatening to break out on her face. She mustn't get ahead of herself - this doesn't mean he's agreeing to go back to how they were, it just means that they will be sharing a workspace again. She swallows, trying to regain her self-control. "Yes," she nods. "Yes... I'd like that."

Fitz nods back at her. "Good. I'll pack up my things and start getting everything moved across this afternoon."

Trip isn't about today, he's been sent off on a solo mission, so May and Skye lend a hand, and Jemma has to spend a good portion of her time ignoring their knowing looks and secret smiles (more on Skye's part, to be fair), because she absolutely cannot get in over her head.

The heavier equipment gets wheeled in on trolleys, and Jemma watches as Fitz checks everything and runs through the list he's holding, even though he couldn't possibly have lost anything between his lab and this one, although she suspects it's to keep him busy and focused, because she's sure he's as nervous as she is about him coming back, even if it's not quite in the same way. He's in and out for the next couple of hours, on his own once May and Skye are needed by Coulson elsewhere, and Jemma busies herself with running her tests and cross-checking her data, the same as she'd been doing before he'd come to her earlier that day. When she can see he's nearly done, she leaves the lab, and returns ten minutes later with two cups of freshly brewed tea. It goes against her protocols, but it won't hurt to have tea in here just once. Fitz looks exhausted from going back and forth, and it's a nice thing to do.

He's sitting at his old desk, setting up his computer, and she places his mug in front of him without a word, moving over to her own station to sit and sip at the fresh, hot brew and letting it comfort and calm her. She chances a glance at Fitz as she does, and she catches the look of confusion on his face before he turns to her and says, "Thank you." He sounds as unsure as he looks, but he picks it up and swallows a mouthful, before giving her a tentative quirk of his lips behind the rim of his mug. She flashes a small smile back, then turns away before he can see the grin that's insisting on tugging her mouth up.

xxxx

A week later, and things have been... strange. Not 'bad' strange, just 'odd' strange. Fitz is trying, but he's still distant at times, still fairly quiet, and Jemma has also found it difficult to stick to the rules she'd set for herself. Bringing him tea in the lab has become a daily thing, and he always seems to have some sort of internal struggle every time she hands it to him. He always says thank you, but she wonders if maybe she's overdoing it. She'd told herself she would mostly leave him be, would not purposefully draw him into a conversation about anything that wasn't to do with what they were working on unless he initiated it. It hasn't quite worked out that way. She knows she's been treating him a bit like a delicate flower, making sure he's okay, trying to crack stupid jokes to get him to smile, fetching things for him before he can fetch them for himself...

And then there's her other, teeny-tiny problem.

Jemma's watching the graceful dance of his hands as he feeds a curved piece of metal through the buffer, long fingers carefully turning it this way and that, as precise and elegant as a prima ballerina, and she can feel her cheeks and the tips of her ears glowing as she struggles to pull her attention away from him.

Now that the veil that had been clouding her vision has been lifted, and she can see Fitz with complete clarity, he's starting to affect her in ways he never has before (or maybe he had, and she just hadn't been consciously aware if it). She's aching for him, and it heats her all the way from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. She's been admiring the way his face sets with determination when he's concentrating, the passion in his voice and in his expression when he's explaining how something works, especially when he's doing so to someone who isn't a scientist. The pit of her stomach bubbles with need. He's hugely distracting, and she feels like a teenager. His neck, the shape of his jaw, the curve of his cheekbones, the slope of his nose, the flutter of his eyelashes, his beautiful mouth, his impossibly blue eyes. And his hands. Oh, god, his hands. The things he could- She coughs as thoughts not appropriate for the workplace fly unbidden into her mind, coughs to cover up the slight whimper that falls from her lips, but then somehow she ends up choking on her own spit, and suddenly, Fitz is beside her, handing her his bottle of water and instructing her to sit down.

Jemma wants to escape, but she can't. This is the closest he's been to her since he came back to their lab, and they've both been somewhat skittish around each other, so now he's right next to her, she just gets sucked in, like he has his own gravitational pull. The heat of him, the scent of his skin, the smell of metal mixed with his cologne, is wrapping around her and making her giddy. So much for not getting in over her head.

She coughs a few more times, in-between sipping from the bottle, and slowly her breath comes back to her, the itch-scratch of her throat is receding, and even though it hurt her chest, she's quite glad of the coughing-fit, because Fitz will put down her beetroot-red face-of-embarrassment to that, and not because she was thinking about him in a completely unprofessional way.

God, she wants to bury her face in the crook of his neck and kiss his warm skin...

"Simmons!"

Jemma shakes her head as she's startled out of her pleasant reverie. "Huh?"

Fitz is hovering in front of her, one hand resting lightly on her shoulder, and even the press of his fingers through her shirt is almost too much for her to bear. Before she can stop herself, her eyes flicker to his arm, and it's then that Fitz realises that he's touching her, and he pulls his hand away as if he's been burned. She gives herself an internal eye-roll. Good one, Jemma.

"Are you all right?"

She nods, a little over-enthusiastically, and he screws his face up slightly, as if he can tell that she was having one hell of a daydream. "Yes, sorry, thank you." She winces at how hoarse she sounds, and holds his bottle of water out to him, but he shakes his head.

"Keep it."

He leaves her be, after that, as if being near to her for that long had overwhelmed him. Clearly, she knows that feeling, although she's worried that the reason that he was overwhelmed by their proximity is not the same reason as hers, and it saddens her.

A few hours later, Jemma looks up from her microscope when a scraping sound from across the lab distracts her. "What are you looking for?" she asks, watching as Fitz rifles through draws, his lip pulled between his teeth in concentration as he searches.

She wishes it was between her teeth... Stop that! You're a smart, intelligent, grown woman. And therein lies the problem. She's never been more aware of her femininity or his masculinity as she is now. It's just biochemistry, of course, that's making her feel this way. It's hard to ignore, but she doesn't particularly want to ignore it. Is this how Fitz felt, loving her from afar and not being able to show her? Did she affect him the way he's affecting her? If she did, does she still affect him like that? The distinct possibility that she might makes her feel tingly and hot. Does he have the same reactions to being around her, the same urges, as she does being around him? With great strength, Jemma manages to pull herself out of that train of thought, because it is not helping.

"Hmm?"

She walks across to him, her head still a little up in the clouds, careful not to stand right in his personal space, lest he go all still and awkward, like he didn't know what to do with himself, like earlier with the hand-on-her-shoulder incident. And for her sake, too, of course - she didn't particularly want another fake cough to start off a not-so-fake coughing fit. "What are you looking for?" She repeats, trying to catch his eyes with hers.

Fitz takes notice of her then, and straightens. "Sketchpad. I thought I'd put one in this top drawer. I don't want to use CAD at any stage for this one. I'm doing the whole thing by hand, from concept design to finished piece." He's excited, and it makes her feel gooey, like chocolate that's been left out in the sun. "Have you seen it?"

Jemma thinks for a moment, and then she remembers. "You took it into the common room the other night - you were sketching in front of the TV."

"Oh," he brings a hand to his head, "of course. It's still in my room. Thanks." He turns to leave to retrieve it, but Jemma stops him.

"I can get it, if you like. I was about to go that way, anyway. No point in both of us going." It wasn't like she hadn't been in his room before, although, not so much in his one here - it hadn't been long after he got out of hospital that she'd started to... Well. That.

He waves her off. "It's okay, I'll do it."

"Really, it's no trouble." She smiles brightly at him as her brain shouts at her to just let him get on with it.

"Honestly, it's fine. I'll be back in a minute."

"But, I'm going-"

"-Simmons."

Her eyes widen imperceptibly, and she quietens. "Sorry."

"Don't..." Fitz sighs, rubs a hand over his face, then turns and goes on his way without another word.

Jemma stares after him, crestfallen and annoyed with herself for pushing. After several moments, she takes a deep breath, and leaves to do what she'd been planning on doing when she'd tried to convince Fitz to let her help him.

When she returns, he's sitting at one of the lab tables, bent over his pad, his hand moving across the paper. He doesn't glance up at her as she approaches, and he's clearly engrossed in what he's doing, because he jumps when a cup of tea lands to the side of him, carefully set away from his immediate workspace, crying out at her as the movement catches in his peripheral vision.

"Jemma, stop!"

Stunned, she steps back, her own mug nearly falling from her hand.

He stands and faces her, exasperated, and she can tell that he's about to say something that's clearly been bothering him for a while. "I don't want you to let me drink tea in the lab! That's not you! You hate me having food and drink in here, because you're right, I'm not supposed to, and I still want you to berate me for it every time I ignore you and do it anyway, not bring me tea and pretend you don't mind just because you think it's helping us - it's not." Fitz takes a deep breath and pinches the bridge of his nose. "I'm sorry. Just... Please, stop fussing over me. You don't have to be constantly trying to please me, that's not why I'm here."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean-"

"-And stop apologising! Look... I know you didn't. I just, I need some space. Please." His eyes are pleading, and then a second later he sits back down, picks up his pencil, and focuses back on his work.

Jemma hangs her head and walks quickly over to the other side of the lab. She's not really sure what she's doing, she just knows that she needs to calm her nerves before her vision gets any more blurred, so she starts washing test tubes, beakers, and anything else she feels needs a good scrub, no matter if they're already clean, and then she places them all into the autoclave for fifteen minutes and stares at the chamber until the sterilisation cycle is complete.

She feels like a complete idiot, and she hopes she hasn't ruined the little they've managed to get back, because she doesn't think her heart will be able to take it. He's right - she's been fussing, more than she'd care to admit, even after she swore she wouldn't. She just couldn't help herself. She's never been able to help herself when it comes to him, has always been over-protective and worrisome.

"Simmons?"

Jemma's breath hitches at the sound of his voice, and she spins round to see Fitz standing awkwardly behind her, his face lined with worry and the weight of the world on his shoulders.

"I'm finishing for the day. And I..." He sighs, sadly. "I'm not punishing you, I promise. I'm just... I can't..."

She stops him. She can't bear to hear him struggling to speak to her, and she knows he isn't punishing her - she knows, because she can see the guilt in his eyes, and she hates it, because it shouldn't be there. "It's okay." She takes the opportunity to study his face while he's right in front of her. He looks tired, and she tells him so.

He manages to huff a small laugh, but agrees that he is. "It's not an excuse, though."

She just smiles softly at him. "Go on, get out of here," she says, quietly.

He nods at her, collects his sketchpad, and once he's gone, she flops down into her chair and takes a moment to just breathe.

A/N: Everyone remembers Beyoncé's 'Crazy in Love', right?

This chapter is dedicated to notapepper, because, like me, she's a huge fan of Fitz's hands, and, well, isn't everyone?

Thanks for reading!