Written for the FitzSimmons Secret Santa exchange and I’m delighted to gift it to @itsavolcano :) It’s been lovely being your Santa. I loved writing this story and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I loved writing it :)
A happy new year to all the wonderful fandom here on Tumblr and Ao3 and a big thank you to @jemmafitzsimmons and @eclecticmuses for organizing this whole exchange :)
Rated: G
Summary: There’s no one else Fitz would rather spend New Year’s Eve with than Jemma. Jemma feels the same way. What if it meant more than friendship? A story about every New Year’s Eve FitzSimmons spent together at the Academy, and how it impacted their relationship.
There was probably something Jemma didn’t understand about parties. She’d heard from several older students at the Academy that The Boiler Room New Year’s Eve parties were legendary. It had started out with a few students who couldn’t go home for the holidays about thirty years ago. But over the years, it had grown bigger as more and more cadets actually decided to stay to party with their friends. And now, it was this huge thing with a light display and sound system that would have made every night club owner jealous. (Which was only logical in a place where the best engineers in the world were being trained to get even better.)And it was a nice party, objectively speaking. The music was good, she’d had a fun chat with a few of her fellow cadets, and even danced for a while. She just felt somehow out of place and a little lonely, despite her friend Sally waiting at the bar while Jemma was supposed to go to the toilets. Instead, she was watching everybody having fun from her perch on the balcony, wondering how long she would have to wait after midnight to go to sleep.She supposed her melancholic and gloomy mood were in good parts due to her early return to the Academy. Her parents had been invited to celebrate New Year’s Eve with some friends in Paris. And since she didn’t really keep contact with her friends from home, going back to the Academy after Christmas had seemed like the best option. But despite her decision to make the best of the evening, there was something missing, something she couldn’t pinpoint that prevented her from really enjoying the party.“Can I interest you in a disgusting non-alcoholic beer?"Jemma straightened up and turned around immediately at the sound of the now very familiar Scottish accent. It was pretty dark around and she couldn’t see him right away. Which, considering that he shouldn’t be here, made her wonder if she’d hallucinated the words.Until he came out of the shadows wearing a small grin on his face and holding two red plastic cups."Fitz!” she cried out, fighting her instinct to throw herself at him and hug him tight. She didn’t want to get beer on both of them, and she wasn’t sure that it was something they did anyway. In just a few months, Fitz had become the best friend she’s ever had, but even though everyone said they were attached at the hip, he’d always been a bit shy, and she didn’t want to crowd him with unwanted affection.
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