I loved the last drabble you just posted, so how about FS + 52) things you said with my lips on your neck <3
(so this was inspired by a conversation in the sandpenis gc earlier and i thought ‘mm maybe i should write this’ and then i happened to see this on tumblr after being away for weeks and i was like ‘.......ok well fuck now i have to write this’)
(set sometime in the near future, probably after whatever is going on in space)
She’s waiting impatiently by the landing strip, hand over heart, when the cargo hold lowers, and Fitz nearly loses his footing on his race back to her embrace. Jemma’s arms encircle his shoulders as she releases the breath she has held for quite some time, but it lasts only mere seconds before she’s pushing him back to scan him over—doctor mode apparently activated.
There’s a scrape along his cheek from hitting the pavement after an unfortunate, unexpected encounter with a few Watchdogs, the rest of the fight only resulting in sore muscles and bruising and the wind knocked out of him once or twice, but as expected, she frets over his injuries anyway. And once Coulson gives him and Piper’s team the order to rest up for the remainder of the night, a debrief to follow first thing in the morning, Jemma drags him by the hand to their old bunk.
“It’s just a scratch,” Fitz protests, after she all but throws him back onto the bed before scavenging for her first aid kit. “There’s no need to make a fuss, I’ll just clean it off in the shower.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says without looking up.
“Or you could clean it off in the shower—that would be perfectly acceptable as well.” It earns him a playful eyebrow raise over her shoulder, but doesn’t stall her mission until she’s found it.
“This might sting a bit,” Jemma warns him, stepping into the space between his legs at the end of the bed with an antiseptic wipe.
He sighs, “I know the drill,” but lets her dote over him nonetheless. When the scrape is clean enough for her standards, she thumbs over the skin below it with a small smile.
“All better,” she murmurs. She aims for a soft kiss to the corner of his smile, but lets out a happy noise of surprise when he turns his head at the last second so it lands on his mouth. Looping her arms around his neck, she climbs atop his lap and sighs into their kiss as the angle changes, causing them both to smile. Fitz runs his fingers down her sweater, pulls her flush close.
After a blissful moment, she pulls away to brush her nose against his softly, ponytail swinging.
“It feels strange being back here,” he points out, gesturing to the bare walls around them—all of their belongings being in their apartment off-base they’d moved into shortly after their time in space.
“Well, you heard Coulson: you’re—ah,” Jemma inhales sharply at the sensation of Fitz tipping his head to drop a warm kiss on her collarbone. “You’re needed in the morning, anyway.”
His teeth graze another spot nearby and she shivers. “You could’ve stayed back.”
“Mmm, and leave you to your lonesome?” She leans back to give him more room to work with. “Not on my watch.”
Moving up the side of her neck, he kisses his thanks against her skin as she dips her fingers beneath his collar, letting out little gasps and sighs when his lips land on particularly sensitive places.
“You know what else feels strange?” She asks. Before he can return from his trance enough to reply, Jemma has pulled free the chain around his neck he’d tucked beneath his undershirt before heading out on the mission, revealing the silver band hidden from any evil goon capable of using it against him. He grins stupidly as she unclasps the chain and slides the ring on his finger where it belongs, carefully, as if it were the first time.
It’s routine at this point, the ceremonious reunion of ring to skin in a selfishly quiet moment after every op, and each day brings them closer to an unsaid day in the future where they no longer have to remove them, but Fitz can’t help the way his heart seems to flutter every time it occurs.
And by the dopey smile Jemma gives him before kissing his knuckles, most every time she returns it, he knows her heart does the same.
Hey girl! I was just wondering - are you planning on doing a rewatch event during the hiatus? I figured I'd ask since we have an extra long break this time around :)
Hi, Mel! I honestly hadn’t thought about it, but if there seems to be enough support for such a thing, then I will absolutely be willing to host a rewatch event! I’d likely do it over on @aosrewatch, but that’s far off hosting plans!
Hello friend! Can you please write FS + 2 & 6 from the first list of prompts? Thanks so much! <3<3
HELLO lovely Melissa, @waitingforeleven,
It’s finally done.
I would describe it as a bus kids heavy canon-adjacent AU (in which Fitzsimmons don’t actually work for S.H.I.E.L.D.)
Now, I know you told me in chat that bus kids is fine, but part of me is a tiny bit worried that it turned out to be a bit too “bus kidsy” and not enough “fitzsimmonsy”.
If it’s totally not what you envisioned or had hoped for, feel free to send me another prompt!
The family we choose for ourselves
Prompts incorporated: “I need a place to stay” + ““Hey, hey, calm down. Theycan’t hurt you anymore” [These just screamed DAISY at me, thus the bus kids theme]
Sneak Peek:
Facebook told her that Aileen hadmoved back to Scotland a few years ago. LinkedIn told her that Fitz was doingwell as an engineer for a big company working on prosthetics in L.A.. She hadseen the pictures from his wedding on Aileen’s Instagram. Jemma Simmons. Adoctor. That much she knew. She looked nice. A bit stuck up maybe. Daisy hadn’tdared to do more research on her. Didn’t mean to be spying on her brother’swife.
She hadn’t seen him in ten years.Hadn’t spoken to him. She wasn’t sure if he was aware that it was her on thenews: ‘Quake’ as the tabloids had started calling her. She wasn’t sure how he’dreact.
But she needed help. And he was theonly person she could think of in L.A. whom she could turn to, who might notturn her away, who might keep her secret, who might be able to understand,willing to understand.
Edit: SHOUT OUT TO THE QUEEN OF BUS KIDS, @agentcalliope FOR HER BETA AND ENTHUSIASTIC COMMENTS!
Hello, my friend! For your ficlet giveaway, how about FS + THE CROWN :D (any scene/moment you want!) Thanks for doing this! <3
@whatlighttasteslike *heavy sigh* do I thank you or scold you for enabling me? XP I had so much fun writing this - but now it’s gonna end up being a full (if shortish) fic at some point when I finish my vastly delayed FSSV present. <3{Much of this scene includes dialogue from the first episode.}Anniversary Ficlet 3/8.Rated G. FitzSimmons. “The Crown” (Queen Elizabeth & Prince Philip) AU.
The room’s familiar gilding served as no distraction for Jemma as she paced the elaborate carpet that adorned the floor. Her dress swished around her legs, and she resisted the urge to curl her fingers into the cream-colored fabric. That would not be ladylike. Voices droned on in the room across the hall, and although she knew that it would be seen as very improper for her to be present or even eavesdrop, the latter was precisely what she was trying to do. It just didn’t seem fair for her to be excluded from such an important occasion; but, that’s just how things were done, and Crown Princess Jemma Simmons was excellent at following royal protocol. She’d been an expert ever since she was a child, and she wasn’t going to stop now. Still, she paced back and forth in front of the drawing room door, managing to catch a handful of words:
“…From henceforth, he will be known as Lieutenant Leopold James Fitz, Royal Navy. Leopold Fitz, I grant you and the heirs, male of your body, lawfully begotten, the dignities of Baron Greenwich, Earl of Meioneth and Duke of Edinburgh, and Knight Companion of our Most Noble Order of the Garter.”
Reserved applause sounded through the hallway, and Jemma realized that she was grinning in an entirely unseemly way, but she couldn’t convince herself to stop. When she accidentally caught the eye of a nearby butler, she quickly tried to school her face into an expression of polite contentment, and gave him a nod. Then she turned on her heel and paced back to the other side of the room, wholly impatient for the men’s congratulating to finish so that she could finally, finally see her fiancé.
Within a few minutes, as she stared pensively out the window onto the grounds of Buckingham Palace, she heard sharp footsteps cross the hall and become muffled as the person entered the drawing room. A bright smile spread across her face, and she twisted quickly around to see that the new person was, in fact, her Fitz. He looked so dapper in his dress uniform, ever-unruly curls barely tamed and blue eyes shining as they met hers, that she sucked in a small breath of pleased surprise. Even though she’d seen him like this before, everything in the next twenty-four hours was guaranteed to be heightened, routines and familiar dress becoming all the more exciting for the life that it was designed to usher in.
The movement of the other dignitaries, guards, and servants now passing through the hall caught Jemma’s eye, and her smile faltered. For although Fitz’s touch was not precisely foreign to her, now was not the time for her to run up and throw her arms about his neck as she had been about to do.
“Well?” she said quietly, slipping around the large table with an enormous vase of decorative flowers that separated them. “They got through it?”
Fitz chuckled, slipping one finger into his collar and tugging slightly. “Yeah. I got through it, which is probably more impressive.”
“Well done, you,” she murmured, taking another step forward. Someone in the hall made a distinct huff, and they both turned, although the noise-maker had disappeared by the time they did. Jemma sighed. “I think they’d have preferred a nice, pink-faced marquis with a grouse moor in the Welsh borders.”
“Are you sure you wouldn’t’ve preferred one of those?” Fitz said, clearly teasing but a hint of insecurity hovering beneath his words. “Someone with a grand title, instead of a homeless Scot with a disreputable family?”
“No,” Jemma answered right away, her gaze clear as she met his. Tension leeched out of his shoulders, and the look he gave her was one of adoration that she knew quite well by now. A smile teased at the corners of her mouth. “That would have been much too… antiseptic.”
“You like antiseptic, if I remember correctly,” he said, and she laughed, raising one hand to hide her mouth.
“So do you,” she retorted, folding her hands primly in front of her skirts as she glimpsed someone’s disapproving glance from the hall. “Otherwise you’d never come into my lab again.”
“If you didn’t leave cat livers lying about,” Fitz groused, and she giggled again, “then it wouldn’t be as much of a problem.”
“The livers keep things interesting.”
“You do that well enough on your own.” Another fond smile spread across his face as he finished talking, and she felt fit to bursting with her own happiness.
With the way Fitz was looking at her, she knew that he was likely to throw propriety to the wind at any second. Oh, on any other day she would love for him to just sweep her off her feet; but there was too much riding on the next couple of days. After all, she’d had to spend months pressing her case for their marriage, had needed to convince everyone from Buckingham to sundry that Fitz was worthy of the titles that had just been bestowed upon him. With luck, it would be very many more years yet before she became queen and he became the queen’s consort, but marrying the crown princess was still not something permitted to just anyone in the kingdom. Jemma, however, having found the source of her future happiness in her best friend in the world, had refused to let anything in the world keep them from being together. The trade-off was that for the next little while, they had to behave as good as gold in order to convince the rest of the world – and the extended royal family – that the match had not been a complete mistake.
After a few seconds, he half-glanced behind him and then stepped towards her. Reluctant to seem like she was rejecting him and yet also wary of drawing the attention of the judgmental people around them, Jemma tensed, prepared to step hastily back if need be. But all Fitz did was lay his hand on the round table, reaching towards her, and she realized he’d just been angling them so that the flowers hid their hands from any outside viewers. Giving him an admiring smile, Jemma slid her hand along the gray and white marble until it met his, their fingers slipping gently over each others’, skin barely ghosting against skin lest they need to separate again soon, all too soon. It had been well over a week since they’d been alone, and truth be told it was driving Jemma mad. If they could even just dance together, chests pressed so close they could nearly feel each others’ heartbeats, at this second, that would be enough for her.
Her eyes caught a smudge of grease on the outer side of his palm, and she let out a sharp hiss of annoyance. “Oh, Fitz! Please don’t tell me you were mucking about in the garage again, not now. You know you can’t do work like that until things have calmed down. The queen thinks it looks common.”
At least he had the grace to look sheepish. “The engine just needed a quick fix,” he explained, bright blue eyes widening imploringly. “It only took a second, and I was really careful that no one saw. Other than the drivers. And my butler.” She raised an eyebrow, and he grimaced. “Yeah, I know. I just – I like helping. I’m good at that, you know, that’s what I do out on tour. It makes me feel useful.”
“And normally, I love that about you,” she murmured, smoothing her palm up so that it rested firmly over his hand. His mouth twitched up at the corner, half in surprise and half in affection. Sometimes, she had the impression that he didn’t quite believe how in love with him she truly was. “But you have to give it up for now. For a few weeks. Until things have settled.”
Fitz sighed, giving his head a chastened nod. “I do miss working when I’m not. But,” he continued, turning her hand over and grasping it tightly with his, “like a great many other things, I’m going to give it all up for you.”
Jemma nearly found herself stepping forward, but the sound of more voices passing by in the hallway kept her in her place. Instead, she gave her fiancé a warm smile. “Well,” she said, tilting her head mischievously, “you still have twenty-four hours to change your mind.” Glancing down at the slim-banded watch on her wrist, she let out a small hum. “Closer to twenty-one hours, actually.”
“Do you really,” Fitz started quietly, taking another half-step forward and entwining their fingers completely, “think I would ever change my mind?”
They stood there in silence for a few moments, energy spinning between them along with all the words they knew had to go unsaid for just a little longer. Tomorrow night, at the end of far too many hours of pomp and circumstance, they would be able to leave propriety at the door and be together as they should. Without artifice, without costume, without company – other than each other. To say that Jemma had been dreaming about that moment for months was something of an understatement.
“No,” he said at last, breaking the quiet spell that had woven between them, “much too late for that.” With a laugh, he gestured back at the room across the hall, which seemed to have finally nearly emptied. “I just signed myself away and everything.”
Watching as a last medalled dignitary exited the room and closed the door, Jemma’s smile thinned. “Or won the greatest prize in the kingdom.”
Fitz made a small noise of dissatisfaction, separating their hands and turning briefly around to follow her gaze. “I dunno. I mean, that’s what they’re all saying, but I’m not so sure.”
A brief laugh sounded from her throat, and she propped one hand on her hip. “Oh? You’re not, are you?”
“Nah,” he said, turning back to meet her gaze, his own expression a mix of amusement and adoration. “Greatest gift on the planet, maybe. Or in the galaxy.”
“Oh, Fitz,” she murmured, instinctively reaching up to tuck a nonexistent lock of stray hair behind one ear. He liked making these grandiose statements that, paradoxically, made her feel uncharacteristically small. Yet she still avidly tried to memorize each one.
After watching her for a few seconds, he glanced around again, noting – as she did – that the rest of the royal dignitaries and signatories and whatsatories had all finally disappeared down the hall, and they were left only with the guard at the entrance to the room.
“Watch out,” Fitz said in a low voice, and before Jemma could register his movement, he was cupping her jaw with both hands and kissing her as if it were the first time all over again.
A small huff of surprise sounded from her throat as their lips met, and although she knew now was a bad time, knew that anyone could walk in at any moment, she didn’t step away. Instead, she wrapped one hand around his wrist and rested the other on his arm, knowing she shouldn’t cling but clinging anyway. Fitz’s lips were warm and gentle and still passionate, pressing in over and over again until she was breathless. But with time being so short, she chose his mouth over air, heart skipping a beat when he broke away to brush their noses together and then capture her lips again.
Oh, damn propriety and damn reputation, Jemma thought, leaning further into her fiancé’s embrace. She and Fitz would be married tomorrow; they were allowed to be blissfully, unreservedly happy, and to forget what anyone else thought.
Hello! Sorry for taking so long, but here you go! Set right when Fitz rescues Jemma from the monolith; Will can exist or not at your preference. :)
———-
“Fitz,” she sighs, and she thinks she feels her mouth move in a way she remembers as smiling. After everything she has the energy left for one last smile. She’s not entirely positive she’s even still alive but if this is her last breath, she can’t imagine a better use of it than calling to him. In his name, she is saying everything: you found me, you never gave up on me, I think I’ve loved you from the moment I met you.
All of the adrenaline leaves her body in a rush and she goes limp. Fitz holds her so tightly against himself that it should be suffocating, but somehow breathing in his scent fills her lungs with the only oxygen she’s ever needed.
She wants to cry. She wants to laugh. Most of all, she wants him to pull her into his own body because there she will be safe and cherished and she won’t lose him ever again.
There is so much she needs to tell him. Dimly, she hears voices she’d long relegated to her dreams cheering from above. She inhales dust and feels her bones sinking into the blown rubble of the monolith. But his heartbeat against her ear is the most real thing in the universe, and she’s seen so much more of the universe than anyone can know.
“Fitz,” she tries again through a mouthful of his shirt and oh, god, she hopes he can understand everything she’s been too afraid to say and everything she’s now too weak to voice.
She passes out. Her last thought before she loses consciousness is of home.
++
Jemma jerks awake, pulse racing and bile threatening to choke her. Her heart is in her throat but her arm does not waver, weapon always at the ready. Once upon a time, she was a scientist and all she wanted was to discover and create beautiful solutions to help the world, but she knows better now. She can kill. She will kill. She will do anything to protect herself, to protect Fitz, even though Fitz is on another planet and she will never see him again.
“Fitz,” she gasps suddenly, as she looks over and sees him sitting against the wall, asleep in a position that will do him no favors when he wakes up.
You can’t possibly be real, she reasons, but before devastation can wash over her again, she realizes she’s never imagined him in this outfit before. She’s also never imagined him keeping such a gentlemanly distance.
She climbs down from the bed, refusing to blink, because he has fizzled out from right in front of her eyes before, and she can’t let it happen again.
She lowers herself slowly until she is lying on the hard ground which is still somehow softer than the surface of her hell planet. His thigh is her pillow and she wraps a hand around his knee. He hasn’t disappeared, and she allows herself to close her eyes. She wants to weep with the beauty of it.
She doesn’t know how long she sleeps, but she feels Fitz stir and his slight movement wakes her in the softest way possible.
“Jemma?” he whispers, her name melting in his mouth like ice cream. No one but Fitz has ever said her name like it’s the most precious word in their vocabulary.
Don’t leave me, she wants to say as she grips his leg tighter and still, still she can’t get the words out.
He runs his fingers through her hair, so lightly she could be imagining it. Her scalp tingles at the contact. He’s doing something not even the shower and new clothes could do: he’s making her remember what it’s like to be human again and her chest feels like it’s cracking wide open.
She blinks back tears, frustrated at the jumble of white noise in her brain and her inability to articulate any of it.
“Do you want to go back to your bed?” he asks gently. “It can’t be comfortable down here.” If only he knew how much nicer this floor is than her previous accommodations. If only he could soothe her bruises.
She lets him help her up anyway, and she lets him guide her back onto the bed, but she doesn’t let him leave. She grabs hold of his hand with a fierceness that seems to surprise him.
“Are you sure?” he asks, his blue eyes so clear and bright and nothing like the stifling blue of the perpetually-dark planet.
Of course I’m sure, she thinks. I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life, but like all of her other words they stick in her throat before she can release them.
“Fitz,” she says, his name her talisman and her only prayer. Her favorite word. Please understand.
He climbs into bed and turns onto his side, holding her hands against his chest. He looks at her in concern, but he’s also smiling, like his world has been dark and void and he’s finally seeing the sun for the first time. She knows a little something about that.
He’s still keeping too much distance, so she pulls on their joined hands until he moves and there’s no space left between them. Until the press of his body against hers is the only law of physics that still applies.
“Mine,” she whispers, mouth pressed against his throat. She’s close enough to taste the salt of his skin and feel his pulse like it’s her own. “My Fitz.”
“Yours,” he agrees in a hoarse, tearful murmur and she feels boneless with relief.
His arms tighten around her and there’s so much more she wants to say and so much she wants to do. But now, at this moment, she’s dizzy with exhaustion.
Right before she falls asleep to the rhythm of his breathing, she promises herself that as soon as she’s able, she will tell him everything she has learned. She will tell him that when she said “maybe there is,” she meant there is and always has been and always will be. She will tell him that when she dreamt of home, it was always the same: his arms around her, his heart beating beneath her hands.
Idk if you've addressed this yet, but in SBS, when did Fitz finally get around to proposing? I just read your answer about how they started thinking about marriage right before she gets taken by the monolith, so how much time passes before he pops the question? And how does he go about it? ;-) ❤❤❤
I haven’t addressed that yet, but - it happens during what’s 3x17 in canon. :-)
they’ve just survived yet another bomb - for Fitz and Sarama, this is far, far too similar to 8/8. so Fitz snaps unnecessarily at Lincoln, and moodily agrees with Coulson that they lie low for the time being.
once the four of them are in their room, Jemma gets right to work, leaning back against Caedmon at the end of the queen-sized bed and grumbling about how they should be in the lab. Fitz, agitated, just stands in the center of the room for a bit, trying to calm down from the horror of having seen a second bomb go off far too close to Jemma and Caedmon. what if next time the bomb hits its target? absent-mindedly, she reaches up to the edge of the bed to rub the backs of her fingers against Sarama’s scales, and that familiar feeling of her touching his soul just crashes over him. what would his life be without her? without knowing that at least she was somewhere?
and as Fitz is watching her do work, something he sees her do every day but now with cuts and bruises on her face, he just blurts it out:
“Will you marry me?”
Jemma blinks up at him, lips parting in shock. “What?”
Panic darting through his chest, Fitz sinks to his knees next to her on the floor, reaching forward and taking away the tablet that she was now only loosely holding. “Marry me, Jemma? I just - I know we sorta talked about it, and I was gonna plan a whole night, with roses and dinner and everything, but then with the bomb and Hive and I know you’re still recovering, and it doesn’t have to be right away, if it’s too soon, but I -”
She bursts into laughter, pushing herself up onto her knees so that their faces are even. “Too soon? Fitz, we’ve been together in some way for over ten years.”
“Eleven years and eight months,” he corrects, cheeks reddening. “Give or take a few days.”
Grinning, she stretches up to press their foreheads together, curling her fingers gently around the back of his neck. “Yes, I will marry you, Leopold James Fitz. As long as you marry me right back.”
“Deal,” he breathes, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and capturing her lips with his.
“Don’t I get any input?” comes Caedmon’s voice from behind them, and Fitz lets out a small chuckle against Jemma’s lips. She groans quietly, and twists around to look at her daemon. The lion must have moved up to the end of the bed at some point while they were distracted, and now lay with his head resting alongside Sarama’s body.
“Would you like Fitz to propose to you, too?” Jemma deadpans, curling her fingers into Fitz’s shirt.
“I think I’d like that, yes,” her daemon responds, and she lets out a small tsk. Forestalling any further bickering - the two of them had only recently made up, after all, and he doesn’t want them to regress - Fitz leans in to give his fiancée (fiancée!) a kiss on the cheek and then shuffles over to the bed.
“Caedmon,” Fitz says, leaning forward on the edge of the bed so he’s staring the lion head-on, “will you and Jemma marry me and Sarama?”
“Sarama and I,” Jemma corrects from beside him, and he shushes her.
“I’d like that,” Caedmon answers, and then scoots forward enough that Fitz can reach around his head for a hug.
Beside them, Jemma leans down to the edge of the bed, putting herself at eye-level with the lizard. “What do you think, Sarama?” she says, unable to fight the grin that tugs at the corner of her mouth. “Marry us, too?”
“About time,” Sarama teases in response, lifting up onto her front legs so that Jemma can scoop her up onto her arm.
With that, Jemma wraps her other arm around Fitz’s back, nuzzling into his neck. They stay like that for quite some time, giggling sporadically about their oddly shaped four-way hug but each of them knowing that this was exactly the way it was meant to be. Jemma and Caedmon with Fitz and Sarama - happiest together, no matter where that was.
(Fitz doesn’t have the ring yet - he has to call his mum and have his grandmother’s mailed over to them in the US. Jemma’s more than happy to wait.)
If you want to know more about post-Side By Side, click here!
