Chapter Text
The Scientific Method
Chapter 1: The Incident
Leopold Fitz has been best friends with Jemma Simmons for almost two years now, and he’s recently come to the conclusion that he might be attracted to her in a more-than-friends kind of way.
He kind of had a crush on her at first – why wouldn’t he really, she’s so smart and beautiful and friendly, and the only other person his age at the Academy. Being the extremely awkward teen he was – and still is, two years later – it was almost impossible for him to even begin to think about talking to her. Then they got paired up in chem lab, and he slowly felt more and more comfortable around her, until they became best friends – fairly quickly, if you ask him. The crush had then receded, leaving room for the most fulfilling friendship he’s ever had – not that he had many friends before to compare it with, but yeah.
Until recently, that is. He’s not entirely sure why, but it seems as if his crush on her has come back full force in the last few weeks. He doesn’t know what triggered it. He just knows that he definitely can’t act on it. He values his friendship with her too much, and definitely doesn’t want to mess it all up by being too greedy.
He thinks he’s already extremely lucky that she’s willing to be his best friend when she could probably find someone better suited to her very easily. He’s pretty sure he doesn’t deserve her, hence why he’s firmly set on ignoring his pesky attraction to her the best he can.
He’s still a teenage boy though. And definitely not perfect.
So yeah, maybe every now and then he allows himself to fantasize about her just a tiny bit.
He figures it’s alright. Definitely better than giving up and acting upon that stupid crush of his and ruining everything, right? A healthy coping mechanism, if you may. The important thing being that she should never know about any of this. Just waiting for this crush to subside, all the while dampening down the pent up frustration brought up by the situation.
It’s science, really.
He’s not much into biology – it’s her specialty, well, one of them anyway – but yeah.
He thinks he’s doing a pretty good job dealing with all of this… until he definitely isn’t anymore.
It’s a Thursday night. They have a holographic engineering test the next day, and have been studying for it all evening in Simmons’s room. It’s not the first time they’ve done that in the years they’ve been friends, and definitely not the first time they end up falling asleep together over their notes and books either.
It is however, the first time they wake up like this.
At first when he opens his eyes, he doesn’t even realize it. He’s still half asleep, not entirely sure what woke him up, but unlike usual days when he’s woken up by his blaring alarm clock, here it actually feels really nice. He’s surrounded by a comfortable warmth, his arms and legs still weighed down by sleep, and he closes his eyes again, settling more deeply in this very sweet warmth. He’s on his side, one arm curled under his head, the other stretched over something soft, and he really doesn’t want to move, because all this really feels heavenly.
He’s pretty sure he’s never felt this rested before in his life, to be honest.
He takes a deep breath, feeling like he’s melting even more into the comfy mattress, and that’s when he starts wondering since when his sheets smell so nice. He blinks his eyes open, his brain very sluggishly piecing things together… until he freezes in horror when he realizes where he is.
He’s facing the back of Jemma’s head. Her soft brown curls are sprawled on the pillow they’re sharing, tickling his chin. His arm is loosely stretched over her waist, his thumb brushing the back of the hand she’s curled against her chest. Her breaths are deep and slow, and he knows she’s still asleep. She’s not pressed against him, the only point of contact between them being his arm draped over her waist, but still, somehow, all his brilliant mind seems to be able to sputter at the moment is the flashing word ‘SPOONING’.
He doesn’t dare to move, doesn’t even dare to breathe, his entire body extremely tensed, his heart pounding in his ears. He’s never spooned with anyone before. Obviously, since he’s never slept with anyone, ever. Wait, not that they’ve slept with each other! Like that would ever happen, ugh. He’s only ever kissed one girl before, when he was 11, and it was just very weird. He didn’t like it much. Not that he thinks it wouldn’t feel amazing to kiss Jemma though!
Oh God, why is he thinking about kissing her?!
This is a disaster. He has to do something. He’s a genius, he can figure out a way out of this right? Preferably before something extremely embarrassing starts happening – something in the crotch area, to be precise. Oh God, this is terrifying.
It shouldn’t be too difficult. He just needs to very slowly remove his arm from over her waist, without waking her up, and then he can just pretend nothing happened. Pretend he woke up on his side of the bed, or slip out of the room before she wakes up. Yes, that’s a plan. Safe, solid. Good. He can do this.
He’s about to do it, very intent on succeeding, but then she moves.
If she’d moved away, he would have been able to deal with it. Hell, if she’d rolled on her belly that would have been okay too, he thinks. But that’s not what she does. No, she curls up closer to him, and now her back is flushed against his front and this time he really cannot breathe anymore.
He’s pretty sure he’s in hell at the moment. She’s so warm and soft and real against him, and God, she smells so good too, like this mix of fruity shampoo and something else that’s just her, and, and, oh shite.
Yup, he’s in hell alright.
He has no idea what to do. Cannot even start to think a coherent thought. Her breathing is still slow and steady, he thinks she’s probably still asleep, and he really, really, really doesn’t want her to wake up, because his hard-on is now pressed against her arse and that’s, that’s, yeah.
T his is a nightmare.
It would probably pass off as a dream if he wasn’t so sure he was awake.
He’s frozen, incapable of uttering one movement – or one thought, for that matter. Every part of him that’s in contact with her feels like it’s burning up, and it would feel really nice if he wasn’t so fucking terrified. What will she think of him? Probably that he’s a disgusting pig, oh God, he can’t have that, what if she doesn’t want to be friends with him anymore?
Oh God oh God oh G–
He’s lost in his spiraling thoughts, but then she moves again.
Almost imperceptibly – except not at all.
She very, very lightly grinds her bum against the most sensitive part of his anatomy, and his heart jumps up in his throat. If he hadn’t been so tensed and terrified, he’s pretty sure he would have moaned, because that felt fucking amazing.
Except he most definitely cannot do that.
So he doesn’t think much.
“BLOODY HELL!”
He frantically backs up, his legs get tangled in the sheets, and then a second later he finds himself hitting the cold floor with a painful groan. He hears her gasp, and then she’s sitting up in bed and looking down at him with wide eyes. With her hair all messy and her rosy cheeks he thinks she’s looking absolutely irresistible, now more than ever, and he gapes at her in shock. They stare at each other for a moment, the silence around them almost surreal, and then her eyes slowly glide toward the very noticeable bulge in his jeans, and he cannot think.
It takes him a couple of seconds of complete astonishment but then he’s gasping and trying to cover himself up, somehow managing to hit his head on the bedside table in the process. He groans in pain, cheeks ablaze, and flinches when Jemma shifts closer.
“Oh, there’s no shame in it Fitz,” she starts with a nervous chuckle, and he wishes his hands weren’t busy covering his crotch so that he could hide his burning face in them, away from her curious hazel eyes and sympathetic smile.
He decides instead to struggle up to his feet, purposefully avoiding looking in her direction. “I’m gonna, yeah…” he trails off, grabbing his backpack from the floor and haphazardly dumping his things in it. He sees her scrambling out of bed from the corner of his eye, and he thinks he would be about to puke his own heart if that were anatomically possible.
“It’s perfectly natural you know,” she says, and now his face, and ears, and neck, and his whole chest are on fire, “and healthy as–”
“Please,” he interrupts her, begging, hands grasping his backpack in front of his crotch, still very intently not looking at her. He knows he’s forgetting things, but these things are also on Jemma’s bed, and yeah he's not going back there. He figures it’s okay, he’ll just buy new stuff. He’s pretty sure his calculator is somewhere over there, and it sucks to have to buy a new one because those stupid things are insanely expensive, but oh well. Better this than making more of a fool out of himself, right?
If Simmons could hear him think, she would scoff and tell him to stop being so dramatic about everything.
He stumbles to the door, grasping the handle like a life line. “I’ll see you at breakfast, Simmons,” he squeaks without looking back, and she doesn’t reply anything to that. He walks out of her room, quietly closing the door behind him, pretty sure that she now hates him.
He’s done it, he’s messed up everything.
He walks back to his room, and it’s like he’s in a dream. Not the good kind though. He’s still almost painfully hard, and if that’s not the most embarrassing thing ever he doesn’t know what is. Sometimes, being a teenager sucks. Ugh, who is he kidding, most times being a teenager sucks. He spends his walk back praying not to see anyone, but thankfully it’s still pretty early, so he makes it back to his room safely.
He really doesn’t know what it would have looked like to anyone seeing him like that so early. Walk of shame and everything. Ugh, and that wouldn’t have helped the rumors that Simmons and him are actually sleeping together. He gets teased about that quite often, by idiots who think a man and a woman can’t be just friends.
Oh, but now she probably won’t want to be his friend anymore, since he’s proven like the moron he is that this assumption might be spot on after all.
He’s the worst, isn’t he?
He unlocks the door and slips into his room, dumping his backpack and running shaky hands over his face. He’s not sure he’s ever felt this conflicted before. On one hand, desperate and terrified to know that he screwed up and might lose his best friend. And on the other hand… still very much horny – the horniest he’s ever been before, if he’s honest with himself. To be fair though, this is the first time something like this happens to him.
Feeling someone, feeling her, move against him like that–
Bloody hell.
He really needs to get his shit together.
He glances at his watch, seeing he still has about half an hour before he needs to meet S– um, to get breakfast before class. He ponders for a second on what to do, then his stupid brain inputs an image of what she looked like earlier, sitting on her bed and looking down at him, and yep, hot shower it is.
He tries not to think about anything in particular, but it’s honestly impossible. Images float behind his closed eyes as water hits his face, and his heart is pounding in his chest when he remembers how she’d blush, how she’d looked down… and suddenly he’s wondering if what happened really was accidental. If she was still asleep when she moved against him. What would have happened if her movement was deliberate and he hadn’t moved away in a rush of panic?
Maybe it’s all in his head. But then again, she didn’t look repulsed or anything. A little embarrassed, quite amused at his reaction obviously, and maybe a tiny bit curious as well. She definitely didn’t look mad, or disgusted, or annoyed.
What does it mean then?
He’s a little more clearheaded when he gets out of the shower, and thinks to himself he’ll figure things out when he sees her again. A tiny part of him never wants to see her again because of how embarrassed he still feels about the whole thing, but he’s also curious. And to be honest, never seeing Simmons ever again would absolutely suck.
Of course he wants to see her again.
It’s kind of terrifying not to know what she’s gonna say though.
Turns out he didn’t need to worry about any of this.
When he walks into the cafeteria half an hour later, Simmons is sitting at their usual table. There’s a neat stack next to her of all the things he forgot in her room when he fled it earlier. His cheeks are very warm when he sits across from her and meets her hazel eyes, and his heart is very loud in his chest as he awaits for her to… well he doesn’t know what he’s waiting for, honestly.
In any case, nothing comes, because she just smiles at him like she always does, and then starts talking about their test this afternoon. And that’s when it strikes him. Of course the best thing would be to just ignore what happened. Trust Jemma Simmons to find the most suitable and sensible option there is. He really should have known she would handle this perfectly, like she always does.
Maybe a little part of him is kind of disappointed that his earlier shower theory therefor doesn’t pan out, but he’s mostly relieved, because it means that nothing has to change and they can keep being exactly what they’ve been to each other for the last two years. After all, he does hate change.
She acts perfectly normal all day, and by the time they get out of their holographic engineering class after their test, he’s pretty much forgotten about the whole thing – that’s a lie, how could he forget that, but at least his mind isn’t zeroing in on it constantly, which is a relief.
Plus, he’s aced the test, and from Simmons’s satisfied little smile, he knows she did too.
When she offers to go to the Boiler Room later that night to celebrate the end of the week, he doesn’t think much about it. It is something they do after all, from time to time. He doesn’t remember when the last time was, but still. Definitely doesn’t have anything to do with the incident this morning.
Someone sneaks them a couple of beers when they get there – despite Fitz complaining about how most American beers are utter shite – and they play some pool for a while, and overall have a lot of fun. At some point she swats his chest when he makes a teasing remark about her last shot, and he kind of flushes at the contact because that’s the first time they’ve touched since the incident earlier, but otherwise he thinks he nails the entire ‘ignoring that anything happened’ thing throughout the night.
Until something happens.
Something that kind of jumbles his mind, and makes things very, very confusing, all of a sudden.
Simmons goes to the bathroom at some point, and Fitz runs into a girl from his Artificial Intelligence class, Ophelia, as he looks for a free table to go with his newly ordered plate of fries. Ophelia is nice, and somehow seeing her reminds him that Simmons told him once that she’s obviously flirting with him every time they see each other. He’s not entirely sure what makes him do it, but instead of just waving politely and leaving as soon as socially acceptable, he stops and lets himself get dragged into a conversation with her. She’s nice, fairly interesting, and quite beautiful as well, although he does prefer more classical beauty really. And now that he’s thinking about it, it probably is kind of obvious that she’s flirting with him.
He’s definitely not used to that, and is quite awkward about it, but somehow it doesn’t seem to bother her at all, as she keeps leaning into him and touching his arm any time he says something remotely funny.
He’s gaining confidence, and Ophelia seems to notice and appreciate it, but then Simmons appears at his side all of a sudden, and he’s a little thrown off by the look on her face. She looks pissed. Obviously she’s not pissed as in ‘had too many American beers’ because that’s not possible, no, she looks angry. Her brow is furrowed, and her arms are crossed tightly across her chest, and when she speaks, her tone is sharp and shorter than usual.
“I’m leaving.”
“You are?” he gawks at her, and suddenly she’s not looking at him anymore, and it’s obvious she’s even avoiding his eyes now. “It’s still early I thought–”
“I’m just tired,” she cuts him with a shrug, and it’s like she’s slipping through his fingers all of a sudden, and he has no idea why. “Have fun.”
Before he can say anything else she’s already left, and he watches her go, completely lost at what is going on. A small part of him wants to go after her, but she’s dismissed him so curtly that he can’t quite find the courage to. He has no idea what’s happening. She never acts like this, usually. They argue all the time, but it’s always in good camaraderie, there’s very rarely hard feelings – and when there is, they talk it through and agree on a truce almost instantly. But they didn’t argue for a second tonight, they were actually having a wonderful time until–
“Is she always so snippy?” Ophelia asks with a raised eyebrow, dragging him out of his musings.
He shakes his head, blinking a couple of times. “No, no she’s not,” he shrugs, turning back to Ophelia. He tries for a few minutes to settle back into the relatively easy rhythm of their previous conversation, but it soon appears that it’s a lost cause. He can’t get out of his mind the angry, almost disappointed look on Simmons’s face, and it kind of hurts. He wants to make sure she’s okay, and if he’s the reason she’s cross, then apologize about it and fix things.
He definitely didn’t mean it. Whatever he did.
Especially not when she’s been so nice pretending nothing extremely embarrassing happened this morning.
Oh God, what if she’s mad about that?
But that wouldn’t make any sense right, why now all of a sudden?
“I’m actually gonna go too,” he says eventually, jumping to the occasion when Ophelia draws in a breath in between telling him about a class of hers – he thinks, to be fair he wasn’t paying much attention to what she was saying. “It was um, nice talking to you,” he stammers when she frowns a little, “um, okay, bye.”
He waves awkwardly then tries not to run away, cursing himself in the process. He’d be lucky if she still wants to flirt with him after that, in his opinion. Then again, it’s not like he… cares much. It’s probably for the best anyway, since he kind of has someone else in mind… he thinks it wouldn’t be fair to her. She deserves better than this.
He hesitates for a few seconds after exiting the Boiler Room, wondering if he should go knock on Simmons’s door or not. Probably not. He doesn’t want to end his night not knowing if she’s okay though, so he settles for going back to his own room and texting her.
Fitz: You okay?
Hopefully she’s not asleep yet.
It’s still fairly early though, or at least, way earlier than the hour they fell asleep at last night.
Last night he slept in her bed, and now he’s texting her to make sure she isn’t mad at him about something he might have done but isn’t quite sure what it is. God, is this what a normal 18 year-old’s life is like? This is not fun. This is very nerve wracking, in his opinion.
He should have just stick to science.
(He doesn’t mean that, meeting Jemma Simmons is the best thing that’s ever happened to him.)
He’s almost made it to his room when his phone buzzes in his hand with her answer. He fumbles with his door, turns on the lights and looks down at his screen. His heart flops a little in his chest at the brevity of her answer.
Simmons: y
She always spells her words fully in her texts. She even corrects her very rare misspells and grammatical errors, for God’s sake. This is really, really bad. He falls backwards on his bed, thumbs hovering over the screen, pondering his next words carefully.
Fitz: Did I do something?
He watches the bubbles indicating she’s writing pop up and out for a few minutes, wondering with increasing nervousness if she’s writing a very long message… or if she’s trying to come up with what to say. Things are not usually that complicated between them, and he must admit it, he hates it. The bubbles vanish for a good minute, and when he’s resigned to the fact that she won’t answer, she actually does.
Simmons: I was just tired, don’t worry about it.
Typical Jemma, he thinks with a sigh. Before he can say anything to that though, she sends another text, and he stares at it in surprise for a minute.
Simmons: Besides, it looked like you were having fun without me anyway.
And, oh.
That’s what it was about then.
He can’t quite believe it. She saw him with Ophelia, and thought he wouldn’t want to hang out with her anymore. It’s so ridiculous and so far away from the truth that he almost lets out an audible chuckle at that. Then it strikes him.
She was jealous.
Jealous of seeing him with another person – another girl.
And that’s… that’s definitely an interesting fact to behold, to say the least.
It’s kind of making him want to jump up and down on his bed, for some reason. But he also doesn’t want to make her wait, or make her regret typing that second text, so he doesn’t jump on his bed like a little kid and types his response instead, without thinking much about it.
Fitz: Yeah not really, but it’s okay, I was tired too, I’m back in my room now :)
Simmons: Oh
He cannot help his huge grin at this. He can definitely picture the little frown that’s most likely plastered on her face now that she’s realized that she was maybe wrong. He has no idea how she can think that he’d rather have a moderately interesting conversation with some girl instead of having fun with his best friend in the world.
Fitz: Anyway, still on for tomorrow? Library at 9:30?
Simmons: Right, yes
The wave of relief crashing through him thanks to these two simple little words is very warm and comfortable. A sigh even crosses his lips, and he feels his cheeks warm up just a little.
Fitz: Cool! G’night Simmons :)
Simmons: Goodnight Fitz
Simmons: :)
The last text comes a couple of seconds after the previous one, and his heart jumps in his chest. Simmons always uses emojis sparsely, and anytime she does, he knows it’s because she means it.Which means that they’re good. They’re okay. Today has been a roller coaster of emotions, to say the least, but it’s good to know that they can get through anything together. No matter what happens to them, he needs to remember that they can face it.
They’re best friends, and that means something.
But then again… maybe there’s something else there, too?
With everything that’s happened today…
Maybe it would be worth digging a little?
Maybe he could ask her… or maybe he could investigate.
Do what he knows best.
Use science to figure out if maybe, maybe she likes him a little more than just a best friend.
And then go from there.