Fitzward Appreciation Week

Day 4a:

Bitten/Otherworld AU: 492 words

Jurassic World AU: 424 words

Day 4b:

Domestic AU: 363 words

And with that, my Fitzward Week drabbles are done.

Fandom: Agents of SHIELD

Pairing: none really, but there are hints of pre Ward/Fitz and Skye/Jemma

Author: Nea

Rating: G

Author’s note: I thank S. for beta-ing!

Author’s note 2: It’s a direct follow-up to Panic Switch.

Wordcount: ~ 2.000

Warnings: angsty, slashy, spoilery for episode 205 and canon-divergence from there.

Disclaimer: Everything belongs to Stan Lee and the Whedons. I just own the love for the characters. The title belongs once again to the Silversun Pickups

Because the second chapter of the Psych AU isn’t done yet, I’m going to be shamelessly promoting another Fitzward fic that I wrote a few months ago.

Melancholy Minus Its Charms

There are twelve signs of unbelievable pain, and he has an awful tradition of witnessing every single one. (TW: depression, suicidal thoughts)

It had been three days since they picked him up in the cab on the side of the road, and it had taken almost that long to work out an agreement between the three of them that included a somewhat strict list of rules. During the day, Fitz would work on trying to get Fury’s toolbox open with either Kara or Ward hanging around the hotel room as a form of protection in case their location was ever discovered. Otherwise, the three of them would pass the time by playing card games or watching pay-per-view movies or something as dull as guessing with raindrop will reach the bottom of the window first.

This particular instance was in the middle of the afternoon, while Ward was flipping through channels and Fitz was struggling to get further than he already was on getting the box open. Between clips of sound from procedural cop shows and a lifetime movie, he slouched in his chair and fought a yawn. He’d only been awake for a few hours, so it wasn’t logical that the scientist would be tired again yet, but that didn’t stop it from being a fact. However, a nap wasn’t anywhere in his near future, not if there was any chance of making progress before the week was up. With a groan, Leo shook his head and took a moment before making himself get to his feet and walk over to the couch, slumping down and staring blankly at the screen of the television.

“Aren’t you supposed to be working?”

fitzward week → day 6: brett & iain appreciation day

Fitzward Appreciation Week | Day 6: Brett+Iain Appreciation Day

Dating Tips by Skye (It’s Not a Mission)

Fitzward Week - Day 5

Alternate Universe - Chuck AU

My bit for FitzWard week! Enjoy!

Grant Ward boarded the Metro car, looked around, and sighed. There was no reason to expect that there would be an empty seat on a D.C. Metro at 5:30 pm, but he’d hoped that maybe just this one thing could go his way today. He’d been out of the country for nearly a week, tracking down an arms dealer suspected of doing business with some characters known to SHIELD as unsavory. There had been rumors of alien tech, which always put an edge on a mission, but all he’d found was a hut and four bodies, none of which had been in one piece. Then, after a long, turbulent flight back to the Triskelion, and a miserably long debrief, Grant had gone outside to fine that the lot he’d parked his car in had been blocked off by the motorcade of a visiting dignitary.

And now this.

Grant had two options: there was an empty handicap bench at the front of the car, and one seat near the back next to a young man who was studiously staring out the window. Though the handicap seat was tempting, Grant had a personal policy of avoiding small wrongs. He figured that since he spent his professional life in a moral grey zone, it was the least he could do to try to stack the scales in the other direction when he could. This meant swerving to avoid ground squirrels on the highway, not taking the last carton of milk at the market, and more relevantly, not sitting in seats with a big blue wheelchair sign on them. So he made his way to the back of the car, nodding apologetically at the feet he had to step over in the aisle.

“Mind if I…?” He gestured at the seat.

“What? No, no, not at all. All yours.” The man gave him a nod and a tight smile, and returned his gaze to the window. There was something vaguely familiar about the curly hair and the Scottish accent, but Grant couldn’t quite place it, which was strange, because being good with faces was part of his job description.

They were comfortable enough at first; Grant had always found metro seats to be a little small for his 6’2” frame, but the aisle was empty, and he could stretch his legs out to the side. As they trundled through the downtown stations though, more and more people filed on, the customary press of public transport became tighter and tighter, and he was forced to tuck his legs into his own seat. Each time someone jostled him, he flashed an apologetic smile at his seatmate, whose brows were drawing lower and lower in annoyance.

Why had he decided to live in Silver Spring, again? Oh right. It was quiet.

What should have been the final straw came between the Brookland and Fort Totten stations when a grinding noise echoed through the tunnel, the lights flickered, then went out, and the train jolted to a stop. Confusion immediately reigned, as Grant could have predicted it would (he’d caused a few of these incidents himself), and the passengers began to push at each other and at the doors, as if being out on the tracks was somehow preferable to the comparative safety of the car. The mechanized voice of reason asking people to please be calm could only just be heard over the melee, and Grant could smell the panic beginning to rise. He tried to push away the woman who was nearly sitting on his shoulder, and was rewarded with a stiletto heel in the tender space between the bones of his left foot.

And though he was well accustomed to pain, Grant couldn’t help swearing audibly and jerking away from the aisle, right into the ribs of his seatmate, who asked plaintively, “Do you mind, Agent Ward?”

And the penny dropped.

Eight months before, Trip had invited him to a New Year’s party to pull him out of the black hole he’d fallen into after a mission on Christmas Eve. There had been a little boy involved, and although the boy was still alive, Grant wasn’t entirely sure that he hadn’t made things worse for the child by handing him over to SHIELD. Trip the even-tempered, the eternal optimist, knew exactly what was going on (every specialist did at one point or another), and had goaded him into coming to the party, held at the apartment of a friend. It had been a lot of fun, once he’d let Trip bring him a drink and introduce him around. They were the only specialists there – the rest were agents, of course, but the vast majority were scientists stationed at the Triskelion.

He’d let Trip hand him yet another drink (was it blue? Really?) and push him toward the center of the party with an admonition to make some friends. Grant didn’t usually drink to excess, but he’d decided to let loose that night. Trip could keep an eye on him (he’d trust the man with his life), and so he accepted a fourth (or was it his fifth?) glass of icy blue alcohol.

Things got really fuzzy after that. A blur of faces and sounds, culminating in fireworks on the stroke of midnight – fireworks that he hadn’t seen, since he’d been in a closet experiencing some fireworks of his own with a very good-looking young man with thick curly hair, dark brows, and a Scottish accent.

Who had left his phone number in Grant’s pocket.

Whose lap he was now nearly sitting in in a darkened Metro car.

“Oh my god. You’re…oh.” This was why Grant didn’t like to get drunk.

“And there it is.” Grant though he heard a hint of a smile in the man’s – Fitz? Fitz’s voice. “I was wondering when you’d figure it out. It’s been a while, Agent Ward.”

“Uh, yeah, I guess it has. Look, I was really far gone that night. I woke up on Trip’s couch with a headache and blue teeth and no idea how I’d gotten there. I found your number in my pocket, but I had no idea what…” Grant trailed off. It was hard to get a read on someone when you couldn’t see their face.

Fitz laughed, in what was clearly an attempt to be casual. “Oh, don’t worry about it. It was just one of those things. Parties, you know. I always do crazy things at parties – not that I make a habit of – I mean, yeah, it’s fine.”

A brief silence fell between them, until a woman’s scream cut through the air. “A bomb! They’re saying there’s a bomb on the tracks!” The panic level in the car rose like floodwater, and screens lit up all around them, as passengers tried desperately to get a signal in a tunnel twenty feet below the city.

Grant sighed. So much for a quiet, easy trip home. Why could nothing go right today? He angled his body back toward Fitz, whose face he could now see dimly by the light of fifty cell phone screens. “Look,” he began, “I know you’re off the clock right now, but I’ve had a very long week, and would just really like to get home. You’re an engineer, right?”

“Yes?” Fitz asked suspiciously.

“So you could, for example, disable a bomb in a Metro tunnel if I were there to watch your back.”

“Of course I could, Agent Ward,” Fitz huffed. “What do you think I am, a rookie?”

“Would you mind, then? It’ll only take a few minutes.”

“Fine. On one condition.” The engineer took a deep breath. “That you have dinner with me tomorrow night. Nothing fancy, just to get to know one another.” Grant laughed, the sound incongruous amid the crying and praying around him.

“There’s no need to laugh. If you don’t want to, just say so and leave me my dignity,” Fitz said, offended.

“No, no, I wasn’t laughing at you! It’s just that I didn’t think you’d – I’d love to have dinner with you.”

“Good. In that case, there’s an escape hatch to the roof just behind us – I’ve seen the schematics for these cars, and it should do the job, but we should make sure that nobody else gets out – can’t have everyone following us out and mucking things up, you –“ Grant off the nervous flow of words with a quick, soft kiss.

Psych You Out In The End

A few months of under cover work to help his brother get reelected was all it was supposed to be. It was never supposed to turn into lying to the police about being psychic, of all things, and nearly getting his closest friends kill.

August 13, 2015

It wasn’t the first time Grant Ward had been in an interrogation room. It was far from it, actually, and it wasn’t his first time being on the guilty side of the table, either. Of course, being guilty of arson as a minor was different from being guilty of what was technically serial murder, and the former didn’t involve turning himself in before he was even remotely considered a suspect. He reminded himself that he hadn’t had a choice, that he would be helping more people by telling the truth, that too many things had gone wrong for him to justify keeping the secret any longer; things had been going on for long enough, and it had to end before anyone else he cared about got hurt.

When the door opened, he kept his eyes focused on the two-way mirror on the opposite wall, trying to determine who might be behind the tempered glass for his confession, and only acknowledged the two people across the table from him with a small nod. They were confused, he knew that much, and he knew exactly why. Four years into their professional relationship, they were about to find out he may have never been on their side to begin with. And they had no idea that he had been lying to them at all.

There was no doubt in his mind that they were all good people, nearly everyone at the station was, and it made him sick to know that he had been lying to them for years, especially when the only two of them that knew his secret were sitting in a hospital room, recovering. Because of him. He never should have let things go as far as they did, even if he did commit some of his offenses with incorrect information. Those were the instances he was most afraid of talking about, because those were the instances he was most ashamed of, because they were the ones with the most collateral damage.

“Grant, I think you can understand that we don’t know what to do here.” The sick feeling in his gut moved up to his chest, making it difficult to catch his breath when Melinda May,of all people, sounded more than just a little concerned. Suddenly, the reality of what he had done, of what he was still doing up until the moment he would say those words and, finally, tell everyone the truth, came crashing down over him. With the damage he had already done, there was no doubt in his mind that he would end up in one of the cells down the hall, and that would only be temporary until they could lock him up somewhere with much better security. He was a criminal – a killer, a danger to society, it might be better if they did just that. “You said yourself that you’re guilty of something, but we don’t know what that something is. You have to tell us.”

The answer was such a simple one that it was impossible to imagine that it would change so much. It would be easy to say that he lied, and to leave his offenses at that, but lying had led to more. Lying had led to killing and pretending and putting one of his best friends in a coma, and just saying that he had lied wouldn’t even hint at all of the other horrible acts he had committed in only a few short years. The only way this could all stop was if he owned up to all of it – even if it meant starting with one of the biggest secrets he had, the one lie he had never intended to tell in the first place, let alone for as long as he had. “I’m not psychic.”

The charade had been so much of his life for so long that, when he had first said the words a few weeks before, things had stopped making sense. Four years of his life had gone into keeping that lie intact, and tearing it down, even to help the people he had grown to care about safe, was crippling. He wasn’t Grant Ward, psychic detective anymore, though he really never had been; he was Grant Ward, the man who had nearly killed his friends to hold a position in a notorious crime ring.

When May spoke again, her voice was colored with curiosity and some of the confusion from before. While unethical, lying about having supernatural abilities wasn’t illegal – although, it had interfered with so many police investigations that it might as well be, at least in this case. “If this is about what happened to Fitz, that isn’t your fault. We never expected the Clairvoyant and his crew to ambush us, or else we wouldn’t have brought Fitzsimmons on that sweep. No one here is to blame for what happened to them after they were taken – Hydra is. We don’t expect you to predict everything.”

Oh, if only they knew.

“Look, I have a lot to say, and you can’t interrupt. It’s a save your questions for the end, please kind of story.” Two heads nodded their agreement and he took a deep breath, forcing out the words before he could lose what courage he had. “What happened to Fitzsimmons is my fault, and not just because I didn’t predict the ambush. If I knew things, if I could predict the future like I said I could, there is so much that I wouldn’t have done – starting with the part I played in them getting hurt. I can’t see or predict or sense anything, I never could; I just have my sources for information. Fitz – Fitz is my fault. I was within Hydra for months before I met any of you, and to keep my rank within them to get more information, I caused that fire. You have to believe me, I wouldn’t have done it if I’d known they were on board that boat. Please, believe that much.”

The tension in the room thickened, and Trip, who had been quiet through everything else, took the silence as an opportunity to speak up. “If you’re Hydra, and have been this entire time, then why should we believe anything you say?”

“Because,” Grant exhaled with a hint of hope, the rest of his tone blatantly pleading for them to at least hear him out. “I’ve been helping you, and I know where they are, and I know who they are and… I know who the Clairvoyant is.”

fitzward week → day 4: a quote that reminds you of them

The thing about soulmates in high school is that nothing is for certain.

In other words Grant Ward big man on campus is searching for Leopold Fitz his soulmate. Fitz doesn’t want to get tangled in all this so he makes his friend Darcy promise not to tell anyone his real name or who is soulmate is. Darcys all very annoyed about this.

no looking back, no turning into salt  the city was crumbling but, baby, we’re not to fault when things got too rough, I promised you we’d leave you’re safe and sound with me.

fitzward week day 4 - a song that reminds you of them

Safe and Sound - Hawksley Workman

Song that reminds you of them: “What about your friends” by TLC

I could have chosen so many songs about these two guys oh my gosh. But I chose this one because it reminds me about the two of them individually, but also in relation to one another. This song is essentially about how to you figure out or understand really that the people you cherish, the people you hold close, may not be your friends. It’s about taking the time to see if they’re worth your time. And it’s about holding those you value close. I would think that this applies to Fitz and Ward because they’re at a crossroads. They’re at this point in their lives where they don’t really have someone to lean on. Fitz is stuck watching the team, the people he considers his family, falling apart. He’s stuck watching them lose themselves with anger and hatred. And his feelings of self-worth are down. Because of what has happened to him and what has happened to the team (the entire team-meaning I’m counting Ward).

This song applies to Ward because of the fact that he’s isolated from those he values. The team. But especially those he had hurt (Skye, Fitz, and Jemma). His number one regret was breaking up the bond that existed within the team and his number one wish was to be acknowledged, to be accepted, to have them feel as though he’d been redeemed. And yet…And yet he has to watch as this group of people become obsessed with taking him down that they feel little to no remorse about those who are in the cross fire (Jemma with Bakashi and Skye shooting him in the back). He’s alone and he has to wonder whether or not these friendship will ever be repaired. He’s alone and he has to wonder if the people he valued would ever be like how they were again. 

A line in the song that connects these two characters is “I can’t tell who I should trust or just who I let trust me” And the reason I say that is because both characters have been dealt with a shit hand. Both characters have harmed the other. (Ward in his attempt to save Fitzsimmons life, Fitz in his attempt to make Ward feel what he felt). Both characters have trusted the people close to them in their lives and both characters have been burned by that trust. Both Fitz and Ward want to have what used to be. Both Fitz and Ward want to turn back time and be the team that they used to be. Both of them want to be whole again. For Ward, the team (and the relationships he’d made within that team) made him feel as whole as he could be. It was an astounding moment for the two of them and Ward’s reveal as loyal to Garret hurt them both.

“I let a lot of people depend on me I never though they would ever deceive me Don’t you know when times got rough I was standing on my own”

This line above me references Ward and how, despite the fact that he’s used to going it alone, he’d come to connect with the team, with Skye and Fitz in particular. They depended on him just as much as he depended on them. And consequently their actions against him-while he expected them-had hurt him. He never thought they’d stoop so low. He’d never thought they’d go to what he considers to be his “level.” He put them on a pedestal and with their actions-although Ward believes he deserves them-they’ve shown that they’re not the people he idolized. And it’s a harsh thing to have to come to terms with. 

“You see I’ve grown a lot smarter now Sometimes you have to choose and then you’ll see”

This line above references Fitz in my opinion. He feels betrayed, angry, upset, and confused about what Ward had done to him and the team. He’s upset and confused because he believed that what they had was strong than that, stronger than whatever hold Garrett had on Ward. He didn’t know, didn’t understand, how much of a hold Garrett had on Ward. He still doesn’t. But what he took away from the betrayal was that he needed to be guarded, needed to keep people at arms length. He’s jaded now, no longer the happy Fitz he used to be.

And this song talks about growing and realizing who you are and what friends are your real ones. This song talks about being burned by people you thought you could trust and it connect to Ward and Fitz so beautifully. They have no one in their lives right now. No one they can connect with. And the relationship they have with one another is tumultuous at best. But Ward knows Fitz. He knows that he’s slowly crumbling under the pressure, the guilt he may feel about what happened to Jemma. He knows and most importantly? He understands. And that’s what the two need. They need someone who understands them, someone who could help the other.

Will it be healthy? Maybe not. But will it help the two grow? Absolutely.