#annivfics

Almost a decade ago, the two of them had gone on one date, the likes of which he was convinced he’d never experience again. Having met at a Doctor Who trivia night in Dupont, they had then spent the following Saturday wandering the pathways of the National Zoo during its winter event, laughing at the monkeys, admiring the lights, and generally having the best night of Fitz’s achingly isolated youth. When they’d parted, he’d been brave enough to lean over and give her a polite but warm peck on the cheek. Simmons had turned her head just enough so that their lips brushed together, her fingers tightening around his and sending tingles of promise through his whole body.

And then Fitz’s entire life had imploded. Or at least, his mobile had, when he’d tripped and dropped it six stories down the center stairwell of his building onto the concrete basement floor. For some godforsaken reason, he had just typed her number into the notes app rather than enter it into his contacts, and when he had managed to wring off any unsynced data from the remnants of his phone, the number had been gone. Googling had been fruitless, as had returning to the trivia bar to see if she might have been a regular. With absolute horror, Fitz had realized that he’d managed to lose his one shot at being with the only woman in whom he had ever truly been interested.

Simmons, having recovered from her surprise at seeing him in her ER so many years later, had informed him that she was running a bit behind but would be back to examine him as quickly as she was able. While he awaited what was sure to be the world’s most awkward doctor’s visit, he tortured himself by recounting the perfect date in vivid detail in his mind, just to remind himself why he was a complete arse before she came back.

“Alright, Mr. Fitz,” Simmons said as she swept back over to his cot, “I’ll try to make this as quick and painless as possible.”

“Right,” Fitz mumbled, ears heating up as he thought about how she probably wanted to be rid of him so she wouldn’t have to think about him having never called her back. Even if he wished fervently that he could have. “And it’s – just Fitz is fine.”

“Let’s see what we have here.” She began to flip through his file, brows furrowing as she studied his unusual medical history. “Acute hypoxia due to near drowning… I can see why Doctor Crawford wanted a consultation.”

“Lucky for me, no water involved tonight,” he returned with a wry smile. “Just a head bump, I feel fine.”

“She was right to call for me.” Simmons tossed him a stern look over her shoulder as she finished her notes and reached for a nearby cart full of supplies. “Do you mind if I –”

“Two years ago, out on a field expedition,” he said, anticipating her question and averting his eyes. He hated telling this story. “I was on the Potomac with my team, testing autonomous aquatic drones. Weather turned sour, and on our way to shore we saw an overturned kayak. A dad and two kids, but one was missing. I saw her, jumped for her, got caught in the current and was pulled under. She was okay. I was in a short coma.”

Fitz chose not to add that making sure his team had the girl first had been when the current had caught him, dragging him so rapidly away that his team said they didn’t even hear him disappear. In retrospect, he thought it made him seem rather foolish, even if his friends and co-workers vehemently disagreed. The fact that he had never been a strong swimmer hadn’t exactly been a secret.

“Oh my,” Simmons breathed, and he chanced a look in her direction. She was staring slack-jawed at him, metal tool held loosely between her fingers. “That’s…” she started, clearing her throat and stepping forward to begin the examination. For a brief second, he thought he saw something akin to admiration in her eyes, but it disappeared immediately. “That’s quite heroic of you.”

A small smile tilted up the corner of his mouth despite his attempt to subdue it, and he shrugged. As much as he generally tried not to think about the act of bravery that had almost taken his life, he found himself feeling rather pleased at Simmons’ compliment.

The rest of the examination was simultaneously perfunctory and pure torture for Fitz. It required her to stand close enough that he could smell her lavender shampoo, that he could see the edge of her clavicle peeking out from beneath the collar of her scrubs, that he could almost taste the memory of her lips. He tried to convince himself to say something, anything, at the very least to apologize for having disappeared from the face of the earth after they’d so enjoyed each others’ company. But the perfect words wouldn’t come, and as she laid the stethoscope on the table and told him he was cleared and free to go, he panicked.

“I didn’t hate you!”

Simmons’ shoulders stiffened, and she glanced around to see that patients, nurses, and doctors were blessedly not in the nearby vicinity. “Pardon?”

Fitz stood next to the ER bed, cringing and twisting the thumb of one hand into the palm of the other, and wished yet again that a hole in the universe would just show up beneath him at any second.

“That didn’t come out right,” he said at last, taking a halting step towards her. “I mean, when I didn’t call you. I wanted to. I tried to find you, I went back to that bar, I spent hours Googling and Facebooking and d’you have any idea how many Jemma Simmonses there are on the East Coast? ‘Cause there are a lot, and I looked through all of them, but not one of them was you. And I’m really, really bloody sorry I didn’t call you, and I’ve regretted it ever since.”

After making it through his entire pathetic, rambled speech, she frowned and tilted her head. “But I – Fitz, I gave you my number.”

“Oh, yeah, no, you did, but I – accidentally destroyed my phone.” He winced, knowing just how ludicrous his story sounded.

Her eyes narrowed. “You accidentally destroyed your phone?”

“By dropping it from the sixth floor. And just….” Cutting himself off, he sighed. “Please believe me. I spent months hating myself when I couldn’t find you.”

Simmons stared at him in silence for a few seconds, and, just as he was about to let his shoulders droop and then escape the hospital as quickly as possible, she let out a low laugh. “You know, I’d thought you’d given me a fake number,” she said, “when it never connected. And I – you couldn’t find me online because I don’t use my last name on Facebook. It’s just Jemma Anne.”

“Jemma Anne,” he repeated, feeling vaguely faint with relief that she hadn’t just shown him the door. “I didn’t know you had a middle name.”

“And you don’t have a Facebook either,” she pointed out, and his eyes widened. Apparently, Simmons had gone looking for him, too.

“I couldn’t,” he explained. “To make it easier to get a security clearance. Any engineering lab I’d wanna work at in D.C. would need a top one, so no Facebook. No online trail at all, if I could help it.”

Something in her face had shifted in the past few seconds, honey-brown eyes now holding a tentative warmth that he remembered vividly from that one night so very long past. “Well,” she said at last, one hand fiddling with the hem of her scrubs shirt, “that really is some rotten luck.”

“I know,” he said ruefully. “I’ve been cursing the bloody cosmos about it for years.”

Nibbling at the inside of her bottom lip, she glanced up at the clock. “Are you busy tonight?”

Fitz’s eyes widened. “No! Wait, shit, um, yes – calling the auto shop about my car. But, um, other than that, no.”

A smile broke across her face. “Okay. I’m still on shift for another hour and a half, but –”

“I can wait,” he blurted out, cheeks reddening, and wondered why he hadn’t managed to achieve any kind of smoothness in the decade since he’d seen her. “I mean, I can call them from the lobby, it’s fine.”

“Okay. I’ll come find you – oh!” Letting out a small tsk, she stepped into his space. “Give me your phone.”

“Right, yeah, good call,” he muttered, digging his Plus out of his pocket, unlocking it, and handing it over. “Don’t trust me with that, I’m clearly hopeless.”

“But in a cute kind of way.” She flitted her gaze up to meet his over the edge of the phone, and he fought off the gormless smile that threatened to take over his whole face. If he wasn’t careful, he was pretty sure he was teetering on the edge of being very-not-cool in his level of interest in her.

“I’ll see you later, then?” he offered when she returned his phone.

“Count on it,” Simmons returned, eyes shining at him with warmth and promise and excitement, before being called away by another doctor.

Resisting the urge to do a small hop and fist-pump, he glanced down at his phone as he navigated through the ER – and then stopped short as he read the beginning of the entry she’d put into his contacts.

Name: Dr. Jemma Anne Simmons, MD-PhDCompany: Yours (if you’ll have me)

With a wide grin, Fitz took a screenshot of the entry and texted it to her number, along with a message: Only if you’ll have me right back.

After a few seconds, he received a one-word reply: Deal.

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.

“Oh for God’s sake, Fitz,” came Jemma’s voice from behind him, and he jumped, having almost forgotten that she was waiting. All around them, small children were streaming past in waves, the sounds of the zoo proceeding cheerfully around them although he’d felt briefly like he was in his own private world.

“She recognized me, Jemma,” he said, turning back to the capuchin that was staring curiously at him through the enclosure’s barriers. “I swear she did.”

“The zoo is about to close.” Sighing, she stepped up behind him and slid her fingers into his left hand. “The next time the team’s in San Diego, we can come back and visit.”

“I wish she could come with us,” he said sadly, allowing her to tug him a few steps back. “I bet she’d be great in the lab.”

“You’d have to clean up her poop.” Jemma took an enormous amount of satisfaction in the way his entire face morphed instantly into an expression of horror. When she pulled him after her this time, he went much more willingly.

“Alright,” he amended gruffly, glancing over his shoulder at where the zoo’s guard was giving him the stink-eye. “So I’m not the person she needs in her life, I said that already.”

“Fortunately for us all,” Jemma deadpanned, “I still want you in my life, even though you just practically proposed to a monkey right in front of me.”

Fitz rolled his eyes. “Jemma, I’d never propose to her. Polygamy’s illegal in the UK.”

Bursting out in laughter, she half-tilted into him, half-shoved him, sending them both a few stumbled steps over on the zoo’s brick-lined path. Once they’d narrowly avoided crashing into a line of strollers, Fitz slowed their progress to a halt so that he could lean down and kiss Jemma, unsubtly running his thumb over the cool ridge of her wedding band where their hands were still entwined. She hummed happily in response, pushing up onto her tiptoes to fit their mouths better together.

“I wonder,” Fitz started, and Jemma groaned as she pulled him along towards the exit. “D’you think they’d let us into the enclosures if we said we’re SHIELD agents and it’s a matter of galactic security?”

She sighed. “Possibly. But wouldn’t you feel guilty lying about that?”

“Nah.” Fitz gave her a cheeky grin. “I figure it’s one of the only perks we get, y’know, other than being best friends with a superhero and occasional space trips. And full health insurance.”

“I’m sure Daisy would love being considered a job perk,” Jemma retorted drily.

“So next time we visit, we need to make sure to get to the lions, and monkeys, and –”

“Lizards, oh Fitz!” Jemma instinctively tried clapping her hands together in excitement, despite being hindered by Fitz’s hand where it was still wrapped tightly around hers. “We didn’t get to spend any time in the reptile house today, it’s such a shame. I’ve never seen a sheltopusiks in person before, and they have a mated pair of shingleback skinks, which is very unusual because most zoos only collect one.”

Dropping a kiss on the top of her head, Fitz chuckled. “Yeah, we can visit the slime house next time, promise.”

Jemma wrinkled her nose. “Lizards aren’t slimy, Fitz. Desert dwellers actually have to stay quite dry, otherwise they can get scale rot.”

As she continued to rattle off facts about lizards – eventually getting distracted by a genuinely interesting tangent on chameleons – Fitz smiled and held her hand even tighter. Even though he really did want a monkey rather badly, he knew that Jemma was much better company.

(Coulson had lucked out and been assigned to what was technically a storage room in the midst of being re-appropriated while the Peak incorporated its seven temporary new team members. In theory, he would be reassigned an actual bunk shortly, but somehow that order hadn’t yet come down the pipeline. Daisy liked to mutter conspiratorially about Coulson using his super-spy powers to arrange this, but neither Jemma nor Fitz were convinced it was more than atypically lucky red-tape bureaucracy at work.)

Jemma stirred first, feeling somewhat squashed but pleasantly so, and it took her a few seconds to remember that having Fitz wrapped koala-like around her was no longer commonplace. The side of his dresser was pressed uncomfortably against her shoulders, with him having burrowed his head into the crook of her neck and pushed her slightly backwards while they slept. Despite the low level of discomfort, she felt unspeakably content, and she allowed her fingers to trail up and card through the mess of his curls. They had spent so many months keeping themselves carefully apart that this kind of closeness still brought with it an acute sense of relief.

Suddenly, she felt all of Fitz’s muscles stiffen at once, and he reared back, with her just barely managing to avoid his skull and her chin colliding.

“What –?!” he muttered hoarsely, pushing out of her embrace and looking wildly around in disorientation and fear.

“It’s okay,” she started, trying to both reach out and soothe while also not hindering his escape if he wanted it.

“Jemma.” As soon as his eyes caught sight of her face, his muscles relaxed and he stopped moving backwards. Sagging against the mattress, he scooted back into her arms and dropped his head against the pillow they’d been sharing. “Oh God, it’s just you. It’s you.” His voice was laced with affection and relief so potent it made her want to cry, and she screwed her face up against empathetic tears as she reeled him closer in, letting him cling to her as tightly as he wanted.

“It’s me,” she murmured into his hair, encouraging him to tuck his head back beneath her chin and again wrapping her arms around his shoulders. “Yeah, it’s me.”

For a few minutes, they lay together in silence. A fine tremor ran through Fitz and prompted Jemma to try to hold him more tightly, as if the perfect hug could make his nightmares disappear.

“I’m sorry,” he said at last, words muffled by her skin. “It’s – it’s been a long time since I’ve woken up with someone there, and… I… I dunno where that came from.”

Her lips thinned, and she distracted herself by pressing a kiss to his hair. They both knew what he’d been afraid of, in whose arms he’d thought himself trapped during that brief moment of barely-awake terror. Jemma swallowed down the anger that washed through her veins for the hundredth time, biting back the bile that rose at the remembrance that someone had done something (so many things, unspeakable things) so vile to her favorite person in the universe. If the android weren’t already long since exterminated, Jemma would happily kill her again and again, a part of her itching for the satisfaction of the vengeance she had watched Coulson enact.

The anger leeched away again almost immediately, though, as she focused on the man in front of her. “You don’t have to apologize,” she said. “Not to me, ever.” After a moment, she added what she worried he kept forgetting: “I love you, Fitz.”

As his breathing evened out, she continued scratching her fingers through his hair. It was a bit like she was petting him, but since he just settled himself more comfortably in her arms she assumed he didn’t mind. The thought that she missed the days when touching had been so easy between them flitted through her head, and, aside from a familiar vein of guilt, she noted again that this was something she would never tell Fitz. Wishing for things that could not and would never be was pointless.

“I don’t understand,” he said after another long silence. “Why you’re still here. Why you… love me.”

His statement felt like a slap across her face, and Jemma had to bite hard onto her tongue to keep herself calm. “Fitz –” she started, voice already shakier than she wanted.

Fitz interrupted her again, shifting back but keeping his hold around her. “No, just – let me finish. I was thinking about it during the episode, just trying to understand it. It just doesn’t make sense to me. You deserve to love someone who… who isn’t….”

Jemma tried to let him talk, she really did, but as he fumbled for the next words, she had to interject. The whole subject was making her chest ache. “Isn’t the love of my life? Or my best friend in the world?”

Swallowing, Fitz stared up at her for a few moments, irises a deep navy in the darkness. “I just – don’t understand,” he continued, almost sounding helpless, “but I think that I just won’t. I don’t think I can understand it. It’s not like – debugging a line of code, or, um, the way I feel about you. Y’know, I understand that. Those things. So when you say you feel like that, when you say you love me, I just….” He sighed, twisting his mouth to the side before finishing. “I have to believe it. And that’s hard, I think. It doesn’t come naturally. But I do believe you,” he said quietly, reaching up to tuck hair behind her ear. “I think I’m there now. Where I believe you.”

A couple errant tears slid down Jemma’s cheeks as she blinked into a relieved smile, and she nuzzled forward to press their foreheads together. “Thank you.”

He gave her a half-smile, and then pursed his lips, letting his gaze drop from hers. “I…” he started, before pausing and licking his lips. “I wish I could….” Huffing, he reached around so he could entwine their fingers and bring their hands up to rest between their chests. “Never mind.”

“No, tell me. Please. What?”

Fitz sighed. “I wish I could do something, y’know, to show you. How that makes me feel. Happy, grateful… everything. I just –”

“Being here with me is all I need from you,” she replied quietly, speaking over his halting explanation. “And – well, this. The talking. Having you talk to me like this makes me terribly happy, Fitz, it really does.”

With a slight inhale, he let go of her hand to reach up and trace the path of her scattered, fallen tears. “Happy?”

“Yes,” she said, more firmly this time. “Happy. Sometimes there are tears, but I am happy, Fitz. It makes me happy to be with you, to see you, um, coming back to yourself. Bit by bit. And if we stay just like this, if this is as far as you get, I’ll still be happy.”

He studied her face for a few long seconds, eventually tangling their fingers together again and then pressing a kiss to the back of her knuckles. “I love you, Jemma Simmons.”

“I love you right back, Leo Fitz,” she whispered into a smile. “Even if you don’t understand it.” 

At least, Jemma thought to herself as she snuggled closer in, delaying the moment when she would inevitably have to return to her own minuscule bed, they each were still trying to understand something about the other. The important thing was that they kept trying to understand, and that they did it together.

“I was just thinking,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken, and she fought to keep a grin off her lips, “that if you got to examine one, I could help!”

“You don’t like the veterinary part of our job,” she reminded him, and he waved a dismissive hand at her.

“I wouldn’t do anything, y’know, with fluids, or – or needles. But what if they need to be calmed down? Monkeys can have high levels of anxiety, y’know, just like humans, and I could be very helpful with that. Give them bananas and that sort of thing.” With a little flourish, he finished making his adjustments and turned to her with a wide-eyed look of hope that almost made her want to give in. Almost. “You’re always saying we need to diversify our clients, to keep the rich ones comin’ so we can afford to treat the rest. People who have monkeys have gotta be rich, right?”

Warmth spread briefly through Jemma’s chest, and once he’d put down his screwdriver she reached out to take Fitz’s hand, feeling their wedding bands slide coolly against each others’ skin. He had been the one to suggest focusing on finding ways to treat pets whose owners couldn’t afford to pay, and even if sometimes his ideas centered around slightly unrealistic things (like an unceasing desire to befriend at least one monkey in his lifetime), his heart truly was always in the right place.

“We can look into exotic pet stores on the east coast,” she said slowly, and his face lit up in excitement. “And you can call the National Zoo, if you want, although I still don’t think that will be fruitful. We can go from there once we have more information.”

“Brilliant,” Fitz breathed, stepping quickly forward to wrap his hands around her arms and plant an enthusiastic kiss on her mouth. “You’re the best.”

“I know,” she retorted cheekily, and leaned up for a sweeter, slower kiss, taking advantage of their rare moment of solitude at the busy clinic. “I wouldn’t agree if I didn’t love you quite so much.”

“I know,” he parroted, her gentle whack on his shoulder not diminishing the brightness of his smile. “And when we go to Borneo for the holidays next year –”

“Ugh, Fitz!” Jemma exclaimed, twisting away from him and towards the door as she figured out his true ulterior motive. “We’re not bringing home a monkey!”

“I’m just saying the extra experience in care wouldn’t hurt.” He traipsed cheerfully behind her, swiftly reaching out to grab the door handle before she could do so and gallantly holding it open for her. “After you, Dr. Simmons-Fitz.”

Sighing, Jemma shook her head as she strode past him into the main room. “You owe me a massage.” She paused before they got anywhere near their other employees, and waited for him to catch up before she spoke again. “A full body one. Feet, too.”

Fitz’s grin morphed from childish glee to something far more mischievous. “At your service.”