#aosficnet

Their first dance is at the Academy.

It’s not really dancing, per se. It could be dancing, it should be dancing, but what they are doing is most definitely not. Jemma is rigid, attempting to execute the steps as though they were the steps of a mathematical equation and not a waltz. Fitz is loose-limbed, gangly, and his attempts to pass his partner forward in the progressives look more as though he is attempting to send her into orbit.

Their instructor, already frustrated at trying to corral the mixed group of cadets into learning this skill for the upcoming ball amidst waves of protestation, pairs them together in the hope that they’ll balance each other out. You should never have been apart, is what he grumbles as he walks off. Only bad things happen.

It seems bad things can happen when they are together, also. Psychic connection they may have, but apparently it doesn’t extend to the dancefloor. Jemma grips too tightly to Fitz’s arm and leaves the marks of her fingernails behind. Fitz’s attempts to spin her leave her arm almost ripped from its socket.

“How can you be so bad at this?” She hisses, after one particularly violent twirl. “It’s practically just physics.”

“Oh well excuse me,” he blusters, trying not to think about them being the closest they’ve ever been in the six months they’ve known each other. He glares at the nails in his bicep instead. “You’re the one that’s trying to steer me about the place like I’m a bloody car, Simmons. I’m a person.”

She was so small – no shorter than she is now – and brittle and young. She remembers the suitcase – too large for her – and the handsome blond that hefted it up the dorm stairs when he saw her yanking it up, banging, step by step, by the handle. Her hands shook and her palms sweat and she shrunk even further when he smiled at her. It aches, like the first day of a cold, before you know you’re really sick, but she can’t shy away from it.

She thinks of the dorm room that was so small it felt like it curled around her and the wide open lecture halls she gave presentations to without a hint of a tremble in her fingertips and talking so fast no one could understand her words but not being able to shape them properly around her ideas anyway.

Now when she speaks it’s pitch perfect, like she’s running from a script, perfectly memorized, so vivid she can read it behind her eyes like her Chem textbook after three weeks of studying for her A levels. Every word structured in the paragraphs and sentences of a finished essay – fact, evidence; statement, correlation. Her voice doesn’t shiver, it’s too cold, or shake; her words don’t wander away from her, hardly even when she talks to Fitz.

She hadn’t always been prim and proper, she was the kind of child who raced her bike through mud puddles and spent hours digging in the garden with her Gran, but the older everyone got around her, as she passed placement tests and evaluations and left her peer group behind, the more mature she had to be. By the time she reached America it was a well-worn habit, a cozy knit sweater that shielded her against the wind, and now it’s a mask that only slips in the stormiest of weather.

Growing up, Bobbi had no interest in the banal niceties expected of a woman of her station, and less than none in frills and petticoats or tending house. Even learning the arts and languages and traipsing around her family’s estate on horseback became dull and boring after a time. What was the point after all, Bobbi reasoned, of broadening one’s horizons if one was only permitted to gaze at them from the safety and mundanity of one’s lace-curtained bedroom window? What was the point of developing a sharp mind if it was allowed only to consume and perform as it had been told? It was a gilded cage to be sure, but a cage nonetheless, and so Bobbi dedicated much of her life to spreading her wings and flying free of it.

To this end – and despite much protest from her hand-wringing family - Bobbi left the comforting cloister of her estate and travelled the world; whereupon she discovered and indulged in many a fascination that had been denied her for so much of her young life. She experimented with tailored coats and hats, trousers, cravats… She studied science and medicine, biology, strategy… She delighted in romantic challenge and chase and left many a heart broken in her wake. She was even married for a time, to a disgruntled British naval officer, but it didn’t stick. Few things did as, quite the opposite of bored, Bobbi became rather restless; all but consumed by the need to discover what the world held in store for her.

When came the news that she had to return home, it was devastating. Without the benefit of hindsight, it hardly seemed to Bobbi that there could be a new and equally enticing journey about to begin. Yet, she had never been one to be cowed by things not going her way, and so she held her head high – a little too high, perhaps, when she insisted upon driving the carriage home herself; fearing, not that she would admit it, that her recently-returned nightmares of the carriage walls closing in around her would finally come true.

Bobbi endured the talk of her home town with as much dignity as she could muster – and as both a woman of high class and exceeding stoicism, that amount was not insignificant. Still, she could not entirely pretend, to herself at least, that it did not bother her; the way they all seemed to talk about her as though she was the small one, the poorly achieving one, having done nothing with her life but travel and dabble in knowledge after knowledge. Even the ones she thought might understand seemed to be hopeful that her return was a sign she was ready to settle down, and the more times this was insinuated, the more Bobbi wanted to cut off her own hair, denounce all civilisation, and steal away into the night. She had the skills and the courage to do it now. The only thing stopping her was the need to rebuild her estate before her family’s finances collapsed entirely and left a few dozen good people out of work and home.

… Although, if she were being completely honest, it did not hurt matters that she had also been invited for tea with the newest and most curious of her neighbours, one Miss Jemma Anne Simmons.

Miss Simmons was a pretty young woman, but her arrival was making a splash in the papers as much for her scientific mind as for her elusive inventor fiancé, and her appearance of apparently Shakespearean beauty. So, as much as Bobbi had been weighed down by tired social occasion after tired social occasion with the socialites that flittered through town on the ever-changing wealth of this new age of industrialisation, she had a feeling in her gut that this one was going to be different.

That feeling certainly was not nerves, Bobbi insisted to herself as she stepped over the threshold of the Fitz-Simmons house – and then again, as she was announced and ushered into the parlour, to find Jemma in all the resplendent glory the papers had promised. The woman seemed delicate, refined, and delightfully feminine in all the ways Bobbi knew she herself was not and Bobbi – who had always been a rather brash sort – felt herself oddly humbled by Jemma’s smile.

“Good afternoon,” Jemma greeted, “it’s Barbara, isn’t it?”

Bobbi couldn’t help but cringe. “Please,” she requested, “call me Bobbi.”

“Oh yes, of course. My apologies.” Jemma curtsied a little – and was that a blush? “It’s lovely to have you, Bobbi. Would you care for some tea? Of if you would prefer, I can send for coffee…”

She reached for the bell, but Bobbi raised a hand to stop her.

“Tea would be wonderful,” she agreed. “Young Hyson, if you have it - black, with no sugar. Thank you.”

“Of course.” Jemma nodded, and began to pour. And yes, that was definitely a blush. Bobbi was even feeling a whisper of her own as Jemma added – as if she was trying to hide how desperately she wished Bobbi to acquiesce –

“I wonder if we might take tea outside this afternoon. I’ve been positively beleaguered with meetings today and I must see to my plants.”

A woman after her own heart. Bobbi smiled.

“Of course. We should stretch our legs after all.”

“Then it is decided.”

Bobbi’s heart dared to flutter in her chest as Jemma’s cautious hostess’ smile erupted into a beaming grin. The woman took hold of her skirts – revealing boots much like Bobbi’s own, rather than slippers that might have matched her otherwise refined ensemble – and took off out of the parlour door with great gusto. Finding herself drawn to follow, this time undeniably by more than her botanist’s interest alone, Bobbi strode after Jemma as best she could while reeling at her own spoonishness.

As they traipsed across the lawn, Bobbi marvelled in the delight Jemma seemed take at being out of doors, and drank in the prelude to the greenhouse – half snatched away by the wind though it was – with which the other woman was regaling her. Bobbi found herself entranced by Jemma’s spirited expression; the way she revelled in the trials and tribulations of seeking and transporting her large collection of exotics, unfazed even as the wind began to pull locks of her perfect hair from its arrangement and blow them unceremoniously into her face. And then –

“Oh, excuse me, Bobbi,” Jemma pleaded, and her expression narrowed into a scolding sort of glare. Bobbi followed the line of it and saw a ladder propped against the side of what appeared to be a disused chicken coop, and a figure hunched atop the rickety roof in an overcoat and goggles, fixing some contraption or other to the highest point of the pitch.

“Ho, Fitz!” Jemma hollered, as the figure lost hold of a tool and it fell to the dirt. He cursed.

“That’s Fitz?” Bobbi blurted. “Your Fitz?”

“You sound surprised,” Jemma noted.

“I meant no offence, it’s just – I’ve met quite a few of these entrepreneurial types and generally they’re rather… obnoxious.”

Jemma scoffed. “Oh, believe me: he’s plenty obnoxious.”

Resolute, she handed her cup of tea to Bobbi, hitched her skirt up a little higher with both hands and made a bee-line for the chicken coop, until she was close enough that her boots were in the muck.

“Fitz!” she called again.

“Yes, love?”

Fitz’s head jerked up at the call, and he saw her and Bobbi and apparently not the loose tile on which he had stepped. Before he could do any more than yelp in surprise, he had slipped and fallen flat on his back, coughing and spluttering and winded. His curls looked madder than ever as he lay there in resignation, and spat a soiled feather from his pouting mouth.

“Ugh, Fitz!” Jemma lamented. She locked an arm with her fiancé and hauled him out of the sludge. “I told you to wait until Mack could come down and help with all this.”

“Mack and I are building the mechanical milling machine,” Fitz corrected. “This is a sonic fox repellent. It’s just a prototype but – Oh, sorry. I’m Fitz, by the way. Leopold Fitz, technically, but please don’t call me that.”

“Barbara Morse, technically,” Bobbi greeted. “But please don’t call me that either. I prefer Bobbi. Sonic fox repellent, you say? Let me know if it works – I might have to purchase a couple for myself.”

“Well, uh, thank you, but um –“

“But Mack will be here any minute, dear,” Jemma interrupted, waving Fitz toward the house. “Go and clean up now. Go! Honestly.”

“Yes, dear.” Fitz rolled his eyes, but smiled at his fussing fiancé as he retreated toward the house. Jemma slogged the rest of the way to the chicken coop and retrieved the screwdriver he had dropped, setting it on a step of the nearby ladder in case he went looking for it later. Bobbi looked on with nought to do but hold the two teacups steady, and she was a little surprised to find that despite what perhaps should have been a heart-wrenching reality check - to discover that the most recent object of her affection was indeed happy with someone else - Bobbi felt nothing but delight. No jealousy, no despair. And, if anything, a redoubled sense of yearning.

“Sorry about him,” Jemma apologised as she returned to Bobbi’s side to fetch her tea. “He’s a lovely man, really, and very intelligent, but he’s not accustomed to being complimented by beautiful women.”

“Well, with you around you think he’d be used to it by now.”

Jemma laughed, and raised an eyebrow as she took a sip. “Careful, Ms. Morse, you’ll give a lady ideas.”

The delivery of it was coquettish, light-hearted, but still Bobbi couldn’t help feeling that she’d crossed a line. She thought of poor sweet Fitz, and her heart sunk.

“I- I’m sorry, Miss Simmons. I meant nothing of it. Just that… Mr Fitz is a very lucky man.”

Seeing that she had sent Bobbi skittering, Jemma hurried to backtrack so emphatically that she almost spilled her tea.

“Oh, please! No need to apologise, it is all in good spirit – It was I who misspoke without the proper context. You see, Bobbi – may I still call you Bobbi? – your reputation precedes you in this regard but perhaps mine does not. Oh, dear.” Flustered, Jemma paused to gather herself and suddenly wished very dearly for a side table on which to deposit the lukewarm, useless beverage in her hands. “You see, I have been known to uh, entertain the attentions of the fairer sex myself. Not only am I not in the slightest offended by your perfectly innocent compliment, but I- I’m afraid I must confess I’d rather hoped you were being flirtatious.”

Bobbi gaped. “But… Fitz? I couldn’t. You’re engaged. It’s- it would be-”

“Fitz and I have an understanding,” Jemma clarified. At least, she phrased it like it was a clarification, but Bobbi only stumbled deeper into her confusion. She’d only seen the pair interact for a few odd minutes and already the connection was clear.

“He doesn’t- He’s not in love with you?” That man? Are you sure? Perhaps she would have to rethink her own calibration for stoicism if he had managed to keep that a secret.

Jemma shook her head.

“I’m not explaining this right. It never comes out simply, does it?” She clicked her tongue, tutting to herself as if musing on a new location for a particular pot, and not resolving the several short circuits sparking off inside Bobbi’s mind right now. It seemed like hours before she finally began again to explain:

“Fitz and I have been friends for the longest time,” she said. “As we grew and discovered that each of us had rather taken to those of our own sex we thought, if we were to live and love as our true selves well then, why not make it a marriage of convenience? Of course, he went and fell in love with me, didn’t he – and I him, do not misunderstand me: by some very blessed coincidence, we are very much in love. But our arrangement still stands. Fitz would not take offence in the slightest if you and I were to… explore any possibilities that may… arise.”

“…Right.”

“I can see that you need some more time to process,” Jemma observed. “Well, if I haven’t scared you off entirely – let’s say no more of it, for now. Come. Let me show you the greenhouse.”

They said no more of it for the rest of the afternoon, and for several days after that. They wrote little notes back and forth, about tea and chickens and foxes and plants, and very much not about the other topic of the day. Jemma waited for Bobbi to broach it and Bobbi – despite thinking about the arrangement with increasing regularity as time went on – dared not. The exact reason for it eluded her; did she fear that perhaps she had misread something, and that Jemma had not in fact, meant what she had said after all? Did she fear being the other woman – as she had been asked and offered many a time by men and women alike who did not have such an arrangement with their partners? Or did she fear the opposite instead; that she had finally found someone as unusual and brilliant and queer in every way as she herself was? Perhaps even two someones?

No doubt, there was some combination of all three tangled up in this knot in her chest, but it was the latter that kept Bobbi going to her desk in the middle of the night, pulling out a pen and paper, and not… quite… putting… the words down.

Or putting them down, and crossing them out.

Or putting them down, and throwing them in the fire.

As she watched the pages curl and blacken, Bobbi could taste the bitter memory of the last time she’d found herself in such a position. She had few regrets in her life, but one of them was that day; the day she’d let (or rather, driven) her former husband’s last words to her fall into the fire. There had been a lot more anger involved that time around, she recalled, and no shortage of jabbing at sparks with the fire iron, to make sure she’d got every last bit. This time, it felt like a step in the wrong direction. Like she was waiting to release the breath she was holding, or for the knot in her chest to untie and it never would.

I fear I must, were the last words she could discern now, from the letter she had burnt. She reached for the poker with a tremor in her fingers, and gritted her teeth. One good jab, and it would all be over. Then again, there was a blank spot just there. She could save it, if she were careful – and quick, as the words were already shrinking before her eyes.

I fear I  

I fear

Fear  

And then they were gone. And her breath was still caught in her chest but she lifted her head. She may have burned her bridges with the Midshipman after all, but she could still remember that infuriatingly rakish daredevil smile of his.

“Come on, love,” he used to like challenging her. “A little fear is nothing to be afraid of.”

It was something that had always bound them; the rush of taking risks, the revelling in new horizons. It was every reason she had to have left her home in the first place; perhaps that was what had made their relationship last so long, despite the warning signs. And as Bobbi reflected upon this image of herself, kneeling at her hearth, clutching a fire poker with a shaking hand at some unearthly hour in the morning - and not for the first time at that - she had to laugh. This was exactly the reason Hunter had broken up with her and after all this time she had to admit, the limey was right: as much as she purported to be bold and confident, to love a challenge, she was a coward when it came to affairs of the heart.

But Bobbi was no fool. She knew regret, and she knew the value of a wasted opportunity. She had regretted leaving Hunter enough times in her life thus far; she dared not waste such an opportunity again.

So she stood, and reached for her coat. Never mind the nightgown, never mind ringing for Davis; Bobbi figured, she could tack a horse herself just as quickly and if she didn’t take action now the fear might just get the better of her. Perhaps the boots, though, rather than these flimsy slippers – yes, she should take the boots.

She pulled them on in a fluster, hopping in through the stable door, and tacked up in the dark as fast as her fingers remembered how. Of course, she could walk to the Fitzsimmons’ – they were only next door after all, just a little ways down the road - but it was far too late at night for that, and God forbid it would give her too much time to think.

Fortunately, Belle was fleet of foot and it was not long at all before she was clattering up the FitzSimmons’ driveway, her heart in her throat. There was a carriage she did not recognise in a nearby pen. Did they have a guest? Should she turn back? Belle whinnied low as if warning her, and Bobbi swallowed her fear once again. If she did turn back, no doubt she would find herself achingly alone by the fireplace for many more nights in her life, and as much as she treasured her independence, she didn’t want it to be like that. Not when it didn’t have to be.

Bobbi slid from the saddle, and as she tied Belle to a nearby post she spared a thought of gratitude that she had decided to wear boots for a little relief against the chilled and dewy cobblestones. With a deep breath, she approached the threshold, and knocked, and rang the bell.

Seconds passed, and though she counted them along their way they still somehow felt like minutes. Like hours. Bobbi watched every breath steam in front of her and after the third she closed her eyes and reluctantly wondered what it would be like to just give in to the dread, and forget the whole thing.

Just as she was on the knife’s edge of giving up, however, the door opened a crack.

It was Fitz, with his soft curls and his shirt loose and dishevelled, and upon recognising the figure who stood at his door, a rather bewildered expression.

“Jemma, dear,” he called, “I think- I think it’s for you.”

And so Jemma came to the door as well, and looked Bobbi up and down. A frown crossed her features, concerned and curious, as she ushered Bobbi inside.

“Are you alright?” she wondered. “I… hadn’t heard from you.”

“I know.” Bobbi bounced on the spot. With adrenaline keeping her blood pumping, she hadn’t realised it was quite so cold. “I know. It’s my fault. I meant to tell you so- so many things. I was flattered- I am flattered. Exceedingly so. I just…”

“It’s perfectly understandable,” Jemma assured her. “I should never have sprung something so… unconventional on you like that!”

“But being unconventional is why I like you.” It blurted out with no restraint, and Bobbi felt her heart warm when Jemma smiled. “And it’s not the- the arrangement itself that worries me. I suppose I thought you were mocking me; that you might not have been taking me seriously.”

“Bobbi.” Jemma looked her square in the eyes, and very deliberately reached out a hand to take hers. “We were very serious – and still are, if you’ll have us.”

Fitz nodded his agreement earnestly, and at last, Bobbi felt the knot in her chest begin to untie.

“Well then,“ she confessed, “I suppose my answer is yes.”

Jemma beamed, and clapped in delight.

“Wonderful!” she cried. “Won’t you come in for a drink to celebrate?”

“Certainly,” Bobbi agreed. The fear was fading much faster than she had anticipated, and she smiled at her companions with genuine warmth in her heart. “I would love a brandy, if you have it.”

“I’ll pour you a glass,” Fitz said, and scoffed. “If Hunter hasn’t taken the last drop.”

“If- who?”

Bobbi stammered, and let Jemma and Fitz usher her into the lounge without protest, with hardly a thought as she checked back over what she had heard. Surely it couldn’t be…

“Where’ve you been, lovelies?”

That voice, she knew it. The spinning, slightly drunken dance he was doing as he poured himself a glass. Even that scruffy beard, and the medallion of St Anthony that gleamed on a leather thong around his neck as he turned away from the fireplace and back toward the door - Bobbi couldn’t see it from this far away but she knew, she knew that’s what it was.

Apparently, he knew her just as quickly too, as he froze mid-dance and mid-pour and stared. Not too long ago, he would have made a snide comment to try and to get a rise out of her – speak of the devil? she could imagine he would say - and a rise she would gladly have given him. But this time he simply… stared.

“Uh…” Fitz wondered from the sidelines. “Do you two know each other?”

Jemma elbowed him, and hissed for him to hush, but it barely registered to Bobbi. She was too busy watching Hunter, waiting for him to burst the bubble of nostalgia and rose-coloured glasses she had no doubt shaded him with. Any second now.

Instead, he smiled, and held the last glass of the brandy out to her.

“It’s good to see you, Bob,” he said.

In participating in the Secret Santa exchange, you will create a fanwork for your assigned giftee. This can consist of fanfiction, gifs, graphics, moodboards, aesthetics, fanmixes, fanvids, fanart, or any other creation. Fic must be at least 1000 words in length, and all gifts must be complete when posted (unless you plan to stagger out fic chapters).

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