#aro!jemma

“You didn’t,” she pointed out. “Technically.”

He sighed.

“It’s just –“ a fruitless handwave at the television. “I mean, really? They’ve known each other what, an hour? And that’s where they go?”

Jemma laughed.

“No-one’s doing anything wrong, Fitz,” she assured him. “They’re just having fun!”

Fitz screwed up his nose.

“Doesn’t look like much fun. I mean. That looks like more fun.”

Jemma followed where he pointed, to see that somebody had just been shot, and was falling dramatically backward into the swimming pool.

“Really?” Jemma pressed. “You’d rather get shot than have sex.”

“Well I was talking about the bit before that, with the swimming, before all hell broke loose, but –“

“Okay, so you haven’t completely lost it -”

Fitz rolled his eyes.

“You’re great,” he insisted, “and there are plenty of things it is better than. Y’know. Cleaning the shower drain. Setting rat baits in the attic. Dissecting a frog.”

“You threw up last time you dissected a frog.”

“My point exactly.”

“You’re hopeless.”

“We’re missing a perfectly good gunfight. Oh brilliant, here comes Miss Legs. Naturally, she’s going to have to fight in her underwear, of course.”

“Now I’ll admit that’s a little ridiculous, but she can fight remarkably well.” As the character vaulted over the bonnet of a car only to have her opponent throw her into a trash can and send her sprawling over the sidewalk covered in garbage, Jemma winced. “Oh, that poor stunt double.”

They returned their attention to the movie after that, but the banter continued. Together they poked fun at poor special effects, melodramatic one-liners, and flat tropes. Fitz explained or guessed at how various explosions and fight damage had been constructed. Jemma lamented and promised herself, for the fiftieth time, that she would learn martial arts one day. Maybe krav maga. The human body was truly a remarkable contraption.

“Well this human body’s getting remarkably uncomfortable,” Fitz returned. “I’m getting a drink. Want one?”

“Water, please.”

Jemma nodded, and yawned as she stretched herself out and climbed out of the nest she had created for herself between the couch and the cushions and Fitz. He disappeared to the kitchen and she to the bedroom, where she changed into a loose top and took off her bra. When Fitz returned with the water, he looked tired enough to collapse, like a switch had been flicked and all of a sudden he was struggling to keep his eyes open. Jemma hummed sympathically.

“Working hard?” she purred as he slumped onto the bed, eyes closed and forehead creased, limbs tensed with frustration.

“Coulson just emailed,” Fitz murmured, a silent groan in his expression. “They’re upgrading to a new model after all, so half the coding I did today is out the window. At this rate I’m going to be another week on this bloody thing."

“You shouldn’t check your emails before bed,” Jemma scolded gently. “Aside from the effects of screen brightness on sleep, there hasn’t been a day this week it hasn’t put you in a foul mood.”

Fitz grunted, wishing he had taken her advice, but read them he had and in a bad mood he was.

“Go to sleep, babe,” Jemma insisted. “You can deal with it in the morning.”

She crawled onto the bed beside him and snuggled into his side, letting one arm drape over his chest. She hummed softly and breathed smoothly until she felt the frustration drain from his body. Fitz’ own breathing evened out eventually and Jemma realised she’d lulled him to sleep on top of the covers. She slipped off the bed and retrieved a heavy fleece from the lounge, which she pulled over him, and then she snuck back into her place, careful not to disturb him as she stuck her feet under the covers.

Knees drawn to her chest, back against a stack of pillows and the headboard, Jemma looked down at Fitz’ soft expression and floppy hair and smiled tightly. He was working outside both her jurisdiction and her expertise, so he didn’t often talk about this particular project with her and she was unsure what to do to help him most of the time. And today was an especially unfortunate blow. He’d thought he’d finally been done with this project, and with the difficulties and secrecies that it entailed – hence an afternoon of lazy strolls, cooking, and amusingly predictable movies. After all the work he’d done so far and thought he’d put behind him, another week might as well have been another month, another year, another decade to his tired mind, and his heart that hated not sharing with her.

Jemma sighed. It seemed she had just as much of a penchant for putting herself in a mood before bed as Fitz did. She pulled her biomedical journal prints out from under her tablet to distract herself, but her eyes refused to train themselves on the words. Her brain refused to let go the thought that there must be something she could do, should do, would do for him. What was in a week’s time? Valentine’s Day. There must be loads of things to do on Valentine’s Day. Restaurants would be open, cinemas would have extra showings, events would be on all over the place.

So it was decided then, she thought to herself as if she could bargain with her own brain. She would arrange a nice day out for them on Valentine’s Day, to celebrate at last and to get his mind off that blasted project and to allow him to share with her whatever he might have felt he’d been lacking or needed to make up for. Surely, with that framework in mind, she could cast aside the journal reading and just go to sleep, ready to start planning proper when it was more appropriate.

Or.

Or, she could shuffle down under the covers and stare at the roof, and her mind could start buzzing with suggestions, and her heart could leap in her chest at the good ones and at the thought of being able to bring Fitz some peace. She could, in short, lie restless for a good few minutes and eventually give up on the attempt to sleep altogether and instead, do what she did best – plan.

-

“Is the blindfold really necessary?” Fitz asked as Jemma guided him by the shoulder down into the passenger seat of the car, a week later.

“Not strictly, but I didn’t want to ruin the surprise.”

“Surprise? I thought we were going to a restaurant, y’know Italian or something nice and romantic and then go to a movie, and then a hotel room after that with candles and rose petals everywhere…”

Fitz trailed off, grinning. He could feel Jemma’s glare through the blindfold.

“Oh please,” she huffed. “You know me better than that. Besides, if I have to hear one more terrible pun or even worse love story or watch those waiters moon-eye at us like they did last year, I’m going to vomit.”

“Hey, you love puns!”

“…Yeah, alright, maybe the puns aren’t too bad.” Jemma rolled her eyes as she moved the car into gear and started driving. Fitz was alert, looking around and listening. Trying to figure out her surprise.

“You’re not going to see it coming,” she insisted.

“Well of course I won’t, I’m wearing a blindfold, aren’t I?”

Jemma guffawed with laughter, and had to remind herself to keep her eyes on the road. Fitz grinned victoriously beside her and continued trying to map out where they were. He was terribly unfamiliar with the area, and after a while, they pulled out onto a long, straight road without much traffic and he lost track of how long they were on it.

“Still think you can pick us, Lassie?” Jemma teased. Fitz crossed his arms.

“We’re somewhere in New England,” he grumbled. “And I don’t appreciate the reference.”

Jemma shrugged. “It was either that or Skippy.”

Suddenly, Fitz bolted upright and slapped the car door excitedly.

“I smell the ocean! Right? We’re going to the seaside, aren’t we?”

“’The Seaside’.” Jemma laughed. “You’re so British!”

“You’re Britisher!”

“I bet I am, Mr ‘second grade math’.”

“Excuse you Little Miss ‘footy squad’.”

“We have footy squads!”

“Oh, 'we' do now, hm? And when did you suddenly get an interest in the Dons exactly?”

Fitz cut himself off when Jemma cut the engine and stepped around the car to open his door. The banter had successfully distracted him from a cacophony of sounds: money jingling, children screeching with laughter, and the unmistakable crank-accordion sound of carnival music. When Jemma finally pulled his blindfold away, she stepped aside to reveal a small fair set up on the jetty and grassed area near the beach. The water shone, a dark but luminescent backdrop for the coloured lights and flapping flags that announced festivity with the humble pride of a small town.

“What do you think?” Jemma asked, trying to get a read on Fitz’ stunned expression.

“I – um – why?” Fitz spiralled as he walked through the entrance, his eyes trained on the triangular penants flapping in the breeze above his head, and the stars far beyond them.

“I wanted to get away from it all,” Jemma explained, following him into the fairgrounds and guiding him out of the way of incoming strangers as he looked around, awestruck. “You away from that bloody project of yours and us away from the base for a while – and not to mention away from all that awful Hallmark tripe. It took me a while to find something interesting but then…I found this! I would’ve run it by you first but like I said, I didn’t want to ruin the surprise. Do you like it?”

“Jemma!” Fitz gasped. “I love it! Fresh air. Space. Fairy floss!”

He grabbed her face, as if to kiss her, but got distracted. He ran past her instead, to a truck offering fairy floss, popcorn and deep-fried potato spiral

“What’s a deep-fried potato kebab?” Jemma wondered, trailing him, and catching up just as he accepted an armful of food from the vendor. A tub of popcorn, a stick of fairy floss, and two of what could only have been the potato spirals. They were, in all, potatoes, cut somehow into a spiral and deep-fried onto a kebab stick. Simple, self explanatory, and unashamedly bad for you. Of course.

“What?” Fitz asked, when he saw her staring. “It was a long drive.”

They walked around the grounds and ate and talked, and in all honesty the simple fact of fresh air was enough of a gift to last them both all night. Jemma became increasingly gladder that she hadn’t caved in the end and chosen a restaurant; it was such a rare opportunity to be out of the base, and out of a city, without having to look over their shoulder all the time. The quiet life, she thought to herself, was underrated.

With occasional assistance from Jemma, Fitz polished off most of the food he’d bought initially in a fairly short span of time, but once he had a hand free, he held Jemma’s funnel cakes willingly and with great restraint as she engaged in some of the carnival activities. She tested her strength on the hammer, and both of them laughed when she barely managed to reach halfway. In the real world, she’d have jumped on the sensor instead, but a game was a game. She tried throwing balls into the clowns’ mouths and did a surprisingly good job, eventually winning a small stuffed seal made of gold and green fabric, which she gave to a passing child later in the night. When they got to a booth for shooting cans with a BB gun, Fitz jumped at the chance.

“Okay okay, this one’s mine.”

“My hero!” Jemma feigned a swoon, and took her funnel cakes back as Fitz made an enjoyably macho show of taking the gun and preparing himself. He was a good shot, but this was a carnival game. A notoriously difficult one at that. At least the attendant seemed to be getting a laugh out of his grand performance.

Fitz managed to down two cans. The attendant applauded, his eyebrows high, impressed. He gestured to the row of choices Fitz had for prizes, and Fitz picked out a larger-than-life daisy made of some sort of felt-like material, with a smiling face sown in where the seeds would go and wire in the stem, for posing.

“Happy Valentine’s Day, Jemma,” he said, presenting it to Jemma as seriously as if it were a bouquet full of roses.

“Oh, babe, you shouldn’t have!” she crooned, stroking its petals as if it were as sweet and fragile as a lily.

“Ah, the lovebirds,” the attendant called, applauding again. “I’ll give the lady three shots for free, eh? My little Valentines gift to you all.”

Jemma grinned, and passed off her funnel cakes and the precious daisy to Fitz. She picked up the gun and fired, fired, fired, and the attendant howled and clapped his congratulations when three cans tumbled from their stand.

“The highest score all night, Ma’am,” he congratulated her. “Have your pick of anything on the board!”

-

Eventually, they retired to the beach.

They walked for a while, until the sounds of the carnival had faded into the distance and the soft roar of the lapping waves took over. Fitz sat, and brushed a patch of sand beside him so that Jemma could adjust her skirt and sit too. It was a graceful practice oddly out of place, as Jemma had the cartoonish daisy wrapped around her arm like it had grown there, and Fitz had a monkey with absurdly long arms and Velcro for hands hugging his neck, and the most recent phase of dinner consisted of a corndog each, and an absurdly large cup of ice-cream they were sharing.

Jemma sighed in satisfaction as she looked out across the sea, where it reflected the shimmering silver moonlight.

“Happy Valentine’s Day, Fitz,” she murmured, nuzzling into his shoulder. It was cold, and she’d left a jacket in the car, but she preferred this method of keeping warm.

“Thanks for bringing me here, Jemma,” Fitz replied. “It was very inventive of you. I had fun.”

“And you got to show off.”

“And I got to show off.” Fitz laughed.

“You’re a great romantic sap, you know that?” Jemma teased. “Defending my honour against those nasty stacks of tins.”

“They were looking at you funny, I swear.”

Jemma laughed and rolled her eyes. “Next year, I’m buying you a sword.”

“Really?!” Fitz jumped, and almost sent Jemma’s corn-dog flying.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Jemma promised.

Fitz stuck his now-empty corndog stick into the sand and adjusted his position so that he could put an arm around Jemma’s shoulders.

“Aren’t you cold?” he wondered, looking at all her bare skin. Jemma shrugged.

“Not with you.”

Fitz snorted. “And I’m the romantic sap.”

Jemma batted her eyelids at him.

“Would the sap like to get my jacket from the car? Pretty please?”

It had been floating around the back of her mind since she had uttered the words. She must have been chewing on it without noticing, because as she delved back into the memory an expansive network of thoughts and concerns flowed out of it.

What if I’m not romantic?

What if I’m not in love?

What if I don’t love him?

What if I can’t feel love at all?

Will came up then, too, like a slap in the face – Will and: Do you love him? I don’t know. Jemma realised, she didn’t know what love felt like. Unlike Fitz, apparently, she had never been able to just know she was in love. Was she overanalysing? Or was she not feeling the same thing he was?

Of course, that didn’t mean anything, necessarily. People experienced and expressed plenty of other emotions – anger, sadness, joy – in a variety of ways, so it was only natural that the experience of love be different too. Still, this felt like a swing too far in one direction. Like she was fundamentally failing to notice something…or perhaps, failing to experience it altogether.

It could just be her hesitation, refusing to let her pinpoint something so intangible, but Fitz and Lincoln, at least, seemed to have a very clear, fairly uniform idea of what love was. May and Andrew, too, had obviously been in love, at least at one point. She could see their heartstrings being pulled with every word and every action. Did she herself look that…desperate? Perhaps she was just not noticing, unable as she was to see her own expressions. But then, why did she continuously fail to understand how Fitz could look at her with such consuming adoration? It was not self-consciousness – she had never been shy of being appreciated, even if she did not overly enjoy being doted upon. No, it was a failure to understand his part of things. What drove him to look like that, like the whole world revolved around her?

Was she just scared of allowing herself to submit to the feelings? Was she afraid that if she admitted to love, she would be expected to move the centre of her world too? No, no, she wanted to be in love with him. World-shifting or no. She’d fight the cosmos for it. Not just for his life – although of course, that too – but she’d taken his hand for a reason. She’d decided, she was all in, and nothing was going to change that.

Except…if she wasn’t in love with him…no matter how much she wanted to be…maybe she should change that. Surely it wasn’t fair to stay in a relationship with him if she didn’t love him back. Fitz deserved that; to have somebody love him as deeply as he loved them. Of course he did.

But.

Jemma loved him deeply too, she was sure. Not in the same way, perhaps, but just as deeply. She was just as determined, just as satisfied, just as committed as he was. It was an insult to her, to them, to everything they’d been through together to say otherwise.

So why was she so torn up over calling it love?

Chewing her bottom lip, Jemma dropped down into the sand. She picked up a nearby shell and tossed it into the ocean, and imagined watching it sink as she cleared her mind.

She did love him. Whatever else, she was sure of that. But if the notion of romantic love – that was the part she was torn about after all - was causing her this much distress, then she needed closure on that. Maybe it was indeed just fear or the ever-elusive desire for some kind of “evidence” of her feelings, but maybe it was something else, and maybe – probably – someone else, somewhere in the world had pondered this very question before her. Whatever the answer, it was time for research.

-

Researching the nature of love was frustrating. Usually, researching such a thing as a philosophical abstract, she would have found it fascinating, but as it was – seeking the answer to seemingly impossible questions, with an increasing ense of urgency – she was torn between throwing the computer out the window, and holding on if only to scrape together what tidbits existed that made sense to her.

“Aromantic.” She whispered it to herself, committing it to memory. It was described as a romantic orientation – like a sexual orientation – or in this case, a lack thereof. Good to know, then, that if indeed she did fall into this category, she was not alone, and she had something to point to that could prove it. It was also quite distinct from a sexual orientation: many of the authors and bloggers she could find writing on the topic were very clear to specify that someone could be allosexual – that is, not asexual – and could still be aromantic. (Many of them also, to her pleasure, pointed out that aromantic allosexual relations were not necessarily flings or at all cheapened by the lack of romance. Romance did not equal commitment, or meaning, or love.)

“Alloromantic.” Another good word. It helped her separate in her head, romantic attraction, from the concept of romanticism. She could believe in hope and love and art and the universe – she could be “romantic” - without being alloromantic, necessarily.

After that, it all got much harder. The distinction between a- and alloromanticism was almost entirely personal, as it depended upon one’s own definition of romantic attraction. Simmons screwed up her nose. Vague definitions were just what she did not need, in the middle of the night, and on the verge of what she was beginning to feel was possibly a revolutionary discovery about herself.

There were plenty of ways of describing what romantic attraction was not: for example, a disdain for grand gestures, or socially coded ones, was emphatically pointed out as not inherently aromantic. In a way, that was reassuring, because it meant she could still be in love even if she rolled her eyes every time Fitz offered to pull out a chair for her. (Maybe not every time.) But it was disconcerting too, because it was far more difficult to determine what romantic attraction was. The desire to share one’s life was a prominent criterion, and she certainly felt that for Fitz – but was that innate, or was it because she had decided to do so, as part of entering into a relationship with him? Another popular notion was a “special feeling” that nobody seemed to manage to define besides a “floaty” sensation, or nerves upon meeting the object of attraction.

At first, the vagueness made Jemma grind her teeth together, but as she read on about aromantic people’s experiences, listening to alloromantic people talk about love and not being able to relate, it began to feel less like vagueness and more like alienation. Not in a bad way, just…distance. It was like hearing people talk about religion, and appreciating but never quite fully grasping the extent of their reverence for God. Jemma was not a religious person, and it had never bothered her – but then again, her relationship with another person had never been dependant upon which deity she did or did not believe in.

In the end, that was her main hesitation. She had never been a particularly introspective person – she found it much easier and more worthwhile to focus on the world around her – but she knew herself well enough to know that the “aromantic” label was feeling increasingly suitable. Her main, if not her only, obstacle to accepting it fully was the terror, slowly building, that she would have to let Fitz go if it were true. He was possibly – no, easily – the most romantic person she had ever met. Could he ever be truly happy, truly fulfilled, with an aromantic partner?

Fortunately, this seemed to be a question many aromantics had attempted to answer – and to her unending relief, the answers were overwhelmingly positive.

“A surprising number of aromantics, asexual and allosexual, actually want a primary partner or multiple significant relationships that go beyond contemporary standards of “friendship…” (x)

“When thinking about the sort of person you’d want to date…” (x)

“Queerplatonic is a word for describing relationships where an intense emotional connection transcending what people usually think of as ‘friendship’ is present.... People in a queerplatonic relationship may think of themselves as partners, may plan on spending their lives together, etc...” (x)

“Aromanticism looks different for different people and that’s okay.”

Jemma sighed and sat back, reading the last one again. The anxiety she’d been feeling all night slowly relaxed its grip on her, and she started to feel her eyes burn with the hours she had been awake – and staring at a bright white computer screen in the middle of the night? What had she been thinking? But she smiled, satisfied, as she folded the laptop down and set it aside. She curled up over Fitz, and let the sound of his heart and the rhythm of his breathing lull her what little way she had left to sleep.

-

The sun was streaming through the windows by the time Fitz opened his eyes, yet he found himself strangely obstructed by the weight of his girlfriend - his girlfriend - lying across his chest. He frowned down at her, concerned: Jemma rarely, if ever, slept in this late. Then again, he supposed, she had a few years of anguish to sleep off by now.

Still, that didn’t make him need to go to the bathroom any less. Or get a drink. Or move any of his limbs, which had been in the same position for a good ten hours now, if not longer, since he’d all but crashed the night before. So he tugged on the blankets just enough to expose her hands and feet to the air, and even though it was not a particularly cold morning, she reacted with the predictability, if not the speed, of a Venus Fly Trap. Without waking – with barely a sound - she rolled toward the edge of the bed, away from him, to cover the exposed areas, and took the blankets with her.

Fitz grinned, and decided that he would have to remember that trick, as he slid out of bed and went about his morning routine. He had just returned to the kitchen and was setting the kettle to boil when he noticed the glow of the laptop from Jemma’s bedside table. Classic Jemma. Doing research into the night. He should have known. Curiosity piqued, he snuck over to the laptop, and carried it back to the kitchen bench with him, wondering what he might find. “Venomous species of East Africa” seemed like something she would look up to relax. “Lingerie deliveries to the Seychelles,” perhaps? He also wouldn’t put that past her. He hoped she wasn’t looking up how to splice breed roses. That was his thing. (Well, it was biology, so technically it was her thing, but that’s why he hoped she’d be extra surprised).

When he finally opened the laptop lid, his jaw dropped. The kettle whistled loudly and Jemma stirred and all of a sudden Fitz was frozen by the feeling that he had just seen something he most definitely should not have.

“Fitz?” Jemma wondered. “What are you doing?”

Search: can aromantic people have romantic relationships?

“I – uhm…nothing.”

Search: can aromantic people have fulfilling relationships?

“I was just looking up…the weather.”

Search: can aromantic people feel love?

“Um. Jemma? What is this?”

Abandoning his futile attempt at a cover, Fitz turned the computer so the screen faced the bed. She wouldn’t be able to read it from so far away, but she must know what was on it.

“You know,” Fitz continued. “When I said that, about you not being romantic, I meant…y’know, roses. Grand gestures. I didn’t mean to imply that you didn’t feel love.”

“You didn’t. You didn’t imply that. Apparently, I was just a little vague in my Google searches.” Frowning, Jemma hopped out of bed and came over to explain, pulling up the other windows he had minimised, to show him as she spoke. “See, there’s this concept called ‘aromanticism’, and basically, it means that some people…don’t feel romantic love. Romantic attachment. At all. To anyone.”

“And you think you don’t?” Fitz fretted, his eyebrows creasing with concern. “Just because I said-“

“No!” she interrupted, hushing him. “No, look, I did some research. ‘You have trouble telling the difference between romantic and friendly feelings.’ ‘You are sometimes perceived as flirtatious when you only meant to be friendly.’ ‘You don’t understand why people do ridiculous, irrational or over-the-top things in the name of love’? Doesn’t that sound like me?”

“That doesn’t mean anything, it’s just a checklist!

Jemma continued to read out the list as Fitz protested:

“They could have put anything on there. How many times have you lectured people on those fake psychology things, and confirmation bias, and-”

“’When you discovered the word ‘aromantic,’ it felt like something finally clicked into place for you.’”

She met his eyes, and Fitz trailed off. Jemma was obviously starting to get uncomfortable; her voice was softer now, and she kept fidgeting her hands. This was a personal and confronting thing and here he was making an argument about it. He swallowed his next words and lowered his head; settling, ready to listen.

“Sorry,” he muttered.

“Fitz.” Jemma took his hand. “Do you feel something special when you look at me? Or think about me?”

“Of course I do.” He looked up, meeting her eyes again. With his free hand, he brushed a lock of hair out of her face. “Of course I do. I love you.”

“What does that feel like?”

Fitz frowned, trying to capture it – and wondering what sort of test this was; did Jemma really not know?

“It’s…like…light,” he tried to explain. “It makes me feel…better. Happier, more hopeful, like knowing there’s something so good about the world that nothing can destroy. It makes me want to make you happy. Make the light even brighter. It makes me feel like I could do anything, too, like…am I…am I making sense?”

“No,” Jemma breathed. It was almost painful to realise it, despite how reassuring it felt to have it confirmed. “Not that you don’t make me feel happier, or I don’t want to make you happy. I do. Just. Not like that.”

“Oh.”

Crestfallen, Fitz let his eyes wander back down to where Jemma held their hands together.

“I do love you,” she insisted. “I wish I was in love with you, like that, but I’m not, and I don’t think there’s anything I can do about it. But I promise it’s not you. It’s not just you.”

“It’s not you, it’s me?” Fitz paraphrased. “Are you breaking up with me?”

Jemma’s hand tightened around his. She took a moment, blinked and sniffed.

“Would you like me to?” she asked, softly. A little tearfully.

“No, Jemma. No. No.” Fitz pulled her in for a hug. She was shaking a little – and no wonder, stand out on a limb like that. Fitz kissed the top of her head, and let his lips linger.

“Are you okay?” Jemma asked. “You seem upset. Are you upset?”

“I’m upset because I made you upset,” Fitz explained. “And because…I love being in love with you. It’s the best feeling in the world. I wish you knew how it felt.”

Jemma pulled back, to study his face.

“You don’t…mind? That I don’t love you back?”

“I don’t love you to be loved back,” Fitz explained. “If you’re uncomfortable with it, of course that’s different, but you’re not, are you?”

“No, of course not.”

“And you want me to be safe, and happy?”

“Yes, of course!”

“And you want to be in a relationship with me?”

“Yes.” Jemma nodded, tears spilling over her cheeks. “Yes. Very much.”

“Well then, if that’s good enough for you, it’s good enough for me.”

Fitz smiled, but Jemma only appreciated it for half a second before she grabbed the collar of his shirt and kissed him – long and hard.

“I love you.” The words spilled out. Without all their incorrect, assumed meanings she had never quite believed – knowing that Fitz would no longer read into them the wrong things – they spilled out like the answer to an easy question. The easiest question in the world.

Fitz stared back at her for a long moment, soaking in the way she looked – relaxed, content, glowing in the sunlight – with his gentle, adoring eyes.