#tripfitzskimmons

“Why the fuck is there a mini-taser is the fucking Fruit Loops?”

Skye spins around, holding the taser in her hand, already glaring at Fitz. Trip and Jemma are looking at him too; this is not the first time someone has pulled a weapon out of a strange hiding place on the Bus, just the first time today. It’s still early.

“Well, what if the plane gets invaded and someone gets trapped in the kitchen without a weapon?” he says, trying to put as much authority into his voice as he can manage. He’s barely slept the last three days, up late in the lab.

“And what? You think the bad guys are going to let me pour myself a bowl of cereal?”

Trip and Jemma laugh, and Fitz forces a smile, dropping his toast back onto his plate. He’s not really that hungry; mostly what he wants is more sleep, but he should get down to the lab. Jemma’s hand on his arm stops him.

“Fitz, she was just joking.”

“I know. It’s fine. I’m just going to go work.”

“Fitz-”

“It’s fine.” He’s out of the room before they can say anything else.

--------------

“I mean, I just need to be able to curl my hair with it. I don’t really need a setting that can kill a man.”

“He did that to mine, too. I made him change it back,” says Jemma, and Fitz drops the ICER he’d been working with on the table. He doesn’t know if they realize he can hear them, but they look up at the clatter of the gun.

“I’m going to go take a nap, I think,” he says, and Skye frowns.

“Fitz-” she starts, but he shakes his head.

“I’m fine. I just need some sleep. Somebody should come get me in a couple hours, or if someone needs me.” He disappears down the the hallway before either of them can say anything else.

--------------

“Hey, Fitz, have you see my iPod?” Trip asks.

“Uh, yeah. Here,” Fitz says, fishing it out of his pocket and handing it to the other man, who looks at suspiciously.

“Okay, but what does it do now?”

Fitz feels better after four hours of sleep, but he’s still sort of fuzzy, “What do you mean?”

“Well, I’m assuming you stole this out of my room at some point to make some sort of deadly modification. What is it? Does it shock anybody who touches it when I say some magic word? Leopold, did you turn my iPod into a gun?”

It takes a few seconds to process this, “I’m sorry. Are you accusing me of stealing your iPod?”

“Listen, man, it’s not a big deal. Just tell me what you did to my iPod so I don’t end up hurting myself, since I’m assuming that wasn’t your intention.”

“Well, you’re doing a lot of assuming,” Fitz says, trying to keep his temper in check, “I found it on the kitchen counter and grabbed it because I know Skye likes to steal it and change the songs. But it’s nice to know that you think I’d steal it from you.” He doesn’t realize that his volume is increasing until Jemma and Skye enter the lounge, looking concerned.

“Why is there yelling?” Skye asks, and Fitz laughs harshly.

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s that Trip here assumed that I stole his iPod

“Fitz, I wasn’t trying to say anything. I was just joking.”

“Yeah, well, there’s been quite a lot of that going on today, hasn’t there?” he says, and he’s exhausted and he really shouldn’t say anything because it’s likely to that he’ll say something he’ll regret, but he can’t help himself.

“Fitz, we know you’re worried about us, and we understand-”

“This is my job!” and he’s shouting now without really realizing he’s started, “You’re the ones who jump out of planes and in front of bullets and I can’t do anything out there to save you because the last time I tried that I ended up with bloody brain damage and you treat me like I’m made of glass! So the best thing I can do is build things that you can use to protect yourselves and if I could do that without you all commenting on it, it would be bloody fantastic! I’m an engineer and this is my job!”

He’s exhausted and shaking and the others are all looking at him with wide eyes. Drawing in a deep breath, Fitz tries to calm down. It only kind of works, and he knows he needs to remove himself from the situation before he makes it worse.

“Ignore me,” he says, shaking his head and tugging on his hair with one hand, “I’m tired. Ignore me.”

“Fitz-” Jemma starts, and for the third time that day he cuts someone off after they’ve said his name.

“Please, just forget I said anything, okay? I’m tired. I’m going to go lie down. Come get me if there’s an emergency or something.” He thinks that maybe they say something to try to stop him, but he doesn’t hear.

His hands are still shaking when he reaches his bunk and it takes him three tries to get the door open. Inside, Fitz collapses on his bed, scrubbing at his face with his hands, trying to get his breathing under control.

It was bad enough, when it was just Jemma, when he only had to be terrified on the rare occasions when she ended up in the field. But now there’s Skye and Trip, too, and everything has changed and he can’t stop himself from worrying about all of them. He should have taken the day off probably, told Coulson he wasn’t feeling well and slept in, but he knows he wouldn’t have been able to sleep, even as exhausted as he is. He’d trade a thousand nights of sleep for a guarantee that they would be safe.

There’s a knock on his door, and he wants to ignore it, pretend he’s already asleep, face what he said to the three of them tomorrow, but he’d recognize Jemma’s knock anywhere and he knows she won’t leave until he answers. All three of them are waiting there when he opens the door.

He wants to apologize. He wants to explain. He wants to try and tell them how tired he is and how sorry he is and how desperate he is to make sure they’re alright, even if he doesn't know what words to use. But he doesn’t get a chance to say anything, because Trip’s hands, large and warm, are at his jaw and his lips are pressed against Fitz’s. One of them, Skye he assumes, has tucked her fingers through his back belt loops and is tugging him towards the bed as Trip steps forward into him.

When his knees connect with the edge of the bed, Trip finally pulls back with a smile. “We didn’t get a chance to respond,” he says, “We wanted one.”

“Oh,” Fitz replies, dazed, and Trip’s smile widens before he kisses him again.

They arrange themselves on the bed quickly. Skye curls up against the wall, leaning over him to catch Fitz’s bottom lip between her teeth before kissing him softly when he lies down on his back in the middle, letting Trip stretch out along his other side. Jemma carefully climbs over so she can straddle him, and Fitz can’t hold back a soft groan, even as he smiles up at her.

“Hi.”

“Hello,” she replies, smiling back.

“You two are adorable,” Skye remarks from where she’s burrowed her face in against his shoulder. Fitz can feel Jemma still smiling when she leans down to kiss him, one hand on either side of his head as her tongue traces his lower lip; she pulls away only enough to lean her forehead against his.

“You know we love you,” she says, and he nods, “And we know you love us,” he nods again, more emphatically this time, “And we know you’re just trying to protect us because you love us and we know that you’re not very good at words-”

“You have tried to flirt with all of us, after all,” inserts Skye, and Trip laughs.

“And we know that we’re sometimes too overprotective of you because of what happened, and we’re going to try and get better at that. We’re all going to try and get better together.”

“That means no more hiding weapons in ridiculous places around the Bus,” Skye says.

“And no turning household objects into deadly weapons without permission,” Trip adds, and Jemma nods.

"And no more week long sessions in the lab with no sleep,” she says, and Fitz attempts to protest that it’s only been three days, but she’s kissing him again, one hand slipping into his hair while the other moves to work on the buttons of his shirt. Trip’s hands join hers, while Skye seems determined to press her lips against the entire left side of his neck and face.

Trip nuzzles at the other side of his face, pressing his lips softly against the shell of his ear. “We want to take care of you, too, alright?” he asks, and Fitz nods, meaning Trip’s grin, which hasn’t faltered since he kissed him in the doorway, grows once more, “Good.”

Fitz sits up enough to let Jemma pull his shirt off, tugging at her sweater while he’s up, feeling Trip trying to shimmy out of his jeans without getting up. And because it’s Trip he manages it somehow and Fitz thinks that it’s distinctly unfair how good he looks in boxers and an old t-shirt, but he’s distracted because he’s kissing him again and Jemma is working open the buttons of her own shirt. Skye grabs his shirt from where Jemma had left it, and the other three watch as she makes quick work of her own shirt and jeans before pulling his on.

“What?” she asks as she fastens a couple of the buttons, raising her eyebrows at them.

“Well, that was frankly quite lewd,” responds Trip, and Skye rolls her eyes.

“Shut up and kiss Fitz again.”

“That’s an excellent plan.”

Fitz is dizzy and breathless. They’ve been doing this whole together thing for a while now, but it’s never been quite like this; for one thing, they’ve never all concentrated on him at once before, but there’s something else too. It’s electric and warm and sweet, like someone has taken lightning and added sugar, and he turns to kiss Skye before he can write anymore bad poetry in his head about this moment.

As much as he’s enjoying himself, he really is exhausted, and he blushes when he barely stifles a yawn against Jemma’s lips. He’s just glad it was her, since the other two would have never let him live it down. She smiles at him when he apologizes, shaking her head.

“It’s alright. There’ll be time for all of that later,” and God, what a promise that is, especially as her fingers slip beneath the waist of his jeans to fiddle with the button. He can’t possibly stop himself from bucking up against her just slightly at that, and she smirks, “You want these on or off?”

“On,” he manages, and he wants to sit up and press himself against all the magnificent pale skin she’s showing off as she straddles him, but Jemma comes to him, tucking herself neatly under his chin.

“I’m good here?” she asks, and he nods. The beds on the Bus aren’t really big enough for four grown people to sleep in together except in a sort of pile. While Fitz is pretty sure May and Coulson are aware of what’s going on, he thinks that flat out asking if he can modify the bunks to be slightly larger might be a little too much. Besides, though they haven’t actually ever discussed it, he thinks they all kind of like the system they’ve got going on now.

Jemma presses a kiss against his jaw, one of her favorite things to do, and mutters I love you against his skin, and he murmurs it back. Skye and Trip join in and for a moment the tiny bunk seems to echo with the statement, and Fitz smiles, takes a deep breath.

He can feel Jemma’s breathing even out, her chest rising and falling against his, and Trip has buried his head in against his neck, and he wants to drop off as well, but his mind is still racing, hands twitching with nervous energy. Skye huffs against his shoulder.

“Leopold Fitz, please shut your gigantic genius brain off for like four hours and go the fuck to sleep,” she says, and pushes herself up slightly to press her lips against his, “We’re all right here. Okay? You have to sleep. If you don’t, you’re going to accidentally cut off your hand in the lab or something and I’m going to laugh at you.” She reaches out and tangles her fingers through his, turning into his side more. He sighs and nods, pressing a kiss against her forehead.

It takes a few minutes, but he concentrates on Jemma’s breathing and the warmth of Trip’s forehead resting against his neck and the feeling of Skye’s fingers between his, and he can finally feel his brain slowing down. Tomorrow and the next day and probably for the rest of his life, he’s going to worry about these three people and do everything in his power to make sure they’re alright.

But for right now, he concentrates on their warmth and their weight and drifts off to sleep.

Notes: Why do you guys ever let me write anything ever? But yeah, ok, this is here now. This is a thing that happened. I've never written anything quite like this before, but I tried my best. I really did. This is really my best. I know that's disappointing, but it's what we have. Life is hard.