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i. North and South
Jemma was the one who organized the book club, of course. Because Jemma was the organizing type and the only one with the planning skills to choose the books, arrange for the snacks, set the meeting times, and alternately coax and bully everyone into taking their turn to host it. And because she wanted to be the one to choose the books.
“It says here that you have a discount for book clubs,” she said to the girl working the register. “How many people have to be in it to qualify? Because I've got five other people so far but I might be able to talk more of them into it if I tell them that it's the only way to get a discount.”
“I think it's eight, but I'm sure six would be just fine,” the girl said, twisting her mass of brown curls up into a bun with one hand and scribbling down notes with the other. “No one'll mind if we bend the rules just the tiniest bit.”
“Can you say that a bit louder, Granger?” a pale-faced boy called from the other end of the shop. “No one's going to believe me that you broke a rule unless I've got audible proof.”
“So what books were you thinking of?” the girl asked Jemma, smiling sweetly across the register at her. Then she jabbed her pencil ferociously through her bun and flipped him off, still smiling.
“I can find more people,” Jemma blurted out. “Just give me a few more minutes.” The girl looked like she was about to hurl the collected works of George R.R. Martin at her coworker's head if someone didn't intervene, so Jemma pulled her phone out of her pocket and did what she always did in a crisis: she texted Daisy.
Need at least two more people for book club, she typed. Does Trip have any friends?
Ofc, Daisy wrote back. Not as hot as him but at least three of them owe me major favors. I'll tell them that they'll be expected at your apartment the week after next. What's the book?
North and South. It had been one of Jemma's favorites ever since high school, when she'd discovered a battered copy lurking in the one pound bin of her favorite used bookstore and promptly spent the next three days devouring it.
Shit, Jemma, she replied. That's like five hundred pages. Jemma didn't bother to text back. Five hundred pages in two weeks was only thirty five pages a day. Perfectly doable.
However, two weeks later, when the book club assembled for their very first meeting in Jemma's living room, she realized with a sinking feeling that some people were simply not capable of managing their reading time. Bobbi and May had both read the entire book, of course, and Andrew had managed to make his way through most of it, interrupted only by a minor crisis with one of his patients. Daisy...well, Daisy and Trip had performed a very entertaining brief re-enactment of the first two hundred pages together and Trip had brought his signature lasagna, so Jemma was willing to forgive him. It had been a miracle that Trip's friend Hunter had even made it and then another miracle that he hadn't walked right out when he saw Bobbi sitting there. (There was a story there, Jemma knew, one that involved a few ill-considered tequila shots, Las Vegas, and an elderly Elvis impersonator.) Trip's other friend Mack actually had a few well-considered points about mill machinery and he'd even offered to change her lightbulb when it burned out. But Jemma had absolutely no forgiveness in her for Doctor Leopold Fitz. Daisy had dropped unsubtle hints about him for an entire month after Jemma's latest breakup and so eventually she'd caved and done some research. Leo Fitz was an extremely well respected engineer, with several innovative patents to his name and an IQ almost (but not quite) as high as Jemma's, and according to Jemma's math, he should have been more than capable of finishing the book before their first meeting. Yet instead, he had been slumped on the corner of her couch for the entire morning, slowly making his way through all the muffins and keeping his mouth firmly shut except to shove more food in it.
“Tell us, Leo, what did you think of the book?” she chirped, taking a seat across from him and leaning forward to fix him with a polite glare.
“It's, uh, it's Fitz actually,” he mumbled and stuffed another piece of muffin into his mouth.
“Fitz, then. What did you think?” Jemma waited for an answer and then, when he shoved two entire muffins into his mouth, just kept on talking. “It's one of my favorite books actually. I always think it's such a wonderful love story: two people who come from completely different worlds but who have something similar right down at their core.” And it didn't hurt, of course, when one of them looked like Richard Armitage had in the latest BBC adaptation. “The social critique's marvelous too,” she added quickly when he didn't contribute anything. Perhaps love stories weren't quite up his alley. All right then. One last conversational sally before she admitted defeat.
“It's all right if you didn't finish it,” she said politely. “But there's some lovely writing in even the very first chapters.”
“I, er...I didn't really read it,” he said around another mouthful of food and returned to examining her carpet.
Jemma (very nicely, she thought) refrained from pointing out that the entire purpose of a book club was to read the books and retreated back to the relative safety of the platter of bagels.
ii. In the Woods
Less than a month into her reign, Jemma was informed that, in fact, their book club was a democracy and that, much to her dismay, each person would get a chance to select the book for the month. (She couldn't help being filled with dread at the thought of what Hunter might pick when his turn came.) Eventually, however, she had to admit that this would probably increase their retention rate, especially since she'd been deliberating between Bleak House and Nicholas Nickleby for the next month.
“Jem, I love you but nobody loves Dickens,” Daisy pointed out during one of their coffee dates. “Everyone has traumatic flashbacks of being forced to read Great Expectations or whatever during high school.”
“Trip told me that he loves Dickens,” Jemma said defensively and took another sip of tea.
“Well, Trip's pretty much a perfect human being so he doesn't count.” Daisy grinned down into her coffee, pink blush creeping up her neck. Her best friend hadn't had the best dating history—hacktivist who sold out to Microsoft for a six figure salary, the certified asshole who'd sold endangered octopuses on the black market, the doctor who claimed their connection was electric when it was anything but—and Jemma couldn't help feeling happy for her friend every time she saw Daisy's face light up when she talked about Trip. “I, on the other hand, once made a really elaborate power point presentation about the first line of A Tale of Two Cities because I hadn't read anything past the first line.”
“You may be right about the Dickens,” Jemma admitted. “Bobbi did give me a bit of an odd look when I mentioned Bleak House the other week. And at least I know that May will pick a good book.”
May had gotten to choose the next book both because everyone trusted her taste and the fact that if someone hadn't, they would have been too scared to say so to her face. For almost as long as Jemma had known the older woman, she'd had a paperback murder mystery lurking at the bottom of her purse or lying on her kitchen table, covers uncreased and a bookmark neatly marking her place. May had an almost hundred percent success rate of predicting who the murderer was. (They didn't talk about the one book that had broken her streak.)
“It's called In the Woods,” Jemma said to the girl at the bookstore. This time, she had a button pinned to her chest that read “Ask Me about Romance!” and an expression that suggested customers should do anything but. “I think it's a mystery novel? Change of genre for the month.”
“It's a great choice,” the girl said, beaming across the counter. “I read it last month and it was fabulous. I actually even brought it along with me to a New Year's Eve party because I couldn't stop reading.”
“Right, because nothing says the holidays like a bunch of gruesome murders,” her coworker, the same blond boy from last month, grumbled from the other register.
“It's better than reading Infinite Jest because you think you can pick up girls that way and getting less than fifty pages in,” the girl snapped, then turned to Jemma. “Nine copies again?”
“Yes, thank you. I'll tell everyone when they're ready to pick up.” Really, she'd end up sending at least three pointed emails reminding everyone to pick their books up but Jemma drew the line at hand-delivering books to everyone's houses.
“Are you sure you don't want to ask either of us about romance?” the boy asked, propping both elbows on the counter. “We've got buttons and everything.”
“Well, it's not like anybody wants to ask you about romance, Malfoy,” the girl said through gritted teeth. They were still squabbling when Jemma left the store, their voices carrying all the way out into the parking lot. It was in close competition with the tea lattes and cream-filled donuts they served in the bookstore's cafe and the cozy reading corner tucked into the back of the store, but watching them argue might have been one of Jemma's favorite things about her chosen independent bookstore.
Jemma was nearly shocked when she sped through the book May had chosen in less than two days. (Murder mysteries had never been quite her style, maybe because she had to resist the urge to write and tell the author all about it every time she found something that was scientifically inaccurate.) She was more than nearly shocked when Leo Fitz appeared to have read at least some of it.
“I, ah, I r-really liked it,” he managed when it was his turn to talk. Admittedly, he promptly returned to spreading chive cream cheese back on his bagel but it was an opinion of four whole words and Jemma counted that as progress.
“You did?” Jemma blurted out before she could help herself. Maybe he'd just been afraid of what would happen if May found out that he hadn't read the book. Some day she'd have to get lessons from May on how to do that death stare—she just ended up blinking whenever she tried to stare people down.
“I did. Actually,” Fitz added. “Prom—promise.”
“And what did you think of the ending?” she asked, arching one eyebrow at him. They'd spent the past half hour arguing violently about it: Jemma, May, Trip, Andrew and Bobbi were for while Daisy, Mack, and Hunter were against. If Fitz had actually read the book, he'd have to have an opinion of some kind on it.
“Haven't—haven't quite gotten there yet, but I'll let you...let you know when I do?” he offered and actually looked up from his bagel to give her a shy smile. Jemma meant to be properly indignant about it but there was something about the way he smiled, brilliantly blue eyes meeting hers for half a beat as he nervously tapped one hand against his knee, that made her swallow her words back down and reconsider. “My reading pace has been pretty slow lately, afterwards. Sorry about that.”
“It's all right,” Jemma said. Against all the odds she'd previously calculated, Fitz actually appeared to be trying. He was trying to keep to keep eye contact with her, even as he obviously wanted to look back down at his bagel, and a few minutes later, he even tried to venture a few more hesitant contributions about the book. Admittedly, one of those observations was about the cover design but that was just as valid a discussion point as Hunter's speculation as to whether the main character had been abducted by aliens as a child. He was probably shy, Jemma realized, and not the best at overcoming it, judging from the stammer. Daisy had told her after that first meeting that she'd had to badger Fitz into even thinking about joining the book club and Jemma had realized that she probably should have been a bit more...gentle. Not everyone loved Victorian novels the way she did, even if she'd theorized that the world would be a much better place if they did.
“I mean,” she added after the rest of the group had lapsed into another conversational tangent, leaning over to talk quietly to him in the hope of making him smile again. It had twisted his face into a completely new shape when he'd smiled the first time and she'd just wondered if a second smile would produce another Fitz altogether. “Have you seen Hunter trying to remember the names of the characters? I'm pretty sure he keeps on calling them all Niall and Liam just to annoy May.”
“Nah, he just doesn't remember any of them,” Fitz said. “Too hung—hung--”
“Hungover?”
“Yeah. Someone bet him that he couldn't do six shots of tequila. Bad idea.” Fitz didn't say anything after that but he gave Jemma another shy smile, one that smoothed out all the things lurking in his eyes, and she thought that just maybe they could reach some kind of detente. As long as he read at least half the book before they had a meeting.
A week and a half later, she got an email from him: I thought the ending was brilliant. Some things just can't be explained.
iii. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
It wasn't until March that Jemma found out what Fitz had meant by “afterwards”. She'd been having lunch at Daisy and Trip's apartment, when Trip suddenly checked his phone and vaulted out of his chair. “Have to take Fitz to physical therapy. Hunter bailed,” he explained and leaned down to give Daisy a quick good-bye kiss. “I'll see you later, Jemma?”
“Sure,” she said and turned to Daisy the moment that Trip left the apartment. “Fitz is in physical therapy?”
“For his injuries from the accident. It was tough going for a while, but now he's doing much better,” Daisy said. “The other day, he fixed our washing machine in three minutes flat and he even looked smug about it.”
“The accident?”
“It, um, he doesn't really like talking about it.” Daisy shifted in her seat, suddenly looking guilty. “I probably shouldn't have mentioned it to you. It was pretty severe at the time—he had a lot of trouble talking after he first woke up and he still has those tremors in his hand and really bad headaches—but he's much better now and he...Fitz just really doesn't want to be the guy whose asshole dive guide screwed up and screwed him over. Look, he should have been the one to tell you. If he ever wants to tell you. Just don't let him know that you know, okay?”
In response, Jemma just put her head down on the table with a resounding thump. She'd been an idiot. Of course he wouldn't have been able to get all the way through North and South if he'd been recovering from hypoxia and unable to concentrate, of course he'd stumbled over his words, and of course she'd assumed the worst that first month. “Daisy,” she moaned. “Why didn't you tell me from the beginning? I would've been nicer to him about not reading the book.”
“Jemma, you were nice to him. Trust me, Fitz isn't mad. Especially not at you,” Daisy added.
“I didn't get chocolate chip muffins for last month's meeting because I remembered him eating all of them and I was being petty,” Jemma confessed. “And I kept on trying to get him to talk about the book and I thought he hadn't read the second book and I—I was awful.”
“You couldn't be awful if you tried,” Daisy said firmly. “And those chocolate chip muffins were mediocre anyway. Get apple streusel next time.”
“I have to apologize. Sneakily apologize. I can do subtle apologies!” Jemma protested when Daisy sent her a doubtful look. “He won't even know that I apologized but I'll know and I'll feel much better about the whole thing.”
“Isn't the whole point of an apology for the other person to know that they're being apologized to? Just...Just say you're sorry if he ever tells you. And if it feels like the right moment,” Daisy said sternly. “No more classic Jemma Simmons apology with fruit basket.”
“That was one time! In college!” The very angry roommate she'd walked in on had needed some fruit to improve her disposition anyway.
Later, Jemma reasoned that Daisy had said absolutely nothing about pastry baskets.
“I asked you not to tell her,” Fitz said and refused to look up from his page of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Andrew's choice this time, at least it was short.) The words kept blurring together into strings of gibberish and he could feel another headache building in his temples, but the book club was meeting again tomorrow and he was determined to finish the book this time. Just to see how Jemma would react if he did.
“I didn't mean to tell her. I really am sorry, Fitz,” Daisy said and briefly rested her hand on top of his, squeezing tight. “It won't make a difference in the long run. Jemma goes a little crazy at first, but then she'll calm down. You know how she is.”
“No, I don't actually. Because every time I try to talk to her, I sound like the village idiot.” Fitz turned the page with an audible snap. Daisy had been telling him about her friend Jemma since before Fitz's accident, going into nauseating detail about how she was pretty and smart and British and how maybe it'd be great if she and Trip and Fitz and Daisy could all go out together. Friends hanging out was how Daisy put it. A blatant attempt to set him up was how he put it. And, after he'd read one of her scientific papers on his lunch break, he'd been ready to give in. Until the accident. Because Jemma Simmons was brilliant on paper and even more brilliant (and beautiful) in person, and that...that was something that Before-Fitz might have attempted after at least two glasses of whiskey and a lengthy pep talk from Daisy. After Fitz didn't even stand a chance.
“You said something last month. I heard you.”
“Not a real something. I just...I just don't want her to feel sorry for me, okay?” Fitz scowled. “I have enough people doing that already.”
“Yeah? Well I, for one, do not feel sorry for you at all,” Daisy told him. “Do you want to know why? Because I counted at least three different kinds of scones in that basket and I'm totally stealing one.” Fitz laughed in spite of himself. He'd first met Daisy when his company had hired her as an outside IT consultant and they'd become good friends after he'd accidentally flown a drone into her workstation and bought her some spectacularly greasy pizza as an apology. And during the worst days after his accident, when he'd spent most of his time lying on the couch and watching shitty reality TV, she'd marched into his apartment and made him go outside. At first she'd just driven him to physical therapy, flicking through radio station after radio station until she found the BBC, but then she'd started insisting that they go out to lunch with Trip afterward. Daisy had dragged him back into the real world kicking and screaming and most of the time, he had to admit that she gave surprisingly decent advice. Just not about Jemma.
“I don't think she feels sorry for you,” Daisy added. “I think she likes you. Just a little, in spite of herself.”
“She's out of my league. Out of my league like she's making twenty million a year in the Premier League while I'm kicking a ball around on the green after lunch at the pub with my mates and getting it stolen before I go three feet,” Fitz said. It'd be enough if he managed to say more than a few sentences to her this time.
“I don't know,” Daisy shrugged. “The pastry basket never lies.”
“Th-thank you,” he said to Jemma at the next meeting, hovering awkwardly over the bagels. “For the pastries. They were delicious.”
“Oh, you're welcome! It's one of my favorite bakeries,” Jemma said and beamed up at him. “Right near the bookstore where I order all the books for the club, actually. I should pick up some pies for next month's meetings, if I can figure out how they'd survive the trip.”
“I could help with that,” he blurted out. “If that's all right. I have, ah, I have drones. That are very good at carrying things.”
“Did you design them yourself?”
“Mostly.” Fitz shrugged and tried hard not to blush. “The DWARFS. There's seven of them, just like in Snow White, but two should be enough to carry the pies. They've all got different, ah, different specialties. Like one has a particularly good camera and one has the mike and one smells things...”
Smelling things didn't sound nearly as good out loud as it had when he'd first come up with the idea. Really, it was a highly developed olfactory sensor but Fitz didn't trust his head to put all the right technical terms together. It could come up with the words, sure, but it couldn't combine them in a way that made sense, especially not when the morning light seemed intent on making Jemma Simmons glow that way. When he was getting ready to go to the book club that morning, he'd told himself that she wasn't really that pretty. Just for the sake of his own sanity. He'd been wrong.
“I think that's brilliant. Maybe you'd let me look at your designs sometime?” she asked shyly.
Fitz nearly swallowed his own tongue trying to answer.
iv. The Bloody Chamber
“I think I might have over-ordered,” Jemma said nervously, biting her bottom lip. “There's no way we'll be able to eat all of this.”
“Nah. Hunter and Mack and I will eat anything that's left over,” Fitz said and shifted the tablet controlling the drones slightly to the right. They'd have to duck down in order to get the pies inside Jemma's car but he'd already calculated the angles. “We had a mozzarella stick eating contest once. Trip was the judge, because he 'wasn't putting that kind of junk in the temple'.”
“And who won?”
“I did, of course. There's a trophy and everything. Engraved mozzarella stick,” Fitz told her proudly.
“There is not!”
“Of course there is! Look, next month I'll drag it out of my apartment and bring it to the book club to show you,” Fitz promised and when she laughed, he felt an unfamiliar warmth spread throughout his chest. Talking to Jemma had somehow gotten easier and easier, as they planned out the great Pie Pickup of April 2015. She had a way of knowing just what the word he'd forgotten was and even when she didn't, she was willing to wait however long it took for him to find it, head tipped to one side and brown eyes wide and patient. His sentences still got turned around in his head but it didn't seem quite as terrible when it was Jemma listening to them. She probably only did it because she felt sorry for him, Fitz knew, but still...when it came to her, he'd take whatever he could get.
“It'll be a nice distraction from Hunter and Bobbi arguing about the books. I can't wait to see what he has to say about this one, especially since she picked it,” Jemma groaned.
“I really liked it. Not my usual kind of thing, but it turned out to be bloody brilliant. Bloody and brilliant, I mean.” This month they'd read a whole collection of feminist fairy tale retellings and when he'd gone to pick up his copy from the shop, he'd been treated to a half-hour long ramble on its virtues from the girl working behind the counter. He'd practically been required to like it after that. “I finished the whole thing this time, too, so no need for any special treatment.”
“Special treatment?”
“I know that Daisy told you about the accident, Jemma. You don't have to be nice to me because of it. Not that you're not nice all on your own,” Fitz said. “That's not what I meant. You just...you don't have to make any exceptions for me, okay?”
“I'm not. I apologized because I behaved poorly,” Jemma said, propping one hand on her hip and stubbornly sticking her chin out. “And admittedly I wouldn't have behaved poorly if I had known the facts about your accident, but then I might have anyway. So I think that the apology is still valid.”
“But I should have read the book all the way through, shouldn't I?” Fitz persisted.
“Well, yes. But you're making it up to me now, with your marvelous pie-carrying drones.” Jemma shot him a bright smile as the drones gently deposited their stack of pastry boxes in the back of her car. “And if you really think you need to do anything else, you can have them deliver all the books for the month too,” she added with a laugh.
She probably hadn't meant it seriously, Fitz reflected later. But just because she hadn't really meant it, didn't mean that she wouldn't appreciate the gesture.
v. The Secret History
“They've already been picked up?” Jemma blinked at the bookstore clerk, confused. It was the boy this time, lounging on a stool like an oversize cat and chomping on a bright red apple. “Are you sure someone didn't steal them? I don't think that anyone would want to steal nine copies of The Secret History.”
“It was a bloke. Said he was here to pick up the books for Jemma Simmons' book club for delivery. He had a bunch of little machines with him,” the boy shrugged. “Granger, do you remember what the machines were called?”
“They were drones,” the girl called from where she was perched at the top of a ladder, shelving books. “He said that several times. Were you not listening?”
“Of course I wasn't listening. That's what you do.” The boy winked up at her and much to Jemma's surprise, the girl smiled for just a second before she remembered herself, rolling her eyes up at the ceiling and asking him if his parents had paid someone to do his listening too.
Fitz must have been the one who'd picked the books up and then used the drones to deliver them, just like she'd joked. But why? She sent a quick message to Daisy: Hey, did Fitz drop off the book for this month?
Yup, one of the drones was hovering on my doorstep this morning. Kind of cute, him trying to impress you like that.
Jemma didn't bother responding. She and Fitz were barely friends, even if conversation came much more easily between the two of them now and even if he'd chosen the seat next to her at the last two book club meetings, and if they were barely friends, they certainly couldn't be anything else. There was an order to things in Jemma's world, a logical series of steps that progressed one after the other to an inevitable conclusion. With Fitz, it would be friendship. Eventually. Hopefully. And it wasn't as if she'd want there to be anything else, no matter how many enormous hints Trip and Daisy dropped. Jemma had temporarily sworn off relationships after her last disastrous one and she couldn't help wondering whether it would be better to make it a permanent decision. Was the end result, the hand woven through hers and the Sunday mornings tangled up on the couch and the stamp of someone else lips on hers like a claim (though she was never sure if it was him claiming her or her claiming him), really worth it? Because getting to the point where she could curl up against someone else when she was tired and know that they wouldn't push her away required a hundred different tiny negotiations and she'd lost all her skill at bartering.
They'd be friends, she decided. She'd win Fitz completely over, grumpiness and all, until he forgot that he even stuttered trying to talk to her. Jemma pulled her phone out again and sent another text, this time to Fitz: Thanks for picking up the books. Maybe I could buy you lunch as a thank you?
Two days later, she was sitting opposite him at her favorite sandwich place, watching him fit more French fries into his mouth than she'd thought was humanly possible. “Now, I see how you won that mozzarella stick eating contest,” she said. “You probably have them on a regular basis.”
“Only when Hunter gets drunk. We used to have them much more in college—once, it was fried pickles.” Fitz winced.
“So that's how you know Trip?”
“Yup, he lived down the hall from me freshman year. He got a single room because he was such a big basketball star but he let me sleep on his floor whenever my roommate sexiled me. I mean, then he tried to get me to drink these kale smoothies he was always making.” Fitz pulled an awful face, wrinkling up his nose and scrunching his mouth into a sideways line. She thought it was vaguely adorable.
“Kale smoothies are...well, not exactly delicious. But they're very good for you!” Jemma protested and tried to muffle a giggle. “Have you ever actually had one?”
“No, thanks to a lot of, ah, of contingency plans. Very clever ones,” Fitz said, sounding very pleased with himself.
“You think you're very clever, then?”
“I know I am. I've got a pHd and everything to prove it.”
“I've got two.” Jemma countered. And unlike nearly every other male scientist she'd ever met, Fitz didn't start an elaborate game of one-upmanship. Instead, he asked her about the research she'd done to get her doctorate and before she knew it, an hour had gone by, she had the pages of her research notebook spread across the table, and Fitz had started sketching designs on napkins for a new kind of tranquilizing weapon. She'd been doing research on neurotoxins and he'd been working on developing non-lethal weapons, and Jemma could only wonder why she hadn't thought to look for an engineer before.
“We had two halves of the same problem. Imagine how much we could have done if we'd found each other earlier.”
“I don't know,” Fitz said slowly, looking up from where he'd surrounded himself with sketches. “I think that sometimes, things like this happen exactly when they need to.”
vi. The Golden Compass
Fitz was going to woo Jemma Simmons. Because she was smart and kind and beautiful and she had a way of making everything else seem just a little brighter, because she was a million little things that seemed to add up to the inevitable: he had to try or he'd probably end up regretting it for the rest of his life. He'd only decided it in the past half hour, four drinks in to a night out with Hunter, Trip, and Mack, but he was still going to woo her like no one had ever been wooed before. It would be a fest...a festival of wooing.
“I know you're going to,” Mack said patiently. “You already told us that five minutes ago.”
“I, er, I'm going to make her scones,” Fitz announced triumphantly. “She told me that she missed them so I'm going to make her scones. An' muffins. An' everything. I'm going to be a master baker.”
“You know how to bake?” Mack asked, giving Fitz a doubtful look over his beer. Well. The only reason Mack doubted Fitz was the fact that he was the only one still sober and maybe that he'd seen Fitz blow up two microwaves trying to make ramen in college. (In his defense, one of the guys down the hall had blown up three.)
“How hard can it be?”
Very, as it turned out. The next morning, Fitz had one batch of scones that crumbled apart the moment he touched them, a bowl of lumpy dough, and a puzzled-looking Trip. “I guess the almond milk didn't work out, then,” Trip frowned down at the dough then heaved a huge sigh. “All right, man, let's go buy some whole milk. I'm only doing this for you.”
“We're running low on white sugar too. Might want to get some more.” Trip's counters were coated with sugar and flour, since Fitz kept on dropping it every time his hand shook. But Trip had let him measure out each cup himself, sipping his coffee and waiting for Fitz to ask for help if he wanted it.
“Don't push your luck. Daisy's already been trying to talk me into letting her keep Goldfish here. But you know,” Trip said thoughtfully. “I think the third batch might actually be the right one.”
They weren't. Neither was the fourth or the fifth or the sixth. But, after a new recipe and some careful (technically legal) tinkering with Trip's oven, the seventh batch was everything a scone should be. Jemma said so herself when he brought the eighth batch to the next book club meeting.
He'd prepared properly this time: he'd read the book all the way through and even read the rest of the trilogy, he'd quizzed Daisy on Jemma's favorite snacks and bought some fruit to go along with the scones, and he'd allowed Trip and Daisy to bundle him into a sky blue shirt they'd unearthed from the back of his closet. However, when Jemma beamed at him after he made a particularly intelligent point about Pullman's views on religion and ate three of the scones he'd brought, Fitz realized he hadn't been prepared at all. Being her favorite person, if only for a moment, was the most intoxicating thing he'd ever felt.
vii. Pride and Prejudice
“Do you think Fitz is all right?” Jemma asked Bobbi. “I mean, he picked Pride and Prejudice when it was his turn for the month and I know he doesn't like Austen.”
“You could just ask him yourself,” Bobbi suggested. “You see him more than anyone else does.”
“Only once a week for lunch,” Jemma said absently. “Sometimes we get a drink after work if one of us have a new idea. And we get brunch on Sundays, but that's only because he wouldn't get up otherwise and because he promised to go with me to the animal shelter this weekend.”
“Now you're getting a pet together?”
“He just promised to help me find a dog that's small enough for my apartment,” Jemma explained. Fitz hadn't even explicitly promised to go with her—they'd both just assumed that he would. Somehow, he'd begun to settle himself into the spaces of her life, fitting neatly into every vacant corner, even the ones she hadn't known existed. He was there whenever she had a new idea she wanted to pick apart, cup of take-away tea in one hand and notebook in the other, or when her new sofa was delivered in twelve separate pieces, or when she wanted to order takeout and couldn't meet the minimum on her own. It was easy between the two of them now, a simple give and take that felt as natural as waking up in the mornings. And if there was an occasional strange feeling in her stomach, or a flush of warmth that went through her every time her hand accidentally brushed against his, or the thought that maybe with someone like Fitz, the negotiation wouldn't have to be a negotiation at all, that could be filed away to understand later. For now, she and Fitz just were.
And for now, when Fitz mentioned that he thought Mr. Darcy wasn't really that dark and brooding at all, just a slightly awkward bloke trying to figure out a way to talk to the girl he liked, Jemma just nodded and understood what he was trying to say. And for now, when he wound his hand through hers halfway through walking to the animal shelter, she held on tight and when he insisted on paying for breakfast, she let him and stole another forkful of his pancakes. And for now, when he stumbled his way through half a dinner invitation, she said yes before he could finish explaining what he meant by somewhere nice.
She already knew what he meant because somewhere along the way, they'd become Fitz and Jemma and because somewhere along the way, line by line and page by page, they'd puzzle out the best way to a happy ending.