Chapter Text
The new year began with Leopold Fitz staring blearily up at the ceiling and wondering when he’d become the kind of person to make poor life choices. He was certifiably brilliant, after all – had a PhD before he’d even entered his second decade to prove it and everything. Yet for some reason the night before he’d decided to let his friends convince him to try Goldschlägger, even though he knew he had a work function to go to the next day. Currently, he was trying to take stock of his limbs, but that was proving rather difficult as he couldn’t remember how many limbs he was supposed to have.
Technically, it was less of a work function and more of a turkey curry buffet arranged by the Director of SHIELD, his gainful place of employment. But Fitz’s supervisor had made it abundantly clear that SHIELD’s London science division needed new funding, and if Fitz didn’t help them get said funding by sucking up to the director then he would be out on his arse looking for new gainful employment. It didn’t help that his supervisor was as much of an idiot as Fitz was a genius, which meant that they had a somewhat fraught relationship.
Groaning the whole way, Fitz turned over to squint at the light-up TARDIS clock that decorated his bedside table. If he managed to force himself into the shower now, he might be able to get to the party by five. Assuming that he didn’t throw up between the bed and the toilet.
Although the shower was definitely higher up off the floor than he remembered it being yesterday, he managed to go about his daily routine with only a little bit of falling over in between. As he shrugged on his nicest jacket – a navy woolen peacoat his mum had given him for his birthday – something bright red and rectangular fell out of the pocket. His fingers curled around the spine of what was evidently a diary, and as he straightened vague memories from the night before spun into his head. Skye, his best friend and a former pop star, had been given the thing by a fan as they’d darted in through the last club’s VIP ropes, with Hunter and Trip ducking after them. Insistent that she would never use the thing, she’d shoved it into Fitz’s pocket, and he’d completely forgotten about it until now.
At the time, Hunter (who had been long since three sheets to the wind by that point) had mocked the idea of anyone keeping a diary anymore. (“That’s what bloody Twitter’s for, innit? So’s everyone can see what you’re thinkin’.”) But now, standing in his tiny, one-bedroom flat, hung-over beyond what he could ever remember experiencing before, Fitz thought that the idea didn’t sound too bad. Much as he’d never admit it to anyone else, he’d felt like he was at a professional and personal plateau: Thanks to his supervisor constantly being up his arse, he never could seem to get the recognition he deserved for his superb work at SHIELD, and having a love life was just about as foreign an idea to him as moving to America. Perhaps what he needed was someplace private to scratch out all of his thoughts, giving him something more concrete to look at and improve upon. After all, that’s what the New Year was for, wasn’t it?
In a fit of self-reflective inspiration, Fitz grabbed a pencil from where it lay on a rejected blueprint and scribbled out the very first entry in his brand new diary.
01 Jan. 2014
Today is shit. Let’s hope the year is not.
With that, he tossed the thing onto the table and sped out the door – he was already twenty minutes late.
------
“Seriously, Trip, now is not the bloody time to set me up –”
“Aw c’mon, man, live a little!”
Fitz frowned up at his taller friend, wondering for the tenth time how the hell he could seem so chipper when he’d been out just as late this morning and had at least as much to drink. “You’re lucky Skye likes you.”
“Or what,” Trip replied blithely, his smile predictably brightening the room as he steered Fitz around a group of giggling comm-ops agents, “you’d kick my ass?”
“Don’t say that like it’s completely impossible,” Fitz muttered, allowing his friend to plant him a few feet away from the end of the buffet table.
The party was being held on the ground floor of the London SHIELD building, a six-story mass of concrete that could probably withstand missile attacks if given enough warning. Each floor circled around a hollow space, which on the bottom floor housed an airy, open lobby that the agency often used for office functions. Coulson, once he’d been handed the directorship from Nick Fury, had taken advantage of its convenience far more than his predecessor.
“You’ll remember why we’re friends once you’re not hung-over.”
“I’ll take that bet.”
Chuckling, Trip leaned over and shifted Fitz slightly so that they were facing the same direction. “Look, just – try to remember to be a human for a few minutes, okay? I think you’re really gonna dig this girl. I met her back when I was working in SHIELD’s DC division. Big up-and-comer in the New York office at the time, smart as hell, and boy – you’ve never seen eyes like hers.”
“Tell me why you’re not dating her, then.”
“I’m not her type.” When Fitz gave Trip a droll look, he just shrugged. “Not smart enough – but you, my man, are more than a match for her. At least, you are when you haven’t been mainlining rat poison –”
“Goldschlägger –”
“Same difference.”
“Christ,” Fitz groaned, rubbing his eyes, “I’m never letting Hunter talk me into doing shot-for-shots again.”
“She’s a biochemist,” Trip continued, ignoring Fitz’s brief fit of self-pity. “You know how you keep saying you wish SHIELD London would hire one worthwhile? Well, she’s one of the best in the world – transferred here over the holidays. Starts next week.”
His horrendous mood and hangover aside, Fitz couldn’t quite squash the interest that the idea of meeting a world-class biochemist peaked. Engineering specialist though he may be, Fitz had always thought many of his groundbreaking ideas might be improved upon with the input of the right expert in those other fields. Of course, the odds of him ever actually meeting someone who met his high expectations for a collaborator were unlikely, to say the least. (Or, even less likely, that he would find someone willing to put up with his own personal brand of finicky genius.) But if Trip respected this scientist, then the least that Fitz could do was meet her.
“You owe me,” Fitz grumbled, acquiescing in as ungracious a way possible.
Laughing, Trip nudged him towards the buffet table, next to which a very tall blonde was speaking to a very short brunette. “For what, setting you up with the girl of your dreams? I don’t think the math’s with you on that one, man.”
“I don’t need maths to be with me, I just need....”
But he trailed off as the brunette turned slightly to grab a spoon off the end of the table and he caught her face in profile. Just his luck – Trip was spot on with thinking that Fitz would like this woman, but he was wrong to think that an introduction was necessary.
Jemma Simmons needed no introduction.
Well, she had the first time he’d met her, but almost a decade had passed since then. When Fitz had shown up at SHIELD Academy, having just turned sixteen and desperate to prove that he belonged with the world’s best and brightest scientific minds, Simmons was the only person whose admiration he actively sought – and never earned. Admittedly, “actively” might be a bit of a stretch, because he spent so much time thinking about what to say that he never got a chance to say it. From the day they’d met to the day they’d graduated, Fitz had always wanted to impress her, and instead the only memory she could possibly have of him was when he’d run naked through the backyard of her Sci-Ops apartment complex.
So he’d been told the next day, anyway. He’d been twenty years old, blind drunk, and dared to either do that or share the specs for his newest invention with the entire group of engineers who had been partying off-campus that night. Suffice it to say that it wasn’t one of Fitz’s proudest moments, even if he couldn’t remember it. (The night’s saving grace was that no one had thought to take a picture, and since Simmons had worked in an entirely different department, he’d never learned what she thought about his drunken adventures.)
That non-memory was also why he turned bright pink at just the sight of Simmons’ face and choked on his next sip of beer. Trip thumped him on the back and gave him a concerned look.
“You alright?”
“Yeah, I just....” Fitz replied hoarsely, clearing his throat. “I know her.”
“There you are!” The boisterous voice of SHIELD’s director sounded from behind them, and, with a somewhat forced smile, Fitz turned around to greet his boss. An eggnog-fueled glint in his eye, Phil Coulson reached out to bring Fitz in for a bear hug, and the engineer wondered how he’d gotten to the point of effectively being adopted by a middle-aged American man.
“Been looking all over for you,” Coulson continued, giving Trip a hearty handshake. “Eat up, eat up, we’re only all together like this once a year.”
“It’s a great shindig, Director,” Trip said, and Fitz squinted as he fought his instinct to point out that the Director ordered get-togethers and parties like this approximately once every three months.
“Shindig, fiesta, fête, you know it,” Coulson answered, before reaching deep into the red velvet bag he had at his side and bringing out a particularly obnoxious Christmas cardigan.
Forest green and patterned with candy-canes, the thing was an eyesore the likes of which Fitz hadn’t seen since he’d spent the holidays at his aunt and uncle’s house half a dozen years ago. For a brief, shining second, he harbored a burst of pity for the poor sod to whom Coulson was going to give the horror. Then he realized that the director was holding it out to him. Standing a good foot taller than their boss, Trip hid a grin behind his beer bottle.
“You kept avoiding me before Christmas, Fitz,” Coulson said amicably, “so sorry my present’s late.”
“Oh,” he said weakly, allowing the neon green disaster to be shoved into his hands, “really, that’s fine, I don’t much wear, ah, jumpers....”
“What?” Coulson gave him an incredulous look. “You wear a sweater every day. If I didn’t see the others in the science division more than you, I’d think cardigans were Turgeon’s preferred uniform.”
“Don’t you have a whole half of your closet dedicated to sweaters?” Trip added helpfully, and Fitz shot him a glare.
“There you go,” Coulson said gleefully, pushing the jumper more firmly in Fitz’s direction. “Put ‘er on!”
Fitz sighed, glanced over to where his supervisor was staring beadily at him from across the room, and began to shrug his arms into the Christmas horror. Maybe if he spent two hours in jumper purgatory, Coulson would agree to give them the extra funding his supervisor had charged him with securing.
“There, you go, it fits perfectly!” Coulson grinned and slung the bag of presumably even uglier cardigans over his shoulder. “Gotta run – ‘bout time I’ll be needed in the kitchen. May gets cranky if I leave her in there alone for too long. Lumpy gravy calls. Merry Christmas, Fitz, Trip!”
The jumper, Fitz thought as he stared glumly at his boss’s retreating back, did actually fit surprisingly well. Apparently Coulson had an eye for clothes sizing. Not that the thing would do much to hide Fitz’s clearly untrimmed scruff, disastrously messy bed hair, or the dark circles beneath his eyes.
Beside him, Trip’s shoulders were shaking as he tried not to laugh, and Fitz gave him a sharp elbow in the side. “Where’s yours, then?"
“On my way here, I saw a homeless woman who had just given birth to a baby in the freezing, January weather,” Trip deadpanned, dropping his bottle into a nearby bin. “And I offered my sweater to keep the kid warm.”
Fitz stared at him. “Seriously?”
“No,” Trip said, giving him a double take as he steered them both towards the buffet table. “Damn, you’re as bad as Coulson. He bought that crock of shit, too.”
“It just sounds like the kind of thing you’d do,” Fitz tossed back, wriggling out of Trip’s grasp. “Being all muscley and heroic twenty-four hours a day.”
“Today’s my day off.” Trip grabbed onto Fitz’s shoulders and spun him around so he was facing the table again, at the other end of which stood the woman to whom he’d hoped Trip would forget about introducing him. “Okay, Romeo, here’s your shot.”
“I don’t –”
“Just be yourself,” Trip said, voice low and not quite as dry as it had been a moment before. “She’ll love you.”
Then he shoved Fitz forward hard enough that he nearly crashed right into the buffet. With another glare back at his friend, he straightened his jumper – and, oh God, realized that he was about to talk to Jemma Simmons for the first time in a decade while wearing the world’s ugliest Christmas jumper. On New Year’s Day. While he was still completely and utterly hung-over.
On the plus side, he thought as he grabbed for a plate, at least he was wearing any clothes this time. That had to be some kind of step up.
As he dumped turkey curry onto the too-warm porcelain, he could just barely hear Simmons talking to the taller woman who he could now see was actually Bobbi Morse, Hunter’s on-again off-again girlfriend/wife/“sparring” partner (depending on the week).
“Seriously, Jemma, you’ll adore him –”
“Bobbi,” Jemma snapped, putting her glass down a little too forcefully at the edge of the table, “you know I trust you. But after the year I’ve had, the last thing I need is to have a blind date with some verbally incompetent, pasty-skinned engineer who can’t get promoted, lives in a pigsty, and was probably dressed this morning by his mother.”
At just that moment, Fitz attempted to put the unwieldy ladle back into the curry dish, missed the edge, and managed to splatter yellow-green goo all over his brand new sweater. Fortunately, that didn’t actually ruin the hideous thing, since its existence alone was odious enough. Unfortunately, the splattering and his own bitten-off swear managed to catch both Simmons and Bobbi’s attention.
With a small gasp, Simmons spun more fully around to stare at him head-on. “Fitz?!”
“Oh,” Bobbi said, politely not looking at the turkey curry as it dripped from the cardigan onto the floor, “you already know each other?”
“Know....” Simmons trailed off and her eyes widened as she stared around at the other woman. “This was who....”
“The Academy,” Fitz interrupted, giving them both a tight smile. “Been a while, Simmons.” Instead of answering, she just swallowed, a blush blooming on her cheeks. “I’ve got to, ah, y’know,” he said, waving at his chest, “so you just, enjoy the curry, Coulson’s is the best. In London. Outside of Harrow. Or, um....” He exhaled, shoving his plate onto the table and turning around. “Yeah.”
That, right there, was the moment he knew things had to change.
Once in the loo, Fitz yanked off the cardigan and dumped it unceremoniously in the bin. As he peered in the mirror, cleaning off the bit of curry that had somehow made its way into his hair, he had an abrupt moment of clarity. Outside of his very small group of friends – most of whom were more gregarious coworkers that had browbeaten their friendship into him – and his mum, he had virtually no other people who cared about him (or who he cared about in turn). Any dates he went on were largely dull, and those were few and far between. Unless something changed soon, the only meaningful relationship he’d ever have was with some bloke named Macallan.
So Fitz vowed to take charge of his life.
(typed on mobile at approx. 18:45) 01 Jan. 2014
To add to diary [god that sounds poncey] – New Year’s resolutions: Drink less, talk to people more, and don’t wake up shitfaced on first day of next year. Also, don’t talk to old school crushes without at least a month of preparation first.
------
“‘Some bloke named Macallan,’” Skye drawled, doing her trademark cringe-worthy Scottish accent as she imitated Fitz. “How long did it take you to come up with that speech?”
“The walk here,” Fitz muttered, finishing off the last of his Scotch. “I’m serious, though, I don’t wanna wake up to another new year by myself. It’s shite.”
After hiding around the outskirts of the SHIELD party for as long as he could stand it, Fitz had deftly avoided seeing Simmons again by escaping out the back exit and making a run for his favorite pub. His two least responsible friends (and co-workers) had long since bid the party adieu, and were already hunched over their traditional bar-adjacent table with half-finished drinks in their hands.
“You need to work on your game,” Hunter slurred, waving at the bartender to bring them another round.
“Says you,” Skye shot back, grabbing a glistening new pint from the counter. “What time did Bobbi kick you out last night? Before or after the second booty call?”
Already too drunk to think of a comeback, Hunter made a face in her direction. To be fair, she had a point; considering that their divorce was just as on-again, off-again as his and Bobbi’s marriage had been, he really shouldn’t be giving advice about having game to anyone else.
“Hey guys,” came Trip’s voice as he emerged from the crowd. “Y’all left before the cake!”
“Worth it,” Skye and Fitz muttered simultaneously, and then clinked glasses.
Once he’d ordered his own drink, Trip slid onto his traditional stool next to Fitz. “So, you left before I could ask – how’d it go with Simmons?”
“Oh,” he replied drily, “yeah, right, fantastic, we’ll be getting married any day now. Can’t go anywhere without her by my side. Wait, where is she...?” Raising an eyebrow, he took a large swig of his pint. “Yeah, didn’t go great.”
Trip frowned at his response, and Fitz had a brief bout of wonder at how someone that well built could be so earnest. “What happened?”
“She doesn’t have the highest opinion of me, let’s leave it at that.”
“And Fitz spilled curry on his new sweater,” Skye added helpfully, ducking to the right when he flicked at her shoulder.
“That can’t be right,” Trip continued, ignoring their teasing as only a spec-ops agent could do. “You should try again, maybe in the lab –”
“Drop it,” Fitz snapped, probably a little more harshly than his friend deserved. But he was somewhere between being hung-over and drunk again, and he wasn’t in the mood to explain that, his scientific acumen aside, he was apparently so beneath Simmons that she couldn’t even bring herself to speak to him. Where this revelation might have simply stung with anyone else, it needled so painfully at the part of him that had once thought they’d get on that he felt the need to numb just about everything until he forgot that it had ever happened.
“Look, man, you respect me, right?”
Squinting wearily over at Trip, Fitz sighed. “Yeah. More’n any other spec-ops agent, anyway.”
“Hey!” Distracted by his righteous indignation, Hunter let a dribble of foam escape down the side of his umpteenth pint.
“You know I don’t respect you,” Fitz retorted, and Hunter paused as he gave that argument a moment of thought.
“That’s fair. Continue.”
“So trust me,” Trip went on, giving Fitz’s shoulder a small nudge, “whatever happened at that party, she doesn’t hate you. Give it another shot.”
“Not in this lifetime,” he muttered in reply, distracted from his own self-loathing by the feeling of someone tapping on his shoulder.
“Excuse me,” said the woman doing the tapping, and Fitz couldn’t help the way his eyebrows raised when he saw who was standing behind him. With dark skin, large, captivating eyes, and a halo of curls, she was easily the most stunning woman who had ever deigned to talk to Fitz at this pub. Her amethyst dress was dotted with small, embroidered flowers, and hugged her figure in such a way that he was hard-pressed to not let his eyes wander. “Leopold Fitz?”
“Just Fitz,” he corrected her automatically, a tinge of warmth flushing his cheeks.
“Right,” she replied, face splitting in a perfectly shy smile, “Fitz.”
“How d’you....”
“Oh God,” she said, shrinking slightly and half-covering her face with one hand, “that must’ve sounded so creepy, I’m sorry! I work for SHIELD, in comms. I’m Raina.” When she held one hand out, Fitz turned sideways in his chair to give her a solid shake of greeting.
“Nice to meet you, Raina,” he said in reply, although he was still utterly nonplussed as to why she was speaking to him.
Spying the people at the table behind him, Raina gave them all a small wave. “I actually work down the hall from Skye.”
Skye squinted at the other woman, possibly trying to place her, and then half-raised her glass in response.
“Um,” Raina began, drawing Fitz’s eyes to her again, “I wanted to try to talk to you at the turkey curry buffet –”
“Culinary treat, that,” he muttered, and she broke into a peal of laughter, resting her hand on his arm.
“Oh, I know, right? But, anyway, you disappeared before I could, and I was so glad when I saw you over here I just had to stop by. I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”
“Only trying to numb the new year,” Hunter interjected, waiting for the boisterous laugh from the others that never came. “D’you want the table? We can –”
“No, no,” she said quickly, glancing over her shoulder. “I have to go. But I just wanted to say your memo about the use of weapons in SHIELD? Week before last? I just thought it was amazing. It’s too bad Turgeon isn’t giving you run of the division, you obviously deserve it.”
“Oh.” Fitz puffed his chest up a bit, trying to give her a humble shrug (and mostly just looking like he was preening). “Yeah, well, bureaucracy and all –”
“God, I know,” she replied, giving his arm an empathetic squeeze. “SHIELD’s lousy with it. Maybe we could, I don’t know, go out to drinks sometime, and vent about it.”
Something about the way she said the word “vent” seemed undeniably sexual, and he blinked at her mutely for a few seconds before he could respond. “Uh, yeah, that sounds – fine.”
“Great.” Raina gave him a warm smile, letting her eyes wander up and down the length of his body briefly before stepping back. “See you around the building, then. Happy New Year, Fitz.”
“Happy New Year,” he half-heartedly called out as she disappeared into the crowd, wincing as a loud whistle pierced the air from behind him.
“That’s my boy,” Hunter enthused, slapping him so hard on the back that he almost vaulted into the high table. “Drawing ‘em in without even needing to get up from his chair.”
Skye started clapping her hands together in an annoyingly peppy rhythm. “Hey Fitzy, you so fine,” she sang, much to his chagrin and with a wide grin on her face, “you so fine you blow Raina’s mind, hey Fitzy, hey Fitzy!”
“Too many syllables,” he muttered, burying his face in his pint and unable to hide his begrudgingly pleased smile.
“You should’ve walked her out, mate,” Hunter said, gesturing with his glass and slopping a splash of it onto the table. “Birds love that.”
“Oh my God,” some girl exclaimed, having halted mid-step a couple of feet from their table. Indian with a distinctly Harrow accent, she stared wide-eyed at Skye for a few seconds before she could speak again, and Fitz rolled his eyes. Here it was – their celebrity spotting of the night. “Aren’t you the lead singer of the Quaking Daisies?"
Letting her eyes wander shamelessly up and down the girl’s body, Skye knocked back the last of her drink before answering. A former pop star who had only recorded one hit record before quitting and running away with a hacker collective, she didn’t exactly advertise her former celebrity status, but she happily used it to get herself laid as often as she liked (when she and Trip weren’t theoretically secretly booty-calling each other, anyway).
Evidently, this girl – with purple streaks in her hair and a local uni’s lanyard hanging out of her pocket – measured up to whatever Skye was looking for tonight, and she smiled fetchingly back at her. “Skye Johnson, at your service.”
“Skye,” the girl repeated, obviously confused. “But wasn’t the band named after you...?”
“Easier to keep my I.D. on the D.L.,” she explained in a faux-whisper.
“The disabled list?” Fitz whispered to Trip, who shook his head.
“The down-low,” he corrected, and Fitz let out a soft noise of understanding.
“I only tell people I have a good feeling about who I am,” Skye continued, keeping her eyes on her fan. “And I have a real good feeling about you.” The girl giggled, stepping back as Skye slid off her stool. “I’m getting another – can I buy you something?”
She nodded enthusiastically, trailing after Skye towards the bar. “‘The Lightning Queen’ is my favorite song in the whole world, I have all the words memorized....”
“I dunno how she does it,” Hunter muttered, giving his head a wide-eyed shake. “She gets more play than any of us.”
“That’s because she’s hotter than any of us,” Trip pointed out.
“An argument could be made for you,” Fitz retorted, swatting one of Trip’s impeccably formed biceps.
“Thanks, man,” Trip said with a grin, tilting his pint in Fitz’s direction before downing it.
The three of them shot the breeze for another hour or so – keeping tabs on how long it took Skye to decide whether or not to seduce the girl in the bar itself or to take her back to her flat – before calling it quits for the night. As the three of them stumbled into the street – or, at least, Fitz and Hunter stumbled, while Trip strode gracefully across the concrete like a jungle cat – Hunter reached out to grab the shoulder of Fitz’s jacket.
“Just promise me,” Hunter yelled far too loudly for the empty street, “that you’re not gonna go home and listen to Chaka Khan by yourself on sad-FM.”
Rolling his eyes and shrugging off his friend’s hold, Fitz waved goodbye to Trip and turned in the direction of his flat, which was, fortunately, only a couple of blocks away. Actually, he had every intention of going home, turning on sad.FM, and writing drunkenly in his new diary about how, even a decade after the last time he saw Simmons, clearly the cosmos still had it out for him. But he didn’t need to tell Hunter that.
02 Jan. 2014
dunno why Huntser dont like sad.FM, s’not bad. good for singinggalong! vvvvv true for life too. always been my myself, will be by myself for always. but I dont wanna be.
will keep New Year’s res’s. ‘cept for drinkin less. start that one tomorrow.