Chapter Text
"You know, you'll have to leave this flat at some point," Daisy remarked as she watched Jemma walk towards the fridge, wrapped in her favorite blanket. She wondered when was the last time said blanket had been washed, too. "I know that sounds scary after walking from the bedroom to the fridge or bathroom exclusively in over a week, but I don't think your boss will appreciate you never coming back. Especially since, you know. You're the boss."
Jemma threw her a look from above the rim of the glass of orange juice she'd poured herself, grimacing at the taste.
"I'm pretty sure this juice has been there for far too much time," Daisy said with a wince.
Jemma shrugged. "Doesn't really matter to me anyway. I've been nauseous for weeks now, it all tastes the same. You can thank the heartbreak for that."
Daisy made a face.
"Dying of a stomach bug because of bad orange juice would be an awful way to die though. And way less melodramatic than the heartbreak excuse."
"You need to go groceries shopping," Jemma said, ignoring the obvious sarcasm in her friend's voice as she threw away the now empty carton of orange juice.
Daisy scoffed. "No, you need to go groceries shopping. It's time, Jemma, you can't just sulk here all by yourself all day long in your pajamas. This is not the Jemma I know."
"The Jemma you know went to a concert almost a year ago and fell in love with the lead singer," Jemma deadpanned. “Which wasn’t the greatest idea in the world either, as it turns out.”
From the other end of the room, Daisy rolled her eyes. "Well. It's still more exciting than you sulking in your room for days."
"That's exactly what led me here, right now."
"Actually, what led you here is a charming smile, baby blue eyes and a good dick but potatoes, potatoes I guess."
Jemma let out a surprised gasp, throwing Daisy in a giggle fit. The younger woman's hilarity eventually relaxed Jemma a little bit, and Daisy was pleased to see the beginning of a smile form at the corner of her friend's lips.
"You should see your face," Daisy said with an exaggerated eyebrows wriggle. "Don't you play prim and proper with me, Simmons. You may pretend with everyone else, but I know you better than anyone in the world and I know you’ve spent the best year of your life, whether you admit it or not."
It was true, too. Ever since the moment she'd met Daisy at a student's bar, Jemma had found in her the sister she'd never had. Daisy had been moved from foster homes to foster homes in America until she was 16, when she'd finally been adopted by a couple of rich bankers who later moved to London for a new job opportunity. There, Daisy had been faced with a whole new country and land of opportunities, and it hadn't taken much for her to search around for a potential job, which had resulted in her working at the student's bar near Oxford University. She'd met Jemma there a few months later, and they'd been inseparable in no time.
It was only logical for them to look for a place together once Jemma had graduated university, and they'd been roommates ever since. Not that Jemma minded, no matter how much she pretended to at times —and truth be told, she knew Daisy loved the teasing.
"I guess," Jemma eventually said with a tired sigh. "But the best time also means the hardest fall.” Staring at the closed fridge, she shook her head. “Maybe I'll go out today, and swing by the store."
Daisy threw her fist in the air in victory. "See! That's the Jemma I know." Grabbing a sticky note and a pen she'd left near her computer, she started scribbling a few things down. "Don't forget to get some pads, too. My period is coming, and I totally forgot to get some the last time I went. There was this creepy guy following me in the aisle, you wouldn’t believe how long it took me to finally lose him near the carrots."
It took Daisy an awful lot of time to realize that Jemma wasn’t listening anymore. Her hand had curled around the mug of tea she'd poured herself so hard she felt her phalanges creak in protest, and she looked frozen in place.
"Jemma?" Daisy asked, walking towards her with the note, a frown of concern crossing her forehead. "You alright?"
"The pads," Jemma muttered.
"Oh, yeah. I don't mind the brand, honestly. Just get whatever you think is best, just make sure they have the little sticky sides. I hate when they move, you would think pads would get better as time passes, right? I can’t believe no one gives a shit about women." Her friend's reaction —or therefore, lack of— seemed to sink in all of a sudden, and Daisy’s expression quickly morphed to confusion. "Jemma?"
"I don't remember the last time I had my period," Jemma said, finally looking up at her best friend. Her fingers started shaking slightly around the mug, spilling some tea on the kitchen counter.
Daisy's eyes widened in shock.
"Oh shit."
Jemma hadn't been aware that there were so many different types of pregnancy tests before she found herself faced with the difficult task of picking one. She'd always thought there were two or three brands, simple and more precise ones, although she’d never really taken time to think too much about it. But she'd never quite imagined such a scary panel of brands, shapes, and sizes as she looked down at the three rows of pregnancy tests in the women’s health section. She had two PhDs, and some of those tests even seemed more complicated to use than the latest exams she'd passed.
"Do you think they're all as efficient?" Daisy asked, squinting at the box she was holding in front of her eyes. "It says 98% efficiency, maybe we can find a 100% one."
Jemma swallowed past the lump in his throat. "I don't think any of them are 100% efficient, Daisy."
She was a scientist, after all. She knew better. However, she'd also known better when she had shrugged with no care in the world when Fitz had realized he hadn't grabbed a condom before their last night together, too eager to feel his body in hers. He’d meant to pull out, but any pretense of will had flown right out of the window the moment they’d reached their peaks in a passionate embrace.
The memory made Jemma’s stomach turn, and her heart seemed to miss a beat in her chest. She still missed him so much it hurt, as if almost three weeks hadn't passed since the last time she'd felt his arms around her and his lips on hers. She could still taste the sweat of her skin and feel the shape of his lips on hers at this very moment, her body thrumming with sadness.
"I guess a bloodwork is out of the question?" Daisy asked quietly. She fiddled with the box in her hand, debating on putting it back on the shelf or directly into their cart Jemma had been pushing around since they’d stepped into the supermarket. The idea of putting it right next to the pasta and tomatoes they’d gotten for dinner seemed almost comical if the situation had called for comic relief.
Jemma shook her head. "I can't just use the labs for a personal analysis."
"Even if you're the boss?"
"Especially because I'm the boss."
Daisy sighed. “You could allow yourself that, at least.”
With a frown, Jemma ignored the question. “I should take several tests. Different brands, even. We never know. The one you’re holding looks simple, let’s take one of these and a more expensive one.”
Daisy knew better than to push.
“How come three minutes seem so long when you’re waiting for something,” Daisy muttered, chewing on her lower lip.
She was sitting next to Jemma on the cold tiled floor of their bathroom, her foot moving restlessly in the air. Jemma had drunk what seemed to be a gallon of tea before heading to the bathroom to take the tests as soon as they’d come home from the store, and Daisy had slipped into the bathroom with her when they waited for the results to appear.
“It’s always like this,” Jemma replied with a forced smile. “Remember when you dragged me to the gym? One minute in plank position felt like a whole year.”
“Ugh! Don’t remind me. Worst decision I’ve ever taken. I can’t believe you made me go until both our memberships expired. Next time I have such a bad new years’ resolution idea, please hit me on the head instead.”
It felt good to be surrounded by her friend. Jemma knew Daisy was just trying to distract her from the obvious tension that had been installed between the two of them ever since Jemma had revealed she hadn’t had her period in over a month, but still. It felt good to have someone to rely on even in those hard, challenging times. The steady presence beside her on the bathroom tiles was proof enough that Daisy was in for the long haul.
“You know I’ll be with you no matter what, yeah?” Daisy said suddenly. It was such a change of subject and tone from the previous sentence that Jemma had to take a minute to realize she was addressing her. “No matter what those tests show… I’ll be there through it all.”
Jemma barely had time to open her mouth before Daisy spoke again.
“Well of course, if you do end up giving birth to a mini-rockstar, I’ll let you change their diapers and everything. But at least I’ll teach them some bad words and they’ll learn quite early that the Lord of the Rings is widely superior to Back to the future.”
This time, Jemma let out a wet chuckle. “Yeah. I wouldn’t expect anything less from you.”
“Gotta teach them young, Simmons. Gotta teach them young.”
“Will you make an exception for Jurassic Park?” Jemma teased.
“Okay. But only for Jeff Goldblum.”
Silence fell upon the both of them again. It dragged silently, making Jemma squirm a little before they were interrupted by the sound of Jemma’s alarm.
“Ready?” Daisy asked, voice tight.
Without a sound, Jemma turned the test around, feeling like her heart would burst out of her chest. She’d once stood in a crowd next to most of her classmates, awaiting for her PhD’s test results to come back, and yet she didn’t remember being as nauseous as she was right now.
The little minus sign seemed to stare right back at her.
“It’s negative,” she said. Her voice sounded hoarse, as if she hadn’t drunk for the last few days. She wanted to swallow past the lump in her throat, yet she couldn’t find it in herself to do it.
Daisy nodded carefully. “And the rest of them?”
Reaching for the two other tests, Jemma stared at the results. One of them had a single line, as opposed to the two she was supposed to get if her estrogen levels were higher than normal. Negative too, then. The last one had an even bigger minus sign than the first, and Jemma had to blink a few times to let the information sink in.
“I’m not pregnant,” she said finally.
She felt more than she saw Daisy’s hand rub against her back in tight little circles. Jemma didn’t know how to feel at the gesture. She felt both too overwhelmed and needy, and her skin tingled with the need to get out of the bathroom and run.
“How do you feel, Jemma?”
It took around ten seconds for Jemma to start crying. At first, she barely registered the tears sliding down her cheeks until her eyes were filled with unshed ones, blurring her visions and making her heave with it. The sobs came later, and Jemma felt Daisy’s arms wrapping around her until she completely collapsed against her chest. Heavy sobs tore through her body, the anxiety and worry of the day washing away in the salty water of her tears.
“Shhhht, it’s all going to be alright,” Daisy whispered against her hair, fingers rubbing at her back.
“I didn’t even want a child. But now it’s all I can think about.”
“Because your heart aches, and you’re trying to hold yourself to the very last bit of this relationship,” Daisy whispered against her hair, her warm breath caressing her temple. “It’s going to be alright, Jemma. We’ll get through this together.”
One thing Jemma hadn’t considered when breaking up with her singer boyfriend —could she consider him a boyfriend, even?— was the fact that she’ll have to hear his voice every other day.
When it happened at the supermarket, she left her cart and exited the shopping center without looking back. Her chocolate cake be damned. The first few notes of “ Cosmos ” had barely started before she’d dropped the bag of flour she was holding onto, completely taken aback by the familiarity of the music. She’d been lucky enough not to crack the bag open as it fell, but Jemma had put it back onto the shelf as quickly as she could, leaving everything behind in favor of exiting this place as soon as possible. Ignoring the cashier’s curious gaze, she’d walked out of the small supermarket she’d been in as the first few sounds of Fitz’s voice reached her ears.
She remembered Cosmos . It was her favorite song of his, actually. And nowadays, she seemed to hear it everywhere she went.
It was such a Fitz’s thing to do, really, to be convinced that the universe kept them apart. Jemma had laughed at the absurdity back then, so drunk out of love and passion that she’d called him an idiot. Long, heavy months later, she wasn’t so sure about that anymore.
He’d written it while she was dozing off on the bed one night, in one of the hotel rooms they’d found themselves in. She remembered hearing the lyrics whispered against the skin of her back, down the swell of her shoulder as he kissed her in between the lines. She’d been facing away from him on the bed, on her front, and Jemma remembered laughing at the silly words he eventually slipped into the song to prevent her from falling asleep entirely. Her entire body was sore from their lovemaking, the place between her legs aching deliciously as small tendrils of pleasure still rushed through her veins. When the song came out, she remembered the way it had made her feel.
She remembered the smell of the sheets, the heaviness of Fitz’s arms as he fell asleep half on top of her after writing it all in one go on the hotel’s small notepad he’d discarded next to the bed. She remembered the familiar feeling in her guts as he kissed her cheek, her nose, and they rolled over together, laughing like teenagers. She remembered the text he’d sent her when it had hit the charts, five little words that had brought tears to her eyes. “this one is for you” , he’d said, and at this moment Jemma swore she fell in love all over again.
Now, all this song brought her was pain and anguish.
“Back so soon?” Daisy asked as she walked into the flat, shutting the door close behind her with more force than necessary.
It might have been her face, or it might have been the way Jemma held herself against the door, but Daisy’s face turned serious the moment she gazed upon her friend’s face.
“Everything alright?” she said, pushing the ice cream she was eating to the side. “You didn’t see him, did you? Because it kind of looks like you’ve seen a ghost.”
It had been over a month since the pregnancy test, and Jemma found that it was even harder to regret what could have been. She missed what she’d had, but bearing the secret of this fake alert hadn’t been something she was prepared for in the slightest. Daisy had been there through all the steps of the way through, just as she said she’d be.
“I haven’t,” Jemma gritted out. “It’s this damn song .”
It took a little while for the words to sink in, and for Daisy to understand what she meant by that.
“Oh.”
“That’s something I definitely didn’t think of,” Jemma grumbled, letting her bag crash on the floor next to her legs.
Daisy nodded. “No more supermarkets for you, then.”
The problem resided in the fact that it wasn’t just supermarkets. It turned out, the three months since they’d broken up had been quite productive for Fitz and the band. Cosmos was followed by Something Magnificent , and soon enough by Bottom of the Ocean. Jemma hadn’t heard the last two before, but she recognized the familiar sound of Fitz’s voice the moment he started to sing. She was sitting in the kitchen, working on a formula that had been bugging her for a while now, and by the time she registered that it was one of his new songs, she was already too into it to fight it. So Jemma stood there and listened, tears glistening down her face as she heard the words Fitz had written for her.
I never had time to tell you. So please, let me show you?
The anguish in his voice coupled with the slow music made Jemma’s heart pound in her chest, tears hot and salty against her skin. One of them slid down the curve of her mouth, and she tasted salt when she allowed herself to swallow against the lump in her throat.
She missed him. She missed him so badly it hurt. Sometimes, she caught herself wishing she’d had him by her side when she strolled down the supermarket aisle, finding the sugary sweets she knew he liked. She imagined him leaning down against her, his body solid and warm as he teased her until she agreed to buy some. He’d gotten one in bed one night, and she remembered how she’d complained about the crumbs before he’d kissed her breath —and arguments— away.
Her life felt devoid of any joy since he’d been away. Jemma had never been one to be overly romantic or focused on her relationship, simply because she was too caught her in her job to care about her personal life most of the time. She’d worked hard to get where she was now, and she’d be damned if she let anyone ruin this for her. It had been the case for most of her relationships, and it was what led to most of her exes breaking up with her in the first place. She’d never understood the expression “found the one” until she’d met Fitz, really.
Before Fitz, she never got the appeal of putting a relationship first. She never understood why people would be ready to do the craziest thing for love, and she never realized how much she could love someone until she met him. Her heart seemed to beat in the same exact rhythm, a symphony that made her entire body thrum with want. Jemma didn’t believe in fate, she believed in science and scientific explanations. However, she was willing to admit that there was no logical explanation for the way she craved for Fitz with every cell of her being.
She’d met him entirely out of pure luck, too. Daisy had bought a couple of tickets for his concert in London, but she’d broken up with her then-boyfriend a few weeks before said concert. Finding herself with non-refundable tickets had her begging Jemma to come with her —and she’d been glad she did, eventually. The moment Fitz had walked on stage, Jemma had been a goner. There was something about the way he carried himself that had driven her mad during the entire concert, and she hadn’t even fought Daisy when she’d asked if Jemma would be willing to come with her and meet them at the back door.
The rest was history.
The moment they’d made eye contact, Jemma could swear something had rightened in the universe. She’d never been one to flirt outrageously either, but things just escalated so very quickly, and the next thing she knew she was sitting in front of the lead singer of the band she’d just discovered in a small dinner talking about life and their respective childhoods.
The song at the radio ended, leaving a few seconds of silence for Jemma to realize that she’d been standing there crying for the entire duration of it before the radio host started talking again.
“Ladies and gents, that was Bottom of the Ocean by the Agents. And I have Leopold Fitz here with us today, to talk about this new album with us!”
Hearing his name made Jemma’s entire body freeze in place. Barefoot in the kitchen, with the light dimming out outside the window of her London flat, she just stood there and listened helplessly. Conflicting thoughts went through her, from excitement to hear his voice again to the dredd that came with acknowledging his existence after trying to forget about him for so long. The first won, eventually.
“Yeah, hi Jack. Thanks for having me here today.”
The thick and familiar Scottish accent brought more fresh tears to Jemma’s eyes.
“Thank you for coming! So this album was written pretty quickly, wasn’t it? Less than three months to write twelve exclusive songs, I’d say that’s a record for the band. Is there a particular reason for that?”
As much as she dreaded the answer, Jemma stood there, waiting for Fitz to reply.
“Well,” he said, and Jemma imagined his little anxious smile as clearly as if he’d been there right in front of her. “I think it’s pretty explicit, isn’t it?”
The radio host chuckled without humor. “There were some rumors going around about a break-up, but we don’t do gossips around here. So do you wanna talk about it with us?”
For Jemma, the silence that followed felt louder than any given answer. And when Fitz started talking again, she realized the hand that was holding her pen was trembling above the formula she’d been working on.
“Well. Without addressing the rumors, I would just like to say that the person I wrote those songs for will certainly recognize themselves. And if they do… well. Time will tell.”
Without thinking, Jemma turned off the radio and left the kitchen in haste.
It took two more months for Fitz to find her.
Walking home from work always helped clear her mind, and Jemma had just finished a big project she’d been working on for a few weeks prior. The meeting with the board had gone well, and she’d gotten the necessary funds for her research. She’d been so happy when she’d called Daisy that the two girls had promised to get sushis when she arrived, something Jemma was more excited about than she cared to admit. It had been a while since she’d felt carefree, her mind constantly buzzing with anxiety and too many thoughts.
Of course, her tranquility was shattered the moment she saw who was standing near the door of her flat.
His hands were in his jeans pockets, and Jemma’s steps faltered when she realized that he’d changed since the last time they’d seen each other. He seemed thinner, and more tired. Heavy bags underlined his deep blue eyes, and something about the way he looked at her when she appeared made Jemma feel like she was two seconds away from crying again.
“Jemma.”
She had missed him. She had missed him so much it hurt, and all she wanted to do was run towards him and put al of her reservations aside. She couldn’t do that however, and Jemma stood her ground as she looked at her ex-boyfriend.
“Fitz. What are you doing here?”
He opened his mouth, then closed it. When he opened it again, his voice was a little less steady than before. “I have a gig in London tonight. I figured I’d swing by before.”
The air was chill enough fo the both of them to tremble as a gush of wind enveloped them, but Jemma knew the cold had nothing to do with the way she shivered from head to toes.
“Why would you do that?” She asked, eyes never leaving his.
He owed her so much, she realized with a start. He owed her more than a simple phrase in front of her flat almost six months after she’d broken up with him. And he knew it.
“Have you listened to any interviews lately?” Fitz asked, chewing on his lower lip.
Jemma shook her head. “Can’t say I have, no. I’ve been pretty adamant on not seeing your face or hearing your voice anywhere in the last five and a half months.”
Fitz winced, balancing his weight from one foot to the other. She’d missed his nervous ticks more than she would have admitted, too.
“That’s fair. But you’ve missed the most important part, then.”
“And what would that be?”
“We’re stopping the tours.”
Jemma paused.
“What?”
“Not the ones in the U.K and Ireland,” Fitz said, waving his hands around as he spoke. He always did when he was nervous, Jemma remarked. “Just worldwide. We’re going to do those once a year, twice at most.”
She stayed silent.
“I’ve realized that you were right,” Fitz kept going. “When you left… The life we’ve been living as a group is exhausting. We’ve all realized that, but we somehow never really put a stop to it because we couldn’t quite understand the luck we had. But then it all started going downhill, and the tour just wasn’t that much fun anymore.” He sighed, looking back at her with an expression that made Jemma’s heart squeeze painfully in her chest. “And then you left. And I realized I didn’t like the life I was living nearly as much as I loved you.”
Jemma felt like her heart had somehow started beating again. It felt like a deep, fresh breath of air after so long without oxygen, and for what it was worth, she understood what he’d meant in Bottom of the Ocean . There was no breathing without Fitz, no matter how much she filled her lungs and hoped to exhale just as much as she’d taken in.
“What do you want, Fitz?” she asked.
His eyes were even bluer than she remembered. “You. I want you, Jemma. No more tours, no more disappearing for six months halfway around the world with only texts to keep us together. Just us, my small flat in Glasgow or yours in London, I don’t care, as long as we’re together. Because I don’t wanna live another day without you Jemma, and I sure as hell don’t wanna tour the world if it means travelling farther and farther away from where my heart truly lies.”
Jemma had never taken three steps —the ones that separated her from Fitz’s arms— that quickly in her life.
— two years later —
“Tonight is very special, you know?” Fitz said into the microphone. His voice was a little breathless from the concert, and small beads of sweat ran down his temples and into his beard. Glasgow was a bit chilly tonight, but the presence of the crowd had warmed the room so quickly that it felt almost too hot to be standing in right now. “My beautiful wife is here somewhere. She’s here with us tonight, but you’ll have to excuse her for not coming up to say hello like she usually does.”
Leaving a few seconds of suspens, Fitz caught Trip’s wink as he turned back towards his bandmates. They knew exactly what he was going to say, yet they seemed to be hanging to his lips just as much as the crowd below. Turning back towards the front of the stage, Fitz smiled.
“You see… she’s very pregnant.”
The roar of the crowd took over the entire room, leaving Fitz to chuckle into the microphone as cheers erupted all around him. His ears rang with it, the sound making his chest tremble with the force of it. People starting jumping on their feet, clapping in concert with one another. Behind Fitz, Hunter beat on the drums in time with the crowd, encouraging them and their fervor.
At this moment, Fitz could swear he felt himself float. He was dizzy with the joy and excitement pouring through everyone’s pores, and he knew he wasn’t the only one feeling it. In the crowd, in the secured space Daisy and Bobbi had kept for Jemma in the VIP section, he caught his wife’s gaze and realized that her eyes sang the exact same song that had been animating his heart.
I love you so much.
Six months later, the band’s new single “ Alya ” hit the charts and stayed number one for 11 weeks straight.