[ He thinks to comment on this, How forward, Agent Carter, but to do so would be to fracture the moment. And it's likely nothing of the sort for her, assured as she is. For his part, Fitz has danced in class at the Academy, at socials and at academic charity events. Across all those affairs, he only danced once or twice with Jemma. They always had other dates or paired-off partners at the Academy, and the social practice of going dancing has died away beyond the individuals with passion for it.
Neither Fitz nor Jemma have ever been overly entranced by the idea. Another regret, comparatively light against the heft of the pile. It weighs the same as ever on his shoulders, though he doesn't always remember to carry it. Sometimes, a moment distracts him from the heaviness of missing her. Carter often warrants undivided consideration, even without tricks like this. Fussing over the rhythm and tracking his feet is busying enough to hold his attention.
With over a year apart, Jemma wouldn't begrudge him for it. Not for feeling Peggy's hair tickle his face and closing his eyes, a huffed laugh startled from his mouth. It's so familiar, fondly chiding. Few people know him well enough to pull it off. ]
Close the eyes in the back of your head, Carter. They're cheating. [ intoned wryly. ]
[ Without his meticulous gaze, his steps improve, swaying along with her. Huh. ]
You can call me Fitz in my own home, you know. [ Not your home. A beat. he misses a step but corrects, fingers pressing into her waist. One voice says don't and the other, ] Or Leopold. [ Then, softer. ] Even Leo.
[ The first quip elicits an actual chuckle from her, soft against the shell of his ear. There are so many things she can toss back in return, the vast majority of them summarised by a single, cheeky spy and a shrug. There's no shutting down how every sense of hers is alight with this moment — the song, the plush carpet under her stockinged feet, the broad warmth of his palm against her lower back (especially that) — but she does the next best thing and lets her eyes flutter closed for a moment, soothed by the familiarity of the steps now that they aren't halting.
God, she has missed this. Not just dancing, but allowing herself a few moments to let go of the director's mantle, the weight of responsibility. She could blame the whiskey for how comfortably loose she feels, but that isn't entirely true, not when she can drink the Commandos under the table. Her thoughts track back to that hand supporting her back and she realises it a heartbeat before he speaks again: it's not that she's missed dancing or missed having a night off from expectations and duty. She's missed feeling safe.
His step falters — or maybe hers does right before. She can't tell. But her eyes drift open when he speaks next. Fitz, Leopold, Leo. Names have meaning, she's very aware of it. She trusts a precious few with Peggy, fewer still with Peg. Director, ma'am, agent — more distance, familiar without being intimate. Safety of a different sort. ]
You're right, [ she says after a moment. ] No need to stand on ceremony after all these months. [ Her thumb brushes absently over his where their hands are clasped, a thoughtful gesture; then she turns her head a fraction, just enough to catch the edge of his gaze. Her voice and expression remain soft and they all but say, This isn't my decision to make. ] Which would you prefer?
[ Ah, the question of the hour. Fitz doesn't know who he is, but perhaps who he'd like to be will come easier. ]
Don't make me quote Shakespeare 'cause I'll botch it.
[ In some ways, his grandad inclinations suit the time period. Literary references are among the few understood by his newfound contemporaries.
Fitz is him, a summation of himself that could be an onomatopoeia, like fzzt, the sound of wires crossing in his tech or brain. However, it's FitzSimmons, too. It's the Academy and SHIELD and Jemma breathing "Oh, Fitz" with her hand flush on his cheek. He'll always be Fitz, half of a whole, but to Peggy Carter, catching his eyes with an uncharacteristically open expression, he thinks he might be someone else as well. Not Leopold, which hasn't tasted the same since Ophelia twisted it in her mouth.
That love was real, it should be said. And if he'd been cleverer and kinder, he might have prevented her spiral. The look on her face after saving Mack will haunt him as much as her fingers on his throat or splayed on Jemma's chest.
His considerations are murkier, a sad flicker at the thought of being Fitzsimmons without his better half and Leopold beyond the Framework. He doesn't realise that framing this decision, his name, in such terms means for his connection with one Agent Carter — only that it matters. She matters. The comforting brush of her thumb over his hand confirms it.
[ If he botched the Shakespeare, she could forgive it; not very many people know how fond she is of the Bard or of poetry in general. She hardly has the luxury to indulge these days. But it's easy to fill in this particular blank — what's in a name? Cliché but apt. He earns her lips pressed into a half-smile for his troubles and it doesn't fade as she waits.
Peggy can see the debate, quiet as it is. The weighing of a question so innocuous, the way his gaze turns inward somehow; they have been friends for some time now, it's true, but she doesn't know the whole of him and she isn't sure she ever will. (The reverse is also true of her for him.) She can't imagine the true gravity of his predicament, cut off from everything and everyone near, dear, and familiar to him with no clear path home — often she's reminded of how she felt in the years after the war, adrift and morbidly homesick for a time she could never return to. The people who knew her then. The distance stretching between the woman she was and who she's become, for better or worse.
Time is the longest distance between two places. Another playwright who had better words than their own. Who were the men broken into those three names? Who called him by which? And what did they mean, if it's taking him a few more heartbeats of silence to decide? What's in a name, indeed. ]
Leo, [ she repeats at last, her voice suffused with warmth. Could be amusement, could be something else. (Something more.) Nicknames, in her experience, are often earned. What has she done to earn this? ] I don't think I've ever known a Leo before. [ She's still smiling as she turns her face back to looking over his shoulder, only her chin is practically resting on it now. The song ends and spins into the next slow ballad. ] But as always, you are a first.
[ She exhales slowly, letting him take the lead in this dance now, even if the most complicated thing they can do is sway in a gentle circle. Her eyes close again and after a moment, she adds, ]
[ There's something about this moment that makes him want to bottle it up and analyse later, when he isn't enraptured by the warmth of her, the edges of his perception having long gone soft. Hard to say if that's the scotch or the proximity affecting him. Perhaps it's even the way she says Leo, confirming he made the right choice, even if he can't quite read her tone. Fond, certainly. In some way.
They wouldn't be dancing if they weren't — ah, he tries to think of the word for it — close?
Fitz can't be sure from this angle, but he thinks that he feels Peggy smiling. As always, you are first makes his mouth curve helplessly. With him in the lead, the swaying keeps pace without complicating beyond that. It's nice as is, isn't it? And if his pulse quickens, it's just nerves over the steps of the dance, simple though it may be. ]
Peggy, [ he echoes. How many people get to call her that? ] Peggy Carter, I've most definitely never known someone like you, either.
[ "besides you" needn't be said. They've crossed that particular tightrope long before now. What he knows of her, what he can share, and what he can't, lest he risk altering spacetime (a precaution despite his fatalistic beliefs, regarding the timeline). Regardless, Peggy Carter is singular in her demeanor and achievements. He doubts he'll ever know everything about her, even with the advantage of time.
He tips his cheek into her hair. She always smells the same, at least, that he can confirm. Signature style and scent mark the impeccable Agent Carter. ]
[ It's always a curious and frightening thing, the stirrings that happen when fondness tips over into something more. Maybe it's harder to place here because so often in her past, that feeling has accompanied the frantic edge of a life-or-death scenario, some rushed timeline where neither one can afford to stop and peel it apart. Daniel was the closest to falling in peacetime, she thinks, but a bullet shattered that moment too — maybe not either of them, but Thompson's assassination attempt forced them to put work first.
And then it was too late. But it's always too late for her, isn't it? Except now, maybe, after a few years (for her and decades for the man in her arms) — ]
So I've been told, [ she teases, her voice soft against the fabric of his shirt. ] But it means something different coming from you. Being from the future, I mean, [ she amends quickly on half a laugh. Christ, Carter, get it together. ] Is asking if I live up to expectations too much of a 'spoiler' for you to divulge?
[ To borrow his word. She learned that one very early on. ]
[ From him, as man outside of time and not as a — yes, that. A walking spoiler, as he'd termed himself early on, ready to muck up any number of things with his big gob. In the months that followed, his stance has relaxed somewhat. Tidbits slip out here and there, though he reserves the right to recuse himself from any precarious discussions. ]
Mm, it's a big ask. [ said with a seriousness that suggests genuine concern and followed, with finality: ] Dead risky.
[ his smile widens, easily giving him away. ]
If you go into the next decade cocky, that's on me, yeah?
[ which is to say yes, you do or even you exceed expectations. ]
[ It is a big ask and she's aware. Peggy was careful not to press from the very beginning even though other agents lacked the same restraint — something she nipped in the bud very quickly. Especially after Fitz (no, Leo) and Howard got started on the science of the matter; talk of the future is strictly off the table unless absolutely necessary. Little things are all right, they get her rather excited to see the next few years, but matters of international policy and politics...
Well, maybe Peggy Carter, Director of SHIELD falls under that category now too. ]
Oh, please, [ she demurs, smoothing a hand over his back. ] There's only room for one stratospheric ego in SHIELD and it's Howard. Besides, it's terribly unbecoming for a spy to be anywhere near the spotlight. [ Peggy opens back up to him to face him more fully, although they're still quite close, as though having a hushed conversation on a crowded dance floor. ] Although what's life without a little risk?
[ The quip at Howard’s expense startles a laugh out him and loosens any leftover rigidity from his shoulders. Only a different sort of tension coils in his chest, as his gaze follows her head back, to the crinkles at the inner corners of her eyes, and then focuses in on the faded red of her lipstick. He feels like the a record skipping, caught on a minute groove, or maybe that’s simply the oh in his head, a recursive chorus whenever the light catches Peggy Carter just so. He fans his fingers out on her waist. The look on his face is at once surprised and soft. Oh. ]
Wouldn’t know.
[ A little roguish (insomuch as he can be, scruff and all) and a lot wry. He applied to bloody SHIELD Academy and took a field assignment with Jemma long before he jumped into quarantine wards and foreign conflicts and strange planets.
Two epic loves is more than most people get, even if they both ended in tragedy. And Fitz has managed to make a life here, far-flung from all he knew and loved. Not much to risk, is there then? Besides the one thing —
It’s a snap decision. Has to be, or he wouldn’t see it through. He cants his head forward, closing the distance between them to press a fervent kiss to her mouth. ]
[ It's her job to see things coming and she certainly sees a great deal. But this — the split-second between breaths, that minute inward shift in his gaze — she doesn't see it so much as feel it, some quiet corner at the back of her mind that sends her heartbeat into a gentle uptick before the rest of her catches up on why. When did it start? A month, two, three months ago? When did this circle into something else, bolstered by long nights not unlike this one? Did this sneak up on him just as much as it has her?
He kisses her and they sway to a stop and the afterimage of his expression flickers across her eyelids as they flutter closed and as she rises up into him and the heat of his mouth, she thinks — yes. Oh, yes, this snuck up on him too.
Her hand is still held in his and she brings both to settle in the gasp of space between them, caught between two pounding hearts; the other at his shoulder slides around to cup his face because there is nothing chaste about this kiss, no matter how tender the music on the wireless, because she didn't see it coming but God, now that it's happening, she can't imagine how she could have missed something so achingly obvious. ]
[ He should've known that despite her poise, Peggy Carter doesn't go easy, not for anything, even his soft attempts at — well, at flirtation, he supposes. Scrappy as anything in the field, with a right hook like a freight train (which he's well-aware of, after their messy first meeting, when the monolith spat him out). Why wouldn't she be bold in this, too? Once their connection sparks into something more, her hand slides across his chest, cups his face, brings them into perfect alignment. And without hesitation, he follows her lead. Might be that he's willing to follow her into anything, after all these months circling each other.
Guided by the warmth of her touch and his own instincts to deepen the kiss, he opens his mouth. Oh. At her waist, his hands first tighten, then slide up, pulling her flush with pressure at the small of her back. A step or two forward, pushing, moving.
Fitz hasn't kissed anyone like this in quite some time. ]
Years, maybe, since the last whirlwind of anything half as meaningful (and the last thing crashed and burned long ago in the wake of duty) and here she is swept up in another. It's probably a terrible idea, getting tangled up in someone who doesn't belong here, who will inevitably leave all this and her behind for where he's meant to be — but she's weathered that storm before and she needn't think any farther than the present. Peggy spends her days trying to think ten steps ahead of the world but she can leave it at the door for a night, can't she, and allow herself this? This small, fervent piece of someone else's life.
He steers this kiss from hunger to passion in a heartbeat and she breathes into it, him, the heat of his mouth, his hands through the fabric of her dress; and as he moves, so does she, walking back blindly until her shoulder meets the mantle piece. Their momentum doesn't slow there — she knows a quarter turn will take her to the gap on the wall between fireplace and end table so she does it, lips parting to his with a soft noise and careless of the colour smearing across them; because it has been a while, a long bloody while, and she doesn't mind him knowing it. ]
[ It's the noise of appreciation that makes him short circuit, breath catching in his throat when she gets him against the wall, delaying any productive reaction by seconds. Even after the Framework, Fitz remains expressive at the worst of times, and this is — better, the best.
Carter finds the only gap in the wall of his bloody apartment, as it happens, a clever maneuver that doesn't go unnoticed or unappreciated, even if he has better things to do with his mouth than gawk at her. Fitz angles to the side, catching the corner of her lips, further smudging the redness there, and kissing across her jaw. Can't let her outdo him like it's nothing, yeah? Hands still firm at her back (not budging despite the reversal of positions), he ducks to trail his mouth along the hollow of her throat.
Spies tend to have a thing about that, confirmed by his own interests and experience of others. A little danger has appeal. ]
[ A little danger, a little surprise has appeal — she isn't often blindsided so the novelty is something she relishes (when it doesn't involve bullets), a thrilling little shiver down her spine all the while. Although it does feel a little bit like a gunshot for how precisely he turns the tables and she bares her throat to the wandering warmth of his kisses before she even realises it, lashes fluttering like her wild pulse. ]
Oh, bloody hell.
[ Soft, more breath than voice, because he catches on a spot that honest-to-God makes her knees a little weak — she'd blame the bourbon but please, she can lie to others, not herself — and her hand on his cheek finds purchase in his hair, curling through it and holding on as if to stop him, to keep him there, to drag him back up for another urgent kiss. She's breathless with it, with waiting for a slip of tongue or the nip of his teeth, with being torn on asking for it because all that she manages on a trembling exhale is — ]
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no subject
Neither Fitz nor Jemma have ever been overly entranced by the idea. Another regret, comparatively light against the heft of the pile. It weighs the same as ever on his shoulders, though he doesn't always remember to carry it. Sometimes, a moment distracts him from the heaviness of missing her. Carter often warrants undivided consideration, even without tricks like this. Fussing over the rhythm and tracking his feet is busying enough to hold his attention.
With over a year apart, Jemma wouldn't begrudge him for it. Not for feeling Peggy's hair tickle his face and closing his eyes, a huffed laugh startled from his mouth. It's so familiar, fondly chiding. Few people know him well enough to pull it off. ]
Close the eyes in the back of your head, Carter. They're cheating. [ intoned wryly. ]
[ Without his meticulous gaze, his steps improve, swaying along with her. Huh. ]
You can call me Fitz in my own home, you know. [ Not your home. A beat. he misses a step but corrects, fingers pressing into her waist. One voice says don't and the other, ] Or Leopold. [ Then, softer. ] Even Leo.
no subject
God, she has missed this. Not just dancing, but allowing herself a few moments to let go of the director's mantle, the weight of responsibility. She could blame the whiskey for how comfortably loose she feels, but that isn't entirely true, not when she can drink the Commandos under the table. Her thoughts track back to that hand supporting her back and she realises it a heartbeat before he speaks again: it's not that she's missed dancing or missed having a night off from expectations and duty. She's missed feeling safe.
His step falters — or maybe hers does right before. She can't tell. But her eyes drift open when he speaks next. Fitz, Leopold, Leo. Names have meaning, she's very aware of it. She trusts a precious few with Peggy, fewer still with Peg. Director, ma'am, agent — more distance, familiar without being intimate. Safety of a different sort. ]
You're right, [ she says after a moment. ] No need to stand on ceremony after all these months. [ Her thumb brushes absently over his where their hands are clasped, a thoughtful gesture; then she turns her head a fraction, just enough to catch the edge of his gaze. Her voice and expression remain soft and they all but say, This isn't my decision to make. ] Which would you prefer?
[ Who would you like to be, in here? ]
no subject
Don't make me quote Shakespeare 'cause I'll botch it.
[ In some ways, his grandad inclinations suit the time period. Literary references are among the few understood by his newfound contemporaries.
Fitz is him, a summation of himself that could be an onomatopoeia, like fzzt, the sound of wires crossing in his tech or brain. However, it's FitzSimmons, too. It's the Academy and SHIELD and Jemma breathing "Oh, Fitz" with her hand flush on his cheek. He'll always be Fitz, half of a whole, but to Peggy Carter, catching his eyes with an uncharacteristically open expression, he thinks he might be someone else as well. Not Leopold, which hasn't tasted the same since Ophelia twisted it in her mouth.
That love was real, it should be said. And if he'd been cleverer and kinder, he might have prevented her spiral. The look on her face after saving Mack will haunt him as much as her fingers on his throat or splayed on Jemma's chest.
His considerations are murkier, a sad flicker at the thought of being Fitzsimmons without his better half and Leopold beyond the Framework. He doesn't realise that framing this decision, his name, in such terms means for his connection with one Agent Carter — only that it matters. She matters. The comforting brush of her thumb over his hand confirms it.
For a long moment, Fitz holds her gaze. ]
I could be Leo. [ then, clarifying: ] To you.
[ in here. ]
no subject
Peggy can see the debate, quiet as it is. The weighing of a question so innocuous, the way his gaze turns inward somehow; they have been friends for some time now, it's true, but she doesn't know the whole of him and she isn't sure she ever will. (The reverse is also true of her for him.) She can't imagine the true gravity of his predicament, cut off from everything and everyone near, dear, and familiar to him with no clear path home — often she's reminded of how she felt in the years after the war, adrift and morbidly homesick for a time she could never return to. The people who knew her then. The distance stretching between the woman she was and who she's become, for better or worse.
Time is the longest distance between two places. Another playwright who had better words than their own. Who were the men broken into those three names? Who called him by which? And what did they mean, if it's taking him a few more heartbeats of silence to decide? What's in a name, indeed. ]
Leo, [ she repeats at last, her voice suffused with warmth. Could be amusement, could be something else. (Something more.) Nicknames, in her experience, are often earned. What has she done to earn this? ] I don't think I've ever known a Leo before. [ She's still smiling as she turns her face back to looking over his shoulder, only her chin is practically resting on it now. The song ends and spins into the next slow ballad. ] But as always, you are a first.
[ She exhales slowly, letting him take the lead in this dance now, even if the most complicated thing they can do is sway in a gentle circle. Her eyes close again and after a moment, she adds, ]
And it's Peggy.
no subject
They wouldn't be dancing if they weren't — ah, he tries to think of the word for it — close?
Fitz can't be sure from this angle, but he thinks that he feels Peggy smiling. As always, you are first makes his mouth curve helplessly. With him in the lead, the swaying keeps pace without complicating beyond that. It's nice as is, isn't it? And if his pulse quickens, it's just nerves over the steps of the dance, simple though it may be. ]
Peggy, [ he echoes. How many people get to call her that? ] Peggy Carter, I've most definitely never known someone like you, either.
[ "besides you" needn't be said. They've crossed that particular tightrope long before now. What he knows of her, what he can share, and what he can't, lest he risk altering spacetime (a precaution despite his fatalistic beliefs, regarding the timeline). Regardless, Peggy Carter is singular in her demeanor and achievements. He doubts he'll ever know everything about her, even with the advantage of time.
He tips his cheek into her hair. She always smells the same, at least, that he can confirm. Signature style and scent mark the impeccable Agent Carter. ]
no subject
And then it was too late. But it's always too late for her, isn't it? Except now, maybe, after a few years (for her and decades for the man in her arms) — ]
So I've been told, [ she teases, her voice soft against the fabric of his shirt. ] But it means something different coming from you. Being from the future, I mean, [ she amends quickly on half a laugh. Christ, Carter, get it together. ] Is asking if I live up to expectations too much of a 'spoiler' for you to divulge?
[ To borrow his word. She learned that one very early on. ]
no subject
Mm, it's a big ask. [ said with a seriousness that suggests genuine concern and followed, with finality: ] Dead risky.
[ his smile widens, easily giving him away. ]
If you go into the next decade cocky, that's on me, yeah?
[ which is to say yes, you do or even you exceed expectations. ]
no subject
Well, maybe Peggy Carter, Director of SHIELD falls under that category now too. ]
Oh, please, [ she demurs, smoothing a hand over his back. ] There's only room for one stratospheric ego in SHIELD and it's Howard. Besides, it's terribly unbecoming for a spy to be anywhere near the spotlight. [ Peggy opens back up to him to face him more fully, although they're still quite close, as though having a hushed conversation on a crowded dance floor. ] Although what's life without a little risk?
no subject
Wouldn’t know.
[ A little roguish (insomuch as he can be, scruff and all) and a lot wry. He applied to bloody SHIELD Academy and took a field assignment with Jemma long before he jumped into quarantine wards and foreign conflicts and strange planets.
Two epic loves is more than most people get, even if they both ended in tragedy. And Fitz has managed to make a life here, far-flung from all he knew and loved. Not much to risk, is there then? Besides the one thing —
It’s a snap decision. Has to be, or he wouldn’t see it through. He cants his head forward, closing the distance between them to press a fervent kiss to her mouth. ]
no subject
He kisses her and they sway to a stop and the afterimage of his expression flickers across her eyelids as they flutter closed and as she rises up into him and the heat of his mouth, she thinks — yes. Oh, yes, this snuck up on him too.
Her hand is still held in his and she brings both to settle in the gasp of space between them, caught between two pounding hearts; the other at his shoulder slides around to cup his face because there is nothing chaste about this kiss, no matter how tender the music on the wireless, because she didn't see it coming but God, now that it's happening, she can't imagine how she could have missed something so achingly obvious. ]
makes this my 1,000th fitz tag
Guided by the warmth of her touch and his own instincts to deepen the kiss, he opens his mouth. Oh. At her waist, his hands first tighten, then slide up, pulling her flush with pressure at the small of her back. A step or two forward, pushing, moving.
Fitz hasn't kissed anyone like this in quite some time. ]
YELLS
Years, maybe, since the last whirlwind of anything half as meaningful (and the last thing crashed and burned long ago in the wake of duty) and here she is swept up in another. It's probably a terrible idea, getting tangled up in someone who doesn't belong here, who will inevitably leave all this and her behind for where he's meant to be — but she's weathered that storm before and she needn't think any farther than the present. Peggy spends her days trying to think ten steps ahead of the world but she can leave it at the door for a night, can't she, and allow herself this? This small, fervent piece of someone else's life.
He steers this kiss from hunger to passion in a heartbeat and she breathes into it, him, the heat of his mouth, his hands through the fabric of her dress; and as he moves, so does she, walking back blindly until her shoulder meets the mantle piece. Their momentum doesn't slow there — she knows a quarter turn will take her to the gap on the wall between fireplace and end table so she does it, lips parting to his with a soft noise and careless of the colour smearing across them; because it has been a while, a long bloody while, and she doesn't mind him knowing it. ]
🔥
Carter finds the only gap in the wall of his bloody apartment, as it happens, a clever maneuver that doesn't go unnoticed or unappreciated, even if he has better things to do with his mouth than gawk at her. Fitz angles to the side, catching the corner of her lips, further smudging the redness there, and kissing across her jaw. Can't let her outdo him like it's nothing, yeah? Hands still firm at her back (not budging despite the reversal of positions), he ducks to trail his mouth along the hollow of her throat.
Spies tend to have a thing about that, confirmed by his own interests and experience of others. A little danger has appeal. ]
no subject
Oh, bloody hell.
[ Soft, more breath than voice, because he catches on a spot that honest-to-God makes her knees a little weak — she'd blame the bourbon but please, she can lie to others, not herself — and her hand on his cheek finds purchase in his hair, curling through it and holding on as if to stop him, to keep him there, to drag him back up for another urgent kiss. She's breathless with it, with waiting for a slip of tongue or the nip of his teeth, with being torn on asking for it because all that she manages on a trembling exhale is — ]
Leo.