Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. –Stephen Hawking

It was another very late night of working and, pausing to stretch, Fitz looked across the lab to see Jemma hunched over her microscope as usual. She'd huffed out an exasperated sigh and, as he watched, she flung her long, dark hair backward over her shoulder. It was apparently getting in her way and becoming a bother. He'd noticed she'd been growing it out for awhile but he still had no idea why. It seemed more of a hindrance in the lab than anything else considering she generally wore it down now instead of pulled back with an elastic as she used to. If she wasn't careful, it could end up a downright hazard.

It seemed it was always another late night in the lab these days. There was little else to do at the Foster/Stark Research Facility but work. Well, that wasn't entirely true, if he's being honest—there were flatscreen televisions and Xboxes galore. After all, the bill for this entire project and even the facilities themselves was funded by Tony Stark himself. However, he and Jemma agreed, really, they just wanted to finish their part so they could go back home but their part of the project seemed never ending. So they worked hard, and ignored the diversions provided by Stark so that they might get back sooner.

They'd been loaned out to work on the joint project because S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Coulson considered it his business to see that the technology they were developing here moved forward for the good of the world. (Or so he'd dramatically told them when he'd informed them of their transfers.) Coulson apparently believed that alien threats were here to stay and that mankind needed as many advances as they could muster to combat their enemies.

Fitz was always a bit of a fan of Stark's, truth be told, so he was keen to come on board from the beginning. Problem was, he had yet to see hide nor hair of the man himself. Fitz was fine with the project, he trusted Coulson that it was important. Not to mention, Dr. Foster was completely brilliant to work with but he missed his friends and the grind of doing mostly the same work day-in and day-out had begun to get to him. That wasn't even mentioning being cooped up in the little base or having to face the New Mexico desert heat if they ventured out. Fitz was decidedly a northerly creature.

Jemma seemed to have her own reasons for being a bit leery of the project, she always seemed slightly ill-at-ease these days, but she hadn't yet shared with him why her enthusiasm was oftentimes lackluster at best. So far, her part of the project was all about making sure the test subjects were coming out of it okay so they could carry on with yet more testing. There were some foreign samples that had come back from the last few tests and she seemed much more interested in those. In fact, that's exactly what she was working on so late. He'd stayed to finish some modifications to the control chip for the device. After the last field test, the circuit kept overloading but he thought he had it sorted now.

He heard Jemma stir and he looked over to find her beginning to gingerly stretch her neck as she sighed wearily. Then she made a face of sudden pain, gasping at the shock of it while she clutched her neck.

"Okay?" he asked, concerned.

Her lips tightened in a way that he knew meant she didn't want to say something but felt she must for the sake of decorum. "It's nothing. Just too long over the microscope," she said with a dismissive wave.

Having spent many an hour with his neck bent tinkering over a project, and just wishing there was someone to work out the knots, he impulsively said, "I could…" But he stopped himself, suddenly unsure if that activity was out of bounds from where they stood now. However, he wasn't able to think of anything to cover his potential faux pas, so he just held up his hand, repetitively flexing his fingers in a massaging motion. "I mean, if you, ehm…need that," he added awkwardly, trying to give her a way to bow out gracefully should she not want him to touch her so intimately.

Though their working relationship was as strong as it ever was and they got on well enough in the professional environment of the lab, they hadn't quite gotten back to where they once were on a personal level. Sure, they had film nights and chats but the subjects always seemed restricted. He felt he was always toeing that line of what was okay and what went too far. Three years ago, he wouldn't even have thought twice about working on her tense neck. But now, everything seemed full of the weight of insinuation. He was constantly checking his words before he spoke to be certain they carried no potentially inflammatory or suggestive undertones. Apparently even acts of kindness now had to be second-guessed.

She rolled her head around on her neck—evidently, testing the damage—and he saw her grimace when it tensed painfully. She looked back at him, her face circumspect, as she rubbed half-heartedly at the area. "Alright, I mean, if you really don't mind," she said dubiously.

A small thrill of fear worked its way up his spine at her words, but he didn't hesitate. He just shook his head, getting up and walking over to stand behind her.

"Course not," he mumbled.

He took over as she let her hand drop away from her neck, dragging her long hair out of his way as she did so. Her skin was just as soft as he remembered, he couldn't help musing as he gently rubbed over the bunched muscles with long strokes of his thumbs the way she used to prefer.

Letting her head fall loosely forward, she supported herself with her elbows on her desk. "Oh, Fitz, that feels wonderful," she said, her voice syrupy and infused with enough intensity to make his cheeks grow warm.

He tried desperately not to let his mind go where it wanted to: other scenarios where she might say something similar in that tone of voice. He just kept up his repeating motions until the worst of the tightness seems to be gone from her neck.

"Is that…okay?" he asked, taking his fingers away quickly to avoid seeming a perverted lingerer.

She brought her hand back up to smooth over the spot, then twisted her head this way and that.

"Oh, that's lovely. Thank you, Fitz."

She turned her head to smile broadly up at him and he felt the familiar tightness in his chest that let him know that, though touching in such a way may be okay for her now, it might still be too soon for him.

"Good...tha's good," he muttered, immediately walking toward the coat rack and sliding his lab coat off his arms. "I'm just…well, ehm, goodnight."

He watched her stand as well, stretching her shoulders back before she said, her tone conversational, "I'll walk you back. I'm about knackered."

He just nodded, waiting for her as she tidied her desk and shut off her work lamp, before she finally headed over to shrug out of her lab coat and hang it next to his.

He locked up the doors to the empty lab as she waited for him, stretching her arms up in the air while he tried not to look at her. Did she not know how that affected him? She couldn't. She would never intentionally do anything to draw his attention. She was just stretching after all—taking a very long time about it and making her breasts very prominent—but still, just stretching. Everyone did that, right? It was a thing people did. He just made sure to keep his eyes pointed toward the ground.

They walked down the empty hallways and back toward the dormitories in silence until Jemma asked, "Are you looking forward to the field test on Monday?"

He nodded absently. "Course. Square one again. Great. If that goes well then we get to analyze data for a month." He spun his finger in the air. "Whoop-de-doo."

"Still," she said, tittering politely, "it could just be three more months or so before we get back."

"Yeah," he said, probably a bit too unhappily.

He felt her hand on his shoulder. "I'm very sorry you're so valuable to the project that they can't afford to let you go just now," she said, just suppressing a smirk. "They need you to save the world," she added, mocking Coulson's spiel.

He cast his eyes upward and sighed theatrically. "I know. And how can I say no to that? Bloody world, always needs savin'. S'pose it's down to me this time."

She chuckled and he found himself joining in. He felt a bubble of happiness rising up within him at being able to make her laugh and then a little pinprick of sadness that popped it when she let her hand slide from his shoulder. He tried to shake it off because there was absolutely no reason for him to rehash these old issues in his mind.

The silence stretched between them again but it wasn't uncomfortable as it once might've been.

He usually liked working in the evenings the best, when he and Jemma were alone together in the lab and no longer surrounded by all the assistants and techs. It reminded him of the way things were between them before he made her his ill-advised love confession.

It was almost two years since he woke from a coma to discover that his genius brain was damaged. He still wasn't sure if he would recover any further than he already had. A little less than a year ago, an Inhuman named Hanna Lis possessed of incredible restorative powers had healed him and exposed an attempted Hydra plot to kidnap him and Simmons for reasons he still didn't quite understand the full nature of. She'd revealed the Hydra plot and an warned of an impeding attack when she admitted to posing as a double agent, ultimately, saving the lives of many S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. She also told him he was something "more" than human. He'd thought she meant he was one of the Inhuman's like Skye, but Jemma had tested his blood and, despite the many tests she'd run on him, he appeared to be completely normal. He had no idea if it'd meant anything or not and Hanna was no longer around to ask since she'd died in the Hydra attack.

He never found out how far her healing had worked either but the benefits were considerable. Medical tests had revealed vast improvements in his brain but Jemma said much of what was damaged couldn't really be measured. So, he had to live with never really knowing his level of deficiency but he tried to be grateful for the improvements he had.

His right hand still trembled slightly sometimes, mostly when he was tired or nervous, and his fine motor control was slightly less than it was before. Though it was more of a mild frustration than an outright complaint these days. After the coma, he'd had significant difficulty speaking, stuttering and fumbling for words that his brain couldn't quite grasp onto. He never had that problem now. He no longer had most of the other symptoms that plagued him in the year following his injury. By far, the most significant improvement was that he could work freely again—nearly as well as he ever could. At the beginning, his abilities as an engineer suffered greatly from the hypoxia but he thought he was at nearly a hundred percent now.

Jemma seemed to agree with his assessment which pleased him because he knew she likely had some residual guilt over his injury. Even though she'd saved him from death, she hadn't been able to save him from the oxygen deprivation or his hurt after her rejection of his romantic feelings.

After he'd confessed that he was in love with her, Jemma pulled away from him completely, unable to accept or return his feelings. He'd turned to Hanna for better or worse. The events that followed had changed him, made him realize that whether Jemma wanted to be more than friends or never wanted that—it didn't matter—she would always be the most important person in the world to him. That realization enabled him to let go of the hurt and shame he'd been feeling, allowing things to normalized between them in the aftermath.

Since then, he and Jemma had been able to work together again just as they always have before the coma and his admission. They were finishing each other's sentences and pushing each other beyond what they were capable of on their own just as they had since they were students at S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy. He still loved Jemma and thought maybe he always would. He also believed that she knew, but naturally they never discussed it. There were many things they never spoke about—including Hanna.

And though it had been problematic for many reasons, his relationship with Hanna helped him realize that Jemma's caring about him but not loving him romantically wasn't because of a failing on his part, it simply was. Just an inexplicable fact of nature, and not something he should be ashamed of or feel unworthy over. Hanna had loved him and somehow, being loved by someone had changed him too. He was no longer choking on feelings of his own worthlessness any longer.

He was hurt by Hanna's betrayal when he'd found out initially and had a difficult time believing she really loved him. He thought she was just using him at first, but once he realized that she'd done it all to save her family, he understood because he felt the same way about Jemma. He didn't know what he'd do to save her and he hoped he never had to find out. In the end, Hanna proved beyond doubt that she was a loyal S.H.I.E.L.D. agent.

He had certainly cared about Hanna but, in the end, he was forced to admit that the situation was just too chaotic and confusing to be sorted through rationally—or perhaps he didn't want to. He just accepted what happened and tried to remember her. She left him with more hope and a greater measure of confidence than he'd had before. Somehow she'd helped him remember that he was worth something—and, really, in a way, that gave him his friendship with Jemma back. When he weighed out what Hanna had gotten in return, he couldn't help but feel a deep guilt and regret.

He almost wished he could speak to Jemma about it at times but things were never quite that intimate between them, not even before. Years before, she'd told him a few things about her exes but, really, he'd never wanted to know, not then and most definitely not now. And he certainly didn't want to encourage that situation by sharing his own woes. Not that either of them had much in the way of woes just now. But, even if they were on those terms, he didn't think he could ever explain any of it to Jemma. He wasn't sure it even came out well in his own head, putting it into words seemed near impossible.

Still, things were good now between Jemma and himself. He could be around her without that near-constant pain in his heart. The anguish he once felt at her rejection was greatly diminished by the fact that she clearly did still care about him and wanted him in her life, just as he wanted her in his—even if he was never anything more than her best friend and lab partner.

They turned the corner into the hallway where both their dorm rooms were located. They got to her door first. She quickly keyed in the code but, instead of opening it, she turned back and smiled up at him.

Then, with an odd look he couldn't discern, she took a step toward him. His heart clenched and his brain seemed to grind to a halt, he had no idea what to do.

Once, back when they were both students at the Academy, Jemma had told him that all women sent out the same signals to let men know when they wanted to be kissed goodnight. Her outlined body language had never failed him. The confusing part was that Jemma's current behavior was modeling those cues pretty much to the letter.

But he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that couldn't possibly be true. She'd made her feelings absolutely clear less than a year ago: she only ever thought of him as a friend—nothing more.

If there was one thing he was sure of, it was that Jemma Simmons did not want him to kiss her—in his mind, that much was an absolutely certainty.

She took another measured step forward and suddenly she was within the boundary of his personal space.

He swallowed what seemed to be an excessive amount of saliva with a clicking sound that seemed very loud in his ears. He cleared his throat to try and cover up the embarrassing noise.

Still, she was just looking up at him expectantly with a small, playful smile tugging at her lips. And Jemma's lips could easily become the central preoccupation of his life if he allowed himself to think that way.

"Good…night?" he said, his finger coming up of its own volition to point toward his room two doors down.

She looked vaguely dismayed (even disappointed? he wondered but quickly dismissed the idea as ridiculous). He suppressed his urge to, quite literally, run away. If he could've thought of a good excuse he might've tried it.

"Early day tomorrow," he said but, even to his own ears, his voice sounded anxious and uncertain. He cringed inwardly, wishing he knew the right thing to say to escape. He hated not understanding what was expected of him. Clearly, he was misinterpreting, just being a lovesick prat.

Suddenly, her features seemed to sag, making her look…deflated. Before he could really think what that might mean, she threw her arms around his shoulders and pulled him down into a brief but firm hug.

"Goodnight, Fitz," she said into his ear but it sounded oddly, if only slightly, quavery. He tried to pull back to see her expression but she turned away too quickly and went immediately inside her room.

As much of his life as he'd spent pondering the inner workings of the opposite sex, he was beginning to think it was a completely hopeless case.

"Shite," he muttered to himself as he turned toward his own door. What the bloody hell did he do now?