Who: Leo Fitz and Henry Foss Where: A bar somewhere When: Backdated to Monday, February 7, 2019 What: Two friends walk into a bar. Rating/Warnings: Nothing in particular. Status: Complete
Even for someone like Fitz, who was prone to getting lost in his work to the detriment of everything else, it would have been hard to miss the shift in Henry after his girlfriend's departure. He wasn't quite sure what to say to the man about it, other than a sympathetic look or hum here and there, but he'd done his best. Even though he hadn't known Henry long, he was always conscious that Henry had known him longer, and it made him want to make an extra effort. It was strange, that expectation that he would be someone's friend almost no matter what he had to say about it, but he'd found as the days passed that he didn't actually mind where Henry was concerned.
And it was nice to know he had someone he could talk to who wasn't Simmons, because that was a whole mountain of feelings he couldn't quite bring himself to dredge up on a daily basis.
The bar they'd chosen was the closest one outside of the community, something not too seedy but also not fancy enough that Fitz felt out of place. Well, he still felt mostly out of place, but that had nothing to do with the venue itself. He'd ordered a bottle of beer from the menu without really paying much attention to what it was and settled into a corner booth that offered some semblance of privacy. "See? Out of the lab and I didn't even turn back into a pumpkin." He smiled at that attempt at levity and took a sip of his drink, leaving the floor open for Henry to talk as he wanted.
“Well, it’s not midnight yet.” Henry, too, had ordered a bottle of beer. He wasn’t paying attention to much of anything these days. Actually, he had more wounds on his hands from his soldering iron than he’d ever had before. He just kept looking over at his phone, waiting for it to chime, hoping she might call. Text. Email. Anything. But Darcy had made it pretty clear that she was going to be out of communications for a while--that she was going to be busy training and starting a new life there. A new life. Those words cut Henry deep. She was leaving everyone and everything here (including him) behind. On purpose.
“You’ve still got time.” Henry lifted his bottle and sipped from it. A weak smile tugged at the corner of his lips as he lowered the bottle again. “If it happens, I promise I’ll just roll you back home.”
"True." If they stayed there until midnight, Fitz had no doubt he'd be itching to get back to the lab. Or, more likely, missing his new nightly routine with Jemma and Alya enough that he'd be twitchy. How long had he been here now? Weeks? A month? It was hard to keep track. Even though there was plenty that still wasn't entirely comfortable, there were parts that he couldn't imagine being without. They were all strangely four-year-old shaped. "Alya might enjoy it." He laughed a little. "Until she realized I wasn't going to read to her."
He contemplated the label on his beer bottle (and the name that sounded far more pretentious than he'd noticed when pointing to it on the menu) before taking a drink. They all tasted basically the same to him, fancy or not. "Do you want to—" He waved a hand, not struggling for words so much as just trying to decide what to say. "Talk about it?"
“Well, we can’t disappoint the little princess.” Just the mention of Alya brought a smile to Henry’s face. It was tired, tentative, a little sad, but definitely there. He didn’t have children of his own (yet) but hanging around Jemma and Fitz’s little girl so much made him think that someday he’d want to. And there had been a thought that maybe he’d get there with Darcy… but that future was gone now.
“Oh. Uh.” Henry took his fingernail and scratched at the label on the bottle in his hands. He l knew he probably should talk about it. It would be the only way to heal, right? “It would have been easier if she’d been taken by the portal. At least then it wouldn’t have been her choice to leave.”
"No, we can't," Fitz agreed, his lingering smile a bit contemplative as he thought of his daughter. Some days it was strange how it wasn't strange. He was even more surprised that Henry's connection with the little girl didn't bring with it a ping of jealousy. If anything, that was reserved for the future version of himself, who had everything he'd ever wanted—and one small, blonde one he'd never known he'd needed.
He nodded in understanding. As much as he'd tried to set aside the things that had been happening with Simmons back in his world, he knew what it was to be left behind by someone else's choice. "Did you have any idea? That she might follow her career first."
“No.” Henry answered, quite honestly. He thought things had been going really well with the pair of them. They’d gone out on dates, spent the night, even talked in vague terms about a future. Some kind of future in which they were together. For real together. Henry had been pretty blindsided by this. It was obvious how head over heels he was for her--he always had been--and now how devastated he was that she was gone. “I thought we were happy,” he admitted after gulping from the bottle again. It didn’t feel strong enough. “Maybe it’s naive, I dunno, but I thought… I thought it might work out. For real.”
"It's pretty shitty all the way around," Fitz said, because there really wasn't any other way he could describe it that felt right. The whole thing left Henry with no option whatsoever than to just deal with it. There one day and gone the next. Suddenly, his own situation didn't seem so bad. "I don't think it's naive to feel the way you feel and...." He turned his beer bottle in his hands, trying to relax into the rest of what he wanted to say rather than force it. "And expect that it was still the same for her. How could you know if she hadn't told you?"
“Don’t you just… know?” Henry asked, turning to look over at him. “If it’s real, don’t you just… know? I mean, maybe not. I’ve never known and had it reciprocated.” He lifted the bottle for another long pull of beer, for once in his life really wishing that it was something stronger. (Normally he shied away from getting drunk because of what danger a loss of control might pose to others. But tonight he felt like he needed something else to take away the sorrow.)
“I don’t know. Maybe there are plenty of fish in the sea. Or whatever the saying goes.” Maybe Henry just needed to meet someone new to move forward. Or maybe he needed time.
"I'm basically the worst person to ask," Fitz admitted, offering a bit of a self-deprecating smile. It hadn't been so long since he'd had his own heart broken. Despite knowing what he knew now, his feelings were still complicated and confusing. Maybe love was simply like that. He hated the bits of life that didn't follow understandable patterns. "My history's not...unblemished."
He shrugged and wrapped both hands around his beer bottle, trying to force himself to stop fidgeting with it. "I'd say something encouraging. But it'd just sound...well, meaningless. Because it would be. But you're great." And he found, as he was saying it, that he really meant it. Even still not knowing the man all that well, he liked working with him and had found an ease with him that didn't always come naturally. "Someone else will see that."
“I don’t know if anyone’s history is unblemished,” Henry mused, turning his eyes to the ceiling for a moment as he thought about it. All the people he knew, anyway. Back in his world people’s relationships were complicated. Very complicated. Magnus, for example, had a difficult past.
“It’s okay,” Henry said, shaking his head. “You don’t… you don’t have to say…” He shrugged one shoulder, turning his eyes back down to the bottle in his hands. Henry paused for a long moment before adding, “thanks.”
It was funny, because Fitz was pretty sure they were defining history in entirely different ways. His own was a desert wasteland except for Jemma's presence—and lack—in it. But the sentiment was still the same, that he didn't understand how to figure out how to tell when the other person reciprocated, no matter how sure you were of your own feelings.
His tiny smile turned into an equally small laugh. "You somehow managed to pick the worst person for a best friend." It wasn't what they were yet, but he could feel the potential there, and in the way Henry trusted him despite their odd situation. "In relationship experience. The best if you want the answers to all the science questions that stump you."
Henry considered for a beat, then lifted his bottle. “Yeah, I dunno about that.” He sipped, then lowered it once more. “You and Jemma are solid. That’s relationship goals right there.” He broke into a smirk, glancing over at his friend. “And not that many science questions stump me, so…” Teasing. Mostly teasing.
"You forget that I'm not him." Fitz said it blithely, only because he wasn't sure how to talk about it, or if he even should. He and Simmons had been a unit for so long that it almost felt like breaking some sacred pact to even whisper about it behind closed doors. Or, well, in a relatively private booth in some strange bar in an alternate universe. "They are solid." He followed the statement with a couple of big gulps of beer, as was appropriate for any such woe.
"Not with me around, certainly," he said, with a raised eyebrow that might have been a challenge in the lab. Here it was only a bit of fun.
Henry shook his head. “You’re not him, but you’re you.” He set the bottle down, empty now. “I’ve seen you with her, and with Alya. I don’t think you’re giving yourself enough credit.” It was true--Henry thought that Fitz and Jemma were absolutely perfect together, even if it was this Fitz. (Truthfully, Henry had been jealous of the perfection of their relationship for ages now. Not that he wanted to be with Jemma or with Fitz, but he saw the way they were together. Even when Fitz was taken away and brought back… Henry thought I want someone to mourn me the way that Jemma is mourning him. And then he hated himself for thinking it, as he cared for his best friend and her daughter.)
“Oh. Certainly,” Henry nodded, playing along. “Not sure how I’ve been able to survive thirty-some-odd years without you.”
"It's not about credit." Except it was, sort of, and Fitz knew that very well even as he refuted the statement. If he'd been a whole version of himself and not this half broken one, he might have felt differently. He might have been able to act differently. But how could he ask Jemma to accept a lesser version of what she'd had? He wanted to anyway, but that thought always stopped him. He still had work to do. "Alya is easy. Atoms falling into orbits. Jemma is...." The science metaphors fell apart there, because science he understood.
"Right? Not sure you could have made it much longer, mate." As silly as it was, it was nice to feel comfortable joking around with someone who wasn't Simmons. (Not that he always felt comfortable with that these days.) "You want another?" He nodded between Henry's beer and the bar.
Henry shook his head. “If you insist.” But he didn’t believe it. He knew the way Jemma looked at Fitz. Not just the old one, but this one. And, if he was completely honest, he’d been jealous of it from the start. Not that he wanted to be with Jemma (or Fitz) exactly, but that he’d always wanted what they had. Love that was true. A family. Trust and honor and respect and obvious infatuation and passion and all of those other things. Henry was hoping he’d have it one day. And thought maybe with Darcy…
But that was over. And he wasn’t going to think about it anymore. “Yeah,” Henry responded. He’d need at least one more. “Thanks for this. I appreciate it.”
Fitz flagged down a server and asked for more of the same, even though his own still had a bit to go before he'd need one. "It's what friends do, yeah?" he said once that was handled. He tapped his fingers on his beer bottle for a second before taking another drink. "We should do this." The words rolled around for a second before he added, "Regularly." Bars weren't his thing, precisely, but he liked the idea of it. He didn't much have the opportunity, being a field agent, but now.... "Maybe sometimes we'll have good things to talk about." He laughed a little and shook his head. "Or at least projects to discuss."
It was, indeed, what friends do. And Henry couldn’t put into words how glad he was to have Fitz as a friend. Without Will, or Magnus, or Kate, or Ashley (😭) or Biggie… Henry was making his new home here in this strange, new world. And Fitz was a huge part of that. Along with Jemma and Alya. Henry glanced over at Fitz after the word this, eyebrow raised. Wondering what this meant… until Fitz continued that thought. Then Henry nodded. “Let’s hope for good things to talk about, and fall back on projects to discuss.” He offered, then clinked his bottle against his friend’s. “Because projects to discuss is almost always a happy thing.”
"The science always provides," Fitz said with a smile, returning the tap with his bottle and finally finishing it off—just in time for their second round to arrive. As an afterthought, he stopped the server and said, "Can we get some—hmm—cheese sticks?" It was the thing that popped in his head. "Might as well figure out what we like. If we're going to be back."