Chapter Text
“Oh, Fitz,” Jemma breathed, dropping her carryon to the mahogany floor. “It’s perfect!”
Closing the door to their beach-adjacent cabin behind himself, Fitz had to agree. The main room was small on floor space but the furnishings were luxurious in reds and golds, and the four-poster bed was hung with mosquito netting, making the room look fit for royalty. Which Jemma might as well be, in his personal opinion. His eyes wandered from the supplied Bluetooth stereo to where Jemma was trailing her fingers over the freshly shined wooden dresser and peeking through the curtains. She let out a small squeal of excitement and hopped over to the wall-length windows.
“Fitz, the hot tub!”
Coming up behind her, he rested one hand on the small of her back as he peered through the curtains at what was, indeed, a private hot tub. The fence seemed to have hinges, probably to allow guests to open it should they wish to overlook the ocean while lounging in the steaming water. Impressed, Fitz nodded.
“Very nice.”
“Nice?” Jemma twisted up to look at him, aghast. “Nice?! That’s all you can say?!”
He tried to think of something more descriptive, but kept getting distracted by wanting to kiss her. “D’you think monkeys will play in the hot tub? Or will the chlorine chase ‘em off?”
Groaning into a laugh, she dropped her head against his shoulder. “We reserve the sixth most expensive room in the resort, and you just want to know about the monkeys.”
“I’d have been fine in a tent on the beach, s’long as I was with you,” he said grandly, earning him an emphatic eye-roll.
“You would have spent the entire time complaining about getting sand everywhere.”
“Maybe. But that doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t be happy anyway.” He reached up to caress her cheek, rubbing his thumb affectionately against her skin, and her expression melted.
“You’re impossible,” she murmured, nuzzling up at him and then leaning forward to fit their mouths together.
Kissing Jemma was like a revelation each time, as far as Fitz was concerned, even if they’d done things far more X-rated by this point. For some reason, kissing her was still his favorite way of showing her how he felt, something about the inherent intimacy of it. After a few moments, she dropped back onto her feet, eyes fluttering open as she smiled dreamily up at him.
“What do you think will be the first fish we see tomorrow?” With that, she was off again, back to exploring the room as she mused about their planned snorkeling expedition. “I think I’d like to see an Elagatis bipinnulata, or a Cephalopholis argus. The Lethrinus nebulosus is supposed to be particularly fetching in the wild, but –”
“Jemma,” Fitz laughed, leaning against the window and pushing the curtains open so he had a better view, “English, not Latin, please. I didn’t memorize the guidebook on the flight.”
“It’ll come in handy,” she sniffed, and he heard her move around the mosquito netting.
“I know,” he retorted, “but someone was monopolizing the book.”
Rifling through her bag, she sighed. “The rainbow runner, the peacock hind grouper, and the spangled emperor fish.”
He hummed, wrinkling his nose. “I dunno, I think I’d really like to see a dugong. Reckon they wouldn’t be that close to shore, though, we might have to see about hiring a boat to take us out. That’s gotta be an option somewhere, right? Jemma?” When he turned around, she was in the process of stripping off her knickers, leaving her stark naked in the middle of the room, and he let out an annoyingly unmanly squeak. “The curtains –!”
“So close them, then,” she said, giving him a dry look. Flailing behind himself, he whisked the two swaths of satin closed before realizing that the fence was more than high enough to hide Jemma from anyone else.
“What,” he said hoarsely, pausing to clear his throat, “are you doing?”
“Going to take a shower.” She responded as if he was being particularly slow, and they both turned when there was a sharp knock at the door. “Oh, excellent, those must be the bags. I’ll see you in here soon, shall I?” When he just stared at her, she snapped her fingers to get his attention. “Hello, Fitz?”
“Right,” he croaked, stumbling to the front door. “Bags, shower. Be right there.”
“Good,” she said, giving him a knowing smile and disappearing into the marble-clad room.
How Jemma could go from talking about fish and snorkeling one second to stripping off all her clothes and propositioning him in the next was completely beyond him. But Fitz wouldn’t have her be any other way.