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tenscupcake · 6 years

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the null hypothesis (2/?)

fitzsimmons. teen. ~3.7k this chap. summary: roughly one out of every six people can’t feel touch; that is, until their soulmate touches them. fitz and jemma are two indignant contributors to that statistic, content to devote their lives to science rather than searching for their supposed ‘other half.’ both too clever for high school, they head off to university at sixteen, completely unaware their fates are about to become intertwined. but in a world where soulmates don’t always match, it’s not always easy to confess to a stranger. a soulmate au with a twist. this chapter on ao3 | back to chapter 1 on ao3

Fitz’s first day at university doesn’t bode well for the semester. Each class he attends on Monday – general chemistry I, economics, and art history – is so introductory-level and simple. Aside from the gaps in his schedule and the fact that attendance isn’t recorded, it feels rather like high school (and three years of that place was enough to drive him half mad).

General chemistry he can’t believe he has to take. He’s more than proficient in the concepts that will be taught. AP exams and community college courses bailed him out of a laundry list of the university’s general education requirements, but this is an unfortunate exception. The university just decided to change its curriculum the year after he’d taken it at his local community college and, subsequently, they refused to accept his transfer credits for that particular course.

He’s planning to skip the lectures and just show up for labs and exams, until he finds out there will be quizzes for participation points at the beginning of each period starting next week. What a bunch of rubbish. He hopes he can at least spend most of that lecture time on his laptop, modelling equations and running simulations for the drone he’s working on.

The rest of the week, at least, bodes a bit better. He actually finds himself paying attention and taking a bit of notes in a few courses. Biochemistry is one: relatively speaking, it’s always been an area he’s weaker in. But it’s not the most riveting subject matter. He’s always found biology far too unpredictable for his taste. His two engineering courses, though, he’s properly excited about. Mechatronics and Numerical Analysis. He’s hoping to get some additional resources from the professors of those two, and look into joining one of their laboratories.

If half his classes weren’t pathetically simple and he didn’t pick up new subjects so easily, he might be a bit overwhelmed after the first week. In his situation, a typical student would probably be quite overwhelmed. His plan to graduate in three years has his schedule jam-packed: on average, he’ll be taking twenty-two units per semester. Normally, they don’t even allow such a thing, but they’ve made an exception for Fitz.

But Fitz is no typical student, so it’s far from overwhelming. Underwhelming, if anything. He’s a bit worried his longstanding boredom from high school may continue here as well.

Part of it is that none of his labs meet the first week. He has to complete an embarrassingly intuitive laboratory safety training course online, but other than that, he gets those periods off. He reckons he’ll be less bored when his schedule fills out with an extra twelve hours a week of lab work. Hands-on investigation is inherently less boring than sitting in class.

But for this week, in the three hour blocks he’ll normally be in various labs throughout campus, he stays in his room instead, continuing to chip away at his drone prototype one piece of hardware and one line of code at a time.

And that’s exactly what he’s doing after lunch the following Tuesday. Not yet in the habit of trekking to lab, he loses track of time. By the time he glances at his phone, he finds it’s 2:00 on the dot.

He’s already late for his first lab of the week.

When he crashes through the door of the third-floor teaching laboratory in the Chem building, the room is completely full. The students are already outfitted in their gloves and coats, goggles at the ready, and only one voice sounds through the room: that of their lab’s TA. He can’t see whoever the bloke is through all the shelves and ventilation shafts above the benches, but whoever he is has stopped his monologue in the wake of Fitz’s entrance.

Oops.

Everyone in the aisle he’s entered into is already paired off. Trying to catch his breath as quietly as possible, he makes his way to the front so he can get a better view of the rest of the lab.

As soon as he’s within eyesight of the TA, he’s on the receiving end of a lecture.

“I just finished explaining to the rest of the class: being more than five minutes late to a lab means you can’t participate in that lab, and you’ll have to take a zero.” Fitz’s stomach drops. Did he just sprint all the way here for nothing? “You’re all right for today. But starting next week, be on time or don’t come at all.”

“Yes, sir,” he responds dully. As soon as he turns his head, he rolls his eyes.

A quick glance around makes it seem as though everyone in the room does already have a partner.

Well, that’s fine. He’d rather work alone anyway. He’ll probably get it done before anyone else even without a protocol, and any one of these sods would likely just be a constant irritation.

“Anyone missing a partner?” the TA calls out. Fitz whips his head back in his direction, staring at him in horror. This he did not expect.

He reluctantly scans around the room, hoping no one will respond.

Much to his dismay, there’s a girl sitting by herself to his far right, the last bench against the wall. Her hand is raised tentatively, and when Fitz meets her eyes, she narrows hers, like she’s upset at the prospect of being paired with him. She looks younger than most of the others, almost like she could be his age. But looks can be deceiving, he’s learned.

Taking a deep breath, Fitz hustles over to her station. The sooner he’s out of the spotlight, the better.

“Excellent,” the bloke’s voice sounds behind him. “The two young geniuses get to work together. This’ll be interesting.”

Fitz glances back at him, scowling in confusion. ‘Two young geniuses?’ Just what he needs. A smart arse. It doesn’t matter how clever she thinks she is; she’s still going to slow him down.

He slumps into the stool next to hers, resigned to his fate. The mystery girl is quiet while the TA finishes telling them what they’re going to do today. It’s painfully simple: dissolve a pre-1982 penny in nitric acid. Precipitate the copper with sodium hydroxide. Form a copper oxide by heating the solution. Add sulphuric acid to form copper sulphate. Add zinc to re-form copper metal precipitate.

Wow. Magic.

He hastily puts on his coat and gloves on while the bloke is rambling about safety so as not to waste any more time. Then he pulls out his notebook and starts scribbling out the date and experiment title as neatly as he can. He knows these lab reports will be graded partially on legibility. He almost manages to get the whole protocol down before the TA finishes his spiel.

He’s just finishing the last two steps when the bloke announces they’re free to start.

“I’m Jemma,” his unwitting partner says, turning to him without hesitation. “Simmons,” she adds.

He reluctantly pulls his attention from his notebook and looks up at her.

At first glance, when she was half-scowling at him, he had found her a bit intimidating, but now that he’s up close and getting a better look, she’s actually rather nonthreatening. A soft smile on her lips and bright brown eyes that actually seem excited for this drivel. Actually, she’s a bit... nice to look at. Which, he realizes, must be bad news. People with her level of attractiveness generally have proportionately low intelligence.

“Leo,” he replies. His attempt at a smile falling flat, he turns back to his notebook as quickly as he can to continue writing. “Fitz,” he adds in the same manner that she did.

He should at least give her a chance, really. Maybe she’ll prove him wrong.

What did he want a fresh start for, if he wasn’t going to use it to find some new mates?

“Right then, Leo, I’ll get the reagents. You can get the rest of the supplies.”

Oh. She’s not American. For some reason it took him several words to pick up on it, but she’s decidedly English.

His heart suddenly softens to her even more. He knows how wretched it is to start over in a new country. He briefly wonders when she moved to the States. Unable to help himself, he glances back up at her, but before he can even agree to her terms, she’s walking away.

Wait. Did she just delegate a task to him? Does she think this is how it’s going to work, then? His short-lived empathy for her starts to dissolve.

Still, to save them both time, he gets the glassware and materials they’ll need anyway, and is able to get it all situated in their fume hood before she returns with the reagents.

“Found everything all right, then?” she asks when she returns with what he hopes are the appropriate amounts of their acids and bases.

As if it’d be hard for him to locate a couple of beakers in a chemistry lab?

“Hard to misplace a hot plate,” he quips, trying not to let his irritation show too much.

Not only did Jemma acquire the correct concentrations and volumes of the necessary reagents, she is surprisingly clever. She proceeds to the first step of the experiment without being prompted, narrating aloud everything she does as she does it (which, strangely, he finds a bit endearing).

Watching and listening her do everything as accurately as he would have done, Fitz readies the second step to save them time. The pleasant surprise of her competence lifts his mood considerably. Perhaps she is a good candidate for a friend.

“Not from around here, I’m guessing?” she asks as she places their penny in a beaker.

“Glasgow,” he says, adding the appropriate reagent to it.

“Sheffield,” she counters. And after a moment, she adds: “What’s your opinion of America so far?”

He takes a moment of thought for that one, thinking back to high school and the things he regularly sees on TV shows and the news.

“Lives up to the stereotypes.”

His answer makes her chuckle, and he rather likes it, though he’s not sure why. He supposes it’s rare that someone ever holds a conversation with him long enough for him to manage a joke of any kind; even rarer for the other person to laugh at it. Most people don’t seem to get his sense of humour.

Or maybe it’s just the sound of her laugh.

There’s a few minutes of silence as they continue on to the next step, and curiosity starts to gnaw at him. Jemma is the first person he’s met on this campus so far that he hasn’t immediately wanted to terminate contact with. Contrary to his expectations, the experiment is not going terribly at all. Jemma is knowledgeable about every aspect of it. She works with a precision that has him convinced she’s worked in as many labs as he has prior to arriving here. Neither of them has to refer to the protocol, both having memorized it in the time they spent writing it down. That saves more time than anything, he thinks, judging by the way everyone else keeps poring over their lab manuals.

As soon as they have another few moments of down time while a reaction bubbles to completion, he musters the courage to prod a little more.

“When did you move here?” he asks.

“About three years ago, now.”

“Hmm. Me too.”

“Though we didn’t move here, specifically to New Jersey, I mean. My parents are in Los Angeles.”

“Ah,” Fitz nods. “Yeah, my p” – he catches himself – “my mum, she’s in New York.”

“How old are you?” she asks, looking at him like she’s suspicious of his answer.

“Sixteen,” he admits.

“Seriously?” she asks, grinning like she’s pleasantly surprised by his answer.

“Seriously.” He nods, and can’t help smiling back a bit.

“I am too,” she volunteers. “Couldn’t stand another day of high school,” she adds, turning back to their foaming beaker.

This time, it’s his turn to chuckle.

It’s odd, how effortless this conversation is. He supposes he’s just no longer accustomed to being around other Brits anymore. Constantly bombarded with a different vernacular, always feels like the odd one out in conversations. References and idioms fly over his head; new-fangled slang words stump him out of some conversations completely. The World loves to rib Londoners for Cockney slang, but some of the things young Americans say colloquially are just as confusing and nonsensical.

That must be all it is.

“What’s your major?” she asks after the fourth step.

“Engineering.”

“Biochem,” she counters, without prompting.

And that’s when his hopes for this relationship sink just a little. Biology is so not his field. Their similarities likely begin and end with being British and taking Gen-Chem. What good would a friendship do them? After their GEs are done, they'll likely have no other classes together, no curriculum in common.

To add to that, Jemma soon all but bombards him with trivial questions that sink his hopes even more.

“Do you know when Dr White’s office hours are? Have you done the textbook readings yet? Have you been to the library?”

Clearly, their priorities are not the same.

“The truth is,” he tries to shut down the string of inquiries. “I spend most of my free time working on projects of my own.”

“Really? Like what?” she asks. She seems a bit frustrated with him. Well, ditto.

Without thinking, he tells her about the drone project. Probably offering a bit too many details. Once he gets started talking about it, it’s hard to stop. There’s so rarely anyone willing to listen. He seems to lose her a bit when he delves into the finer details, but she at least pretends he hasn’t.

“Sounds fascinating,” she offers. “And you do that all on your own?”

“For the most part, yeah.”

If only to be polite, he asks what sorts of things she gets up to in her field.

She goes into detail about the pharmaceutical internship she did the summer before she arrived here, and he can’t help but be impressed. She’s not just clever; she must be brilliant. What sort of sixteen-year-old could score an internship at a pharmaceutical company?

But as intrigued as he is by her kindness and intelligence, it isn’t long before he’s reminded of their inherent incompatibility.

Their TA approaches, peering between them to get a look at their settling reaction.

“Where are you two at?” he asks.

“We’re just about to dry the sample –” Fitz begins.

“We’ve just finished precipitating the copper metal –” Jemma says at the same time.

They both shoot each other surprised frowns, but neither of them cuts their explanation short.

The TA walks away laughing at the incident, but Fitz doesn’t find it amusing.

The very next moment, they disagree how to properly collect the copper solids for weighing; mere minutes later, on how to most efficiently dispose of the corrosives. Neither of them ever backs down, and they end up having to flip a couple of (undissolved) coins to decide whose ideas to use.

He’s thankful the simplicity of this particular experiment left few opportunities for such disagreements. But it seems clear that them working together on more complicated projects outside the confines of this introductory laboratory would be a recipe for disaster.

By the time they’re collecting their copper pellets into a tared dish and getting ready to bring it to the scale, they’ve both stopped attempts at chatter. They take down the mass in their notebooks and finish recording some observations, hardly glancing at each other. Seems she’s starting to tire of being in such close quarters with him.

But when they’ve finally cleaned the last of their station, she speaks up one last time.

“I hope you don’t make a habit of being late. It’s not only your grade that’s dependent on your punctuality.”

His last lingering hope squelches out in an instant. Well, there goes that, then.

Blood boiling, he tries not to let it show she’s gotten under his skin.

“Couldn’t find the building, that’s all,” he lies, without making any assurances he’ll be on time in the future. Or even show up. He could probably take a zero on two or three labs and still pass the course. Getting an ‘A’ in everything is hardly necessary. He’ll save his best work for his engineering courses. With or without a stellar GPA, he knows he’ll get into a graduate program. Extracurricular projects alone. Not to mention the campus research he’s planning on pursuing.

Perhaps next week he won’t show at all. That’ll show her. Trying to boss him around like that.

He takes off his protective gear and shoves his things into his bag. Checking the clock up on the far wall, he sees they’ve finished with more than an hour to spare. The other students have barely begun to add their sodium hydroxide.

Well, at least she’s efficient. Intelligent, too, he supposes. More so than anyone else in the room. Probably even the undergraduate population as a whole, if he’s honest with himself. But he can’t shake the feeling this friendship simply won’t work.

The TA comes by before they can leave. Fitz still doesn’t know the bloke’s name.

“Looks like you guys make quite the team. I’ll have to come up with some extra experimentation for you two next week, since this was clearly too easy for you.”

Fitz can’t help but sigh as the TA walks away. Perhaps they should’ve dragged it out a bit more.

“Well, it was nice meeting you, Fitz.” Jemma says before either of them can leave.

Taken aback by her casual use of his last name, it takes him a moment to respond.

“Yeah,” he says, slinging his backpack on. “You too.”

Before he can duck out the door, she holds out her hand.

“See you next week?” she says, gently smiling at him like she did when she introduced herself.

He’s probably being a prat. She’s been perfectly nice since he sat down next to her. She’s just… studious. Even if they won’t be best friends, he shouldn’t go mucking up their relationship. She is an excellent lab partner, the best he could’ve hoped for. A knack for chemistry, efficient, friendly. And he should really give her some more credit, going out on a limb to make amends. Doing his best to shrug off his pessimistic first impression, he reaches for her outstretched hand.

But the moment his hand makes contact with hers, the whole bloody world stops turning. The commotion of chatter, stools screeching against the floor, and glassware clicking fades into nothing as he stares down at their joined hands, dumbfounded. His vision tunnels until it’s is all he can see; his very existence becomes tethered to her hand. He should be gasping, or screaming, but his lungs aren’t working. They’re frozen along with all the muscles in his body, including his hand.

He’s neither squeezing nor shaking her hand, but nor is he pulling away, he’s just awkwardly holding it in mid-air.

Because he can feel it.

He. Can. Feel. It.

Her smaller, smoother hand wrapped around his, soft skin and the gentle contours of joints, warm and clammy from wearing gloves for two hours. Instantly, effortlessly activating a million dysfunctional nerve endings everywhere her skin touches. A fuzzy warmth kindles in his palm, sending phantom tingles that shouldn’t be possible halfway up his arm.

In an instant, he’s forgotten about their disagreements, his shallow irritation with her study habits and bossiness. Suddenly, all that matters is how perfectly this hand fits inside his. The fact that it’s attached to a brilliant and beautiful girl that he’s meant to spend the rest of his life with.

How much time has passed? A second? A minute?

He snaps his gaze back up to her face, trying to hold himself together.

Don’t panic, he tells himself. Stick to logic and observation. Gauge her reaction.

But all his overstimulated brain can manage to gather from her is an evident lack of reaction. She doesn’t gasp, or shout, or jump up and down, like he’s seen others do when this happens.

Ward’s taunt flashes in the front of his mind again, fresh as if he just said it.

You must be one of the mistakes.

He can’t let on what’s just happened, then. He can’t possibly tell her. A million scenarios race through his head of how that could go, the most prominent of which goes something like: oh, you’re one of those? And you think I’m yours??? Scoffing. Piteous laughter. Her running up to the TA asking to switch lab partners because hers is too weird.

Fearing the worst, instinct kicks in and he yanks his hand away as though he’s been shocked (something he actually knows intimately, working with electronics as often as he does).

She doesn’t look creeped out, at least, that he held or stared at her hand for so long. She looks mildly surprised, confused perhaps, as she lets her hand fall to her side again, but that’s all. As silent as he is, she just stares at him. It takes him far too long to realize she’s probably just waiting for him to say something in response to what she asked him.

Oh, bloody hell! He still hasn’t said anything.

What did she ask him?

His name? No. They did that already.

See you next week?

Right.

“Yeah,” he chokes out, his throat uncomfortably dry. “Yes,” he adds, unnecessarily.

Before he can say or do anything else stupid or revealing, he turns around and speeds for the door – as fast as he can without properly running, at any rate – and doesn’t look back. Only once he throws open the door and is clear of the frame does he break into a run. By the time he realizes the door had slammed into the door stop, he’s already halfway down the hallway.

#fsfic #fstag #fitzsimmons #excited to be posting this update too #2 fics updated in one weekend thats some kind of record for me #though it has involved me sitting in my recliner a large portion of the day #but i don't want to succumb to this cold or whatever so i'm letting myself off the hook #written by yours truly

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