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Vicariously
By Kristina K
The first chance she gets at some down time, Jemma Simmons goes out and buys herself a leather jacket.
It's a hot summer day and the jacket is very expensive so that's already two reasons why she shouldn't, but while she's weighing the pros and cons of the purchase, she catches herself in the mirror and decides that, yes, she needs to move past flowery button downs and blazers she usually wears and add something bold to her wardrobe. Regardless of how she manages to successfully offset them by wearing bright red Chuck Taylor's, a leather jacket trumps every piece of clothing she has hanging in her closet. When the lady at the checkout compliments her choice, Jemma beams at her and points at the rack next to the register. She picks out dark tinted Ray Ban's and cheerfully places them on the counter next to the jacket.
She never wears the jacket, though. She keeps it in her closet, next to her flowery button downs and her blazers and sometimes reaches for the sleeve to feel the leather, but she never takes it out and she never wears it when she goes outside. She keeps the new sunglasses in the inside pocket of the jacket and wears her old horn rimmed ones.
They are in Dublin for a week on a mission and she allows Skye to talk her into doing whiskey shots with her. After her third shot, Jemma is on the mission of her own and is trying on her fourth pair of biker boots until she decides on the black leather, ankle high ones with a zipper and a buckle. When Skye asks her the next day what was so important she had to buy that she left half of her team happily downing drinks in the pub the night before, Jemma responds with oh just some silly stuff and shows Skye a small charm bracelet dangling from her wrist.
When her red Chuck Taylor's get a tear in them, she puts them away and replaces them with a new, teal colored pair. The boots she keeps meticulously polished and tucked away at the bottom of her wardrobe, just under the leather jacket she bought a month ago.
The first time Jemma actually puts a leather jacket on, she does it with eyes full of tears, choking back a sob. The jacket is not even hers, it's Skye's, because Skye loves to just leave her things – her jacket, her pen, her mascara, her unwashed coffee cup, her pair of socks that one time – around the Bus, and Skye is laying in the infirmary, hooked up to machines that are breathing for her and she may not even wake up, ever. So Jemma puts on Skye's jacket – she can feel the contours of Skye's Ray Ban's pressing against her chest – and zips it up.
There is a bottle of Southern Comfort in the lounge's bar; Jemma shrugs, thinks:close enough, and takes it. It's two in the morning when she slowly walks down the cargo ramp, the soles of her unbroken biker boots making hollow thuds with each step. She sits down and rests her back against Lola's bumper.
It doesn't take much whiskey – or any liquor, really – for Jemma to start feeling a buzz, and when she does, she allows herself to notice how the jacket on her feels like a hug. It feels like the hug she got from Skye after she herself almost died. It's as warm, it smells the same and it feels just right. She contemplates many other important things, Jemma.
After much thinking and some booze to help the thought process along, around half past three in the morning, Jemma Simmons decides she wants to wear that leather jacket forever.
The End