It was night and most of the team had already gone to sleep, leaving the base quiet and calm, though the spice of holiday spirit still lingered in the air where Christmas lights shone in red, yellow, green and blue, illuminating the room in soft light from their place on the Christmas tree.

A train track ran in a circle beside the plastic green pine, supporting a black and red engine that towed three bright red cars behind it past the tiny trees and houses that decorated the center. The engine chugged around the track, hissing as if it ran on steam (though this one ran on batteries) and letting out a long whooo every minute or so.

Fitz, lay down on his stomach so that he was level with the miniature town, amusing himself pushing down on the button of his remote control, stopping the train abruptly when he let go and speeding it along when he toggled the switch on the other side.

Every once and a while he would glance up cheerfully at Simmons who sat cross legged across from him, reading through some notes she felt needed to be read before the morning. He'd insisted on staying up to keep her company, and she'd responded with a fond smile and a mug of tea which was almost empty now but had been wonderful (Simmons always made the best tea.)

"You know, I think this Jones fellow might have been onto something," she chattered excitedly, unaffected by the late hour and sipping absently from her own mug as she held her tablet in front of her. It was strange how much her excited voice sounded like birdsong when it was the middle of the night. It almost seemed out of place except that Fitz couldn't seem to picture Simmons as out of place anywhere that was safe and beautiful.

"You think he might have invented a time machine?" He questioned, remembering what she'd been bubbling to him earlier, only a little skeptical. After everything they'd seen it wouldn't be that surprising.

The train approached his side of the tracks and he halted it in front of him. Glancing up quickly to be sure she wasn't watching, he stealthily slipped something into the car behind the engine, then started the train up again so that it slowly motored towards her, grinning to himself as the small gift was delivered.

Maybe it was a little childish, but there was something undeniably fun about delivering presents using a toy engine and he was already feeling giddy with Christmas spirit. They were together and they were happy, nothing felt more like Christmas than that, and it was better than any gift he could have asked for.

She shook her head, her short, wavy hair, bouncing slightly at the movement, as animated as she was, absorbed by what she was reading. "No, not a time machine, a teleportation machine."

Slowly, the train continued its journey towards her. Fitz pictured it making its way past thriving towns and snow peaked mountains to reach its destination, the journey well worth it.

"Not sure how I… uh… how I feel about that," he answered uneasily. "All that um.. that… the... disintegration… then… then… uh..." he fumbled over the complicated words, but pushed down his frustration because he wasn't about to let it spoil the mood.

"Reintegration," she offered, glancing his way briefly and raising her eyebrows to ask if she'd gotten it right.

He nodded. "Yeah, it sounds like a lot could go wrong."

She nodded too, smiling warmly, before returning her attention to the tablet. "Oh it did. The pictures are rather gruesome," she commented as she flicked through them so that the light from the screen flashed against her skin. She didn't make faces as she looked them over, as he would have, but he was glad she hadn't offered to show him.

"Bad day to be a rat?" he guessed, releasing the button so that the train stilled in front of her.

"Actually, he used guinea pigs," she mumbled, setting her mug onto the floor next to her and scrolling down the page, becoming wrapped up what she was reading once more.

"Yes that's much better," he said sarcastically.

"Mhm," she answered, distracted.

She hadn't noticed that the train had stopped in front of her, waiting, so he started it up again and brought it back towards him, past the houses and the trees and the tiny, tiny people they'd named after their teammates. They'd crafted halos out of pipe cleaners for the ones that weren't with them anymore and the Koenigs had insisted on thirteen figurines to represent their family (which made Triplett fidget and widen his eyes uncomfortably, muttering something about how they must be joking). One brother bore a silver pipe cleaner halo.

As the train passed him, he swiftly placed another item into the same car, watching as it wound back to her, his eyes resting on a pair of little townspeople. Simmons had decidedly positioned her and Fitz's miniatures beside each other on the white mat of fabric, adjusting them so that they pressed against each other, and the sight of it still made him smile and his heart glow soft colours like the lights of the tree.

It had taken awhile for him to understand it but he now knew that Simmons loved him just as deeply and unbreakably as he loved her. Maybe that wasn't always enough, he wasn't naive enough to believe that all the bad in the world could be stopped by love, but he knew that countless many things could be fixed by it and that, whatever happened, it made it easier to bear. Whatever the universe threw their way, the love that circled between them like the train's tracks, kept them strong and gave them hope that all their struggles would be worth it one day. Like this day, and the day before it, and every day which they spent content beside each other.

The train retraced its journey and, once again, he stopped it in front of her. For the second time, she didn't notice, so he looped it back around, dropping more into the car. After many minutes had passed and he'd done several loops he was all out and the first car had filled so that he'd needed to use the second one. It looked a lot more like a real train, not that it had a load, and he was having much more fun than he thought he should have been making it carry it's cargo back and forth between him and Simmons.

She hadn't spoken in all that time, lost in what she was reading, and he parked the train, waiting patiently for a full minute for her to notice. When the minute was up, and she remained oblivious, he rolled the train backwards, then forwards again, going past her over and over again, smirking but trying not to giggle, until at last she looked up.

"What are you doing?" she chuckled. Her eyes fell onto the overflowing car and she grinned before shaking her head at him, gaze filled with quiet affection. "Is that all of the chocolates?" she asked.

He chuckled. "It started out as just one," he told her, returning the grin. "But you didn't notice so I put another, and then… well it sort of got out of hand…"

"I can see that," she mused, looking down at her gift. "You should have some too… why are you all the way over there?" she added, as if she'd only just noticed the distance.

"I've been here the whole time," he told her.

"Yeah, and I miss you." She scrunched her nose at him and patted the place beside her. "I can't show you what I'm looking at if you're so far away."

"I really don't need to see pictures of hacked up guinea pigs," he teased, but he rose to his feet to join her anyway because the place beside her was much too enticing for him to be deterred by gruesome photographs.

She rolled her eyes at him. "You're so squeamish, it's only blood and soft tissue. You're filled with the same thing, in case you forgot."

"Yeah, and it's inside of me, where it's suppose to be," he protested, sitting next to her.

She tutted at him, though her smile quickly returned and she squirmed closer, spreading a sweet, warm sensation down into his stomach like fresh sugar cookies. She smelled like fresh sugar cookies (and just a bit like cow liver because she'd been experimenting on it earlier) and something else that reminded him of warm hugs. He squirmed closer too, allowing her scent to cloak him like a blanket.

"Look at this," she held up the blueprints for the device, eyes shining. "Do you think we could build it?"

He gripped the other side of her tablet so that they held it together between them and studied it closely. "Maybe," he told her. "I'd need to… uh… I'm not sure we have any of those." He indicated a particularly uncommon part that lay near the centre of the machine. "Yeah, yeah maybe." His mouth twitched up into a grin and he chuckled. "As long as you're not planning to put any guinea pigs into it."

"Of course not," she assured him, shaking her head. "There'd be plenty of other uses for it besides transporting living things, which I don't think I'd ever be comfortable enough to risk anyway."

"So we're making a teleportation machine then?" he asked, already working through what they'd need to do. He turned towards her, a blush pinkening his cheeks when he realized their noses were only inches apart and his voice lowered so that his next words were barely more than a whisper. "Is that what you want for Christmas?"

She smiled knowingly at him, then slowly shook her head. "No."

He smiled back, though he was a little confused by her expression. "Well what do you want then? Please don't say more cow liver, I don't think I could take another week of the stench fouling up the lab."

She nudged him lightly with her shoulder. "It isn't that bad," she objected.

He made a face. "It is."

She rolled her eyes. "Well you have nothing to worry about, I'm done with it… for now. Anyway it isn't what I want."

"Are you… uh...are you leaving that a mystery?" he teased. "Or are you going to tell me what it is?"

She chuckled softly, then leaned towards him to peck a light kiss onto his cheek. "You've already given it to me.

His heart sang joyful Christmas carols so loudly he worried it'd wake the team. "I think you've already given me what I wanted too," he answered fondly.

Her eyes sparkled and she grinned before nudging him again, using her elbow this time. "So does that mean we aren't giving gifts this year?"

He shrugged, gaze falling on the train. "Well, I did give you a train full of chocolate."

"I don't think the others would appreciate me eating all the sweets," she laughed.

"What about just one then?" he offered. He lifted one of the round, chocolates, this one covered in shining golden wrapping, pressed a kiss to it and offered it out to her.

She narrowed her eyes affectionately and returned the gesture with a green one. Then they tapped them together in cheers before unwrapping them and popping them into their mouths to enjoy the burst of sweetness together.

"Happy Christmas," she murmured and he felt her love for him in the air between them, mixing with his love for her so that they became a single shimmering cloud encircling them both.

"Happy Christmas," he replied softly.

/-/-/

Christmas story! I couldn't resist, I've gotten into the Holiday cheer between my mom blasting the Christmas music like it's rock 'n roll, all the snow and the twinkly lights.

Thanks notapepper (as always). You are Marvel level super.

No Fringe reference in this one. It was originally meant to be super short because it is suppose the Fitz's POV complement to Someday which is why most of what has happened leading up to this point is so ambiguous. I was trying to make that one as potentially canon (within season two or early season three) as possible and in canon, anything can happen (though not quite as much of anything as fanfiction haha) so didn't even mention if you know is you know what or not (*is in stubborn denial*).