The first time it happens it is purely by accident. A thought that flits through his mind unbidden as he watches Jemma bend down over a woman's pram, the two of them walking back to their apartment after an exhausting day in the lab at SciOps.
"She's beautiful," Jemma coos, grinning up at the woman for a moment before turning her attention back to the baby that is babbling away, waving tiny fists around as she clutches a soft toy.
"Thank you," the woman smiles in response. Fitz doesn't hear anything else they say, too enamoured by the thought that Jemma looks so happy with the baby gazing up at her.
"You're going to make a great mum one day," he blurts once the woman is a few feet away, feeling his neck heat at the admission. Jemma turns to him, confused, before shrugging.
"Thanks?" she says, chuckling. "I'd never thought about it before. What about you? Do you want children?" He feels his heart seize at the question, insecurities about what kind of parent he might be considering his own upbringing surging through him.
"Dunno. Maybe one day," he responds.
He doesn't tell her that the only children that he can suddenly see in his mind have her eyes and her smile.
XxX
The second time it happens it is more of a conscious decision to think about it, but the words that slip out of his mouth are anything but. He's just glad the only one who hears him won't be repeating his slip up anytime soon.
They're visiting her parents, Coulson having granted them both leave after the Chitauri virus and Jemma's eventual concession to speaking to her parents again. One of her cousins has come to visit, bringing along her eight month old son, the child gazing around with the still blue eyes of infancy but with hair and features that are both reminiscent of Jemma and her family.
When Catherine passes baby Thomas to Jemma the biologist smiles and clutches him to her side, eyes instantly filling with panic as Catherine ducks back into the house, leaving the two of them with Fitz in the garden.
"What do I do?" Jemma hisses, looking to Fitz for guidance. He has just as much experience with children as she does, which is to say little to none at all, and shrugs, crossing the lawn to stand next to her. "What if I drop him?"
"You're not going to drop him -"
"Can you take him?"
"Jemma-"
"Please. I… I don't want to hurt him." Her voice is filled with terror, her hands shaking as Fitz quickly relieves her of the baby, Thomas looking confused for a few seconds before he grabs onto Fitz's cardigan, tugging at the buttons happily while squealing. "Thank you," she whispers, dropping her head to Fitz's shoulder for a minute before stepping away and sinking down into a chair. "I'm sorry, its just… after everything I…"
"You don't need to explain. Its alright," he assures her, bouncing Thomas on his hip. Jemma offers him a weak smile, scrubbing her hands over her face. "Thomas and I are going to go look at the pretty flowers, aren't we?" he says to the child, pointing towards the large rhododendron that encompasses the back fence, heading out across the grass. He keeps an eye on the infant while Thomas tries to grab at the pink flowers, giggling when Fitz lifts him up higher before dropping him back down to chest level.
"Don't let him eat any!" Jemma calls, causing Fitz to roll his eyes.
"Your Mummy is silly, thinking I'll let you eat plants." The words are out of his mouth before he has a moment to think about them, his cheeks instantly flaming when he realises what he's said. Thomas pays him no heed, giggling and flailing about while Fitz burying his nose in the little one's curls. "God, what is wrong with me?" he moans.
"Are you eating my baby?" Catherine hollers, laughing, as she and Jemma's mum come out of the house a second later. Fitz blushes again, shaking his head as he wanders back over to them, Thomas instantly reaching for his mother when they set foot on the patio.
When Jemma eventually ends up bouncing Thomas on her lap as the sun is setting and the baby is falling asleep, he tries to ignore the way his heart aches beneath his ribs.
XxX
The third time they're barely speaking. His hand still trembles terribly at times, his speech laboured and broken, and neither of them have been able to close the gap that was caused by her absence those long months after they nearly died at the bottom of the ocean.
He stays at the base more days than not, trying to tinker away at things and usually just ending up cursing while swiping them off whatever surface he's working on when his hand doesn't cooperate. He's better in the garage, keeping away from the others save for Mack and, occasionally, Hunter. When he does show up, the other Brit usually wanders in carrying a beer or two.
Their estrangement doesn't stop him from worrying when he's working in the cargo bay only to see the quinjet land and Bobbi hauling an extremely pale Jemma out of the plane however. Trip follows behind the women, shaking his head as Jemma stumbles but refuses his hand on her arm, leaning heavily against Bobbi instead.
"What the hell happened?" Hunter calls, leaning forward from where he's been going through a crate.
"Got hit with a mild toxin," Bobbi answers, wincing when Jemma lurches away from her, bending over as she vomits onto the concrete. "Causes extreme nausea and vomiting but only lasts a couple hours," she adds, letting Jemma finish before wrapping her arm around the younger woman again. "I'm gonna get her to her room."
"M'fine," Jemma coughs, trying to shrug Bobbi's hand away. He wants to be angry and ignore it. To hold on to the anger that simmers beneath his skin when he remembers how she left. How she refused to talk about what happened. What he said to her.
But he knows her. Knows she hates showing weakness in front of people she doesn't know well and doesn't fully trust. Knows how she gets upset and clingy when she doesn't feel well. After all, he's known her longer than everyone else in the hangar and the base combined. And if that wasn't enough he knows that beneath his anger and resentment, he still loves her.
Dropping the tools he was using he crosses the floor until he's in front of the women, taking Jemma from Bobbi's hold and leading her towards the base without a word, eyes scanning the woman next to him as he goes. She's tinted green, a saying he's always heard but never understood until now, her face pale and sweat dotting her skin.
He's lucky that they make it to her bunk before she gets sick again, falling to her knees by the toilet in her tiny bathroom with a thud, barely getting the lid up before she's gagging again. He cringes at the noise but it doesn't stop him from pulling her hair back out of her face, deftly reaching for an elastic from the counter before he puts it in a plait, hand holding steadier than it has in ages as he carefully makes sure not to pull at her scalp. She's still retching when he finishes and without thinking he strokes her back, rubbing circles between her shoulders as he feels her body shaking, trying to offer her what little comfort he can until she flops back against him, tears on her lashes as she gasps for breath.
By the third time she throws up, she's actively sobbing, chest heaving even as he strokes her hair and neck, knowing there's nothing he can do until the toxins are out of her system. He wonders if this is what it would be like if she ends up with morning sickness. Would it be something that only happened once? Or would it be like Princess Kate who was so sick she had to be hospitalised.
"I'm right here, I've got you," he whispers, the words falling unbidden from his lips as he lets himself get lost in the fantasy for a split second before he crashes back into reality. She clings to him, hands trembling when she rests against his chest, eyes red.
"I don't feel well," she mutters, hiccuping as she cries softly. He can't stop himself as he presses a chaste kiss to her hair, holding her just a little bit tighter.
"I know. It will be over soon."
When she finally stops being ill an hour later and falls asleep against him, still curled on the bathroom floor, he can't find it in himself to wake her to get up. Instead, he shakily lifts her from the tiles, carrying her to bed before tucking her in. He hopes she never has morning sickness if she gets pregnant.
XxX
The next time, they're cuddled together in bed, Jemma having fallen asleep after a long day trying to keep Mace at bay while Coulson was off doing God knows what. He can't get his own mind to calm enough for sleep, so he's contenting himself with watching her, her top having ridden up to display the soft skin of her belly.
Gently, he strokes his fingers over the tiny scars on her skin, left over from trauma at the hands of a madman and the little nick that marked where they had taken her appendix during their second year at the Academy on a cold November night. Otherwise, the skin is flawless and lightly freckled, her chest rising and falling with each breath as she sleeps.
There's a ring tucked away in a drawer, somewhere he knows she won't look. He doesn't know when he'll give it to her yet. If she'll want it. He thinks she will, but his own insecurities still flutter through his mind when he thinks too much about anything. Sighing, he lets his hand rest on her abdomen, feeling each breath through his fingertips.
Closing his eyes, he allows his mind to wander. Imagining what it might be like to feel the flutter of life beneath his hand one day. To feel the soft skin grow taut as Jemma's belly gets bigger, swelling with their child. He thinks he'd like two. Enough that they have someone to grow and learn with but without being overwhelming. He wonders if Jemma has thought about it. About children in general. About getting pregnant.
He blushes in the dark, heat suffusing his skin as he imagines how she'll look.
"I love you," he whispers, kissing her neck as he presses just the tiniest bit harder into her torso, wishing that she shared his thoughts.
XxX
"Fitz." Its Daisy that makes him think of it the fifth time, her hand on his shoulder as they frantically try to gather tiny tatters of their lives in the ruins of the base they've called home. He can't look at her; can't really look at anyone, guilt swelling in his gut at the reality of what he had done. What the Framework had done. What Aida or Ophelia or whatever the hell she was calling herself had done.
He felt sick just thinking of it.
"We're going to get through this," Daisy says, trying to get his attention again.
"How?" he asks, voice breaking. "How are we supposed to move past this? I - what I did… How can Jemma even -" He catches himself before he breaks down again, feeling tears sting at his eyes as he pulls the ring he's made from his pocket. He doubts Jemma will ever want it now. Want him. But he can't leave it in the base to be found by someone else.
"Fitz -" Daisy says, voice filled with sadness.
"I… I had this whole image of what our life would be like," he starts, tripping over the words. "We'd get married outside. Move somewhere she'd love. Somewhere close enough to a lab that she could still work on whatever she wanted but far away enough that this… shit wouldn't happen to us anymore. We'd have two kids. They'd… they'd look like her."
"You can still have that," Daisy rushes, squeezing his arm harder, trying to break him out of the panic cycle she can already see rising in him.
"How?" he demands, tears spilling out over his lashes. "How could I ever entertain the thought of being a parent now? Look at what my father did to me. Look at the type of man I am. It doesn't matter how much I want to have a baby with Jemma. I can't. I can't risk doing that to a child. To Jemma."
Daisy doesn't have time to say anything else, Mack rushing in to tell them its time to go, a hard expression on his face before he ducks back into the hall. Fitz swipes at his eyes, taking a shaking breath as he looks at the ceiling before following.
He tries to leave the image of Jemma holding a baby as she reads quietly to it in the darkness of the base.
It doesn't work.
XxX
Fitz is cleaning up their kitchen when Jemma comes up behind him, curling herself around his back as she rests her head against his shoulder.
As soon as they had been reunited and assisted in saving the world or was it the past or the future? He's still not sure on the specifics but, regardless, they had resigned, Jemma's fingers clinging tightly to his as she informed Coulson that she wanted her life to be more normal. He had simply nodded, wishing them well and congratulating them as they left, nodding down to the ring on Jemma's finger. She had found it when he had first allowed himself to hug her, the stone pressing from the inside of his jacket pocket into her shoulder until she had leaned back and fished it out, crying almost immediately at the sight of it. He hadn't asked her. Hadn't been able to get the words out, simply cupping her cheek in his palm and kissing her forehead as she had nodded, sliding it onto her own finger.
Now, two years later, he simply grins, tilting his head until he can kiss her gently.
"Fitz, how do you feel about children?" she asks. They haven't ever really spoken about it aside from the occasional comment throughout their friendship and relationship. Nothing concrete. He'd never voiced his fantasies of watching her grow heavy with a baby or told her how the picture of her cuddling an infant in the early light of morning was an image that got him through some of the toughest moments after the Framework.
"In what context?" he asks. He wonders if she's going to bring up the prospect of having a child or just simply the concept of children as part of existence.
"As in, how would you feel if we, um, talked about maybe having a baby?" her words are laced with anxiety until he puts the dishtowel down, turning to look at her.
"I've always thought you'd be a good mum," he says in response, cupping her cheek and tilting her gaze up to his. "I'm not going to lie to you Jems. I… I do worry about if I can be a good dad after everything that happened with my own but… God, I've always wondered what it would be like to have a baby with you." The words spill out of him, a soft smile playing about his lips as he watches her tear up, burying her face in his neck as she hugs him.
She stays like that for a while longer before leaning back, taking his hand in hers and playing with his wedding band.
"Good," she finally says, tugging his hand towards her stomach. "Because I don't know how much longer I can keep you from finding me being sick every morning for the next goodness knows how long." His eyes go wide at the words, fingers tightening in the fabric of her shirt.
"You're pregnant?" he breathes, wonder lacing each letter of the question. She nods, biting her bottom lip before he surges forward to kiss her, capturing her elated laugh in his mouth.
XxX
When their daughter is born early on a June morning, he sits in awe, watching the way the sunlight catches Jemma's hair as she feeds the infant, her eyes tired but filled with so much love that he can't speak.
"We did good," Jemma comments, stroking the baby's soft skin. Fitz nods, too choked up to agree in any way other than to crouch down and kiss his wife, his hand joining hers where she holds the infant to her breast.
"We did," he manages after a moment.
And he's right, his thoughts from sixteen years before proved in that moment and a million more.
She is a wonderful mother.