When he walks into the house he isn't surprised by the music blaring from the in house lab he'd built for Jemma. She often plays music to keep her company when working alone. Sometimes he wonders if the overlapping chatter that is FitzSimmons own language makes her brain work that much faster.
What does strike him as odd is the Bluesy B.B. King song playing that is much more attuned to his taste than hers. He gives a shrug smiling to himself as he walks through the kitchen to Mud Room turned lab.
He finds her hunched over a microscope. He loops an arm around her waist and pulls her back into him. "Rock me Baby? Really? Did you miss me that much?" he whispers in her ear kissing the hair he brushes back behind it.
"That Depends…" She replies voice catching on the second word as he captures her ear lobe between his teeth.
"On what?" he asks impatiently.
"Whether or not you missed me back?" he twists her around pressing her into the lab table and kisses her deeply. She goes with it and lets him control things as she's prone to do when he's fresh back from a mission.
It's a slow burning kiss full of every dirty intention in his heart. He truly doesn't want to stop but according to Jemma oxygen is really fucking important. She breaks the kiss breathing heavily. "I have something for you. It's over on my desk." She says lowly.
"It can wait." He picks her up and plunks her down to the left of the microscope on top of her notes. "I missed you too." His words are muffled into the skin of her of her jaw.
"It really can't I'm excited for you to see it." She looks up at him all doe eyed and pretty. "Please Darling?" and he is sunk. He regretfully disentangles himself from her. He strides determinedly over to the desk and he picks up the box he rips the paper off a pretty gold looking pattern he could care less about. He opens the box and moves aside the neon pink and blue tissue paper.
The object in the box gives him an odd feeling of unsureness. The object in the box is… he looks at Jemma and back into the box… Jemma… the box…Jemma... he picks it up…."Oh don't touch it Grant there's urine on it and Fitz will complain about lab sanitation and…" he blocks out her rant and stares at the word until its a little black blur.
"You're pregnant?" he asks in a state of shock.
"Yes, are you happy I can't tell you're making that face from the time you met my father. Like you're quite terrified."
Is he happy? He stops and takes stock. Yes, past the shock and fear there is complete joy.
"Yes, I'm happy…" He gives her a bright smile and her giddy laughter as she jumps down from the table to cross to him drowns out the bluesy guitars riffs.
"I think it's a boy." He says proudly as she stands on her tip toes to kiss his smiling mouth.
"All fetuses start off female Darling." She says promptly dashing his hopes.
-/-/-
He takes a month of his built up leave. There's nothing he can do for Jemma who is unbearably sick and extremely irritable. In his opinion she has to be scarier than the Cavalry is rumored to be.
But that might be his own fault for not letting her return to the lab. His mission for Garrett takes a hit as he's tended to Jemma but for once John isn't his whole existence.
He wakes from one of his sympathy naps to find her standing in the kitchen with his "Beats" head phones pressed to her still flat belly. "What're you doing?"
"It's Bach… classical music is good for brain development." She says looking bemused as she sways to a beat neither of them can hear.
"Does it even have ears yet?" He inquires laughingly.
She gives him a sarcastic little huff. "Oh now you want to get technical?"
-/-/-/-
He wakes alone and it's not uncommon because Jemma gets antsy when she has too many thoughts running through her head. He gets up and moves blindly through the bed room intent on prying her from the lab.
Light pouring from under the bath room door stops him from making it that far. He can hear the tinny upbeat sound of The Beatles before he opens the door.
He looks in and in doing so his heart drops and shatters but he pushes it aside.
He takes a deep breath to steady himself and smells the iron and copper tinge of blood in the air. He has to get her to a hospital.
He reaches out to scoop her up He must have given voice to his thoughts. "No, my body knows what to do. I'm fine, it just hurts." She grits out before dissolving into sobs again.
While he kneels next to her and pulls her into his lap he seriously rethinks some of his life choices. Is all the blood on his hands in the name of John's crusade some sort of karmic balancer for this? In this moment with her sobbing into his neck and clinging to him so tight he can barely breathe. In this horrible moment He wishes He hadn't denied Garrett the desire to make her compliant. At least then he could banish this painful memory to the far reaches of her brain but no, he had wanted Jemma to keep that beautiful spark of hers. He wanted her to keep her complicated intelligence and her curiosity for life.
Because she was all he wanted and she wanted answers all the time. As it turned out she was his answer to every hole and question in his soul.
"I just wanted to tell Fitz…I was so excited." She laments.
"I know Babe…I'm sorry Jem." He kisses at her hair line. "I'm sorry…" He repeats as the song switches to "All You Need Is Love." He thinks to himself he will never again hear the Beatles without fighting the urge to vomit or cry like a broken child.
-/-/-
For the first time in the history of their relationship the house goes into complete silence. Almost as if they and the house they're living in is sleep walking through life. Jemma goes into an impenetrable depression. Neither he nor Fitz can pull her from. So, he must rely on science to do it for him.
When Garrett forces him onto a team he makes it contingent he brings Jemma with him. She'd always wanted to try field work and he'd fought her on it.
He knows she sees the play for what it is but takes the offer anyway.
It turns out being on a field team helps their relationship along with Jemma's depression. Everyone knows they're married but on the bus they're meant to be professional at all times which in theory works fine but when you're told you can't have something that's when you want it all the more.
It leads to lots of little sneaky stolen moments. Stolen moments that bring back her laugh bit by bit, stolen moments that flash her smile at him. Stolen moments that give him back the way only she can say his name on a sigh…like a song all its own.
-/-
When she flings herself from the plane his heart stops and doesn't start again until she wakes up in the water wrapped around him He says the thing he'd been thinking while waiting for her to wake. "Let's try again."
The ocean waves seem to agree sounding like "Yes, Yes, Yes," in a solemn refrain.
And they do the night before Hydra reveals itself.
-/-/-
He finds out she's pregnant as they march him into the vault. "Don't do anything drastic Ward. Our only medic is in a delicate condition and is refusing to see you." Coulson throws the words at him and like well-aimed punches they hit the mark.
If only he could explain that the only loyalty he has left remains to her alone.
-/-/-
He does indeed get drastic… if by drastic you mean bashing your head against the sink until you open a gash.
"You truly are off your bloody damned rocker." She says picking her way down the stairs. She tosses a suture kit in the cells drop box. "Fix yourself." She spits.
"You needn't stay then." He snarls before he can stop himself.
She sidles closer to the barrier and the soft swell of her stomach almost activates it. She must be about five or six months along. "Like I'm going to leave the best spy I have ever met alone with sharp objects. Stitch yourself and return every item to its proper place I itemized everything." She says snippily.
He laughs. "Of course you did baby." He says with a smile a blood drips into his eyes. "You'd be better at this." He Gestures to the gash. "What if I swore no harm will come to you or the baby?"
"Why should I trust you?" Her eyes narrow. He did this to get contact with her will wait her out.
He shrugs. "You shouldn't I'll give you that but you will…"
Her chin kicks up he's always loved challenging her. "Why's that?"
"Because you love me and only I know how afraid you truly are. You have to tell someone better the someone who knows. The someone who knows why we replaced the bathroom rug and exactly which Beatles songs make you cry." It's a low blow but a truthful one.
He eyes glaze with tears. It make him sad but he needs her angry. "You're an asshole."
"You let them lock me up knowing who Garrett was to me and just what I was trying to save. You let them leave me here to rot." He counters and knows he's got her when she flushes and huffs.
She lowers the barrier and strides right in using all her body's momentum to shove him to the wall. Just like he taught her. Her arm is over his wind pipe and pressing down but he can undo the hold easy as pie. He needs to let her vent this if he is ever going to regain her loyalty and love.
And he wants any contact he can get.
"Why was he more important than our happiness?" She screams. "Was it ever real? Was anything real?"
He reaches out and touches the curve of her belly. "It was real. I'd never gone this far if it wasn't. I expected to grow old and grey with you as a perfectly useless sleeper after I saved Garrett "He can see her trying to figure out if it's a con, It's not he has all day or until he loses so much blood he faints like a girl. "Is it a boy? Or maybe a girl I could handle a girl." He gives her a crooked grin.
She backs out of touching range which is a pity since he is touch starved and particular enjoys her touch. "I haven't fancied finding out. Sit, I may as well fix it while I'm here." She relents and he knows she still loves him. He might get her back yet.
She doesn't give him lidocaine which he takes to mean" this is a stupid injury you deserve what you get." Which is a fair point. "I did what I had to I'm sorry if those choices ruin us. "He whispers. While she sighs setting to work. He remains utterly still. "I don't expect you to bring the baby down here once it's born but if you would could you at least tell me when he or she is born?"
"And I would do that for you why?" She asks almost conversationally. God he loves her even all pissed off.
"Because you don't believe in torture as punishment." He counters and she nods unconsciously.
-/-
When Coulson trades him off to Christian he knows exactly what his brothers plans are and he has plans all his own, but he's still a little shocked to Jemma standing there with her big belly. In another life time he might have laughed seeing such a tiny person so round is comical.
She's very round but very pretty. He's missed looking at her. She steps forward. "I always knew I'd want you pay for your sins but this, giving you to the man who twisted you up feels wrong. I got out voted. She hands him a three dimensional sonogram print. "His name will be Roman. The doctor says he's perfect. That's the last bit of mercy I have to give you." She turns and walks away.
-/-/-
He escapes Christian and gives Coulson's people the slip. He leaves them gifts of Intel. He leaves gifts for his son as well knowing he must be born by now.
When he introduces Skye to her father he knows by calculating the date on the sonogram Roman is at least three months old. He pesters Skye about him and looks for a baby toting Jemma all over San Juan.
He never sees Rome as they call him. Skye had let that slip. She shoots him; he understands she's tying up Coulson's loose ends. He deserves it too with kidnapping her and all.
-/-/-
Kara nurses him back to health and he helps her break the compliance holding her back. They could be something…but someone holds him back. "Is that sonogram the reason you won't… go deeper with us?" She asks conversationally over dinner on a Tuesday in a dingy hotel.
"No." He pauses in thought he could bury his feelings in another but it wouldn't be enough. As some guy sings on the radio about missing the touch of the one he loves being likened to with drawl. He decides to be painfully honest even if it means he loses some of the sway he holds over Kara. "That sonogram is the only thing I have of my son Roman. The reason we can't be more? Go deeper as you say, is I'm still quite deeply in love with his mother… anything else would feel cheap and empty." He swigs his beer and changes the radio station.
-/-/-/-/-
When Coulson leverages Kara against him it pisses him off. Though he doesn't love Kara she's the only thing he's had reassembling companionship. When he suggests the mind wipe it takes everything in him not to tell Coulson to go fuck himself… Jemma and Roman won't be taken from him that way. It might be Coulson's idea of mercy. But two things He has never desired are forgiveness and mercy. Not from him anyway.
-/-/-
When he returns to The Playground to help Coulson infiltrate the Antarctic base Hydra holds. He's not sure what his reaction will be when he sees Jemma after so many months but he never thought it'd be to cry.
He leans on the door to her lab like he belongs there and shoves his tears down.
She's doing a neurological check on Kara and Roman who has his back turned to him is trying to climb up her up her pants leg. "Really Romy? You don't even like to be held." She scoops him up and stands with him on her hip. "He's just a curious type he likes people." She excuses. "Do you ever forget things in the middle of a task?" She asks returning to her questions.
"Her short term is intact. Long term is more muddled between reality and compulsion." He answers and Jemma turns just like he wanted. Roman turns his big gray eyes on him curiously. His chubby cheeks jiggle as he chews his fingers.
"Hey champ…" He murmurs stepping closer.
"How'd you know to break the compliance?" She steps closer this time within touching distance and there's his inevitably curious girl.
"Making you compliant was one of Garrett's biggest threats when I stepped out of line. Because he knew I loved you for who you were. I learned to break it as insurance." He replies fighting himself to keep from touching her.
"I'm supposed to believe that?"
"Believe what?"
It's not an angry statement. It's a flat one that literally hurts. "That you loved me enough to defy him."
"I would've in second had I known." He nods to Roman. "He's chunky…" he comments smilingly.
"It'll come off once he gets his feet under him right." Jemma says defensively.
"I mean no harm… it reminds me of Thomas when he was a baby. Can I hold him?" He asks no longer able to contain the desire.
Jemma looks skeptical. "I've turned in every weapon I own and I'll stand perfectly still right here."
She's just about too given in when Coulson sends Fitz for briefing round up. She instead hands him off too Morse who shields the boy from his view. If she wasn't already on his hit list for Kara she'd die painfully for that action alone.
He checks his rage and passes through the door. He brushes a hand down Jemma's back and she leans into his touch for half a second. He can work with that.
He makes his forgiveness speech that no one is buying not even his wife. She even suggests shooting him in the face. He's impressed. "Come on baby, you don't really mean that." He needles her because miffed Jemma still turns him on.
"Whatever gave you such a misguided impression love?" she fires back.
"Six years, three months, "He looks at his watch. "Six hours and fifty two minutes central standard time. Of being married and exactly one nine month old son. If you really wanna get down to it, my impression is dead on and we both know it. You can concur or we can go on if you like Jem."
She opens and closes her mouth eyes narrowing and he knows the insult on her tongue is too severe for public consumption. He gives her just the edge of a smile. He'd won that round.
-/-/-
She goes on the mission as field medic but for some reason feels the urge to wear totally unnessacary but very sexy TAC gear. Not that he's complaining, no sir complaining is very last thing he'd do.
He's musing about what he'd do with five minutes alone with her when Bobbi brings Roman back to Jemma for a goodbye kiss. "Hey my boy! Mummy has to go a mission but I'll be back before you know it." She kisses his cheeks and blows a raspberry into the rolls of his neck and he erupts into a fit of belly laughter. It fills up the quint jet bay. All the while pulling an honest smile from Grant himself. "I love you Roman! Yes I do…" She says pressing a kiss into his jet black curls.
"Quit hogging the lad and give me my turn." Fitz complains taking him. "Don't do anything fun while I'm gone like walking or talking okay? Be a good lad for Auntie Bobbi and we'll be back in a jif." Fitz says before kissing and handing him back to Morse.
"Would you like a turn Grant?" Jemma asks in what he takes as an act of kindness her head tilted up at him measuring, expectant.
He takes the boy from a very begrudging Morse and the moment Roman is in his arms he knows he's made a misstep. He knew when he conceived this plan that it required him to leave once he had Kara implanted in SHIELD again. He had never factored in his son or the immediate and overwhelming attachment he felt. He never knew love could be so infinite or intense… He realizes as people stare at him most intently Jemma he hasn't said anything to him. He kisses his forehead as Roman wraps his fat little hand around the wedding band hanging around his neck. "You keep Kara company for me okay?" he kisses him again and hands him off to Morse he leaves finding his jump seat before he gives into the urge to weep or to stay at The Playground with the woman he actually loves and his child and toss away his plans for vengeance.
Jemma's eyes are on him. He feels the heat of her big Precious Moments "I didn't mean to hurt you." eyes at the base of his neck. He doesn't acknowledge her or her sympathy. He just straps in and when he's ready. He smiles over at her wide and sure. "Ready baby?"
She just rolls her eyes.
-/-/-
She's on his team and he thinks somewhere in the distance he can here Coulson chanting "You want her but you can't have her you've broken her before and she's no longer yours." Or maybe it's just what's left of his conscience.
She commands him using short phrases and sharp tones he's not forgotten the sound of no, an angry wife has a melody all her own he remembers it so well he might be able to sing it.
She orders him to find something to carry Peterson out on and he does her bidding. A few moments later he hears her discontented "I can't find the answer." Sigh.
"You don't trust me to be able to hunt down a gurney now?"
She ignores his question. "Why're you here?"
"I'm helping."
"Bullshit!" He smiles he loves it when she uses American curse words. It makes him happy. "Why're you really here Grant?"
"It won't involve you. Not directly." He confesses in a burst of honesty.
"And Roman? "She counters and turns too look at her finally leaned on some time of tank.
"No harm will ever come to him by my hand. You know that!"
"No physical harm but possibly collateral damage."
She right and he's really fucking pissed about it so he deflects. "Why are you so goddamn cynical all of the sudden because seriously babe you're literal fucking sunshine and your light its fading."
"Oh sod off you lying wanker! You lied to me for six fucking years and then when we're- when I- " She is fighting off tears and he can't help but step closer no matter the danger of being slapped or possibly shot. "We were happy again after so long and you asked me to try knowing Garrett was going to take you away from me! I can handle you being a traitor, a murderer even, you've done that for both sides I always knew there was blood spilled by your hand I'm not a stupid woman. What I can't handle? What I cannot even bloody fucking fathom is lying! You lied by asking me to try you implied being present and I am raising him alone! Because you fucking lied! The way people look at us. The way they pity him, poor fatherless child. It's all of that I find unforgivable." Tears track down her face. He feels sick; he never meant to turn her into the SHIELD Pariah.
She takes a breathe revving up to light in into him again he crosses to her and does what he's really wanted to do for months and the entirety of the day. He kisses her and its a little rougher than she is used to but pointing out his absence stings and he wants to punish her for pointing out his flaws and adding to his self-loathing as much as he wants to feed the desire to kiss her.
So it's a rough hard kiss and he's cupping her face in one hand and drawing her against him with the other hand planted on her ass he feels more than hears the sigh of surrender as she grips the straps of his tac vest to go up on to her toes to kiss him back in equal measure. She is just as angry and it shows as the kiss becomes a battle wills. Neither of them breaks it as the kiss spirals out into something slower, hotter. Well, look who missed him he thinks smugly.
Bakishi clearing his throat cuts them part and just like that all the dissonance between them comes rushing back. Still he kisses her a final time on the lips a chaste peck. Then he presses a lingering kiss to her forehead whispering into her skin. "Lasciando a vivere I nostri sogni da solo non è mai stata mia intenzione il mio amore mi dispiace mi perdoni Jem." He lets her go and leaves to do her bidding from before.
He catches Bakishi's eye and knows that the other man knows he'd had an honest moment with the only person he really cares for but doesn't worry over it. Once the compliance has lifted the moment will cease to exist for Bakishi.
-/-/-/
He leaves the sticky note where Jemma can find it. Smacked on to the side of her microscope.
Jem,
Make Hunter teach him to throw a curve ball. Under no circumstances is he allowed to be a Pats fan. I mean that. Teach him to be a good person; it'll be easy you're the best person I know. Tell him I love him please. I need you to know that most nights when I am alone with nothing but the sound of own breath and my conscience for company I wished I had made choices that allowed me to keep you. I love you and I'm sorry. It's not my place to ask but stay safe.
-Grant
-/-
As always Grant's very calculated plan goes shit side up. As he sits at the bar he thinks maybe he shouldn't have made Kara's revenge so important nothing had been solved and though he'd never get the team back he could of gotten Jemma back. Jemma or repaying his debts to Kara had been the choice he just hadn't known it at the time.
He pulls out the sonogram he's kept with him the whole time. Next he pulls out a grainy Polaroid he'd kept of Jemma. She's covered in tile grout and smiling up at him. She'd been so happy about their new house she found redoing the bathroom fun.
She'd worn shots and his old Red sox cap with a ratty t-shirt to him she'd never looked prettier.
"She break your heart?" the bartender asks.
"No she just keeps reminding me I have one. Fucking scientific Dorothy Gale…" The guy seems confused and pours his bourbon again. "What day is it?" He asks. He very rarely loses track.
"August 23rd."
"It's my son's birthday. He's one today." He says proudly.
"Then what are you doing here?"
"What's best… staying the hell away." He replies. The bartender looks at him oddly as he hums the tune of happy birthday to the sonogram picture.
He ignores him but if the guy so much as snickers he will put the fucking tumbler into the barkeeps jugular. He will sing to his boy even if it is in a shitty dive bar as he awaits his hired thugs reports.
I own nothing but Roman Douglas Ward.
-/-/-
Songs used as inspiration:
Rock Me Baby- BB King
Bach's cello suite No 1.
Here Comes the Sun, All You Need is Love the Beatles
Withdrawals-Tyler Farr
Happy Birthday-Unknown