I am so sorry for the late update. I want to thank the people who read and follow this story. And especially those who left me reviews. I want to thank the lovely gumcrunch for the awesome idea and inspiration for this chapter.
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"Wait" she pushes him off of her "wait… it's too quiet in here…"
"Not for long" he smiles smugly, resuming his attack on her neck "I'm planning to have you screaming under me in exactly two minutes… we'll have plenty of noise then…" She rolls her eyes at his arrogant declaration "or above me" he agrees "I really don't care..." it makes her smile, slightly, and he's happy to feel her relaxing under his touch again. He kisses her marvels at her taste in his mouth.
They sit on the bed in their room, kissing slowly, content with the rare opportunity to finally find a moment to be alone together. She strokes his hair gently, humming quietly when he puts a big hand on her breast. "Hi" he whispers, looking at her lovingly, his hand moving strands of black hair behind her ear.
"Hi, agent" she whispers back, his eyes are so soft, with so much love in them, she really missed having him all to herself like this.
"Still" she pushes him away suddenly "it really is too quiet in here… what am I missing?"
"Will you relax already?" he sighs "I'm trying to do something here, and you're ruining it." She watches him for a moment, he has that sweet little pout on his face, so similar to their child's pout when he's hungry it makes her smile despite his apparent annoyance when he feels how his plans are being snatched away from between his fingers. He's right, it's been way too long. Ever since they came on the bus again, letting their team invade their carefully built privacy, their family's simple and confined existence, they didn't have a moment break from the chaotic atmosphere, the ongoing assignments, the briefing, debriefing and re-debriefing Coulson made them go through. Add to that a four month old baby who is used to having his parents around him at all times, who due to the lack of authorization is still sleeping in a temporary crib in their room. With all that going on, they didn't have time to just be together on their own, to talk, not to mention to touch each other. He was bound to break eventually.
He pulled her out of the cockpit ten minutes ago, ordered her to follow him to their room. Well, not ordered as much as begged and pleaded. After forcing her in their room and locking the door behind them, he sat on the bed, pulled her to sit in his lap and told her he needs her. Now. Or he's not responsible for his actions.
He kisses her again, thoroughly, like he has all the time in the world, and she feels like she's melting into his embrace, letting his warmth seep through her and remind her everything she forgot about her husband's strong and muscular body.
"The baby!" she finally gets it, sitting up, leaning on his chest and looking at him with alarm "where is the baby?"
"He's fine" he sighs in misery "I left him with Skye. Please Mel… just…"
"With Skye?" she looks at him with annoyance "from all of them you chose Skye? I think from the bunch of them she's the most unreliable. She'll get on her computer and forget all about him."
"He'll be fine" he pulls her against him again "he's a tough little baby. He's yours and mine, after all."
"Skye has the tendency to get herself into troubles. I don't know…"
"What's the worst she can do?" he smiles, kissing the point where her neck meets her shoulder, making her shudder, the usual response for his expert ministrations. "I'll be quick, I promise."
"If something will happen to him…" she mumbles, letting him pull down the zipper of her uniform.
"Nothing will happen to him" he murmurs, kissing each and every newly exposed patch of skin he can see "anyway, we can always make another one, just in case."
"Another one?!" she raises her head to look at her obviously mentally disturbed husband "it's a miracle we even have this one. I don't think we could… I mean even if we… anyway, we were planning on coming back on the…"
"A little girl" he whispers, his movements becoming more urgent, more demanding as he touches her all over "a small little girl with your hair and your eyes. A beautiful, strong, sweet little girl" he lets his weight crash her to the bed as he holds her behind her neck, looking pointedly into her eyes "let's make another baby, Mel…" he breathes "I want you…"
Before he finishes his thought they hear a loud shriek from the direction of the lab. They look at each other in alarm they can recognize Simmons's voice "the baby!"
They burst into the lab and see Skye, Fitz and Simmons standing against the wall, looking horrified above them.
"What is it?" he shouts, looking at the three agents in alarm. They all turn their heads to look at him, sheer panic on their faces. Fitz only points towards the ceiling above them.
"What the hell?!" They both cry together. When they look up they see their infant son floating up in the air, 12 feet above the floor. When he sees his parents the baby starts giggling and laughing, waving his little arms in the air and it makes him float up and down in a rapid pace, and even make some unintentional summersaults in mid air. They instinctively jump towards him, trying to reach him but he makes a few loops, way too high for them to take a hold of him. Finally Ward climbs on the holotable "What are you doing, you'll break it." Fitz cries, a sharp look from both specialists make him shut up. If he gets their meaning correctly, the holotable is not the only thing they're about to break around here.
"Kai" Ward smiles reassuringly towards the happily flying baby "come here, buddy. Come to daddy." He reaches to him slowly and the child laughs again, making another loop in the air before he comes close enough for his father to grab at his foot and pull him into his arms. The child giggles uncontrollably when Ward tries to correct his hold on him and he slips from his hands again. The others try to hide their laughter when May sends them a murderous look. The next time the baby comes close enough Ward's specialist's instincts help him to grab him by his small arm before he flies away to the other side of the room. He pulls him gently towards him and hugs him to his chest, exhaling in relief.
He climbs down from the table with the baby tightly secured in his embrace and looks pointedly at the three young agents before him. His wife takes the baby from him as soon as she can reach him and tries to assess him quickly. He looks unharmed, happy and cute as ever.
"What. Have. You. Done. To. My. Son?" she turns towards them threateningly. They all start talking together in a cacophony of words and excuses. Looking at each other, pointing at the ceiling, at the lab, at the baby.
"Quiet!" Ward shouts, slamming his fist on the holotable. "You!" he points to Simmons "explain."
"It was an accident!" Simmons says hurriedly. "We were doing an experiment with gravitonium, and I think. We didn't mean to cause him any harm. We didn't see anything it happened so quickly…"
"Wait, Gravitonium? That element Dr. Hall was working on?" he looks at her worriedly "I thought we got rid of it. That it was all secured in the sand box."
"It is!" she says quickly "more exactly, it was. I mean we… you see… Jimmy… he sent us… we were doing him a favor." He furrow his eyebrows with confusion a her incoherent rambling.
"Oh for the love of. I thought she was supposed to be the intelligent one." May hands him the baby and walks to stand in front of Simmons, holding her under her chin. "Now, from the beginning, slowly." She whispers "who is Jimmy?"
"Our friend from the academy" Simmons spits quickly "he works in the sand box. He was working on Dr. Hall's project for reclassification. He spotted a mistake in the electromagnetic measurements in the records so he had to reassess the…" she can see May's expression indicating she is about to lose her patience "he sent us a sample. It's S.H.I.E.L.D's protocol to have reassessments done in two separate independent laboratories. We were measuring it, and we were looking at the computer, with our backs to the gravitonium… Kai must have crawled towards it, it's shiny and it's moving rapidly, it must have caught his eye…"
"I only put him on the table for a minute" Skye jumps in, her eyes on the ground "his shoe fell so I bent over to pick it up… before I knew it he was moving away from me" she looks with tears in her eyes at the two furious parents "I couldn't reach him on time."
"He's a fast little bugger" Fitz mumbles, earning himself an angry glare from Ward.
"So what happened to him?" Ward looks at his baby boy, who seems to be quite content with the fuss around him, smiling brightly to everyone, holding at his father's shirt. Whenever he lets go of the strong hold he has on him he can feel him rising upwards as if he's about to fly away.
"He'd eaten it." Simmons says "at first nothing happened and we tried to find something to give him to make him throw up, but after five minutes he suddenly stopped, sat in his place for a few seconds looking at the air and we just watched him, before suddenly he started to elevate slowly until finally he was hovering in the air above us. We were so shocked we couldn't move fast enough, and he just flew to the ceiling, too high for us to reach, we were so shocked we all screamed, but he didn't look like he was afraid or anything and then... well then, you came in…"
They sit in the lab, Fitz and Simmons with their sophisticated equipment, Skye at the other side of the wall doing her own research on her laptop, Coulson sits near the holotable looking at May and Ward who hold at their son, one at each arm of the young boy as he hovers peacefully a few inches above the holotable. "So… you think it could be temporary?" Coulson asks "maybe after he'll digest all of it, and after he'll excrete the element out of his system. Maybe he'll… get better." Ward and May look hopefully towards Simmons and Fitz when he says it. They don't look so sure, they look at each other for a second before they look back at the worried parents.
"The material has already absorbed into his blood stream." Simmons says "the spectrograph shows it distinctly. It's hard to know at this moment, but…"
"But?!" Ward and May look at her anxiously.
"I don't think it's temporary." She says. They look at each other, and Ward lets go of his son to put his hand on his wife's cheek. The baby takes this opportunity and starts hovering higher above the table. May grabs him quickly and holds him against her bosom, looking at her husband with silent despair.
"I'm sorry" Skye whispers "I should have been more careful. I promised to look after him and now…"
"It's not your fault" Ward mumbles unconvincingly "he's a baby, they can do unexpected things."
"I should inform Jimmy." Simmons says "this is an important discovery, I mean… an unknown feature of the gravitonium. They should know about…"
"No!" May and Coulson says immediately.
"This stays here" Coulson explains "I will not allow Kai to become a guinea pig in the Hub." Ward and May look at him with gratitude "Simmons, Fitz figure anything you can about this new… superpower. Skye, we need to ship something back to the sand box. Let's try to cover the tracks of the missing material. Log it all back nice and tidy. May, Ward…" he looks at them for a second "we'll figure it out. I promise. I think it's been a long day for all of us. We should all call it a day."
- TBC -