Her footsteps had never sounded louder as she made her way down the metal staircase, the lab (their lab) coming into view, and with it - the familiar and frantic movements of Fitz.
Taking a deep breath, she didn't allow herself to falter or stop - knowing that should she do so, she may just hide in her bunk for the next six or seven months.
And the next eighteen years after.
Finally needing to stop as she inputted the code to open the clear lab doors, her hand hovered just above the final button needed, noting with a slight smile that he still hadn't noticed her coming down the stairs, so immersed in his own work as he was - but that short pause was enough to bring back all her earlier worries and fears in full force - this ... particular turn of events ... this wasn't something they'd ever discussed, they'd never even thought to discuss an incident such as this.
Was she even doing the right thing?
They were only twenty five, with dangerous jobs, no permanent home beyond a freaking plane, and as for family members that so much as acknowledged their existence anymore - let's just say that even between the pair, there weren't many.
Surely the better, the easier path to take would be just hide for a week or two, just until they touched down in America again - it could be all ... sorted out in a matter of hours, she could convince Skye it was all for the best, and Fitz would never have to know - nothing would ever have to change.
Except it already had changed, it had been changed for a long time now.
She pressed the final button, the doors opening with a definitive swoosh, the disturbance enough for Fitz to swivel on the spot, fixing her with an accusing glare, but waiting for her to make the first move.
She opened her mouth to speak - she had to do this quickly, or there was chance she never would. "I'm ... I'm ..."
"The next word out of your mouth had better be 'sorry'. Do you know how much more work it is when you leave me to do everything alone?" His voice sounded almost petulant, but accusing at the same time, a skill he had long since perfected.
"Fitz." She tried again, trying to put some urgency into her voice, trying to get him to listen.
"No," he interrupted. "Last time I checked - 'just a minute' does not take all morning, even Coulson asked where you were. Twice. And that really means..."
"Fitz will you just shut up for one second." He looked wounded, his eyes widening as Simmons lost her temper and eventually yelled - well, almost yelled anyway, the horrific pounding in her head only getting worse with the stress of arguing with her best friend (her child's father, an unwanted voice in her head supplied).
"There's no need to yell, okay." If anything his voice got louder, while somehow remaining put out, turning his back to her, returning to his work, busying his hands with something just so he didn't have to look at her. "You're the one who's been acting really weird these past few weeks, the one who's been avoiding me, so why should I shut up because you won't talk. Give me one good reason wh..."
His voice was cut off with Simmons' exasperated statement.
"Because I'm pregnant, you bloody idiot."
In hindsight, that probably could have come out better, but hyperventilating slightly as she watched her lab partner react, Jemma couldn't be faulted for not caring.
She didn't quite know what she expected following her outburst - but watching Fitz blink wordlessly a few times, as he paled further than she had ever seen him turn (and that included the incident with the wasp nest) and crumple to the floor - would actually have come quite close to the top of the list anyway.
Making sure he hadn't hit his head or anything, and had actually just fainted, she took the momentary silence as a blessing, using it as a chance to even out her breathing - for it was extremely likely that Fitz would still be ... off when he regained consciousness again, and really they shouldn't both be overreacting.
Though considering she was the one who was actually pregnant, it was kind of annoying.
Crouching beside her other (and to some, her better) half, she passed a half full bottle of water over as his eyes fluttered open, still a tad disorientated, and not quite able to shift from his seated position on the floor, for fear of a repeat performance.
"I didn't just make that up did I?" he asked weakly.
A sad half-smile passed quickly over her lips before it was gone. "That depends," she hedged, "On what you think you did or did not make up."
His eyes flicked from her stomach to her face and back down again. He didn't have to say anything.
"No." Her voice was almost inaudible, her eyes specifically aimed anywhere but at him, not needing any of the emotions that could be passing through his eyes just at the moment.
"How far, um, along are you?" He just had to check, had to know...
"Almost three months." Came her soft reply.
He could do the maths just as well as she could, and remembered the night just as vividly as she did.
"But how ... how?"
"I should think even you should have had that talk by now Leo," Her words were almost withering, but spoken with a quaking voice, and the look in her eyes - the one only Fitz had ever got close enough to decipher - betrayed her fear, avoiding his true question with true skill.
She sighed, knowing she had to answer the underlying question - they weren't stupid, the combined precautionary methods they had undertaken should have rendered a talk such as this one unwarranted.
"It must have malfunctioned or ... or something." Her mind instantly supplied statistics she could quote, probabilities that this could have happened, but she shoved them away. It's not like they'd do much good anyway. "I don't know... I didn't plan..."
Didn't plan to get infected with an alien virus.
Didn't plan to throw herself off of a plane without a parachute.
Didn't plan to sleep with her best friend.
Didn't plan to end up pregnant with his child.
Didn't plan to have this conversation curled in a ball on the floor in their lab.
A lot of her life hadn't gone exactly to plan recently - wasn't that supposed to be the fun of it.
She felt tears rising and blinked them back, really not needing to deal with that as well as everything else right now.
Her hand slipped unconsciously to her stomach - for the first time since fully coming to the realisation that something, a future someone was growing in there - as she raised her eyes to his level. "I'm terrified Fitz," she admitted, the watery smile that accompanied it, saying more than her words ever could.
He had no words to reply with, in that moment, none of the platitudes or jokes he'd use to diffuse the situation in usual circumstances - if these had been usual circumstances - if it wasn't him and Jemma sat on the floor on the lab, trying to work out the rest of their lives together.
He simply raised his arm, in a silent gesture and she slipped closer, fitting into the gap between his body and his arm like two pieces of a puzzle - like she was meant to be there.
"Are you ... are you keeping it?" He rubbed his face with his one hand as he spoke, the other never ceasing in it's reassuring hold on Jemma's upper arm - torn between the desire not to push her, and the want, the need to know the answer to that question.
"I wan... I mean I think I ... uh, I mean if y..." she trailed off from her stammering of four sentences at the same time, looking just about on the verge of tears yet again. "Yes." Her voice was firm, and it was only in that moment she realised how much she actually truly wanted this - a baby, a child, the perfect mixture of the two of them. "Yes," she repeated, the tears all but gone already - and the smile that passed over Fitz's lips didn't pass fast enough for her to miss it, knowing it had been the answer he had been hoping for, even if he wouldn't admit it.
They fell back into a comfortable silence, the sort they had become used to working through in their many years in the lab together, almost able to understand the other telepathically having lived within the same little bubble for so long.
It was Fitz who broke it, his barely murmured voice loud in the stillness of the room. "What are we going to do?" There was a slight weariness bleeding through his words - something that Simmons could easily agree with, was it really just twenty minutes ago she had been debating whether to come into the room, four and a half hours since she took the test. It seemed so much more and so much less all at the same time.
She sighed, lolling her head back until it fit into the gap between his shoulder and his neck. "I don't know Leo."
Regardless, they couldn't go back anymore.
Thank you for reading, and please review,
Mia