This one was really hard to get started. Mostly because Kavan Smith invaded my brain and refused to leave. Also because my darling boyfriend keeps distracting me (although he looks a bit like I think John would if he wasn't a puppet so I can't be mad at him). Consequently, when you add in the writers block that Kavan (aka Major Evan Lorne) caused me I had a bit of trouble getting this one going. Then I wrote Lorne drabbles and suddenly there this was. With a lovely Scott shaped treat at the end. Yum.

Hollie retires from the general noise of the Tracy household and into the bedroom she shares with Scott. As much as she adores her new family sometimes they can be a little bit too much to handle and since she and Scott announced her pregnancy to them all her life has not felt like her own. She has appointments to organise and this is not something that it is easy to get her head around. Hollie cannot help but realise how fast everything has moved between her and Scott this time around, she cannot help but wonder at it. She has no doubt in her mind about her feelings for him, no doubt that she is doing the right thing by marrying him and having his child, but she is aware of what her friends think about the situation. She knows that they think that things have gone too fast because any number of them have expressed that thought on the few occasions that she has been able to get hold of them. Only Erin and Cassandra have really stuck by her in all this. Cassandra knew her when she was dating Scott the first time and Erin knew of Scott as that one man no other man could live up to.

She speaks to Erin about once a week now, though she suspects that her friend is in more regular contact with Virgil than she is with her. Hollie knows that this has to be hard on the blonde, her friend is quite obviously falling for Virgil and his charms and though she knows him well Hollie cannot be certain that he feels the same way. It comes as no surprise to find out that her friend already knows that Hollie is pregnant.

"I'm disappointed in you," the blonde says as soon as she answers her phone and sees that it is Hollie. "I had to find out from Virgil."

"Find out what?" She asks, feigning ignorance. Traditionally friends and those outside of the immediate family circle are not told until after the first scan at three months, a matter of luck she thinks it is.

"Please, Hollie," Erin rolls her eyes. "You're pregnant! I should have been one of the first people that you told."

"I'm sorry," Hollie replies with an expression of completely false contrition on her face. "Will you ever forgive me?" Erin gets a calculating look on her face. "Come on, you're going to be my maid of honour! You can't be mad at me."

The declaration seems to take the other woman by surprise, green eyes blinking rapidly as she frowns at her friend. Even though Erin had been told about the engagement Hollie has not yet had the chance to ask her friend if she would like to take the position of maid of honour. It was something that she has long thought she would ask Cassandra to do for her, but as time has passed on the island she has found that her conversations with Erin have come more easily. She found that Cassandra was less willing to maintain this friendship over such a distance and over time she has concluded that Erin's company is actually preferable in many ways.

"You could have told me," Erin points out, probably in reference to both topics of conversation.

"But you'll do it, right?" Hollie asks and watches the brilliant smile cross her friend's face.

"Of course I will," she laughs and the conversation turns back to the pregnancy and the first scan that is coming in a little under a week. "Are you nervous?"

"I don't think it's actually sunk in yet," Hollie admits. "This is so different from when Ashwyn came into my life. She sort of just dropped into it."

"You were alone, then," Erin points out. "You've got Scott now, not to mention Virgil and the others. You tried to do it all alone last time."

Hollie has to nod at that, has to accept that her friend is right. Erin does not know everything, admittedly, she does not know just how quickly after the death of her sister Scott came back into her life. She does not know the part that the boys had to play in it and she does not know just how dangerous everything really is for them.

"I never did get the story of how he got hurt from you though," Erin continues, "with them living on that island and everything you'd think that the most trouble they could get into would be the odd trip or slip."

"You know I can't tell you that," Hollie replies with a sigh. This is not the first time that her friend has asked and she knows that it will not be the last, but it is getting harder and harder to keep the truth about her circumstances from her. She has no doubt that as Erin talks to Virgil more she is starting to ask him for answers more and more regularly. "The work they do for Jeff is top secret." Her friend sighs.

"So will you be coming here?" Erin asks, changing the subject much to Hollie's relief. "It would be good to actually see you rather than use the vid-phone all the time."

"Well it's not exactly the closest hospital," Hollie says apologetically, "but I'm sure I can talk Jeff into letting Gordon come and get you so we can grab coffee in Travellers."

"Why Gordon?" Erin objects. "Why not Virgil?" Hollie laughs and Erin has the grace to look a little bit sheepish.

"Don't you want to meet the rest of his family?" She asks and the blonde sticks out her tongue.

"Of course I do, but I'd rather spend more time with him first." The door opens behind her and Hollie turns to see Scott walking through the door covered in something that looks suspiciously like oil. "And here's daddy," Erin says when she sees him. "What on earth happened to you?"

"Gordon and Alan," Scott hisses. Hollie shakes her head, it is enough of an explanation.

"If you got oil on the floor Grandma is going to kill you," she tells him. "Get it on me and they'll never find your body." He grins at her.

"She's raised six boys over the course of her life, she's used to it," he leans in and kisses her cheek, careful to avoid brushing her with his dirty clothes.

"I think that's my cue," Erin says with a soft smile at them both. "Let me know about next week, Hol, I'm sure the school can do without me for a day or two."

"I will," Hollie smiles and sees Erin's smile become more appreciative as Scott starts to strip off his shirt behind her. "Get your own," Hollie tells her.

"I intend to." The screen goes blank as soon as Erin is finished talking and Hollie turns her eyes on her fiancée. His back and chest are streaked with oil where it has seeped through his old shirt and t-shirt, though thankfully his jeans are only spotted with it, and the fact that he is only wearing his socks states louder than words that he left his work boots in the hanger. It does not take much in the way of thought for her to slip off her sun dress and follow him from the bedroom into the en suite. After all, things are going to start changing for them very rapidly now and she intends to make the most of what she can do while she can still do it. Hollie saw Amelia enough when her sister was pregnant to know that even some apparently simple tasks get harder when there is a bump in the mix.

Artemis