Chapter Thirty-Seven:

A/N: Hola! Okay, I am evil. Very, very evil. First, I write a 5, 000-odd word chapter, post it and then I disappear for over two months. Awful. But then I come back and write angst. How could I?! Well, it will get fluffier, I promise, but I really, really wanted a chapter where Ryan and Delko just fight it out the whole way, and then Jess has a go at Stetler - if you're a fan, stop reading NOW, LOL - , and then has a mini-breakdown. And I got it, so woot! And my CSI: Miami inspiration/plot bunny is back, officially, and it's all good. Sorry if it sucks, though, I'm a bit rusty and I'm half-dying of hay-fever...I can barely see my screen for having to sneeze!...and it's far too short, in my opinion, but I totally didn't want anyone to forget about me, LOL! Enjoy the madness :D

XDXDXDXDXDXDXDXDXDXDXD

Nearly six months into the pregnancy, Jessica was determined that she would keep on working right until the very last week. Everyone else in the lab, however, was determined that she should take her time off starting from scratch. Delko had a real bee in his bonnet about it, and Jessica wasn't sure why. There was a particular case, a high-profile one, with a lot of guns, a lot of drugs and an absolute ton of really dangerous people. The press were desperate to get into it, especially Erica Sikes, but the CSIs were trying their hardest to keep it under wraps. The victim was a politicians daughter, an heiress-type, and all eyes were pointing on her boyfriend, who just so happened to be a member of the Mala Noche. Horatio Caine was adamant that they would catch the guy as soon as they could. Jessica had matched some prints from a gun found at the scene to him, and Ryan matched blood found on the victim to the guy. They just had to find him. Jessica ran some information through the computer, and immediately widened her eyes and printed it off. She ran into the corridor, acutely aware of the fact that the baby would not keep still. Her wardrobe now consisted of Ryan's shirts and dark suit-jackets, or baby-doll tops, generally things that looked as though they were four sizes too big for her. She was now sure that Horatio knew, but thankfully, Stetler didn't. Jessica ran into the break room, finding Ryan and Eric sitting frowning at each other. They both looked up, noticing how out-of-breath Jessica was. She had planned for this to be a great day, and this had just been an added bonus.

"You two! Get into the car now, we have to go the Letterman factory! I think that's where our guy's hanging out!" She was especially excited, considering Horatio had let her be the primary on the case. "Anyway, come on...as far I've timed it, he'll only be there for the next hour or so...so..." She glanced up at the two men and arched her eyebrow. "What are you waiting for?"

Ryan and Eric looked at each other again, frowning. Eric cleared his throat. "Jess...you'll have to stay."

The words were like a bullet in her chest. Nothing could have ever hurt her more.

"What? What do you mean, 'I'll have to stay'?" Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Her one last chance at being a fully-fledged, brilliant CSI and Eric Delko was trying his best to ruin it. She placed her hands on her hips. "This is cause of the Bump, isn't it?"

Ryan furrowed his brows and glanced at the floor. "Jess, honey, if anything happened-"

"Ryan! Nothing's gonna happen to me. It hasn't happened yet. This is the case of a lifetime, man. You can't tell me to stay."

"Lucas, for what's it worth, I agree with Wolfe. It's not safe." Delko folded his arms, eyes boring into Jessica. She scoffed, glanced around the room and shook her head.

"But, hey, this too big for me to miss. I can't..." Jessica almost wanted to cry. Or to take Ryan and Eric and bump their heads together, try and get them to come to their senses. "I'm going with you." She began walking ahead of them, but she heard absolutely no sign of either of them following her. "Yo, men? Come on." Jessica raised her eyebrows, smiling very lightly, and nodded to the front door.

"Jess, no. You're a liability." Delko folded his arms. Ryan opened his mouth to say something, but he found that he couldn't. Delko had just been annoying him more and more since the eye incident, and this was just getting ridiculous.

"Whoa, don't you dare call her a liability." Ryan turned to Delko, eyebrows furrowed. "She's pregnant, not stupid. And you can stop trying to undermine her." Jessica almost collapsed with happiness at Ryan's rage towards Eric. He turned to Jessica and shook his head. "You can come, but you're staying in the car." Jessica nodded once in reply.

Eric Delko did not appreciate getting his ass kicked in public. Not by Ryan Wolfe. "Hey, Wolfe! What is your problem?" Ryan's problem was Eric. Simple as. "Who said anything about undermining her? All I'm saying is, she's pregnant, if anything happens to her, the blame's on us."

Ryan stopped completely in his tracks. Oh, no, he didn't. He couldn't have. He turned round, still not believing of his ears and folded his arms. "You think if anything happened to her I would give one damn about who got blamed? No, I wouldn't. And neither should you." For fear of actually killing Eric in public, Ryan turned back to Jessica and resumed walking. Oh, now she felt great about herself, piggy in the middle style. "And you can take your own car." Brilliant. More feuds. Over the last few weeks, they'd done nothing but snap and snark at each other.

Jessica stopped waking with Ryan and thought for a few seconds. She glanced down at her stomach and then up at Ryan. Why did everything have to be so awkward between the three of them. "Hey, Ry, maybe I should just stay." When she was with Ryan, she was excellent, when she was with Delko, it was fine, she didn't want to slap him, but when all three of them got together, it just didn't work. Pathetic.

Ryan furrowed his eyebrows for a brief second and sighed. He wanted Jessica to be there, really he did, as long as she stayed in the car. He knew her, however, and he knew that it would never happen that way. He did not want anything to go wrong, either. He inhaled once more and held his breath for a long moment. He was not a happy bunny, and this was not helping. He exhaled and smiled wryly at Jessica, head tilted to the side. "Maybe you should." And then he sauntered out of the door, independently. Delko followed after him, not really paying any attention to Jessica whatsoever. All at once, she felt like she could burst into tears, quite happily, in the middle of the lab. Instead, she walked into the lab and perched herself down next to Valera.

"Hey, Jess. What can I do for you?" Valera smiled, unaware of the pain in Jessica's mind. She and Ryan hadn't ever really fought before, and this was moderately huge. What if something happened to him? All this time, Ryan had been worrying about her...nobody had worried about him.

"Nothing, thanks, Max." Jessica realized, as her voice betrayed her and cracked, that nobody could do anything for her. Not until Ryan was with her.

XOXOXOXOXOX

Roughly two hours later, Ryan and Eric returned, much worse than when they left. After a long time of running, yelling, and a ton of chasing after the bad guy, Ryan caught up with him, resulting in him getting stabbed lightly in several locations after falling and landing on a plank of wood, covered in nails. Jessica groused to him as she pulled him into the locker room, pushing him down onto one of the hard, hole-covered benches as she foraged through her locker.

"...knew I shouldn't have let you go out there on your own...damn Delko...where the Hell was he, anyway...stupid, stupid pregnancy..." After she found a small, brown-paper bag, she shifted towards him and surveyed the damage; several tiny puncture wounds on his neck that could've easily been mistaken for something that could've happened when he was shaving; a slash along the collarbone and a few dots and splodges of red beneath his shirt. "Take your shirt off, Ryan."

Ryan glanced up, the absolute epitome of hurt etched all over his face. "Jess, it's fine..." He sighed. "I'm fine." Really, he knew, it was his own fault, heading out there, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, eager as anything, all because he was peeved with Delko. No, he reasoned, not with Delko, at Delko. "You don't have to-"

"Yes, I do." Jessica said, firmly, holding eye-contact with him for as long as she could without her eyes welling up with tears. Quickly, she blinked them off and began unbuttoning his shirt, all the time ranting to him about how ridiculous everything was. He felt slightly foolish without there being a proper reason, eyes darting to the floor, to the ceiling - anywhere but Jessica. "Jesus, Ryan..." She shook her head as she discarded the shirt. Ryan took the opportunity to glance down at himself, see what was causing Jessica so much woe and pain. Ah, it was only a few little wounds, barely even the size of a tic-tac.

"It's nothing." Apart from the fact that he could get tetanus, he knew he would live. As the sting of the anti-septic fluid Jessica had on a handkerchief came into contact with his skin, Jessica didn't want to cry, but she couldn't stop the large, unwieldy tears that were pouring out of her eyes at an alarming rate. The fact that she could've lost Ryan - again - hit her like a ton of thick, angry bricks.

"Nothing, my ass. You could've died. And then what?" Jessica pushed the sheet of material harder into his skin as she sat down beside him. Why did he have to be so unfortunate and accident-prone? Suddenly, it hit him - the reason she was crying. He'd had so many near-misses in the past and this could just be added to the list of times that the two of them almost kicked the proverbial bucket. He hadn't, however, wanted to make her cry.

"Hey, Jess...honey...I love you." He had hoped to make things better, but this only resulted in her crying even harder, dropping the handkerchief onto the ground. Ryan pulled her onto his knee and into a hug, arms warm and caring, full of concern. She pulled away from him after a few moments and wiped her eyes. Ryan smiled, cheekily, at her. "Jesus, you are emotional. You feel any better?"

Jessica glanced down at the floor. She was, actually, oddly happy. She smiled, reluctantly, and glanced down at Ryan's chest. "Yeah. You just scared me, was all. I can't...I don't want anything to happen to you. I'm kinda attached, you know..."

Even though they were in the lab - a sort of forbidden nest -, Ryan felt the immediate impulse to kiss her. And he did. She kissed him back, hands roaming through his hair as he managed to snake his arms around her waist...and, of course, this all happened very quickly...

At exactly the moment that IAB agent Rick Stetler walked past.

Uh-oh.

XOX

Ryan scrambled to pull on his shirt as Jessica tried her best to calm down. Stress wouldn't do anything for her or Bump, but she couldn't halt the panic that was coursing through her. Oh, God. She would get fired. Or Ryan. If Ryan got fired, everyone was screwed. She, at least, could become a housewife, or something. Ryan loved his job, whereas Jessica could leave it if she had to. She was standing in front of the mirror, tracing the liner along the bottom of her eye, only just able to stop her shaky hand from turning it into a complete shambles. Stetler was not supposed to know about them. Yes, she was pregnant, and yes, she had just thought that she could tell Stetler she was taking a small sabbatical for, oh, eight months or so and, should the subject really pop up, she'd say that she wasn't sure who the daddy was. No big deal, happens every day. Never was Ryan Wolfe's name supposed to pop up between them. Jessica spun round on her heel and fluffed her hair up slightly as she slammed her locker door.

"Okay...what are we gonna say?" She folded her arms and leant against said locker door. Ryan sighed and licked his lower lip.

He wasn't entirely sure; they could lie, say it was a stupid fling that neither of them bothered too much about, or they could be thoroughly truthful and say they'd ben together nearly three years. Weighing up these options, Ryan pondered over what Stetler's reaction would be. Not good, anyway. "I have no clue, Jess. We'll just...be honest. What's the worst he can do? Change our shifts?"

Jessica frowned. She didn't rightly like that idea, either, but they could cross that bridge when they got to it. "Okay..." She sighed yet again and tilted her head to the side. "You ready?" Ryan nodded, and they continued on their way to IAB.

XOX

Quickly, they were huddled into the dingy, cramped office belonging only to Rick Stetler. Frankly, the smell of cologne and something else - something not too pleasant - was putting Jessica off instantly. Ryan was his usual fidgety self, squirming around in his chair, eyes moving at one-hundred-and-twenty miles per hour. The door behind them opened and closed again at an alarming speed, slamming loudly in the process. Jessica jumped slightly and squeezed her eyes shut. She was not, not, not looking forward to this. When she opened her eyes, Stetler was sitting opposite her, feet up on the table, chewing a stick of gum. Smugly, Ryan noted. Everything that man did was smug. Sitting down, eating a sandwich, talking - all of it was done smugly, as if there were no one on earth that was cooler than he. Well, Ryan would see about that.

"So...Miss Lucas, Mr. Wolfe..." Rick began, of course, in his own superior-to-everyone way. Jessica already felt the urge to slap him. "Where do we start? Hmm? Maybe we could start with why you were canoodling in the locker room."

Jessica shifted in her seat and folded her arms over her swollen stomach. "Well, see, Ryan was out at a crime scene-"

"Which you weren't at, even though you're both on the same case." Stetler stated. God, was he that blind, or did he just think she had gotten monumentally fat? He needed shot, immediately.

"Yeah, well...anyway, he got injured and I was just-"

"Kissing it better for him?" Stetler supplied. Jessica sighed heavily and glanced to her side. She couldn't think on anything to say in reply to him. Fortunately, Rick started stomping back in with more questions. "And how long have you two been together? And don't lie to me."

Ryan swallowed. "Three years." He cleared his throat. Oh, man, he should've lied. "But it doesn't interfere-"

"Frankly, Ryan, I don't give two hoots about whether it interferes or not, you should both know and understand that relationships in the workplace are not a good idea." Stetler sat forward, eyeing up Jessica. "Is there something else I should know, Jessica?"

Jessica absent-mindedly glanced down at her belly. He knew. The rat, of course he knew. "You're talking about this," She pointed to said swollen belly. "Right?" Boh, howdy, she sincerely hoped that he did, otherwise she had just opened up a whole other fridge full of cheese.

"That's precisely what I'm talking about, darling." He sat back, suspicious mole on his face seeming to twitch with pleasure. He was actually enjoying tormenting Ryan and Jessica. The pig. "Is it his?" Rick nodded to Ryan.

"Of course it's mine." Ryan furrowed his eyebrows, angrily. As if Jessica was a downright, dirty tramp who randomly went off with everyone else in the lab. That'd be the day. "Look, is there any particular reason why we're here? I mean, considering you never noticed us before, does it make any difference if we just go back out there and forget about this whole thing?"

Stetler laughed, a hollow, malicious laugh. "Well, now, how can we forget about it when you two are having it off with each other every few hours in the locker room."

"Whoa!" Jessica frowned and sat forward. She was not about to take any more of this from such a weevil of a man. "Firstly, we are not 'having it off' every few hours. We've never done anything in the lab. We've been strictly professional at all times. Everyone in this place knows about us, and they didn't seem to have a problem-" Once more, she was cut off in her prime by Stetler.

"What, everyone? Everyone in this lab knew? Except for me, obviously." He sat back and glared at Ryan, then at Jessica.

"Well, all due respect, you're not exactly in the lab. You're IAB." Ryan half-smiled. Nobody liked IAB, and he knew it would sting Stetler right in the heart. Stetler pursed his lips together and looked up at the ceiling. Oh, yes. Ryan had done it. He had hit the nail directly on the head.

"Alright, Wolfe, you're on one week's unpaid leave, Lucas, you're on maternity leave, starting from..." Rick checked his watch. He looked up, tilted his head to the left and smiled, cockily. "Right now. Have a good day." The way he picked up the newspaper and started reading through it as if Jessica and Ryan had just called in to say hello, and nothing had happened, really got to Jessica. Ryan stood up, resigned to his fate. Jessica remained in her chair. She couldn't move. Literally. She was frozen with rage.

"You're making me go on maternity leave because I'm dating a colleague?" How utterly pathetic. "Well, Mr. Stetler, can I just say one thing?" Jessica half-smiled, leaning back in her chair. Ryan eyed her curiously. She was running off script now, and he wasn't sure he liked it. Stetler nodded. "You are by far the most obnoxious, arrogant, , shriveled-up-prune-like, self-obsessed son of a bitch I've ever had the misfortunate to meet. Now, you have a nice day." With that, Jessica winked at him and stood up, taking a hold of a very, very shocked Ryan Wolfe's hand. Stetler opened his mouth to say something, but words escaped him, purely. As they walked out, Jessica got a sudden image of herself turning into the incredible hulk, and it began to hurt.

"Wow." Ryan muttered as they sauntered down the hall of IAB, heading out onto an elevator. Thankfully, they were the only ones there, allowing Jessica a few moments to stand there, seething at the door, arms folded, not even thinking about saying one word back to Ryan. Quite frankly, he himself was too scared to say anything to her. God knows what kind of hormone-induced fit she'd go into if he tried to give her a hug. A few moments later, the elevator pinged and Jessica marched out into the lab. Ryan walked, hesitantly, behind her. He noticed that she never bothered with anyone on the floor, she just kept on walking. She walked the whole way out to the car, angrily, and then she fumbled around in her handbag for her keys. Ryan folded his arms and leant against the car. He loathed the Miami sun, and he loathed the way it made everyone so cranky. Even himself. "Hey, Jess...where are you goin'?"

"Home." She snapped, voice as low as it could be. "I'm hungry, I'm frustrated, I am heartily sickened, Ryan, and I have to pee. I hate this place. I hate Stetler. And don't even start me on being pregnant." She stopped and bit her lower lip. She didn't mean that; she liked Bump. She just wasn't best fond of the distraction that he/she caused. "Ugh, and I hate this bag!" She gave up on the keys and let her bag fall to the ground.

More than the sun, Ryan hated seeing Jessica so stressed and rage-filled. He shifted closer to her and put an arm around her shoulders as he produced a set of keys from his back pocket. "I can take care of that first problem. Come on, get in the car." Slowly, Jessica walked around to the other side of the car and got in.

She had not had a great day like she had planned. It hadn't even been good, or fine. It had been terrible.

XOX

A/N: Whoa, what a bad ending. AND I am uber-sorry about the complete neglect on this fic!! I totally didn't mean to do that!! Next chapter: fluff-o-rama! Oh, man, that was terrible...very mad-cap, LOL. But very fun to write. I'm starting work tomorrow, really nervous, but uber-excited!! Oh, and we planted potatoes, they're getting very big, and ooh, I kinda threw a ranter on Stetler, didn't I? Whoa! Ah, well, that's what he gets for firing Ryan. The git.

Okay, I have to go but please, please, please don't give up on me yet, LOL, it will be better!

R&R if you can...

Have a great rest of the day,

JauntyChick

XOX