Hello everyone!
I had this idea one night, and I somehow couldn't get it out of my head. So here it is, and I hope you'll like this little thing.

I wrote it all in one go, and English isn't my first language. You'll have to forgive me for the grammar mistakes! xx

Fitz was not sulking. He was merely bored. A quick glance at the clock told him that it was now past midnight, and his stomach plummeted at the sight.

Maybe he was sulking a little. But it was because he was worried, that was all. Simmons had told him she'd text him when she was home, and his message box was unfortunately and desperately empty. Even though it had been less than five minutes since he'd last checked, he took his phone out of his jeans pocket one more time, finding his notifications desperately empty.

On the Tv, Doctor Who was still running, but he barely paid attention to it. He loved this episode, and Simmons loved it even more. She'd always found the Silence fascinating, and she loved Amy almost as much as Rose. Fitz had taken a liking in Rory, which made Simmons smile every time he mentioned it, even if he had no single idea why. Even though he still deeply missed Ten, Eleven wasn't that bad, after all. Especially when he watched it with Simmons.

Sighing loudly again, Fitz laid back on the couch with a pout. He really was worried. After all, Simmons had agreed to go on a date with a guy she'd met at the Boiler Room, one of those big and muscly guys who made Fitz's skin crawl. But he'd played his part, and he'd even helped her dress before her date. He was her best friend, after all. They were 18 years old, top of their classes at the Academy, and Simmons was an objectively attractive woman. Not that he'd looked at her that way, of course. She was his best friend, and he was merely thinking with an objective point of view. Which was why he'd helped her pick her beautiful purple dress, and he couldn't hold back his gasp when he'd seen her get out of the bathroom fully dressed and wearing beautiful makeup. But it wasn't like that. It wasn't like he was interested in her, she was more…. More of a sister to him, really.

Which was why he worried so much, because she hadn't texted him that she was home yet. And when the campus was a pretty safe place, it was after all past midnight.

Just as he was about to check his texts for what felt like the hundredth time, Fitz heard a light knock on his dorm room's door. Jumping to his feet, he opened it only to be faced with the very objects of his thoughts.

"Simmons!" He exclaimed. Then, he set his mouth on a thin line. "You didn't text."

Simmons rolled her eyes, mentioning towards his room pointedly. Fitz didn't even think, twisting his body so that she could walk inside. As he closed the door, he realized that she was barefoot, padding inside the room with her high heels in her hand before falling face down on his bed with a resigned sigh. Fitz heard more than he saw her shoes and bag fall from the side of the bed when she rolled over, and he adverted his eyes immediately when he realized that her dress had riddled up her thighs, exposing more of her fair skin to his eyes.

"How was your date?" He asked cautiously.

He walked around the bed to sit on his mattress on the other side of her, making sure to put some distance between them.

"Awful" she replied truthfully, blurting out the words in a sigh. "I didn't text because I wasn't home, and I didn't feel like going home after that. Is this okay?" She asked with a raised brow, suddenly worrying. "Am I overstepping? You weren't sleeping, were you?"

Her last question was more formal than anything else, because he could feel the way her eyes ranked up and down his body. He wasn't wearing a pajama, just his usual jeans and teeshirt combo.

"No, no. I wasn't. It's fine, I'm glad you're here." He wasn't about to tell her that he didn't change because he wanted to be able to go get her at the restaurant if she ever needed. That was what best friends did for each other, right?

"Okay" Simmons replied, smiling for the first time since she'd stepped into the room.

"Why was it awful? Do you wanna talk about it?"

Simmons frowned. "I just…" she sighed. "I realized halfway through the meal that I was bothering him with my science talk" she confessed, sitting up and adjusting her dress. Weirdly, Fitz immediately felt like he could breathe a little easier after that. "And after dinner, he heavily implied that we should continue this discussion in his room."

She wrinkled her nose, just as Fitz did the same. When they looked up at each other, Simmons giggled.

"I don't care about virginity, since its social construct" she said casually, propping herself up against the bed's headboard. "But I really didn't wanna have sex with him. He was quite handsome and symmetrical, had the perfect average body fat percentage, but…" she shrugged. "I didn't even have fun during dinner. All I could think about was how I longed to be home and watch Who with you."

It took Fitz a couple of seconds to realize that she'd called his room "home", and a few more to realize what she'd implied.

"I was worried" he simply blurted out, feeling himself blush. "I'm glad you came home, too."

When she smiled at him, he ignored the way his heart clenched. After all, it was probably just the last remaining bits of worry easing their way out of his chest as she snuggled against him a few minutes later, asking him if he could restart the episode for her.

2.

"Simmons! Why the hell didn't you text me?" Fitz asked, barging into her room without even bothering to knock first. It wasn't like he never did it, really. But he realized his mistake as soon as he laid eyes on the bed, bed on which Jemma was currently lying under a (still clothed, fortunately) student that Fitz had never seen before.

"Fitz!" She exclaimed immediately, pushing against the guy's torso to get him off her. "What are you doing here?"

It was apparently Fitz's lucky day, because Jemma was still dressed as well, apart from the top two buttons of her blouse. His eyes immediately betrayed him as they fell on her cleavage, his breath quickening as he realized that the freckles dotting her skin kept going there, too. He snapped his gaze back on her face, finding it red and obviously annoyed.

"I'm sorry" he blurted out immediately, throwing a glance at the guy now standing next to the bed, fidgeting with his jeans. Fitz bit back a grimace when he observed the noticeable bulge in front of his trousers, and turned his attention back to Jemma. "I just… you never texted. I was worried."

They'd established this texting rule two years before, after one of Jemma's disastrous dates. If she never texted Fitz that she either got home or that the date went well, he had the right to worry when it had been more than three hours without any news from her. Usually, Jemma was always very adamant on keeping her end of the bargain. But tonight she'd went out for dinner with a guy from Sci ops she'd met a few days earlier, and it had been way more than three hours since she'd last texted Fitz to tell him that everything was doing just fine when they arrived at the restaurant.

Which was why he'd gotten into his nearest sweatpants and walked to her dorm with worry, only to end up furious when he'd seen some light coming from under her door. Which led them to their current predications.

"Well I was kind of busy!" Jemma immediately replied, annoyed.

Her cheeks were still sightly red and her eyes glassy as she stared at him, and Fitz wanted the floor to swallow him whole. On the other side of the room, the other guy looked about as weirded out by the situation as he did, but Fitz could clearly see some annoyance in the way he looked back at him. Snapping his eyes back to Jemma, Fitz felt his stomach do a weird flip when he took in her kiss swollen lips and heaving chest.

"I'm sorry" he muttered again, raising his hands in defense. "I'm gonna… Night, Simmons."

His own dorm was just a few corridors away, but the walk back to it felt longer than ever. Fitz was still feeling uneasy with the whole situation, and he had no idea why his chest felt this heavy as he opened his dorm room door and slipped inside, flopping on his own bed. His brain couldn't quite erase the sight of Simmons' breasts coupled with the movement of her chest as she breathed in and out, quicker than he'd ever seen. Of course there was not much action in class or in the lab that would cause such action, but Fitz hadn't quite realized how beautiful Simmons' body was. He immediately felt horrible at the thought, shaking his head rapidly. She was like a sister to him, and he was just confused by the whole situation. He'd never meant to walk in on her… doing anything remotely intimate with someone.

Sighing, Fitz changed back into his pajamas before sliding under his covers. He hoped Simmons wouldn't be mad in the morning, because he already felt awful as it was without having to apologize one more time to her for ruining any kind of moment. But just as he settled his head on his pillow, willing his brain to stop overthinking everything, Fitz heard someone knock on his door.

"Fitz?"

Even though it was muffled by the wooden door, Fitz would have recognized his best friend's voice anywhere.

"Simmons?" He asked, sitting up.

It was all the encouragement she needed to push open the door, and slide inside of his room. Fitz immediately noticed that she'd buttoned up her blouse again, and he bit back a sigh of disappointment. Her cheeks were now back to their natural color and he tried not to think too much about her lips as she came sit with him on the bed, fingers twisting in his bed sheets in obvious anxiety.

"I'm sorry" she whispered immediately, her gaze fixed on her lap.

"No, Simmons, I'm sorry" Fitz immediately replied. "I shouldn't… I should have knocked."

He wanted to reach out to her, put a reassuring hand on her shoulder, but it suddenly felt too intimate.

"But I asked you to make sure I texted you" Simmons insisted, finally looking up at him. "We've had this deal for years, and I just… I'm sorry."

Silence stretched between them, and Fitz suddenly felt a little uneasy.

"Well" he half whispered, glad that the general darkness of the room was able to hide his surely reddening cheeks. "You were, uh. Busy. So it's okay. Just… tell me when it's going really well, next time. It'll avoid… these kind of talks."

Suddenly, Simmons was laughing. He had no idea why, but she'd somehow found something he said really hilarious judging by the way she curled on herself and laughed even harder. Finally, after taking a deep breath and calming her hilarity —Fitz had no idea why his stomach felt this weird, tonight— she mentioned at him to scoot over to sit next to him, on top of the covers.

"It wasn't going really well" she confessed in a grimace. "It was… okay, I guess. But he was an awful kisser, really. I was about to ask him to leave anyway."

Fitz frowned. "Really? Because you seemed…" he stopped, unable to keep going. How could he tell her that she looked like sex personified without sounding like a creep?

"Well. Biology and all, you know" Simmons replied with a shrug. "Just because the human body reacts a certain way doesn't mean it's necessarily good. Anyway, I just wanted to apologize again, Fitz. I shouldn't have snapped at you."

"It's nothing" he assured her immediately, tensing when she wrapped her arms around him.

"Thank you for being such an incredible friend" she whispered against his neck.

Fitz definitely needed to get his stomach checked. Maybe he was covering something.

3.

Fitz had been studying for hours when he was torn from his engineering book by a knock on his door, followed by Simmons' familiar form slipping into his room and closing the door behind her.

"Hey Simmons" he threw from above his shoulder, taking one more note on the margin of his book before closing it. "Aren't you supposed to be with Milton?"

He turned his desk chair around, surprised to find her lost in her thoughts.

"Simmons?" He asked again. "Are you okay?"

His question made her snap back to attention and she nodded with a forced smile, walking towards his bed before sitting on it. Fitz knew something was bothering her from the moment she ignored his rumpled sheet and the occasion to make a remark on how messy the bed was, and his eyebrows drawn together in concern.

"Are you sure everything's fine? It's not… it's not Milton, right? Did he upset you? Did you guys fight?"

Fitz hated Milton. Not only because he was quite remarkably less intelligent than him and Jemma, and not only because he had a cabbage head, but also because he didn't deserve Simmons in the slightest. None of Jemma's exes had, to be quite honest, but Milton was the worst. At least all the guys Simmons had dated before treated her well, even if it was sometimes just to get a few favors. Milton though? Milton was stupid, and he took Simmons for granted. And Fitz hated that.

"What?" She asked, looking up at him. "Oh, no. No, it's not… we didn't fight."

"Then what did he do? You look…unhappy."

Sometimes, Fitz felt like he knew her better than he knew himself. They did everything together, from the lab to their private life. They spent night binge watching Doctor Who, they took respective trips to their families' houses for the Hollidays because they wanted to save money, and they often slept in each other's room when they didn't feel like walking back to their own after nights of studying together. When Simmons had started dating Milton, it did change their habits a little bit, but Fitz had ignored his disappointment and pushed it back inside of himself. After all, it was normal for her to spend time with her boyfriend, and even he couldn't compete with that with his best friend status. Still, he hated it. But only because he hated the guy.

"I…" Jemma whispered, before sighing. "We had sex" she blurted out.

Fitz felt frozen on the spot. That was something he hadn't seen coming, to say the least.

"Oh" he said then, immediately cringing at the way his voice broke. "Did it… uh. Was he good? To you?"

Simmons somehow immediately knew what he was talking about, as her features relaxed and eased into a small smile when she looked up at him.

"Milton was fine" she reassured him. "I mean. He was nice to me, I guess."

"You guess?"

Simmons' nose wrinkled. "Well. It wasn't really good, to be quite honest."

Fitz felt himself blush from head to toes. It wasn't that he was uncomfortable with sex, quite the contrary. He was a 21 years old boy, thank you very much. He got himself off quite regularly under the shower or late at night, and he wasn't ashamed of it. But it was something terribly different to hear Simmons talk about her first experience so bluntly.

"Uh" he said, staring at the way she sat on his bed. Most of the books and movies were wrong, because she didn't look like she'd just had sex. He didn't know why he was so surprised that she didn't glow like a fairy like it was implied in pop culture, and immediately felt stupid. "I'm sorry?"

Simmons chuckled. "Come on, don't be. It's not like it's your fault anyway."

She fell silent, and it stretched between them uncomfortably before she spoke up again.

"I just couldn't stop thinking that we didn't work well together at all" Simmons kept going, staring at the wall in front of her. "You know how effortless it is when we're in the lab, and we just work in harmony?" She didn't wait for him to reply, before going on "Well it wasn't like that at all with Milton. Every time I tried to orient him whenever I wanted him, he just didn't get it."

She sighed.

"At least the pain wasn't that bad, so there's that I guess."

Fitz felt himself grimace in response. He knew it was illogical, but he didn't like the idea that Simmons had been hurt in any way, especially when it came to sex. She'd never been shy when it came to talk about sex or her pleasure, she was a biochem student after all and biology was her thing. But to know that bloody Milton had ruined her first time made his skin crawl and his blood boil.

"He's a bloody idiot that's what he is" Fitz interjected immediately, making her focus switch from the wall to his face again.

Somehow, this made her smile even wider. There was a certain fondness in the way she looked at him, and Fitz ignored the way his stomach filled with weird fleeting sensations.

"Well at least your future girlfriend will be a lucky gal" Simmons said after a short while, looking down at his hands. "If there's anything you know how to do, it's use your hands." Then, she got up, walking around the bed to grab the pizza flyers on his desk. "You wanna order in? I wanna spend time with you tonight."

The slight pinch in Fitz's heart was probably caused by the fact that Simmons had lost her virginity before him, he thought as he looked at the comfortable way she laid back on the bed with her phone stuck to her ear. They were both very competitive people, it was bound to happen eventually. There was, after all, no other explanation for the way he felt knowing that she'd had sex with someone.

4.

Maveth had been hard. For Simmons, but for Fitz, too.

He'd spent six whole months trying to bring the woman he loved back from an unknown planet, when everyone else around him thought she was dead and he was just getting crazy. But it had been hard for his heart, too. For the first time in his life, Fitz had felt heartbroken. It was a different kind of pain to see Jemma leave after his brain injury, because she'd come back to him and he knew that she was alive somewhere, even if she was away from him.

But on Maveth? It had been a different kind of heartbreak. And Fitz had felt like he hadn't been breathing correctly until he was holding her fragile body in his arms, surrounded by the monolith's debris. And just like that, life was back on its course, and everything felt right again.

Of course, he logically knew that it would take time for her to get used to her surroundings again, and that she would need therapy as well. They didn't know what she'd faced on Maveth yet, only witnessing the bruises and cuts on her thin (too thin) body during their primarily medical examination.

But then it all went crashing down again.

Just when he thought they'd finally get their chance —didn't they deserve it, after all they'd been through?— she'd told him about Will.

Will Daniels, top marks astronaut, and hero. The man who'd been stranded in the monolith for 14 years, the man who'd given Jemma hope again. The man she fell in love with, and wanted to bring home.

And who was Fitz to refuse? No matter how much it hurt and no matter how much he'd cried in his bed that night, clenching his pillow against his face to muffle his sobs, he would do anything for Jemma Simmons. Including finding a way to save Will Daniels, even if it led to him losing the woman he loved. Because that was the thing, wasn't it? He'd never been enough for Jemma. He hadn't been enough when she went on all those dates at the Academy, hadn't been enough when she'd started sleeping with some of them and complaining about how they never worked with her quite as well in bed as she worked with him in the lab, and he hadn't been enough when she came back from Hydra even when she knew how he felt about her.

And Fitz refused to pity himself. He hadn't given her his last breath to get the looks full of pity he could feel whenever he walked down the halls of the Playground when he was still battling aphasia, and he was the last person he needed pity from. He'd known from the moment he met Jemma Simmons at SHIELD Academy that he'd never be good enough for her, and he had to live with it.

Yet he couldn't help the jealousy that twisted his guts when he looked at the selfie Jemma had taken with Will on Maveth. He couldn't help but stare at the picture, wondering if Jemma had been the one to initiate it. He couldn't help but stare at Will, and think about all the things he'd had the right to do with Jemma, that he never would. Fitz felt selfish, because he envied a man who'd spent 14 years on what could only be described as hell, and he envied six months of it, spent being loved by Jemma.

So he worked, and ignored his jealousy. He worked, and ignored the images he got whenever he thought about Jemma kissing Will, embracing him, making love to him. Had he been aware of his luck? Had Will known how special it was, to be loved by Jemma Simmons? To be kissed by her pink lips, lips that she worried whenever they got an exam at the Academy until she sometimes bled? To embrace her strong body that had been through so much, that same body that pulled him out of the bottom of the ocean? To make love to her, like he so desperately wished he could some day?

So Fitz worked to bring him home, and break his own heart even further in the process.

5.

Fitz knew it was immature, and frankly ridiculous.

But he couldn't help it, and couldn't help the sinking feeling at the bottom of his stomach as he Jemma spoke.

"Guess I had to be there" he groaned when Jemma told him about their wedding venue, biting the inside of his cheek to prevent any more sarcastic remarks from passing his lips. He knew Jemma didn't mean anything by it, but the ache in his chest was crushing his lungs as he thought about that day. He'd imagined marrying her so many times, from the moment they first kissed to the moment he froze himself in space to get her in the future. But somehow, he'd never imagined himself missing his own wedding.

Jemma sighed in contempt, totally unaware of his inner turmoil. "You were. And you. Looked dashing."

"Oh yeah" Fitz bit back, pressing with more force against the piece of tech he was working on. "And brave, and I sacrificed myself for the lives of others." He sighed, turning around to face her. "Looks like you married Mister Perfect, doesn't it?"

He didn't even realize he'd been impersonating her until the words left his mouth, and Jemma looked up at him with a frown.

"Are you jealous of yourself?" She asked, using that tone he knew but too well. That tone she used when he was being irrational when they fought, just like he was now. Not that he'd ever admit it, of course.

"Yep" he replied, figuring that he was already too deep to care. "Yes I am." Then, after a pause, he swallowed hard against the lump in his throat.

As irrational as he sounded, he needed to emphasize how much it hurt, to know that he'd missed this. That he'd missed the occasion to marry the love of his life like he'd planned for years, like he'd dreamed for years. And even though a part of himself did (or at least a version of himself), it didn't really matter. Because Jemma had memories of him, of them, that he'd never share. No matter the videos or pictures she'd told him about, he'd never remember the rush of emotions he must have felt as he walked down the forest to marry her, he'd never remember Coulson's voice laced with emotions as he married them, and he'd never remember their first kiss as husbands and wife. He'd told her once that he was the romantic one between them, and he still firmly believed that. So he knew he'd been thinking about marriage way before her, and when she might not have pictured it at first or at all in her life, he always knew he wanted to get married. And somehow, deep inside of him, he knew he wanted to marry Jemma Simmons since the first moment they'd spoken at 16.

"Cause he'll always be your first husband" he whispered. "I'm only ever gonna be a replacement."

He could see that he'd upset Jemma when she looked up at him, turning her head sharply towards him. "You do realize how ridiculous this sounds?" She asked, squinting at him.

"Absolutely."

She was upset, and he knew it. He couldn't quite figure out if she was upset with him, or with fate. It didn't matter either way, really. Making his way towards her, Fitz sighed.

"Had fun on your wedding night?" He asked, feeling childish enough to push. At least when Jemma was angry towards him, she also directed all her attention to him, and him only. As stupid as it was, he needed it at this moment. He needed to feel anything but the deep ache in his chest.

"Oh, it was wonderful" Jemma immediately chuckled, looking up with a smile. When her gaze fell on him though, her smile dropped down immediately. "I mean, obviously, you know" she quickly caught herself, walking towards him. "It will be nothing compared to the second time."

And as much as Fitz wanted to take this peace offering and joke with her, he couldn't quite shake his deep resentment.

"What, I wasn't enough the first time?"

This time, annoyance dripped from Jemma in waves as she sighed. "Let's just concentrate on getting the message to the base" she replied, turning away.

+1.

When Fitz awoke, it was with a mouthful of Jemma's hair and the scent of her perfume surrounding him. Blinking away the last remains of sleep from his eyes as he stretched as sneakily as possible without waking his wife, Fitz took a few moments to bear his surroundings. The sun was already up, filtering through the light curtains drawn in front of the windows of their bedroom. It was a sunny morning in Perthshire, Scotland, and Fitz felt himself smile automatically. Against him, Jemma's body was still warm with sleep. The sheets of their bed were smooth against their skin, falling down Jemma's shoulders as he moved, pressing a kiss against her freckled shoulder. The clock on the bedside table announced five minutes to seven, which meant that he wouldn't be the only one awake for very long. With one last lingering look at a peaceful Jemma, Fitz rolled over and got out of the bed, stretching as he stood.

He carefully turned off the baby monitor on Jemma's bedside table as he stifled a yawned, rubbing his neck. His hair needed a trim, but somehow getting a haircut hadn't been in his priorities in the last few weeks. Fitz closed the door carefully behind him as he exited the bedroom, walking towards the nursery silently. When the room was still plunged into darkness, curtesy of the much thicker curtains in front of the windows, he didn't need much light to walk towards the crib. After all, he'd made his way in this room in the middle of the night more than once, and he could probably do it all by automatism now.

It was 6:58 by the time Fitz bent over the crib, and a soft smile stretched his face as soon as he realized that his daughter was blinking herself awake just on time.

"Hello monkey" Fitz whispered as she immediately babbled at him, little fists punching the air excitedly. He huffed. "You're so much like your mom it's kind of scary, you know that? I can't believe you wake up at the same exact hour every day without exception, and you're only three months old. I bet you'll make lists to organize your play days by the time you're two."

Rosie only babbled in response, letting out a soft giggled as he scooped her up and held her to his chest, kissing the top of her head. Walking towards the changing table, he made a quick job of changing her diaper, kissing and blowing against her little toes whenever he could catch them with his mouth. Fitz still couldn't quite believe how lucky he'd gotten in the past few years. Every time he looked down at his daughter, his heart felt way too big for his chest, and he knew nothing in the world mattered except for her. After being with SHIELD for so many years, living through traumatic events and losing so many people they cared about, it sometimes felt almost too good to be true.

After defeating the Chronicoms, it had felt right to quit. They were ready for a new chapter of their lives, and as soon as Deke had gotten them a cottage —he'd called it a late wedding present, and neither he or Jemma had complained— they'd left for Perthshire without looking back. Jemma's pregnancy had been so sudden and early upon their arrival that it had just proven how right this was for the both of them, and now that Rosie was born, Fitz's world had taken a drastic turn. When he'd never imagined loving anyone as much as he loved Jemma, always ready to sacrifice himself for her if it meant that she got to live another day, Rosie had proven him wrong from the first moment he'd laid eyes on her tiny form. Fitz had spent years wondering why his father had left him when he was just a kid, never quite understanding what he'd done to deserve it. But now that he had a child, he'd stopped looking for answers. Because there was nothing Rosie could ever do that would drive him away, and for the first time in his life, Fitz had stopped blaming himself for his father's departure.

"Alright monkey" he said when she was all dressed up again, her pink pajamas already looking a little small. She was growing so fast, it was quite dizzying. "Let's get you breakfast, uh?"

Rosie was a quiet child. She'd never really been fussy, except when she was hungry, which made Jemma laugh more than anything else. She hadn't been surprised in the slightest that their daughter had inherited from his stomach, and she always made sure to pump some of her milk for the next day before going to bed. Once in the kitchen, he juggled with his daughter and the instant warmer like a pro, making her laugh once again and rocking her with every step as they waited for the milk to warm up.

"Mummy's asleep" he explained, making sure she was well tucked against his torso. "So we'll have to be very quiet, alright? She's very tired, so we'll just have some quality daddy daughter time in the meantime."

Once the milk was warm enough, he found his way towards his favorite spot on the couch, laughing quietly when Rosie held up her hands towards the bottle once it was in her line of sight.

"Yeah, yeah, it's coming" he huffed. "You really have daddy's stomach, don't you?"

Rosie's eyes immediately slit shut as she suckled on the bottle, and Fitz couldn't help but smile as he gazed upon her relaxed face. He couldn't quite believe that he and Jemma had made this perfect baby, sometimes. Being parents was the only adventure they hadn't gone through together yet, when they'd made quite the list during their years in SHIELD. Unsurprisingly, like many parents, they'd been as terrified as excited for their daughter to arrive. But the first time they'd gazed upon her, they'd quickly figured it would be one hell of an adventure they couldn't wait to live.

"So I told you about that time your mummy was lost on another planet" Fitz eventually whispered, his eyes never leaving Rosie. "I guess today I'll have to tell you about the time when she found me in the stars."

Rosie hummed around the bottle, little brows twitching in concentration. Fitz's gaze fell on her nose, so tiny still, and he chuckled.

"You look so much like your mum, it's crazy. I'm glad, though. Don't tell her, but I've never seen anyone as beautiful as your mum. Except maybe for you, but I might be biased."

The stairs on the right side of the couch creaked a little as Jemma walked down, eyes still heavy with sleep and wearing one of Fitz's old shirt and worn out pajama pants. Her hair was a mess, a reminder of that moment she'd woken up at four in the morning to feed Rosie, but Fitz couldn't help but think that it was probably the most beautiful she'd ever looked.

"Well hello there" he said as she approached, pushing his head against the back of the couch as Jemma leaned down to kiss him upside down.

"Hi my loves" Jemma replied, walking around the couch to sit next to them, caressing her daughter's foot gently. "How's my little sunshine?"

"She's famished, for a change" Fitz joked, looking down at Rosie again. "How about you? You could have slept in a little, I would have handled her this morning."

The look Jemma threw him made him shiver from head to toes. It had been years since their first kiss, but somehow Fitz couldn't quite believe the admiration he saw in his wife's eyes when she looked at him sometimes.

"You've been up during the night, too" she pointed out, pushing her forehead against his shoulder with a yawn. "You don't have to do it all alone. Besides, I missed you both."

Fitz's heart clenched with love. In his arms, Rosie wriggled a little, opening her eyes just enough to gaze at her parents.

"I love you" he said suddenly, turning his head to look at Jemma in the eyes.

She looked positively exhausted, the side of her face still marked with her pillowcase and her lids heavy with the lack of sleep. She wore his old teeshirts because she didn't feel comfortable wearing anything tighter yet, as her body slowly recovered from her pregnancy. No matter how many times he'd told her that he loved her, stretch marks on her lower belly and rounder thighs included, she still felt the need to cover herself from him at times, until she could get back to exercising a little more regularly. No matter what, though, Fitz felt like the luckiest man on earth.

And when Jemma smiled at him, whispering "I love you too" as she kissed him on the corner of the mouth, Fitz realized that for the first time in his life, it was other people's turn to be jealous of him.

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