a/n Thank you for your reviews and follows and favourites and general positivity. Happy reading!

"John? You awake yet?" Emori's voice sounded in his ear, and he made a noncommittal grunting noise by way of response.

"I'm taking that as a yes. Come on, we have somewhere to be." She dropped a soft kiss on his cheek and rolled away, leaving the bed and, by the sound of it, making a start on getting dressed. He allowed himself to wonder for a moment why she was still here, when really it was quite late in the morning, and whether that whole date night idea followed by trying to be a bit more boyfriend-ish yesterday had maybe achieved something after all.

"We do? Where?" He asked in some confusion. It seemed a better idea than asking why she hadn't already run off to play with her engineer friend.

"There's something we need to talk to Clarke about."

"There is?" He wondered, mind spinning. What was this about? Was this something to do with her being tired recently? Was she sick? Or was it something very trivial, and was he getting anxious for nothing?

"I said we'd call this morning, before breakfast, and that doesn't give us very long now. Come on, get dressed." She shoved an assortment of clothing at his chest and stood there, staring expectantly, looking very fierce and very beautiful, and he risked a quick kiss on her lips before he followed her instruction.

"Are you going to tell me what this is about?" He asked, as they walked hand in hand towards the Earth Monitoring Station to use the radio.

"Not yet." She squeezed his hand. "I want Clarke's opinion first."

"OK then. Well, this isn't at all concerning." He said, making it clear to her that, in fact, he found it really quite concerning.

"I don't think you need to be worried." She assured him. "I think we just need to talk to Clarke."

"Yes, you made that bit quite clear. Literally the only bit of this entire situation that I'm up to speed with." By now, they had made their way to the room in question and were taking seats near the radio. Emori reached for the call button, and John leaned back in his chair, wondering why, exactly, he needed to be here at all.

"Clarke?"

"Emori, hi. And is Murphy there?"

"Hi, this is me."

"Great. So what did you guys want to talk about?"

"I guess I had a question." Emori was saying now, and this rather formidable woman he loved suddenly sounded rather nervous and he couldn't quite work that one out. "It's a question I'm pretty sure I already know the answer to, but I wanted your opinion all the same. Just to be sure. I mean, you are the closest to a doctor we're going to get." John sat up in panic at that. "Anyway, yeah, so, I think I know what's going on, but what would you say it meant if a woman hadn't, you know, had a period in a couple of months and found herself sometimes feeling a bit sicky and tired and – John will attest to this – sometimes being a bit short tempered for not a good reason, and, yeah? That?" He felt his jaw drop, and wondered how on Earth he had missed all this. Because even he knew the answer to that question. Had he really been doing so badly at this whole boyfriend thing that he hadn't even noticed she was pregnant?

"It would mean I need to congratulate you, and ask you if you know how long this has been happening for?"

"Getting on for three months I think." She said in a small voice.

"Well, looks like the Ark will have a new addition in about six months' time."

"Do you think it is a congratulating situation?" Emori was asking now, concern knitting her brow. "Do you think we can deal with this up here? I mean, we don't have a doctor, and I don't know whether there's going to be enough air or water or how we're going to get him or her back down to Earth again, and, yeah, I'm a bit stressed out at the idea?"

"He or she will just take my place, right? You were expecting eight, and there will be eight. And Bellamy has quite a lot of experience of helping with babies, I seem to remember."

"Yeah, I guess. I hope so. Thanks, Clarke."

"You're welcome. I'll leave you to share the good news with everyone. Speak later." The voice on the radio disappeared, and he realised he was still staring, open-mouthed, at Emori.

"Are you going to sit there looking horrified all day?"

"This isn't horrified, Emori. It's terrified. We're having a baby? I can't imagine anyone less qualified to be a father."

"And I can't imagine starting a family with anyone else." She reassured him briskly. "Now pull yourself together. You'll be fine. It's not like you're the one who has to actually carry a foetus around for nine months."

"You're right. I'm... sorry I've not handled this well, Emori. Really. How did I not even notice you were pregnant?"

"You're kind of an idiot. I knew what I was getting myself into."

"I'm going to do better. Really. I'm going to have my work cut out if I'm going to be even half the dad my father was. And I'm going to do better at looking after you. I promise." He reached out for her hand.

"Please, since when do I need looking after? Shall we go tell everyone the news, or do you need to sit here panicking for a bit longer?"

"How are you so calm about this?"

"I've had the best part of three months to get used to the idea."

"But you didn't want to tell me before now?" He asked, saddened at the thought.

"Not until I was sure. It was quite good timing getting back in touch with Clarke. And... I don't know, you've been weirdly kind and affectionate the last couple of days and it seemed like you might not mind the idea. I was kind of worried you'd freak out and ditch me, before." She informed the floor next to her feet, looking uncharacteristically shy, and he breathed a sigh of relief that it seemed by his actions of the last couple of days he'd managed to ensure they continued to have a relationship rather than only sex.

"Never." He stated, with a vehemence that seemed to surprise her but came only naturally to him. "I love you. And although I'm still struggling to wrap my head around this whole baby thing, I know I'll love our kid too."

…...

It wasn't a surprise that Murphy was late for breakfast, Bellamy thought, because it happened rather often, and to be fair there was a decent chance his friend was nursing a bit of a hangover. He was positively shocked, however, that Emori wasn't there, because she was normally up at the crack of dawn conniving with Raven. He rather hoped that this was because the two of them were enjoying some quality time together, and not because all that unexpected tiredness Emori had been talking about was the precursor to some substantial illness that had her laid low.

"Do you think we should go look for them?" He asked the room at large, as they all sat around staring at each other and wondering whether to start on the algae.

"No." Raven decided. "Absolutely not. No one here wants to risk walking in on them in the act, I'm pretty sure."

"Thanks for that mental image, Raven." Echo shivered slightly and Bellamy found himself laughing. He was interrupted by Emori and Murphy walking into the room, hand in hand. There was definitely something afoot, he decided, because Emori had a sort of sheepish smile and something of a glow about her, and Murphy had a dazed expression that made it look like he'd recently been hit over the head by a large blunt object.

"You're late." Raven snapped at them, ever to the point.

"I think we have a pretty good excuse, Reyes." Murphy managed to summon up some of his usual fire.

"What's going on, guys?" Harper, always slightly better at human interaction than the rest of them, was clearly onto something.

"We're expecting a baby!" Emori announced, and was met by a shocked silence. Bellamy was pretty sure he could read utter disbelief on Monty's face, and sheer happiness on Harper's, and complete shock on Echo's.

Personally, he didn't think he'd ever found anything less surprising.

"Congratulations!" He jumped from his seat and rushed over to slap Murphy on the back and pull Emori into a hug. It seemed his lead spurred the rest of the crew into action – before long the happy couple were in the middle of a huddle of humanity and Bellamy pulled away to take in the scene. He couldn't help but feel this was going to be a good thing for all of them, something good to celebrate for a change, a bit of new life instead of everyone they cared about dying around them. Eventually Monty managed to convince everyone that it was time for algae, and Murphy made a big fuss of helping Emori to a seat and insisting that she be given an extra serving of breakfast. They all laughed when all he received for his trouble was an affectionate slap on the wrist and her insistence that she was perfectly fine, thank you very much.

"So are you going to spend the whole day patronising Emori, or can you spare some time to train with me again?" He asked with a grin. He figured that Emori could probably use a break from this enthusiastic hovering, and Murphy could probably use a bit of normal routine. He also wondered if, perhaps, his friend might want an opportunity to chat about the whole impending fatherhood thing without an audience.

"I'd love to, but I was thinking I might spend some time with Monty, if that's OK?" For the second time that morning, the Head of Algae Production looked absolutely flummoxed. "I figure it's about time I learn how to do something useful." He tried for his usual sarcastic tone, and everyone seemed to decide to help him out by pretending he had succeeded.

"Erm, yeah, sure." Monty made a valiant attempt to gather his wits. "But you would probably get bored watching me watch algae all day. Maybe spend some time with Bellamy too?" It sounded, he thought, like Monty was a little terrified at the idea of an entire day with Murphy.

"Definitely spend some time with me too." He agreed. "I need someone to babysit me. If you don't hang out with me, I'll basically just sit in Earth Monitoring moping all day and waiting for Clarke to call, after all. And that will just annoy your pregnant girlfriend. So I figure it's in your best interests to come train with me."

"Well, when you put it like that..."

They both went to the algae farm after breakfast, in the end, because Bellamy quite liked this whole spending time with people thing and it really did seem like a better idea than moping next to a radio for the entire day. He really wanted to call Clarke and tell her Murphy and Emori's exciting news, and also to find out whether she'd slept well and what she'd had for breakfast and every other minute detail of her day, but he figured it was probably more socially acceptable if he did something useful with his time first. To that end, he sparred with Murphy for a little while, and then they lifted some heavy things in their improvised gym for a bit, and then he did some reading, and all in all he was feeling rather proud of his self control by the time he sat down to supper. Admittedly, he did find himself downing his food quite quickly, and not entirely concentrating on the conversation, and excusing himself as soon as it was polite to do so. OK, maybe before it was polite to do so. No one else had actually finished eating, but he figured they were all so busy being excited about the whole baby thing that it wouldn't bother them.

He heard her voice issuing from the radio as he entered the room, and grinned a little at her good timing.

"... because we actually had some duck left from yesterday, rather than having to go fishing, so, yeah, here we are."

"We had algae, you'll be shocked to hear."

"Oh, hey. Didn't realise you were actually there."

"I mean, I can leave if you like, and you can get back on with talking to yourself?"

"No, eighteen months of that was enough for a lifetime. So, how was your day?"

"Pretty great. I have exciting news. Well, I mean, it's not really my news, but I'm going to tell you anyway because it's exciting. Emori's expecting."

"Yes." She replied, sounding amused. "I know."

"You do?"

"Uhuh."

"How?"

"Sometimes I talk to people who are not you. Not very often, admittedly, but yeah. They called me this morning. Wanted the opinion of an almost-doctor before they told everyone."

"That does make sense, I guess."

"I told them you'd be pretty useful, by the way. From helping with O. So good luck with that."

"I'm actually really looking forward to it. I think it'll do us good to have something positive to bond over, rather than just the struggle for survival."

"Yeah." She sounded a bit wistful, he thought.

"You'll be part of it too, you know. I'm pretty sure you'll get to share everything with us even though you're not physically here." He rushed to reassure her.

"I hope so. I'm really happy for them, obviously. It just makes me feel a bit lonely." She told him, and he felt his heart break for her.

"I get that."

"I don't feel like I ever really got to bond with any of you over much that was positive. Mostly I remember more of the surviving."

"I mean, yeah, it was mostly surviving, but I remember plenty of pretty great bits too. That time when we had a Unity Day party and you tried to show everyone you were fun? That was pretty great until the whole shooting and bridge thing happened. Bonding over oxymorons while the world was ending? I suppose that's not everyone's idea of positive, but... I'm never going to forget that conversation, that's for sure." That was something of an understatement, he thought. The words they shared that day had been the soundtrack to his failed attempts to sleep for eighteen months.

"Yeah, me neither." She sounded wistful, he thought.

"Do you want me to tell you about Murphy trying to learn how to grow algae now? I figure that would cheer anyone up?"

He didn't know how to show a woman who was thousands of miles away that he thought there was plenty of positive in their history, and that, to him, their time together was about more than just surviving, but he spent the rest of the evening attempting nonetheless to do exactly that.

a/n Thanks for reading! Next time: an adorable couple of scenes in which Madi asks difficult questions.