'Jemma?' Fitz tossed his keys onto the table as he called into the house.

'Down here!' came the muffled yell of Jemma's familiar voice. She was in their basement lab again.

Fitz ducked around the kitchen and followed the sound of her voice. 'I got the pasta you asked for, and some prosciutto and mozzarella. There's basil in the garden, thought maybe we could have sandwiches on Sat-'

Fitz trailed off as he arrived in their basement laboratory. Unable to give up science completely, they had designed a sort of hobby lab that took up the entire bottom floor of their home. They had amassed a large collection of LCD screens that were currently plastered with sequences of A's, C's, T's and G's, broken up by various chromatin mapping diagrams and restriction cloning schematics.

'Bloody hell, Jemma. What's- what's all this?' Fitz spluttered. There was an uncomfortable feeling in his chest. Jemma hadn't done this extent of genetics since their SHIELD days.

'Oh, thanks, Fitz! Sure, we can have sandwiches on Saturday. Though Alya will want beetroot and salami, not proscuitto and mozzarella.'

Fitz ignored this statement, instead gesturing wildly to the screens that surrounded him and bathed the dark basement with light.

'What, you're going to say 'blasphemy!' at our daughter's diet choices?' Jemma teased. Then, seeing that Fitz was still gazing at her workspace in shocked incomprehension, she added. 'Oh, this. It's Alya's science project.'

Fitz looked at his wife in disbelief. 'Jemma. She's twelve.'

'Yes, Fitz,' Jemma agreed, not at all shaken by his skepticism. 'And she's wanted to design a fish since she was four.'

'You- you- but you said it was illegal!'

'When did I say that?' Jemma frowned.

Fitz waved his hands around wildly again. 'At our first holographic reunion! You said - and I quote - 'well, it's possible, just not legal - yet'.' Fitz put on that ridiculous high voice and false English accent that he used whenever he imitated Jemma. 'The law hasn't changed, Jemma. It's still not legal. Also, she's TWELVE.'

Jemma rolled her eyes. 'We're not going to actually genetically engineer the fish, Fitz. We're just designing it. It's all thereotical.'

'Right. But still. She's twelve.'

'So you've said.' Jemma was thoroughly amused, but she really need to get back to checking Alya's design for any accidental premature stop codons or abberant termination sequences. 'But's she's exceptionally talented. She's designed whole synthetic genomes for two unrelated novel fish.'

'She's designing two fish?!'

'Yes, Fitz. Don't worry, it's perfectly legal. And it's only for school.'

Fitz glanced around again, and suddenly seemed to realise that his daughter wasn't present. 'Where is Alya, anyway?'

'It's Wednesday. She's at swimming.'

'Ah.' Fitz finally seemed to accept his daughter's precocious aptitude for biology. Shame it wasn't engineering that had taken her fancy. He would've liked to have worked on her science fair project with her. But then he looked at Jemma, who had turned her attention back to the genome sequences, and he saw the spark of curiosity in her eyes and the flush of joy in her cheeks, and suddenly realised that he was beyond pleased that Jemma could share this with their daughter.

'So,' Fitz said, his tone finally devoid of all shock and indignation. 'When do I get to hear about these fish?'

Jemma grinned. 'Parents are invited to science fair, Fitz. You'll see. All in good time, I promise.'