A/N: My plot bunnies have run wild, so this story is getting a continuation. My current plan is three extra chapters that might stretch into four (I have an outline for nine scenes, and the number of chapters will depend on how long each scene turns out to be and where can I find a natural breaking point to divide them up), which I sincerely hope to be able to finish in May. I hope you'll enjoy them :)
Word Count: 2762

Cat Out of the Bag

Fitz was doing his best to concentrate on the schematics of the new cloaking device he was working on–it had a lag he wanted to get rid of–, but he was simply unable to, because he was hungry. And worried. Well, to be honestly, being worried always made him peckish, so it was really cause-effect kind of thing, but it didn't change the fact that he was going nowhere with his design.

He just didn't like the way Coulson had ordered Ward into his office. Yeah, sure, Ward used to be HYDRA–kind of–, but that was water under a distant bridge. And it wasn't like it was all his fault–it was all on Garrett–, and he had also made it pretty clear in the past months that he was loyal to the team and that he could be trusted. So, as far as Fitz was concerned, that couple of months of spying on them and all had been all forgiven and forgotten. Friends had each other's back, after all.

So what must have went down in Coulson's office after the director had called in Ward–Fitz quickly glanced at the clock on the computer screen–about twenty minutes ago was really making him worried, and thus hungry, and thus distrait, and thus completely unable to work. (He wished for those long-gone simpler times, when his biggest problem was that Jemma was dissecting a cat right next to his lunch.)

But he couldn't ponder on it for much longer, because then, like the force of nature she was, Skye all but stormed into the lab.

"Hey, Fitz, have you seen Jemma?" she asked, crossing over to him and perching on the edge of his work station–while munching on what looked like the remnants of a bear claw. "She said she wanted me to take a look at her tablet–something about it not connecting properly to the central database?"

Fitz swallowed–that bear claw really looked delicious–, and shook his head. "Haven't seen her since lunch. Have you checked the– Oh, Ward!" he perked up as he saw the specialist enter the room as well.

"Hi guys," Ward greeted him with a nod, then stood behind Skye, wrapped his arms around her middle, and planted a kiss on the top of her head. No matter how many times Fitz saw them do this, it still astonished him sometimes how Grant, who had once cringed at being touched, turned out to be near addicted to physical affection, at least as far as Skye was concerned. It was as if he needed to touch her somehow whenever she was within reach. "I missed you," Ward added, addressing his words to Skye as he rested his chin on the top of her head.

"Me too. Want a bite?" She lifted her pastry to his mouth, and he obediently took a bite from it, making Fitz avert his gaze from them, picking up some random object from his desk just to do something with his hands. Skye and Ward could be sickeningly, embarrassingly sweet sometimes, to the point when it was uncomfortable to watch (also, it wasn't fair that everybody was eating but him).

"Anyway," Fitz cut in after a moment (after almost dropping the screwdriver he picked up to the floor), clearing his throat, "what did Coulson want?" He saw Grant's eyes flash in alarm, but too late. "Is everything okay?"

Skye's whole body stiffened, then she tried to turn around in Ward's arms to look at him, but he kept her in place, so all she could do was to crane her neck to try to meet his eyes.

"Coulson wanted to talk to you? Why?" she asked, her voice laced with concern.

"It's nothing," Grant tried to reassure her, his thumbs drawing small circles on the back of hand in a calming gesture. "It was just a misunderstanding. Nothing to worry about."

"Are you really sure?" Fitz quipped in, unable to contain himself. "Because Coulson seemed pretty mad to me–the last time I've seen him that mad–"

"It was nothing," Grant interrupted him, his eyes flashing again, silently begging him to shut up. "We talked it through, everything is okay now," he insisted, and yet Fitz had a strange feeling that everything wasn't, in fact, okay.

"Babe," Skye extracted herself from Ward's arms at last, turning around to face him, "if Coulson is being hard on you, I can…"

Grant leaned in and pressed a kiss against her lips (Fitz, once again, tried not to look), effectively silencing her.

"He is not," Ward promised her. "He was actually… rather understanding. So you have nothing to worry about."

Skye held his gaze for a moment or two, not blinking, maybe unconsciously–or consciously–trying to mimic May's signature gaze, the one that made you spill even your deepest secrets. But then when Grant didn't even blink, she gave in after a while.

"Alright," she sighed, "but I'll still wanna talk to Coulson–just to hear his side of things. I mean," she groaned, closing her eyes for a moment, "right after I saw what Jemma's problem is. And she should be…" she let the end of the sentence hang, turning towards Fitz.

"At the archives," he answered, not missing his cue, referring to the hidden room where the hardcopies of the old S.S.R. files lay stacked in boxes.

"At the archives," Skye repeated. "Thank you. And you…" she turned back to Grant, putting her arms around his neck. "See you later, stud." then, after a quick kiss, she was gone, leaving the two boys alone in the lab.

Fitz watched her go through the glass walls of the lab for a moment, then, when he thought that Skye was definitely out of earshot, he turned to Ward, and, barely keeping himself from smacking his friend on the arm, he hissed, "What the hell was that?"

"What?" Grant asked, not exactly irritated, but maybe slightly defensive.

"What, what? That…" He raised his hands up next to his eyes, and made little "shockwave" movements with his fingers. "That eye thing. It was as if you wanted to silence me with your Jedi powers."

The corners of Grant's mouth actually twitched at this. "Well, it worked, didn't it?" he asked, to which Fitz snorted (well, it did kinda of work).

"That's beside the point," he said, then lowered his voice and added in an incredulous tone, "Were you lying to her?"

To be honest, Fitz couldn't decide which the scarier prospect was: Grant lying to Skye, or Grant having a reason to lie to Skye.

"No, of course not. Well, not exactly. It's… ugh…" Ward closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. Then he opened his eyes again and looked around the lab to make sure that it was really just the two of them there. "Alright, there is this thing–"

"Are you in trouble with Coulson?" Fitz cut in. "Because of you are, then–"

"I'm not," Ward interrupted the scientist mid-sentence. "It really was a misunderstanding, and once we cleared that, Coulson was actually rather supportive. It's just…" He took a step forward, to which, in spite of himself, Fitz responded with half a step backwards. "Okay, I'll tell you something, but at first you'll have to promise me that it won't leave the room."

"Are you sure everything is–"

"Fitz. Promise me."

"Alright, alright! I promise. Now what's the… oh." He didn't get to finish the sentence, because the next moment Grant pulled out a ring box from the inner pocket of his jacked, popped the lid, and held it in front of him, so Fitz could see the engagement ring nested inside. "Oh!"

"Yeah," Grant nodded with a ghost of a smile in the corner of his mouth, then quickly closed the box and put it away.

"It's for Skye?" Fitz asked, although he could hear how stupid it sounded the moment the words left his mouth.

"No, it's for Victoria Hand," Grant snickered. "Of course it's for Skye."

"Of course," Fitz echoed, nodding and trying to forget his momentary lapse in intellect. "It's absolutely self-evident."

"You are only the second person–after Coulson–who knows about this ring, so Fitz, really not a word to anybody. And even Coulson only knows about it because he thought… I don't know, that I was selling S.H.I.E.L.D.'s secrets on the black market when I was actually out ring-shopping. But we talked it through, and he actually tried to give me some tips on how I should propose, so it's all good. But you can see now why I don't want Skye to dig into my visit to Coulson's office."

Fitz frowned, one detail particularly sticking with him. "You don't know how to propose?"

It might have been just him, but in Fitz's mind, one just didn't go around buying engagement rings without knowing exactly how and where and when they were supposed to pop the question. That was like getting the materials for a gadget he didn't have the schematics for yet.

"No," Grant admitted after a moment's pause. "Not yet. I'm working on it. I just don't want to mess it up," he added quietly.

Fitz was just about to reassure him that he won't–that he could stumble upon his words and fall into a puddle and drop the ring, and Skye would be still completely touched and would say yes right away (not that Fitz could imagine Ward dropping the ring. Or anything, for that matter)–, but then something occurred to him.

"And what are you going to do with it until that?"

Grant furrowed his brows.

"Do with what until when?"

"The ring!" Fitz hissed somewhat loudly, then quickly looked around, in case Skye had returned in the meantime. When the coast appeared to be clear, he lowered his voice and continued, "What are you going to do with the ring until you figure out how to propose? Stuck it in your sock drawer? In the room you share with Skye?"

Grant seemed to ponder on it for a second. "Good point," he said at last, then pulled the ring box out again and thrust it into Fitz's hand. "Would you hold onto it until then, please?"

Fitz was just about to stutter out why it was a terrible idea–he really didn't want to be the person who lost Skye's engagement ring, to be honest (he didn't have the best track record with small objects), not to mention that he had his doubts if he could look Skye in the eye while hiding her ring in his pocket–or toolbox; or wherever–and not blurt out Grant's big plans to her. Only Ward didn't even give him a chance to say no, because the next moment–the ring securely in Fitz's hand–he was already turning around, on his way out of the lab.

"Thank you, Fitz!" he called back. "Now I'll better go, find Coulson and talk to him, get our stories straight before Skye finds him first. See you later!" And with that, he was already gone.

Fitz stood there for a moment longer, staring after him while turning the velvet box around in his hand, then he sighed, and, letting his shoulders fall forward, slipped the box into the pocket of his lab coat. Then, his decision made–he just couldn't focus on his work hungry–he ventured out of the lab to get himself a sandwich, while muttering under his breath, "After this, he'd better make me his best man."

Jemma was… rightfully irritated (some might even say grumpy): it wasn't enough that she spent three hours trying to dig up an old S.S.R. file she hadn't even managed to locate, and Skye told her she'd have to reinstall her tablet completely to make it work properly, so she couldn't have it back until the next day (what was the deal with that, anyway? Skye could hack the NSA in an hour, why couldn't she fix her tablet in like five minutes?), now she found the lab in complete disarray that just screamed Fitz. His tools were strewn all around his workbench next to a half-eaten sandwich and messy sheets of schematics, and his lab coat lay thrown haphazardly over the armrest of his chair, while Fitz himself was nowhere in sight.

Grumbling to herself, she stepped to her partner's workstation, and–in a manner that Skye'd have called mother hen–started tidying up, putting the tools into their boxes, arranging the sheets of paper into a neat pile, and laying the lab coat on the back of the chair, smoothing out the wrinkles. Only, as she lifted the garment, something fell out of its pocket, hitting the floor with a small thud. Frowning, she bent down to pick it up–and then her heart skipped a beat.

Exactly the same moment as Fitz reentered the lab and his eyes locked on her.

"Jemma, no!" he hissed, and, quickening his steps, rushed to her, but it was too late–heart hammering inside of her chest, Jemma's fingers had already wrapped around the small, velvet box.

"Fitz, what the–"

"It's for Ward," Fitz cut in before she could have finished the sentence, diving for the ring box, only Jemma stepped sideways, not letting him take it.

"What?" she asked with growing confusion.

"I mean, it's for Skye," Fitz corrected himself, but when still all he could see in Jemma's gaze was confusion, he closed his eyes for a moment, took a deep breath, and tried again. "I mean," he started, slower this time, "Ward bought it, for Skye, and he asked me to hold onto it for him for a while."

Oh, Jemma thought, that makes more sense. The anxious–and, to be honest, not too pleasant–tightness in her chest lessened, just to be quickly replaced by another kind of excitement. "So he is going to propose?" she asked, her voice going higher than she would have liked to admit.

"Well, every piece of evidence is point to that direction," Fitz answered with a hint of sarcasm in his voice. Why did people need verbal validation of this? (Not that he hadn't asked the obvious when Grant had shown him the ring, but that was beside the point.) "But it's top secret right now, alright?"

"Of course," Jemma nodded, lowering her voice a little, as Fitz, taking advantage of her momentary lapse in attention, snatched the ring from her hand, and stuffed it into the bottom drawer of his toolbox (which was a shame, because Jemma really wanted to sneak a peek at the ring). "Who knows about it?"

"Me, now you, Ward, obviously, and Coulson."

"Coulson?"

"Long story," Fitz dismissed it with a wave. "Anyway, I guess it's already more people knowing about it than Ward would have liked, so let's keep it between us–we really can't have Skye figuring it out before… well, you know," he said, although a little voice kept saying in his head that something can only be kept a secret if only two people know about it and one of them is dead.

"I absolutely agree," Jemma replied evenly, even though she appeared to have a problem with keeping the wide smile on her face under control. "And… when it is going to happen?"

"I don't know," Fitz shrugged.

"No? Then who knows?"

"Nobody. Ward hasn't figured it out yet," he said, turning towards his work bench, hoping Jemma will take it as a sign that they should close this topic.

But Jemma just went on, "Well, then tell him to figure it out soon, because I'll need to know the date," she stated as she walked over to her own work station, almost as if she was talking about some chemical formula, and completely as if it was self-evident.

Fitz raised his eyebrows at her. "Why?"

"Because," Jemma said, giving him a look that was almost pitying, "somebody will have to get Skye ready for the occasion. You know, organize a spa day or something. Strictly in a subtle way, of course."

Fitz pinched the bridge of his nose, then reached for his schematics. Knowing Jemma Simmons's way of being subtle, the four of them keeping the impending proposal a secret from Skye until its day seemed just about impossible.

(Hell, at this point he'd write it off as a success if they could hold out until the end of the day.)