A/N: Hey guys! Here's the next chapter! Hope y'all like it!
Everyone was in Skye's old bunk when Coulson returned early that evening, seemingly having an argument.
"We are not painting the nursery pink." Skye said, crossing her arms and sighing in annoyance.
"Why? It's the typical baby girl color!" Simmons exclaimed, putting a sheet over the crib and other furniture.
"Exactly, and you could've been wrong!" Skye said, oblivious to the fact that her father was watching the exchange with amusement.
"Jemma's never wrong!" Fitz said, shocked that Skye would say such a thing.
"If Skye doesn't want the nursery to be pink, then it doesn't have to be pink." Grant said, looking at Skye and then Agent May who was busy helping Simmons prep the room to be painted as Grant opened a can and showed it to Skye, "What about green? It's a neutral color, babe." He added, grabbing some paint brushes and passing them around.
"Yes! Someone finally gets it!" She said, turning and finally noticing her father standing in the door way.
"Daddy! You saw Tasha, I take it?" Skye asked as Grant poured the green paint into a pan and began painting.
Coulson nodded, "Yeah. Zaria looks a lot like Tasha, except_"
"Except she's got Clint's eyes." Skye finished for him.
Coulson nodded, "Yeah and everyone was there. Stark, Thor, Cap, Lilith who's happy to be an older sister, Emily, Sam...everyone. Although, does Maria seem different to you guys? She seemed anxious but happy at the same time almost." Coulson explained, not noticing the looks that Agent May and Skye shared.
"You know?" Skye asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
"Of course. She didn't specifically tell me, but I knew the moment I saw her two weeks ago that something wasn't right." May whispered, sighing before turning on her heel and leaving the room, shouting, "Your turn to supervise!"
Coulson gave everyone a confused look, "What was that about?"
Everyone shrugged.
"I don't know, sir. She wouldn't let us do the nursery by ourselves," Jemma said, moving the crib away from the far wall so she would have enough room to maneuver the paint brush as she added, "Would you like to help, sir?"
"I can spare an hour or two. Sorry I was late getting back, anyway. Since Skye is already seven months pregnant, I had to stop in and see Director Fury and ask if we could have the rest of Skye's pregnancy off. I don't think Simmons is going to want to be the one to deliver the baby."
"Not that I don't want to, but that's not my area of expertise. But I will if I have to, I mean, i've done a pretty good job of monitoring the pregnancy so far if I do say so myself." Jemma said, giving a soft smile as Coulson nodded and left the room to get changed into more suitable clothes for painting.
"Back to the thing about Agent Hill...she does seem strange...she did seem strange when she came down to the lab at the main base a couple weeks ago." Fitz said, looking at his friend, who nodded in agreement.
"She did, didn't she? She seemed very pale too. I did hear her talking with someone...I think it was Emily, about not feeling well."
"Well, Skye and I actually heard her throwing up at HQ two weeks ago." Grant said, looking back at them.
"Maybe it's a stomach bug. There is something going around." Coulson said, coming back into the room and grabbing himself a paint brush while Skye put her head in her hand.
They're so clueless sometimes... She thought as she continued painting.
"Hey Skye! Think fast!" Grant said, throwing what looked like a ball at her, which she had caught, but immediately dropped due to the fact that it was covered in paint.
"Seriously?"
Grant nodded and turned away from his girlfriend in attempt to hide the smirk on his features.
"Hey, Grant, look at me." She said, pulling back the bristles on the paint brush almost like she was using it as a sling shot, and released it so it'd splatter paint on her boyfriends face.
"Oh, it's on!" Grant said, taking a rag and wiping the paint off his face.
In a matter of seconds it turned into an all out paint war and everyone was involved, throwing paint at each other left and right and Coulson was grateful that old sheets had been placed on the floor and furniture.
"What the hell is going on here?" Agent May asked, causing everyone to turn towards the sound of her voice and find that she had Agent Hill and Emily with her as well, and in Emily's hand was a leash along with a rottweiler at the other end.
"Paint fight?" Grant asked, approaching them only for the dog at Emily's feet to growl, causing him to step back while Maria gave the dog a verbal command in Welsh.
"This reminds me of the time that Maria played paintball with the other Avengers when they had to attend Group Therapy together." Emily said, letting go of the leash, the dog looking up at her in confusion until she nodded and the dog approached Skye and Jemma.
"Aww, this is Tasha's dog!"
"Why_"
"Maybe Roxy...her name is Roxy right? Thought so...maybe she hates guys that she's not familiar with." Skye said, only for the dog to catch sight of Fitz and trot up to the Engineer and Coulson, "Or maybe it's just you." She added, smirking at him as she left his side and approached Emily, who flinched as soon as Skye poured a little bit of paint on her head.
"Please don't do that again." She said, sighing and leaving the room, breathing heavily.
"As you can probably guess, she's got some psychological effects from the torture she endured, as I assumed she'd have." May said, sighing.
"We've been slowly trying to wean her back into taking a shower...the same way that Tasha did with me, just getting her used to having liquid, mainly water, poured over her head." Maria explained, looking at them with worry and sadness in her grey eyes.
Coulson nodded in understanding as Skye left to go find Emily.
"It's going to take time. Is everyone still at the hospital?"
Maria shook her head, "No. We all wanted Natasha to get some rest so all of us left. We would have had Lili with us, but she threw a fit at the thought of leaving Nat and Clint, so we let her stay with them, but that's not why i'm here. I have some paper work for you to fill out from your mission in France." She explained, holding up a folder, which Coulson grabbed with a paint free hand.
"Sure thing. Let me just get cleaned up...but first, come give me a hug." He said, holding his arms out and approaching his friend.
"No. i'm not hugging you until you take a shower." Maria said, trying to back away, but not fast enough because he enveloped her in a big bear hug, getting paint all over the front of her. She gagged from the strong aroma of the paint, pushing Coulson away a little too forcefully, confusing him, but he elected to ignore it and walked out of the room, beckoning for her to follow.
A little more than an hour later, Skye sat in her and Grant's bunk, getting dressed after having just finished the nursery and having to give Maria a change of clothes to borrow.
"Hey, I never noticed, but you got big." Emily said from the door way, moving past her friend and sitting on the bed, putting her damp hair in a bun.
"Yeah, I know. Where's Roxy?" Skye asked, noticing that the Rottweiler was absent.
"She's sitting outside the door way of the bathroom..Maria had to go throw up, but she has the shower running so everyone thinks that she's just taking a shower. Now that Natasha had her baby, Roxy, although still very protective of everyone, she tends to follow Maria around because she knows that she's pregnant. It's gonna be interesting to see how she hides this from everyone until September...and she'll be three months by then and she'll be showing to some extent most likely...if she doesn't end up losing the baby...she does have a habit of stressing herself out."
"Oh Emily, always so positive!" Skye said, sarcasm dripping in her tone before she sighed and looked back at Emily, confused, "Dog's know those things?"
Emily nodded, "Yeah. When Tasha was pregnant, not only is Roxy protective of Lili and Jace, but as soon as Tasha came into the room she got very anxious and followed her around more than she follows those kids around. When Tasha left for work, she whined and barked for ten minutes. Any other time when Tasha wasn't around, she was fine though. It was so annoying. Now she follows Maria around. That's also why she easily approached you when we first showed up." The teen explained, shrugging.
"And Roxy is still very much a puppy...a year old, right? Never mind that..i'm sorry about pouring paint over your head."
"Don't worry about it. I'm over it...i was just being dramatic. I didn't go back to school for the rest of the year...the principle said I could still be a senior next year, though. I might just have to take a couple of the mandatory classes I had to take as a junior though, to make up for what I missed...I went to prom though, so don't freak out on me. I took Sam... I'd have found you sooner, but May was forcefully washing my hair in the sink.." She said, trailing off as Maria appeared in the door way with Roxy at her feet.
"So, i'm heading out. You coming with me? Or do you want to spend a night or two here?" She asked, yawning and rubbing her eyes.
"Hmm...go home to an annoying father, go back to the tower with you and hear you throwing up all night and yelling at Stark, stay with Sam, or stay here...I'll stay a couple days, i've already been staying with Sam this whole summer..and my friends, so they could use a couple days off." She said, half joking half serious, earning an eye roll from her sister who left.
"Roxy. Stay." Maria ordered, nodding her head to Emily and Skye, turning to them, "I'll tell everyone that Roxy will be here for a couple days. I need a break from this dog following me around like it's lost..." She added, trailing off and scratched the dog behind the ears before closing the door behind her.
Roxy whined and scratched at the door for what seemed like hours, when it was really a matter of seconds.
"See?" Emily said, before Roxy jumped on the bed and lay down on Skye's lap, nuzzling her pregnant belly, growling as Grant came in.
"Don't take it personally. She does it to Stark too...and hispanics...did you know dogs are racist?"
Grant rolled his eyes and looked at Skye, "Hey, come with me."
Skye nodded and grabbed his hand, allowing for him to lead her out of the bunk, with Emily having nothing better to do but follow them, where they came to the kitchen.
Skye's eyes widened at the elaborate table setting, a red table cloth was placed over the smooth surface and there were two chairs at the table instead of the usual six with a lit candle placed in the middle.
"What's all this? Our anniversary isn't until October." Skye said, sitting down in the chair that Grant pulled out for her while Emily stood awkwardly at the kitchen island.
"What? I can't surprise my girlfriend with a candle lit dinner?" He asked, sitting down across from her as May brought them two plates of food and FitzSimmons brought drinks to them.
"Don't say I never do anything for you." May said, looking at them sternly before heading to the cock pit, beckoning Emily to come with her, but not before the teen reached into the wine color and poured herself a glass of red wine, earning disapproving looks.
"What my sister doesn't know won't hurt her...or me...or any of us..." Emily said, quickly falling in step behind May.
"They're such pleasant people to be around. Especially May." Skye said sarcastically, making Grant chuckle when May called;
"I heard that."
The two ate and talked for the better part of two hours. Shared some laughs, had heart to hearts, had no boundaries.
"You know I love you, right?" Grant asked, reaching a hand out to brush a strand of hair out of Skye's face.
"You tell me every chance you get. Of course I know." She said, not expecting what he was going to do next.
Grant smiled at her and got up, closing the distance between them and grabbed her left hand in his and got down on one knee, pulling a small, black velvet box out of his back pocket.
Skye gasped, covering her mouth with her free hand.
"Skye, I love you with all my heart, and i've loved you since I first saw you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me?" He asked, his hazel eyes boring into her brown ones.
Skye let tears fall down her face as she looked away from him and never in a million years did she think this would happen.
"Skye, babe, what's wrong? Are you hurt? Did I do something to make you upset?" He asked, looking at her with concern.
"Yes." She said, looking back up at him.
"Yes what? You're hurt? I hurt you?"
Skye shook her head and took her free hand from her mouth and smiled at him.
"Yes, i'll marry you."
A/N: Let me know what y'all think! Please review :)