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Fitz sits next to Jemma’s hospital bed, absently rubbing his thumb up and down the back of her hand. She looks exhausted; she looks beautiful. The nurse smiles at the two of them as she comes around the bed to where Fitz is sitting.
“Does dad want to hold him for a while?” she asks, nodding down at the bundle of blankets in her arms. Fitz stares at her for a few seconds before the realization dawns that she’s talking to him.
Dad. That’s him. It’s not so terrifying anymore, except, well, there are moments when it’s so blindly terrifying that he can’t believe he’s ever been more scared in his entire life, even though logically he knows he has been. Probably. Maybe.
Now, it’s more awe inspiring than anything, a swelling warm feeling in his chest as he sits up straight, arranging his arms carefully so that the nurse can set the bundle in them.
And then he’s holding his son, and his breath sort of stutters for a moment or two before he remembers how his lungs are supposed to work. The blankets are warm and there’s dark tufts of hair sticking out from under the little blue cap on his head and Fitz glances up at Jemma, who is looking at him fondly, and tries to find any words to say at all.
“He’s, um. He’s very,” he stammers, forces himself to breathe, “He’s tiny.”
Jemma smiles, laughs, reaches out with one hand to fiddle with the curls at the back of Fitz’s neck, “Yes, Fitz. He’s a baby.”
“Yeah. Yeah,” he glances up at her again, smiling, “Our baby.”
“Yeah. Our baby.” She looks so pleased about that that Fitz wants to lean over and kiss her, but he’s kind of terrified at the idea of moving while holding their baby, so he settles for smiling at her again.
“He’s the normal amount of tiny though? He’s not like, um, especially tiny or anything we should worry about?”
“He’s a bit on the small side, but perfectly within the healthy range for newborns.”
“Oh. Good.” He’s not sure what else to say.
“He looks like you,” Jemma says after a while.
“Really?” Maybe he sounds too pleased when he says that, and he occupies himself with studying the small face, topped by the tiny blue hat and the tufts of brown hair, “Really?”
“Wait until he opens his eyes,” Jemma says, and like he can hear them, there’s suddenly a pair of blue eyes blinking up at Fitz. He’s forgotten how to breathe again.
“Hi,” he says, trying to keep his voice as soft as he can make it. Is that what you’re supposed to say to your son the first time you really meet him? The parenting books hadn’t really covered that, this specific situation, “Hi, Jasper.”
Jasper. After Fitz’s grandfather, his mom’s dad. It’s the first time he’s ever said his son’s name out loud to his son, and he wants to look up at Jemma to make sure he did it right except he can’t really take his eyes off Jasper.
“I don’t want to scare you, or anything, but I’m your dad,” he says, because he doesn’t know what else to say and he kind of really wants to say that, your dad, and Fitz can hear Jemma laugh at him, but softly, fondly, her hand still playing with the curls at the back of his neck.
“He’s going to be a good dad, Jasper Leopold Fitzsimmons,” she says.
Fitzsimmons. That shouldn’t make him cry. He’s heard it hundreds of times over the past decade, except it’s never been like this before. It’s never been a person before, a tiny little person that’s equal parts himself and Jemma and his own person too, blinking up at him with blue eyes and reaching a tiny little hand out of his blankets, and how is it at all possible that a person could actually be so small? Fitz carefully shifts so that he can cradle Jasper in one arm and lift his other to trace over the tiny fingers with his own; one two three four five, he counts, just to be sure, and then all five of those fingers wrap around his one, and his breath escapes his lungs as a shudder.
“Hi,” he says again, shaking his finger just slightly, testing to see if it will dislodge Jasper’s grip and smiling when it doesn’t, “I think he might like me.”
He looks up at Jemma, and it’s then that he realizes he might be crying, just a little bit, because she’s slightly blurry. He’d be embarrassed, except that her eyes have a distinctly glassy look to them as well, and she’s moved her hand from the back of his neck to rest over his and Jasper’s hands. It’s kind of, maybe, probably the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.
“He’s got good taste.”
“Are you going to tell the others that I cried?” he asks, and she nods.
“Oh, definitely. Skye will love it.” He doesn’t know if she’s being serious, because some things Jemma keeps between them, fierce in her protectiveness of those moments that she judges as belonging only to the two of them, and some things she tells everyone, starting with Skye and moving outward from there, spiral arcs of happiness. He doesn’t think he cares if she tells the whole world that he cried when he held his son, their son, for the first time; Fitz kind of wants the whole world to be told.
He leans down, presses his lips carefully against the tip of Jasper’s nose, his forehead, before he whispers, “I like you, too.” He shifts to press his mouth against the back of Jemma’s hand, and then Jasper’s tiny one, and he likes how that sounds, says them out loud, their names, the J sounds pushed past his teeth, breathed against their skin like a prayer.
They sit like that for a few minutes, until Jasper begins to quietly fuss, and at that point, Fitz has to stand, taking deep, measured breaths the whole time, so he can hand him over to Jemma so he can eat. After she’s arranged herself and Jasper, she indicates the mattress next to her, and Fitz climbs up on to the bed, clumsily, carefully. He settles with his head on her shoulder and his arm wrapped underneath the one she’s using to hold Jasper.
“I love you,” he whispers, “and our baby.” It feels like something that needs to be said, right in that moment, and Jemma turns to kiss his forehead, leaves her nose pressed against his hair.
“I love you, too. And our baby.”
They stay like that for a long time, the hospital room quiet except for the soft sounds Jasper makes as he eats and the rhythm of their breathing.