You look up at him again and he smirks back down at you. Without wasting a second, his lips are on yours, working fervently against your mouth. Just as you grant his tongue access, there’s a small shout of “Mom!” from across the hallway and you separate. 

“We’ll continue this later,” you tell him, side stepping around the bed to head to your son’s room. Donghyuck doesn’t hesitate to give your ass a little smack when you do so. You roll your eyes and give him the finger over your shoulder. 

Thirty minutes later, everyone is situated in the car. Your son chatters happily about how excited he is, while your husband listens and nods from the driver’s seat. His hand is lazily thrown over the console, loosely holding your own. 

Donghyuck has barely put the car in park at the complex when your son grabs his bag and practically sprints out of the car. You both watch as he approaches the field, joining his team to put on his gear and warm up. A small contented sigh leaves your mouth. You lean back against the headrest and close your eyes. 

You’re only granted a few moments of peace before your husband disturbs you. His hand slips from its place on the console to your upper thigh, where he gives it a quick squeeze. Your eyes shoot open. “Hyuck…” you warn.

“‘...’m not doing anything,” he mumbles, eyes zeroed in on the plush skin underneath his hand. 

A scoff escapes you at his statement. You don’t get a chance to shoot back a smart remark, because his other hand reaches out and pulls your face towards him. Before you know it, his lips are crashing against yours. His mouth moves roughly against your own and you can feel your own desire increasing by the second. You reach up, placing your hands on either side of his face and pulling him closer. 

Your little moment is quickly interrupted by a knock on the driver’s side window. When Donghyuck turns his head, you catch a glimpse of Mark with his hands in his pockets and a disgruntled look on his face. Unsurprisingly, his outfit matches your husband’s to a tee. Hyuck rolls down the window.

“You guys are nasty little voyeurs, man. We’re at a children’s football game,” Mark calls out to you both. “Game starts in 15 minutes,” he continues, looking down at his watch. “And you might want to fix that,” he says, gesturing to the eye black that mirror’s Donghyuck’s, before turning around and walking back to his wife. 

Sure enough, when your husband turns back to you, the purple has smudged further down his cheek. “Sorry,” you giggle to him, while reaching out to fix it as best as you can. 

One of his hands reaches down to rest on your thigh again. “Our son is going to sleep pretty well after this game, right?” he asks you. 

“Probably, why?” you ask as you lean back to observe your work. 

Donghyuck leans down and presses his lips to your ear before whispering, “I want to give him a sibling.” You smack his chest as hard as you can and he leans back, howling in laughter.

“Great,” you tell him with a deadpan expression. “Now I’m going to be wet walking into my son’s football game.”

His Adam’s apple bobs in response. “Mmm maybe I should keep it up. Would probably keep Melissa away,” he teases.

You smack him again. “Stop talking about another woman when you just said you wanted to put a baby in me.”

Hereaches into the corpse, wraps his fist around one of the tumorsRaina’s GH-325 knockoff caused. He twists. Connective tissues tear,icy juices flow over his knuckles, that familiar squelching soundthat can only be soft flesh fills the stillness of the lab. He lifts thebloody mass. Jemma’s eyes stay fixed on his face.

“Andnow you’re gonna fix thisbefore yournew favorite TV program getscanceled.” He drops thetumor back into the open chest cavity. Jemma jumps back but doesn’tentirely avoid the splatter. The red is stark against her white labcoat, but where it caught her blouse it blends in real nice with thosepretty little flowers.

Notthat she notices. Her jump was instinctive, her focusis on the TV set he’s had set up in here for her. Cheap littleblack and white thing still gives a good picture. 

John hisses indisappointment while he wipes off his hands. “Lookslike you’re running out of time,” he says. The feed from Grant’seye is showing Bruce Banner leaning in uncomfortably close, squintingat the damn thing. Looks like Phil’s desperate enough to mend hisbridges with the Avengers, it’s only a matter of time before theyget the eye out of Grant’s skull. And John’s not about to letthat happen.

“Howdo I even know you’ll hold to your end of the bargain?” Jemmaasks. She’s trying to sound all cool and collected but there’sthat little tremor, the one that says I’m an emotional little woman afraid of watching my lover die. “Grant’smade it clear he won’t return to Hydra, no matter the threat youhold over him, not now it’s out of the shadows.”

Johnturns his back on the footage. “And that doesn’t strike you as alittle hypocritical? He was more than happy to do our dirty work whenno one was the wiser but now he’s gotta be honestabout it-”

“Don’ttry to turn this around,” Jemma snaps. “You’re the onebalancing his life against my good behavior.”

Johnlets himself smile again, nice and slow. “That’s right. I am. Andhe’s the ungrateful little prick who turned his back on Hydra,abandoned me in my hour of need, abandoned you.So I’m itching to give the order, princess, make no mistake aboutthat. If it comes down to it, if it looks like they’re really gonnaget the damn thing out? I hope you’ve got your black dress allpicked out.”

Sheswallows.

“Unlessyou give me my miracle drug first. For that, I’ll forgive andforget.”

Ittakes her a few beats to compose herself. Tears shimmer in those doeeyes of hers, her throat works, and all the while Raina watches fromthe shadows, calculating. Always calculating. That’s what Johnlikes about her.

“That’sstill not proof,” Jemma manages.

“No.It’s not.” She’s not looking at him so he tips her chin up,lets her see his honesty. “But you’ve known me long enough now toknow I’m not lying about wanting him dead. Your choices are forsure he dies or maybe he dies. You really gonna tell me you’ll takethe done deal over the chance? Because if you’d rather, I can blowhim right now.” He lets her go to reach for his phone.

Shecatches his arm, her eyes back on the screen. “No! No. I’ll doit. Just- just don’t hurt him anymore. Please.”

“Yeah,” he says, shrugging his shoulders lightly. “You do want to get married, right?” He seems a little tentative now. Like he’s worried that he scared you off.

You’re quick to ease the tension. “Of course I want to get married. I just didn’t think you’d bring it up so nonchalantly like that.” 

He smiles back at you with that crinkle in his eyes you love so much. Removing his hand from the back of your chair, he reaches out to grab the picture from you. He looks down at it with admiration. “I can already think of the pictures we could use,” he admits. “Like that one of you sleeping in the laundry basket. That one is cute.”

You giggle at his statement. “Okay,” you concede. “But only if we get to include the one where you are blowing bubbles with that weird pinwheel hat on.” 

He sets the picture down, ruffling your hair a bit. “I think someone has had one too many of these,” he teases, pushing your champagne glass further away from you. You roll your eyes at him. 

Jeno goes to say something once again, but is interrupted by a tap on his shoulder. He turns around to see your little cousin, her eyes pointed bashfully toward the floor and rocking on her heels. “Hello Aria,” he says, provoking her to actually look at him. “Whatcha need?”

She looks at you hesitantly before looking back toward your boyfriend. “Can you…dance with me, Jeno?” she whispers. The question has you realizing that the song has now switched to something slower, a few couples adorning the dance floor. How cute, you think to yourself. 

“Of course,” he responds, grinning down at the girl. Before she knows it, Jeno is scooping her up, carrying her to the dance floor. You can hear her giggles fade as they reach the other side of the room. 

Taking a breath, you look back toward the table, grabbing your champagne glass and another picture. Your moment of peace doesn’t last long though, because someone plops down in the seat next to you less than a minute later. When you look up, you spot your grandmother. “It’s a shame you didn’t participate in the bouquet toss. I was hoping you two would be next,” she taunts, looking pointedly at you. 

You set the items down, opting to run your hands over your face in embarrassment. “Ah, grandma!” you complain. “You know we don’t believe in superstitious stuff like that. We’ll get there in our own time.” 

She nods in understanding, but still smirks. Leaning closer to you, she begins to whisper. “You two would make me some beautiful grandbabies.” 

Now you’re really blushing. Thoughts of having a mini Jeno running around your grandmother’s house flash through your mind. You try your best to push them away. “Seriously, amma?” you exclaim, though there’s no malice in your voice. 

She points across the room. You follow her movements to find Jeno with a bright smile on his face, Aria twirling around in his arms. He reaches down to brush a strand of hair out of her face. You can’t help but gaze longingly at the scene, wishing that it was a daughter of your own. Your grandmother calls your name once more and you turn back to look at her. “If the next wedding I attend isn’t yours, that boy is getting a serious talk from me,” she says smugly. Without another word, she scoots back in her chair, walking back toward her own table. 

You steal a glance at the bride and groom’s table. They’re lightly making conversation, her head resting against his shoulder. His arm is wrapped around her shoulder with his hand hanging down to brush comforting strokes down her arm. Maybe that could be you and Jeno sometime soon.

Startled out of your thoughts once again, you see your boyfriend plop down next to you. Your cousin is nowhere to be found, likely back with her parents once again. “What were you and your grandma talking about?” he asks. 

“Just about how she thinks you and I should be the next ones to be married. Said that we would make beautiful grandbabies.” you say, repeating her words with your own smirk.

Once I'd written the first one, I realized that the failed coup could easily lead to the State worrying about John and his cult of personality being too powerful, particularly without Elizabeth to balance him some. At  that point, I had the overall plot arc of the whole series--John and Rodney's relationship taking place and changing against the backdrop of the State forcing John into a corner so he had no choice but to secede.

That the third and probably (because who knows, I might write more than that) final novella will complete that process isn't really much of a spoiler. It'll be the most complicated and probably the longest one because there's a lot of stuff to work out. I have it partially plotted out and I'm still poking at it and trying to fit bits and pieces in. I also really do want to get out of John and Rodney's POV every once in a while so I'm hoping to do some shorter pieces, including at least a couple from Ronon's POV because he sees and notices more than a lot of people think he does.

So that's pretty much it, although I could probably ramble even further. :)

As for a timestamp...God, I wish I knew where the one I wrote a couple years ago was because while the gist of it is the same as what I'm writing here, it was better. It's essentially the epilogue to the entire series. I'm not sure if I'll actually put it at the end of the last major story or not because it's so many years after the series. If I do it'll be expanded

Anyway, this is at least 15-20 years after the start of the series and contains a major character death.

So it's about 15, maybe as many as 20, years later. John's been horribly injured; he'll never walk again and he's going to need to be on some kind of medical support for the rest of his life. Everyone's there around his bedside in the infirmary with Rodney's standing at the foot of his bed. Rodney's silent while John and Keller and some of the other medical staff argue about how much time John has and how much of a life he can have like this.

Finally John looks at Rodney and says, "do it, boy. You promised."

John hasn't called Rodney "boy" for at least a decade, either in public or in private and Rodney knows what it means and knows that it's as close as John can come to expressing how he feels.

He stares into John's eyes for a long moment and then says the only thing he can say. "Yes, Sir. I did."

And then Rodney pulls his gun out and shoots John clean in the chest--a perfect shot just like John taught him to do all those years ago. He looks at the body for another moment, then turns on his heel and walks out, his eyes dry.

And no one says anything or stops him.

There's no announcement or declaration or vote or anything, but the next morning, when Rodney steps out of their quarters, John's bodyguards are standing outside the door and Namin's waiting with them.

The guards salute, Namin says, "good morning, Commander" and Rodney just nods and walks toward John's office.