Engaged

Chapter 2

After saying goodnight to Elizabeth, Iain headed back to his room to go to bed, as it really was late.

But an hour later, he was still wide awake, lying on his back staring up through the darkness at the ceiling, unable to fall asleep. Everything that had transpired since Elizabeth had showed up at his door earlier that evening was still running through his mind at full speed, leaving him with more questions than he had answers for. Questions like, 'Is she really going to do this?', 'What is this that she might do?', and the big one, 'Do I actually want her to be considering me as her husband?'

Well, the answer to that last one was obviously yes, even if he felt too guilty to want to admit it even to himself and certainly wouldn't admit it to anyone else, even Lil — or especially Lil in this case. And he did feel guilty about it, even if Lil had been right in saying he'd done just about everything he could to keep her from finding out in the first place, and then to dissuade her from even thinking about him instead of her fiancé once she had found out. But that still didn't make him feel any better about wanting her to end up choosing him over her fiancé.

As for the first question running through his mind, 'Was she really going to do this?', the answer to that one seemed pretty straightforward as well. Lil could be one of the most stubborn people he knew, and if she had her mind set on something, which she clearly did now, she was going to follow through. He just hoped she wouldn't get too hurt in the process, and made a promise to himself then and there that he would do whatever limited amount he could to try to keep her from getting hurt from the (potentially) stupid decisions she was making.

Now as for what she was actually going to be doing about it all, he really didn't have a clue, never having been engaged and then realizing he might have feelings for someone else. In fact, he'd barely even dated anyone since he'd met Elizabeth, never making it past a few dates when he did find a girl he thought he might like, a fact he now realized was probably due to a subconscious attraction to his costar and best friend, and always comparing, both subconsciously and consciously now that he thought back on it, any girl he was with to Lil.

But all that thought led to was what was really going to happen now for the indeterminate future while Lil was doing whatever she was going to be doing about all this. It was easy for her to say that on set they had to act like nothing was going on and act like their married characters were supposed to, which included a substantial increase in personal scenes compared to the previous few seasons, the writers clearly having finally figured out that the audience wanted more FitzSimmons, but while it was very true that they had to still be actors first, it was an entirely different matter to actually figure out what that meant and how to do it than just to say it. But he supposed that since she had said that he had to try to 'woo her' (her words, not his) during all this, until she said otherwise he would throw himself entirely into their more romantic scenes, and for the short time they were filming, forget everything that was happening in the real world and pretend like he really was Fitz and she really was Simmons, and that there was nothing morally wrong with him doing what he'd wanted to do for real ever since realizing he was in love with Elizabeth.

~AoS~

Meanwhile, as Iain was laying awake in his bed unable to fall asleep, Elizabeth was doing exactly the same in her own bed a few miles away, just with different questions running through her mind.

Her first question was of course whether she really still liked Iain like she once thought she had, or if his telling her he liked her had just briefly sparked up old feelings that weren't really there anymore. Because none of this matter, and there wouldn't be any problems at all, if this was all just some short-lived flashback to old times, and not really her current feelings. But unfortunately, she was pretty sure that wasn't the case. As soon as Iain had said that he liked her, or at least as soon as she'd realized that's what he was saying and processed it and got over the pure shock of it, her feelings for him that she'd buried deep inside her had begun flaring back to life, even if she had successfully kept control of them enough for the rest of the night not to let Iain know how deep they really ran.

Because the truth was, she certainly did still like him. Had never actually stopped liking him, had simply given up hope that she'd ever have an opportunity to try to be with him, and then had met her fiancé who she also certainly really did like. But there was a difference between simply liking Iain, and him actually possibly being the person she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. Because that's what it really all came down to — did she really believe she could spend the rest of her life with Iain, and raise a family with him one day?

And that was the question she really wanted to be able to say no to, to be able to say that he was a great friend that she wanted to continue spending time around, but not someone she could see herself spending the rest of her life with. But she just couldn't. Because as she'd been sitting there in shocked silence at his confession, before she'd asked him when he'd started feeling that way, as her old feelings had started to resurface from wherever they'd been buried deep inside her, her mind had drifted to the fact that after the end of this season of filming she wouldn't get to see him nearly every day for half the year at a time, and that thought had been like a douse of cold water to her. She couldn't imagine not seeing him anymore, didn't want to not see him anymore, and that thought more than anything had led her to eventually confessing that he wasn't the only one of them who had feelings for the other.

And if she couldn't imagine her life without him very much a part of it, then she definitely to at least some extent wanted to spend the rest of her life with him, even if it wasn't necessarily romantic. But it unfortunately definitely could be romantic, and knowing that meant she had to at the very least consider the possibility that the feelings she clearly still had for him might be of the 'till death do us part' variety.

So finally relenting to herself that she really did still like Iain, that it wasn't just a ghost of former feelings briefly floating through her mind because of what he'd said, she was now faced with the very real dilemma of what to do about it, and how to figure out what she was supposed to do about it. And for that, she really needed someone to talk to, someone who knew both of them well enough to be able to see things she couldn't, and provide insight her brain wasn't going to be able to come up with on its own. But also someone who wouldn't judge her too harshly for even considering breaking up with her fiancé for Iain in the first place.

And probably the best person for that, unfortunately, wasn't exactly the most unbiased person she could think of. But she would certainly give her advice, and certainly not judge her, so as long as she took everything the younger girl said with a grain of salt, it could still be helpful, at least as a start.

That finally settled, Elizabeth moved on to the final question that was keeping her from falling into what she knew would be a restless night's sleep, that of what to actually do in the meantime as she worked her way through all of this. She had told Iain that on-set they had to act like nothing was wrong or off, and act like FitzSimmons were supposed to, but it was one thing to say it, and another thing to actually know what it meant to do it. But eventually she settled on using it as an opportunity to pretend what it might be like actually being with Iain, a (mostly) guilt-free opportunity to be as romantic with him as she wanted, as that was after all what their characters were supposed to be doing, being married and deeply in love and all that.