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With the day she's had Skye wonders how can she be smiling like this right now.
Like, she really shouldn't have it in her. Like, when you spend your day trying to survive while kidnapped by a HYDRA murderer, smiling shouldn't be something you are capable of, at least for a while, if you ask her.
It's a strange night, mismatched to the day she's had; cold like being washed away of everything bad, and dark in a good way in that you can see the lights behind it. Companionable but not suffocating.
She guesses she can smile now because she can smile. All those fake smiles she had to throw Ward's way – she doesn't want to think about it, it's still too soon, too raw, she can still feel the bitter taste in her mouth as something burnt and horrible was trying to crawl its way up her throat the whole time. All those fake smiles.
But no, she can smile now. She's with Coulson, she's safe, it's okay, she can smile.
And she's not going to lie: the chocolate has helped, big time.
It's only after Simmons and Fitz have gone to bed and the pool is empty that they start properly talking, revising what just happened, not just the broad details she told him after they made it to safety. She can't say the adrenaline has subdued completely, but there are other things substaining her now, keeping her in this strange, strangely quiet emotional high. She's not going to lie: the look on Coulson's face helps.
She has trouble telling it in order, starting with why Ward wanted Koenig dead, starting with the NSA hack. Skye doesn't say it but she feels responsible, like she somehow got Koenig killed. He had been set against her plan and he'd be alive now if she hadn't pushed him to go off book. Coulson doesn't say anything but he looks at her like he can tell she feels guilty. She likes that he doesn't attempt to tell her she's wrong.
Skye rests her face on her hands, not tired, but wanting to settle somehow. She can still smell a hint of chocolate on her fingertips and she has to fight a smile.
She's getting a headache, though. She rubs the spot in the middle of her forehead that feels painful.
"What's going on there?" Coulson inquires about the gesture.
"It's from where I headbutted Ward. It actually hurts a lot. Can you tell if there's a bump?"
She doesn't know why she tells him to do that.
Coulson actually leans over and puts his hand to her forehead.
Feeling Coulson's fingertips carefully inspecting her skin Skye feels a lot of things wash away, if she is being really honest with herself; she doesn't want to compare, because this is Coulson and the idea of him should be kept as far away as possible from Grant Ward, HYDRA spy, but she can't help it, she's thinking about those hours on the plane, the little touches she had to suffer from Ward, the casual hand on her arm or in the small of her back, the revolting proximity Ward felt the right to impose on her. She feels it all drain away under Coulson's thoughtful and tender touch. Under Coulson's welcomed and wanted touch. Skye doesn't wonder why that is. She stopped wondering a while ago. These past few hours at least.
"You're okay," he says.
"Well, it's sore, anyway."
"You headbutted Ward?" He repeats, disbelieving.
"As I said, it hurt. It's been years since I last headbutted someone." Coulson laughs. "What?"
"You headbutted Ward. Maybe I shouldn't have been so worried about your safety all day."
"No, you should have. Coulson, it was terrifying. He wasn't just justifying himself, he was justifying HYDRA. It was the scariest moment of my life."
He shakes his head. "Sorry."
He doesn't look that sorry about his comment, but that's okay, Skye is not interested in drowning in self-pity and having Coulson as a witness. If she's still fucking terrified about the whole thing that's just fine, this is what she does, she swallows it and walks on. Coulson looks slightly impressed with her, too, and she can hold on to it. She survived after all. Ward said he was a survivor but she survived. She survived today at least, and tomorrow can do its worst. She'll take it.
"It's okay," she says. "You ever get kidnapped by Nazis then I'm allowed to make jokes, though."
"Deal."
There's still a softeness to his expression, around the eyes and the mouth, like he is not quite buying it, that she is okay. Skye feels okay; she doesn't know how true the feeling is, but for now she's willing to enjoy it.
She tells him about Deathlok, about what he did to Ward, how they made her crack the encryption.
"They knew you, they've been studying all of us," Coulson says. "They knew you'd never –"
"I wanted to. I really wanted to see him suffer, to see him die. I wanted him dead. But I couldn't be the person who let it happen. I just couldn't."
"No. And you shouldn't have thought about letting yourself be killed." His voice is almost – almost – admonishing boss tone, which he hasn't used with her in a long time. She can't remember when was the last time.
"But the consequences of letting Ward and Garrett have all that information... What if something horrible happens because I couldn't let that lying scumbag die? What if tomorrow Ward finds us and puts two in the back of the head of someone in our team?"
"You can't think like that, Skye. Right is right, and it doesn't have to do with its consequences."
She smiles a little bit. "I didn't think that I'd end up this day having a discussion about morality with you. I'm not complaining, it's much, much better than how I imagined this day ending."
I imagined I'd be dead in a ditch, she thinks. I imagined I'd never see you again.
She can't say that out loud.
She tells Coulson about Mike, about how she hasn't given up on him yet. About the humanity still left in his eyes. About how she felt safer in the presence of Deathlok than in the presence of Grant Ward, Agent of SHIELD.
"We have to make things right with Mike," she says. "We have to make sure Ace is safe."
Coulson nods. "Taking down Garrett should help with Mr Peterson's chances."
He in turn tells her about his conversation with Agent Hill, how she told him to give up on even the idea of SHIELD. To make it through this one last mission and then walk away from it all. Skye wishes she had her badge with her right now. But it's in Coulson's safe, in the plane, in the plane now in Ward's possession.
"Maybe Maria is right," Coulson says, sounding tired for the first time today. "Maybe we all should think about moving on."
Skye thinks it hurts to hear this more than anything else.
"I can't imagine not being part of something like SHIELD," she says, very quietly. "I know I have no right to feel like that, because I was only part of it for a few months and compared to you... but I want to help people. I can't imagine myself without this team. And..."
"What?" he asks, a little too quickly.
She really can't imagine her life without Coulson being a part of its every day, either. But that's not something she can tell him, either.
"Nothing. What would I do, anyway? I'm not a girl of many opportunities."
"You could do whatever you set your mind to, Skye."
She crosses her arms; nobody has ever told her something like this and it's not that she doesn't appreciate it and it's not that it's exactly Coulson's fault that his words are absolute bullshit but they are.
"That's a nice sentiment and all but that hasn't been historically true for me," Skye explains. "No education, no family, no resources. I'll wash up somewhere – like I was going to do before you picked me up."
His posture in the chair stiffens. He sits up, closer to her.
"You know I would make sure you were okay. Right?"
"I know. But I don't want to think about that," she shrugs uncomfortably. She was used to being alone before, but now it'd be too lonely a world, without the team, without him. And it would be too sad thinking about Coulson walking a different path than the one he's been choosing since she met him. "Because I don't think you should give up on what SHIELD represents."
"You're the only one who thinks like that."
She smiles. It's not often that he gets so close to self-pitying. He probably needs to blow off some steam right now. From what he's told Skye she knows how much he respects Agent Hill's opinion so she understands why that conversation could have had such an impact.
"I thought this was my day to have a pity party. We can do yours some other time," she says. She leans forward in her seat, until they are quite close and she can speak in a lower voice. "What happened with us and Ward is a bit like what happened with SHIELD and HYDRA. It was right under our noses and we didn't realize. So now we have to take responsibility. We can't just walk away."
He looks up at the horizon. The night is getting darker now, the lights brighter. The noises from the street sharper. Skye knows those noises well.
+
He can't sleep.
It's not like – he's not going to have a breakdown (May raised an eyebrow when he told her she could leave him alone in the room, that it was okay, she took a bit of convincing) and he is not going to sink into depression. It is a big thing, of course, but at least now he knows. It's good to know who you are up against, even if that person turns out to be yourself.
Maybe because he has spent the whole day thinking about Skye trapped with a HYDRA killer and using everything she had to survive. He couldn't quite think about giving up, he has no right, it wouldn't be fair.
Maybe it's just that it had been too strange a night (the way Skye was looking at him – like she had reached some silent, very important conclusion, like it might be the same conclusion he was reaching as well) and everything still rests on this side of surreal and maybe he's not processing it properly. Maybe he isn't processing it properly and maybe he will just crash at a later time but... so what? Right now he is going to enjoy the quiet sense of reprise they've been granted today, the little victory, the peace. It's peaceful tonight, despite the noise – traffic outside in the inconvenient road, and the loud neighbors and the buzzing of the vending machine and the pool's outmoded filtering system and the sound of somebody grabbing some ice from the box outside in the hallway, despite all that, peaceful's good.
But he can't sleep. He paces up and down his room, tiny as it is. He looks at himself in the mirror, looks closely at the color in his eyes, wondering if it's true, if it's just a matter of time before the machinery starts to fail. Then he sees the reflection of the outside through his open blinds.
There's light on the pool.
He's still dresssed so it doesn't take much for him to decide to go outside and see. He has a gut feeling, anyway.
Skye is sitting in one of the chairs.
"I thought you had gone to bed."
She looks up, a bit startled.
"I did," she says, an uncomfortable smile settling on her face almost immediately. "But then – the walls of my room were closing in a bit, I spent too long trapped in our plane, you know, or it felt like ages anyway. And I didn't want to sleep. Honestly, sir? I don't know how I could ever sleep again. I don't even need to close my eyes to have nightmares about what happened."
She looks down at her hands; Coulson sees she has them laced together. She looks like she is cold. That's something easy to fix, unlike everything else she's just said, all the things he doesn't want to think about right now.
"You should go inside, get warm."
"I'm fine here. It's okay." She's not looking at him. She looks troubled – her face doesn't hide anything at all, does it. He wonders how she was able to fool Ward for so long.
"Come with me," he tells her softly. Skye turns her head, gives him an inquiring look. "There's something I need to tell you. Something I need you to see."
It wasn't his plan to do this, not tonight at least. He had hoped to let her breathe a bit before putting the weight of this on her as well. He had hoped to spare her of further pain. Give her a little space to recharge. God knows that she deserves it, after today.
But it doesn't seem like she is taking a breather so he might as well.
"Come," he repeats and offers his hand to her without thinking; he watches Skye recoil on instinct, while something horrible twists in her gaze. Fuck, Coulson thinks, he can't believe he's forgotten. "I'm sorry."
Skye shakes her head, not looking at him. "It's okay. It's just – nevermind, let's go."
He takes her to his room, or rather she follows him, and he tells her to sit on his bed.
"What is this?" she asks when he puts the computer in front of her and Skye sees the Level 10 Only restriction warnings.
Coulson feels like he can't get enough air into his lungs to explain this:
"I wasn't going to show you this. Because I thought it was not the right time, you had enough on your plate. But I've realized it doesn't matter if it's the right time or not. I shouldn't keep secrets from you, Skye. Not for a week, not for a day." He tries a tiny smile. "Not for a couple of hours, as it happens."
He watches her watch the video.
In part because he doesn't want to watch it directly again, wants to avoid fixing his gaze on the screen, and in part because – yeah. He wants to know if it's too much for her, if he has to stop it. He needs to know if he is just being selfish, wanting to share the burden with her. It involves her as well, everything about this matter involves her (he involved her). It's hard to tell when it comes to Skye – what part of the whole is exactly that, him being selfish, wanting to know he's not alone whenever he feels pain or fear or confusion, and what part is the certain belief that truth always needs to come first between them, even if they have nothing else they should have the truth.
He watches her press her lips together. She is not blinking, and her eyes are as big as ever. But she is not hesitating either, she concetrates, takes it in carefully.
Suddenly he thinks about how disappointing it must be for her, knowing he was the one in charge of something so horrible, complicit in something so evil. Skye, who wouldn't let the man who lied to her and kidnapped her and terrified her die in front of her eyes if she could help it – what will she think of Agent Phil Coulson, who led human experiments like these? God, Coulson thinks, Ward isn't the only one who'd been working for HYDRA.
"Wow," she says when it finishes. "That answers that, I guess."
"Yes," he says. "I wanted to know who was responsible. Now I know."
"Are you okay about all this?"
Coulson shrugs. All things considered he's not doing too bad. If they had told him this some time ago it would have destroyed him, probably. All his search... leading here. But now he's okay. Today of all days he thinks he can bear it.
Skye shifts where she's sitting on his bed, looking down at her hands. She has a strange expression on her face, nervous and crestfallen at the same time. He sits with her.
"I'm almost too scared to ask but..." she draws a breath. "What exactly is aphasia?"
"It's a disorder of the language," Coulson says, swallowing, his mouth dry. "It can go from just forgetting words to losing the ability to read or speak."
Her eyes go wide with terror. "Oh god."
"Yep. Pretty much."
"But you are okay, right? You feel okay?"
She puts her hand on his chest, like she's reassuring herself he's there, and then immediately takes it away, looking embarrassed.
"I feel fine," he tells her, and it's true.
"I mean, apart from the fact that your boss totally and completely betrayed your trust in such an intimate way and did the exact thing you told him should never be done to anyone and he did it to you." He just glares at her. "I'm sorry. This is not helping at all."
"It's – no, you are exactly right."
"And it's not like you can ask him what the hell he was thinking when he did this to you."
He stares at her. Right.
"Actually..." He hopes the look he gives her is enough.
"Fury's alive? Koenig lied to us."
"HYDRA is still after him, only a very few people in the world know about it," he tells her. "I'm sorry. I was going to tell you, I just – a lot of things happened afterwards."
He hasn't told her about Portland, either, and he wants to, for entirely selfish reasons this time.
"No, no, it's a good thing," she says. "I'm glad you didn't tell me. Ward asked me about Fury. I would have told him if I knew. HYDRA would have known he was alive, it would have put him in danger."
Well, at least Fury trusted him enough to be one of those few people who knows he's alive, and that must mean something, some small consolation; he very much doubts Fury's plan was for him to include Skye in on the secret but to hell with it, he's never following that man's orders again.
"I'm not telling the team," Coulson explains, eyes cold. "I trust them but after Ward we are not taking any risks."
"You should tell May," Skye says. He gives her a quizzical look. "We saw each other when she was going to her room. She didn't say much. When does she ever, right? But I could tell. And I can imagine. This is different for her. Ward..."
"You knew." Of course. He's not even surprised.
"I didn't mean to. It just – it happened. And anyway, I think she should know Director Fury is alive. She brought this to you, she found the truth. And what she did to you was... unjustifiable, okay, but precisely, she was under Fury's orders. Don't you think she has some complains of her own?"
He leans back, thinking it over. He and May haven't officially forgiven each other, not with words, and to a certain extent Coulson knows Trip had a point, he knows May couldn't have known about Ward but the fact remains that she served Skye to him on a silver plate. She left Skye alone. No doubt she must have beaten herself up about it already – for all of May's protestations that Coulson is all she cares about he knows it's not true, she cares about the team. He has seen her care about Skye, it couldn't have all been an act. He trusts her and Skye is right, this is not just something May did to Coulson, it's something Fury did to both of them. And he has the sneaky suspicion May doesn't believe Fury's dead anyway. She had before, but not now.
"After seeing this I'm beginning to think maybe Fury's orders concerning the team weren't so off the mark."
"What do you mean?" she asks.
Skye, quick as they come, could never understand what he's saying here. He gives her a soft smile, it's equally sad and wonderful that she doesn't see the full extent of the shit he's in.
"May was right all along. She told me I was a ticking bomb, and it's true."
"Hey, you're not. It's going to be fine, I know. And in any case if you are then so am I. I have the drug inside me as well."
He shakes his head. "No, Skye, you're not. You weren't dead. We didn't do anything else to you. You didn't require various operations. And the amount of drug I let Simmons inject you with wouldn't be that much."
There's the little stubborn frown Skye has whenever what she is going to say is probably right and Coulson is wrong. This happens some times.
"Don't try to shut me out of this. We said we'd face this together. Remember?"
He feels like that was a million years ago.
"Yes. I guess that's why I showed you... this." He gestures towards the laptop with disgust.
"But hey, it's not all bad news," she tells him.
Isn't it, though? Leave it to Skye to find a bright spot in this dark place. She does that. That's the thing about Skye.
"It's not?"
"This proves you tried to stop it, the experiments, the project."
"I didn't. It's obvious the project went on."
She moves across the bed to sit closer to him, her knees touching his thigh. He wonders at the sudden need for contact now that they are in the room (her fingers on his chest, Coulson still feels the ghost touch if he concentrates) after his faux pas earlier.
"You were going to resign," she is saying. "Resign. SHIELD meant the world to you and you were going to walk away because you knew this was wrong. This communication – this proves you were trying to do the right thing all along, you were the good guy here." He just smiles at her. "What?"
"That's what you take from this revelation? That's where your mind goes?"
"Well, yeah. What?"
"Nothing. I'm thoroughly unsurprised."
She manages to smile back a bit.
They settle back on the bed in complete silence.
He looks outside the window. It's not really dark, it's never really dark in L.A. Tiny lights reflected on the tranquil pool. It is a nice night, despite everything. Despite everything he is not unhappy to be here, right in this moment.
"What's going on there?" she asks.
He turns to her and Skye is pointing at his head. He must have been making a weird face as he looked outside because she sounds playful but looks slightly concerned.
"Honestly? I don't want to sleep either."
The subtext is clear.
She raises one eyebrow and grins at him. "One thing you need to know about being homeless though: the reason motels are so great is because they have tv."
She grabs the remote and settles back on the bed, next to him.
"This is a pretty okay place, by the way," she says as she switches through channels. Her elbow brushes against his arm every time she does, and it can't be accidentally. Coulson wonders exactly what's going on in her head. He can normally tell and he thinks he can tell now – he thought he could tell some hours ago, when they were sitting on the ridiculous pool furniture, eating a chocolate bar together and talking about defeating HYDRA. He was so sure then; should he really start doubting it now?
"Okay place? This is a dingy motel, Skye. I just wish we had funds for something better for the team."
"First of all? Dingy motels? Best place to hide. We're still terrorists to the world at large. Did you notice how little interest in us the front desk guy had? That's good, dingy means anonymous. That's something we need right now. And second? This is okay, don't be a snob. I've had to live in way worse places."
Sad thing is, he believes her.
She seems frustrated by not finding anything on the tv, settles for a late night sports recap show and turns the volume up a bit.
"You have a lot to teach me about being homeless," Coulson says.
"You have no idea," she replies cheerfully then the cheer disappears and Skye turns around to face him, very serious. "I'm glad you have no idea. It seriously sucks."
He doesn't comment but he agrees a life like this sounds seriously hard. And at least here the team is together but he imagines Skye doing this on her own for years and years. A slight ache spreads across his chest when he thinks about that.
They both sit back to watch the show and Skye puts the pillow over her legs, makes herself comfortable on his bed.
Coulson looks at her and he doesn't feel like a ticking bomb, he doesn't feel like a man condemned.
+
When she wakes up she can hear the noises of someone cleaning the pool.
It's early, too early, before anyone else has woken up, the light through the blinds is soft and blue and quiet, pre-sunrise light more than anything.
For a moment she doesn't quite remember where she is, and then it comes back bit by bit, she realizes what the narrow motel bed means, the body next to her breathing heavily, spread over the covers. She must have fallen asleep on Coulson's arm and here she is now, cheek still pressed against the crook of his elbow – he also slid down from his sitting position before he fell asleep.
Once she stirs into wakefulness it doesn't take much for Coulson to follow. Soon they are slowly pulling away from the other a bit, enough to look at each other, it's awkward in a quiet way.
"What time is it?" Skye asks.
"Early."
She sits up a bit, just a bit, so her head and shoulder are still touching him somehow. It's selfish and Skye knows it but she doesn't want to let go of him just yet.
"Yesterday when I saw the sunrise I thought it was the last one I'd ever see. Ward was flying the plane and I just... it was such a beautiful sunrise."
"Skye."
He just says her name.
She presses her face into his clothes and closes her eyes.
She knows what she feels.
She feels safe.
She knows what she feels.
She feels many more things than just safe.
"Nightmares?" he asks.
"Not one. Not that I remember anyway." She snuggles up against him, making the point in case he's missed it. "I could get used to this."
"I don't mind."
She freezes. Does he mean that?
"Coulson?" Her voice sounds tiny in her own ears.
"I'm sorry. Forget I said that. It's not the right time for this."
He slides up, trying to sit against the wall again.
"You said it yourself," she tells him, propping herself on one elbow to reach him. "There's no right or wrong time."
She kisses him.
She pauses a moment before doing it, looking at his eyes (surprise but not-surprise in them, all at the same time), holding back until she can't. She kisses him.
She is not even shocked at herself for it, even though never in a million years she had imagined she'd do that, first of all because how could she be brave enough to risk it. But he just said – and the voice with which he said it. And the way he was looking at her last night, when he gave her the chocolate, the way they had looked at each other the whole evening.
He tastes like morning, which, granted, is not super-great, but she doesn't mind much right now. And it's Coulson and he kind of tastes like it, too. Like his clothes smell. Like the embrace they shared in the plane cell. She kisses him for a bit, tender and undemanding, trying to get to the center of that taste, where everything is just nice like the clean smell of his suits, and everything is safe and bright.
He ends the kiss gently, holding Skye by the shoulders. His hand moves up to her face, pushing away the hair fallen over her cheeks.
"Skye, you just went through something..." he sounds like he's going to let her down kindly but then his fingers keep stroking her hair, which is good. "Actually, I cannot imagine what you just went through."
"I know. It messed me up. But not about this," she tells him. "I thought I was going to die."
"I thought you could be dead already," he says simply and Skye can hear the toll fear has taken on him. She knows what it feels like very well; she remembers when Centipede kidnapped Coulson (oh god, Ward was part of that as well, wasn't him, she's definitely going to make sure he spends the rest of his life in a really dark and small cell), when Coulson was taken from them and she was fighting to find him and all kinds of horrible scenarios were running through her head. It was worse not knowing.
"With Ward in the plane, all that time... I never felt so alone in my life. And I'm the expert on being alone. I just wished... I'm not going to lie, I was wishing you could be there with me."
"You should have never had to go through that. Not alone."
"It's not your fault. It's not anyone's fault but Ward's. He did this to me. And I thought I was done for. I thought he was going to kill me for sure. Had very little hopes of surviving this. But I wanted to make sure the information on the drive never fell on the wrong hands. And I wanted to give something to the team, something so you could stop Ward, and Garrett. That was my only goal. I was going to die for it. But –"
He nods. "You couldn't kill for it. It's okay."
"I thought I was going to get killed," she says, a bit more agitated now, remembering sharply how it felt, to know she was going to die, without a doubt, remembering exactly what was going through her mind at the time. "And it was silly but I thought that I... would like to have seen you again, one more time, before he killed me. When you opened the door to the cell, when you came to get me, for a moment I thought I had lost it, that I must have been imagining it for sure."
"Skye..."
"I didn't say this to make you feel bad. I wanted to tell you that yes, I'm confused about so many things right now, and I'm still so scared. But I also gained some clarity. About the things I really want."
She presses extra weight into that last word, without meaning to. Not for Coulson's benefit, no, for herself, because she didn't know.
He holds her face in his hands. Skye wonders when she is going to stop having flashbacks, to stop feeling it under her skin, the memory of Ward grabbing her head in almost desperation – she concentrates on Coulson instead, the lighter touch, almost reticent, these hands so different, the way she doesn't feel trapped between them.
Then in a moment he sighs and lets go of her face, looking down.
"I knew something was going on before we found Koenig's body, you know," he tells her. "I knew something had gone horribly wrong when I saw you holding hands with Ward. I knew it couldn't – I said nothing, I didn't want to be presumptuous but I suspected it couldn't be true, knew there had to be more to it than just..."
"You weren't being presumptuous. You were just being... the person who knows me the most in the whole world. Of course you would have known, and of course I liked him, but you would have noticed if I... if Ward had been important in that sense to me."
They are just circling the subject at this point, not defining it. Skye wonders if it's because Coulson is not sure (he looked sure last night, she couldn't have been imagining it). She feels the auto-destructive urge to make some crude joke, something about him coming to her rescue and how she's been dying to thank him and possibly thank him. She bites it down with the rest of her own personal sabotage. She won't do that with him, that girl is still inside her somewhere, but she is not that girl anymore. She's changed, she's the woman Coulson was finally, finally looking at last night, finally seeing.
She could be completely wrong here, of course. He might not even want this. But if she was imagining things, if she has been rash like always, Skye needs to know it's not all ruined, she needs to hear it from his lips, that the risk has not been too high.
"Coulson, please," she says, not sure what she is asking for. "If you tell me to just shut up about this, if you think this is wrong, or you don't feel the same way about me, just say a word. I just know I can't lose you. I don't mind turning back the clock on the last five minutes."
He seems to think about it, which, okay, Skye appreciates that at least.
"I think this is a bad moment for us to be talking about this," he tells her. Skye tries not to let hurt show on her face. But then Coulson takes her hand in his tentatively, fingers gently brushing between hers. He sighs. "But I also know sometimes you can't choose when these things happen."
He bends his head a bit and puts his lips to hers, gingerly at first, like making sure she still wants this. But Skye sighs against his mouth and his fingers grip at the back of her head more tightly.
She doesn't want to think about the day she had yesterday, even though it's not like she doesn't want (isn't desperate) to erase the memory of Ward's kisses, but she stops her mind from going there, because she'd never want to kiss Coulson for the wrong reasons. Not Coulson. He slides his tongue into her mouth, copying her movements from before. Suddenly the movement is like liquid joy burning through her veins and she has to pull away for a moment, too much. Coulson has just kissed her and she wasn't crazy, what she felt yesterday was real, he felt it too.
"Skye...?" he gives her a questioning glance when she breaks the kiss but Skye shakes her head and smiles.
She moves over to his side of the bed, climbing across his lap, hands in his shoulders and hair falling and tickling his cheek. Coulson lets out a small groan when she puts her weight on him. They are face to face, almost too intimate. Skye curls her fingers around the curve of his shoulders. The incipient soft sunlight falls on his face, and on hers, not quite warm but rather revealing. The lines around his eyes and mouth make him look kind, not old. He sits straight-backed and upright and when Skye brings her mouth down to his again it's like she is pinning him against the wall. Coulson lets her do for a moment, like he needs time to adjust to the way her tongue is moving inside his mouth and the way her hands dart from his shoulders to his chest, then he starts responding in kind, grabbing Skye by the back of her neck again and kissing her open-mouthed and hard and playful.
He places his hand experimentally on the small of her back and he has to swallow Skye's shiver. She can't quite believe the sounds she's making against his mouth. Except yeah, she totally can believe them. She also can't believe they are doing this, right here, this moment, except after last night she can totally believe it. There's a sweet pressure on her chest, like she knows she can't get close enough to Coulson, like there's too much wanting inside her right now.
But then she can feel Coulson trying to wind down, and she feels a frown forming on his brow, she can feel it because their faces are so close together.
She lets him pull away and break the kiss.
"Have I done something wrong?" she asks.
Coulson shakes his head. "No."
"What? You want to stop."
"I don't want to stop."
"But you think we should."
"It's not that." He closes his eyes, rubbing them with the heel of his hand.
Skye props herself on her knees, hands on his shoulder, so that she is no longer straddling him. She gives him a bit of space, sensing that he might need it.
"Tell me," she says.
"We should probably get downstairs. I promised the team we'd have breakfast all together."
"You did?" she smiles. He almost never ever eats with them.
Coulson nods. "I felt it'd be good for everyone. Touch base."
"Our leader..." she teases him, placing one quick kiss on the corner of his mouth, feeling strangely excited by the freedom to do so.
She feels a bit sad, though. As much as she really wants to have breakfast with the rest, as much as she is also very hungry (all she had eaten yesterday was half a chocolate bar), the truth is she'd want to stay here with Coulson. She has the feeling, like in that cell, that she's lost it and she's probably hallucinating the whole thing, and as soon as she walks through his door everything that happened will disappear.
She wonders if she has been too impulsive, if she hasn't thought about the consequences and ramifications long enough.
But Coulson is running his fingers along her arm and she forgets about that, he is touching her like he knows exactly what she is thinking (could be, and it wouldn't be the first time).
"There' no rush," he tells her, so sweetly her heart aches. So confident that whatever they have will still be here after a good breakfast with the team. She trusts him. She feels a rush, but the good kind, desire pooling in her stomach and settling there for good – Skye has the feeling she's going to walk all day around feeling it, the taut pull of possibility and want and just Coulson.
She extricates herself from him with some difficulty, hanging on to the headboard for balance. Coulson places one hand on her hip to help her out and in that simple gesture she feels a reassurance all his words could never manage.
+
She said she wanted to freshen up a bit first.
Coulson thought she meant she was going back to her room. But she is using his bathroom instead. There's something vaguely exhilarating in that, he thinks, the proximity, the progressive blurring of boundaries like a promise of what's to come. He also knows Skye is doing this because she feels like leaving him, even for ten minutes, will undo whatever resolution they might have reached this morning. She doesn't have much faith and he can't blame her, knows exactly where that comes from.
She emerges from the bathroom, slightly freshened up but still wearing last night's clothes and a tired face.
He's still wearing last night's clothes as well – but he can't bring himself to care about what the team might think, the ideas they might get. A lot of things that seemed important a couple of days ago, well, it's not just that they are not important today – it's that they never really were.
"One moment," she says, a lopsided awkward grin on her face.
He watches Skye sit on the bed to put on her black boots.
He watches her in wonder.
After everything that's happened, everything that might still happen (he tries not to think about that) Coulson knows this is precisely the worst time to be doing this. Of all the times they could have picked for it this is the most inconvenient. But that doesn't matter. He wants this. Skye wants this. He doesn't care about the rest. The rest is not real. She was right: he felt it, too, the unexpected clarity yesterday brought – while she was god knows where and he couldn't know if she was alive or dead, if she was okay, if Ward was hurting her.
She looks up.
"What?"
He shakes his head. There's no rush. They have to talk about a lot of things. But they are allowed to have breakfast first. They are allowed to have these things. Even for people without a chance at ordinary. And every sunrise, even this one, might be the last one they see. But they are not alone. And he might not have all the time in the world (he thought about that, about the video May unearthed, he thought about it, when Skye first kissed him, just how long he would be able to give her, if it was even fair that he tried) but no one does, and whatever unknown limited time he has – yes, he would like to share that with Skye, if she wants it.
He watches her grab her things, her bag and jacket and computer.
"Ready?" he asks.
Skye bites her lower lip. "Almost."
Coulson gives her a curious look. She looks nervous, not bothering to hide it.
She reaches for his hand, entwining her fingers between his. She gives it a little squeeze, like asking for permission. Coulson nods, knows immediately what she's asking, what this means. He squeezes her hand in return, holding it tightly, curling his fingers into the grooves of her knuckles.
They walk out of the room hand in hand.