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There is something people should know about him: Coulson doesn't like being punched in the face.
It's not that he can't get through it bravely and gracefully, he just doesn't like it. It hurts. And it keeps hurting for a while. And he has fragile eyebrows, prone to splitting. Still, the things one has to do for the job and the intel.
But he's done with this one, and wondering when rescue will come. It hurts, and he's bored, and Coulson's not particularly patient with either of those. He's about to take matters into his own hands (what? he could).
Fortunately he doesn't have to wait long.
He sets his jaw to prepare for the next punch.
It never comes.
There's an almost imperceptible tremor under his feet that announces it. It's a ghost sensation, easy for Coulson to notice because he's experienced it up close and personal a thousand times, and most people are left wondering if they really ever felt it.
"What was that?" the other guy finally stops punching Coulson to look around him, unable to locate where this sudden feeling of uneasiness comes from.
"Vibrations," Coulson tells him, cryptically, amused despite the pain, feeling excitement rise in his stomach, although for the other guy he knows it's just nausea at the sudden frailty of their balance.
This is Coulson's favourite part.
He admits he even gets goosebumps, sometimes, right before it happens.
Many bad guys don't realize what has happened until it's over and they are in handcuffs.
He can't get enough of it.
It's just like one used to read about in the comics. Coulson swears he can see the motion lines behind th objects, too. He smiles at his torturer. Boy, he has no idea.
The room shakes a second time. Then the heavy steel door opens, giving away like it's made of paper. The figure behind – the figure behind it all – walking fast towards the two men.
"Hey, hey," Skye tells the kidnapper urgently and the man can barely take in the figure of a woman in tactical gear. He is turned around, his fist still raised towards Coulson's face with menace. "Easy on the moneymaker. Or did you think I married him for his brains?"
Coulson smiles a blood-stained smirk.
"What the–?"
The other guy is about to turn his gun on Skye – finally shaking off the confusion of seeing the doors fly off their hinges semingly of their own volition – and Skye disarms him with an elegant wave of her hand, like an afterthought, the pieces of the gun falling to the ground with an almost comical clicking noise to match the guy's baffled expression.
Coulson looks at Skye. When she does this kind of stuff he swears she looks taller, more formidable. He's glad he fell in love – mostly – before Skye learned to control her powers, or he would always wonder...
"Are you all right?" she asks him, seriously, while staring the villain down.
"I am now," Coulson says, their call-and-response whenever a mission goes down in a certain way, good or bad, and they have to fight their way back to one another. It's only once he started going on missions after he and Skye became involved that he began to understand Hunter and Bobbi's whole don't die out there deal from way back when.
"Did you get what we needed?" Skye asks.
"Yeah, he gave me everything."
The bad guy stares dumbly at them, incapable of understanding he had been set up.
She proceeds to handcuff him to one of the control panels.
"Don't grumble," she tells him. "At least you got to meet a celebrity." The villain gives her a blank look. "What? You don't know who I am? SHIELD agent? Earthquakes powers? Great hair? No?"
Coulson smiles at her frustration.
Skye rolls her eyes. Coulson should be offended on her behalf, he knows. He just finds her scrunched face of disappointed upon not being recognized as the international superheroine she is pretty funny.
She opens comms. "Delta team, you've got your package ready in the controls room. We move on to find the weapons."
She makes a gesture for the goon to stand where he is and not move.
She finally turns her attention to Coulson, still handcuffed to the chair.
"Ouch, that looks like it stings," she says, prodding at his split bottom lip with her thumb. Coulson is about to ask her to kiss it better but he guesses that's pretty unprofessional of him. He has to keep appearances. Doesn't he? It's not like there's a rulebook for being in a relationship with a superhero while also going on missions together.
Skye runs her hand over the handcuffs and these simply drop off his wrists, immediately disassembled piece by piece. Coulson can't help it, no matter how many times they have done this, it still gives him a rush to see what her powers can do.
"Thanks," he says and Skye beams at him, for some reason.
"You're welcome."
He stands up and rubs the sore skin of his wrists.
"You're late, you know?" he points out.
Skye shakes her head.
For a moment neither of them seem to remember there's a bad guy in the room. Then Skye grabs the man by the arm and drags him unceremoniously towards the main panel.
"I thought you were going to run into my strong bosom when I rescued you," Skye says, fake-pouting at Coulson while she slips the handcuffs on the kidnapper. "You know, like they do in the movies."
"Next time," Coulson promises.
He watches as Skye disables the controls with her usual swift typing.
"Are you planning on getting kidnapped again?" she says, raising an eyebrow.
"Is everybody clear?" he asks, on full-mission talk again.
"Of course. We just need to find the weapons. You're the last one we get out. Or did you think I was going to give you a preferential treatment just because you give me orgasms?"
"I assumed it was in the marriage license. Thou Salt Rescue Your Spouse First? No?"
She laughs. She always laughs at his awful jokes.
"No, but how many times has it been already? I'm thinking about issuing you some sort of loyalty card," Skye says. "Get your ass rescued ten times, the next one's free?"
Coulson likes her stupid jokes, too.
They leave the room and walk into the hallway.
Skye pushes him gently against the wall before they make the corner.
For a moment Coulson thinks she's going to kiss him and gets excited about the idea.
"Wait, it's going to get into your eye," she says, touching her finger to the line of Coulson's eyebrow, tip coming away bloodied.
Coulson winces. His wife gives him the gauze to clean it and the emergency stitches she alays carries on her person. There's a nice ritualistic feeling to it; being on the field together, getting hurt, helping each other. Last month Coulson had to set Skye's dislocated shoulder in the middle of a firefight. It was quite fun. So to speak. They are good at it, taking care of each other. They know each other weaknesses, they can trace the scars. In the last year they have been punched and shot at a lot.
"Done?" Skye asks. She's gotten so reponsible and bossy.
He touches the cut above his right eye. It should hold until a doctor can come take a proper look. He nods.
Skye takes her sidearm from the holster and pushes it into Coulson's hand.
"Okay, follow me."
He does.
"The guy was very gloaty," Coulson points out, moving his jaw, a pull of pain that'll be there a couple of hours. "I think we've hit jackpot on this one."
"I hope so. I wouldn't like like it, if you took a beating for nothing," she says, throwing a look at him over her shouder.
"I wouldn't like it either," he agrees.
Still not too late to ask Skye to kiss it better. That's what they do every time anyway. To the point where Coulson worries about developing some Pavlovian reaction to the punches. He used to be a professional. Agent Coulson used to be synonym with reliable and focused. What happened to that guy?
Oh right. He remembers what happened.
He looks at Skye's back as she leads him down the empty hallway. He swears she really looks taller, the shoulders broader, these days. Maybe just when he watches her in a mission. Many adjectives come to mind, magnificent being the prominent one.
"Are you hungry?" he asks her, trying to be helpful. He knows using her powers tires Skye out and after heavy missions she needs a banquet and to pass out in front of their tv to recover.
"Not yet," she replies. "Why? Are you thinking about cooking dinner?"
They should be talking mission-talk, not this.
"I've been beaten up," Coulson comments. "I think that's a good excuse for take-out."
Skye laughs. Her taste in food isn't particularly healthy and he indulges her – okay, he indulges himself as well – and he swears if they hadn't Kree blood inside them they'd probably be both dead in ten years.
They find the room they were looking for. Skye sets to work on the panel. Throwing doors wide open is dramatic and all, and Coulson loves seeing that, but it's not always practical. These doors are more secure, thicker, there's no way she can vibrate them with enough pressure without compromising the structure of the hallway. And to be honest he also loves seeing Skye hack a lock.
"I can't believe that guy didn't know who I was," she comments.
"I know," Coulson agrees, amused. "I found it offensive."
Skye turns to him a moment. "I think I need a superhero name. To speed up the process."
He remembers he's heard Fitz and Hunter have this same conversation before, some kind of brainstorming about possible superhero names for Skye, right after the first time her earthquake powers made the national news. Coulson had frown at every choice – Fitz's were too complicated, Hunter's a bit crass. And well, it's not like Skye needs a secret identity. She's Skye. Everyone around her knows what she can do. And Coulson is not in any rush to hide his connection to her. He's proud of it.
"What's wrong with Agent Coulson?" he offers. Hey, it's what it says on the laynard. Skye insisted. "It's a cool superhero name."
"Cute," Skye says, flicking her eyes at him sensually. "But that one's taken."
He looks at her.
"I'm not a superhero," he argues.
Her lips curl slowly.
"Dissenting opinions," she tells him, graciously.
It's okay, Coulson thinks. He never wanted to be a superhero. He always wanted a superhero.
Skye finishes hacking the panel and the door opens.
They look around. Their intel wasn't bad. If anything, they were being modest. Shelves and shelves of dangerous weaponry stolen from various intelligence agencies.
Skye opens the comms again for a moment. "Found it. Get the retrieval team to our coordinates."
She whistles at the depth of the armoury.
"I want something more catchy," Skye says, picking up their conversation. "Something that might put the fear into bad people's hearts. You know, like that guy, the Devil of Hell's Kitchen."
"That's grim."
"But catchy."
Coulson looks around them and sighs. The world is never getting any safer, is it? He doesn't mean to sound like a bitter old man – he's not, he swears – but it's a bit frustrating, the way the work gets harder and harder and the world doesn't seem to get better. He knows they make a difference, but he wishes it could be more significant. Well. At least he has Skye and his personal life has been miraculously improved right when he thought he had to give those fantasies up. He can't complain. It turns out that the easiest part of it all is being married to a superheroine – international superheroine, a voice, much like Skye's, corrects him.
"What's wrong?" Skye asks. "You look grumpy."
"I think I'm missing my rescue kiss," Coulson says, very seriously. "I thought the whole point of playing damsel in distress was that I got the hero to kiss me afterwards."
"Come here, Agent Coulson," she tells him, grabbing the front of his shirt and pulling him closer.
She has a strong bosom indeed.