It's late and everyone has turned in for the night. Well, not quite everyone. Trip tilts his head slightly, listening to the footsteps. It's a woman's tread. If it were May, he wouldn't hear anything. It's too light for Jemma, which leaves Skye. He smiles. Girl's getting good at sneaking up on people.
Sure enough she rounds the corner a few seconds later and grins when she spies him ladling spoonfuls of cookie dough out. "You cook?"
"Bake," he corrects.
She makes a face at him.
"It's not quite the same, really."
He adds, "I bake a few things; cook when I have to." Ward or Garrett usually cooked or they ate out; that doesn't seem important to mention now. He shakes his head to clear his thoughts and puts another spoonful of cookie dough on the baking sheet.
Skye idly swipes some cookie dough from the rim of the bowl with her pointer finger and then licks it. "I haven't had homemade cookies in..."
She shakes her head and smiles and the brittleness of it does not go unnoticed by him.
He nods his head toward the thermometer on the stove. "Check the oven temp for me? It should be three hundred fifty-five degrees."
"Three Hundred Fifty-Five? That's-" She stops and glances at him coyly, before looking away. "Hot."
He grins. "Are you flirting with me, Agent Skye?"
She looks down at the countertop and twirls the oven mitt across the counter surface. "Is it working?"
"Maybe."
"Is maybe enough to get me a kiss?" She gives him a sly grin.
He steps around her to put the cookies in the oven, deliberately brushing his fingertips against her elbow as he does so. "Would you like a kiss?"
"Well." She taps his waist lightly. "You are hot. And I don't know if you've noticed, but so am I."
"Mmm. I've noticed."
As he closes the oven door, she steps closer. She places one hand on his jaw and looks up at him. He stares down into unreadable brown eyes. He relaxes under her touch, which surprises him. He didn't even realize he was holding himself tensely. She keeps her hand on his jaw and stretches up to place a gentle kiss on his lips. He puts his hands on her back, returns her kiss.
She curls her hands on the lapels of his shirt, her knuckles brushing against his collarbone. He slides his hands a little further down, slipping them beneath her shirt to cup the hollow of her waist, bare skin to bare skin electrifying with the touch. Trip tightens his grip around her waist and in one smooth move swings her up onto the counter. She's not a heavy burden to carry.
Her kiss is easy to get lost in.
He likes it.
She presses a little harder, leans a little closer.
He responds in kind, drawing her impossibly closer. Close enough that he can feel her heart pounding against his ribcage. She slips her hands up to embrace his neck with her arms.
If he lets himself think about it, there's an edge of desperation to her kiss. Just a hint, but it's there.
If he lets himself think about it, there's an edge of desperation to his kiss. Not enough to overwhelm, but it's there.
Their worlds have just been shaken up, turned inside out.
He doesn't want to think about it.
He lets her kiss pick away the edges of his grief and confusion. Those emotions feel like a tidal wave waiting to consume him if he doesn't guard the floodgates every second, but this right here, this kiss, their bodies pressed together, it feels like a tidal wave all its own.
And he finds he likes this kind of drowning.
Trip vaguely registers a dinging sound and then remembers—cookies, right. He pulls quickly away from Skye.
"Hey!" She protests, falling forward.
"Sorry." He steadies her. "I have to get my cookies out."
"I hope that's a euphemism." Skye clears her throat.
"Nope. Sorry." He starts to turn away from her. "I really do have to get those cookies out of the oven."
She reaches forward, catching a handful of his t-shirt, trying to pull him closer, and asks seductively, "Can't it wait?"
He laughs and leans forward to drop a quick kiss to her lips, at the same time untangling his shirt from her grasp.
"You're going to want to kiss me even more after you taste these. Promise."
"I better," Skye grumbles, sliding off the counter. She watches grumpily as he pulls the baking sheet out of the oven and sets it down. He realizes then that he doesn't have anything to transfer them to the cooling rack with and he turns his back on Skye for half-a-second to look.
"Let's see if these are worth waiting for." She grabs a cookie quickly off the baking sheet, wincing as the heat burns her fingers. She shovels half of it her mouth.
"Careful, girl, those are hot."
"Mmmm," Skye groans, mouth full of warm gooey chocolate chip cookie. "This is amazing."
"Told ya."
He reaches over to brush crumbs and melted chocolate from the corners of her lips. She smiles at him and he can't help himself: he slips his fingers to her chin and tilts it gently up so he can kiss her again.
She lets him kiss her for a minute, but when he starts to deepen it to the level of passion they were reaching before, she wiggles away from him.
"Not now," she says with a petulant pout. "I want more cookies."
"Ok," he grins easily. "I can respect that."
She pulls two cookies off the baking sheet and takes a big bite out one of them. She holds the other up to his mouth. He takes a bite obediently.
"Will you teach me to make these?"
"Maybe. It's an old family recipe."
She takes the last bite of the cookie she's holding. She leans back against the counter, looking up at him with a smile that is part-flirty, part-earnest, and all Skye. "Oh, yeah?"
"Oh, yeah." He grins and reaches forward to pull her closer, lacing his hands together against her lower back. She tilts her head up and grins back.
"Now where were we?" He whispers against her lips.
"Right about here," she whispers back, entwining her hands behind his neck and closing the gap between their lips.