A/N: Notice: this will be a MayWard story, the one I've been promising. If that, for some reason makes you physically ill, turn back now, as this isn't the story for you. Otherwise, read on and enjoy. :)

Breaking Protocol

Behind Closed Doors

SHIELD, like all multinational organizations, was a bureaucracy at its very core. Whether the agents within it liked it or not, there was an order, a protocol with which they handled their business, and their personal lives. These protocols were put in place to make life much easier than it otherwise would have been. Agents like Maria Hill could honestly and wholeheartedly attest to that.

Protocols were not principles, nor were they suggestions. They were not there to offer opinions on how agents should have conducted themselves. They were hard and fast rules meant to be followed down to the very syllable. If a rule stated that an agent shall not crawl through the air vents and shoot nerf darts at people as they passed by, then he was to be expected not to crawl through the air vents and shoot nerf darts at people as they passed by. When agents didn't follow the rules, there were consequences to be paid. Some light, such as rookie symposium duty; some heavier, like reassignment and outright dismissal. The latter was a rarity, which was why those types to protocol divergences were avoided.

More often than not, agents followed protocol. The rules weren't unreasonable, and were fairly easy to follow. One, however, that seemed to always he broken with callous disregard was Section 3, Paragraph 5, Bullets 15 and 16, which were under Employee Relations. The rules stated, 15) Agents shall not engage in romantic relations, sexual or otherwise, with other agents within their department; 16) Agents shall not engage in romantic relations, romantic or otherwise, with other agents that they are either exclusively partnered with or members of the same task force.

This rule, dubbed the 'Fraternization Rule', was the single most broken rule in all the protocol. SHIELD agents may have been the best of the best, but they were also human. When they took a liking to someone, it was only natural to act on it. The fear was that relations would have distracted agents from their duties. This was already proven with an incident in Bahrain, which was the spearhead for this rule in the first place. And while such another incident hadn't occurred again in the fifteen years since, Director Fury thought better safe than sorry and kept it in.

Agent Grant Ward was a stickler for obeying all the rules. He even kept a copy of the SHIELD guidelines in his bedside table to casually peruse at his leisure. Everyone who found out about it made fun of him, but he didn't care. There was something to be said about being looked at by the administration as a good egg. He rarely broke protocol by mistake, and when he did, he submitted himself to his supervisor, Agent Phil Coulson, promptly for discipline.

It was even rarer for him to break it intentionally. When he did, he had a damn good reason. His reason this time was lying next to him, asleep and snoring softly. Grant glanced over and ran his eyes over Melinda May's bare back. Taut back muscles carried the soft sheen of fresh sweat. Her hair was splayed across the pillow, so he could see the love marks he placed across her neck and collarbone.

They had just had another night of drunken sex after a mission at a Hydra sleeper base in the Czech Republic. From what he could remember, it was wild and rough with plenty of scratching, cursing, biting and pulling. Pain, sexual pain, helped him forget killing five people. They were bad people, but they were still people. Sex with May was just that, sex. There was no emotion, no love between the two. Just two drunk people fucking each other's brains out for an hour or so and then going on about their business the next morning.

Alcohol was a prerequisite. If they weren't drunk, they didn't have sex. They needed to forget what they did the night before to make sure that they didn't possibly develop any feelings toward one another. They had a system, a system of booze, rough sex and forgetting the previous night. It worked for them because they were both committed to making it work. They both knew the dangers of love between two teammates (Grant suspected that Melinda knew that danger more than she was letting on). They knew how dangerous it was going to become when one, or both, of them let their feelings get involved. That was a risk that they were both willing to take, because the sex was just too damn good. Why else would they keep coming back for more, knowing that they were breaking protocol and putting quite a bit on the line?

Grant stopped looking at Melinda's back and turned over to fall asleep. He would forget what they did tonight, and wake up to complete the cycle once again, until next time. He could have stopped at any time and found some other why to unwind, but why? It was working just fine, and not too many guys at SHIELD could say that they banged the Cavalry. Not that he'd do something so stupid. It was agreed upon that they would keep it a secret, for both obvious and not obvious reasons. The obvious reasons were obvious, which was why they were unsaid. The not obvious reasons, Melinda's reputation being on the line and questions about whether Grant would have the focus to have a relationship and be Skye's SO and a contributing member of the team being raised, were actually, in their eyes, the more important reasons for their secrecy.

Besides, it was actually a little fun to have it be a secret from everyone. It made all the little comments he made to her during their downtime with the team where only they knew what he actually meant all the more amusing.

And it also meant that he and he alone could know that he got to see a side of Melinda that no one else got to see. A Melinda May full of unrestrained passion, eyes dilated with lust and want, every curse word under the sun bubbling out of her mouth and into his as they kissed as if the world were coming to an end. The way she whispered his name during their love making sent chills up his spine each and every time he thought about it. The sight of her hands tightly clasping his as she reached ecstasy, the look on her face and in her eyes as she rode through her climax was… breathtaking.

He wouldn't, he couldn't possibly trade that in for anything. He didn't want to stop, and he was confident that she didn't want to either. Protocol said that what they were doing was wrong, but, as the old saying went, if doing May was wrong, he didn't want to be right.

That didn't mean anything else, though. It was just sex. No love, no emotions after it was done. Anything extra was risking too much.