Connected
AN: lmao there is a really niche group of people out there who abouta love this and everyone else out here thinking it's dumb as shit oh well happy birthday alison. also I'm replacing matt with nick and emily with jenny because fuk u they're better characters and also canon can suck my ass
The golden light pierced through the darkness, only emphasised by the harsh angles; the shards it contained. While it's not the soft glow of it's natural counterpart, the sparks that flew from the portal were enough of an indication of the raw power it contained. They were discovering what it was, what it meant. The only sensible course of action was for the teams to join together in the hopes of understanding these… anomalies.
But enough about that. Because before they can take on time travel and other dimensions, they have to take on a bigger challenge: teamwork.
The zephyr touched down with ease, as May lead it almost softly to the cold concrete below. Jemma had undone her seatbelt before the plane had even ground to a halt, causing her to wobbly and fall directly on Fitz's lap.
"Someone's excitable." Fitz laughed, giving her hips a squeeze.
Jemma batted his hands away, rolling her eyes and laughing with him, "I've really rather missed England." She sighed.
"Don't get your hopes up, it's always colder than you remember." Fitz replied, earning an elbowing from Jemma. The rest of the team chatted as they got ready, some excitedly, some cautiously. The doors swung open and they climbed down the steps, feeling the very cold British air hit their faces as they did. Simmons and Fitz made eye contact as soon as the chill hit them, the look he gave her in absence of an "I told you so".
"You guys ready?" Coulson asked, taking a few steps toward the building in front of them. The question went unanswered; nobody was really ready, but they were all very eager to learn the truth. That kept them moving towards the building. That, and the fact that it was bloody freezing.
Jess smoothed out the material of her dress, a smile etched permanently on her face. Unlike Becker, she loved meeting new people, something he was apparently quite bad at. He tried to relax his shoulders slightly, trying to mimic the calm she had, but to no avail. The clicking of heels told him she was making her way over, and he shot her a weary smile.
"Captain Becker, you have fought dinosaurs!" Jess exclaimed, putting emphasis on the last word, "You are not going to stand there looking so afraid of people." She punctuated her sentence with a small kiss on his cheek, earning her a more confident looking smile.
"I think I'll just leave people to you, and you can leave the dinosaurs to me." He sighed, pulling her closer towards him, almost lifting her off her feet. He put her down to the sound of the intercom buzz and the American accent that followed it.
"Agent Phil Coulson, temporary representative of S.H.I.E.L.D. May we come in?"
"Hello Agent Coulson, buzzing you in now." Replied Nick. The team could faintly hear a small gasp from the intercom, followed by a male voice with a similarly Scottish accent chatting excitedly.
"Jemma did you hear that, he's Scottish." Fitz exclaimed, trying to be quiet enough as to not be picked up by the receiver, unsuccessfully. The light flashed green and the magnetic lock on the door gave a clunk as at released.
"Lets do this." Daisy cheered, pushing her way to the front of the group and bounding through the doors.
The team hurried after her, shuffling quickly through the hallway. Pushing through the double doors, they immediately froze in the doorway, staring at the people waiting for them awkwardly.
Coulson stepped forward, as did Cutter, the reality of meeting in person drawing up the awkwardness they'd both hoped to avoid. "It's good to meet you professor." Coulson said, extending a hand to him.
Nick paused for a second before eventually shaking it. "Good to meet you too." He replied eventually, giving a forced smile.
"Sorry, Mr Coulson." Jenny interjected, giving him a sweet smile as she shuffled past Nick. "Cutter doesn't do well with government officials. Or authority figures." She added, shooting Nick a knowing look and cocking an eyebrow at him cheekily. "Or people for that matter."
"Don't worry Mrs-?"
"Miss Lewis. But you can call me Jenny."
"I wouldn't worry Jenny. Daisy wasn't particularly fond of us when we met. Once you get past the scary shady government organisation we're not so bad." He replied. "Let me introduce you to the rest of my team." Coulson turned slightly to acknowledge the rest of his team standing behind him. As soon as Coulson had removed himself from his position in front of Cutter, Fitz was immediately in his place, enthusiastically shaking his hand.
"Agent Fitz, it's a pleasure to meet you Sir, I read all about your work on the plane over here, it's incredible." Fitz spoke quickly, only letting go of Cutters hand upon completing his sentence.
"Well, uh, thank you. Always nice to meet someone who can appreciate the science. I've read about some of your work too, not a lot I'm afraid, most of it's-"
"Classified, I know." Fitz said, defeated.
"Classified." Nick confirmed. "I'm guessing thats why I've never heard of your organisation before."
"Yeah, little confused as to why we've never heard of you before, time travel's a pretty big deal." Fitz questioned.
"Privately run." Connor spoke up. "People with a lot of money tend to get the privacy they want." Connor paused and laughed a little. "Thats probably more shady than you guys." He gave another little chuckle before realising that nobody else was laughing. Abby gave him a small pat on the shoulder sympathetically.
"Yeah that's a bit shady." Fitz said, braking the silence and laughing sympathetically with Connor.
Mack was the last to enter the dimly lit break room. No mind that he was last to be checked, it had taken a much longer time to relieve him of his weapons; not that he wouldn't give them up, just that he had insisted on bringing so damn many of them.
It was already late in the evening and with all the formalities out of the way he was looking forward to sitting with his friends and enjoying a beer. To put that correctly, his formalities were over, he had a feeling that Phil, Melinda, Nick and Jenny would be talking business until well into the night.
He could already here the chatter coming from the break room before he opened the door, and upon opening it he was met with jeers from not just his team, but the ones from the ARC too. Everyone was already pretty tipsy.
"Heres the big man himself!" Fitz exclaimed clumsily chucking a beer Mack's way. "We were just talking about you."
"All good things a hope." Mack chuckled, pressing the beer bottle into the door frame before shutting it swiftly to open the bottle up. He was more than aware that he was showing off, but didn't really care all that much.
"Shotgun-axe?" Becker questioned in response to Mack.
"It's awesome, you gotta check it out." Daisy remarked, getting up from her cozy spot next to Lincoln to stand next to Mack. "But not as cool as these guns!" She laughed, pointing to his arms.
"Talking about my guns, tremors, like you're not a walking weapon, surprised you got passed security." Mack joked, before realising that he might've just outed her as inhuman to the unaware parties in the room.
His words struck something in Jess and she immediately leapt up, almost falling over as she did. "I knew it was her! The file I hacked said there was an inhuman and I knew it was you, because look at you you're so cool!" Jess slurred, the words gushing out of her like she was still an excited school girl. She wobbled all the way over to daisy, taking her hands and swinging both their arms back and forth. "Please show us!"
Daisy could only laugh at how excitable Jess was. "Okay I'm gonna show you guys, but only because she's the cutest little thing in the world." Daisy joked, pointing to Jess. Jess blew her back a kiss just as Becker plucked Jess from where she was standing and carried her back to their seat.
Daisy proceeded to fill the empty wine glass, lying discarded on the counter, with water. Drunken, quiet chants of 'Daisy' filled the room as everyone watched what she was doing. The surface of the water began to ripple and the chants grew louder, she changed frequency and splashes of water bounced up into the air and fell back into the glass, everyone continued to get louder and louder. Fuelled by alcohol and peer pressure, Daisy clenched her fist and shattered the glass on the counter in an exciting finale. Cheers filled the room and Daisy took a bow. "Ladies and gentlemen, the coolest thing you'll ever see besides dinosaurs."
Lincoln stood up, cracking his knuckles, "Come on, how about I show them a real party trick."
Jemma wrapped her lips around the shot glassed and quickly knocked it back, the loud cheering of 'shots, shots, shots' in the background egging her on. She just had the belly button left to do, so she tried as fast as she could to place the shot glass back into Daisy's cleavage. She had barely licked the salt and was about to go for the lime in daisy's mouth, but was stopped short by the cheers coming from beside her. Abby let the shot glass fall from her mouth and onto the floor.
"Yes! Champiooooonn!" Abby yelled, before throwing her arms round the now sticky tequila and salt covered Jess.
"I would've won if she hadn't kept squirming." Simmons complained playfully, poking Daisy in her exposed tummy.
"The salt bit tickles okay!" Came the muffled reply from Daisy, lime still sitting in her mouth. Lincoln removed it with his mouth before spitting it into the sink.
"I think we need a rematch." Jemma slurred, lifting a shot glass full of vodka in the air above her head.
"And I think you've had enough to drink." Fitz replied, pulling the vodka from her grasp.
Jemma took Fitz's hand, still holding the shot, and moved it to his mouth, "You haven't though.".
"Come on Leo you can do this!" Jemma yelled, promptly taking a shot. Chants of 'nerd fight' echoed from round the room, almost drowning out the music in the background.
"You got this Connor!" Abby almost screamed. A single bead of sweat ran down Connor's forehead, before it could drip to the table, Connors hand was slammed down against the cool metal.
"Leopold Fitz arm wrestle champ 2016! WOOO!" Daisy yelled, grabbing Fitz's other arm and lifting it into the air above their heads.
"Mate, how the hell are you so strong." Connor wheezed.
"Before ah wis an engineer, ah helped me uncle fix cars, if ah can deadlift an engine, ah can kick yer sorry arse at arm wrestlin'." Fitz cheered, the alcohol (and pride) in his system drawing out his Scottish accent. Simmons flung herself on him giving him a sloppy drunken kiss on his cheek.
"Alright alright, give me a go then." Becker challenged, rolling up his sleeve and getting into position.
"A'm drunk, a'm not bloody stupid, na wey a'm wrestlin' ye." Fitz slurred, gripping onto Jemma as she continued to swing off him.
"I'll do it." Mack said casually, stepping towards the table where Becker was sat.
"No thanks." Becker laughed. "If I wanted to go against someone who could fracture my arm, I'd fight her!" Becker declared, pointing to daisy.
Jess draped herself over him and kissed his face a few times. "She could do it, she could fracture your arm. I'd probably still love her." Jess sighed, before hiccuping and almost falling over. The whole room dissolved into laughter, even Becker was nearly doubled over as laughter shook his whole body.
Abby tiptoed over to the sofa, trying not to wake the various sleeping/passed out people on the floor. She handed Lincoln a bottle of water, then took a swig of her own.
"I didn't think I'd like you guys as much as I do." She whispered.
"Me neither." He replied, absent mindedly playing with Daisy's hair. She stirred a little, but remained asleep. "I hope even after all this is over we'll still keep in touch."
Abby laughed a little, then quickly covered her mouth. "We've been fighting this for years, and you've barely begun to understand theses things, let alone help us fix them." Abby placed a hand on his shoulder. "Believe me, you don't have to worry about this being over for a long time."