notes:
+ this is a slightly late birthday present for my baby sister. who requested fluff. even though i can't write fluff. to make up for the pain i put yall through.
+ title from "ho hey" by the lumineers.
Coulson made the mistake of delegating the job of setting up the records of the new Shield to Skye.
To say she took liberties is an understatement, but her own file is probably the worst.
Her blood type is hella. It originally said never under marital status, but at some point (possibly after she forgave and then began shagging Ward) it changed to blank. And under the date of birth section it just says no.
In fact, it would be impossible to find her real birth date anywhere.
She never had a (real) passport, all her IDs are fake, and her records from the orphanage show her "found" date rather than a birthday.
But Grant Ward is persistent.
She learns that after she walks in on him struggling with hospital records on the computer.
She doesn't understand at first, what he's doing, not until Coulson mentions once that he asked.
But the thing is, he's never going to find it. Because she doesn't know. (And she doesn't bother to ask her psychopathic alien daddy when he visits.)
So she's a little surprised when she wakes up one morning to find a tiny present wrapped in starry tissue paper and tied with a bow, sitting right outside her bunk.
She figures at first that it's yet another anniversary that Grant remembered and she's forgotten. The downside of having a robot for a boyfriend is that he remembers every single anniversary ever. And insists on getting her something for all of them.
With like, money. Which no one has ever done for her before.
But when she sits back on her bed and inspects the gift tag, and while it is written out in his handwriting, she realises it's something else.
Happy Birthday Skye
She blinks at it, but she's not reading it wrong.
She frowns, but pulls the paper off anyway. A little gold necklace with a pendant shaped like an S falls out onto her lap.
Still holding the necklace in her hand, she walks down to the cargo bay. She stops on the cargo bay and waits on the stairs, until he looks up from the punching bag.
'What's this?' she asks, letting the chain dangle from her fist.
'A necklace,' he says. He's got a dumb innocent look on his face.
'I got that, dumbass,' she says, trying to sound at least a little bit assertive. 'Why do I have it?'
'It's a gift.' He gives her a little smile and goes back to punching.
She sighs in exasperation and folds her arms. 'Yes,' she says. 'But why did you say it was for my birthday?'
'Because it is.'
'But August 16th isn't my birthday,' she says. 'I don't know my birthday.'
'It is,' says Grant. He stops punching and opens the doors to the lab. 'Simmons,' he says, 'isn't Skye's birthday today?'
Simmons looks up, a syringe still in one hand. 'Skye!' She beams. 'Happy birthday!'
'But today isn't my birthday,' she insists.
Simmons exchanges the syringe for a tablet. 'Wrong,' she says, pushing the tablet into Skye's hands to show her a lot of numbers that blur in front of Skye's eyes. 'I tested samples of your DNA, see? And Fitz and I ran dozens of calculations - quite groundbreaking actually - and-'
'Wait,' Skye cuts in, before Simmons can start rambling. 'So today is actually my birthday?'
Simmons nods. 'Yes. And Fitz has your present from us. Or are we doing presents later?'
'We're doing presents later,' Grant says. 'Once Trip's finished the cake.'
Skye blinks at them both. 'I...' she begins. This is big. This is pretty big. She suddenly has a real birthday, a real actual birthday, and maybe more importantly people who want to celebrate it. 'Okay,' she says. 'What do I do?'
'You're supposed to relax,' Grant says. 'I think.' (And it hits Skye right in the gut that maybe no one has ever celebrated his birthdays either.)
'Yes,' Simmons agrees. 'You're supposed to have fun.' She smiles brightly, and Skye isn't sure if she really want to know Simmons' idea of birthday cheer. Not that she has much choice.
Grant takes her back upstairs to make her breakfast. Trip is already in the kitchen, bowl under his arm, stirring furiously, but he looks up to grin and call 'happy birthday' to her.
'I said chocolate cake,' Grant says, putting a stack of waffles in front of her. 'Chocolate is good, right?' He looks worried, like he thinks he might have made the wrong choice.
She gives him a syrupy, waffley kiss. 'Yes,' she says. 'Chocolate is very good.'
By the time she's finished eating, a small mound of presents has built up on the coffee table, and she's ready to leap at them.
'Once the cake is in,' Grant says.
Skye whines.
He gives her a look, and she frowns because this must be the first time he's actually managed to refuse her. She should probably give him a medal or something.
'Fine,' she says, and scrunches her nose at him. 'What am I supposed to do until then?'
'You could help,' Trip offers, waving a wooden spoon at her, 'and then I'll get it done quicker.'
Grant looks like he's about to protest and try and make her relax, but she leaps from her stool before he can say anything.
'Here,' she says. 'I'll lick anything you're done with.' Trip hands her a bowl that would have contained melted chocolate.
'But you gotta stir the icing when you're done,' he tells her sternly (it would be more serious if it wasn't for the fact he was wearing the apron Simmons got from her granny at Christmas).
Skye nods, chocolatey finger in her mouth.
The second the cake is in the oven, Skye bounds over to the sofa where the team has been slowly gathering to wait for her.
'What first?' she asks, pretty much sitting on Grant.
'Ours!' Fitz wheels himself in front of her and dumps a little mound of brightly wrapped gifts onto her lap.
'If there's a monkey in here...' Skye warns, rattling a few.
Fitz just grins.
There is no monkey.
There is a number of gadgets that Fitz or Simmons or both explain to her at lightspeed. Then there's trinkets and food from across the world that they must have been collecting up for months. She's no idea how she's ever going to manage to eat it all.
There's two presents from Coulson, both in the official Battle of New York wrapping paper. The first is a pair of Black Widow pyjamas - a black tee with Natasha's symbol and red shorts with little black spiders.
'Do you have a matching pair?' she teases.
'No,' May says, without missing a beat. 'His are Captain America.'
Skye nods. 'Of course.'
The second gift is rectangular, hard and heavier. Skye gapes when she unwraps it. She picks up the thin little laptop and turns it over in her hands. 'Wait. Is this custom Stark Industries?'
Coulson gives her a little smile. 'I called in a few favours,' he says (possibly slightly smugly).
Skye practically flings herself at him with a hug. 'Thank you,' she says. 'I love it. Better than anything I won in a bet.'
May gets her a dress - shimmering gold and ridiculously elegant, and more than Skye would have ever expected from a woman who wears black one hundred percent of the time, but when raises her eyebrow May refuses to give explanation.
Everything from Trip is decidedly retro. There's a stack of movies that ranges from The Breakfast Club to Rear Window, a couple of mixtapes that look properly old, and a polaroid camera.
Nerd.
She's pretty sure Trip is actually about ninety inside.
Not that it stops her getting all emotional about how thoughtful his gifts manage to be.
Grant goes last. There's two more presents from him, both in starry paper like before. One holds a few old battered books.
'I never recommended you any,' he says, a little quietly. 'As your SO, I mean. These are ones I liked that I… found myself.'
What's left unsaid is: these are the ones Garrett didn't give him. This is what he found on his own, just like he's doing now with his life. But she hears it.
The second is smaller. At first Skye thinks it's just a card, but she finds two tickets from LA to Paris.
'It's a holiday,' Grant says. 'I thought… you know. We'd never had… I'd never had and I didn't think you'd ever had a real one before.'
She kisses him. 'Thank you,' she says. 'It's perfect.'
He looks surprised, so she kisses him again.
Lunch is purely chocolate cake. Trip places it in front of her - iced and covered in twenty six candles that have been arranged to spell out her name - and Simmons flicks the lights off. The team's rendition of "Happy Birthday" is spectacular, but maybe not for the right reasons.
Not that it matters.
It takes her a minute to think of something to wish for, because there are so many possibilities but at the same time she doesn't need anything. She's really, properly happy, just the way things are.
She could wish things would stay like this, but she knows that isn't how life works.
She wishes instead, that they'll be happy
She squeezes her eyes shut and blows out the candles and everyone cheers.
And Fitz asks, 'So what did you wish for?'
She swipes his arm. 'Not telling.' She sticks her tongue out and grabs the knife to cut the cake with.
May lands the plane outside LA in the evening, and they order from Skye's favourite pizza place back in her van days. It's cheap and greasy and nasty. But the good, homey kind of nasty. Or at least, she thinks so. Both Grant and Trip look at it like it might give them a heart attack right there and then. Or ruin their perfect physique (which would be a shame).
There's the standard argument over which movie to watch. Skye plays the birthday card to insist that it's a disney movie, but after that she's happy with anything.
May attempts to rule out any movie that will involve someone crying, until Fitz points out that, with Grant and Skye in the room, that rules out any movie intended for under tens. Ever.
They settle for Wall-E (which definitely doesn't fill May's criteria), but in the end it doesn't really matter, because most of the team have headed for bed before they're half way through, and it's just Skye and Grant snuggled into the sofa, under a small pile of blankets and paper.
He stops stroking her hair suddenly. 'Did you like it?' he asks. There's that worry in his voice that she wishes she could work out how to stop.
She twists round slightly in his arms to look up at him, chin tucked against his chest. He's frowning slightly. And Skye doesn't like it.
She pushes herself so she can kiss him lightly, and slides back down again, keeping one hand on his shoulder. 'Of course I did,' she says. 'I've never had a birthday before.'
'You have,' he points out. 'You just didn't know it.'
She prods him in the chest. 'Not what I meant.' She looks up again. 'I mean… nobody has ever cared enough, before, to go to all this trouble for me. You did all this. You and the team. For me.'
'Why wouldn't we?' Grant asks.
'Would you think we'd do this for you?'
'No but-'
'There you go then,' she says, cutting him off. 'We forget we have people that care about us now.'
'I care about you,' he says immediately, like it's just programmed into his brain, that he has to remind her of it at every opportunity. 'I love you.'
'I know.' Skye smiles. 'I love you too.'