She hadn't stopped thinking until then, but not now. She didn't think. She had spent hours going over it, going over what she'd realized. The feelings that had pleaded for recognition as she waited for death. She was in love. Not with her best friend, not her partner in science or the new agent but the girl with the computer. The girl she had nothing in common with but somehow couldn't live without. She hadn't realized then, when Tripp had asked, just why that was. But sitting there, watching the ocean swallow their lives, it finally dawned on her.
Every second of it.
The way her heart pounded at a simple glance. The pooling sweat in her hands as a result of a smile. The rambling that somehow found a way to be even worse than usual because she hugged her. Because she pulled her in until her head swirled with her scent, and her warmth, and her everything.
So when she saw her, when the hanger opened and she saw her face – her mind went blank.
She didn't thin
She acted.
She surged forward. Onlookers be damned, Jemma threw herself in Skye's arms. If she'd been thinking. If she'd been using the brain she was commended for she would have simply hugged her. She didn't. She didn't ease into it. She didn't let the question linger in her gaze as she gently leant forward. She didn't rest a tentative hand on the hacker's cheek – an invitation they both would understand. She didn't do any of it because she'd shut it off. She's shut of the part of her brain that followed logical reason. It was pure instinct now. An instinct that had her catching Skye's lips with her own the moment their bodies met.
It was in that next moment that she came to her second realization – she had been waiting to do that from the moment the girl stepped onto the bus. She had been waiting for the slight hitch of breath that came from surprised, tense lips. She had been waiting for that next second when an expulsion of breath was followed by Skye's mouth slanting over her own, moving in ineffable tandem. She had been waiting to analyse the quintessential contours of the hacktavist's face with unquestioned fingers and palms as she slid them around her neck pulling her closer than the laws of nature should have allowed. She had been waiting to feel warmth spread like flames through her veins as Skye's hands bypassed her shirt and lingered on the skin of her lower back. She'd been waiting to feel the burn of her lungs as she finally gasped for air, and for the perplexed look on the other girls face as she furrowed her brow and tried to comprehend exactly what just happened.
"W-wha-Why?" The words tumbled from Skye's lips as Simmons extracted herself from her grasp with a shaky breath, and a hand already running through her disheveled tresses as she stumbled for viable explanation as to why she had hurled herself onto Skye without so much as a word.
"Fitz shared something with me and I came to the conclusion that I had a similar confession, an albeit unexpected one, though I didn't share it with him because that would have been unnecessarily cruel to the boy and awkward because I hadn't really realized it myself until that point. I actually hadn't intended to act upon the epiphany but that plan failed quite epically really since well – here we are. With my lips on yours" Skye tilted her head thoughtfully at the ramblings of the scientist as she tried to decipher the mumblings and off tangent comments.
"If I'd known you felt the same I would have done this a long time ago" She tugged the Simmons back in till their lips met in a chaste kiss that somehow sent Jemma's find reeling – even with the simplicity of the act.
"What else would you have done?" She heard herself asking in a husky tone that she didn't even know she had the ability to utter.
"Well I would have caught you unexpectedly in the lab and pushed you up against the counter before I-"
"Stop!" The voice that was distinctly Coulson's made both of the girls whip their heads around to see both him and May still standing directly next to them. Simmons had completely disregarded their presence the moment her lips met Skye's. "It was cute at first and I'm happy for both of you. Really. But I do not want to know any details, especially not one's that involve communal areas on the bus that are surrounded by windows and are easily visible if the hanger were to open" Simmon's felt the other woman's chuckles as it vibrated in her chest and a smile of her own played upon her lips at the agitated look on the man's face. He walked away muttering and May quickly followed in his wake.
"You owe me fifty bucks" Came from May when she finally caught up with Coulson and he begrudgingly slammed it into her open palm as she sent a wink back to the girls.
"I didn't think I was that obvious" Skye mumbled.
"Neither did I" Jemma agreed.
"Yeah, you don't count."
"What? Why not?" Incredulous questions were thrown Skye's way.
"Because you're not exactly observant with these kind of things 'Little Miss I-had-to-almost-die-to-realise-I'm-in-love-with-you'" Was Skye's reply.
"That so doesn't count, that was denial and self-preservation at work" She raised her eyebrows inquisitively.
"Self preservation?" She asked.
"It's an idea presented by Sigmund Freud in his initial period of work. Its simplest definition talks of the set of behaviors by means of which people attempt to preserve their own existence and the physical processes that establish these particular behaviors. Freud associated these behaviors with the sexual instincts. He claimed-"Skye lifted her hand to halt Jemma's ramblings once again.
"Stop right there. One, I know what it means I was simply questioning the idea of you having to preserve yourself. Two, all I heard was sexual and now all I can think about is the actions that I didn't get to finish telling you about" She punctuated her words with kisses to Simmons neck, whose words got stuck in her throat the moment soft lips grazed over her skin in hushed whispers. She couldn't bring herself to question the open plan of the bus, or the fact that the lab was made of windows, or the fact that the hanger was still open, or the fact that it definitely wasn't sound proof and she was in no mood to keep a lid on things.
No, she didn't question any of it. Neither did Coulson. Although the fact that he didn't look either of them in the eye for a week confirmed any and all suspicions that he had every clue as to what had happened on his bus.
And on Lola.