Grant Ward is good at a great many things: games, sparring, and even cooking, to name a few. But one thing he's absolutely, utterly horrible at is asking people out.
Ward likes to chalk it up to a lack of experience — not being able to give out your name for fear of breaking your cover isn't a great way to get a date — but there's more to it than that. He's tried again and again, used every line in the book and some that aren't. ("Being a secret agent means I have to work out" isn't as effective as he expected it to be. He's not sure why, because that's a pretty great line.)
Yet when it comes down to it, Grant Ward is just really awkward.
But nervous as he may be, Ward is determined. So he goes to ask her out one day when she's chilling in her bunk, doing who knows what on that computer of hers.
"Hey," he starts quietly, and she looks up sharply. Ward is never anything less than perfectly confident, perfectly composed, and his nervous interjection is worrisome.
"Hey," she echoes.
He's rubbing the back of his neck all weirdly, and Skye cranes her head to see if he's been infected by some strange personality changing fungus or something. (He hasn't. Yet.)
"I, uh, wanted to ask you something. I've been meaning to for a while, but I haven't had the chance, and…" A small crash sounds in the kitchen, breaking Ward from his trance.
He doesn't finish, but instead blurts something about "was that an earthquake I felt?" and runs away, leaving Skye to wonder what kind of earthquakes can be felt on an airborne plane. (None.)
It's weird, certainly, but not the weirdest thing that's happened to her on the plane — she thinks Fitz teaching Simmons how to yodel takes the cake — so Skye returns to shopping for Ward's birthday present until it's time for training.
She changes and makes her way down to the hanger, and soon enough she's punching rhythmically to his count, eyes narrowed and alert, when he stops. Skye flails.
"Why'd you stop?"
Ward's eyebrows raise like he hadn't even noticed his lapse, and he speaks without even addressing her question. "I never finished talking to you earlier, and I meant to say that I've been spending a lot of time-"
There's another crash. He mentally curses whoever's in the kitchen. Then he verbally curses them.
"Shit. Damn, I should, um, go check that out. Got to make sure that wasn't a- a sudden hailstorm or anything."
He leaves, and Skye goes to look out the window to confirm that they're above the clouds. (They are.)
The cause of all the crashing becomes abundantly clear when she makes her way upstairs and sees two flustered scientists standing in the kitchen. It's funny, because cooking is quite often like a basic lesson in chemistry, but Jemma Simmons may be the worst cook Skye's ever seen. (Besides herself, of course.)
Fitz has tried to remedy the situation, so there's only a thin wisp of black smoke instead of a billowing cloud. It's almost miraculous. And not as miraculously, Ward has taken over the cleaning effort — so typical, she smirks — and is busily placing pots and pans into the sink.
"R2," Skye calls. "Need some help?" His eyes widen at the sight of her, and she wonders if she accidentally put her underwear on outside of her pants or something of that ilk.
"Not with this," he finally replies. "But, uh, I did want to ask if you-"
"Whoa!" Fitz releases an apparently still hot pan from his grasp, inspecting the burn. The metal clangs against the floor.
"Let me guess," Skye grumbles. "We're in the path of a tsunami."
And business goes back to normal after that: Skye returns to her shopping, Ward to his weather monitoring, and Fitz and Simmons to their sciencing (she's still not quite sure what they're working on, only that it's probably mind-blowingly awesome and definitely complicated).
Their dinner plans are somewhat ruined by the inescapable fact that that same dinner is a pile of charred, black dust now. Skye would offer to help make something new, but Coulson is shaking his head no before she even fathoms the idea.
So they land for pizza. (May is a little annoyed at having to literally land an airplane to get a pizza, but it's that or Skye's stash of candy, and Skye's not telling anyone about that just yet.)
Skye gets two slices of Hawaiian and Ward gets pepperoni. "I love Hawaiian," he attempts, and she glances pointedly at his plate. "…And pepperoni! I also like y-"
Fitz drops his plate.
"I heard there was-" Ward exclaims, and Skye nods.
"A tornado warning? Sure."
She finishes eating with Coulson, talking to him about all the cool gadgets in his office. (Ward interjects a few "I have cool gadgets too!" but the tech geek in Skye is too entranced to notice.)
And they're on their way back to the bus when Fitz — whose middle name may be any word in the history of language except Subtle — essentially yells, "So, have you asked her out?"
Everything clicks.
Ward's looking like he's just been struck by lightning (which isn't surprising, given the recent weather patterns) as he glances back at Skye.
He looks so adorably nervous that she wants to pinch his cheeks but, figuring that wouldn't go over too well, Skye settles for a blinding grin instead.
"Why didn't you just ask?"
"I… don't know." It's as much a question as it is a confession, and she acknowledges this by lacing her fingers with his.
"I would've said yes, you know. I mean, I'm saying yes right now, if you haven't noticed."
Ward does notice, and he decides that no hurricane, flood, or sudden avalanche could make him forget.