Title: Even Angels Have Their Wicked Schemes
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~1,800
Characters: Grant/Skye
Summary: She loves him, is in love with him, and it may possibly be the death of her.
A/N: I started this before episode twenty, "Nothing Personal," aired, so it ignores canon beyond that point.
Even Angels Have Their Wicked Schemes
"I want this," she'd said. She wished she'd been lying.
God, she wished that'd been a lie.
It wasn't, though. Not all of it, and yeah, maybe a larger part of it was a lie, her attempt at keeping herself alive and safe and in Grant's good graces, or whatever side of him that keeps a target off her back, too. If that means playing the innocent, naïve girl in love, then fine. She can do that.
But there was – is – still a small fraction of truth in those words and she hates herself for that, maybe more than she's hated herself for anything before, and that's saying a lot. That small ounce of truth says so much about her and she can't ignore that, because what kind of person still feels like they're in love with a man like Ward? A man whose every word she can no longer trust, who kisses her with the same lips that have probably been telling her nothing but lies from the start, and holds her hands with the same hands he's used to kill people in the name of murderers. She should feel disgusted to be with him, but he'll look at her and trace his thumb over her skin and she can't help but get those damn butterflies.
She loves him, is in love with him, and it may possibly be the death of her – or, if not her, the death of hundreds upon thousands of innocent people.
She's going to be sick.
"Hey," he says, voice low and soothing, and she feels goose bumps up her arms. They've landed – she's not sure where, because she just told him anywhere and babbled something about actually not liking heights too much, and he just smiled and patted her knee and said that yeah, he'll find them someplace remote so they can take a breather.
He's sitting on the couch and she's on his lap, and loves how his hand feels in her hair and his lips feel against the apple of her cheek.
She's an awful person.
"What?" He'd just been kissing up her throat and she hates the part of her that didn't want him to stop. He's looking at her like… "What's wrong?"
"I was about to ask you that," he admits, his lips tugging into a grin. "You tensed up."
"Oh." She laughs a little, glancing away. "I just… You're… You're really good at the, um…" She gestures to her neck, hoping she sounds as appropriately flustered as she needs to be. The actual blush on her cheeks from the fact that his lips did feel amazing against her skin probably helps.
He nods as he gets what she's trying to say, moves the hand at her hip down and rubs the side of her leg soothingly. "I can stop, if you'd like." He smiles at her, that same smile he used to give her when they sat across from each other and got too into the board games they'd play on their downtime, and for a moment, she sees her Ward. "If I get too… This is all up to you, Skye. You set the pace. You call all the shots," he tells her in his soft voice, and it's painfully ironic that she's imagined him saying those exact words a few times before.
This isn't how she wanted to hear them. The fact that she feels like part of her really, truly believes them – believes him – is just plain cruel.
"Well, in that case," she says slowly, running her fingers up his arm. "Can you get me a drink?"
He laughs a little breathlessly and looks at her almost… almost adoringly. He moves the hand in her hair, thumb smoothing along her jawline as he kisses her again, slowly and gently. "Coming right up, Agent Skye," he mumbles against her lips.
(She feels her stomach flip. She's almost positive that name is meant to mock.)
He slips out from under her, lets his hand linger against her cheek before walking away, and she brings her knees up to her chest and wraps her arms around herself as she watches him pull out a bottle of bourbon from the mini fridge. She glances towards the nearest window, and she can see out of it, but she can't recognize where they might be.
Then Ward walks back, hands her a glass, and she knows there's a very real possibility that he could've tampered with her drink, except if he'd have wanted to kill her by now, he would've. And the selfish part of her can't help but think that, even if he did do something to her drink, she wouldn't really mind. She's been shot and almost bled to death. Maybe poison is the lesser of two evils. So she takes a sip when he does and licks her lips. She hasn't had bourbon too many times before, but this one doesn't taste out of the ordinary.
Not that ordinary is terribly reliable anymore.
She blinks slowly, taking another sip, and she must look as tired as she feels because he tilts his head and asks, "Want to lie down?"
She should. She fought against it but ended up falling asleep for a bit – maybe twenty minutes, at most – while Ward was flying the bus, but she's still exhausted and as much as she doesn't want to let her guard down, he'll begin to suspect something if she keeps brushing off sleep.
"Lie down with me?" she asks.
He laughs a little. "There's no bed here where we'll fit comfortably."
"Please?"
She says it in this soft voice and gnaws on her lower lip a little, and maybe it's just her imagination, but she swears there isn't any hesitation in his eyes as he says, "Alright," and gets this grin on his face. She'd been expecting a bit more resistance, him telling her to rest and to just give him the coordinates so she can sleep while he drives.
But he's giving her this look like there's nothing else he wants to do right now than be with her.
She must be imagining things, or at least Grant is an even better actor than she thought, which is very, very possible.
He gets up, takes her glass from her hand and sets both on the coffee table, and she slips her hands in his when he holds them out for her, letting him pull her up. He drapes an arm around her shoulder and presses a kiss to her temple as they're walking towards her bunk on the bus, and she hates the feeling she gets in her stomach and the way her skin tingles where his lips had been. She slides her door open and he slips off his shoes, sits himself on her bed with his back against the headboard and his legs stretching out, and he reaches for her and says, "Come here," in his gruff voice. She's pictured this scene before, almost exactly like this, but it's all wrong and her chest feels tight because this is all so screwed up.
She will cry if she starts dwelling on it, so she pushes the thought aside and slips out of her shoes. He moves so that he's pressed into the corner of the wall, and she lays her legs out over his and rests her head against his shoulder.
It's totally quiet.
She listens to their breathing, soft and out of sync, and somehow hers sounds fairly normal despite the fact that her heart's beating way too fast and there's this chill running through her veins. She glances up and sees that Ward's closed his eyes, though she knows he's hardly asleep. She kind of wishes he was. Maybe then she could get some sleep, too.
He opens his eyes after a few more minutes, tilts his head to look down at her, smiling. "Hey," he says softly.
"Hey," she echoes. He brushes her hair gently from her face and she gets this swooping feeling. "Was it that bad?" she jokes.
"No," he replies easily, sounding sincere. "You're beautiful."
She presses her lips together, unsure of what to say to that, and he glances at her lips and actually looks like he really wants to kiss her. He grasps her chin in his fingers and she closes her eyes a second later than she should have after he's already kissing her.
He pulls her closer, pushes his other hand into her hair and lets his lips linger against hers after they've parted. "Can I tell you something without you freaking out?" he asks, his fingers sort of massaging her scalp and lulling her to sleep, but she fights against it as she holds her breath and nods. "I think… I might already be in love with you."
She tenses.
"Hey," he says softly, soothingly, rubbing his hand over her arm. "You don't have to say it back. Don't. Not until you mean it, anyway."
"I… I can't…" She shifts, her heart thumping in her chest, but then she turns to meet his eyes again and that look in them – as if he's broken and panicking, or about to, if she moves away – stops her immediately. It's stupid. She doesn't… She doesn't believe him. She can't.
(But she thinks a bigger part of her than she's willing to accept still does.)
"Right, no freaking out," she says after a moment, mostly to herself, but he gets this smile on his face and looks almost relieved. "I can't… I can't say it back."
"It's alright," he tells her, and there she goes again, believing him, if only for a moment. "I just needed to tell you."
She nods faintly, swallows and grasps onto the material of his shirt, bringing their lips together again.
She feels her eyes wet with tears, and when one rolls down her cheek, he brushes it away with the pad of his thumb. She grips onto his shirt a little tighter and… she's not really sure what she's trying to do. Maybe she just wants to kiss him and believe him and feel like things are the way they're supposed to be, just for a little bit, while they're alone and she can ignore reality for right now. He makes it so easy to. He shifts gently them, pressing her down against the mattress and kissing her a little harder, as if he can't get enough or doesn't want to stop. She feels her entire body tingling, wanting him, wanting more, and squeezes her eyes shut and pushes away the part of her that feels disgusted with what she's doing.
His fingers trace the skin over the waistband of her jeans and she makes this noise, opens her eyes to find him staring at her.
"I want this," she whispers, and god, she wishes that was a lie.