It's Christmas, 2014.
SHIELD is opperating in the shadows, slowly getting put together. Fury passed the title to Coulson and he had been running around the world, tracking loyal agents and calling them back since then.
Of course HYDRA and Natasha throwing all SHIELD files to the Internet revealed his status as alive and the Avengers had found out.
Tony Stark was being insufferable, even after the rest accepted him back as an ally and agreed to help SHIELD, and of course guilt-tripped Coulson to attend his Christmas party, with the only request his name didn't show on the name list.
(It was one of those fundraisers and the only people he knows in there are Stark and Pepper.)
Not wanting to suffer through it alone, Phil dragged his seven closest agents.
So here he was slinking in the back and trying to avoid Stark, watching his friends have a peaceful moment and celebrate Christmas and drinking eggnog in peace.
Until a young woman in a lovely pink dress came and stood with him.
Coulson looks at her, the profiler in him already in work, and puts her in her twenties and not one of Stark's assosiates.
She stared back at him.
"Yes?" he asks at last, once he's certain she's not a threat.
"You've been standing here all night." she says.
"I didn't know it was against the rules."
She rolled her eyes.
"No, but I noticed Stark had been looking in your direction with a rahter evil mischievousness."
Phil quickly and discreetly looks and, yes indeed the look on Stark's face doesn't bode well. He looks like he's waiting to pounce the moment she leaves. He sighed.
"Dance with me. That should make him leave you alone for a bit." she suggested.
"What – ?" he berely gets out before she drags him to the dance floor.
They dance for quite a while, until the young woman pulls them aside. She checked her clutch for her phone and looked up apologetically.
"I'm sorry. I have to go. It's imortant. You think you can fend off Stark for the rest of the night?" she asks amused.
"Yeah, no worries." he waves her off.
She looks up suddenly.
"Mistletoe." she says softly, a little surprised about it.
Phil looks up, too.
"Huh."
"You got to kiss, you know." Stark suddenly appeared beside them, with a shit-eating grin on his face.
Phil looked at the woman and she looked back. She shrugged not uncomfortable with keeping to the tradition. He leans closer and presses his lips to hers and he can feel her kiss back, a little harder than him and it makes him blush.
And then she's gone and he's left staring at her retreating form while Stark goes on beside him how he will e-mail him the picture of them kissing and their dancing video.
It didn't take Stark more than two days to ask for his help finding that same woman, because she not only was a gatecrasher but also a hacker and a damn good one, since she managed to not alert JARVIS.
"Say I find her. What do you want to do to her, Stark? I somehow don't think offering her a job will be interesting to her." Coulson asked finally, during the third day of the search.
"Oh, I'm gonna find out what she came looking for, hacking my system. Then I'll let you deal with her depending on what she did. Otherwise, to the police, if she doesn't take the job." the millionaire shrugged.
Phil hummed.
"I've got a lot of things on my plate, Stark. I will keep an eye, but I won't be working overtime for this." he told him.
"Fine. I'll wait." Stark said dramatically.
"Bye, Stark." Coulson ended the call and sat back on his chair.
It's February 25th and they are on a mission, having found intel on some HYDRA agents movement and he notices the beat-up van around the corner, almost hidden in an alley. He finds it suspicious that it's so close to their mission location and once they had taken care of HYDRA – they were trying to clear out an lold CENTIPEDE lab – Phil decides to check the van.
"Coulson?" Trip asked following him.
"That van." he nodded towards it. "It's too close and I want to make sure it's not connected to HYDRA."
"I'll back you up."
"No. You can go ahead. I think I'll be fine." Coulson said quietly.
Trip stared at him for a moment before nodding and leaving.
Coulson stepped beside the van and in a swift movement he had dragged the sidedoor open.
"Holy shit!" someone exclaimed from inside.
Coulson frowned, because really, he must be imagining things.
"Do you know how to knock?!" the woman bristled, scrambling to get to her feet and meet face to face with her intruder. "It can't be hard to knock a door and check everyone's in, can it?"
And then she looked up and froze.
Phil was in the same predicament, as he too didn't know what to say. The chances were astronomical.
"Oh." she breathed, surprised. "It's you."
"Hi." he said lamely.
She smiled.
"You weren't looking for me, were you?"
"No. Just making sure this van didn't have anything to do with CENTIPEDE." he admited.
"Yeah, not likely. I've been trying to get under their radar for a year now." she said. "Uh, wanna come in?" she invited him.
"Sure." he climbed in and she pushed the door closed.
"I never got your name." she said. "I hacked into the hall's security system afterwards, trying to find who was the unlucky guy Stark wanted to embarrass so much." she looked amused. "Gatecrasher." she callded him.
"You're one to talk. Stark knows you hacked him. He wasnts to know why and what did you see."
"Trying to get into SHIELD, actually." she shrugged.
"And why are you telling me?"
"Because you look like SHIELD." she told him.
Coulson stiffened.
"Relax. I'm not trying to kill or take you hostage."
Coulson smirked a little and relaxed.
"You couldn't?" he asked,playfully.
"I could try, but I hardly think I could do much."
"Phil Coulson." he gave her his hand.
"Skye." she shook it.
"Why do you want in?"
"I think you'll like what I've got on CENTIPEDE and HYDRA." she said. "And I think there's someone tailing me." she added.
"How can you tell?"
"Tall guy, broody, brown hair, dead eyes, good looking. He's been lurking around here the past week, always near the dinner I haunt." she said, looking out of the windshield. "There he is." she nodded out.
Coulson looked discreetly and stiffened.
"How long does he stay around?"
"Half an hour at most." she said. "You know him?"
"Traitor." Coulson growled.
Skye laid a hand on his shoulder and gave it a gentle squize.
They waited until McDeadeyed left half an hour later. On his insistance, they waited half an hour more, while he checked the van for a tracker – 'just to be safe' as he had said.
Once he was certain they were ready and still unseen and no one was going to follow them to base, he offered to drive them. Skye put her foot down.
"This is my van and my home. No one drives Cloud unless it's me. You just being in means I trust you enough." she said, sitting behind the wheel. "You navigate." she smirked over at him, as he settled in the passenger seat.
"Fine." he let her drive. "Nice name for the van by the way." he smirked back.
Skye grinned, her eyes on the road.
"It's a good name." she agreed. "Good for puns, too. Skye's Cloud."
Coulson directed which way to go and Skye was mostly quiet, huming to the radio.
"So. What's the plan?" she asked.
"Plan?"
"You know, we kissed under the mistletoe."
"Yes. So?"
"I kinda think I like you." she glanced at him. "I don't get caught under the mistletoe with everyone or anyone. I know how to avoid attention when I gatecrash millionaires' parties."
"You do that often, gatecrash parties?"
"Yep. Trying to make sure they are not trying for world domination." she looked over at him again and caught the charmed little smile on his lips. "You didn't answer me, though. You and me?"
"We'll be protecting you, at least until he isn't trying to tail you and CENTIPEDE or HYDRA aren't trying to get to you." he said seriously. "Last time I developed a relationship with someone I was supposed to protect, she ended up believing I am dead."
"And if I joined SHIELD?" Skye asked.
"I'd be your boss." he shrugged.
"You know you aren't downright saying 'no', right?" she smiled a little.
"I know." he smirked.
"I like you." she nodded once, as if she came to an agreement. "And you like me and you're curious about me. That's why you're so relaxed and letting me drive you to your secret base, isn't it? You tried to track me and found nothing." she smirked. "You're living dangerously, Phil."
"Thank you."
Skye laughed quietly.
"It's going to be hard not attacking your mouth."
"We shall practice some self-restraint in public." he said with a smirk.
"Oh, I guess that answers my question." she said,before leaning over and pressing a kiss to the corner of his mouth. "Why not take advantage of now?" she asked at his raised eyebrow.
"Because you're driving and if I started I don't think I'd be able to stop soon."
"Thought of me much in these two months, haven't you?"
"Possibly too much and not enough."
Skye hummed.
They reached the Playground – as Phil called the secret base – around late evening and her entrance was met with some surprise and some suspicion at first. Skye wasn't surprised by that. The agents were looking after their boss and themselves.
(What was a surprise was Phil being actually the Diretor and not just some agent, as she had assumed.)
It didn't take long for Skye to actually become part of SHIELD, become an agent herself, as she came to love everyone in Phil's close circle of friends-team members and that love was surprisingly mutual.
As for her and Phil, well, the team had seen the two of them under the mistletoe. No one really batted an eye when they announced they'd be seeing each other, nor did they seem surprised or against it when Skye moved in his bedroom.