A/N: Once again, we're ignoring that whole "Real S.H.I.E.L.D."/Afterlife thing.
Skye has never driven out of the Playground before. Every mission she has been a part of has required them to fly out, so she was fairly surprised when May told her that she would be spending the day accompanying Coulson on a "special errand" to a town a few hours from base. Truth be told, she had been a little disappointed when she learned she was going on this little excursion. She had been looking forward to the training session on the flight simulator she and May had planned for today; but she can't be too upset about it, not when the weather is this nice and Coulson lets her roll her window down so she can enjoy the fresh air as they speed across valleys and into civilization.
It hasn't escaped her attention that since Puerto Rico he has been making an effort to spend more time with her. At first she assumed it was to keep an eye on her and her newfound abilities, and she is sure that was largely the case at first, but since retrieving her from her solitary stay in Fury's secret cabin Skye has started to think that his motives aren't solely founded on concern. Recently, Coulson has made it a point to have lunch with her at least twice a week, just the two of them in his office. She brings him lunch and they sit and eat and gossip and she gets to see more of her D.C. and a little less of the not-as-much-fun Director. She likes it.
She likes this, too – driving through the countryside with D.C., the sun shining, wind blowing, and old tunes quietly streaming from the radio.
They drive for a little more than an hour and half until they reach a moderately sized city Skye has occasionally heard May and Bobbi talk about in passing. She can sense that they are nearing their final destination and curiosity is starting to really eat away at her newfound patience because no one has briefed her on what they are doing in a town almost two hours from base or why Coulson is sitting in the driver's wearing a small, almost happy smile and jeans.
She didn't know he even owned a pair of jeans.
"So, considering that neither you nor May briefed me on this field trip, I am going to assume that this isn't actually a mission?" She finally asks as they turn into the city's shopping district.
"Didn't she tell you we were running a special errand?"
"I thought it was a code for something else," she says, looking down at her clothes with a little pout. If she had known this little trip wasn't mission related she wouldn't have worn all black. "So, what are we doing? Going to a special spy post office? Paying special spy bills? Picking up dry cleaning?"
"We're picking up parts for Lola," he chuckles. "She needs certain specific parts and there's a guy who has one or two we can use."
He makes two more turns before expertly parallel parking in front of a rather nondescript boxing gym nestled in between a bridal boutique and a hair salon.
"Just follow my lead," he tells her.
The gym is larger than it looks from the outside and mostly occupied by muscular, sweaty men and a handful of equally muscular, sweaty women. There are posters from old boxing matches hung on the walls, a lot of them in Russian, so Skye isn't all that surprised that they are greeted by a grey-haired bear of a man with a heavy Russian accent.
"Yuri, I see you're doing pretty well for yourself here," Coulson says with his friendliest smile. "I love the shirt. Only you could pull it off the way you do."
Yuri is wearing a very loud Hawaiian shirt covered in drawings of sunburned penguins and he is not pulling it off at all; but Skye does as she's told and follows Coulson's lead, smiling and nodding in feigned appreciation. Yuri eyes her curiously for a moment before turning to Coulson with a cheeky grin that makes her stand a little straighter. Skye doesn't speak or understand Russian but she understands that he's talking about her and even manages to catch him say May's name when he nods in her direction.
It's when her S.O. is mentioned that Coulson's friendly smile becomes just a little strained and there is a look of almost tired resignation in his eyes when he takes a crisp twenty dollar bill from his wallet and hands it to her.
"It's been a while since breakfast, why don't you go and see what that food truck across the street has to offer while Yuri and I catch up?"
She knows he can take care of himself, has seen him in combat first-hand, but that doesn't mean she stops worrying about him; and Yuri is twice his size.
"Don't fret," the burly Russian tells her, "you will get your папочкa back in one piece."
Coulson gives her shoulder a reassuring pat before gently nudging her towards the door. "I'll be out in ten minutes."
Skye, once again, does as she's told and buys herself an order of curly fries and slightly impatiently waits across the street. As she licks the salt from her fingers she thinks of how proud May will be when she learns how well she has been following orders today; that is, if Coulson doesn't somehow get himself beaten into pulp in a boxing gym she is about ninety percent sure is actually front for the Russian mob.
After about five minutes of waiting she starts to wonder if these car parts are worth the trip, but three and a half minutes after that a victorious and slightly disheveled Coulson finally walks out of the gym sporting a bruise on his right hand and holding a duffel bag in his left.
"So, I take it you got the parts?"
He looks very pleased with himself as he swings the bag across his back and Skye starts to truly understand why May tends to roll her eyes and sigh a lot more when he's around.
"It's adorable how much you look like May right now." He stuffs an entire curly fry into his mouth. "God, it's been years since I had some of these. Why do they taste better than regular fries? Is it the curl? Has to be the curl." He takes another two. "When we were in the Academy, we used to go to this little diner down the road, and they had the best curly fries. Oh Skye, you would have loved it. Their burgers were okay, but their curly fries and milkshakes were to die for. May was obsessed with their banana milkshake."
Skye loves to hear stories about May and D.C.'s old missions and their days as cadets in the S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy. May generally talks about that time in relation to her training, usually explaining how she had learned using different equipment and how they were adapting Skye's training to fit their limited means. Sometimes Coulson does the same, but usually, when he talks about the Academy, it's to tell her stories about youthful antics and pranks gone either very wrong or fantastically right. Either way, she soaks them up and files them away, preferring them over the half-made up stories Fitz-Simmons sometimes still tease her with.
She listens intently as Coulson tells her about the time he watched May go through 4 milkshakes, two burgers, and an order of curly fries in less than an hour just to prove someone wrong. In fact, she is so captivated by his description of May's epic upchucking that she almost doesn't notice him leading them away from the SUV and towards a lonely little record shop.
"Is this another errand for Lola?" Skye asks, following him past the somewhat dusty CDs and surprisingly less dusty vinyl towards the back of the store where he starts browsing through old band shirts.
"Nope."
It doesn't take him very long to find what he seems to be looking for as he only flips through a handful of t-shirts before pulling out an off-white number with what looks like a bird with metal wings on the front of it.
"I didn't know you were such a big Rolling Stones fan," she says once she gets a good look at shirt as Coulson tries to measure it by draping it over his chest. "Please tell me you're augmenting your wardrobe because it is not right that I have basically lived with you for two years and this is the first time I'm seeing you wear jeans."
"It's not for me, it's for May," he explains, already moving towards the register. "Besides, I'm more of a Kinks fan."
"Ooh, a present for May! What's the occasion?"
He grins and shakes his head. "You're not the only one disappointed that today's flying lesson got canceled. I told her I'd bring her back something to make up for stealing you away."
Something in her chest flutters at his words. Skye knows that May cares about her, she doesn't doubt it, not anymore; but in the back of her mind she always wondered if maybe May was at least a little bit miffed about having to train her and spend all of this time with her when she could have been doing other more important senior agent/deputy director things. Hearing that May actually wants to spend time with her, however, quiets those concerns and leaves her feeling a very nice sort of ache. By the time they start making their way out of town and back to the Playground Skye has to fight to keep her tremors in check because, humming along to the radio with him, she comes to understand that Coulson didn't really need her to come out with him. This trip wasn't connected to S.H.I.E.L.D. business and she wasn't his back-up; all she did was carry a shopping bag and keep him company because that's all he really wanted from her today – her company.
The sun is just starting to set as they pull into the garage where they find May patiently waiting for them.
"Judging from that dumb smile on your face, I'm going to guess that you got everything you wanted to get."
"And more," Coulson says, still looking very pleased with himself as Skye ceremoniously hands her the plastic shopping bag.
May accepts the bag with a carefully raised eyebrow and then hums in appreciation at what she finds inside before turning her attention to Skye.
When she speaks her tone is the same one she uses when asking for mission debriefs, but her eyes are soft and warm and Skye knows that the question she poses is an important one.
"Did you have fun?"
"Yes. We had curly fries," Skye answers, mimicking her. Coulson practically beams.
A week has gone by and the duffel bag full of mysterious car parts is still tucked away in a corner of Coulson's office and Skye still hasn't seen May wear her new shirt. Considering that he's a pretty busy guy, the first observation isn't really much of a surprise; she is, however, a little disappointed about the latter.
Maybe she's worn it to bed. The shirt did fit Coulson fairly well which means that it would be large on May, and she does seem to prefer wearing loose fitting clothes as pajamas.
Watching May set up the flight simulator, Skye wonders if maybe Coulson should have kept looking for a shirt in black.
May, on the other hand, tinkers with the computer settings and hums.
"You got me so I can't sleep at night," Skye eventually sings along. "Is that The Stones?"
May shakes her head and the right side of her mouth is upturned just slightly. "The Kinks."
A/N 2: As always, this is completely unbeta'd.
Title is taken from "You Really Got Me" by The Kinks. It's also the song May hums at the end.