Genre: Friendship
Summary: Fitz is feeling a little down after a mission and Coulson knows how to cheer him up.
Maybe it had been luck that I'd turned around when I did, maybe it was pure intuition. Either way, the sight of one of Fitz's little drone things (Dwarfs, he called them?) was just the beacon of hope I'd needed as reassurance. They were fine. Of course they were; they were top of the line agents. And obviously they'd devised a plan to get us out of this mess (alive). I hadn't really been expecting them to blow a giant hole in the side of my plane, but everything had worked out in the end. Fury had torn into me a little, but I didn't take it personally.
Now, we had nothing to do but rest for a couple of days until the Bus was back in operation. Everyone was in good spirits except Fitz, who was off sulking because S.H.I.E.L.D. wouldn't let him re-design the labs or really have any input on the repairs at all. I had just the thing to cheer him up.
I walked into the room silently, with the small box behind my back. I hoped I didn't look too suspicious. The young engineer glanced over his shoulder once, before returning his attention to the large metal box on the table. As I got closer, I recognized it as the one where he stored his drones. There was an empty slot.
"Which one was it?" I carefully asked, trying to sound more interested than I actually was.
"Sneezy." Fitz muttered, "Number 05."
"Oh." I hummed, doing my best to sound sympathetic over the loss of an inanimate object. "If it weren't for… Sneezy… we might not all be here right now." This got a small smile out of him, but it disappeared as quickly as it'd come.
"I'm responsible for keeping them safe." Fitz closed the storage box. "I knew that the flight generators wouldn't be powerful enough to fight against…" He trailed off. "It ah, hit a piece of debris on the way out; I lost control of its movements but the camera was still intact. Soon as it hit the water, feeds just cut out. Never got around to water-proofing them." Coulson had a feeling that Fitz was talking mostly to himself than anything. Their conversation wasn't exactly going as Phil had hoped. So far he'd only managed to put the engineer in a worse mood than before.
"It would have a tracking device though, wouldn't it?"
"Of course," The Scot scoffed as if it was an obvious answer, "But we're not over S.H.I.E.L.D. protected waters so retrieval is next to impossible."
"Hmm." Now would be as good of a time as any. "I'm sorry about that." Then, after a slight pause, "I have something for you." I held out the small box to him. Fitz took it without a word, looking at me questioningly. "Just open it." He did as he was told and to say he was shocked would be an understatement.
"Sneezy!" Fitz exclaimed, snatching his lost drone from the packaging. "How did you-"
"The Peruvian Government had to go fish bodies out of the ocean. They saw this floating nearby and figured they'd return it along with… other means of thanks." But that was classified. "I thought it'd cheer you up." The wide grin plastered across my engineer's face said it all. I couldn't help but smile in return. I was happy when my people were happy. Most of the time.
"Thank you." He still seemed a little stunned. Fitz was inspecting the damages when someone walked past the doorway behind me. "Wait-" He leapt past me, scrambling to catch up with the passerby. "Simmons!" By now he had rounded the bend, drone in hand. "Look who came-" He was out of easy earshot now and I didn't bother try to eavesdrop. I had better things to do anyways. I was just glad I could uplift the engineer's mood.
A/N: I don't know how often I'll be able to update, but I figured I might as well post anyways. All new chapters will be located first at tumblr blog phitzhq