NOTE: Forewarning: All the actual tech stuff in this is bullshit.
Skye makes her way through the hallways of SHIELD Investments, feeling small in the labyrinth of hallways and sharply-dressed people with Bluetooth headsets and briefcases. She slips into a small… it looks like a staff room, with a stout coffee machine and a drawer full of… candy. She frowns, staring at the pile of sweets. What kind of company keeps candy in their break rooms?
"Hello?"
She starts, eyes widening as she twists around guiltily. The man standing at the doorway is about her height, short brown hair and blue-gray eyes with a soft slant to the sides, wrinkles in the corners. He's wearing a suit but seems oddly relaxed, easy, wide stance and a slightly bemused smile quirking the corners of his mouth.
"Er." Skye slams the drawer shut, clutching her folder of files. "I… I was just…"
The man cocks his head and walks over, still smiling, and opens the drawer again. "I think the strawberry liquorice is the best." He looks through the heap, perking up when he finds a plastic-wrapped string of the stuff. "Do you want some?"
She's staring at him, she knows. "Um. Sure." The man offers her a strip and she takes it, unwrapping it and biting tentatively. He's looking at her expectantly so she smiles and says, after swallowing, "Mmm. It is good." Pausing, she tilts her head to the side and asks, "Sorry, but who are you?"
"Phil. Coulson." He's still grinning, blue eyes intrigued. "Can I ask your name?"
Phil Coulson. It suits him, she decides. "Skye. Do you work here?"
He hums. "In some capacity." Coulson bites off another piece of his candy and pops open the lid of his coffee cup. "Do you work here?"
"Actually, no." She rubs the back of her neck with her free hand. "I'm the CEO of Rising Tide Inc. and I have to pitch my… product to the SHIELD board in…" She checks her watch. "Half an hour."
Phil turns to the coffee machine and hits a few buttons, dark liquid streaming into his thermos mug. "Sounds like fun. What kind?"
"It's… a new tech thing." Skye unconsciously touches the small box in her jacket pocket, reassuring herself of its existence.
"Can I see it?"
"…If you promise not to tell."
ACACACACAC
The room is quiet except for the humming of Skye's laptop and the slight clink of the machine on the desk. The two are sitting at the small table by the window of the room. Coulson is staring, wide-eyed.
"Skye…" He says, still astonished. "This is… incredible."
She flushes, eyes flicking between Phil's enraptured face and her invention. "It's… pretty cool, I think."
The tiny metallic man on the table looks up at her, blue lights running up and down his body, and waves. She waves back and types a command into her laptop; Coulson, reading over her shoulder, sees the words "facial" and "recon" and his name.
"Here, check this out." She's smiling now, an honest grin taking up much of her face, and lifts the miniature robot up to his eye level. "He's got facial recognition and a speaker system." There's a snap from the laptop and an image of Coulson appears on the screen.
"ACTION: RECOGNIZE. IMAGE 254: PHIL COULSON. SHORT: PHIL." The robotic voice, flat but smooth, sounds through the speakers Phil can see on the shoulders of the AI.
"Technically his name is D.E.A.T.H.L.O.K.: stands for Decisive Electronic Automated Tungsten Humanoid Lithium Observatory Kinetics. But I think that's dumb, so I call him Mike." Skye continues, twisting her hands in her skirt below the table.
Coulson grins and lowers his face to the level of the humanoid, saying, "Hello, Mike."
"GREETINGS, PHIL."
He giggles. Skye blinks; honest to god giggling.
"Skye, this is phenomenal." Phil looks up at her. "I have no doubt your pitch will be great."
ACACACACAC
She lets out a breath, shuffling her feet and checking her watch.
Her presentation is two minutes.
The door creaks open: a curly-haired man walks out with a metallic box and a set of tablets, huffing relieved breaths and grinning. Skye sees him rush to meet a slight, brown-haired girl, hears an excited Scottish lilt shouting, "I got it!" The girl kisses him full on the mouth and he looks like he's seen stars. Skye smiles.
She walks in, breath quick and limbs jittery, and takes a deep breath before turning and facing the-
The…
Damn, she thinks.
ACACACACAC
"I told you it would go great!" A familiar voice sounds through the break room where Skye is sitting, wiped out from her presentation.
She looks up and frowns. "You couldn't have told me you're the CEO of this place?"
He smiles at her bashfully. "Sorry about that. " Cocking his head, he continues, "Though you did walk into the room labeled "CEO's Break Room".
ACACACACAC
"And then Fitz lit the drapes on fire, which triggered the fire alarm and the sprinklers, and everyone was drenched. And May goes, "It's a good thing we bought insurance."" Coulson laughs, eyes bright.
Skye giggles. It's a nice sound, he thinks.
ACACACACAC
When May strides into the break room, she sees something that makes her raise her eyebrows.
Phil's asleep at the table, head pillowed on his arm. Candy wrappers are strewn on the table, coffee cups resting on napkins. That's not what surprises her, though.
There's another person in the room. A girl, a little younger than Phil (although she knows exactly where his tastes run), napping right beside Coulson. May recognizes her as one of the startup CEOs who must have pitched her idea earlier in the day. Their hands are nearly touching on the table, a tiny mechanical man (her pitch, she realizes; she's the Rising Tide Girl) sleeping leaning against the side of the girl (Skye?)'s hand. A laptop that she recognizes as Phil's, and another, unfamiliar, sleek and matte black, that must be Skye's.
She smiles and walks back out the door, closing it behind her.
ACACACACAC
Phil groans, opening his eyes blearily and lifting his head from its resting place on his arms. "Urg."
Had he fallen asleep at his desk again?
There's a yawn beside him. He turns. It's Skye.
"What the-" She says, jolting upwards, confused and disoriented.
He laughs. "We must have fallen asleep."
She snorts. "More like passed out after all the debate on the subject of cyberkinetics."
"Mmm." He looks around at the mess on the table. "What time is it?"
Skye checks her watch. "Cripes. It's almost ten o'clock." She sighs. "I should get home, get some real food."
"Do you want to get some dinner" He blurts out. "I- I mean. We can go to this burger joint a few blocks down, and they have really good milkshakes…"
The girl looks at him, head cocked.
"Yeah, alright." She smiles. "I'd like that."
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