Protection
Words: 409
Couple: Grant Ward and Skye
TV Show: Agents of SHIELD
Disclaimer: All characters your recognise belong to Marvel.
AU.

…

Before HYRDA, she hadn't noticed it.

After HYDRA, sometimes in high stress situations is was the only thing she noticed.

His compulsive need to keep her safe. His need to reach out and grab her hand to remind himself that she's still there. That she's safe.

If she'd known at first, a part of Skye would have been a mix of offended and repulsed. Offended that he didn't believe she could look after herself, despite the evidence that she had been doing so for years prior to SHIELD picking her up and away from her van. Repulsed with the knowledge that a person who had done the things he'd done was trying to be near her.

Before HYDRA, she reminds her guilty conscience. Before he risked so much to pull her from a collapsing building despite nick fury's orders that he was to protect from a distance. Not to interfere.

Now, Skye notices how he impulsively tries to keep her within grabbing distance on missions. How he angles his body in such a way that he could shield her from anything that came towards her. How he stupidly puts her own needs before his own, knowing that he's meant to be selfishly doing anything to further is own recovery.

It doesn't mean that she doesn't welcome this protective side of him, Skye found that it was a lot more subtle than Phil Coulson's own attempts at protecting her. Something that the new director of SHIELD has admitted he was over-doing it, but he wouldn't quit. Grant Ward, while being this protective as an attempt to reassure himself that she was okay, knew that she could only take so much.

Grant Ward, in all of this, knew that she could only be benched so many times before the protectiveness streak was no longer "cute". He had learnt very quickly after his rule-breaking, scandalous and heroic episode that there was a time to back off and a time to press her further.

Skye can only assume that this understanding the specialist has is the absolute only reason that she lets it go on. That she doesn't push him away.

In those high-stress situations where all she can think about is how he's going to do something stupid in order to do his job, she allows this. Because the hacker is 100% sure that he knows that she's going to do the exact same thing if it means protecting him as well.

…

My name is Paige and I can write about 500 words of skyeward mush in an instant but I cannot write 1000 words for a creative response (*cough cough* FAN FREAKING FICTION *cough cough*) to 'The Cat's Table'. Priorities are winning man.

I also completely understand that I haven't updated "Us" in like forever and it's not the only thing that's been abandoned in this crazy rush to finish assignments for year 12 classes but I'm getting there. Very. Very. Very. Slowly. But at least I'm making an attempt, huh?

Thank you!

All mistakes are mine.

Review?