I.
Skye doesn't meet Grant Ward in the best of ways, so it feels a little harsh to categorize him as Robot too soon. But then he doesn't get any nicer, and she's left wondering if that small frown was just a permanent part of his face.
She makes some joke about how people always say that you can get stuck cross-eyed but no one had warned her about the dangers of grumpiness, and the frown just deepens. So she waves her hands in surrender and leaves to go see if anyone in the damn world has a sense of humor anymore.
Later that day when he's wounded and she's tempted to wrinkle her nose in disgust because injuries have never been her thing, she's surprised to see blood and not wires peeking out. He has an almost pained look on his face, and she would've felt bad had he not been glaring at her moments before. She rolls her eyes. He rolls his.
She gives in and nicknames him Robot.
II.
Then Ward is made her SO, and Skye gets a new name for him.
He wishes it annoyed him more than it did. Yet it doesn't, because it's much more friendly than what she's called him before and anything is better than Robot. So he puts up with it reluctantly, painfully aware of the number of times he's had to turn to hide a smile.
The rest of the team has noticed too, and they smile in recognition of a shared joke whenever the nickname is spoken.
The name itself doesn't bother him. Her jokes are starting to. Somewhere along the way it occurs to her that SO could also stand for Significant Other, though who would use that he's not sure. That, like any other logical argument, doesn't stop her.
III.
Skye doesn't call Ward anything for a while.
It's by choice, though the choice was made for her, because he's been pointedly ignoring her ever since the whole traitor thing happened.
Occasionally he'll enter the room and she'll be surprised to find words on her lips, but then his face will harden and she will remember why her nights have been so sleepless lately. More often than not one of them will get up to leave. It's usually her.
It takes him longer, so much longer than everyone else to forgive her. It's a storm cloud above her when her interactions with the rest of the team bring sun. She doesn't even realize that he had until he knocks on her door one morning and she answers with a quiet "hey" and a silence that asks more than a nickname ever could. And he says "hey" back.
IV.
Skye is back to the robot names. It's R2D2 now, and she says it as much as possible just to prove her theory that he wasn't going to stop her. She is right.
It started during a night of SO-rookie bonding complete with a supposedly mandatory Star Wars marathon, when he is surprised to note their shared affinity for the squeaky robot. She teases him, per usual, saying that he must feel so similar to the little fellow, and he can't even bring himself to glare in response. So she laughs instead.
And then he finds himself wrapping his arm around her shoulders, and she finds herself leaning into his embrace, and they both find themselves liking the name R2 quite a bit.
V.
Ward has never heard Skye call him Grant before. She does it for the first time against his lips, as much a whisper as a gasp while they break for air. It makes him feel silly, all butterflies and flushed cheeks and, wow, she is a good kisser.
Her back was against her door and her hands in his hair and she feels all the world like a giddy teenager, yet she can't bring herself to care.
She sees rather than hears the sharp intake of breath that followed and immediately decides that his first name was something she'd be using more often. But she doesn't tell him that; she simply leans back in for more.