A/N: So, basically over the past several days I have somehow turned into a hermit who does nothing but write AOS fic. Please send help.
"Wheels up in five." May glances around. "Where are the kids?"
Ward looks up from the armory catalog he'd been perusing. "They wanted off the bus. I told them we were only touching down for refueling, but they were insistent. I gave them thirty minutes."
"And how long ago was that?"
"Uhh," he checks his watch, "Forty minutes ago?"
"Well, I am going to stay here and stay warm, while you go corral them. Have fun."
It was cold. He hopes they'd remembered to put their coats on. Ward pulls his own jacket a little tighter. The reflection off the snow on the ground is blinding; he squints as he looks around for them. Where were they? They couldn't have gone far.
"FitzSimmons? Skye?"
There is no reply. He turns around. And then back around; still no sign of them. The footprints are impossible to track. It looks more like a trampling herd made them than two scientists and a Skye.
He gets a face full of snow without any warning. He sputters and blinks. "What the-"
He is promptly hit with a barrage of snowballs. He ducks behind the wheel of the plane. It does little to shelter him and all he can see for sixty seconds is white. When it stops, he straightens up, brushing the white powder from his clothes.
"Very funny, guys." He casually rolls some snow into a ball. "It's time to go."
It does the trick. There are some muffled giggles and then Fitz appears in his line of sight. He winds his arm back, lets go, and watches in satisfaction as the snowball bounces off Fitz's cheek. The engineer splutters indignantly.
"Oh, it's on!" Skye cackles gleefully.
"Fitz, come back inside the snow fort. You're losing our tactical advantage!" Simmons exclaims.
"You have a snow fort? No fair. All I have is a wheel."
"Well, perhaps you should have considered that before you attacked the engineer," Fitz replies haughtily.
"I thought we'd be in the air by now," Coulson remarks as he enters the room.
May nods to the window. Coulson crosses over to it and looks down. He grins; half his team is involved in a full-out snowy brawl.
"He's getting slaughtered," Coulson says in amusement. "Who knew Special Agent Grant Ward couldn't hold his own in a snowball fight?"
May laughs softly. Coulson turns and heads for the door.
"Where are you going?"
"To help him. I haven't had a good snowball fight in a long time."
May sighs and follows him. Their itinerary was shot by now, anyway. Besides, it had been years since she'd had a good snowball fight, too.
Coulson's waiting for her at the top of the ramp, not even surprised that she followed him. "Alright, I'm going to take defense and come in to help Ward from the right flank. You take offense and sneak around and take them out from behind."
She rolls her eyes at him, but he's already taken off, in full combat mode.
Time to move, then.
She operates in full stealth mode, sneaking around the plane to come up in the FitzSimmons-and-Skye team's blind spot.
From her hiding place, she glances over at Ward and Coulson, hunkered down together (still behind the wheel, really? It wouldn't even provide adequate cover for Simmons, who is at least half the size of Ward, much less two fully-gown men.). The two of them are slightly more effective than Ward by himself, but they're still taking heavy fire.
She decides to let them suffer for a bit while she gathers ammunition. While she's making snowballs, an overturned garbage can lid buried in a snow bank catches her eyes. She grins. This will be much faster.
A few minutes later, she stands quietly over three heads bent together whispering strategy and carefully empties the contents of the snow-filled lid on top of them. All three shriek. She beats a hasty retreat in a blaze of snowballs as Coulson and Ward cheer loudly.
"Ok, kids. Time to pack it in. We've already missed our scheduled departure time. Time to go before S.H.I.E.L.D sends out search parties." Coulson says at last, bringing an end to their snow battle.
Skye, Fitz, and Simmons head hastily for the Bus, huddling together for warmth as they walk. With one last wistful look at the snowy carnage, Coulson heads for the bus himself. Ward dusts snow from his clothes as he too falls into line. As they all head for the ramp, May sidles slyly up beside Ward.
He should have seen it coming. Ward only has a second to try and shy away as cold hands brush the nape of his neck and then May drops a handful of snow down the back of his shirt. Ward yelps. He slips on the slushy ground as he tries to get away from her. At the last second, he grabs a hold of her waist and she tumbles down after him. They land in a tangle of limbs, fall half-broken by each other and the snow bank. May retaliates quickly by scooping more snow from the ground beside them and shoving it down the front of Ward's shirt. Ward makes a sound between a laugh and a cry. He scrambles to gather some snow with his right hand, but May, seeing it, flips him the rest of the way onto his back and puts a knee on his chest. He abandons the snow and instead reaches up to place his cold, wet hand on the small, exposed hollow between her neck and shoulder-blade. She grabs the offending hand and pins it to the asphalt. Doing so brings her face dangerously close to his. He grins and lifts his head off the tarmac until their faces are scant inches apart, their mouths on the verge of touching.
Coulson clears his throat pointedly. The two roll away apart, faces flushed and their damp clothes clinging to their frames. He extends a hand to both of them and pulls them to their feet. They follow him in silence to the ramp.
Later, when everyone has taken warm showers and the Bus is in the air, the team congregates in the kitchen while Coulson makes them all hot chocolate. Skye and Simmons—both clad in sweaters of Fitz's—are sitting across the table from each other, with Fitz sitting beside Simmons. Fitz and Skye are currently driving Simmons to despair by adding an obscene amount of marshmallows to their drinks.
"Ugh, that's disgusting. And that much sugar is not good for you. The studies I could cite-!"
Skye just laughs and pops a handful of marshmallows in her mouth, eyes wide in a mocking expression. Simmons sighs. Ward shakes his head at all of them, grabs a second mug, and heads for the cockpit.
He hands her the mug of hot cocoa. "Warm yet?"
May smiles and takes a sip, "This will help."
He shivers. "It's cold up here. Want me to get you a blanket?"
"No," she takes another a sip from the mug, "This will be enough."
"Well," he stands up and heads for the door, "If it's not, you know where to find me."
With a meaningful smirk, he is gone.
She turns her eyes back to the skies with a smile of her own.
-the end-
((Hope you enjoyed!))