Chapter Twenty-Nine – Stop Thinking
Skye would have been quite happy to snuggle there and fall asleep in Brock's arms, but he wasn't having any of it, insisting they both needed to get up and eat a decent meal. She grumbled at him until he promised to undress her and make love to her again afterwards.
"You think you can bribe me with sex?" Skye lifted an eyebrow at him.
"Considering your nipples just pinged against my chest and I can smell you're gettin' aroused again, I think it's worth a try," he gave her an extremely masculine grin.
"Asshole," she said without heat, because he was absolutely right.
"You like it."
"Sometimes," she allowed with a teasing grin over her shoulder as she swung her legs off the narrow bed and reached for her scattered clothes. He stretched luxuriantly, catlike, and she couldn't help stopping to stare. His body really was a work of art, all olive-tan skin over sculpted muscle. Skye licked her lips.
"Stop lookin' at me like that or we'll be makin' love again before dinner."
Her stomach had started rumbling as soon as she moved, so Skye laughed and looked away, blushing. She picked up Brock's cargo pants and tossed them at him without looking at him again, heard him sigh and pull them on, not bothering with underwear. He wouldn't have bothered with a shirt either except she told him Jemma would probably swallow her tongue.
"Eh, she's too busy eyeing up Cap to notice me."
"What?" Skye's shirt was over her head, so the word came out muffled. She yanked it down and stared at him. "Jemma and Captain America?"
"Well, he's looking back, so yeah, if he can get past his shyness." Brock grinned up at her from where he was seated on the bed pulling his boots on. "I'm pretty sure he's still a virgin, though, so she might have to jump him."
Skye had absolutely no idea what to say to any of that. She was still processing the idea of Jemma and Captain America. But she trusted Brock's powers of observation – he'd already proved time and again that he saw things she would never have noticed. She found herself watching Jemma and Steve over dinner. They weren't sitting next to each other, but their eyes kept meeting as though neither of them could quite keep looking away, and both of them blushed every time they did.
Well, if we get through tomorrow I might have to lock the two of them together in a cupboard or something. She met Brock's amused glance and grinned at him.
"All right," Coulson got to his feet once everyone had finished eating. "Time to move. Get some sleep, you two." He nodded at Skye and Brock, and one by one the SHIELD team came to embrace her tightly, whispering their best wishes to her. Everyone else was leaving tonight. Sam and Tony were going to fly them in at low level above the minefield, and they would then make their way quietly to the compound's inner perimeter, each carrying a device that Tony swore would make them invisible to surveillance cameras. They'd all be in position to stage the perfect ambush when Brock and Skye flew in with the helicopter in the morning.
They'd been paired off so that the non-field agents – Jemma, Fitz and Mack – were partnered with more experienced. Knowing what she did now, Skye was unsurprised to see that Jemma and Steve were paired off. Mack went with Bobbi and Fitz with Hunter. May and Phil, and Clint and Natasha made up the other pairs. Sam and Tony would fly aerial support, so they at least would be returning to the Bus to get some sleep first.
They'd all insisted on going. Skye had protested at Jemma, Fitz and Mack. But Jemma had shaken her head, looking at the picture of the girl and the baby, and simply said; "I'll be needed," and Fitz and Mack had both muttered something about axes to grind. Skye just prayed that none of them would be hurt or killed because of her.
"It's not because of you," Brock told her quietly as she lay in his arms, unable to sleep. "Don't think that, Skye. It's not about you, really. You're just the catalyst. Sooner or later this was going to happen. Better now, before Quinn, Ward and Zabo complete whatever diabolical plan they've got going up here, which having you is obviously central to somehow."
She couldn't argue with him, but she still couldn't sleep for worrying, until he pulled her closer and kissed her again, his strong hands roving gently down her body.
"Sshh," he whispered tenderly. "Stop thinking, angel. Let me love you."
She fell, finally, into an exhausted, sated sleep, curled in his arms. Brock lay staring up at the ceiling until morning came.
Sam was the only one on the Bus when they got up. He nodded at them, pushed a small bag across the table towards Skye.
"Nat left this. Said you'd better cover up the stubble rash."
She blushed, thinking of the pinkish marks all over her body – but Natasha had meant just the ones on her face, she knew. And the love bites on her neck. She scooped up the bag and headed for the bathroom.
Sam cocked an eyebrow at Rumlow, who helped himself to cereal before sitting down. "She all right?"
"Nervous," Brock shrugged, digging in. "Can't blame her. She's not used to this shit. She's never operated undercover, or as a double agent."
"Unlike you."
He paused with the spoon halfway to his mouth. "Yeah, I guess I deserved that."
Sam leaned back, folded his arms across his chest. "I was all set to hate you. But you're not the same guy I fought in the Triskelion, Rumlow. Whatever they did to you afterwards, broke you out of your programming."
"I wasn't brainwashed," Brock said immediately, shaking his head. "I don't have that excuse."
"Actually – I think perhaps you do."
He stared incredulously as Sam gently explained his theory about the SHIELD psychologists. About Brock's clearly falsified assessments.
"It was subtle and insidious, and it's taken massive trauma – and you isolating yourself to sort out your own head – to snap you out of it," Sam concluded.
"Fuck," Brock leaned forward, putting his head in his hands. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."
"What did you say to him?" Skye's angry voice made Sam look up.
"Told him what he needed to know to get himself out through the other side of this. What he needs to start forgiving himself and stop thinking he should sacrifice himself for you." Sam stood up from the table, put a hand on Brock's shoulder. "Skye needs you alive, Rumlow. Not a dead hero. We've all seen too many of those."
"Were you really planning to sacrifice yourself for me?" Skye asked, once Sam had left.
Brock looked up at her, his eyes red-rimmed. She was huddling her arms around herself, looking very small and vulnerable. "If it comes down to it, Skye, I still will do that, because you're worth a hundred of me any day of the week. But yeah – I was kind of thinking that maybe it would be a suitable atonement for my sins…"
She'd have slapped his face if she didn't suspect it might break her hand. Instead she stood and glared at him and said slowly and clearly "Don't you fucking well dare."
He choked off a bitter laugh. Held out his arms to her, waited until she came to him slowly. "Considering what Sam just told me, I think maybe there is a way back for me after all, even if it's going to be a long, hard road."
"Then it's a road we'll take together," she said softly, pressing his big, rough hand between both of her small ones. "Because I'm gonna be right beside you every step of the way."
"I don't deserve you."
She looked up at him with that spark of defiance he so adored dancing in her dark eyes. "Tough shit. You're mine now and I'm not letting you go."
He pressed his lips to her dark hair, careful not to muss the makeup she'd carefully applied. Whatever Natasha had given her was the good stuff, he couldn't tell she was even wearing any, but the marks he'd left on her soft skin were completely masked. The primal part of him mourned their absence, wanted to shout out to the world, and particularly that bastard Ward, that Skye belonged to him. But he knew there were other marks beneath her clothes, could still scent himself all over her, and that would have to be enough.
They ate quietly and went to prepare. While Skye couldn't be visibly armed, Natasha had provided several weapons that could be easily concealed under regular clothes, including a butterfly knife that clipped inside her bra, anaesthetic darts in a belt buckle, a garrotting wire threaded inside the belt itself. Brock, however, was armed for battle.
Skye stared in amazement as he opened the metal weapons case he'd brought with him from the cabin and shrugged into a harness that crossed over his chest before hanging a truly impressive number of weapons from it. "Is that your normal loadout?" she had to ask.
"Was when I was STRIKE leader, yeah," he didn't even look up, just strapped a holster on each thigh with a gun and knife in each. Shrugged his shoulders to settle everything into place as he straightened up. "And at that I sometimes still ran out of weaponry."
She counted five guns, a pair of shocksticks, no less than eight knives – including a bigass one that looked almost like a machete down his spine – and ten spare ammunition clips. "Wow. I knew STRIKE was badass, but I didn't know just how badass."
He seemed to stand a little straighter, his muscles thrown into even sharper relief by the tightly cinched harness. "Best of the best, baby. Why do you think they gave me Rogers to manage? They knew I was the only one with a hope in hell of keeping a handle on him, and that was before I was enhanced."
Skye couldn't help but be impressed. Lustful, even, though she knew there was no more time for that. Especially when he picked up the wide metal collar Fitz and Tony had made the night before.
"I gotta put it on you now, angel."
She swallowed. Nodded. It made no sense to be nervous, not when she knew the collar wasn't what it looked like. That there were no explosives in it at all. A red light blinked on as Brock clicked it shut around her neck.
"Jesus, I can barely stand to see that on you," he said, his voice tight. "When I think…"
"Don't." She reached up, put her finger to his lips. "Don't go there. You didn't do it, you wouldn't have done it. This is just a prop to fool Ward and Cal. I can get it off any time I want."
He bit his lip, nodded finally. Scooped up the matching trigger remote and shoved it in his pocket. "Let's go then, angel."
He buckled her into the passenger seat of the helicopter with gentle hands. Secured her wrists together with the cuffs Mack had carefully broken so the locks wouldn't hold against a firm pull, and made her test them.
"Good," when she popped out of them easily. Closed them around her wrists again, picked up the tiny, transparent earbuds Tony had provided and held them up. "The moment we put these in, we're on open comms with the others."
"I know." She looked into his golden eyes. "I love you. Don't you dare get yourself killed."
"I love you too, angel." He leaned in for one final kiss, their lips touching only lightly, before putting the earbud carefully into her ear.
"Sierra Two is on the comm," Skye said, watching at Brock circled the chopper to get into the pilot's seat, fitting his own earbud. It was strange to hear his voice both in her ear and beside her as he checked in too.
"Sierra One is on the comm, preparing for departure, T minus ten."
"Copy that, Sierra One, Sierra Two," Coulson's calm voice in her ear was so familiar, so steadying, Skye felt herself relaxing instinctively. Just another mission, she tried to tell herself. "T minus ten, Charlie One acknowledges." His voice hesitated, then returned. "Don't die out there."
Skye couldn't help a smile as she heard a choked-off chuckle that could only have been Hunter. "You too, Charlie One," she said fondly, hoping he heard her over the roar that was the helicopter's turbine starting.
I realised while writing this chapter that Rumlow himself didn't know about the shrinks who'd been messing with his head. And I don't think he can really start to heal until he truly understands what's been done to him, so I had to have Sam tell him now, before Brock did anything dumb in the fight because he still believes he's not worth saving. The big fight really does start next chapter, promise…
