I haven't written in forever, but I'm in the middle of a re-watch of the series, and this idea would NOT leave me alone. It's silly, borderline crack-y, but...well, here you go. There's also an itty bitty reference to my second favorite spy show: Archer.
This takes place pre-series, pre-Andrew, pre-Bahrain. Friends and frequent partners since their academy days, Coulson and May are sent on a mission infiltrating a potential enemy base. Coulson is the distraction while May sneaks in to verify intel. Of course, it all goes wrong.
"I'm sorry for the delay, guys, but you know how it is. Always with the paperwork, am I right?" Phil Coulson summoned his most congenial smile for the pair of guards blocking his path and the room full of potentially evil scientists beyond. "They'll get right back to me with the authorization code, I'm sure, but in the meantime..."
A beeping called the attention of a woman stationed at a complicated looking panel, who glanced down at a few screens, then sharply up at Coulson. Uh oh. That couldn't be good.
"Uh, in the meantime, how about that weather?" He shifted his weight back, edging toward the exit, but a third guard – even more enormous and heavily armed than the others – stepped in behind him, cutting off any easy escape. "Crazy hot, right? Super unusual for this time of year, isn't it? Really need to get the A/C recharged in the ol' SUV."
The woman on the comm caught the eye of the new guard and nodded.
"Ah, dammit," Coulson muttered as the room burst into activity. Every weapon in the room snapped up to train on him in an instant. He slowly raised his hands out to the sides, palms out. "Whoa, hey, guys. What's going on? I know home office is kinda slow with that authorization, but is this really necessary?"
The guard behind him caught his wrist in an iron grip and twisted his arm behind his back.
"Linda's probably just on her afternoon cigarette and gossip break. I'm sure she'll be right b—ow!" Coulson yelped as the guard kicked the back of his knee, forcing him heavily to the ground. "All right! Okay! We can talk about this."
One of the guards in front of him stepped up and punched him hard in the face, catching him in the left temple. As he rocked from the blow, the bruiser behind him wrenched his arms farther back, shackling them painfully in place. Coulson shook his head and looked up again. He smiled slightly. "Heat's getting to you, too, huh?"
The second blow to his temple knocked him out.
"Coulson."
A horrendous headache greeted him when he woke into darkness. His thoughts didn't want to align themselves into any proper order. All he could focus on was the throbbing in his head and roaring in his ears. And the nausea. Ugh, he felt like he was spinning.
"Coulson."
Blinking didn't make the darkness go away, so he assumed there actually was no light. Unless he was blind. That was always a possibility, he supposed, but he wasn't sure how he was supposed to test the theory. He shook his head, but that just made the pounding in his head worse.
"Owww," he complained.
"Coulson!" the voice hissed louder in his ear, and something thumped him in the back.
"May?" He realized he was lying curled up on his side, his arms still firmly secured behind him, his hands immobilized. Duct tape? Not cool. His feet were bound now, too. He could feel Agent May pressed close behind him. Shifting a little, he realized that wherever they were, it was tiny, cramped, and very hot. A trickle of sweat rolled across his temple and into his eye. He croaked out, "May, am I blind?"
"What? Of course not – it's just dark. Are you okay? I've been trying to wake you up for the last five minutes."
Shit. He'd been knocked unconscious. Wasn't that, like, suuuuper bad for you? He would have to get his brain checked when they got out of this, wherever 'this' was. "What happened? Where are we?"
May sighed irritably. "Op went sideways, obviously. And now we're locked in a storage cupboard on a boat, going god knows where."
That explained the roaring in his ears – motor noise. And the swooping nausea. Coulson blinked hard again before remembering that wouldn't help him see. "Why haven't you escaped yet?"
"Oh, I'm sorry. Should I have just left you as collateral damage? You were unresponsive, Coulson! For five minutes!"
"Okay, fine! I'm responding now, so you can get on with the escaping."
A cold silence filled the space. At least, as cold as the oppressive heat could seem.
"...I can't."
Coulson tried to process the idea. Melinda May...can't. It didn't work. "Can't what? Why not?"
Another silence followed. Coulson could almost hear May chewing on the words before spitting them out. "They made very sure I wouldn't be able to get free. There's duct tape. Very not cool."
"You must have really pissed them off. How many did you take down?"
"Don't know. Maybe twelve?"
Coulson couldn't suppress a grin as he imagined May demolishing enemy agents with fierce, acrobatic ease. "So you mean, like, twenty?"
He felt movement behind him as she shrugged. "Maybe." The smugness in her tone was probably warranted.
"So," he ventured, "how do we get out then? I take it you weren't able to trip the beacon?" The extraction beacon was supposed to trigger a full raid of the facility they'd just infiltrated, once May had confirmed their intel.
"No. I have it, but I can't get to it."
"Okay, good. We get the beacon, trigger it, they come get us. Simple. Where is it? Maybe I can reach it," he said, before remembering that his hands were wrapped up in a duct tape cocoon.
Silence. Again.
"May?"
"It's in my bra."
"Sorry, what? Don't you have pockets? I'm pretty sure all S.H.I.E.L.D. tactical gear has pockets!"
"They check pockets, dummy! They would've found it!" May snapped. "If we want to get out of here, you're going to have to go in after it."
"I have no hands!"
"Then you'll have to improvise."
Coulson considered their options. Face first into his best friend's cleavage, vs. certain torture and/or death, with no hope of rescue. "I guess we die here, then."
"Coulson!"
May might have been trussed up, but she managed to kick him in the small of the back with something pointy anyway.
"Ow! Fine! Let me turn over, then." But after thirty seconds of struggling and a lot more sweating, Coulson had to admit defeat. "There's not enough room. You're smaller and bendier – can you climb over?"
May snorted, and suddenly, a warm, squirming body was wiggling its way over him. Yep, not awkward at all. He tried inching back to give her more room in front of him, and she slithered into the gap he made. Another bead of sweat trickled down Coulson's throat, but that one might not have been from the heat.
"Okay," she said. "You'll have to pull the zipper down a bit. Let me...move...up."
He could feel the puff of her breaths on his face as she hitched herself upward like an inchworm.
"Find the zipper pull. Hurry up," she urged.
Leaning forward, he found her body with his nose, trailing a bit side to side, looking for the seam of the zipper.
"Little higher, yep. Right there. Can you get it?"
"Mmhm," he acknowledged, lifting the tab with his tongue so he could grip it with his teeth. He tugged downward, carefully inching the zipper open.
"Little more. Little more. Keep going. Jesus, Coulson, what is this, a strip tease? Unzip me!"
Unwilling to lose his grip on the tab, he kept his snarky reply to himself as he twisted his neck, trying to get the damn zipper to move farther down. "Moo uff!" he mumbled.
"What?"
Coulson dropped the zipper pull. "Move UP, May! I can't go down if you don't move up."
Grumbling, May hitched up another couple of inches, while Coulson nosed around searching for the elusive tab again.
When May was satisfied he'd opened her tac vest far enough, she said, "Left side."
Oh, jeez. Here we go. He was never going to live this down.
Coulson leaned forward cautiously. When he found skin – very warm, very sweaty skin – he turned and burrowed his nose under the vest. God, she smelled delicious.
"My left! Not yours!"
"Sorry, sorry," he mumbled against her breastbone. If it weren't so damned hot in here already, he probably would've flushed in embarrassment.
Turning the other way, he delved under the stiff material of the vest to find the softer fabric of her bra cup. Taking a steadying breath, Coulson rooted his nose under the edge of the cup and began searching around for the beacon. As the seconds ticked by without encountering anything, he started getting nervous. He pushed his face in deeper.
"Coulson?"
"Mm?"
"Any time now."
Like he was going slow on purpose! He scowled. Wait, did May think he was going slow on purpose? He caught the edge of her bra in his teeth and pulled the fabric away as best he could, before nosing back in. He bumped against a hard plastic edge.
"Bingo."
"You found it? Great – grab it," she said.
Coulson froze for a second. He hadn't really thought about this part. He lunged forward a bit, trying to capture the device with his lips but only succeeded in chasing it away. "I can't get ahold of it," he said, voice muffled in her chest. "Hang on, lemme try..."
May yelped and twitched away, losing him the progress he'd made. "Shit, Coulson! Buy a girl a drink first!"
"I was just trying to reach..."
"With your tongue?"
He cringed a little. "Yeah, I probably should have warned you first."
"You think?" He heard a hint of a smirk in her voice there. "Hurry up. We don't know how much time we have left. Just...do what you have to to get that beacon."
Coulson rooted back in until he located the device again. For an agonizing thirty seconds, he chased the damn thing around her bra with his mouth, trying desperately to get a grip on it. At one point, May squeaked above him, and he realized he'd just thoroughly tongued her very erect nipple. Oh, God, he was never, ever, ever going to hear the end of this. She didn't pull away this time, though, he noticed.
"Gahd ih!" he announced, clenching the beacon in his teeth at last and disengaging from his partner's cleavage.
"Oh, thank God," May murmured under her breath. Louder, she said, "Hit the button, then."
But as Coulson explored it with his tongue (warm and salty – like May), he couldn't find anything resembling a button. The beacon appeared to be a smooth, rounded rectangle with no raised surfaces or depressions.
"Der's no buh-uhn," he told her. "Can' fine ih."
May hissed an exasperated sigh through her nose. "It's right there! In the middle! Oh, give it here."
She leaned in, bonking their foreheads together a bit gracelessly in the darkness. "Ouch. Sorry," she breathed.
May moved closer again, trying more cautiously to find the beacon – Coulson couldn't think of any other word to describe what she was doing other than 'nuzzling'. She located the device at last, closing over it with her mouth and prodding with her tongue...while it was still clenched between his own teeth.
A bright light burst to life between them as May managed to trigger the button at last. Coulson blinked furiously as the light stabbed at his eyeballs, but he didn't dare release his grip on the dazzling little gizmo. As his vision adjusted, he could see May looking as sweaty and disheveled as he felt staring back from all of two inches away.
She pulled back abruptly. "So. Now we wait."
He nodded.
"You know if they catch us with that before the extraction team arrives, we're screwed." Her eyebrows rose as though that was supposed to tell him something else.
He tilted his head in question.
A truly evil smirk crossed her lips. "You're going to have to put it back."
Shit.
Coulson closed his eyes. She was never, ever, ever going to let him live this down.