DAY FIVE – PROMPT: RECORD PLAYER

By Morning Light

More in the 'This Spy for Hire' universe: this takes place roughly six months before the Agents of SHIELD pilot episode. Just a glimpse of daily life for this Skye and Grant.

Oh, and this was almost completely inspired by a motion gif I saw on tumblr of Chloe boogying on the spot in front of a green screen. Wasn't sure why until I heard Michael Jackson's 'Rockin Robin' on my oldies station!

Grant and Skye never knew where the record player came from. It was just there, waiting for them, the day they moved into their new, official office suite.

For the first couple of years, they'd been rootless; Skye refused to use her van for business, and Grant's safe house-turned-apartment wasn't a good idea for security reasons. But business started to pick up really quickly after an... incident... involving Justin Hammer, enough so that Grant decided they should get an actual place of business; it offended his sense of propriety to meet clients in bars, airports and even shopping malls, when they met at all – it smacked of sleaziness.

After a protracted argument with Skye (who hated the idea of a permanent address of any kind), and lots of scouring the internet, they walked into their new office on a Tuesday. The only furniture was the table in the corner; there was a record player on top of it, and a small, old-fashioned trunk full of records underneath it.

The first thing Grant did was take the player apart, looking for surveillance devices or explosives. He didn't find anything.

The second thing Grant did was find someone who could put the record player back together, because Skye really wanted to listen to the records in the trunk.

The office door opened without a sound, the two figures walking through it turned into shadows by the lack of light. As the smaller person darted forward, the taller deftly caught the penny that fell off the top edge of the door itself, pushed off by the pressure of the door opening.

The smaller figure headed unerringly for the north-eastern corner, where glints of chrome and glass hinted at the mainstay of any office – the coffee machine. The other headed towards the windows, where wooden Venetian blinds did their best to block out the LA morning, with a fair amount of success.

On a long black couch against the southern wall, a dark, long and irregularly-shaped lump tossed and mumbled.

The two recent arrivals looked at each other, and then turned back to their business. While the taller quietly raised the blinds furthest from the couch, the smaller set out several cups, and brought out milk and sugar from a small refrigerator that sat underneath the bench that held the temple of caffeine worship.

As the aroma of Hawaiian Roast started to waft through the air, the lump on the couch stirred again. A tousled head of long brown hair poked out from under a polar fleece blanket, printed with a star field and several alien planets.

The small intruder gently stepped closer, their hands all but dwarfed by the large mug they cradled. Closer, closer, until the lump on the couch lurched upwards, and turned into a young woman.

She sniffed once, twice, and her eyes opened, focusing on the coffee mug.

"Mmmm, come to Mama," she muttered, holding out her hands to receive the mug.

Eyes still at half-mast, she took several slow sips, while her coffee-bringer waited anxiously.

The young woman let out a long contented sigh, before her eyes snapped open, and focused intently on the small boy beside the couch.

"Do we pay you?" she asked.

The little boy, who had skin the colour of coffee beans himself, shook his head.

"We should. MIKE!"

"I'm right here," chuckled the man by the windows, whose skin tone matched his son's.

"Double Ace's allowance, and take it out of petty cash."

"I thought you said that office mascot was an unpaid position?"

"It is. We're paying him as office barista in training." The woman broke out into a sunny smile. "Thanks, Ace. Morning!"

Ace gave an equally sunny smile – without benefit of coffee – back. "Good morning, Skye!"

Skye frowned. "Wait, shouldn't you be in school? Or did you drop by for breakfast?"

Ace giggled. "It's Saturday."

"Seriously?" Skye frowned. "Huh."

"Girl, when did you go to sleep?" Mike asked, his fatherly instincts surfacing automatically, even for one of his employers.

"I think it was Thursday. At least, that's when I last remember having coffee."

Skye shrugged, and climbed off the couch, dragging the blanket with her to the small bathroom – she was stripped to her lacy cami and boyshorts, and didn't want to corrupt Ace just yet.

As she turned on the shower, she could hear Mike opening the rest of the blinds and doing his 'opening for business' routine.

Once she and Grant had officially moved in, it turned out that one of the biggest issues they'd had, strangely enough, was keeping the office tidy. It wasn't as if either of them were very messy – given they'd spent the last several years living out of a van and a military-style duffel, respectively – but between Grant flying out to other cities or even countries at almost a moment's notice, Skye staying up for 36 hours straight writing code then crashing on the couch (sometimes leaving computer parts strewn around), things tended to get chaotic. Things finally reached crisis level when they had the power cut off twice and the water once in one quarter. Fortunately, whatever divine beings look out for spies and computer hackers (Hermes, maybe?) had made a perfectly normal innocent bystander walk into one of their jobs.

On that particular day, Mike Peterson had been having an even shittier time than Grant - and Grant had been shot at, jumped out a window to avoid an explosion, shot at again and had his motorbike towed. Before lunch.

When Grant tried to explain to Skye later how he'd ended up taking along a complete stranger – a civilian stranger – on the second half of the job, he couldn't figure it out himself. Grant only knew that if he hadn't had Mike along, he'd be somewhere between jail, hospital, or the morgue. When the dust cleared, Grant and Skye offered Mike a twelve-week probationary period in the office, officially doing 'whatever'. Four weeks into his 'probationary' period, they offered Mike a contract, complete with carefully researched employee health plan.

Grant called Mike 'the front man'

Skye called Mike 'the office manager'

Mike called himself 'The one around here who makes sure the lights turn on and we've got some damn toilet paper'... among other things.

Strolling out of the bathroom, Skye felt like she might just be ready to face the – ugh! – morning. Even after all these years, she still didn't understand how Grant did this whole 'AM' thing so casually.

Skye stretched her hands up to the ceiling and felt her spine stretch in a satisfying sort of way – the Tai Chi classes one of their oldest clients had recommended were definitely good for more than one thing.

Looking around, she saw only one of the three males in her life. Grant was safely en route from Mumbai - thus, her Van Winkle-esque snooze after 48 hours awake.

She strolled over to the record player, where Ace was carefully going through the rack that Mike had built to hold the record collection. Grant and Skye had made a habit of adding to the collection every chance they could, especially in downtime on a mission (which is where the Edith Piaf and ABBA albums came from), so it had long outgrown the trunk that still sat next to the player.

"Hey there, Ace-in-the-Hole. Where's your dad?"

"He went to get breakfast from the Sunny Side Up. Also to see if Grant needs a ride from the airport."

"Cool. What do you feel like spinning this morning?"

Ace held up an album with a grin. Skye grinned back.

"Excellent choice! If anything can get me up and at 'em in the morning, it's our man Michael."

Grant Douglas (formerly Ward) actually let out a silent sigh of relief as he approached the office door. Why did he only ever have to go to Mumbai in the rainy season? He felt like he'd been carved out of wood, only without the joints of a puppet. Not only had he been rained on relentlessly for several days straight, he'd had to make tracks on the first plane available.

"Flying coach blows," he muttered to no-one. Which went to show just how worn out he was.

As he paused outside the office door for his automatic status check, he listened closely for familiar voices.

The one he heard was familiar... but Grant was fairly sure his voice had broken back in the eighties. Not to mention, he'd been unfortunately dead for awhile now.

Grant carefully opened the office door, so he could slip into the room unnoticed. His caution paid off, evidenced in the grin that slid across his face. He quickly retrieved his phone from his jeans pocket, and managed to get the video camera in position in the nick of time to record Ace and Skye doing a dual booty-shake right in his direction.

Every little swallow, every chick-a-dee, every little bird in the tall oak tree

Ace tried to do a moonwalk, without much success. Skye had only a little more - she could pull off not only the moonwalk but the entire 'Thriller' routine spectacularly, but only when she was drunk.

Grant did his best not to laugh and give himself away; Mike was going to love this footage, even if the need for anonymity prevented Mike from putting it online. He could still show his sister, the next time he and Ace went up to visit her.

When serendipity had landed Mike in their laps – or more precisely, their office – Ace had been an unexpected bonus. Ace was the first time Skye and Grant had been around a kid on a regular basis since St Agnes, and they'd both been utterly surprised at how much they liked it. The kid had a way of making anyone smile (which they'd used to great effect on at least two jobs).

Blow Rockin' Robin 'cause we're really gonna rock tonight!

Skye had switched to doing a version of The Swim instead – or was it that point-and-stare bit from 'Greased Lightning' in Grease? Either way, Grant was enjoying every second of it.

With any luck, they'd make it to the end of the song, before Skye caught sight of him and started screeching – or made him join in.

FIN

I was never sure where I was going to end this (the mental image of Skye and Ace dancing in the office was the only thing I ever had for this piece)... so here seemed safe enough! Finally, I can finish posting this thing!

This is one of the pieces I was most looking forward to writing, and it's one of the two I had the most trouble getting done! (sigh) Typical. And of course, needing them all done in order means that I couldn't post the others (day six and seven were finished back in January!) until this one was complete.