Confession and Consequences

Melinda went to the cockpit and stayed there, so she missed the interrogation. She assumed that it went well, since Coulson told her to head back to the Hub ten minutes later. Finally. Even though it had only been a few hours, it felt like days since they had left. The mission had been a success, but it couldn't have possibly gone worse in her mind. Her actions, no, The Cavalry's actions, were still fresh and replaying in her head constantly, staining her memory like a bad movie. She completely disregarded everything she had fought to bury deep down inside since that fateful day in Bahrain and allowed that… monster to take over.

It nearly cost them everything; everything they had done and gone through would have been in vain.

She sighed. She would have been shocked if Phil regarded her in the same way again. He was counting on her to keep her cool despite being agitated, and she damn near blew it.

For a brief moment, she closed her eyes. Her hands wrapped around Rappaccini's throat flashed through her mind. She almost killed someone; she killed men who had already surrendered. Why?

She knew why, because she hurt someone she cared about. But, it went deeper than that. She didn't want to say it, even think it. To admit it was to admit that someone had managed to get that close to her heart without her noticing. She wasn't exactly sure if she was even all that upset with the fact itself, and it was just her pride not being able to come to terms with it.

It shouldn't have happened. She was normally, always, so careful with everything. She did nothing, this included, without first foreseeing any possible problems or issues that would and could arise, and then taking steps to compensate for them. She did the same here and still the worst case scenario, well, second worst, happened. Was happening before her eyes. And there was nothing she could do to stop it. A not insignificant part of her didn't even want to stop it.

She loved him, and she didn't want to admit it. Because she was Melinda May; she didn't do love, or romance. Every time they slept together, she made sure to sleep with her back to him to make sure she couldn't look into his big, soulful brown eyes and fall in love more quickly than she did.

Damn him and his wanting to be close to her. Damn him and his adorable little schemes to trick her into cuddling. Damn it, did she just use the word adorable? What had this man done to her?!

The cockpit door opened. Phil sat down in the co-pilot's chair. She huffed. He raised an eyebrow. "Am I intruding?"

"No. Just… thinking."

"About Ward." He carried a knowing smile, so she didn't bother to answer. "Hand said he's doing much better. Should even be waking up in the next days, at the most."

A small smile unconsciously appeared on her lips. She made it go away. "That's good."

"What you're doing is adorable," he commented.

That's what Ward would say. No, stop it! "What am I doing?"

"Trying to stop something you want to happen from happening. Now that I look back, that's been you're problem this whole time. And it's pretty adorable seeing you all flustered."

"I. Am not. Adorable."

"I beg to differ, sweetheart."

Melinda pulled the sheets up to her chest and then turned to glare at Grant's smiling form. God, he was delicious. "Unless you want your face to be a permanent fixture on that wall, Agent Ward, I suggest you don't say that again."

"Say what, pudding pie?" he goaded before lunging and attacking her exposed neck. She moaned and suddenly forgot what she was so annoyed about.

"Mmm…"

"What did Rappaccini say?" she asked, desperate to get her mind on something else.

To that, Phil sighed heavily. "She didn't know where they were. Honestly. She gave an order yesterday that in the event of her capture, they were to move the inundators to three new cities. She did give us the frequency for the electromagnetic waves the machines use, thankfully. Hand is doing a tech trace now, but it'll take a while."

She just nodded. She figured that it was safe to assume that her bad cop portrayal was what tipped things in their favor. That was one thing she did right today.

Minutes passed without another word being said between the two. They had grown close enough to know that silences like this were just the harbinger to an uncomfortable conversation. She sighed.

"What were you thinking?"

There was no malice or anger in his voice, but only concern. For her, her well-being, her mental health.

She answered the only way she could, with the truth. "I wasn't." She touched a knob on the panel in front of her. She could feel his eyes shifting from her to her hand, prodding silently for her to continue. "I was only concerned with getting back at her. For what she did to us."

"To Ward," he corrected.

She sighed, but didn't dispute. "When I saw what she had done, I wanted nothing more than to kill her." She shifted her eyes until they shared a gaze. "What does that say?"

"It says to me that you care a great deal about him. More than you would if this thing between you was just sex. By the way, it's never 'just sex'."

She snorted derisively. "Two people can have a purely physical relationship."

"Yes, when they don't spend hours upon hours within an enclosed place together everyday. You and Ward do; this should have been expected."

Sighing, she flipped the plane into autopilot. "It was, which was why we had rules. No kissing when sober. Flirting kept to a minimum. Only fucking when drunk and after missions. No cuddling after sex." She didn't appreciate him snickering at that one. "No love, no emotion. It's just sex. Nothing more."

Phil smiled. "You're lying. There is more. I can see, Barton can see it, Ward could see it, and you can, too. It's that you two don't want to admit it. When did this start?"

"After our exposure to the Berzerker staff."

His eyebrows shot up in surprise. "That was months ago."

"Yep."

"You two are good."

"Yep."

Melinda didn't even have a chance to touch the ground the Hub was built on before Hand quickly approached her. She didn't look happy. "My office, Agent May."

She was walking quickly, and didn't say a word throughout their walk to her office. She could feel the eyes of everyone they passed lying on her. She would be lying if she said that she didn't feel a little self-conscious.

When they reached Victoria Hand's office, Hand didn't waste any time. "You want to explain to me what the hell that was?"

There were very few things that she could have been talking about, and only one of them could have her this angry. Melinda sighed. This was what people were talking about when they said to think before one acts. "No," she said simply. "You want an explanation, get it from Coulson."

They stared at each other for a very long time. "Fine," she replied tersely after several tense moments. "I'm taking you off this mission. I've already called in Romanoff from DC."

She didn't say anything. She stood, and waited the appropriate amount of time in case Hand had something else to say, and then walked out when she didn't. When she opened the door, she say Phil standing there, hand raised as if about to knock. "Good luck," she said without an ounce of regret.

His expression went from calm to angry and then back to calm in record time. He slammed the door closed, and she smiled.