A/N: Hellloooooo lovely lovely readers. I'm sure you thought I'd forgotten about and/or abandoned you. I have not. And will not. It just sometimes takes me awhile. But you're all such perfect magnificent gems. Fear not, I've returned and I've brought with me a chapter of some length.

In it, things happen! Stuff takes place. It's all a lot of fun. If we've learned one thing by the end of all this, I think it will be that Dr. Banner is really a very sassy guy.

Anyway, I really hope you like this chapter. You've waited a long time for it and I took a little extra time trying to get it just right. So, I hope it fills you with good feels and laughs and a little suspense and some mystery and just a dash of 'I want more'.

I made a few references here from some of my other favorite fandoms. Like lil easter eggs. They are likely more fun for me than they should be, but they're there all the same. If you see some, feel free to give a lil shout of fandom joy in the comments. I love hearing your (digital, silent) voices.

Finally, if you've made it this far in the author's note, awww, you're lovely. If I could, I would bestow many great gifts upon you. I can't, but I wish I could. Anyway, if you read all this and you're enjoying reading It's A Nuclear Show And The Stars Are Gone, drop a line in the comments with the #supersecret SophBraxt password: "Pesto Aioli".

P.S. - I haven't caught up on the most recent SHIELD ep but I will admit to some lol-ing upon the team's landing in Canada. Also loved the Banner reference last week. Everything is SHIELD and nothing hurts.

P.P.S. - If you'd like to follow this little story on tumblr, you can do that! Head over here:

Alright, really now. On with the show.

Chapter 6

It Worked For Captain Marvel

"Not possible," I stand up, shaking my head. "What would S.H.I.E.L.D. be doing with a facility of the Isle of Man?"

Skye pulls something up on her screen. "Like I said," she turns her laptop around to show me a set of complex and improbable-looking schematics . "Not on, in.

"So you're saying-"

"That whatever kind of facility it is, they buried it. Literally."

"And what kind of 'radioactive incident' did you say took place there?"

Skye appears thrown by the question. "Oh, er, it was nothing. Small potatoes, really." She laughs nervously.

"If it was nothing, why are they hiding-"

I'm cut off as the doors open to reveal Coulson and Ward. The're both sporting a number of cuts on their faces, one of which is large enough to send a thin trickle of blood down Coulson's right temple.

"I thought you guys were just interviewing the hikers."

"Long story," Ward grunts

I jump up and start toward the cupboard where we keep the first aid kit when Coulson holds up a hand to stop me.

"We're fine."

"But sir, you're-"

"Fine," he insists, "I promise. Heard you had a incident of your own. Everything alright?"

I nod. "Fine, sir. It was nothing, really."

He looks doubtful, but his attention shifts toward the couch, where Skye's still seated with her laptop.

"Did you find anything?" he asks.

Skye nods, "I think so," she turns the screen to show him the reports. "Isolated incident at the S.H.I.E.L.D. facility in the Isle of Man."

Coulson's brow furrows as he looks from the reports to Skye and back again.

"You're sure?"

Skye nods.

Coulson sucks in a deep breath. "Right. Okay. I'll tell May where we're headed as soon as she and the others get back."

Skye nods as he turns around and exits the lounge in the direction of the pods.

Ward looks back and forth between Skye and I several times, squinting as if he's trying to piece something together. In the end, though, he seems to give up, shrugging and following Coulson without saying anything.

In his absence, the air in the room seems to lighten a little.

"Talk about a hostile work environment," I laugh lightly. It wouldn't be funny if I didn't know that Ward always enjoys a mission that gets a little messy. Punching his way out of bad situations is fun for him. Typical Ops.

"Yeah. Rough day in the Great White North," Skye joins in, rolling her eyes as she closes her laptop and rubs her eyes.

"You should switch to your glasses," I suggest. "Your eyes must be tired, looking at that tiny screen."

Skye looks at me, a small smile on her lips. When I catch them briefly, her eyes do look tired, despite their warmth. She tries (and fails) to stifle a yawn.

"Perhaps you're the one who needs a nap," I suggest, leaning against the bar.

"You might be right," she nods sleepily, "Do you mind? I mean, we could-"

"I'm going to take another look at the samples in the lab, I think."

"Oh. Okay," she nods. She busies herself with gathering her laptop. "Are you sure you're okay? I can-"

"I'm sure," I cut in. "Go get some sleep. I'll come get you when May, Fitz and Banner are back."

Skye looks at me then, her eyes asking a question I don't think I understand.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," I assure her lightly, "Of course."

That seems to satisfy her. With her laptop in her arms, she stands and moves to walk past me, towards the pods. Before she can get far, however, her foot catches on a loose bit of carpet. The same one I distinctly remember asking Ward to fix several times over the last few weeks.

Without total comprehension of what's going on around me, my vision snaps into sharp focus and my muscles coil beneath my skin. I watch as Skye stumbles, falling forward. In the very next moment, I'm diving, reaching out and grab her...laptop . Before it crashes to the floor.

My fingers close around it and I tuck it under my arm before rolling into a very impressive and totally uncharacteristic somersault. I right myself just in time to see Skye land unceremoniously on the ground with a distinct 'thump'.

I wince, realising too late that perhaps I should've prioritized the girl over the laptop. And they say chivalry is dead…

Skye groans as she pulls herself into a sitting position on the floor.

Feeling like a complete moron, I speak up sheepishly.

"Are you, er, okay?"

Skye nods, "Just clumsy, that's all."

I silently seethe at Ward for not fixing the damn carpet. It's his fault that I look like a useless-

"Oh thank god," Skye breathes a sigh of relief.

I shoot her a questioning look as I extend my hand to help her up.

"You caught the laptop. You're a hero," Skye laughs, taking my hand and pulling herself to her feet.

"Oh, er, yeah. No problem," I hand her the laptop, which she immediately hugs to her chest like a holy relic.

Skye just smiles warmly at me, then tucks a stray stand of hair behind her ear and looks down at her feet intently.

"Anyway," she nods absently, "I should let you get to the lab."

I nod, too. I feel like there's something else that I should say, but she's walking away from me before I can even begin to figure out what it might be.

With more force than I'd intended, I slam my safety glasses down onto the hard metal of the lab table, shattering them into several smaller pieces of hard plastic.

"Careful there, muscles," says a voice behind me.

I whip around to see Dr. Banner, who's carrying two large field cases and has a bag slung over his shoulder. Because my parents taught me manners so young that they're essentially second-nature now, I rush over and relieve him of the cases and hoist them onto the nearest table.

"What'd you find?" I ask, unable to contain my eagerness.

Banner sets his bag next to the cases and shrugs off his chunky parka.

"Well," he says uncertainly, "plenty. But it's what we didn't find that concerns me most."

"Didn't find?"

Banner nods, "The source of the radiation. I expected to find something obvious, but all we found were trace amounts of radiation. Barely more than you'd expect to find in your local Buy More."

"And you checked the entire area?"

"Yeah. Full square-mile around the initial discovery site. Nothing," he opens up the field case and extracts laptop, opening it and placing it on the table. "We did, however, place some probes."

"Probes?"

"I brought some prototypes," Banner pulls something out of his pocket and holds it out in front of me on his palm. "One never shows up to a S.H.I.E.L.D. party empty-handed."

In his hand is a small, spherical object, no bigger than a dime. It appears to be made of a cool, dull metal, and thin, delicate lines trace an intricate pattern across its surface.

He squeezes the probe lightly between two fingers and immediately, it begins whirring. As it levitates just above his hand, light radiates from inside of it. The lines on its surface come alive with a thin trickles like glowing vines before it shutters to life, projecting a holographic field above it at about eye-level.

"What is that?" I ask, enthralled.

"H.E.R.M.A.N."

"H.E.R.M.A.N.?"

"The H.E.R.M.A.N. device. Highly Experimental Radiation Monitoring And Neutralizing."

"Catchy."

Banner scowls at me and turns his attention back to the probe. It spits out a few rogue jets of light before it manages to display a few data points with corresponding markers on what I assume is a scaled-down rendering of the area surrounding the irradiated discovery site.

"Like I said," Banner sighs, "it's a prototype."

"Is that-?"

"Yeah."

"But how can that-?"

"That's what I said when I saw it."

I step away and shake my head, frustrated.

"Listen," Banner says, "I know it's not exactly good news. Whatever was there is gone now. But we do have some hints."

I nod, but don't feel especially comforted. Something weird is going on with me and we have no idea what it is, what caused it, if it's permanent, or if it's dangerous.

"I have an idea," Banner sets the probe down on one of the large tables, then opens and closes a few drawers until he finds what he's looking for. When he's satisfied with the syringe and the vials he's collected, he turns to me and nods once.

"Now," he says, "sit and roll up your sleeve."

"One more and I won't have any left."

"Hush. It's just a few tests," Banner swabs yet another place on my arm and prepares a new syringe to take more blood. "Any more developments?"

I can feel my face flush, despite how much blood Dr. Banner's taken from me.

"Uh, no. Not really. I mean, there was a thing on the couch. But she's really hard to read. Or maybe she's not and it's just me." I realize that I'm rambling and stop for a breath. "Do you think she's hard to read?"

Banner smirks, "For the record, I was talking about developments in your 'condition'. The jumping-thirty-feet-into-a-tree thing."

I'm a little pre-occupied with wishing that the ground would open up and swallow me whole when Banner sticks the needle in my arm to take the last sample.

"To answer your question, though," he says as he finishes, "I think she's about as hard to read as cereal box."

I take a moment to glare at him as he dabs away a little bit of blood and fits a plaster over the cotton swab there.

"I can see where you'd have trouble, though." He stands and goes to work prepping the vials.

"What's that supposed to mean?" I frown as I roll my sleeve back down.

"Nothing," Banner waves away my question, "You never answered my question: Any new developments on the mutant front?"

"I'm not a mutant."

"Oh really? Interesting," he nods. "Probably for the best. Scott can be difficult to work with. What would you call it, then?"

I didn't have an answer.

"Whatever it is," Banner opens one of the cabinets and begins pawing through solutions, "we'll know more in about 45 minutes."

In an attempt to entertain himself while he waited for the test results, Dr. Banner had begun unpacking the field cases. I tried to help him, but when I went stow the very delicate, very expensive S.H.I.E.L.D.-issue scanner, I may have underestimated my abilities and smashed it to pieces when I put it on the shelf.

I tried to explain that the scanner was already a little bit broken and that it wasn't like I 'Hulk Smashed' it, but my protest fell on deaf ears as he instructed me to sit down and proceeded to make poor attempts at humor by listing the possible befits to being an irradiated super freak, much like himself.

"Think about it," he'd said, "you'd never have to ask for help with a jam jar. And my bet is that there's nary a tree you can't scale."

Shortly after that, I'd decided that 45 minutes was an awfully long time to listen to Banner tell me that "at least now I'll be able to carry all of the grocery sacks in one trip."

Now, I'm trying to keep busy with a little walk around the Bus. Not wanting to answer an onslaught of questions from Fitz or May (not that May's much of a conversationalist, but better safe than sorry), I stick to the less oft-traveled passages in the plane. Namely those leading to storage and server rooms, the weapons locker, and the power station.

When I arrive at the door that leads to the control room, I'm struck with an idea. A wonderful, terrible idea.

The control room houses the majority of the electrical components that fine-tune the various gadgets and whizz-bangs on board. Things like the holotable, the communication devices, and the signal boosters the deliver a wi-fi signal to the entire plane.

Once I commit to the plan, it doesn't take me but a minute, all told. I slip into the small room quietly (not that there's anyone around to hear me anyway) and unplug a few surprisingly accessible cables. Moments later, I emerge, feeling light with amusement.

Only 42 minutes left to wait.

I'm wondering now if this was a real thing. I know I had promised to wake her, now I'm sort of getting the feeling that just one those things you say you'll do without following through. Like saying 'we should hang out more' or 'we should stay in touch'. Also, Skye really hates being woken up. She's very cranky, and if I'm honest, I'm not overly eager to be on the receiving end of her post-nap grumpiness.

Before I can agonize too much, I hear voices from inside. Specifically, Fitz's voice, followed by Skye's. They're muffled, but as I lean closer to the door I can make out what they're saying.

"I thought you said you were going to say something about it."

Even through the door I can tell that's his judgmental voice.

"I was going to," Skye says, "something just came up."

"Riiiiiiight. How convenient."

"What was I supposed to say? 'Hey, I know you're a little busy with the mutant fungus, but any chance you can take a break so we can talk about my feelings for a hot minute?' Come on."

I get the feeling that they're talking about me and feel my cheeks warm considerably.

"Okay, obviously not," Fitz concedes, "I see your point. Tonight, then."

"What? No. Not tonight."

"For Christ's sake, Skye. Why not?"

"Because she fell out of a tree today. What's more, she apparently jumped thirty feet straight up into said tree."

"Excuses," he retorts flippantly. "Also it was more like twenty-five."

I hear Skye groan in frustration.

"Listen," Fitz continues, "this is for your own good. If not tonight, when?"

"Shut up," Skye says offhandedly. "I'll get to it. When this all blows over."

"And if it doesn't?"

"Huh?"

"What if this doesn't 'all blow over'?"

"What do you mean?" Skye sounds irritated.

"I mean, it might not blow over. Look at Banner. Gamma radiation is serious business."

"Oh jesus," I can almost hear her rolling her eyes, "First, Simmons is not the Hulk. Second,"

She pauses and I have to stop myself from bursting into the room to find out what, exactly, is second.

After a few moments that felt like hours, she continues, "it doesn't change anything."

When I hear the door mechanism for the pod begin sliding to open it, I bound into my own pod with speed that I was almost sure I'd never be capable of. I'm just barely behind through the open door when I hear Skye's footsteps nearing.

In the next moment, I feel myself listing. On instinct, I reach out to grab something to steady myself, but come up empty in the sparsely decorated pod. Though case study after case study has proven that it will do more harm than good, I tense in preparation for the fall. And I do fall. Hard.

There's a dull 'thud' when my ribcage hits the corner of the bed frame, and a louder, more resonant variation of the same 'thud' when my shoulders, head and back hit the floor in quick succession.

So much for being discreet.

As I knew she would be, Skye is in the doorway a second later, and kneeling beside me the second after that. Her face is painted with the same concerned expression that seems to have scarcely left over the last 18 hours.

"Simmons?" her voice is anxious and I immediately feel badly for getting caught but even worse for worrying her. Truly, it doesn't hurt at all. I know from both experience and several hundred hours of research on how the human body reacts to injury and trauma that it should hurt, but it doesn't. In the end, this is perhaps more worrisome.

"Simmons, are you alright? What happened?" Her eyes flick over my features, checking for any sign of injury or distress.

A little stiff from the tension but not in pain, I prop myself up on my elbows and pretend to wince to avoid looking Skye in the eyes. "Just fine," I answer, my voice strained from embarrassment, not as a result of injury. "I just lost my balance, that's all. I was just coming to see you, actually."

I can see the small smile on Skye's face as she ducks her head, biting the corner of her lip as she shakes her head. "And here I'd thought you'd forgotten," she laughs.

"Of course not," I defend, "Banner's just been busy taking all of my blood for samples in the lab."

"I see," Skye nods sympathetically. "Did he find anything?"

I pull myself to my fleet slowly, shrugging.

"We'll know in about 20 minutes."

"What about the discovery site? Anything there?"

I shake my head, "Nothing, really. Some trace amounts of radiation, but not enough to tell us anything substantial."

Skye nods again as she stands, but doesn't say anything in response. The silence quickly becomes thick and heavy. I feel now, more than ever before, the effects of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s sparse utilitarianism. This space is hardly big enough for one, but with Skye standing in my pod in front of me, I feel like there's no space at all.

I regret acknowledging that fact, even internally, when I feel the my cheeks getting warm. I wrack my brain for an excuse to get out of here, but come up empty.

Skye's looking me in the eyes, then. Hers are light, almost illuminated from within. Her lips curve upward in an amused smile, but her eyes are alive with something else entirely. There's a hint of the the mischievous glint that appears when she's teasing me, saying something to get me riled up. She's done it a hundred times before, little quips here and there while we're working in the lab. They come with the territory, the easy rapport we've developed. She's been so distant the last few weeks, though, I'd almost forgotten how easily it came.

I feel my lips forming a smile, finding it hard to remain anxious. I'm still hyper aware of how close she is, my heart's still pounding, but now it feels more like a piece finally falling to place and less like driving a car with no breaks on a narrow mountain pass.

"Skye, I…" I trail off, not sure what it is I need to say.

Skye raises her eyebrows, her expression asking a question without speaking any words.

When I don't answer, she prompts me a little more.

"Simmons?"

I can feel my head become suddenly light as my peripheral vision dulls.

Not now, I plead with my own body, I need to say something.

What it is, I'm not sure, but before I even have a chance to elaborate, Fitz appears in the doorway.

"What're you doing up here, Simmons? I thought Banner was running some tests in the lab?"

Just like that, his presence snaps me back to reality. Everything returns to sharp focus and my eyes are still on Skye's when my head clears.

"Simmons was just grabbing a book for me," Skye covers for me quickly.

Puzzled, but catching on quickly, I grab the book that's sitting on my bed.

"Right," I say, handing it to her and trying not react when her fingertips brush my knuckles. "I think you'll enjoy it," I manage to choke out.

Skye smirks, not even looking at the book. "I don't doubt it."

Fitz looks at the book, though.

"'The Complete History of Spinal Column Restructuring and Enhancement'," he reads from the cover. "Bit of light reading, then Skye?"

"You know what they say," she fires back, "never stop learning."

"I see," Fitz nods before turning his attention to me. "Shouldn't you be in the lab with Banner, Simmons?"

Seeing a graceful way out of this situation, I jump on it, perhaps a little too eagerly.

"Right. Yes, you're absolutely right," I slip past Skye and impress myself when I manage not to falter as her hand grazes my lower back. "I should get back down there," I say with more conviction than I feel.

Fitz, mercifully, steps out of my way, allowing me to slip past him into the hall. I pretend not to notice that they're both shooting perplexed looks at my back as I hurry back down the hall in the direction of th lab.

"How much longer?"

"About two minutes and forty seconds less than the last time you asked."

I let out a groan of frustration. I don't really even know what he's testing for, but I'm tired of waiting.

Only a moment later, Banner's phone goes off, playing an 8-bit version of "I Am Iron Man".

"Really?"

Banner shrugs, smirking as he silences it. He removes the samples from the various pieces of equipment he's deemed necessary, them pulls up a myriad of results and reports on the holo table.

Upon first glance, I'm relieved. Everything looks normal. Great, actually.

A little too great.

"Is that-?"

Banner nods, squinting. "I think so?"

I shake my head. "I've never seen that. Ever. It's like-"

"Exactly."

I'm not sure what I was expecting. On some level, this makes sense. The results are consistent with what we saw in the fungal samples.

"What does it mean?" I ask, not sure that I want an answer.

When Banner doesn't supply one, I look up. Lucky I did, too, as I'm just in time to see a large glass beaker hurtling towards my face, too fast and too close for me to possibly catch it.

And yet, without panic or hesitation, I feel my hand rise to meet it. I catch it effortlessly, plucking it from the air.

"What the hell was that?!" I turn to Banner, incredulous.

He shrugs, "Testing a theory. I was right, by the way."

I balk at him. "And if you'd been wrong?"

"Then you'd probably be more angry, and quite a bit more bloody. But, lucky for you, I'm almost never wrong." He smiles smugly.

Still seething, I move to place the beaker on the table. Unfortunately, I underestimate my strength and set it down with more force than I'd intended. As is normally the case with glassware, it shattered under excessive force, sending shards of glass all over the table and floor whilst a few embedded themselves in my hand.

Banner is by my side a moment later, examine the damage and carefully plucking the pieces from my skin.

"Nothing too serious," he informs me, as though I don't have several Ph.d's and couldn't ascertain this information on my own. I don't say that, though. I just nod, because he's helping and I'm not eager to dig the glass out of my own flesh.

When he's removed the last piece, he crosses the room to retrieve the bandages from the drawer in one of the desks. Before he's returned, though, I look down at my hand and feel my eyes widen.

I can see my skin stretching and growing, repairing itself at hyper-speed to cover the wounds. Upon reaching my side again, Banner follows my line of sight to my hand.

"Whoa," is all he says.

"Yeah," I nod. "Whoa."

"You rang?"

I jump, startled when I hear Coulson's voice behind me in the lab.

Dr. Banner smiles from behind the holotable projection.

"'Bout time. Dying really slowed you down."

"I got held up in the cockpit. What's up?"

Banner pulls up the results from the initial tests and displays them on the holotable.

Coulson considers them for a moment, then shakes his head slowly. "Sorry, guys. All greek to me. What is it?"

Neither Banner nor I answer immediately. After a few moments, I step in hesitantly.

"Well…we're not sure."

Coulson's confused look encourages me to continue.

"The results of the blood samples show extremely high levels of-"

"Simmons," Coulson cuts me off, "keep it simple. Please. Been a long day."

"Right. Well, basically, the tests are normal except for the cellular breakdowns."

Coulson raises his eyebrows, "and those are…?"

"Decidedly not," Banner fills in.

"Then what are they?" Coulson asks.

"Short answer? We're not sure yet." He comes around from behind the holotable and stands in front of Coulson and I. "But think Super-Serum and Vita-Ray plus irradiated super-fungus." Banner turns to me, "Show him your hand, Simmons."

I do, still a little shocked myself. The skin is still red and a little irritated, but it's shiny where the new skin has healed. It looks like a wound that's a few days into the healing process already.

Coulson looks concerned when he sees the cuts. "What happened?"

"Erm, beaker. It, uh, broke." I avoid looking Coulson in the eyes, embarrassed.

"When?" he asks.

"'Bout 8 minutes ago," Banner says, looking at his watch.

Coulson looks awed at first, but a dark, anxious expression quickly settles across his face.

"Keep this between the two of you for right now. Until we know what we're dealing with in Scotland. In the meantime, make a note of everything, Simmons. Headaches, nausea, anything."

"Should we send anything to the labs at the Hub?" I ask.

Coulson shakes his head, "No. Let's keep this in-house." He looks like he wants to say something more, but decides against it. He turns to leave, but stops before he's through the doors, looking like he's about to say something more. But, he must decide against it, as he continues on a moment later and quickly disappears up the stairs and out of sight.

Banner and I have been working in the lab for hours. I'm not sure how long it's been, exactly, but it feels like days since Coulson left.

"Enough," Banner groans, sitting back from the microscope and rubbing his eyes. "There's nothing more to find here. We can't do anything until we get to a proper lab, with bigger, more expensive equipment."

I nod, yawning.

"Back to the important matter at hand, then," Banner says.

I have a feeling I know what he's referring to. He's scarcely left it alone all afternoon.

"No," I say, "there's nothing else to discuss. And stop meddling. It's annoying."

Banner scowls, but ignores my criticism in favor of continued meddling.

"What?" Banner shrugs, "It's not so ridiculous."

"It is, though," I insist, continuing to transport the vials from one tray to the other.

"It's not like you'd be the first."

"What do you mean?" I narrow my eyes at him.

"Agent Hill and Cap."

I put the last vial in the tray and turn my full attention to him. "Really? I never pegged Captain America—"

"Not Captain America. Captain Marvel."

I nod slowly in recognition. Part of me thinks that maybe he has a point. Am I the only thing stopping me? I wish I could say that I've never been one to stand in my own way, but I think I can safely say that self-doubt has been one of my biggest adversaries thus far in life.

Banner secures his own tray of vials in an insulated drawer, then picks up one of the lab stools to stow it, in case we hit turbulence.

"You don't really have much choice now, Simmons. You've got to be extraordinary. It'd be a shame to limit yourself."

Without warning, he hurls the heavy stool at me. The force isn't quite Hulk-like, but it's enough to do some serious damage at such short range. Before I even have a chance to think about it, my hand rises to meet it, wrapping around the metal and stopping it effortlessly.

I shoot him a steely glare. He seems to think that suddenly gaining unexplainable 'super' attributes is some kind of joke. Bruce Banner of all people should know that it is not.

"Don't look so forlorn. You ought to get some mileage out of it. Could be temporary, after all," he shrugs. "And hey, at least you don't have 'big, green and ugly' to contend with. This may actually help you. Worked for Captain Marvel."

I lower the stool to the ground and stow it, choosing not to dignify his quip with a response.

"You have to admit," he continues, "there are some interesting parallels."

I will admit no such thing. And in an attempt to prove that point, I shrug off my lab coat, hang it on the hook near the door, and exit the lab.

Banner is right on my heels, though, unflappable.

"I'm just saying you should give it some thought. Life's short. And in our line of work, probably shorter."

Sound advice, but not especially comforting.

Having wrapped up everything in the lab, Banner and I head upstairs.

To call today a long day would be a criminal understatement. Despite whatever kind of super-serum might be coursing through my veins, I am well and truly exhausted.

When I reach the door of my pod, I can feel my eyelids drooping as I enter the code to open my door.

I'm in my pajamas moments later, two seconds from sprawling out on my bed, when I hear Fitz's voice in the hallway.

"It's working in mine, Skye. Don't know what to tell you."

Skye groans in frustration. "I've checked everything. Every other pod's fine. It's got to be the signal booster."

I lean against the doorway, watching as Fitz shakes his head, "How could it be? They're simple. Sturdy. 'Bout the only way to break them is to unplug them from the mainframe in the control room."

When Skye doesn't say anything in response and Fitz breathes out an exaggerated sigh, I almost consider fessing up. Almost.

But I don't, so a moment later, Fitz leaves, grumbling, "Fine. I'll go check it."

"Internet troubles?" I ask innocently.

Skye jumps, clearly not realizing that I was there.

"Sorry," I say sheepishly, "didn't mean to startle you."

She waves off my apology with a hand that's covered in the too-long sleeve of the S.H.I.E.L.D. jumper she absconded with last night.

"Don't worry about it," she laughs breathily, "just a little jumpy ever since the whole ghost-on-board incident."

I nod, smirking and just now noticing the way her nose wrinkles ever-so-slightly when she laughs.

"But yes," Skye continues, "Internet's acting up. Fitz thinks it might be the booster."

"That's odd," I feign a frown, "mine's working." I pause, hoping that it sounds like the thought just occurred to me when I say, "You can come in and use it. If you'd like."

Any guilt I may have been feeling over unplugging Skye's signal booster and letting Fitz run around trying to fix it quickly dissipates when Skye smiles brightly. She laughs quietly as she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and looks me right in the eyes. Hers are warm and bright and radiant in a way that I always think I could never forgot but am surprised by every time. So this time, I hold her gaze just a moment longer than I normally would, trying to take them in. In this moment, I think that maybe she knows.

"I'd love to," she says, turning away only for a moment as she grabs her laptop from the table beside her bed. In a few short strides, she's in front of me, then slipping past me into my room. "You're a lifesaver, Simmons."

I laugh and shake my head, but don't argue as I close the door to the pod. When I turn around, she's settling into the same side of the bed she occupied last night and opening her laptop. I feel the corners of my lips lift slightly. I'm glad she didn't go for the chair. So very glad.

"Is this okay?" she asks nervously, noticing after a few moments that I'm looking at her and not moving to get into the bed. "I can move if you want m-."

"No," I say, maybe a little to quickly. Shaking my head, I try to recover, "don't be ridiculous. You're not sitting in that awful chair again. You're fine right there."

Skye's expression softens into a shy smile.

Despite a valiant attempt to stifle it, a yawn escapes my mouth.

"Simmons, get in here," Skye tosses back one side of the sheets. "You must be exhausted."

I nod, unable to deny it. Slowly and carefully, I climb into the bed and under the sheets. My whole body practically sighs in relief, finally letting go of the tension it's been holding all day. Between traipsing across the frozen tundra and finding out that I may or may not have some kind of superhuman abilities that I can't tell anyone about, today hasn't exactly been a breeze.

I get comfortable, knowing that I won't be able to keep my eyes open for much longer, but I suck in a quick breath when I feel Skye lean over me to turn off the light. Squeezing my eyes shut, I try not to think too hard about the way her hip is touching mine or about the way that all of her is so close to me. Close enough that I can smell her shampoo: sweet and fresh and light.

"Is my screen going to bother you?" she asks quietly. "I don't want to keep you up. I can go to the lounge."

She shifts slightly, but I grab her wrist gently. "Stay," I say without opening my eyes. "It won't bother me."

"Are you sure?"

I nod, "Positive. I want you here."

As my words hang in the air, I swallow nervously. I hadn't meant to say it like that. So honestly.

After a few moments of nerve-wracking silence, Skye says only one thing:

"Really?"

"Really."

I can hear the smile in her voice when she says, "Okay." The word sounds heavy when she says it. Like it's carrying something beyond an agreement to share my wi-fi and my bed for the night.

"Okay?"

"Okay."

A/N: You made it! Yay, you.

I sincerely hope you enjoyed this chapter. You're all so great and I'm so glad that there are people reading this lil project.

Again, if you're reading my dumb words on the beginning/end of these chapters and you're enjoying It's A Nuclear Show And The Stars Are Gone, drop me a line in the comments with the #supersecret SophBraxt password: "Pesto Aioli". I'd love to hear from you. It makes my whole dang week.

Okay. Enough talk. Until next time, cuties. 3