"Hey" Ward said to May as he joined her outside.
"Don't you start."
"I take it Simmons and Amber were on at you about a certain man?" Ward asked, even though he knew the answer.
The glare he got from May confirmed it.
"I was actually coming outside to say I'm sorry for making you do the reading. I could tell it hurt you more than you will admit."
"Why would it hurt?"
"Because it stirred up memories of your own wedding and everything that came later."
"It was a long time ago."
"He was your first love?" Ward asked her, knowing that to talk about what he needed to talk to her about he would have to make valuable points before addressing it.
"Yes. He was." May admitted after a long and thoughtful pause.
"You never get over your first loves. I don't know what it is, but something about them always stays with you, no matter what you do, who you see and where you go to avoid them." Ward told her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and giving her a hug.
"It's especially hard when..." May started to say, but trailed off, not knowing what to say, or even how to say it.
"When you have feelings for someone else and they conflict with emotions and feeling you have tried to bury." Ward finished for her.
May tilted her body and buried her head into Ward's shoulder before emitting a sob.
"You know Coulson feels the same way." Ward told her. It was a gamble, but as no one else knew this fact he was hoping that it would be the push they needed.
"Don't be stupid. He's in love with Audrey." May reasoned, pulling her head off his shoulder and wiping her eyes.
"Yes, but she was his first real love. The one that never goes away." Ward told her. He needed to make her see that Coulson was moving on.
"There is no way." May objected.
"He got shot when you guys were taking out those carnies because he was watching you." Ward told her.
The blood drained out of May's face as she processed this piece of information.
"Really?" she croaked.
"No, he was actually checking on Amber, making sure she was alright, but he nearly took a second bullet admiring your form."
"And he simply told you all of this?"
"I had to coax it out of him, but what do you think we talked about when we spent the night in medical? It sure as hell wasn't holiday destinations."
May sank back away from him, utterly defeated.
"What do I do?" She asked Ward.
He handed her an earwig.
"Trust me." He said to her.
Nadia was still suspicious of Ward so when he headed out after May she followed. She saw them talk. She saw him put his arm around May and pull her into a hug.
She then saw Ward tenderly brush May's hair out of the way and cup her ear.
Feeling like she had seen enough Nadia went in search of Skye. She found her talking to the man who had given her away at the altar.
"Skye, can I have a word?" She asked, politely interrupting Skye and Coulson.
Skye didn't want to go and talk to Nadia again, but Coulson had turned to talk to Fury, so she didn't really have much of a choice.
"Want to throw some more accusations around?" Skye asked with a slight bite to her voice.
"I just saw your husband in a rather compromising position with the Oriental looking woman who read earlier."
"Define compromising?" Skye asked. She knew exactly what Ward was doing, she was just playing Nadia.
"He pushed her hair out of her face and cupped her ear." Nadia told her, realising as she told it to Skye, it was pretty flimsy.
"Big wow!" Skye replied, voice dripping with sarcasm. "Believe it or not, when we discussed this evening we both agreed it would not be about us. It is about a friend of ours who needs our help. Grant isn't cheating on me. I am pretty much with him all day every day, with six other people who are all already paired off. Just because you are having trouble with your marriage doesn't mean you can try ruin mine."
Skye was close to tears. She saw Hawkeye talking to Tilly across the room and went to sit with them. Before she got there, however all of the chairs were taken. She took the tap on Hawkeye's leg as an invitation, so she sat on his knee.
May's hands were shaking violently, so Ward brushed her hair out of the way and placed the tiny device in her ear.
"Now go ask him to dance." Ward ordered her.
"What? How?" May squeaked.
"Walk up to him, take his drink off him and put it on the table. Take his hand and lead him onto the floor. Then let him take over. I'll be right here." Ward said, tapping her ear.
May took Ward's scotch out of his hand and drank it in one. Shaking her head at the bite of the drink she headed back indoors. Ward sneaked back into the room and headed to the table where Skye was sat on Hawkeye's knee. He took the empty seat that had materialised out of nowhere and gave the thumbs up to Skye, Fitz and Simmons. As a table they watched as May walked right up to Coulson, took his drink out of his hand and led him to the dance floor. Fortunately it was a slow song so it would give them the chance to get up close and personal. They watched as Coulson placed him free arm around May's waist, but he didn't pull her closer.
"You could drive a bus through those two." Romanov said as she sat on Ward's knee.
"We're working on it." Skye told her from across the table.
"May, slide your arm up towards his neck." Ward instructed into his microphone. They watched for a few more seconds and when May apparently ignored him Ward batted Romanov off his knee and he and Skye went back to the dance floor.
"Can we interrupt?" Ward asked.
May thankfully spun into Ward's arms and Skye took May's position.
"What the hell was that? Ward demanded.
"You told me to put my hand up towards his shoulder. I didn't know what the hell you meant."
"If you want him to pull you closer" Ward tightened his grip on May's waist and pulled her closer, forcing her arm up his shoulder towards his neck before continuing "You have to slowly do that with your arm. He will then, instinctively pull you closer." He told her, before spinning her back into Coulson's arms. Ward and Skye headed back over towards the table. Clearly Romanov and Hawkeye had not made up so they took their original positions.
Over the next thirty seconds they saw May make many tentative attempts to move her hand to force Coulson to pull her closer. She seemed to bottle it each and every time.
"This is hopeless." Skye said. The desperation clear in her voice.
"Other than being excessively clumsy and knocking them into each other I don't see what else we can do." Simmons said.
"Blue Eyes could break her heel." Hawkeye suggested.
Simmons let out an excited gasp and spun to look at Ward.
"She'd know it was me." Ward pointed out.
"What if we, and by we, I mean you, gently tug on Coulson's arm to pull her in?" Romanov asked Ward.
"That might work."
"What might work?" Fury asked, sneaking up on them all.
"Nothing, Sir." Romanov told him, batting her eyelashes as she usually did to get what she wants.
"Are you trying to set Coulson and May up?" Fury demanded.
"No, Sir." The table said in unison, passing conspiring smiles between them.
"Just don't let either of them get hurt." Fury warned.
"We won't." Ward promised.
"Maria and I are leaving. We have to get back to HQ." Fury announced.
"Ok. Thankyou for coming, Sir." Ward said to him, extracting his hand from underneath Romanov's bum and shaking it with Fury's. Skye moved around the table and held her hand out to say goodbye.
Fury surprised everyone when he gave her a quick kiss on the cheek.
"Right, onto business." Skye said, returning to Hawkeye's knee, face bright red.
"I'll need a distraction." Ward said.
If he had to use his gifts the last thing he wanted was for civilians to see it.
"Leave that to us." Fitz announced, pulling Simmons off her chair and towards the other side of May and Coulson. They could see Fitz make a big deal of scooping Simmons in his arms and kissing her.
They whoops and whistles caught the attention of Coulson and May, but as they had seen it before, the kept dancing.
Ward took this opportunity to move around the room to get a better angle. He focussed all of his attention on the arm Coulson had around May's waist. He tried to do it as smoothly as he could, but Coulson, feeling a strange sensation in his arm, resisted.
The final effect was that he pulled May to him with more force than anyone intended.
May's arm instinctively moved up Coulson's shoulder to his neck. When neither of them pulled away Ward considered his job done and went to tackle relationship emergency number two.