Picture Perfect

Skye once roped him into going to the mall with her.

It started off as a silly bet between them during one early morning training – he told her she could ask him something, anything, if she did ten pull-ups within a minute. He only half-believed that she could do it, but she did, within forty-eight seconds. She was unbelievably pleased with herself, doing a little victory dance, before she started to complain about how her arms hurt, while he was really proud of her.

He thought she would ask something like forgoing a training session. Or demand that their morning sessions started an hour later. He even imagined her asking him to steal Fitz's candy for her.

In the end, she only asked him to take her to a mall – she said that with her S.H.I.E.L.D. paycheck, she finally had enough money not to shop at a second hand store, and she wanted to take advantage of that. (He would have taken her even if she only asked; but under the pretense of the lost bet he could still pretend that she was nothing else to him just his rookie.)

They had some down time near a bigger city three days later, and that was when he took her. (She wore a dress; she wore a dress that ended halfway down her thighs, and it was driving him crazy.) Most of the day was a simple affair – she chose a few not too high-end stores she wanted to visit, and he followed her as she browsed through the racks and racks of clothes. She modelled a few for him, and asked about his opinion (she didn't try on dresses, though, but jeans and pants and simple shirts in darker tones than he was used to, clothes that were mostly sensible for an agent).

(At one point he broke, and started recommending her brighter, lighter, happier pieces. She smiled at him in a funny way – some of the clothes he chose must have been ridiculous –, but she tried on, and even bought a few.)

Nearing the end of the afternoon, they were on their way back to the parking lot, with shopping bags in their hands, when they passed a photo booth. Skye's eyes started sparkling the moment she saw it. She hooked her arm into his elbow and started pulling him towards it.

"Hey!" he protested, but his smirk betrayed how half-hearted this protest was.

"C'mon!" Skye urged him, already stepping into the booth. "We so need a pic of this day." Letting the bags fall to the floor at her feet, she sat down, and started to set up the machine. "Do some silly faces! Can you do some silly faces?"

The first flash came when he was still sitting down, looking towards the entryway, an amused smile on his face. By the second, he was already looking towards the camera. For the third pic, he managed to pull off some kind of cross-eyed silliness for her. But the fourth one…

On the fourth one, she is sticking her tongue out towards the camera, while he is looking down at her, half-profile towards the lenses, a look of pure adoration on his face. A kind of affection not even a blind man could miss.

So of course Skye noticed it as well.

"Well, look at that," she said smiling once the machine printed their pictures. She looked up at him, her dark eyes huge. "Maybe you should have that last one. I'll cut it off for you once we get back to the Bus."

And she did. She put the first three pictures on the wall of her bunk, but gave the fourth one to him. He refused to part with it ever since.

(It's his only picture of her.)