Trip smiled, watching Daisy run playfully back and forth between the two. “Nothing’s black and white,” he said, rubbing the puppy’s head. “But you’re right. If we think we’re gonna fail, we will. Thank you, Skye.”
“That’s really offensive to the colorblind, you know?” she grinned, though it didn’t quite translate to her eyes. “Now that we’ve reached a consensus, it being that I’m always right, are you gonna name all of your children after French royalty? Consider Clovis while you’re at it.”
“My grandparents thought they’d beaten HYDRA. It’s not just that - we’re not going to be here forever. This job has a short lifespan. You either live long enough to tell the tale, or you don’t. And I don’t want to leave a child behind without a father. That’s not fair.”
“Then we’re gonna beat Hydra. It’s as black as white as that. And, if we somehow fail, you’re still not going anywhere. Not on my watch. You deserve to have everything you’ve ever wanted and I kinda want to be there to see them happen to you.”
“Daisy it is, then,” Trip said, scratching the puppy on the head. Skye’s smile was contagious, and he couldn’t help but smile as well. “I certainly hope she does, because I’m not taking her back to the shelter, no matter what Coulson says.” The puppy pranced around them, rolling around and occasionally biting at a stalk of grass. “Y’know, I kind of wanted kids, but this sort of life - it’s just. I don’t want to bring a family into this HYDRA mess. If HYDRA can kill a puppy, they’re the worst people on the planet. Not that they aren’t already.”
Skye reverted her eyes from the puppy and to him, the wide smile dropping off her face to be replaced by a smaller, sadder one, the one that really packed a punch. “I kind of still do. Want you to have kids, uphold the legacy, all that. Fuck Hydra. You wouldn’t be here right now had your grandparents thought the same. There’ll always be evil, but whether there’ll be someone to fight it? That’s entirely up to us.”
“Am not,” Trip protested, slightly jealous as Daisy licked Skye’s cheek. Not that she hadn’t licked him several times today already. “This is Skye,” he tells the puppy, scratching her on the top of her head that peeked out from over Skye’s embrace. “She thinks I’m a bad puppy parent. Don’t listen to her. I’m gonna be the best puppy parent.” He smiled, sitting down on the grass across from Skye, watching the two of them interact. “The name’s up for debate,” he says. “Daisy’s a great name and all, but I’m not completely sold yet. That’s just what they called her at the shelter.”
“Daisy’s fine. Do you want her drop out of high school, run away and start calling herself a misspelt version of the great unknown? Let her keep the name and do not put her in a Catholic school. She’ll start rolling joints with with Matthew 14:1-12.” Skye spent a few moments of silence playing with the dog she’d completely hijacked then, enamoured with it to the point of being oblivious to all noise happening around her, and didn’t even bother looking up when she started talking again, “I love her. Coulson won’t, but I do,” she said, more so to the puppy itself. “And you’ll grow on him. Literally. All it takes is me offhandedly mentioning a stable home and the guilt trip will kick in.”
In retrospect, Trip should have realized sooner that his profession wasn’t exactly best lent to taking care of a small animal, let alone one that was going to grow up to be big. But he’d been thinking about it for a while, even back when he was on Garrett’s team. Now that he was assigned to the Academy for the foreseeable future, it certainly couldn’t hurt, right?
His shoes would beg to differ. Two hours after coming home from the animal shelter with a black and white bumbling bundle of border collie, his apartment was a mess, but he was the happiest he’d been in months. The puppy never stopped moving - much like a freshman ops student on too much coffee - and when Trip turned his back for one minute, it had somehow managed to nudge the door open and run out of the apartment.
Trip chased the puppy down the hallway and outside onto the quad. “Come back!” he yelled, realizing that she didn’t yet have a name, let alone answer to one. Her name had been Daisy at the shelter, but she was still young and untrained. Still, it never hurt to try it. “Daisy!” he called, but the faster he ran after the puppy, the faster she ran away. He’d just committed at least twelve years of his life to this.
And he loved it.
If the faint, high-pitched barking wasn’t alarming at first, the sound of claws against the hardwood floor getting closer to her certainly was. She spun around on her heels to what was a either a genetic mutation gone wrong in one of the labs or - yep. A dog. The less likely option. And the only person crazy enough to take one in other than Fitz was Trip, who then appeared round the corner as if she’d summoned him by knowing the man too well, exasperated but not in a bad way. Skye knelt down to greet the puppy with open arms as it pattered towards her with as much vigour as it’s tiny legs would allow, “It’s mine now,” she declared when Daisy was safely enveloped in her arms, pulling it closer against her chest as not to let it go again, “Finders keepers, and you are already proving to be a horrible fucking parent.”
Trip pointedly ignored the skyscraper comments. “You know some of them. Jonathan from comms? You’re gonna fight him whether he’s Hydra or not - I saw the way you looked at him when you heard about him and Fitz. That was a murder look if I ever saw one.” He pulled the chair out from his desk and motioned for Skye to sit down. If he was going to sleep (and he probably wouldn’t), he could always do so on the floor. “I’ll take the first half of the alphabet if you want the second.”
Once sat, Skye refocused her attention on flipping through the first file, only looking up (or down) at Trip when he name dropped, mouth suddenly a thin line of universally translatable pique. “Don’t say his name around me,” she said dryly, “Do you know how close I came to murder? Stop smiling, Trip. I had two people cry in my room in the past week because his hand decided to colonise Fitz from the waist down. First man on the moons, if you will.”
“I didn’t sleep well last night,” Trip mumbled with a yawn. “Hence the poetic bullshit.” The files he had to read weighed heavily on his mind, as well as the pop quizzes he had to grade. Surely he’d be a more popular teacher if he didn’t give them - and he’d have more free time, too. “Well, apparently I have a ton of work to do, but I wouldn’t mind some company?”
“Work? What, like building a fucking skyscraper? With me?” Skye teased, passing him to get to the office she’d previously stormed out of. She didn’t look over her shoulder to see if Trip was following until she was at the door, but a quick in his direction as she pulled it open confirmed that he was. “Here’s a wild idea - you sleep, I go through the files. Recognising the Hitler youth look is one of my many talents, as is being incredibly nice and giving back to the community, plus, I don’t know any of them, so there’ll be no feelings involved if they turn out to be girl scout nazis. Emphasis on the ‘if’.”
“I like you. A lot.” Trips put his hand on her shoulder, squeezing it gently. “And I don’t want what we have to end just because you did something you think you shouldn’t have done. Especially not without asking me how I felt about it. You assume the worst, Skye, when it’s not necessarily what’s true.”
“Hoping for something and losing it hurts more than never hoping for anything,” she said softly, tone worn out, but accompanied by a slight, happy-passing smile. There were things to be said, but she refrained, hoping he’d already know. And, if he didn’t, she hoped he’d understand. Instead, she reached out to rest his hand on his, picking up the conversation after a few moments of silence, “Skyscraper, huh. What’s gotten into you? And,“ she hesitated, “How do we proceed, agent?”
“What if I don’t want to walk away?” he mumbled. “Skye, I- I’m not mad at you. I’m not going to leave you. And for someone who’s afraid of losing people, you’re certainly doing your damnedest to push me away.” He took a deep breath and squared his shoulders, trying to meet her eyes. “This job isn’t without its risks. We could lose any of us any day, to Hydra or a freak accident or a fucking supervillain. But if anything, that’s a reason to build a relationship - to make what undetermined amount of time we have together great. And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to built a fuckin’ skyscraper with you.”
Skye went silent all at once, eyes wide, mouth slightly agape in incredulity, barely managing to collect her thoughts, much less to reply. It wasn’t easy to stun her, and she could admit it wasn’t a pleasant feeling in the rare instances she was taken aback. But, this. This was in a league of it’s own. “Say it again. Preferably using simpler terms instead of Sylvia Plath. I want this to be very clear.”
