Chapter 2
Looking in the rear-view mirror, May rolled her eyes heavily before shooting a look at Phil who sat comfortably in the passenger seat. He just shrugged his shoulders and went back to his crossword on antiques. Naturally. He loved Skye and Ward but he was not getting in the middle of that bat-shit crazy. May cast another look in the mirror before returning her eyes to the road, silently cursing herself for putting them both in such a small space for an hour. It was like a high-school gym hall in there! On one bench sat Bobbi and Jemma, with Skye mushed between them. Jemma had her arm protectively around Skye's shoulders and kept shooting Ward what could only be described as 'bitch faces'. Bobbi, however, was too busy eyeing up her boyfriend from across the van to pay much interest. Skye herself was quiet, withdrawn and completely not Skye. There were no quips or sarcastic comments. Which, strangely enough, left the short bus eerily quiet. Opposite the girls sat the boys, Trip and Fitz on one end, occasionally murmuring something about the night-night guns to each other but never in more than a hushed whisper to break the silence. Then there was Ward and Lance was sat on the end nearest the doors opposite Bobbi. The sexual tension between the two of them almost masked the awkward tension between Skye and Ward. Almost.
The silence in the van had become so loud and oppressing that when May suddenly turned on the radio, the whole party in the back jumped a mile. Only Coulson remained motionless, only letting out a chuckle in correlation to May's smirk. So they were forced to listen to a crackling news channel... until Fitz decided he could do better. Of course Jemma agreed and they started working out ways to fix it when Trip told them it was “only a fucking radio” to which Fitz effectively exploded, saying that that was an insult to his profession which had Lance snorting out through his nose. That alone earned him a glare from Fitzsimmons and another slap on the arm from his girlfriend.
“OW!” he exclaimed, “What was that for!”
“You were disrespecting his profession-”
“Yeah you were disrespecting my profession!”
“Ohhh Fitz I'm sure you didn't mean it did you Lance?”
“Oh hey I did fuck all it was Trip that started it!”
“Me?! Don't drag me back into this it's not my fault you're whipped!”
It was then the short bus descended into chaos. Insults were thrown left right and centre, even Coulson's attempt to put out the fire failed miserably; his voice being drowned out by the racket. Throughout it all, Ward and Skye remain quiet, occasionally having to avoid a flailing arm or two, but otherwise they sat stationary, avoiding each others gaze. A couple of minutes into the argument and Phil was unbuckling his seatbelt and turning around to stop the fighting like a parent does for young children. This distracted May who had to turn around in her seat to try and pull Coulson back to sit in his own for safety reasons, causing them to have to swerve last minute to avoid an on-coming truck.
The volume in the van was increasing as people fought to make themselves heard. Even more so now they'd almost crashed on the way to a level 5 mission!
“ENOUGH!”
“SHUT THE FUCK UP GUYS!”
Ward looked at Skye. Skye looked at Ward. She scowled and looked away.
“I said it first.” she muttered under her breath.
Ward took a deep breath to suppress his rising anger and surveyed the van, giving everyone a cold stare until they were properly sat back in their seats and were completely silent.
“Thank you.” He said simply, before readjusting his seat belt and closing his eyes. Unfortunately, this meant that he couldn't see the flash of love in Skye's eyes as she glanced at his slumped form. She was still mad but damn it was hard to be mad at someone who had a body like a fucking Greek God!