disclaimer: disclaimed.
dedication: im not okay you don't understand
notes: nothing is happy ever and im gonna barf

title: the absence of faith
summary: You get me closer to God. — Grant/Skye.

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He finds her in Milan.

(She finds him, really, but, well, he doesn't know that.)

He finds her in a club in Milan, an isolation on the dance floor. The swing of her hips hot-slick-dirty. Her spine is a long bare line in the flashing light, speckled blue-white when the strobe hits her skin just right. She moves like sin, and he's supposed to kill her.

For a minute, he can only watch her.

Three steps, and—

"Hello, Agent Ward," she breathes in his ear.

"Skye," he says.

He's not even surprised.

(After shit went south at the Hub, she'd only have had May and Coulson to train under. May and Coulson were the best. Are the best. He's going to be sick.)

She slots her thigh in-between his legs, rolls her hips up into his. The press of the cold metal barrel of a gun to the soft flesh beneath his jaw stays hidden behind the fall of her hair. No one can see them like this.

It wasn't supposed to go like this.

"Been a while," Skye murmurs.

His hands find purchase on her hips. The way they jut into his palms makes his blood pulse in time with the heavy bass, trembling up his limbs. Her lips have curved up, curled into something cold and cruel that doesn't suit her at all, but causes the already-erratic beat of his heart to intensify.

"Not long enough," he says.

She doesn't react, not visibly, so maybe she didn't hear him. But that smile stays, and her eyes glaze over like coloured glass.

"Well," she says, "time must pass different for traitors. But then, hell, who am I to know? M'not very good at betrayal. Maybe you could tell me about it, sometime."

He does not choke.

She spins in his grip, her back up against his chest, but doesn't move away. Her arms come up to wrap around the back of his neck—the gun's gone, but there's a knife, now, kissing the edge of his hairline—and she presses into him. She's a soft swaying thing in his arms, and he has to fight not to close his eyes.

"We never did get that drink," Skye says.

Her head goes forward, down, and he can't help the dark twist in his gut that says mine, all mine. He bends, too, touches his lips to her dusky skin. Tastes sweat and something else; it rolls across his tongue sweeter than summer wine.

And he wants.

God, he wants.

(He's supposed to have killed her by now. He doesn't believe in God, but he can't, can't, can't take Skye out of the world. It'll be a cold day in hell before he puts a bullet through her. It'll be a colder day when this is done, when this is all over, and she can put that bullet through his brain, right where it belongs.)

"So what do you say?" she asks, spins again to look him in the eye.

He gets her by the throat, digs his fingers in. Her neck is so fragile in his fist. His self-loathing is palpable on his tongue, ashy and bitter.

"C'mon, bot-twenty-two. Gimme a reason," Skye sings into his ear. "It's just sex."

"Just—" he still can't even say the word.

"Just sex," Skye repeats, but her breath comes shallow and fast in his ear. "Get it out of our system, and we can stop meeting like this."

It won't stop them at all. He knows that. He knows that she knows that; he knows that she knows that he knows that she knows. And one of these days, he's going to slip and say something that'll blow the whole thing, because he's in too deep and she's Skye.

The memory of her is the only thing that keeps him together, some days.

Skye put her hands to his face. She's shockingly cold in the overheated club, but her mouth is slick and fire-hot when she kisses him. It's different than that first time, when she was younger and more naïve. She'd felt something for him, then. Nothing's changed on his end, but deep cover calls for the death of everything he ever wanted.

So now it's just physical.

He wraps around her, hikes her up so they're face to face. When Skye smiles at him, his heart does something funny. Her lips shine wetly. Everything about her is murder in a dress. He buries his face in her throat.

"Ready?" he asks, and he doesn't know which one of them he's asking.

"If you're good," she says into his ear, "I might not even kill you."

He breathes her in, and prays that she does.

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fin.