In Her Arms

Prompt: "Skye wakes up disoriented/scared after being shot, but May's there to calm her down."

She wakes up to the feeling of her entire body spasming in shock. Before she can register where, or even who, she is her eyes shoot open, her breathing rapid she panics as the brightness of her surroundings sends sharp pains through her head, and short, shallow gasps of air fail to make their way to her lungs.

Her eyes snap shut, protecting her from the unnatural lights as the dizziness and disorientation sends a wave of nausea over her. Unable to calm down enough to control her breathing, she slowly reattempts to open her eyes, in order to try and make some sense of the situation.

It's no use, as there's no sense to be made of the vague shapes surrounding her, and she begins to doubt that anything, including herself, actually exist as she remembers the sound of gunshots, and relives the moment she realised a bullet had entered her stomach. Crying out in a mixture of pain and fear, her breathing becomes even more erratic, and she realises she's shaking involuntarily. Her heart thuds in her chest, beating so hard she's almost afraid her chest will explode.

Suddenly, she feels strong arms she doesn't recognise wrapped around her. Her breathing and the fire in her chest begin to calm, as soothing sounds are whispered into her ears, and gentle hands caress her hair. She may not recognise the feeling of being in the arms of the woman holding her, but she knows it's someone she trusts, someone who makes her feel safe. She sinks into the warmth of the woman holding her, and realises she's hardly shaking at all any more. Soft lips press against her forehead as tears she wasn't aware she'd shed are brushed from her face.

Skye lies back on the bed, and feels the woman move so that she's sat next to her. One hand returns to her hair, stroking it soothingly, arm curved protectively over the top of her head. She can feel the woman breathing next to her, and can just about make sense of the fact that the person comforting her is sat next to the bed, but with her head and upper body lay next to hers. Her other hand is resting on top of Skye's, and as her breathing slows back to a normal rate, she grasps the hand of the woman close to her.

May continues to stroke Skye's hair, and switches back and forth between linking their fingers together, and caressing her hands, watching her slowly relax and fall back to sleep. She feels her own heart rate return to normal as the woman on the bed relaxes under her touch. She'd never admit it, but watching her wake up in so much distress had shocked and terrified May, and she'd had no clue how to react, trying to trust her instinct and calm her down, whilst she herself was panicking. It was just her luck that Skye would wake up twenty minutes after she'd forced the rest of the team to get some rest. Simmons hadn't left her side for days, and yet when she eventually woke up it had been Agent Melinda May by her side trying to comfort her.

Looking at the impossibly strong yet fragile woman in front of her, watching her chest rise and fall as even breaths escaped from her beautiful dry lips, knowing that she'd been ready to give up on the idea that she'd ever see her alive again was painful. She realised she was glad to have been the one there when Skye had awoken. It had given her the time she needed to process the realisation of just how important the girl was to her, and the space to privately contemplate how heart breaking it would have been to lose her.

The next time Skye wakes up, the rest of the team are there, and no one mentions the fact that this isn't the first time she woken up. She's much less disorientated this time around, and the teams goes through what happened with her, catching her up on everything that had happened whilst she was unconscious. Sometimes May remembers how small and breakable the panicked girl in her arms felt, and wonders how on earth the strong, determined woman she watches work alongside her could even be the same person. She wonders if Skye remembers, and how it would feel to hold her in her arms again, under different circumstances.

Sometimes Skye imagines being held in those arms, and wonders if Agent May ever thinks about that day, before she reminds herself that she's being silly, and that is was only a dream. After all, it would hardly be the first time she'd dreamed of sharing her bed with the woman.