“story-mad, tiger roar and wolf bad”
Fandom: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Characters: Piper Velaquez, Melinda May, Maria Hill, Clint Barton, Natasha Romanov, Agent O’Brian, mentioned: Phil Coulson
Pairing: Agent Piper&Melinda May, perhaps: Agent Piper/Melinda May, Melinda May/Phil Coulson?, Melinda May/Maria Hill?, and Melinda May/Natasha Romanoff?
Title from "difficult damsels” by nikita gill
Warnings: No Archive Warnings
Summary: Piper is excited when Agent May invites her along on a secret side mission. Really excited.
May’s voice cut through a training room with expert precision. It took her two paces for every one of May’s even though she was at least four inches taller than the Chinese woman.
“Grab your bag and meet me on the Zephyr in ten.”
Piper didn’t question that as she quickly moved towards the locker room. She was greeted by a face full of steam and a half-dressed Agent O’Brian. She moved quickly towards her locker—when May said ten minutes, she meant it, and had a habit of leaving people behind when they were late.
“May and I are flying out on mission, so I won’t be able to make that aikido session tonight.”
O’Brian was her only true friend on the operations team. She remembered him from the Academy. He had been four years ahead of him and had been particularly good at explosive disarmament and munitions. It was useful especially now because May avoided touching guns in general. O’Brian loved himself a gun, the bigger the better. (Piper was sure this had a commentary on the male psyche, but being the only female on the team—save May—she kept her opinion quiet.)
He was a sweet guy, overall one of those people that Piper’s grandmother would have liked her to marry and settle down with.
“It’s your time to make a move,” he teased, toweling off his hair, “the two of you all alone, atop the clouds with no other witnesses.”
O’Brian smirked and threw a t-shirt on over his head, muffling his voice.
“Have a good mission, Velazquez.”
She made it to the Zephyr with two minutes to spare to find May running the system checks. No one else as aboard, which made Piper more excited that she cared to admit. It was rare to get one on one alone time with May.
She usually trained the entire group as a whole except for a few individual lessons sprinkled in here and there. With both O’Brian and her in munitions, Jackson into organized hostage retrieval, and Hart and Chapman working in a pair, May often took trips alone being the only true extraction specialist on the base.
She quickly tied down the rest of her stuff before climbing into the co-pilot’s chair.
Piper helped to set up her side of cockpit, which was very little as May never let her do much of the navigating, before calmly folded her hands in her lap and tried her best not to fidget as the Zephyr buzzed into motion.
Her hands were bruised and scabbed over from a tussle with Jackson. He liked to pick on her during warm ups, during drills. He knew about her…preferences. She was small and a woman, and queer, and not white and her list of disappointments to her older white colleagues seemed to always be growing.
May didn’t look up at her. Her eyes were focused on the front of the sky as her hands carefully moved them around the plane’s dashboard. Her voice didn’t seem intrusive or demanding. It didn’t even seem like she was asking if she was having problems…more likes May already knew it.
Piper’s heart jumped a little bit and she forced her hands to still and fold back into her lap again, covering the picked at scabs.
“I’m used to it…from the Academy,” Piper quickly supplied.
She wasn’t the only girl in her class. It was far past the time when the Operations Academy has realized that perhaps tiny women had their place in the combat field. Small women could fit through smaller holes in the security fields. No one ever suspected a woman walking down the street versus a set of large muscular men in black camouflage. (Still, she was different from the tall, blonde operative like Barbara Morse that they all liked and expected her to be.)
“I used to put sugar in the water tank.”
Piper blinked, and then broadly grinned.
May shrugged and finally glanced over at the younger woman.
Piper leaned back in her seat. She knew Coulson kept extra bags of white sugar in the top cabinet of the second basement kitchen for when he baked late night cookies. Perhaps it would mysteriously go missing when they got back to the base.
The ride continued quietly until, “where are we going?”
“We’re dropping off supplies to some old friends.”
Finish reading on AO3 at: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16792210