This fic was inspired by this tumblr post: post/84379864820/but-like-what-happened-after-the-pool-scene

Tag for Nothing Personal. The now-homeless team needs to make a supply run to Walmart.

I haven't written much in years except for a drabble recently, and I'm very rusty and insecure about my writing. I am particularly unhappy with this one and didn't want to post it but I didn't want to just ditch it either after having spent time on it. So this will go down as sloppy writing practice.

I know some of you put me on author alert after my drabble and I cant tell you what that means to me, as well as the few too-kind comments I received. Seriously you guys are the reason I thought I would try to get back into writing. Thank you very much.

It was Fitz accidently wondering aloud if the giant potted plant behind them was edible, accompanied by his rumbling tummy, that the team finally admitted they needed to make a late-night run to the local Walmart. They had been putting it off as they were bone-tired, but they all knew it would be useless trying to sleep when Fitz was hungry.

Lola was the only transportation they had but she only seated two, and she also had a bunch of bullet "wounds", as Coulson insisted on referring to them, and since taking a bus was generally a bad move for wanted fugitives, they were forced to walk.

It was thankfully a nice night, the walk mostly quiet as they were too exhausted for any conversation of substance, although occasionally the steady beat of their feet on the side walk was interrupted by Trip pulling yet another tiny vending-machine chip bag from somewhere on his person and Fitz asking him to please, please share. Their two appetites rivaled each other, which was amusing considering the huge difference in size and activity level.

Skye was 99.9% sure that the only reason Trip kept eating the chips was so he could have the fun of playing keep-away with Fitz. She could practically hear Simmons rolling her eyes at their antics.

Fitz eventually resorted to just trying to snatch a chip from Trip's hand. Trip casually raised the bag above his head and chuckled at Fitz's "no come one, just one!" Coulson finally turned Dad Eye on them and told them to quit attracting attention, they were wanted terrorists for god's sake.

Skye laughed at them. "You got in trouble!" She teased, and Coulson had to tun Dad Eye on her too.

She looked away, still giggling, while Fitz huffed and Trip lowered the bag. The rest of the walk was silent.

They arrived to a mostly deserted store. Coulson grabbed a stack of baskets and distributed them in an orderly fashion while giving them the rundown on necessities and budget allowances, although he knew it was in vain as none of them seemed to be really listening. Skye was rocking on the balls of her feet and reading the signs above the aisles, a big goofy grin on her face. Trip was reading a pamphlet he'd gotten from the side of the blood-pressure testing station. Fitzsimmons were a little away from the group, arguing about food. Fitz wanted his favorite flavor of chips this time, as they always got hers he claimed. Simmons huffed lightly. "Fitz we don't have to share all our food you know?" Fitz looked affronted. May rolled her eyes and walked off toward the pharmacy, and Coulson gave up, shaking his head hopelessly at his motley team before wandering down the nearest aisle.

Skye skipped off towards the snack aisle, finding herself in a mood to binge on nutritionless crap. Jemma followed Skye, but when Fitz made to follow Jemma, Trip put a muscular arm around his shoulder and forcefully steered him towards the back of the store.

"Oh I'm so hungry but I don't know what I want" Simmons muttered as she hurried past Skye down the aisle "maybe pretzels".

"Cheetos!" Skye declared, grabbing a bag while Simmons compared two pretzel brands, quickly becoming absorbed in the nutritional facts.

Then Skye felt her face fall, her gaze drifting down to the Cheetos in her hand. And quite suddenly Skye's mildly good mood was gone as she felt her chest tighten at the sight of the bag that sat unchallenged in her hand.

She shuffled her feet, staring at the shelf in front of her, feeling oddly like a child who had stopped to tie her shoe only to look up to find herself alone, her family lost forever in the encroaching crowd of strangers.

Ward, the Ward who had been her supervising officer, had all but forbidden junk food. He had put her on some crazy high-protein diet, saying it was necessary while doing strength training.

The first time they had gone shopping together (and the team always went shopping together as they found early on that no one person was apparently capable of buying what everyone wanted), she'd gotten excited about the prospect of Cheetos, only to have Ward come over and sternly pluck the bag from her hand and replace it on the shelf.

"No junk food" he said roughly, and she made a face at him when he turned away.

Every time after that she would make an attempt at sneaking Cheetos, mostly just to annoy Ward the way Trip had been annoying Fitz earlier, and every time Ward, the Ward who had been her friend, would have to take them from her, his perpetual frown a little closer to a smile each time. Until eventually she was doing it hopelessly, fruitlessly, the goal of Cheetos forgotten, just to see him smirk and roll his eyes while he took them from her.

She painfully realized then that she hadn't skipped down this aisle because she'd wanted Cheetos at all, as she stood staring at the unmoving snack bag in her hand. No, rather she had subconsciously held the bag aloft in the hopeful expectation that Ward, the Ward who had betrayed them, would grin and prove that he cared about her by snatching them up and enforcing her diet so she could grow stronger.

Yet the chips remained untouched and the grief of the last 36 hours hit her suddenly like being shot twice in the stomach by a lover, grief that had been quietly building beneath rage and adrenaline. Skye swallowed and blinked up at the unnatural florescent lighting, buzzing away uncaringly.

Simmons was a few yards away, now contemplating the popcorn prices, oblivious to Skye's dilemma.

Skye sniffed lightly, wishing desperately that the tears would stop gathering. Oh, she was not ashamed to cry or to feel. She was no stranger to pain- indeed, the two were old friends. But crying because Coulson was being tortured, because a little boy had lost his father, or because Simmons was dying of an alien virus, was not the same as crying when one of your best friends betrayed you and everything you love in the entire world.

No, this crying was more akin to the tears she had choked on in the back seat of her case workers car, only 34 days since the last time she'd been there. The woman she'd smiled tentatively up at with chapped lips and once called 'mom' had told her that morning, and without looking at her, that her case worker was on his way and she needed to go pack her stuff.

Skye had felt her face go cold with confused shock, and numbly she took the garbage bag Mrs. Brody held and did as she was told.

The Brody's did not watch her leave from the porch or the door or the window, like people who love each other do in movies, like she had watched the house grow smaller from her car window until they had long driven out of sight. When she finally turned away she wiped the blood from her lip that she'd bitten in an effort to keep from crying, and wiped the tears with the back of her hand to hide that she had failed.

Often throughout her tumultuous life Skye found herself crying with friends, or the two of them holding each other up while they cried for the other, but she refused to let herself cry for those who had hurt her. She would not give them the satisfaction of looking back at people who wouldn't watch her go.

So she stood in the snack aisle like a statue, breathing through her mouth, her muscles tense in the effort to contain the aching, screaming pain of having lost a dear friend who she now understood she'd never really had at all, her hand steadily squeezing the Cheetos bag tighter and tighter.

"Skye?"

The voice was tentative and gentle, yet she still jumped. It was Coulson who had spoken, though the whole team had congregated while she'd been absorbed in her grief-stricken thoughts, their baskets already full.

She sniffed and wiped her eyes roughly with her thumb and forefinger. It seemed she'd ended up crying despite her quiet efforts. Coulson and May were looking at her with kind understanding, and maybe a little displaced anger. Trip and Fitz were trying to pretend they weren't aware of her tears so as to not add to her discomfort, and their own, even as they stood there sheepishly holding two foam swords. Simmons' own eyes were swimming with tears, a grief shared perhaps, and Skye involuntarily whimpered when she looked at her.

Simmons gingerly took the Cheetos from her, all of the team aware of Skye and Ward's old game, and replaced them on the shelf, before wrapping her arms around her friend.

The warmth and kindness were impossible to resist, the pressure safe and reassuring, and Skye found herself hugging back desperately, sobbing uncontrollably. It was an ugly sort of crying with lots of snot, but Simmons was crying too so it wasn't so bad. May then surprised her slightly by offering her own brand of comfort, squeezing her upper arm gently and firmly while she sniffed, but only once.

The others may have had full baskets already, but Skye hadn't gotten a single thing yet. After she'd gained moderate control of herself, Trip picked up her basket and slung his arm around her shoulders. He dwarfed her.

He directed her to the frozen goods and told her what was the best, and when she wanted something he would put it in her basket for her. He carried his own overflowing basket effortlessly in the crook of his elbow.

Fitz and Simmons were not far behind them. Fitz was trying to trade their items and Simmons was examining his to make sure he would have rounded meals.

May and Coulson flanked them, watchful.

Skye felt a bubbling sensation in her, a feeling that she almost wanted to ignore, crush even. She'd felt it before. It had preceded her urge to call Mrs. Brody 'Mom'. It had surfaced anxiously before she'd daringly decided that she wanted to trust Ward enough to reveal she had been a foster kid. Neither of those events led to anything good.

It was a rare and foreign sense of belonging, of peaceful permanence. It was scarce and it was dangerous. She simultaneously craved it and feared it.

Fitz then brought her violently from her thoughts by rudely stabbing her in the kidney with his sword, followed immediately by Simmons' exclamation of "Fitz! Now is not the time!" as she ripped the toy from his hand and threw it into the clothes rack nearby.

Fitz began to complain that he was just trying to lighten the mood, to which Simmons impatiently pointed out that there was a time and place for everything. Skye smiled and shook her head as they lined up to check out, while Coulson snuck a Twix bar into her pile, winking at her.

She knew it was too late to do anything about her bond with the team, and the thought frightened her. She already loved them, even if their future was uncertain. Deep inside her she knew she would always be bracing herself. Despite the incredible attachment she felt to them, she thought she might always be waiting for them to leave her, either willingly or through cruel fates. It would hurt she knew, and someday she would once again find herself squeezing her fists and digging her nails into her palm and pretending she wasn't all that sad. But she knew with equal certainty, as Trip beat a now defenseless Fitz with his own sword, that it would be worth it.

Hundreds of miles away and thousands of feet in the air, Grant Ward tore open a bag of Cheetos and pretended the same. He had never been one to look back.