Date started: 1/9/15
Date completed: 9/29/15
Summary: Story of Bobbi and Hunter's relationship and how it fell apart, leading to the events of 2x05. A lot of inference but very few deviations from canon, if any.
Main Characters: Bobbi Morse, Lance Hunter, Clint Barton, Melinda May, Phil Coulson, Maria Hill, Natasha Romanoff, Nick Fury, Alfonso Mackenzie, and Isabelle Hartley

Disclaimer: I don't own Agents of SHIELD or any of the other Marvel characters who find their way here. Like the rest of us, I wish I did though.

"I wish I could give you some advice, but I've never been friends with a guy first. It's always been a roller coaster. Fast out of the gate, then hit the drop, the turn, the loop...the screeching halt. Then…back in line to do it all over again."
"But is the ride worth it?"
"I'll let you know when it's over."

Chapter 1
Operation F.I.R.S.T. C.O.N.T.A.C.T.
"I've Never Been Friends With a Guy First"

"S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ, do you copy? This is Morse, requesting confirmation of orders. S.H.I.E.L.D., do you read me?" Nothing but silence greeted her on the other end of the line. Perfect. Real perfect.

She stood up fully from her crouched position, surveying the warehouse in front of her. It looked abandoned, but she knew better than to assume. Water was seeping quickly through her specialist's catsuit, soaking her inside and out. There was nothing else to do but complete the mission and hope the extraction team would get there before she had to jump into the frigid lake again or died of hypothermia. She'd never counted surprise heat-seeking missiles as things to put on her top-ten most hated list, but after this fiasco she would have to seriously consider it.

Agent Morse started for the warehouse, moving stealthily but quickly through the underbrush and trying to keep her movements fluid and her teeth from chattering. She reached the door to find it protected by a single padlock, but when she went to remove it a few lead shavings fell to the ground and it sprang open in her hands. Again, odd. Her spy senses, acutely formed through years of training and experience, were flaring wildly, but she didn't have much choice. The window for this mission was very slight, and she wasn't going to have the extraction team find her hiding like a waterlogged rabbit a half mile away with the op incomplete. Whatever it was, she would have to find a way to handle it.

The door creaked as she let herself in, creeping alongside the wall in the semi-darkness. The interior of the place had a dank, musty smell, but was a bit warmer than the outside.

That should have been her second clue.

Bobbi headed forward again, listening intently. Suddenly she detected a voice speaking a language she couldn't identify and pressed her back up against the wall, heart pounding. The speakers were getting louder, coming nearer, raucous tones and angry voices. She would be caught if she stayed on the surface, but intel had a trapdoor to the cellar no more than fifty feet from the entrance. Bobbi peeled herself away from the wall with a deep breath, searching in the dim light across the ground. A few seconds felt like a few minutes, and all the while she heard the voices growing nearer.

Finally, she found it; her hand looped around the metal ring and she pulled upward. It opened to admit her with a horrible creak, and she pulled a mini flashlight off her vest, broke the waterproof seal—why couldn't her comm have one of those?—and shined it down in front of her before taking the leap.

She landed hard on ground—it was much closer than she'd expected it to be. The jolt sent pain lancing up her ankles, but she recovered quickly and immediately thrust the flashlight to the side should anyone try to use it to pinpoint her location. Her outstretched arm would require a much luckier shot than the center of her body mass.

She shined the light around the basement, scanning for movement, a door, anything. Something tackled her from the side and she crashed into the stone wall. No sooner did she register the splitting pain in her shoulder than she felt a thin wire press like a razor against her neck and she struggled violently, elbowing her attacker hard enough in the ribs to be released. Gasping for breath and feeling a droplet or two of blood beginning to trickle down her jugular, she spun to face her assailant, planting a giant kick in his side, effectively throwing him to the ground.

"Bloody hell," the man grunted from the floor, and Bobbi was surprised enough that she stopped in her tracks mid-second-kick to his ribcage.

"Who are you?" she demanded, pulling her metal staves from her belt and readying herself for another attack.

"You speak English," he said in a rough voice. His hands planted themselves on the dirt, and she knew it would only take a split second for him to push himself off the floor.

"Good observation," Bobbi responded dryly, grasping her staves tighter. "Who are you, and what are you doing here?"

"American English," he corrected distastefully. His eyes appeared nearly black as he squinted into the light, calculating, dangerous. "The question, love, is not what I'm doing here, but what you are. You're unlawfully interfering with a British operation, so I suggest you leave now before my backup arrives and I decide to press charges."

"Then you're trespassing. The British aren't allowed to operate within this country," she countered.

"And neither is S.H.I.E.L.D." He caught her eye, lips forming a twisted version of a smile. "Yeah, I know you're S.H.I.E.L.D. They're the only ones that allow operatives to go off on missions with metal, non-pointy sticks to fight with."

"Would you like a demonstration of what exactly me and my non-pointy sticks can do?" Bobbi challenged.

"Not really, thanks," the man replied, pushing himself up from the ground. He dusted his hands off, quite obviously no longer treating her as a threat. That annoyed her. "Now, if you would please shove off and allow me to do my work, I would be much obliged."

"I don't think so," Bobbi answered tightly. "You being here is putting enough kinks in my mission. You're staying put, and maybe I won't have S.H.I.E.L.D. lock you up later."

He scoffed. "Like you could. I've got my orders, and a single S.H.I.E.L.D. agent with metal sticks isn't going to stop me from completing them. I've faced far worse than you, darlin'."

"Then stay out of my way," Bobbi spat, forcibly moving past him further into the basement. "I've got my orders too. I've got a package to retrieve."

"Yes, the package," he said, "...you can't have that."

"The hell I can't. Why, is the British government after it too? Which, by the way, is a clear violation of the S.H.I.E.L.D.-British Compact over rights to to otherworldly and dangerous materials."

"Not after the package," the man replied with a shrug. "Don't even know what's in it. I'm after the men here right now, and the men who'll come afterward to claim it."

"I'm taking the package."

"I'm afraid we're going to disagree on this one, love."

"A lot of people must with you. You seem like a very disagreeable person." He caught her next kick with his bare hands, thrusting her legs upwards and knocking her momentarily off-balance. She spun to regain her footing, and by the time she was upright again he was out of reach and halfway across the basement. She took off after him, raising a stave to bash into the back of his head. He ducked just in time, but she was expecting that and jabbed the end of her other one into his stomach. He doubled over, then fell to the ground and rolled quickly to the side, causing her next swing to miss as well. Breathing heavily, she attacked again. Her leg locked with his and he planted a swift kick on her shin. She blocked his next move with one of her batons, receiving a punch to the jaw in return. The stave jerked out of her grip as he twisted, but only at the cost of another giant kick to the chest. He staggered backwards, dazed, but managed to stay on his feet. He was good; she would give him that. Not many could hold their own unarmed against her and the staves, but they seemed somewhat evenly matched.

Then again, she was trying not to kill him if she could help it.

He interrupted her train of thought with a run straight toward her, at the last second diving to the right and sliding right by. Before she could even turn around her head was being jerked backwards by the long strands of her golden hair. Her knees buckled under the strain of that position, and he vaulted over her to the corner of the basement, feeling the ceiling for the other hatch. She sprang up after him knowing it would be her last chance; there was no way she would follow him up to possibly blow the mission with some inter-agency skirmish. And he knew it.

"Well, that's odd," he said, stopping her in her tracks again. His hands were pressed against the ceiling. "It's locked, and it won't even budge. It's like something's been stacked..." He gazed up at the low ceiling, a minor curse word on his breath.

"You don't think..." Bobbi began. They looked at each other and then took off for the other hatch. She beat him to it, only to find it similarly inaccessible.

"Great, bloody great," the man muttered darkly. "You happy now, Miss S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent? We're trapped in here."

"How is this my fault?" Bobbi demanded. "You're the one breaking the S.H.I.E.L.D.-British Compact."

"I don't even know what the bloody hell that is!"

She glowered at him. "Obviously." The stood there in silence for a minute, glaring at each other.

"So, they haven't shot us yet," he broke it.

"No," Bobbi replied. "They might not even know we're here, because if they did, we'd be dead already. It's possible they just happened to place the crates directly on the hatches."

"Oh, because that's likely," he rolled his eyes.

"There are five hundred cubic feet in machinery that go with this thing," Bobbi informed him. "This warehouse ain't that big."

"That's the package you were here to pick up?" the man scoffed. "What are you, superwoman?"

"Yes, and I also shoot laser beams out of my eyes," she told him, rolling her eyes. Bobbi picked up her flashlight from where it had fallen on the floor and cast it around. She didn't remember any other access points from the blueprints she'd studied on the jet ride here, and her sweep unfortunately confirmed that. Just as she faced the fact that she was well and truly trapped, the utter cold took her over again. She unzipped her jacket, peeling off the first part of her suit.

"What on earth do you think you're doing?" he asked warily.

"I jumped in the lake to trick the heat-sensors. If we're going to be here a while, I need to get these wet clothes off."

"So that's what your special S.H.I.E.L.D. training told you to do," he mused.

"What do you mean?" she demanded.

"Just that I got in here...and I haven't got a drop of water on me."

"Care to share how?"

"Not particularly. I'm sure your way would've gotten you through the mission just fine. After all, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s all high, mighty, and secretive. No way one of their agents could ever make the wrong call."

"You got a bone to pick with S.H.I.E.L.D.?"

"Love, I've got a bone to pick with anyone who comes and messes with my op."

She chose to ignore him and held up her outer jacket, twisting and wringing it in her hands. Drops of water cascaded to the floor, but the material was measurably more than damp. Bobbi idly wondered how cold it got at night in Azerbaijan before putting it back on.

"There's no tactical cover in here," he noted, and Bobbi blinked, startled by the fact that he'd been doing a survey of their situation at the exact time she was.

"Besides each other."

"Yes, besides us." He peered up at the trapdoor. "I vote we blast our way out. I set a grenade on the edge here, we go to that back corner—well, I do, you can do whatever you want—and it blows this thing open."

"Or, when a pile of machine parts drops through the hole and buries us in while the fire eats up all the oxygen, we asphyxiate to death."

"There is that little snag."

"And you brought grenades for a mission like this? It's like you're trying to get yourself killed!"

"It's not me I was trying to get killed!"

"That package, up there," she pointed above their heads, overriding his words, "is a lead-lined case with a vial of a rare radioactive isotope. That thing bursts open, and you'll be lucky if not ever having kids is your worst problem."

"You're not all that pleasant to be around, are you?"

"Agent Barbara Morse, pleased to make your acquaintance," she rolled her eyes.

"Lieutenant Lance Hunter, Special Air Service," the man replied. He stared at her with coal black eyes for a moment and then shrugged his coat off and tossed it to her. She caught it with one hand out of reflex.

"What's this?"

"Just put it on. If I'm going to be stuck in here for some indeterminate amount of time, I don't want you to kick it of hypothermia and have a dead body stench to deal with."

"How thoughtful," she deadpanned, but grudgingly replaced her own jacket with his. It was thick and warm with his body heat and had a faint musk to it. She absently wondered if that's what he really smelled like on a day-to-day basis.

"You should probably turn off the flashlight to conserve the batteries," he suggested. "I've got one, front left pocket. But I've been using it a lot lately, so I'm not sure how long that'll last either." She clicked hers off, plunging them into a sea of black. After a moment: "What do you mean, rare radioactive isotope?! My commander said it was 2.3 million pounds sterling in smuggled diamonds from Namibia."

"Yeah, of course he did, you're not supposed to be here!" Bobbi said emphatically. "S.H.I.E.L.D.-British compact, we're supposed to take care of the non-run-of-the-mill dangerous stuff. But I'm guessing someone in the British government started getting curious about this specific target, so S.H.I.E.L.D. fed them the diamonds-in-payment-for-genetic-mutation-testing story to both provide an explanation and place it within our jurisdiction. You weren't supposed to get involved, sticking your noses where they don't belong!"

"S.H.I.E.L.D.'s a real piece of work," Hunter said before falling silent. Bobbi pursed her lips, annoyed with how comfortable he seemed here, with her. She preferred strange men on ops to be running away scared or cowering behind a table or something. This was just...wrong.

"You know, if we don't get out of here, we may have to resort to cannibalism," she said after a few minutes, just to gauge his reaction. So far nothing about her had fazed the man, and that bothered her. But cannibalism...cannibalism usually fazed people. The silence pricked at her skin, setting her on edge though she was seated up against the wall. There was no reply. "Hunter, I swear to God if you're creeping up on me with that wire of yours..."

"I'm not, I'm not!" he answered from somewhere further away. She relaxed the tiniest bit. "Wake me up for the cannibalism, though. You're on first watch."

Bobbi sighed.

This will be a fairly long story, as it will encompass everything from their initial meeting through dating, marriage, divorce, and chance encounters after that. MUCH MUCH MUCH thanks to my AMAZING beta, VanillaAshes, because she went well above 'above and beyond' for this story. She deserves a lot of credit. Seriously.

Thank you for reading. Please let me know what you thought in a review!