Agents of Shield One-Shots

Puppies are pawsome additions to a team

Continuation to my earlier fic Puppies are great team bonding activities. Per the request of AvengingAngeli on AO3! Hope you like this!

Takes place after 1x4, Eye Spy. 

I have absolutely no experience with getting a pet (unfortunately) so I apologize in advance for any errors regarding that. :)

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"Where's May going?" Skye asked, seeing the senior agent walking off the BUS. 

"She's taking some personal time," Coulson replied, walking in the direction of his office. 

Skye made an incredulous face. "May has a life outside of SHIELD?" 

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As it turned out, May's supposed 'personal time' was somewhat SHIELD related as well. Somewhat in the vaguest sense of the word. After continuous bribes and pleading eyes from the younger members of the team, Coulson (not her, definitely not her) had finally acquiesced to getting a puppy. Not that Skye and Fitz-Simmons knew anything about that, of course. Coulson wanted to keep the puppy-shaped cookie bribes coming for as long as he could. 

(May had to agree with that, those cookies were good. Especially now that the kids were getting better at baking them.)

So, there May was, driving the SHIELD issue van to an animal shelter. In the back was a large cage, ready to transport the German Shepherd puppy Coulson had picked ahead of time. She pulled into the parking lot and walked in, and was immediately greeted by a smiling girl who seemed to be in her twenties. 

"Hi, you must be Melinda! I'm Alicia. Are you ready to meet your new dog?"

Alicia chattered the entire time while leading May to one of the kennels in the back. She talks more than Skye does, May observed with some amusement. 

"And here's Captain!" A small puppy with his tongue out looked up at May. She had to admit he was adorable. 

(And she also had to admit that a big factor of why Coulson chose him was because his name could be short for Captain America, technically.)

Alicia attached a leash to the little puppy and looped it around her arm. She grabbed a clipboard and a pen and handed it to May. 

"All you have to do is read through this and sign here, here, and here! Then Cap will be all yours."

May grabbed the pen and scrawled her signature across the page. Handing it back, she suddenly heard a pitiful meow. 

A small black cat peeked out from the corner of a kennel.  

"Who's that?" 

"Oh, that's a kitten that we found yesterday. We don't have a name for her yet," Alicia explained. "She seems to be pretty fond of Captain."

"She's cute."

Alicia smiled again. "Yeah, she's pretty adorable. It's a shame though, she'll have a harder time getting adopted because of all the superstition surrounding black cats."

May looked pensive for a moment, then her expression settled into one of determination.

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May drove back onto the cargo ramp of the BUS and braked. She was entirely unsurprised to see Coulson standing there waiting for her. 

"So is you-know-who here?" he asked, practically bouncing up and down in excitement. 

May rolled her eyes affectionately, walking to the back of the car and opening the storage. Coulson's eyes lit up as he took in Captain, who was wagging his tail and walking towards the agent. 

"Hey, Captain! It's nice to meet you," said Coulson, letting the puppy sniff his hand. Then something else in the car caught his eye. "Is that a cat?"

"Yes," May said, as she picked the kitten up and glared at Coulson, daring him to say another word. 

Coulson only smiled and scratched the cat behind the ears. 

May heard the footsteps of Skye sneak up on them, and she turned around. It was absolutely adorable to see the young girl's eyes light up. 

"IS THAT A CAT AND A DOG?" Skye all but screamed into Coulson and May's ears. "OH MY GOD FITZ-SIMMONS GET OVER HERE!"

They came running over, along with Ward who had an annoyed look on his face. 

"Aww, what are their names?" Simmons asked, a huge smile on her face. 

"Captain and undecided," May told her, gesturing to the respective animals.

"Cap's full name is Captain America," Coulson interjected.

"Schrödinger," Fitz said. "The cat's name should be Schrödinger."

Ward rolled his eyes. "Schrödinger's cat dies, pretty much. Isn't that bad luck? And isn't a black cat bad luck?"

No one listened to him. They were all crowded around the two new additions to their team, the bus kids with expressions of disbelief and absolute delight. 

"Schrödinger is mine, by the way," May said. The cat in question made her way over to May lazily, nuzzling up to her hand. May tried to pretend she wasn't dying of cuteness overload. Fitz-Simmons and Skye practically melted. 

"It looks like someone's gotten attached," Skye commented. 

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It had been a few days since May had brought the pets back to the BUS, and everyone was slowly getting used to having two pets. Schrödinger typically sat with May in the cockpit, and occasionally fell asleep curled up beside Captain. (Skye had taken so many pictures of that her phone ran out of storage.) 

Captain, on the other hand, seemed to like everyone except for Ward. He would play fetch with them using a chewable remote-controlled drone that Fitz had created, but growl whenever Ward approached. (Ward didn't seem to be fond of either animal.) The team had seen Captain steal ICER prototypes from the lab (which didn't work yet thankfully) and even cuddling with May once when there was a storm outside. 

Coulson had been continually trying to train Captain to bark whenever he saw the colours red and blue or a picture of Captain America. May, on the other hand, had been trying to teach Captain how to remain silent. She was not impressed with Coulson's attempts. 

("Oh, come on, May, Cap's gotta be able to recognize his namesake," Skye heard once. 

"Yes, and get us all killed on a mission by barking at the wrong time.")

The pets didn't need any disciplining at all, except for the time that Schrödy peed in Ward's shoe and Cap tore up some of his clothes. (Somehow both things had happened within the same hour.) Skye had almost died of laughter and Fitz-Simmons had struggled to keep a straight face. 

Then Skye had betrayed the team, and none of them could meet her eyes. For some reason, though, Schrödy and Cap had followed her around until her team forgave her. Skye was grateful for that. 

Simmons almost died from the Chitauri virus, and the two pets had kept her warm as she was shivering from her unplanned dive into the ocean. 

May and Ward touched the berserker staff, and Cap had held it between his teeth and brought it to the lab for Fitz-Simmons. (Apparently animals weren't affected by the staff, fortunately.) Schrödy went missing for an entire day and was finally found in May's room, keeping her company. 

It seemed that the animals had a sixth sense for when the team wasn't feeling their best, although they wouldn't know how strong that sixth sense was until Ward (oh, and the rest of SHIELD, practically) was revealed to be HYDRA. Suddenly their pets' behaviour towards him made sense.

Slowly but surely, Cap and Schrödy had wormed their way into the hearts of the entire team, even May, who acted like an Ice Queen but was actually the warmest SO there could possibly be, as Skye eventually found out. 

They were lucky to have Schrödinger and Captain as teammates. 

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I hope you liked it, AvengingAngeli! :)

-M