Title: Twisted
Fandom: Agents Of SHIELD
Pairing: Ward/Mike
Rating: R
Length: 482 words
Content notes: Spoilers for the entirety of Season One. Set after Nothing Personal. Rough sex/hate sex. Mentions of burn injuries.
Summary: Denial and acceptance, and the anger between.


Ward can feel it, all that rage that simmers just below the surface that he’s fought so long and hard to control. It’s scratching at his skin from the inside, trying to claw its way out, and he grits his teeth against it but there’s no holding it back.

He can’t stop thinking about Skye’s face, about the twist of her mouth and the anger in her eyes when she called him a Nazi. She’d believed it, the word ringing between them like a death sentence. That’s how she sees Ward now, and his knuckles crack as his hands form fists.

She doesn’t understand, none of them do. They don’t know what he’s been through. They don’t understand what it means to survive.

The anger, it’s this huge and overwhelming force within him, and he wants to lash out, wants to destroy something. And he can, because Mike won’t break, Mike’s designed not to break.

The kiss is more like a clash of teeth, and Ward’s fingers scrabble at Mike’s shoulders, at his chest, sliding over the metal plating. Mike holds his hips with unmovable hands, and Ward tries to buck against the grip but Mike’s too damn strong.

Ward growls, lips sliding until he can mouth at the shinier skin of Mike’s burns, and that gets him a snarl. Mike shoves at him, and the back of Ward’s head hits the wall hard enough to see stars, but it’s exactly what he wants, blood and fire.

“What’s the matter, Deathlok?” he sneers, head tilted back and hips tilted forward, as much a blatant invitation as a challenge. “Sensitive?”

Mike glares at him, and Ward knows Garrett can see all this through the mechanism in Mike’s head. But, fuck, he doesn’t care.

“I know what I am,” Mike says slowly, voice level and cold. “What about you, Agent Ward?”

Ward’s top lip pulls up, baring his teeth.

Mike smirks at him, but it’s humourless and dry. “Do you tell yourself you’re not a monster?”

Ward doesn’t want to hear this.

“Hail Hydra, right?” Mike spits, looking at Ward like he’s nothing, like he’s pathetic, and Ward surges forward, shuts up him with lips and tongue, low and feral noises caught in his throat. Thigh shoved between Mike’s legs, grinding against Mike’s hip, and he hasn’t forgotten, even as he gets lost in the heat of it.

He hasn’t forgotten what Mike did to him, hasn’t forgotten that Mike stopped his damn heart.

Joke’s on him, because right now Ward isn’t sure he has a heart. Maybe he just has a gaping wound where his heart’s supposed to, but he’s doing just fine without it.

Maybe he is a monster. Maybe that doesn’t matter anymore. Maybe nothing matters but the feeling of Mike’s skin and Ward’s anger, two dangerous creatures in a cage with no way out, each as doomed as the other.