#brofessionals

Six times.

Definitely not | No | Not Really | Its Okay | Kinda | Yes | Fuck yes |There goes my pants |

(A Tree, A Drink, Ordering Something)

In the morning, recruits Sitwell and Hill would graduate and become full-fledged agents of SHIELD. That was, or course, in the morning, and even a rank first-year fresh out of the Air Force could have told them that the morning was at least twelve hours away.

They would both graduate with honors, at the top of their class, and their careers would likely be glorious and hopefully long. They were the best, and the best either lived and got rank or died saving the ones would would get rank. They knew this and accepted this.

So the night before graduation was as much a preemptive wake as it was a hedonistic party for those who’d made it to graduation. Those who hadn’t made it… they were either dead or their memory was wiped and they’d woken up in hospital being told they’d just come out of a coma. Probably from slipping in the shower or something. SHIELD only had as much imagination as it took to launch an op, not detail the loss of three or four years of a recruit’s life.

But back to the wake. Celebration. Whatever. 

There were ten of them that had made it to this point. Ten of twenty-five. Those were better odds than previous groups, and no one really understood why that was. Johnson credited random chance, Garcia better teaching methods. The others fell somewhere between those two. Maria Hill privately credited Sitwell’s sense of fair play, and his solid dependability that held the group together through what seemed to be sheer will that they all make it to the end together. No one knew what Sitwell thought about it, not even Maria.

So regardless of how they’d all gotten here, here they were.

The sat in the back room of The Forest, an English-style pub that wasn’t supposed to have a back room. That was one of the tests in the second year; finding the back room of The Forest. Every team that managed it passed on to the next year. Teams that failed… didn’t get to have one of The Forest’s excellent martinis. 

And failed out of the Academy.

But mostly they missed out on the martinis. They were really good.

Her mind was wandering. She’d had a few martinis in the last few hours, interspersed with other things. They’d had a toast to everyone there at least once, and now they were drinking to the ones who hadn’t made it. Most of those had been awful people and deserved to flunk out, but they were all too far gone to care, and were turning maudlin and reflective. 

Maria ordered another round, with a soda for herself and a water for Sitwell. She wasn’t entirely convinced this traditional night of debauchery wasn’t part of another test, and only those who were sober enough to attend would graduate. She and Sitwell were going to make it. He was her partner, and the others were on their own.

The last round had been Sitwell’s, and her drink had been water. They were on the same page, she was sure. She locked eyes with him across the room, and she nodded almost imperceptibly. He raised his glass to her a fraction of an inch.

Oh yeah, same page. 

Eight of the ten made it to the ceremony.

This was disturbing not because it was a weird pairing, but because it was all true.

//not gonna lie, I have no idea what meme this is about. So I’m just going to write you a Brofessionals moment to make up for my ignorance//

"Come on, Come on." She was side-seat driving in the worst of ways, applying a ghost gas pedal and nudging her body from side to side as if that would move the steering wheel. somehow. "Man, step on it. We’re going to be late."

"It’s rush hour, in New York. There is absolutely no way I could go faster." Sitwell moved lanes into the only available space in traffic and had the extremely unrewarding experience of watching his old lane move faster. 

"You didn’t ever drive a humvee, did you?"

"Rode in one, once or twice."

"Move over, I’m driving."

"The hell you say!"

"Move. Don’t make me pull rank on you."

"You don’t have the rank to pull, not until after the ceremony we will likely be late to if you try to drive yourself.”

"Dammit, Jasper. It’s like being late to my own wedding."

"Hey, no one could have foreseen you stepping out of HQ and then punching out a purse snatcher and getting blood on your dress." It had been glorious.

"Well, I like my uniform better anyway."

"Oh my God," he said in amazement as he gained another three car lengths in a Herculean feat of driving, "you did it on purpose."

"Yes, Jasper. I arranged for a purse snatcher to mug some poor lady right in front of me so I could ditch the dress." The sarcasm was barely detectable unless you knew her really well. Jasper Sitwell knew her that well.

"No, I mean the blood. You could have tased him, tripped him, thrown a damn shoe at him, but instead you punched him in the way most likely to get blood on your dress."

"You credit me with too much."

"The rank you’re about to get says otherwise."

She grinned evilly and then shouted a nearly joyous implication on the doubtfulness of the taxi driver’s parentage in the car ahead of them.

"I’m sure that taught him a valuable lesson, ma’am." His face was completely unreadable, which meant he was likely hiding a wicked grin the twin of her own.

"Don’t start that ma’am shit with me, Jasper. I don’t have the rank yet."

"Exactly. Sit down, shut up, and let me drive, agent."

She gaped at him a moment, and settled back against the leather seat of the SUV. “Yes sir.”

They made it on time, but barely. Fury had to pay Sitwell $50 on the bet that she’d ditch the dress. And three hours later, the newly minted Commander Maria Hill emerged from the United Nations building and ordered Sitwell to sit shotgun while she drove herself home. 

The entire way back she grinned like a madwoman, and Sitwell was well content that her first official order had been to him. Even if she drove like a madwoman on top of it all.

"Where did you learn to drive?"

"Chicago."

"Ah ha."

…