Title: Partners In Halloween

Paring: Antoine "Trip" Triplett X Reader

Warnings: fluff, humor, undercover missions, Halloween. 

Spoilers: nope!

Requested By: DarthXarra 

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When you first heard of the assignment, you had been a little miffed, but didn't argue it. Not that you had any social life around being on Coulson's Team and your hardcore Netflix bingeing around your work as a sharpshooting spy. And not that it was just a Halloween outing – there were bad guys out, and you were dressed to impress your friends and distress your enemies. Well, not quite yet. Here you were, trying to fit as many microphones, trackers, guns, and grenades under a Wonder Woman costume. Thankfully, it wasn't the skimpy old one from the comics, but the radical one from the recent movie, with that fantastic skirt. Because of Coulson's awesomeness, or perhaps unlimited resources, you had a near-replica of the outfit.

"Wow," you heard from the doorway. "I had no idea it was a couple's costume."

Standing there, was Antoine Triplett, decked to the gills in his Cyborg outfit, all the pieces of it right, down to the last plate of armour. From what you could tell, Skye had even rigged up a sort of contact lens that glowed red, and, knowing the resident Hacktivist, it probably had a camera on too.

"When did Wonder Woman ever get with Cyborg?" You huff, trying your best to attach a tracker to your midthigh. It hid nicely under the skirt, but it was that damn lasso of truth that had you working harder to clip it on. "C'mon...can you spare me a hand?"

He chuckles, and makes his way over to you, bending to attach the pieces together. "Hope we don't have this much trouble on the mission as you are with that tracker," he comments, looking up from where he's kneeled beside you. "There," he grinned, and standing, added, "Coulson sent me to say we're out five. See you there, partner."

It's all over and done in five hours, but in that time, you've hijacked two cars, crashed one party, ran away from the Canadian federal police, and somehow managed to expose the fraud and money-laundering through a HYDRA associated front to the world, where they used alien lifeforms to create priceless items to sell against international law.

But yes, when it's all over five hours later, and Trip and yourself are both standing sweaty in the middle of the bust, covered head to toe in a mixture of fake snow, fire-extinguisher fluid, and alien-sourced mucus, your heart starts to slow, adrenaline fading.

He looks at you with a grin, the bad guys being carted into the Bus. "Great working with you, partner." He beams. "It's been one hell of a day."

"Okay, I'm Sherlock, you're H-Holmes..." a drunken guy shouted from a street party, dressed up in a ratty black jacket and a tilting wig.

"Asshole!" another guy yelled out, shouting at a brick wall.

Beside you, Trip laughed into his Ghostbusters collar, where the microphone chip was hidden. "Please tell me I wasn't the only one hearing those boozers go off." He chuckled, glancing to you with the biggest smile on his face. "Anyone?"

From your coms unit, you heard Simmons snicker, and what sounded like a small whack. "You can find anyone like that anywhere when they've had a whole day to down that much." May intoned on the line, serious as ever. "Just find the idiot we're after and let's get home." She huffed, and then in a lower voice, "I hate Halloween."

"What even?" You exclaimed, aghast.

"You heard me, Agent _______." May grunted.

From the corner of your eye on the street you see the target for the mission, dressed as Stay Puft. "I have a visual, 10-32, about to engage." You spoke into your own beige Ghostbusters collar. No way you'd let Trip get all the fun dressed up as Spengler when you could be as Holtzman. "Ready, Agent Triplett?"

He grins, raising the proton pack in his hands, where there's a I.C.E.R. tucked inside to incapacitate the target. "Hell yeah, I ain't afraid of no ghosts." He grins. "Willis Peregrine, you are under arrest for breaking the peace on five counts of international law." Trip announces, probably scaring the marshmallow man before you both half to death.

From his pupils, you'd say he'd been drinking. Trip glanced to you, and raising your own proton pack, you said, "Mr. Peregrine, you have the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law..."

By the time you're shrugging off the stress of the day when your guy is handed over to the correct authorities, it's way past your usual sleep schedule's time to crash. Grabbing a cup of tea, you find another person in the Bus's kitchen – none other than your partner, Agent Triplett. He's leaning against the bench, waiting for the microwave to count down to zero as a cup spins around inside.

"Can't sleep?" He asks.

You nod. "You too?"

He hums, stopping the microwave a couple of seconds early. Pulling out the mug, the aroma of sweet hot chocolate fills the room like a miracle, and humming once again, he takes a sip. "Grandma always made hot chocolate for us when we couldn't sleep," he tells you, taking another long drag of his mug. "Only cure I know."

You smile. "I'm just a boring old cup of tea kind of person," you tell him, warming the kettle. "But then again, my grandparents weren't fantastic heroes."

You've been stuck in the underground bunker for hours, awaiting rescue from the team. The lighter you had in your pocket to see is losing its fuel. It's starting to get cold, and in the tactical gear, it's not exactly warm, and comfortable. Beside you, in the box is Trip, also in tactical gear, also losing hope, also starting to cool down like you're two popsicles.

"How long have we been here?" you ask him, doing all you can to stop your teeth from chattering.

He doesn't answer right away, and for a moment, you wonder if he's asleep, or worse, knocked out. But when you glance to him, you see Trip sigh heavily, looking anywhere but where you are. "Five hours."

You bite your lip. "I can't die in here." You whisper, pulling your knees in tight, trying to keep warm. "I had it all planned out." He raises a brow, scooting closer to you, and you add, "I was going to donate my organs, and then have my ashes sent in little parcels to the countries I've never been to, so I could finally have a trip around the world."

He chuckles. "Morbid, much?"

You shrug. "It's better than dying in a concrete box under a mountain on Halloween night with a fellow agent, doomed to haunt anyone who spoke ill of El from Stranger Things."

Once again, Trip chuckles. "Why don't you tell me about that show. I haven't seen it yet."

For the next three hours until you're rescued, you tell him the story of a small town in Indiana in which four children stumble into something much bigger than themselves. After the light disappears from the lighter, you can't see one another, but if you had x-ray vision, you'd notice that there was a sweet smile upon his lips when you described the show which you'd probably sell your soul to be a part of.

A whole year later and you find yourself approached by Coulson. For the last six months, you've been assigned desk work due to an infraction of a teeny-tiny rule, and have been consequently stuck punching papers and approving things. Meaning: you're bored permanently, and absolutely to death. But when Coulson appears at your desk, manila folder in his hand, you know you're off the hook.

"There's a case I need you on. You will be Thelma Mayberry, twenty-five. Married to husband –," Coulson began reciting, but before he could finish, you took the folder from his grasp. "Thought you'd be interested."

"Interested?" you laugh like a maniac, "Count me in."

Fourteen hours later, you come out of the intensive undercover artists' warehouse. Somehow, they've managed to give you a nose that's slightly larger, and attach a wig to your head that looks nicer than your hair, given you glasses, prosthetics in your mouth to make your lips bulge a little. It's not beauty school, but you're into it. Anything's better than paperwork.

"Hey there, I don't think we've met..." Agent Triplett goes up to you, holding his hand out kindly.

In that second, you forget you're in costume, and sigh. "It's only been six months, Trip, it's not like I'm that forgettable." You huff, clicking your tongue. "Dude, it's _______."

He raises an eyebrow. "What? No way." He grins, really looking at what they've done to you. "Oh my god, I couldn't tell, it's so great!" He beams. "I'm just about to go in, I'm on the case too."

You're on a blank, and then remember the rest of the file that you promised to read later. "Wait, we're –," You grinned, "We're undercover, in a pretend relationship, and it's Halloween? No freakin' way."

You raised a hand up, and high-fived him. "Hell yeah," he beamed. "Let's catch some bad guys."

You're sick on Halloween, stuck in your bed with a nasty cold. Or, you hope it's a cold, and not something Fitzsimmons have cooked up in their lab and not told you about. You're bedridden with endless boxes of tissues, and a marathon of all the spooky movies you can find on Netflix, from terrible movie effects to slasher flicks, to childhood favourites. Your room has become your decontamination unit, with nobody daring to step foot near it since you first sneezed in the common area in the debriefing for the next mission, which was supposed to be today. Instead, Skye and May are on it, and you're not working Halloween for a change.

On your phone, Trip sits beside you on FaceTime, also not on mission. He's half watching the movies through the phone onto your laptop, half keeping you company with half-assed horrible jokes and funny lines that keep you from wallowing too deep with your sick sadness.

"Okay, I have a funny joke." He grins, just as the credits for Hocus Pocus appear on screen. "Why did the ghost go into the bar?" You don't say anything, having been told these terrible Halloween jokes all day so far. But you also don't stop him from saying, "For boos!"

Despite hating the joke, you crack a small smile.

"There she is! There's the _______ I know!" He beams.

You wave it off, glancing to your laptop screen. "What should I play next? Halloweentown, or The Nightmare Before Christmas?"

He doesn't even take a moment to consider, "Both!"

Scrolling through your phone, you found yourself staring at a thread from your boyfriend, and long-time friend and work partner, Antoine Triplett. He wasn't big on texting, but rather, making sure what he said was either heard aloud between the two of you, or when that wasn't an option, via letters. It wasn't like it was the digital revolution or anything, and holograms existed. But then again, it wasn't like you minded. His handwriting made you feel like you were caught up in a Jane Austen novel way back when penmanship meant the world.

HIM: I need some time.

YOU: Is something wrong, baby?

Read: 9:45 PM

You stared at that text the longest, wanting to know what it meant. All you'd spoken about that day was how it was going to be a long haul writing up paperwork, and that you wouldn't be back to your shared apartment in Washington until it was early enough for the sun to rise. All because of a stupid mistake a newcomer made on the field, and as the most senior officer who was a part of Coulson's team with office experience, you were left to clean up the mess. You know the S. H. I. E. L. D. facility you're in has security cameras to the nines, and they probably know already you're slacking off, but you don't care.

What if this was the end?

You loved Trip, more than you probably let on, at the best of times. He made you less tense, brought out the dormant smile in you that was always for him. You'd been together for almost a year, now, next month, and to be fair, you'd have to say that you'd never felt this way for anyone before when you had been dating. You'd even go as far as to say he was the one.

But what if he wasn't –

You clicked your phone closed, sliding it into the desk draw beside you, and buckled down for the rest of the night's paperwork. Your laptop played a mixture of Enya playlists and the soundtracks from Studio Ghibli movies, and with a nearby coffee machine, you managed to get through nearly all the files of folders by midnight, the clock only just ticking over to say the date for the next day.

"_______?"

Glancing up, you see Antoine in the doorway to your cubical, small smile on his face. In his arms is a small picnic basket, a bottle of wine poking out the top, the smell of apple pie and cookies and cream ice-cream wafting from him.

"Baby?" you frown. "What – I thought you were mad with me."

He places the picnic basket beside him on the floor, and slowly, goes down on one knee. "The only mad I am for you is madly in love," he says, your brain not computing what's happening until he pulls a small velvet box from his pocket. "...and I'll always be in love with you."

You feel the blood rush into your head, a blush roar upon your cheeks. "Trip –,"

"_______, will you marry me?"

There's tears going down your face, and you're not sure if it's because you're tired as hell, are completely shocked by the current events, or if it's because you really want some of that ice-cream.

"Yes!"