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It wasn't a secret that Grant hated losing, he wasn't good at it, he wasn't graceful about it, and because it was so rare, it was lorded over him. He rarely lost on board game night, but Scrabble was becoming a problem. He had been beaten by Jemma at Scrabble the last two times they'd played, and that was fine, really, it was. How she won was what upset him.
The dialect of british english was a different animal than american english and that was made evident whenever he and Skye were with Jemma and Fitz in the lab, but the spelling was what kept tripping him up. Jemma kept winning with the letter "U", and because it was still in English, no matter how hard he fought, Coulson allowed it. Sometimes he swore that he was the only one bothered, and that they only kept playing Scrabble because the rest of the Bus loved seeing Jemma beat him. It was cruel, plainly and simply cruel.
Losing to Jemma was the easiest loss, but it was also the most frustrating. She was as blindly stubborn, competitive, and unwilling to compromise as Grant and she was a ferocious rival. She seemed to have read everything put to paper in both English and French, while Grant was fluent in six languages. They'd even taken to shouting at each other in French when they didn't want the rest of the team to know exactly how annoyed they were. When that happened it was usually an indicator that Coulson had to come in and broker peace between the two. He hesitated to get between them, but it required more effort than he preferred to expend on breaks forcing the two surprising hotheads back off of their soap boxes.
So when Board Game Friday came along, and out came the Scrabble board, Grant had an english language dictionary at his side, it had alternate spellings for days; and he was perfectly confident that this time Jemma wouldn't beat him and he wouldn't be stuck with the dishes again. She did, for the third time, with the letter "U", and it was by one point because "U" is worth one point and losing by one point is more painful than losing by one hundred. Skye's gleeful laughter filled the lounge, along with Fitz' subdued sniggers. There Jemma sat, beautiful, poised, and radiating smugness. The now familiar sensation of wanting to both throw a couch pillow at her and kiss her had enveloped him and the problematic nature of it edged out reason.
A small part of Grant snapped, they'd had the argument before, loudly and at length, but Coulson was usually the one who broke it up, and he'd gone to check in with May. This shouting match was different, both of them were annoyed, Jemma because she was the victor and she felt as though it had been justly earned, Grant because he was terrible at coming in second over something as trivial as a single point. Neither of them consumed with their furious shouting and referencing to dictionaries noticed Skye and Fitz slip out.
The knock on the door of the pilots cabin was answered with permission to enter. Coulson and May both had dictionaries open in their laps, the speakers wired to the lounge were on, and they were grinning. Coulson moved into the co-pilots seat so the scientist and the consultant had more space, the four of them would be in there for a while. The loud crackle of the speakers being shut off startled everyone. The non-combative residents were being deprived of their fun but none of them were brave enough to go see what had caused the outage. The argument had either gotten playfully violent with Jemma winning via surprisingly good reflexes, interesting because Grant usually suggests chess to even it out, or had entirely ceased being a verbal discourse on rules and had become instead a physical lesson in the creative usage of the imagination outside of a board game setting.
The fact that two of the "u" tiles were missing, and the table smelled slightly of bleach, and would shift on it's legs now when nudged provided insight into exactly how things had gone the next morning. The aura of smugness remained with Jemma, but Grant shocked everyone by showing up at breakfast looking surprisingly relaxed. Normally he and Jemma wouldn't speak for a full day after one of their spats, the only concession to change was that Jemma adjusted the collar of her t-shirt slightly and Grant made a point of looking at her directly, where he'd normally look at the floor until the coffee kicked in. That did it, no more Scrabble. They apologized, and paid for a new table together, but Jemma had moved the one they'd used into her room. Coulson asked Grant in private if he would have been bold enough had he conceded the one point a third time, Grant shrugged and Coulson said that he was glad, May had been planning to lock them in the lab if something didn't happen soon, it was disruptive to the harmony of the team as a unit and now, even though they'd soiled public property, everything was normal again, and certainly better than before.
Grant and Jemma kept their "U" tiles on them during missions, if for no other reason than to remind themselves that some things really did just need to happen. The fact that they were re-created in candy atop cupcakes at their impromptu joint retirement and engagement party was simply a happy coincidence.