Work Text:
It’s a dark and windy night in Houston, the clouds spreading wide across the sky. The moon, whether full or hollow, is completely obscured from sight. On a street in a quiet vein of the city, down an alley in between two long abandoned buildings, the wind blows trash in front of a rusted over door. Days old newspapers and burger wrappers swirl like tumbleweeds with a constant ebb and flow of quiet rustling.
A black boot comes down on top of one of the newspapers, stopping it in its tracks. The rest of the mini-cyclone disperses across the alleyway, papering it in more trash. The owner of said boot bends down to pick up their captured prize, shaking the paper open to see it’s headline more clearly.
“Houston Spies set new blaseball record,” Alexandria Rosales reads out in a mutter, “With their negative division series score.” They hold the newspaper in their hands for a few more seconds, then crush it into a ball. Almost on instinct, they begin tossing it up and down in their free hand as they make their way further down the alley. There was no reason to get angsty about bad press, Alex thinks, it’s unavoidable. They’ll just have to work harder to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
The rusted door that they stopped in front of was obviously the fake entrance, on account of it being so obvious, so Alex just has to keep a sharp eye out on the opposite wall to find exactly what they were looking for. They find it relatively quickly, pushing on a slightly off-color brick at about eye level. The hidden door swings open, and they descend into one of the many hideouts of the Spies.
The stairs are as steep and rickety as Alex remembers them being, but they aren’t really concerned. They’re more focused on the absence of noise in the room that they’re descending to. By their knowledge, about half of the Spies were down in this hideout, with the other half in charge of gathering supplies for their next mission. Typically, whenever more than three Spies got together, things got very noisy.
Alex actually has their hand on their sword sheath as they approach the locked entry door, slightly concerned that something had gone wrong. They calm considerably when they begin to hear quiet chatter, the voices of Math and Fitz distinct in their timbre and abnormality. Less worried now, Alex produces the key to the door and walks in.
Half their team was indeed in this room, but the reason for their relative calmness was obvious at first glance. Someone had dragged a poker table into this hideout, and some of the usual culprits of noise were completely engrossed in what seemed to be a card game. Son, Sosa, Comfort and Malik are all sitting there in contemplative silence, each of them holding a hand of cards. Comfy’s cards are half turned the wrong way around, on display to the rest of the team. Sosa’s cards are being held in two hands, one under the table and one above. Malik and Son are holding the cards normally enough, but Alex could swear that the cards that Son had are familiar in some way, like a deck from their childhood that they might have passed down to him.
Not wanting to interrupt the group, Alex looks around to the other agents in the room. Math and Fitz are having a quiet conversation together at the back of the room, something Alex doesn’t really want to intrude on either. The only other person in the room is J-ORDAn, sitting off in one of the corners and simply observing. Quietly, they grab an unused chair and heft it over to place it next to J-ORDAn.
“Ah, hello Agent Rosales,” they say, their lens glinting in the light. “Did your walk go well?”
“I’ve had better.” Alex shrugs, then readjusts their chair to better get a look at what the people at the poker table were doing. “So, is everyone else out getting supplies? It’s damn quiet.”
J-ORDAn nods slowly, turning their head to also look towards the group playing cards.
“It was initially intended to just be Agent Wilson, Agent Scott and Agent Holloway on a basic supply trip, but it turned into quite the ordeal,” J-ORDAn says, affection somehow tinting their synthetic voice, “Escobar and Bean were a bit down on themselves after the playoffs, so Holloway decided that they were going to ‘make shopping fun’ and take them along to cheer them up. I believe Agent Clark just went with them because they saw the opportunity to cause some chaos.”
“Sounds about right. And they’re playing poker?” Alex says, gesturing towards the group who had seemingly started a round of whatever they were playing.
“I… do not think that is what they’re playing.” J-ORDAn says.
“What-” Alex starts to say, and then is cut off as the card game begins loudly across the room.
“GO FISH!” Comfort shouts, confidently slamming two cards down in front of themselves, one face up and one face down.
Son, Sosa and Malik all peer over the table to see the cards that Comfy has laid down, and then shuffle through their own hands. Sosa pulls the impressive feat of looking through two halves of their cards at once, one about the table and one below.
Malik places a single card down in front of xemself, then sits back. Sosa passes a card from his under-the-table hand to his over-the-table hand, and places that in front of himself, turned on its side. He then sits back as well, proud. Son spends a few more moments looking at both of these new cards, contemplating the ramifications. The rest of the table watches with bated breath as he chooses a card and places it down on the table.
Sosa and Malik react with shock, letting out what sounds like four separate sharp gasps as a pair. Comfy quickly sits up, slamming both hands on the side of the table as they lean over the edge to get a better look at the card Son put down.
“NO WAY! THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE!” They say, looking in between their hand and whatever card was on the table, “I’VE NEVER EVEN SEEN THAT HAPPEN IN CARD GAMES!”
Alex, now deathly curious, shoots a look at J-ORDAn. Somehow, despite just having a camera for a face, they are obviously very amused.
“Go ahead, I’m not going anywhere.” they say, motioning towards the table.
Alexandria nods, and walks over to the poker table as the four people around it are still half-starstruck by whatever card game move Son just accomplished.
“That was the perfect move, Son!” Sosa chirps, his voice emanating from below the table. “I think that’s your third win in a row!”
Malik nods in bemused agreement to Sosa, then waves Alex over with a smile. They oblige, going over to sit next to Malik. With a better view of the table, they’re finally able to see the cards that were played in that round of… whatever game they had been playing.
Comfort had placed down what looked to be a Pictionary card and a face-down card that was clearly from a different deck, Malik had placed down a queen of spades and Sosa had seemingly placed a Yugioh card in defense position.
And Son had placed down what seemed to be a handmade birthday card, glitter spilling across the green surface of the table. They could assume from the amount of different color glitter already on the table, this was not actually the first handmade card that Son had played.
Alex suppresses the urge to break out in full on giggles. God, they loved their team. The scrunched up newspaper in their hand, which they had honestly forgotten was clenched in their fist, drops to the ground as they push their seat.
“Alright, I wanna play. Deal me in.” Alex says, looking around at their teammates.
“Awesome! I’m so glad you’re playing with us!” says Son, grabbing the deck of cards in the middle, “Malik, could you do that shuffling trick again you did? It was super cool, I wanna try and learn it.”
“Sure thing, kiddo.” Malik takes the cards from Son, doing an elaborate card-shuffling trick as Comfy, Son and Sosa watch on with complete awe. Alex makes a mental note to pick up some card tricks later. Malik deals out the deck.
Alex picks up their hand of cards, and just grins down at it. They don’t really know what game they’re playing, and they don’t really know what makes a good hand, but they do know one thing.
Despite having one of the most crushing playoff losses they’d ever had, they were still smiling just as wide as they were during their victories. Alex had their team by their side, and as long as they had that, it would be a win in their books.