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It is Skye’s fault, really, when it starts. She will never tell it that way, but it is. She’ll claim that it was Ward’s fault, because when in doubt, you blame Ward, and then she’ll rant to FitzSimmons that as the subject of that very first bet, they’re responsible for the ensuing chaos.
(Everyone will know it’s her fault anyway, but they won’t care).
“What do you mean, they’re not dating?” she asks incredulously. She and Ward are training, and FitzSimmons are in the lab, fussing over the Night-Night Gun, heads bent low over it as Simmons is perfecting the dendrotoxin concoction and Fitz is trying to make the trigger less sensitive.
“I mean they’re not dating,” Ward shrugs. “What about it?” Skye doesn’t understand how someone can just not get it like that. FitzSimmons are so completely infatuated with one another that it’s hard not to.
“Fitz is obviously in love with her, and Simmons is absolutely crazy for him, she just doesn’t know it yet. I knew they were clueless, but this is a whole new level of cluelessness. This is like…” Skye can’t come up with a good comparison, because there isn’t one.
“Skye, less focus on them, more focus on my stance,” Ward sighs. Skye holds the punching bag while he hits it and pretends to be immersed in this very educational training session, but like he has pointed out, her attention isn’t on him, it’s on the two oblivious scientists to her left.
Now Simmons is testing out the toxin on a rat, like a certain witch Skye read about when she was ten (and spent the next year waiting for her letter, because if Harry Potter got a letter to a special school that saved him from an abusive home, surely she would). Fitz, on the other hand, is trying to find the right cartridge to hold the dendrotoxin, because it’s not a bullet, it’s a sedative.
‘“Twenty bucks says one of them confesses their love for the other in the next year,” Skye announces.
“I’ll take it if you start paying attention,” Ward replies. “Now, hit align your elbow with your wrist and your shoulders so you can withstand the pressure of the blow.”
Skye rolls her eyes, sneaking one last glance at the pair. Later, she’ll set an alarm on her phone for one year from today, captioning it “WARD OWES ME TWENTY BUCKS.”
(Later, she’ll wish she threw that punch slightly higher, to hit Ward in the face).
- - -
One year later, Ward has been punched in the face, and he has also dropped FitzSimmons out of an airplane to the bottom of the ocean, where Fitz does indeed confess his love (but Skye doesn’t know this, and besides, she doesn’t want to collect on a bet, she wants to fire two bullets into Ward’s stomach the way Ian Quinn did to her.)
This doesn’t stop Skye from making more bets, of course. They’re all drinking one night, Mack and Trip and Hunter and Skye, and Skye abruptly gets up, goes to her room, and grabs a tiny little notepad, no bigger than a cell phone.
“Ten bucks says Hunter gets back together with this hellbeast he keeps talking about,” Skye announces. Trip and Mack roar with laughter, and Hunter sputters,
“I’ll take that bet!”
So Skye writes: Skye bets Hunter gets back together with hellbeast, Hunter takes it - $10.
“You know if you lose, you’ll have to go to the currency exchange,” Mack says. “You don’t have any American dollars in your wallet.”
“If I lose, that will be the least of my problems,” Hunter mutters.
“Anyone else?” Skye asks, waving her pen in the air.
“The Director and Agent May,” Trip says. Skye fist-bumps him.
Mack shakes his head. “They're partners, right? Most of the time, partners aren’t romantically - ”
“ - or sexually,” Hunter cuts in.
“Or sexually involved,” Mack agrees. “It’s an unspoken rule.”
“So you’re taking it?” Skye says.
“Twenty bucks, Coulson and May don’t get together,” Mack confirms.
“I’m with Mack, there’s no way,” Hunter concurs.
So Skye writes, Trip and Skye bet Coulson and May get together, Mack and Hunter take it - $20.
“Mack, tell us about the hellbeast since Hunter won’t say anything positive about her,” Skye says.
“We had good sex,” Hunter offers. Skye rolls her eyes.
The notebook and the little pen sit atop the table while they talk and drink beer, the bets, their values, and who’s betting carefully written in Skye’s neat handwriting. They don’t know it, but Fitz is watching from the doorway with Subconscious Simmons by his side. They don’t know it, but later, Fitz will clean up the beer bottles while everyone else nurses wicked hangovers, and he’ll find the little notebook.
(He’ll add his name to the bet shipping Hunter and the hellbeast).
- - -
By the time Jemma returns from HYDRA’s clutches, several agents will have entered the betting pool, some to bet on other agents (Hunter and the hellbeast is a particular favorite) and some being bet on themselves. Izzy and Idaho, new recruits and old friends of Hunter’s, each bet one hundred dollars on Hunter and the hellbeast, and this becomes a trend, to the point where Hunter has nearly seven hundred dollars wagered against him.
On Bobbi’s first night, when everyone is still getting to meet her, Mack accidentally-on-purpose lets it slip that everyone is betting against her and Hunter.
“You know,” he says before Skye can shush him, “Hunter’s got a hefty fee to pay.”
Bobbi raises an eyebrow. “On what?”
“Where’s the notebook?” Trip asks Skye, grinning. She sighs and pulls it out, trying to figure out how Bobbi will react.
“The bet is versus Hunter, on the subject of you and him getting together. The total’s six hundred eighty-seven dollars and twenty-three cents, fifty-two bottles of eighteen-year-old Macallan, fourteen boxes of various cereals, and one unicorn,” Skye reads.
Bobbi spits out her drink. “You guys bet that much on me and Hunter in less than twenty-four hours of learning of my existence?”
Mack grins. “Barbara, you know better than that.”
Bobbi laughs. “The hellbeast again, huh?”
Skye feels bad for Hunter at that point, because how could you not like Bobbi even if she is your ex, and besides, she doesn’t know where he’s going to find a unicorn, so Skye decides to try to petition the agents to let Hunter off the hook - but only if he’ll go on record saying he still loves his ex-wife.
- - -
In the end, Agent Oliver agrees to give up his unicorn, but it leads Agent Davis to create what will come to be known as The Rules.
The Rules of betting on the romantic and/or sexual relationships of around a hundred people who routinely save the world start simple, but soon become nearly too complicated to execute.
- Director Coulson and Agent May are not to be told anything of the betting pool, including hints at bets surrounding their relationship unless we all want to die horrible deaths.
- Any two or more people that are employed by SHIELD and are not married are up for grabs.
- If someone is bet on, then KIA, or MIA for six months, or chooses to leave SHIELD, all bets surrounding them end.
- The Avengers are not employed by SHIELD,..
- Former SHIELD agents who turned out to be HYDRA agents are not employed by SHIELD and can rot in hell.
- If someone is bet on, then KIA, or MIA for six months, or chooses to leave SHIELD, all bets surrounding them end.
- Betters can cash out whenever they want, though if they are transferred to another base they must cash out.
- If those betting are KIA, or MIA for six months, any and all money owed to them is paid to their partner, who can keep the money or give it to the family.
- A romantic and/or sexual relationship is hereby defined as making out, having sex in any form, getting engaged or married, or dating.
- If the bet is placed on Agents May and Coulson (philinda), any act of intimacy counts as being in a relationship.
- If the bet is placed on Agents Morse and Hunter (huntingbird), being anywhere near that one SHIELD van after having mysteriously disappeared for an hour(s) counts as being in a relationship, and yelling and screaming coming from any bedroom, locker room, or the van counts as being out of a relationship.
- You can place a bet on Agents Morse and Hunter (huntingbird) getting out of a romantic and/or sexual relationship.
- All bets surrounding the relationship are over when one or more of those being bet on enter a relationship, get engaged or get married.
- Any relevant discoveries are reported immediately to Agents Skye, Triplett, and Mackenzie, regardless of personal bets you may have made.
- If you are found to have not reported something you should have, Agent Skye will get Agent May to beat your ass. You also don’t get any Pop-Tarts for the rest of the year.
- You cannot wager more than fifty dollars on any one relationship. You can only wager money or boxes of cereal and you can only wager five boxes on any one relationship.
- You can wager up to one hundred dollars on Agent May and Director Coulson (philinda) because at this point, if you win, the money’s the least of our problems.
- You can wager up to twenty dollars on Agents Morse and Hunter (huntingbird) because people win all the time and we’re sick of getting complaints that Agent Piper keeps winning fifty bucks on them to the point where Hunter owes her three hundred dollars in total.
- You can wager up to seventy-five dollars on Agents Fitz and Simmons (fitzsimmons) because who can honestly tell when they’ll get together, so it’s your loss.
- If you have a complaint to register, you can email Agent Skye. Remember: any and all bets are kept track of, so she can check your story to see if it checks out.
The Rules have so many subsections, in fact, that Skye begins to email them out monthly with updates. They also email a list of all bets currently running in her updates. The notebook, by now, has been filled, so the bets are recorded in Daisy’s notes section of her phone. If she’s being honest, she’s proud of herself. She’s running a covert operation under the nose of a Director of a secret spy agency.
(She’s betting on Philinda and Coulson and May don't even know).
- - -
After Skye-now-Daisy gets back from Afterlife, and Simmons has been rescued, the betting dies down a bit. Everyone is stressed and they can’t all sit around drinks and laugh about it anymore. The “real SHIELD” shook everyone up - it’s the second time another secret agency has existed inside this one. May’s gone. Hunter, who was always backing Daisy and her shenanigans, is out on a revenge mission. No one really trusts Bobbi or Mack or even Daisy anymore, so she makes it her mission to win back their trust.
It starts with drinks on Saturdays. Daisy grabs a beer, and slowly, the agents trickle in. She makes references and hints until Davis slurs, “D’you still have the notebook, Daisy?”
Daisy grins and pulls it out. She passes it to Davis, who flips through the notebook, laughing. He passes it to Piper. And slowly, as the notebook goes around, as the laughter spreads, Daisy remembers just how good things were before.
(“Before what?” Bobbi will ask when Daisy tells her this. Daisy will shrug. Things were always hard. She just thought they’d always face them together).
- - -
When Daisy’s on the run after Lincoln dies, she doesn’t think much about the notebook. She doesn’t think about anything related to SHIELD, or she tries not to. Yo-Yo deems it her mission to inform Daisy of all of the bets currently floating around. She hands her slips of paper with the monthly email updates, which are still going out, thanks to Mack, who has become the ringleader in Daisy’s absence. Bobbi and Hunter managed to pay one month’s rent on a fairly nice apartment with everything they cashed in, though Hunter had to pay a lot of money, so it’s generally accepted that Bobbi is the best investor. Yo-Yo blushes when Daisy reads Piper, Simmons, and Davis bet $20 each on Mack and Yo-Yo (mackelena). Mack and Yo-Yo take it.
“Are you holding off on announcing it because of the fraternization rules, or because you’d owe eighty bucks?” Daisy asks. Yo-Yo laughs but doesn’t reply. Apparently, a fair twenty or so agents wanted to bet that Daisy was hooking up with a non-SHIELD agent, but Mack wouldn’t let them because of Section 2 of the rules, which specifically states that someone must be employed by SHIELD to be a part of the bet, and anyway, it’s too vague.
Daisy shakes her head at that, but she does leave a small note in the apartment she knows they’ll track her to.
Mack --
I, Daisy Johnson, am currently not hooking up with anyone outside or inside of SHIELD.
- - -
Daisy gets back into the pool after Robbie leaves. She figures she might as well. All of her bets, both ongoing and resolved, still haven’t been cashed in.
“So who’s in?” she asks later that night. There are still bets on a FitzSimmons kid, which Daisy doesn’t take, though she does put twenty dollars to a Mackelena relationship, and she pays fifty toward Coulson and May getting together in the next year. She catches all the looks they give each other, and they’ve been getting more prominent.
“There’s a bet on you and Agent Piper,” Mack says. “Oh, and there’s one with you and Ward since the bastard is never dead and you two were something way back when.”
Daisy raises an eyebrow. “You guys can’t function without me, can you?”
“Nah,” Mack replies, “I think they were just pissed at you for taking off.”
“I’m ninety-six percent sure he’s dead.”
“What about the other four percent?”
“The other four percent says he’s become Deathlok and now we have to go fight a robot.”
(Daisy was right about fighting a robot, but she tries not to remember that because she really doesn’t want to be right about Ward).
- - -
“You mean they made out? ” screeches Piper. Daisy winces at the noise and nods.
Everyone who wasn’t betting on Philinda is sure as hell upset about it now.
“And we know for sure that Bobbi and Hunter almost got married, but didn’t?” Davis asks, turning to Fitz, who nods.
Everyone who was saying Bobbi and Hunter would get married is definitely not in for a good night.
“And you’re not pregnant?” Yo-Yo asks, turning to Simmons, who blushes.
“Not currently,” She replies.
“Damn,” Piper swears. Everyone looks up at her. “What? I made that bet when you had all got back from fighting robots. If you can fight a robot in an alternate reality computer system… ”
Daisy shrugs. “She makes a fair point.”
“What are you guys even talking about?” Deke asks.
“Don’t you dare,” Daisy says as a delighted smile creeps across Yo-Yo’s face. “I’m serious! He doesn’t even have any money! And he can’t keep a secret from May!”
Daisy’s protests go unnoticed.
- - -
Hunter still reads the magazine that Fitz sent letters to, just in case. Also, it’s a good magazine.
“Any letters today?” Bobbi asks, sitting next to him on the couch.
“One,” Hunter says, but he’s confused. He can tell there’s a code, but it’s not Fitz’s normal code. He shows Bobbi the letter. It takes her about twenty minutes to decode it, but eventually, she does.
“You owe Daisy twenty bucks,” she announces.
“What?”
“From a bet.”
Hunter thinks for a minute. He and Bobbi have been out of betting since they’re no longer employed by SHIELD, so it’s got to be one of the old bets. It’s not FitzSimmons, because he received his winnings for them by mail from his grandmother, who got it from Bobbi’s grandmother, who got it from Bobbi’s mom, who got it from Daisy. It’s not himself and Bobbi, because he got all those winnings shortly before they left. Which leaves…
“Bloody hell!” he cries.
“What?” Bobbi asks.
“It’s got to be May and Coulson. Way back when, Mack and I bet they wouldn’t get together, twenty bucks. Daisy and Trip took it,” Hunter explains.
Bobbi laughs. “Hell of a way for them to tell us.”
They’re both quiet for a moment, lost in thought, before Hunter turns to Bobbi. “She doesn’t actually want me to pay her, does she?”
- - -
"Daisy, would you come here a minute?" May calls. Daisy glances at Piper and Davis, hands Mack her beer bottle, and walks to the kitchen where May is.
"What's up?" Daisy asks.
May hands her a piece of paper. "Care to explain this?"
It's this month's pool update. Daisy groans.
(The lecture she gets on unprofessionalism and relationship privacy is torturous, but it's worth it when May throws in fifty bucks for a FitzSimmons kid).