How the Hell did I end up playing for the Hydra team? Simmons puffed in irritation as she examined the board again. S.H.I.E.L.D. Triviassault, a proprietary game by the looks of it, demanded a bit of strategy to win. Probably not the best choice to play with a group of twenty-somethings who're all three sheets to the wind. The score was close. If she answered the next question alone, she could advance two little plastic Hydra tanks within firing range of the miniature building that represented S.H.I.E.L.D. Central Command.

"I'd like to answer on my own, please," she requested politely, her boozy persona momentarily forgotten. She noticed Fitz watching, and quickly clapped a few dizzy high-fives toward her teammates. "Coz I got this! Oh yeah! You lot are in trouble!"

Penelope, as acting quizmaster, read out the question. "What 'pouncing' deity does double duty, with followers in both ancient Egypt and modern Wakanda?"

"Bast! It's Bast!" Simmons' hands flapped in excitement. "Hah! Take that, S.H.I.E.L.D.!" She quickly placed the game markers into position and caught Fitz's eye again. "When I'm King of the Lab," she beamed, "I'm going to make you build me a crown."

He scrunched his face in annoyance. "Can't imagine anything'll fit around that big head. Try lettin' some of the hot air out an' we'll talk, yeah?"

"I'll take help from my team," said Fitz, while Simmons rolled her eyes at him, mouthing "Again?" That's fine. The S.H.I.E.L.D. side was winning anyway, so he could afford to be cautious and take fewer points in exchange for a greater chance at the right answer.

Penelope read, "What do Las Vegas blackjack dealers stand on?"

Fitz looked at the others through deliberately sluggish eyes. For all that he knew that answer, he might as well have been drinking, instead of just pretending to.

"Erm… the floor? A step-stool? Is it the floor?" Fitz offered. It couldn't be that easy…

Lexie burst into giggles next to him. "A step-stool! Are all Scottish people this funny?" She fell sideways, surprising him, and Fitz helped her right herself. He managed to keep up his relaxed, wobbly façade, no small feat considering the eyeful he'd inadvertently gotten down her blouse.

Fitz shrugged, smiling. "I don't know… I haven't met all Scottish people." That prompted another round of bubbling laughter and some heaving breaths, which he felt a mite guilty for noticing.

His gaze snapped to Simmons, and found her peering at him, chewing on the inside of her cheek with a slight frown. She broke her eyes away immediately and went back to slowly twirling in place, moved by the pounding bassline of the sound system, Michelob can in hand. At least she's finally switched to beer. If he'd seen her go still, or curl up in a corner, or stop talking, Fitz would have probably made them leave, competition be damned. But Simmons still seemed happily buzzed. She clearly had some trick to avoid getting sloshed in these peer-pressure situations. I'll have to pry it out of her sometime.

"Not 'the floor', dope" asserted one of his teammates, a Comm-Ops cadet - Mack? -from their shared history class. "It's a gambling thing. What is it, gang, seventeen? Eighteen? Nineteen's too high, right?"

Lexie gave a noncommittal shrug. "Eighteen sounds good to me. Fitz?"

"Yup, no problem." He raised his voice and addressed the host, "Eighteen."

"Oooh, sorry," hissed Penelope, not looking overly upset. "Seventeen. So close!"

Simmons was chortling, "Hydra dance party!" as she tugged a girl up off the sofa, a Mutant Systems second-year named Mercedes, to join her. They bopped around in classic drunk-girls-dancing-together style, while Simmons tipped her head at Fitz in mockery. Damn it! Fitz could see it now. He'd wind up waking at half five in the morning all weekend, because Simmons would want to catalog some grasshopper that only came out in the wee hours and he'd need to carry her camera bag or something equally inane. Herrick would have known that answer. Where the Hell was Herrick, anyway? Didn't he know he was here for a reason? Bloody fair-weather friend. I hope whoever he's shagging, she's pretty, at least. Because Fitz was going to be reminding him of this betrayal for weeks to come.

"I'll ans- answer alone…" Simmons remembered to giggle. This game was going her way. She'd built up a small lead, due in no small part to her confident risk-taking.

"Cool. What 'princely' substance covers a deer's antler when it is growing?"

"Mmm…" Simmons ran her hand over the side of her face as if she were enjoying the feel of her own skin. "Velvet…"

She heard Fitz scoff. "Should've asked for help, Simmons, but y' got cocky." He lowered his voice to a mutter. "Velvet, really, of all the ridiculous-"

"That is correct!"

Simmons smirked and pushed her tiny tank up the board, knocking off one of the teeny S.H.I.E.L.D. aircraft carriers and locking eyes with Fitz's dazzlingly blue ones. "Oops. You seem to be running out of resources." The challenge was sitting tall in her voice, soaking in it like a hot tub.

Fitz looked away and continued to grouse. "Velvet?! That's the stuff on an Elvis painting, not an antler, for the love of-"

Fitz just barely managed to dump the latest shot he'd been handed into the nearest cup before his hosts turned back towards him. That was close. Between Lexie's chest on display in her party clothes - like two pert apricots poppin' out - and Simmons laying fetchingly across the arm of an easy chair, trailing her fingers through her hair, Fitz was finding it increasingly difficult to focus.

"To Hell with it. I'll answer by myself." We're gonna lose soon anyway, unless we do somethin' drastic. He wasn't going to be King of the Lab, or of anything. He was going to be Serf of the Lab. And Simmons'll make me wear somethin' embarrassing, I know it. A pageant sash announcing her superiority, perhaps, or a T-shirt with a naughty line drawing and the caption "Biologists do it in base pairs." Somethin' like that. So Fitz needed to pull out all the stops to win.

"Alright, Fitz!" cheered Lexie, "You can do it! Full points!"

Penelope cleared her throat. "Move over, Disney! What 'squeaky' piece of computer equipment was invented by Douglas Engelbart in 1963?"

Oh, mother of all things. He had no idea. Fitz used computers; he wasn't a computer nerd. He inhaled deeply and forced himself to settle. He thought about the wording. Disney? The Hell kind of garbage questions are these? Before he could get angry, he felt Simmons' eyes on him and made himself smile at her with a false sense of security. Okay, I can do this. Disney… squeaky… computers… "Mouse!" He couldn't hide his anticipation as he waited to be assured of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s comeback, or their destruction.

Penelope and Lexie gave him twin smiles, even as Simmons' pout took over her face like a dark sky. "Correct!"

He let out a - not girlish at all - noise of relief and smugly knocked over the two weakest Hydra tanks on the board. "And boom goes the dynamite."

Fiddlesticks. Somehow, Fitz's team had managed to edge ahead after demolishing her own small gains. Had they all studied their trivia while they were drunk? Contextual learning would seem to indicate that Fitz's team should not be able to recall random facts this well. But we'll get it back. They still had one brave little tank on the board, perfectly positioned to take down Central Command and win the game. If she answered correctly, and with a little luck, she could bring it home with this next question. If she got it wrong, the game was a lock for team S.H.I.E.L.D. Pressure's on. And Simmons was fantastic under pressure.

"I don't need any help." She didn't even remember to slur this time. Her decoy beer can went on top of an end table as she brushed her hands together. "Let's do this."

"Okay… here goes: what is the white part of most raw eggs?"

Fitz was suddenly protesting, "Come on, that's not even difficult! Who wrote these stupid-"

Penelope interrupted, "Oh, that's a fun fact - S.H.I.E.L.D. lets the top students in each graduating class come up with a few questions apiece, and every five years the Academy puts out a Triviassault expansion pack. Neat, huh?"

"Yeah, just brill," he muttered around a scowl. "Jesus. Now there's trivia about the trivia game?" Fitz put one hand on his hip and pointed to the girls with the other. "It's not fair. Penelope," he entreated, "y' don't really want to see Hydra win, do you? Consider your values, woman! What kind of person would-"

"Fitz!" Simmons rebuked, "Don't be a sore loser. You're going to love sunrise hiking, I'm sure of it!" She turned to Penelope. "The white of the egg is called albumen."

Fitz grumbled, "Everyone knows that. For Pete's sake."

Penelope smiled sweetly. "Sorry! Albumen is only white when it's cooked. The white part of most raw eggs is the shell."

What. Fitz let out a high-pitched whoop, sharing a celebratory hug with his teammates - Did Lexie just grab his arse?! - as Simmons stared down Penelope. "Well that's an absurd distinction," she explained flatly, to Penelope's unapologetic shrug. "This is nonsense, you know." Her palms wiped across the thighs of her jeans as her head shook out an incredulous no. "Honestly, I don't know why you even have this game."

"Aww, Simmons…" she could hear the never-gonna-let-you-live-this-down in Fitz's tone, "Don't be such a sore loser."

A/N:

Right, so two chapters turned into three. As they tend to do when I get excited. The last section is undergoing final tweaks, and will be up within a couple days!

The trivia questions are all true, and I found them on the Web (thanks, Internet, you're the best!) and in particular, Trivia Hall of Fame .com

As I'm sure you guessed, S.H.I.E.L.D. Triviassault is not a real board game.

The question about Bast was inspired by TheLateNightStoryteller's fic Carnivorous Plants, which is set in the Marvel nation of Wakanda, and has been teaching me quite a bit about that fascinating fake country.