Work Text:
It’s Memorial Day weekend, and the corner of the cafeteria where the SHIELD betting pool holds sway every Friday afternoon is busier than usual. Sitwell runs the bank, as usual, his bald head shining with sweat. The first major heat wave of the year has hit Washington, but the air conditioning hasn’t caught up yet. Maria Hill wipes her forehead and makes a note to talk to Facilities Management, but they usually run out of the building at four sharp.
Sitwell is all debonair concentration as he collects handwritten slips and stuffs dollar bills in a metal box. He flips back and forth between tabs in an enormous three-ring binder with his usual clipped efficiency, writing down entries and collecting signatures. An orderly line has formed in front of him.
Settling in a couple of tables over, Maria listens in as she pretends to be studying an HR report. As Deputy Director she feels obliged to frown on things like betting pools, but Fury has instructed her to practice benign tolerance, in the interest of staff morale. What she can't ignore, though, is that Sitwell has acquired an odd penchant for silk ties, which suggests a lucrative second source of income - always a concern in a security agency. Time to check just how much this enterprise may be worth. Besides, even assuming everything is on the up and up, the betting pool is an excellent place to pick up internal intel.
Business at Sitwell's table is brisk and chatter from the queue fills the air.
“You sure?” Sitwell now asks Carter, checking what she’s scribbled down with a furrowed brow. “Doreen hasn’t made meatloaf in almost a month. Thank God.”
Sharon shrugs.
“That’s the rotation,” she says. “Once a month. It’s on the menu again for Thursday. Surprised you haven’t noticed? Put me down for ten casualties, at twenty bucks.”
“That’s pretty conservative, actually,” Miyazaki opines as he takes his place at the front. “We had a whole bunch of new recruits starting last week. So I’ll go seventeen, for ten bucks. And another tenner on Coulson finally convincing his cello lady that they should make beautiful music together.”
Maria makes a mental note to make sure the SHIELD pharmacy has a sufficient stock of Pepto Bismol and Gravol and that Thursday might be a good day to order in pizza. So far, so good; Sitwell seems to ensure that people's bets are reasonable. What she hears next, though, makes her internal alarm bells go off.
“Is the Barton body count category still a thing?”
Evans saunters up to the table with his usual post-op adrenaline swagger, arm in a sling. Sitwell looks up sharply.
“Weren’t you on a mission with him and Romanoff in Bogota? Insider information is disqualifying, you know.”
Evans shakes his head and waves his injured appendage.
“I wish. Got switched to Khartoum with May. Woman sure likes sharp knives. Besides, they’re still in Colombia; I expect Coulson to monitor Barton’s numbers and pass them on to you when they get back. What’s the current range?”
Sitwell flips the binder open at a tab with the letter B in fat magic marker. Hill squints, but from this distance she can’t tell whether that’s a B for Barton, or for Body Count.
“I don’t give out ranges,” Sitwell says unctuously and quite loudly, obviously for the benefit of those at the back of the line. “That wouldn’t be fair to others, would it? Gimme your slip, Evans, or move over. I run an honest business here.”
Evans fishes a piece of paper and a fiver out of his sling with his uninjured hand.
“Fine,” he grumbles, “Just wanted to know whether the Black Widow might have had an effect on his scores. Melinda thinks she might scare people off.”
“You can have a peek after I enter your bet,” Sitwell says, covering the page with hand as he takes Evans’ money. “But no changing after!”
So, Fury’s newly created ‘Strike Team Delta’ is already the talk off the staff? Interesting, if not too surprising. Three other people plonk down cash for Barton Body Count bets in the next ten minutes. Obviously a popular category.
And Sitwell seems to be running a clean house. Maria tries to tell herself that she needs to see the operation from closer up, although the honest truth is that she feels a bit left out. She rips a small piece off the cover page of her report, scribbles down a number, and joins the queue. Almost immediately she is joined by Nora from Accounting.
“Hi,” Nora says nervously, clutching a crumpled twenty and a surprisingly official-looking piece of paper. (Trust Accounting to come up with a form for even the sketchiest of activities…) Somewhere, Maria suspects, there’s a drawer full of these. No wonder Sitwell can afford silk ties.
As for Nora herself, the poor thing probably did not plan on close proximity to the Boss today; she is practically shaking. Maria decides to be gracious and asks about her plans for the weekend, just to break the ice. Those plans, it turns out, are pretty mundane - involving the latest superhero movie and dinner at Olive Garden, with a colleague from Records, or something. Putting someone at ease doesn’t mean you actually have to listen to their prattling, does it? Once relieved of her anxiousness, Nora goes on and on though, like someone unplugged the Hoover Dam. Apparently, her fondness for superheroes has been stoked by none other than Agent Barton himself, whose spectacular arms and chest the Accounting team has apparently been observing – if not swooning over - for years.
Five minutes of polite nodding and mm-mmhing later, Maria has finally reached the front of the table. Sitwell had obviously spotted her standing in line; by the time his Deputy Director looms before him, his face has been thoroughly cleansed of concern and suspicion.
“Deputy Director Hill,” he says politely. “What can I do for you today?”
Maria slides the liberated fragment of HR report across the table and pulls out her wallet.
“For the Barton Body Count,” she says. “And before you ask - no, I haven’t seen any field reports of his current mission with Romanoff. You know Barton never provides any details until the debrief, and then only if we’re lucky. We’ll have to wait for Coulson.”
Sitwell looks down at the paper and his eyes widen.
“Seventeen? That’s… a lot,” he says. “You sure here? I mean, this being your first time, and all. This category runs in two-week intervals.”
Nora, still in full communication mode, peeks over Maria’s shoulder and gasps.
Maria feels her indignation rising. Why are people questioning her judgment - a clerk from Accounting, no less?
“They’re in Colombia. Taking out one of the Medellín cartels. You know about drug cartels, yes? They’re crawling with minions that need to be cleared out of the way, so numbers add up quickly. If anything, this is pretty conservative; I cut my estimate in half, on the assumption that Romanoff will take out her fair share.”
Nora coughs. Not the polite I want to say something, is now the right time? kind of cough, but the choking kind, the one you have when something goes down the wrong part of your throat. Maria claps her on the back, hard, and someone in the back of the line hands her a bottle of Evian. She swallows gratefully and takes a couple of wheezy breaths.
“Can I ask you a question, Deputy Director?” she sputters, finally.
Maria raises a defensive eyebrow. This is not at all going the way she’d planned, even as it seems to validate her earlier thinking, namely that she should have stayed out of the whole sordid business altogether.
“Sure,” she says gruffly.
“What do you think body count refers to, exactly?” Nora asks.
Oh.
Understanding dawns all around, with unpleasant speed. Sitwell starts to snigger.
“Well,” Maria sputters. “In that case, forget it.”
She snatches the piece of paper out of Sitwell’s still outstretched hand.
“I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to bet on the sex life of my agents. And you…” she rounds on Sitwell, “ you shouldn’t either. It’s…it’s… gross. A violation of privacy. And totally unprofessional.”
Sitwell gives her a look that’s a mixture of apologetic and triumphant.
“Director Fury was pretty specific with the parameters,” he says with a supercilious smile. “We can have this pool, provided we don’t mix fun and business. ‘Don’t want people fucking with mission objectives just to make a buck’, is what he said - a direct quote, by the way. Personal and daily lives is all we’re allowed to speculate about. He did not mention privacy as a concern.”
Sitwell looks past (through?) Maria, at Nora now. The show must go on, Deputy Director's humiliation notwithstanding.
“What you got, Nora?”
Maria Hill is not exactly used to being dismissed, though. If she can’t shut Sitwell down (or up), at least she can stand here for a while and ooze disapproval - maybe ruin his business for a bit. She doesn't move.
“Excuse me, Deputy Director?”
Nora stammers and steps around her, brandishing her neatly completed form. Maria casts a quick, surreptitious look at the paper. Zero, it says.
A zero score? For Barton?
The guy who has slept his way through a squadron of field agents (not just women, either, and any number of hostiles) and a solid percentage of SHIELD support staff? Who had Melinda May purring like a kitten about the advantages of fucking a trained acrobat? Who had almost – almost - managed to crumble her own resolve, during that mission in Tashkent, when he was wearing that stupid white t-shirt with the target on it, and then it started to rain, and…
Zero? Inconceivable. Single digits, yes; the man has standards. But… zero? Nil? Naught?
Sitwell, oblivious to the tumult inside Maria’s head, raises an eyebrow of his own, but writes down Nora’s bet without further commentary. He takes her money and slides the ledger over for her to sign.
“Next,” he says and the line shuffles forward.
Now, resentment is fine as a momentary pastime, but it’s not particularly useful. Maria turns her back on Sitwell and follows Nora out into the main part of the cafeteria. What does Accounting know about Clint Barton that the Deputy Director does not?
“Why zero?” she asks when she catches up. “I mean, this is Barton we’re talking about?”
Rumlow - now him Maria could see as not scoring once in a month, let alone in two weeks. The guy is so full of himself, no woman in her right mind would give him a second look (not that Maria would every say as much to a subordinate, of course). But… Barton?
Nora hesitates, clearly wavering between protecting proprietary business information and not wanting to piss off the boss lady wearing leathers and a side arm.
Good sense prevails.
“Have you seen the way he looks at Agent Romanoff?” she says, her tone low and confidential at first, but rapidly picking up steam. “He hasn’t looked at anyone else since the first time they sparred together. I mean, Linda in Statistics was ready to throw her panties at him the last few times he was in the gym. Seema and I talked her out of it, of course. Have some self-respect, we told her. But he never even noticed her, or us talking about him. I think Agent Romanoff was toweling off at the time, so that’s where his eyes were. Glued, I might add. Until she turned around, then he was all business again.”
She puts her chin up defiantly.
“So. Zero it will be, until she decides to make a move on him. Then, it’ll be one. That’s my bet, anyway. I may be just a clerk, not a spy, but I have eyes. Was there anything else?”
Maria shakes her head, which is whirling a little now.
“No thanks, Nora, That is all; you can go. And have a nice weekend - I hear that movie is great. Superheroes are the coolest, right?”
She heads to the coffee section, orders a latte, and sits down to sip it while she thinks. It’s almost six o’clock; the building is rapidly emptying as people head out for a well-deserved three-day weekend. Some are clearly leaving together - pairing up, right there, under the watchful eye of the enormous SHIELD eagle.
One should only be so lucky.
Her coffee done, Maria gets up, wincing slightly as her chair scrapes on the tile floor. She walks across the cafeteria to where Sitwell is starting to pack up.
“Yes, Deputy Director?” he asks warily.
“You’re not hearing this from me,” she says. “But you may want to start a new category. About Barton and Romanoff.”