"Yes!" Fernandez dealt him in without missing a beat. "Okay, Shaw's in."
They played the hand. Shaw won with a straight, which was annoying but also completely predictable, because of course Shaw was good at poker. He had the perfect face for it: neutral, unreadable, deadpan.
"Another hand," Fernandez said, dealing again.
Shaw hesitated. "Fine."
Someone passed Hudson a beer. He took a long drink and watched Shaw instead of his own hand.
"Hale, you in or out?" Reed's voice cut through his distraction.
"In." Hudson called without looking at his cards.
They played three more hands. Shaw won two of them. Hudson won none, mostly because he kept getting distracted by the way Shaw's mouth curved slightly whensomeone said something funny, or the way his fingers drummed on the table when he was thinking.
"You're terrible at this," Shaw said under his breath, and Hudson realized he was talking to him.
"I'm fine."
"You folded with a full house."
"I did not." Hudson tried to remember his cards. Shit. He had.
Shaw's mouth twitched. "Pay attention, Hale."
Hudson grabbed another beer and tried to focus on the next hand.
"Okay, serious question," Fernandez said, leaning back in his chair. "If you could do anything, regardless of what you got assigned, what would it be?"
"Nothing beats Aviation, so I’m good,” Hudson said.
"Show-off.”
"What about you, Shaw?" Reed asked.
Shaw turned his cards over in his hands. "Civil engineering."
Everyone stared at him.
Hudson saw it on Shaw's face the instant he said it—the realization that he'd let something slip he hadn't meant to.
"Wait, what?" Fernandez said. "You want to build bridges and stuff?"
"Yes."
"But you're doing tactical operations. Special ops. What does that have to do with building bridges?"
Shaw's expression didn’t shift. "Nothing."
The table went quiet. Shaw tensed, walls going back up.
"Civil engineering's cool," Hudson said, breaking the silence. "My mom's friend does that. Designs water systems for developing countries."
Shaw glanced at him, giving him two seconds of something unguarded.
"Yeah, but Shaw's gonna be jumping out of planes and shit. Who cares about bridges?" Fernandez shook his head like he genuinely couldn’t wrap his head around it.
"Bridges are important," Novak said. "Infrastructure is literally what holds society together."
