scott x hope oneshots

she's somebody's hero

Hope has never been good with kids.

It was a reality that she had accepted many years before, and worn as a label, until it became something everyone knew about her.

San Francisco had hills, the BART never ran on time, and Hope was terrible with children.

These were facts of life.

No doubt, countless psychologists would sit her down on their plush couches, and insist that this all stemmed from her mother's absence and her father's distance. If only they ever had the chance.

She supposes on paper it would all add up. A mother dying early in life would surely lead to a lack of strong female role models. A distant father and a childhood spent at various boarding skills could sap anyone of their natural parental instincts.

When other little girls had played house, rocking plush dolls in their arms and naming them 'Susan' or 'Marie,' Hope had been in a very different world. Science became her fairy tales, engineering became her tea parties, and ants became her dolls.

She'd be the ideal subject for those psychologists.

Though all of their summations would be wrong.

For Hope knew the truth of the matter.

Children scared her.

They were dirty and small. Loud, and yet very fragile. There was not much that could leave the unflappable Wasp feeling uneasy, but children were at the top of that very small list.

Not that she could explain all of that to the eager six year old looking up at her with a wide eyed expression and a gap where her front teeth ought to be, "Are you my dad's girlfriend?"

"I'm his partner," Hope says, in what she tries to project as a calm and collected voice, not the voice of somebody who is very much wondering where the hell Scott got off too so suddenly. There was no easy way to explain that she and Scott were more like friends who were taking things very slowly, and occasionally fought crime together which was usually followed by adrenaline filled hookups that she would pretend never happened.

"Do you guys kiss," Cassie asks this time, her nose wrinkles as she says the word kiss.

Hope's own nose wrinkles in a poor mimic, "Only after he's brushed his teeth."

That gets her a giggle in reply. Which she counts as a small success, especially since Scott makes his reappearance while Cassie's laughing and shoots Hope a relieved smile. One that she returns hesitantly before making a mental note to talk to him about her whole 'bad with children' situation later.

---

She's at Scott's place again.

Partially because his new apartment is a part of time where she gets terrible cell reception and can pretend that that's the reason she's ignoring all her work calls. And partially because Scott's cooking, there's a Disney movie on the TV, and she was asked to be there.

Not by Scott, but by the elementary schooler currently sprawled out across the couch listening to Hope's feminist commentary of the movie with an enraptured expression.

Or, at least, she had been until Cinderella's step-mother dashed glass shoe against the ground, and suddenly Cassie was speaking up, "Are you gonna be my new mommy?"

"What," Hope says instinctively, before correcting it with something more eloquent, "You already have a mother."

"Yes, but," and now Cassie's sitting up with her full attention turned towards Hope, "Daddy's lonely when you're not around... I saw you kissing in the kitchen, and you're gonna get married, right? Then you'll be my new mommy, like Cinderella's?"

"Is that why you picked this movie?"

"But you're not a bad guy right? You're a superhero like daddy, he said so. He said, you can shirk too and fly!"

"I'm not" she starts to say, but falls silent a second later. There's a weirdly hopeful look on Cassie's face. She's not even sure to begin with that. And in the end she settles for simply saying, "He was telling the truth, I can fly."

After this Hope was going to have to add incredibly perceptive the reasons why she didn't do well with children.

For now though, she was able to distract that perceptiveness by describing in great deal how incredible it was to fly through the sky.

---

There's a standing engagement she keeps every Wednesday, lunch with her father, now that they're on speaking terms again. Usually the conversations are kept to more mellow notes, it's not polite to talk about criminal activity in public, instead work and the weather come up more often than not.

Which is why, she knows something is wrong the second he asks, "How's Scott?" in greeting.

She has the answer out of him before their drinks are on the table.

"He asked for my permission," Hanks says, as though that was supposed to make her happy.

It predictably doesn't.

"I'll have to tell him no."

"Do you?"

This is not the kind of conversation she's ever wanted to have with her father. Her love life, has been something always pushed to the background, hidden away and forgotten until something accidentally slips out.

She's thankful for the momentary interlude that is their drinks coming, because it gives her time to think, time to come up with an answer for the searching gaze her father has fixed.

Even so, her eventual answer feels weak in her mouth, "He has daughter, and you know I'm awful with kids."

"For what it matters, I told him as much."

---

"Its parent's day at my school next week," Cassie explains, pushing the flier into Hope's hands with wide eager eyes, "You have to come."

"I'm not your parent," she says, repeating the words Hope knows too well by now, only to feel terrible as she watches Cassie's bright smile fade at once.

Hope hadn't meant it like that. Hadn't meant the words to sound so harsh.

This was why she was bad with children, because she never knew the right things to say, never knew how to make them understand. Going to parent's day, may have seemed like something simple to Cassie, and perhaps it was, but Hope – she'd never had anyone go to her parent's days before, before the accident they'd both been too busy and after it had just never worked out. But Cassie had both her parents, who would go and support her, and yet for some reason, she wanted Hope there.

She can see Scott getting prepared to go into damage control (though which one of them he'll trying to fix things for is unclear). It doesn't matter though cause Cassie beats him too it.

"Neither is Jim," Cassie insists, and it takes Scott mouthing 'Paxton' for Hope to know who she's talking about, "But he promised he'd come, so you have to too! Please please please!"

"Three pleases, well, that is tempting," Hope says, and just like that she's got an armful of Cassie raining thanks down upon her.

"Thank you! Thank you! It will be so fun, I promise!"

"I'm looking forward to it already."