scott x hope oneshots

so much you can't hide

The coolest thing about being a superhero, Scott finds, is not saving the world (which he's done a couple times now) or beating up an Avenger (which he's only done once--sadly? thankfully?) or even the suit itself (which Scott has to admit is pretty damn cool). The coolest thing about being a superhero is Cassie. She's always been the light of his life, and she's always looked at him like he was basically a superhero, but now it's something she knows.

Overnight, she goes from loving pink and princesses to loving superheroes. Ant-Man doesn't have the sort of marketing department the Avengers have, so Cassie gets her parents to buy her Avengers stuff--Falcon wings, an Iron Man mask, a Captain America shield, Thor's hammer. She uses them all at once and tears around the back yard pretending to fight crime and aliens and HYDRA. (At one point, Scott catches her facing off against the Iron Man mask, which she's fastened to a tree at about her own eye level. "I've looked at your books, Iron Man, and Stark Industries is just as bad as that place my daddy burgled," she declares to the tree. "You're going down!" Scott watches her run in circles around the tree, tossing her plastic shield at it, and he has never been prouder.)

The other piece of it, slightly less easy to explain to anyone outside the family, is her sudden obsession with shrinking. Half-jokingly, Scott had brought her a DVD copy of the movie Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, and according to Maggie, they've had to put a limit on how many times a day she's allowed to watch it. She and the giant ant Scott can't believe Maggie let her keep (whose name, Scott is informed, is Antgela) arrange the toys and blankets and furniture in her bedroom to make tall grass, giant pebbles, enormous puddles, and pretend that they're having a very small adventure.

It feels like he's a part of her life again, and it's amazing.

*

Scott wonders what superheroes with kids are supposed to do about being superheroes with their kids. Hank's the only one he knows about who has any at all, and that is not a father-daughter relationship he particularly wants to emulate. As cool as Cassie thinks his being Ant-Man is, he's not sure how to share it with her. Maggie and Paxton have told him they're not huge fans of him telling her stories about his adventures--what he does is dangerous, and that's not good for a kid. If she knows it's dangerous, she'll worry about her dad; if she doesn't, she'll want to try it herself. Scott agrees in theory, but hasn't quite been successful at keeping his work and home lives as separate as his ex-wife would like. Cassie comes to visit on the weekend sometimes, and she sees Scott in the suit occasionally, it can't be helped. She also meets Hope and sees the Wasp suit, which Scott is pretty sure doesn't do anything to dissuade her from whatever budding aspirations she might have to grow up to be a superhero.

"Girls can do it too?" she asks Hope, her voice rising with awe and excitement.

Hope gives Scott a look that says what are you teaching this kid, seriously and answers, "Of course! Who do you think taught your dad how to be Ant-Man?"

"You?!" Cassie says, even more breathless.

Hope smiles conspiratorially and nods. "Taught him everything he knows." While Scott blusters at that assessment a little, he knows it's not far off.

Later, he makes the mistake ("Of wanting to be a cool dad!" he tells Maggie, after) of showing Cassie the discs Hank had given him, the ones that shrink and grow the things they touch. It's not like she didn't know they existed before--her Thomas the Tank Engine had been hit by one and crushed a police car--but it's a different thing entirely to demonstrate them to her directly. He shows her the disc, holding it out in the palm of his glove for her to examine. Once she's taken a look, he has her stand back and shrinks the sofa. Cassie shrieks with delight and rushes over to the space where it had been sitting. It's still sitting there, she finds, but now it's small enough to fit in her hand.

("When I said 'get involved in her life', Scott, this is not what I meant," Maggie hisses at him over the phone.)

He loves his daughter and wants to share this with her, but he tries to be more careful after that.

*

He comes out into the kitchen in the middle of the night and finds Cassie standing over a guy in a ski mask whose leg is trapped under the remains of the kitchen table and a giant-sized penny. Cassie is sobbing and the guy is screaming and fear courses through Scott's gut as he takes in the scene.

"What the hell, man!" the man in the ski mask gasps. He winces in the light that Scott turns on and tries futilely to lift the coin off his leg. "All I wanted was your TV!"

Scott looks around the room at the slightly-ajar door, the old CRT TV he'd picked up at a pawn shop for something like $15, and the burglar. Scott's not even a burglar anymore and he's embarrassed for this guy. He obviously hadn't scoped out the place at all--the apartment door creaks loudly when it opens, the TV is basically worthless, and Cassie had been asleep on the sofa when he'd entered.

Scott leans down to Cassie and wraps her small, sobbing body in the best and most reassuring hug he knows how to give. When the crying subsides, he puts his hands on her shoulders and holds her out far enough away from himself to look her in the eye. "Did you do this?" (The confession is a formality at this point; it's not like the burglar did this to himself.)

She nods.

"Why?"

Cassie pauses, and Scott gives her a stern look before she answers. "I heard him sneak in and I came to get you but you were asleep."

"You can wake me up; you can always wake me up in you need something, peanut--"

"I know, Daddy," she interrupts, with an almost put-upon sigh. "But you looked so tired and I thought I could do it. I opened up the cabinet--" (Scott makes a mental note to change the combination of the lock on that cabinet to something other than Cassie's birthday) "--and got out one of your make-bigger coins and..." She trails off and waves her arm at the burglar and the table and the giant penny.

"You know that Daddy's suit isn't a toy, right? And you're not supposed to touch it?"

"I know. I'm sorry." She starts to cry again, and he pulls her close.

"It's okay," he says. "You did good." And she had, Scott has to admit; she'd done excellently. It sounds like she'd managed to hit the penny on the table from across the room, which either means she's got incredibly lucky aim or had been practicing her tosses. (Scott really hopes she hasn't been practicing.)

"I broke your table," she sobs into his shoulder.

"It was a dumb table anyway. Who needs tables? Not me," Scott says. It elicits a giggle from Cassie, and he hugs her a little tighter.

"This is all very touching--" the burglar groans, and Scott takes the opportunity to knock the guy out.

He turns back to Cassie and looks at her very seriously. "Let's not tell your mom about this, okay?"

*

For Career Day at Cassie's school, all the kids have to draw pictures of themselves doing the thing they want to do when they grow up. Maggie sends Cassie's drawing with her for her weekend visit, and it gets a place of pride on Scott's fridge: a crayon drawing of Ant-Man, Wasp, and a third superhero in a red and black suit and a black mask. Based on the skyscraper she's drawn for scale, the ant that Ant-Man is riding is the size of a horse. Wasp is flying several stories above the other two, shooting lasers at a guy in a window of the skyscraper who's wearing a ski mask. And the third superhero is giant, at eye level with Wasp, and has her foot suspended over what appears to be a getaway car, ready to crush it if need be. The teacher has written on the corner: VERY INVENTIVE and attached a small smiley-face sticker.

God, he loves his kid.