It was so much to take in. Her mother, renowned scientist and S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, Janet Van Dyne, was standing in front of her. A real person in the real world. She and her father had pulled all the books from the shelves, run trials, pieced together an experimentation chamber deep underground from the rocky bottom up. All the anticipation that they were working towards something that would happen, and... here it was.

She literally collapsed into her mother's arms, holding onto her so she wouldn't disappear again. And Janet held onto her the same way, telling her and her father who shakingly joined them both that she was home, and she felt every bit like the little girl she had been thirty years ago, but whose mom had come back from her trip.

It wasn't until they realised there was a commotion building outside that they broke away and Scott – Scott, she'd forgotten about him.

He'd probably been standing off to the side, just watching, she'd thought later, after she and her family didn't have any more to deal with explanations and the FBI. No cutting in, no interfering in a moment that wasn't his. When they turned round, he'd already been standing by the door. She had to thank him later, he'd played a part in this as well –

He turned back to look at them, his face like the one time he forgot to lock up the ants and he finally saw the things they did in the pantry. "Looks like I'll be heading home early!"

The sounds of car doors opening and slamming shut started coming in from the front door, and they had to run again.

A few days later, after moving back into the mansion and spending some time within its walls again, her phone buzzed. It felt weird, being able to have an unmonitored, direct on-the-phone conversation with Scott Lang.

"Hey, Hope." His voice was gentle, like it was when he meant what he was saying, but there was a lift to it too.

"Hey," she replied, an unintentional crack in her voice. "Listen, I'm sorry I didn't get around to telling you this... when my mom came back, but – thank you. We probably wouldn't have accomplished as much as we did if you hadn't been there. You helped us."

There was a light chuckle from the other end of the phone. "I did the best I could." A simple, straightforward reply. "Thank you for saying that. How's your mother doing?"

She told him about her mother, adjusting to being in a house again, being around whenever she could for all the times she hadn't been able to, staring at the walls to remind herself that she was here and time and places were as they should be. Scott listened, commenting in between and making a fairly harmless joke every now and then. But mostly he listened. "I'm glad your family is okay."

She'd voiced her appreciation. She wondered if she'd said enough.

"What do you think about dinner tonight? I know a good place that I don't think you've been to yet."

"Sure." Scott's tone was starting to lighten up. "But – aww, I was gonna suggest a place."

"Alright, then. But if that doesn't turn out so well, there's always my place."

"Alright alright. You make the plans today. Next time, my place."

*

"It looks so much better than the one I wore."

The Wasp suit stood mounted on a transparent mannequin, its signature wings unfolded but displayed on a glowing panel in the alcove behind it.

"We took everything we could from your original notes," Hank said, standing closely beside her. "And Hope used whatever she learnt to build from there." He glanced at where Hope was standing, a little further away.

Janet ran a hand over the glinting gold parts of the fabric, taking in the smooth build of the new suit and helmet before turning to face him. "Both of you did a great job." She glanced at the suit again. "Although now I wish I'd made that while I was still out in the field."

She let out a laugh. Hope thought she saw something ripple in her father's eyes, a shadow of smile beginning to appear on his wrinkled face. It was a sound they realised they wanted to keep around these few days.

"I saw the test footage with you and Dad in it," Hope said, taking a few steps forward. "It was one of the things that kept me going while we were looking for you."

It had been something of a testing track, an obstacle course set up by S.H.I.E.L.D. themselves to see just how well the Ant-Man and the Wasp could perform – insect-sized tunnels, high-nanosecurity passageways, openings that required precise timing and coordinated movements to pass through and a lock with a code that had to be cracked.

"The test run was something we prepared for almost a year beforehand." Janet looked into the far end of the room like she was trying to see what happened thirty years ago. Memories that felt further in the past. "During the run itself, your father and I were hard-focused on that lock. I made sure I moved where he needed me to move, and he made sure he was always in a place to assist me."

It had been very clear in action. There had been other test logs that Hope had seen. Videos demonstrating combat against physical opponents, her mother and father documenting secondary suit functions, and, on a few occasions, just her mother and father in the lab, talking.

"The response we received from the directors after they saw just how much we could do was, well... Your father said it was the proudest he'd ever felt of his achievements. And I felt the same way too."

"And the next one would be our first mission in Moscow," Hank added, almost with a smug air that Hope hardly saw, though that air faded away when he looked at Janet. "You were... shockingly talented at reading my mind."

"How was it like, working with Dad?" She'd asked Hank the reverse before, but she wanted to hear what the other person had to say.

"He was a very efficient man." Janet gave Hank a wry smile, which he seemed to stiffen at. "We got along very well in the lab and on the mission. When the tools were away, though..." She was looking at Hank, but this time he was starting to look away. "It took some time."

"I knew you wanted to talk to me," Hank said, his voice not entirely there. He met her gaze. "You were always trying. I was just still figuring out the right way to respond."

There was no blame in Janet's smile. "And look where that got us." She put a hand on Hank's arm, and Hope realised just how long she hadn't seen both of her parents together.

It was like seeing one of those video logs – Hank and Janet standing over a worktable laid with vials, components and two finished suits, their shoulders touching; Janet saying something, Hank nodding in response, never moving away.

Her father wasn't the sort who'd make room for other people – she was like that sometimes, she admitted, and she saw it in him. How he'd ended up with a woman like her mother was something no one saw coming until the signs were blindingly obvious.

And, she thought, he was extremely lucky to have her.

*

"He wouldn't even look at me. Unless he had to ask me for updates on my side of the project, so he'd talk to me, but it was like there was a blur in the center of his vision he just couldn't see, or something."

"He actually respects you." Hope resisted the urge to laugh because Scott looked comically depressed. "Only he'd rather not – he didn't want to express it the nice way."

"I felt like I'd committed a crime." Scott cringed like the memory stung a little as he opened the fridge. "But I couldn't confront him about it, I mean, how can you tell someone, I'm sorry, everyone in the department just thinks I'm fun to be around, and I really enjoy their company, could you not hate me please?" He brought out two cans of beer and set them on the countertop.

Hope brought hers closer to herself and popped the tab open, eyeing Scott. "You're right. That wouldn't work. So did you?"

Scott sighed and opened his can. "Nah. I had to do some self-reflection, but in the end I just treated him like everyone else in the office."

The two of them drank from their cans.

"I know you handle stress at work pretty well." Scott gestured at Hope with his can before taking another sip. Their conversations moved from topic to topic the minute a new point of interest came up. Before Scott's old workplace story, they'd been discussing passable service at cafes.

Yet the change in the direction of the conversation to her still caught her off-guard, and she laughed. "Believe me, it takes a lot of patience. And a lot of practice." She stared him down, noticing his bemused expression from across the tabletop. Stress management was no game. "A lot of it is just not screaming out the worst things you can think about someone, even if you want to."

"Well, I think you've perfected it," Scott said, very seriously. "I can never tell if you feel like screaming at me."

Hope felt like tossing him halfway across the kitchen. But all in good nature, of course. "Would you like me to teach you?"

Scott set his beer firmly down. "Put me down for a meditation class after our next training session."

Hope could only laugh. It felt good – she always felt like she was able to let loose whenever Scott was with her. It was probably the reason why his old colleagues liked being around him too. "It's easier to ignore the stress during the 'hero work', somehow. Like what happened last week."

"Yeah," Scott looked up at her, then out the window, where the lights of the houses opposite had mostly dimmed out. "Because... all the trouble was happening right in front of us, and we were literally fighting it."

She thought the same thing, too. She'd only wanted to look for her mom, but the picture had been bigger than she wanted, by that meaning other people started appearing and getting dragged into it. "We sure did a lot in a few days, didn't we?"

"Are you kidding me?" Scott gave a forced laugh. "It was the most we did together after, er, Germany. It wasn't exactly the first thing I thought we'd be doing together after not seeing you for so long, but..." He paused for a while. "That was fine as well." He turned to look at her the minute she'd looked back at him while she was listening.

"Well, come to think of it, we've only ever teamed up for that one mission," she said. There'd been a few times or so where the two of them had to run some errands out of the lab, after she'd gotten her first suit and before Germany, but those didn't count. There hadn't been anything at risk. "Though something would have to go completely off the rails for us to do something like that again."

"We could always do something like this," Scott nodded at the kitchen, and Hope unsuccessfully repressed a laugh. "But hey – " There was a slight change in his tone. He leaned forward, almost by reflex. "If things do go off the rails, you're not gonna be dealing with it alone."

She knew this already. But there was affirmation in hearing him say it. And he was right.

They sat across from each other in silence.

Hope's eyes moved from the open hole of her beer can to Scott. He stared back, his focus constant even as he blinked. She held his gaze.

It was just that, just looking at each other. The movement just came that easily. Her eyes just seemed to settle on his. Like flexing a wrist.

Scott's eyes dropped quickly for a second in the direction of his can. "Refill?" He lifted it slightly, his fingers almost slipping off the rim.

Hope ignored the question. The countertop was coincidentally narrow, enough for her to lean comfortably a little past halfway across the top.

They had a sort of thing. It was painstakingly hard to tell before, but in light of recent happenings, she was sure of it now. "You're a good person to work with, Scott."

A smile broke onto Scott's lips, before he twisted his mouth to one side so it wouldn't show that much. "Do you mean that in a professional sense, or...?"

It was always going to be either a joke or a flirt in return.

She couldn't stop her own smile. "I mean it."

She leaned all the way forward, closing the distance between her and him, and slowly pressed her lips to his.

They remained for a drawn-out second, their faces close together, the heat that'd been building up for the past minutes finally washing through the rest of her body. Scott held on firmly, his hands finding their place at the sides of her cheeks, then down the side of her neck.

She'd always wanted to be a hero. On the other hand, she'd never worried too much about the people she would have to work with. Especially a person she would be working with. Someone who bounced off her well, to hold up one end of the load while she carried the other, someone she would always be seeing, in the danger and out of it.

Most importantly, she hadn't expected what kind of person that would be.

She let everything she felt in that moment just overwhelm her – confusion and exhilaration, she could only guess, her hands tugging at the folds of the back of his shirt as she buried her head into the space between his neck and his shoulder blade. She felt him fit into her empty spaces, running his hands through the tangle of her hair, mumbling words into her ear.

She'd always felt a sense of touched admiration for the relationship between her mom and dad, even if at one point she'd wanted nothing to do with her father. They were partners, and she'd never seen anyone work together as closely before. Now, she was working together with Scott Lang.

Dad had always been himself the most when he was with Mom. Remembering Mom from the times she'd been there while she was still a girl, she was always looking out for her and her father without trying. Where her father was stubborn, her mother was headstrong, and she made it clear how much she loved the people she cared for. In this thought, Hope felt lucky that she had her mother in her as well.

She still found it hard to believe, lying on the couch in Scott's living room, his head resting on her chest, her fingers brushing against the strands of his thick hair (Scott looked more mature while he was asleep, she'd noticed, it was the way he lay completely still and his face looked like he was concentrating on the things inside his head), wide awake because of all these thoughts running like live wires through her brain.

The Ant-Man and the Wasp were back, one way or another. Desperate times had thrown the both of them together, and they'd stuck.

She wouldn't want to lose this partner anytime soon.