this one is extremely long but well worth the read :)

It starts because Darren asks her if she's got a date to the staff Christmas party. Which she doesn't, but she feels very, very compelled to lie.

He corners her when he's on his way out of Hank's office and she's on her way in, and the not-truth automatically materializes on her tongue before she can think about it. His mouth twists unpleasantly on one side. "The Mexican guy? Luis?" he asks disbelievingly. He doesn't pronounce the name right. "No way he's good enough for you. Really, Hope."

"No," she half-snaps back. It comes out more defensive than she means it to. Because yes, the plan was to get Luis to go with her. He comes to half the Pym Tech events, anyway – he's a good friend to have on one side of her around all her father's colleagues. They like to sit in a far-off corner and make up whispered stories about the party guests. He's better at it than she is. Luis is possibly the most creative person she knows, though his talents when it comes to whispering could use a little work. "Not Luis. We're just friends. No, it's someone else I'm, um, seeing." Her voice comes out higher-pitched than normal, but she thinks she's convincing enough, besides that. It gets Darren to back off, at least. She feels inordinately proud of herself for about thirty seconds until he disappears into the elevator, and then she realizes the trap she's effectively pushed herself into.

Okay, so the whole thing is a damn mess, and now Hope van Dyne is stuck.

The good news is that anyone from school is fair game, because Darren goes to a fancy private school across the city, and he doesn't know any of them. She's going to ask Tony Stark. That's the original plan, at least. She decides this when she sees him down the hallway the next morning. There are several reasons why this plan is a good one, and she lists them all out in her head while she absentmindedly pulls her math textbook from her locker. Like the fact that they're friends, sort of, even if they've grown apart since their respective fathers' falling-out. Like the fact that he's a senior and Darren is only a junior, like her. Like the fact that he would probably say yes, really, because it would piss off his dad. And, perhaps most importantly, the fact that it would piss off her dad, too. Really, convincing Tony to go to the Christmas party with her checks all the boxes, only by the time Hope has shut her locker and squared her shoulders and taken one step in his direction, she's already remembered the very specific reason she can't follow through on that. Pepper Potts. They've been hovering in that strange almost-dating-but-not-quite territory since last spring break, or maybe even longer, and she isn't about to throw a wrench into the middle of that.

No, it will have to be someone else.

"I'm in a situation," she complains at lunch. She doesn't feel like eating. She has under a week to find a date to the stupid Christmas party, and the entire thing makes her feel sort of sick. Blurting out the details to Ava, Carol and Luis doesn't do much to ease that, and Hope pushes her food off to the side so she can lean forward and rest her forehead on the table. To her friends' credits, they begin to scan the cafeteria and suggest other options, though the names come seemingly at random and she emphatically turns down all of them. "This is ridiculous," she mumbles into the tabletop. "I'm just going to have to tell him the truth."

"Or," Luis interjects, sounding far too excited. Hope closes her eyes. She can recognize his I-have-an-idea tone anywhere, and while said ideas always have some sort of brilliance to them, it's often buried deep, and usually hidden by several run-on sentences strung together. "Or, listen, you could just tell him the guy bailed on you or you broke up or something and you're just, like, absolutely heartbroken and never want to look at another guy again, and –"

"Hope, heartbroken? Unlikely."

Great. The rest of Luis' friends have arrived, squeezing in around the table. There isn't really enough room for seven, but they manage by sacrificing trivial, unimportant things. Like Hope's elbow space. Good thing she feels too sick to move, let alone sit up properly and try to eat without moving her arms at all.

Luis doesn't even come up for air, even as he changes tracks mid-sentence. "– he'll have to back off, you know, because all guys pretty much repulse you – hey, guys – Hope's just found herself in a bit of a predicament." And then he's off, explaining everything on her behalf, which is completely unnecessary. It's not like she wants them to know this particular thing about her, that she impulsively lies to cocky Pym Tech interns about stupid things like having a date to the Christmas party. It's embarrassing. She keeps her head down, but she can feel everyone's eyes on her. "So now, like, she's gotta find someone to go with, except she doesn't think any of our suggestions are good enough, right?"

Someone gives a low whistle, and she's pretty sure she knows which one of them. "Well, damn, isn't that a pickle," he says, and she was definitely right. Nobody else at this table is going to use that phrase in a hundred years, even ironically. "What the hell. I'll do it, if you want."

Plot twist.

Hope finally lifts her head up, but she does it a little too abruptly and then feels slightly dizzy. "You what?" she asks, shell-shocked. Because there's no way she's taking Scott Lang to this dumb party. Not in a million years. Not a chance in hell.

She doesn't like Scott Lang; she tolerates him, at most. He's stubborn and makes dumb jokes even if he's the only one laughing at them, and he constantly wavers between acting very full of himself or drowning in self-deprecating humour, with no real middle ground. He doesn't seem to understand the concept of personal space, either, though that one is a trait shared with the rest of Luis' friends, too – something that she discovered rather quickly when she got paired with Luis for a history project freshman year and somehow wound up accidentally merging their friends into one messy collage. Hope clashes with Scott at every opportunity simply because it's so easy to eye-roll at half the things that come out of his mouth. Maybe he's smart enough to pull off decent grades, but he has this annoying habit of not trying. His immaturity is, she thinks, defined by all of these facts, and only highlighted by the close-up magic tricks he constantly tries to impress everyone around him with. And so she tolerates him, puts up with his presence for Luis only, and he endures her clear distaste for him in return.

Their entire so-called friendship depends on this dynamic, and now he's throwing it all off balance. Offering to help her is just so unlike the rhythm they fell into immediately, and she's going to say no. Obviously. They've got four more days of school before winter break, and the party is this weekend, and she has no intention of spending a single minute of the holidays hanging out with Scott Lang, of all people.

"Ay, Scotty!" exclaims Luis. She's not looking at him, because she's busy staring wide-eyed at Scott like he's grown a second head, but she can tell from his voice that he's grinning broadly. Of course Luis would think this is a good idea. He doesn't seem to understand how downright infuriating it can be to spend long stretches of time around his friends. Maybe his ridiculously-high energy levels simply free him from growing tired of their antics.

"No," she says abruptly, "you don't ha–"

She's cut off by Scott placing a hand on her arm. It might be intended as a comforting gesture, but she's not sure how well it works. "I want to," he tells her earnestly. Somehow, he manages to look serious and smile at the same time. How does he do that? "This Darren guy sounds like an ass."

"He is," admits Hope. She tilts her head, examining him closely, green eyes searching green. Maybe he's got an ulterior motive, she thinks. Maybe he wants to come to the party just so he can tell Darren face-to-face that Hope lied and just how far she's gone to fool him. Then again, maybe not. Scott Lang is a lot of things, but plain evil isn't one of them. That little voice in the back of her head telling her not to accept the offer might be worth ignoring. It is very rarely anything but automatically distrusting. Everyone else at the table is watching this exchange with bated breath – no one is even touching their food, and all the rest of the cafeteria noise has faded into a barely-noticeable murmur in the background. And so, trying to sound extremely casual, like this is not a big deal at all, Hope shrugs and says, "Okay, yeah. Sure. Um, thanks."

He holds out a hand, and she rolls her eyes, but she shakes on it, anyway.

—

By the time the Christmas party actually rolls around, though, Hope has had a few days to steep in her regret. It was downright mortifying, telling her dad that her plus-one isn't Luis like usual, or even Ava or Carol, her usual go-to backups when he can't make it. They don't enjoy it as much as Luis, and Bill stopped tugging Ava along in his wake years ago (God, she wishes Hank would drop the mandatory attendance, too), but they understand Hope's need to have someone familiar to interact with there. And she had to heavily imply to her dad that Scott is more than just a friend, because Darren idolizes him and will try to make conversation with him all night. He's got to believe it in order for Darren to believe it, and she can't have him ruining everything. At this point, it feels like there is far too much at stake.

"Maybe I can just fake sick," she says to her reflection in the bathroom mirror. It wouldn't be a total lie; she does feel sick. She could call her dad, who always goes early to make sure setup runs smoothly, and tell him she's not feeling well. Then she could text Scott and tell him he doesn't need to pick her up, after all. And then she could take off the makeup she's just finished carefully applying, curl up in bed, and watch movies on Netflix until Christmas morning. It would be so easy.

Ava's voice echoes on the counter from where Hope has her phone propped up against the toothbrush holder. "No, not happening. You have to go. This is the way to get Darren to leave you alone. It's going to be great." She glances down; Ava has leaned in very close to the camera to eye her seriously. Hope sighs. The point of the FaceTime call while she gets ready is for support when she tries to bail, not this. Ava looks off to one side. "Care, tell her it's going to be great."

"It's going to be great," says Carol faintly from off-screen.

Lips turning down at the corners in a pout, Hope takes the only shot she has left. "Are you sure you can't come this year?" she asks, purposely adding just a hint of a whine to the words. "They probably wouldn't even bat an eye at you for not being on the official guest list. I bet you could even get Carol in."

The response she gets is immediate: Carol snatching Ava's phone out of her hands just to shake her head emphatically. "No can do. We're going to a movie. Already bought the tickets and everything. You're going to that party. And you can handle Scott, you do it every day."

"That's different," insists Hope, but Carol only sarcastically blows a kiss to her (can one do such a thing sarcastically?), wishes her good luck, and hangs up. Hope lets her friends' words echo in her head and fortify her from the inside out. You're going to that party. You can handle Scott. It's going to be great.

It's not going to be great, but she doesn't bail.

Scott picks her up in his dad's car, which smells like cigarette smoke. They put the windows down even though it's December, and while he drives, she goes over the game plan. "We've only been dating for, like, a couple weeks. We met through Luis, obviously, because we should keep as much truth in this as possible. This is the first time you're meeting my dad, and you have to shake his hand. Take the next right, it's a shortcut. A firm handshake, okay? Or he won't take you seriously, and it won't work. We'll be fighting by New Year's so my dad doesn't think it's weird for you not to come to that, and we're breaking up by the time school starts again. And under absolutely no circumstances are you allowed to kiss me."

"What if there's mistletoe?" he asks, very innocently. She glances sideways and he's grinning. He lets his eyes flicker to her for only a brief moment, and she looks back at him, deadpan.

"Absolutely no circumstances," she repeats. She waits until he gives her an affirmative nod before she looks away. "Keep your eyes on the road, Lang."

The party has only just begun when they arrive, and so she only has to introduce him to a handful of people, at least to start. She's hopeful that they can retreat to the sidelines as the room fills up, like she does when Luis comes to these types of things with her. Scott plays the part well, she'll admit that. Not out loud, and never to him. But silently. He remembers the firm handshake tip and he even manages to crack a joke that makes her father allow a glimmer   of a smile. It's enough, she hopes. They don't need the actual Hank Pym seal of approval, just enough of his belief to get them through this one party.

"Hope," says someone approximately ten seconds after Scott weaves away through the crowd to find them both something to drink. It's Darren, of course. He's probably been hovering nearby, waiting for the perfect opportunity to make his approach. "You know, I don't think I would have pegged you for a girl into the class clown type." He smiles as he says it, but his eyes are cold steel.

She shrugs. "You don't know me that well," she answers. She tries to say this lightly; it comes out stiff. Casting a glance in the direction Scott disappeared, she finds herself hoping that there's no line at the bar so he can get back quickly. She pins this desire solely on the fact that she hates to be alone at her father's work events. One day, she might like to work here, but for now, she's the girl half the office has watched grow up, and she's decidedly bad at small talk. This is precisely why someone more talkative is a good companion to attach herself to. Hence, Luis. Scott is good at making conversation, too, even with strangers.

Darren smiles wider, showing his teeth. "So your dad mentioned this" – here, he gestures towards the bar, proving that he definitely was   close enough to know exactly where Scott went – "is all pretty new, huh?"

Hope shifts her weight from one foot to the other. "Yes, that's right." She doesn't offer up any other information, and he has to press further for it. And press, he does. Darren is good at research. He asks his questions casually so that they don't sound like an interrogation, but that's exactly what it is. He wants to know Scott's name, how they met, what kind of things Scott likes. She doesn't even have to make something up, which is the best thing about using a sort-of-maybe friend for this instead of a relative stranger – she mentions that Scott is funny (a stretch, most of the time) and is learning close-up magic to entertain his little sister, and then she goes off on a tangent about Cassie. She's never met the girl, but Scott likes to tell stories about her, so she gets almost halfway into one of them, hoping she can keep talking without giving Darren a single place to interrupt until he grows tired of the conversation and sidles off to talk to someone else.

Thankfully, she doesn't have to go quite that far. Scott pops up next to her practically out of nowhere, a glass in each hand. "Hey, babe," he greets her. Her eyes widen slightly. They so   did not discuss that one. "Full disclosure, I got to the bar and I completely forgot what you asked for? So I got a Shirley Temple and a Roy Rogers. Take your pick, I'm good with either." She picks the Roy Rogers, and half the reason is so she can poke fun at him for drinking a Shirley Temple next time he annoys her. Lifting the straw to her lips, she watches, feeling like perhaps she's seeing things from afar, as he turns and looks Darren up and down before offering a handshake to him, too. "We haven't met yet. I'm Scott. And you're...?"

Darren shakes his hand, seeming surprised that Scott's shake is even remotely stronger than anticipated. He covers this up quickly, but she sees it for a moment, and she's not going to lie – it's immensely satisfying. Grudgingly, he introduces himself in return, and after that, he's quick to make his exit.

Scott watches him go, one eyebrow arched higher than the other one. "So that's the infamous Darren. Job done, then, am I right?" Hope opens her mouth in protest – he can't leave now!   – but he laughs easily and adds, "Relax, I'm kidding. Luis said I'm not allowed to leave you here alone, anyway. Something about it maybe actually being a fate worse than death. Walk with me." Perhaps a little reluctantly, Hope lets him lead the way around the room, weaving in between her father's colleagues and sipping at her drink and filling him in on who people are.

His free hand closes in on her arm abruptly, tugging her in another direction, and she almost spills what's left in her glass. "What are you doing?" she asks. Or snaps. It's definitely more of a snap.

"Look," he instructs her, and she follows his gaze to a sprig of mistletoe ahead. Oh.   "Under absolutely no circumstances, right?" And she was pretty sure Scott's biggest failing was that he never listens, but maybe she was wrong. They curve away in another, mistletoe-free direction, and stop to set their now-empty glasses down on a table. He puts his hands in his pockets and asks, quite suddenly, "Wanna dance?"

"What? No."

"Why not? There's lots of people dancing."

He's right – there's a dance floor, as always, and they have wound up somehow on the edge of it. Hope always tries to steer clear of this portion of the party – she's coordinated in many places, but a dance floor is decidedly not one of them. She wrinkles her nose a little and says distastefully, "They're couples."

Very patiently, he reminds her, "We're supposed to be a couple, Hope."

He's got a point there, but she isn't giving in that easily. She shrugs and doesn't look at him. "I don't dance," she tells him, with the highest degree of finality she can manage. This would work on pretty much anyone else in the world, but not Scott Lang. He picks and chooses when he wants to listen to her, and now is definitely not one of those times. Grabbing her hand, he begins to pull her away from the table, and she immediately digs her heels in. "No, I don't want to!"

But he's onto her, of course. She really should give him more credit sometimes. He's smart. "C'mon, it'll be fine. I swear I won't let you look like an idiot. Besides, Darren's right over there." Her concentration breaks just barely, and he takes the opportunity granted to him with both hands – literally, other hand reaching to drag her out onto the dance floor, too. And then it's far too late, and with the cliché timing of a shitty rom-com, the song ends and a new and slower one begins. Energy renewed, Hope tries to pull back again, but Scott is stronger than she gave him credit for, too. He lifts her hands up to his shoulders and places his on her hips and says teasingly, "So Hope van Dyne can't dance, huh?"

Hope shrugs. "I can,"   she insists. This is, of course, mostly a lie. She knows how to dance in theory,   but she's never exactly had a reason to do it for real.

Scott grins. It's a cocky grin, the kind she's seen him flash at people a million times. Only now that she's this close to him, she can see it makes these little golden flecks spark up in his eyes. How does that work? "Don't worry, your secret's safe with me," he says, "and I'll lead. You just have to follow, for once."

—

He sticks around after people begin to filter out into the parking lot and asks if she needs a ride home. Hope has half a mind to say no – it wasn't really a part of the plan, it's not exactly in the direction he needs to go in, and she can get a ride home with her dad, so long as she stays for cleanup. But Darren is still here. She can handle him on her own, maybe even without talking herself into a messy situation this time, but she's tired, and she doesn't want to deal with that right now. God, since when is spending extra time   with Scott Lang the preferable choice? Hope pushes that thought back into the shadows and nods. "Yeah, okay," she agrees, and they head outside, Scott just half a step behind her. She feels only slightly guilty for using him to get away from Darren, but that's the whole point of him being here tonight, right?

In the car, they put all the windows down again and he turns the radio up loud, drumming on the steering wheel at red lights. He sings along, too. He's terribly off-pitch, but she doesn't even roll her eyes at him for it. "Oh, this is my favourite song!" he exclaims, adjusting the volume just a little bit higher. Hope leans her head back against the headrest and puts her hand out the window so the cool night air slides over her skin. She stays quiet for the length of the entire song, listening carefully to the lyrics. Someone's favourite song can say a lot about them. It turns out he can actually sing sort of well – maybe the tone-deaf wailing of before was just an act, one of those things he does to try and draw smiles out of the people around him.

It's kind of nice, to get a glimpse at this strange Other Scott.

"You surprised me, you know," says Hope when the song fades out. A commercial starts playing in its place, and he reaches for the volume knob to turn it down until it's only a whisper. She thinks she's going to have to tell him where to turn off the main road, but he flips his turn signal on at precisely the right spot. "I thought it was going to be a total disaster."

He laughs. "Was that... almost   a compliment? From you?   Hope van Dyne?"

Hope pulls her hand back into the car and crosses her arms in front of her, suddenly feeling self-conscious. "It was supposed to be," she admits, staring at a particular speck of dust on the dashboard.

Pulling into her driveway, he twists in his seat, his laugh still lingering in his face. "I think you need to work on your delivery," he tells her, taking the car keys out of the ignition to jingle them absentmindedly. That's another thing about Scott – he's always moving, barely even noticing it, and usually making noise while he does it. The heel of his shoe tapping the floor under his desk, or a pencil drumming on the cafeteria table, or the keys knocking into each other. Is it about the movement, or filling up small silences?

Arms still crossed, Hope shrugs. "I'm not good at it, I know. Compliments. Telling people that they're... I don't know, important. Or that I appreciate them." She's quiet for a moment, and then she finds herself carrying on, and the words that come out of her mouth aren't planned. They just tumble forward of their own accord, like they've been hiding under her tongue and just waiting for the least possible opportune moment to come out. "I think maybe I got it from my dad. He used to be a lot more... open. He smiled more, when I was little, but after my mom – well. He changed. Totally disappeared for two weeks and then came back home and shipped me off to boarding school. I was seven." Scott is very quiet, and has even stopped jingling his dad's keys. The interior light times out and then they're mostly in the dark, except for the distant light from her front porch. She tries to focus on that speck of dust she was looking at before, or at least the spot where she thinks it was. Her voice sounds foreign, detached, like it's someone else speaking. "Anyway, I got him to put me back in public school for eighth grade, but it's all different, without my mom. I guess we just don't talk about it." She stops and takes a deep breath and then adds, in a little bit of a rush, "But the point is, you didn't have to do this, and you did, and it was really nice of you, so... thank you."

She can feel Scott's eyes focused on her, and in the dim outline of him she can see with her peripheral vision, he looks incredibly serious. "You're welcome," he answers, after what feels like a small eternity. It's possibly the most pleasant interaction they've ever had, except that she feels frozen in place, permanently attached to the passenger seat, with a secret she never dared to say out loud before hovering in between them. "Hope, I... I didn't know any of that. About your mom and, well, everything."

Mercifully, this is the moment her muscles decide to unglue themselves. "It's fine. I shouldn't have just, uh, dumped all that on you," she mutters, and then, in a flash, she's up and out of the car. "So, thanks. I'll see you when school starts again."

Then she runs. Or walks, but quickly. It takes everything in her not to actually break into a run up the porch steps. She gets into the house and shuts the door behind her, and watches through the frosted glass as Scott turns his dad's car back on. The headlights illuminate the front hall for several long moments, and Hope holds her breath until he backs out of the driveway and is gone.

The next morning, Hope is woken by the doorbell. She's an early riser, even when school isn't in session, but this is pushing it, even for her. When she pulls the front door open, Ava slips right into the house, all energy despite the fact that she's apparently rolled right out of bed and walked the block here in her pyjamas with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders like a cape. "I see you survived," she says, eyeing Hope and then turning on her heel to lead the way into the kitchen. She started making herself at home here the first time she ever stepped into the building, and today is no exception. "So how was it?"

"Morning to you, too." Hope watches Ava pour herself a bowl of cereal, and busies herself with making coffee so she doesn't have to look at her friend directly while she adds, as casually as she can manage, "And it was kind of... fun, actually."

She risks a glance over her shoulder and regrets it. The other girl is nodding, eyebrows raised in interest. "Fun," repeats Ava, with the unmistakable air of someone who thinks she knows a secret.

—

Scott calls the day after Christmas. It's been several days since she blurted out too much information about herself and then forcibly ejected herself from his dad's car, and she very seriously considers not answering. In the end, she does. "Hope, hey," he greets her, sounding immensely relieved. "I have a huge favour to ask you. I've sort of gotten myself into this, uh, situation. I've really van Dyned it, you know?"

At this, her interest peaks a little higher. She's been lying on her bed, but she sits up abruptly, fingers tightening a bit around her phone. "You've van Dyned it?"

"My family does this New Year's party every year," he breezes forward, "and all my aunts and uncles and cousins come into town, and some of them stay with us. And Maggie's been there, like, the last few years, you know, so they all know her and they keep asking me about her." Oh. Oh, no. Shit. No, she can guess the direction this is going. "So I sort of accidentally told my Aunt Bea that I've got this new girlfriend, and I was wondering... if you could come over. On New Year's." He pauses and it's only just long enough for her to open her mouth, her answer already forming on her lips. He starts talking again in a rush before she can vocalize it properly. "And before you say no, 'cause I know you're going to, remember that you, well. You sort of owe me. And it doesn't have to be a big thing and it won't throw off your timeline at all because we can still break up before school starts, and I swear I won't try to kiss you at midnight, we can hide out somewhere and they can just, you know, assume, but I remember. Under absolutely no circumstances."

Technically speaking, she doesn't owe him a damn thing. He was the one who offered to come to the Christmas party with her, and the deal never involved a favour in return. And she almost tells him this, except that she catches herself. Because he sounds nervous. He's rambling in a very Luis-like fashion and she's never heard him sound like this. Maybe it's one of those Other Scott things that he hides away from the world.

So she says yes.

—

Over the next few days, she makes sure to sulk around the house and glare at every inanimate object in sight, taking this task seriously enough that Hank even goes so far as to ask her what's wrong. She settles for the most believably Hope-like answer, rather than flat-out telling him that she and Scott are quote-unquote fighting – she sighs heavily and doesn't look at her father directly and mumbles something along the lines of, Boys just suck. He tiptoes around her after that for a bit, and while he looks surprised when she tells him Scott's family is having a New Year's Eve party, he doesn't question it. All he says is, "Just call if you need me to pick you up," and she nods, and they leave it at that.

She takes the bus, which is a strange experience. Public transit makes her feel constantly off-balance and more stressed than she'd like to be, and she avoids it wherever possible. But she doesn't want her father to drive her to Scott's, and she specifically told Scott not to drive all the way to her house again, and she can't ask any of her other friends because she didn't tell them she's doing this. And isn't it strange, how she mentally categorizes them as her other friends, like Scott is suddenly one of them?

He does insist on walking to meet her at the bus stop, saying he wants at least a little bit of travel time in which he can prep her for his entire extended family. Hope expects him to be late; she doesn't know why. He was precisely on time to knock at her door for the Christmas party, but her automatic perception of him still leans immediately in the direction of scattered. But he's standing there with his hands in his pockets when she gets off the bus, and Hope thinks, yet again, that she should give the guy more credit, however little it is in her nature to do that.

She steps up to stand in front of him and they stare at each other, somewhat awkwardly, until the bus pulls away. "Hi," says Scott.

"Hi," she answers.

"I kind of thought maybe you wouldn't come." He runs his hand over his hair, looking apprehensive, and she's reminded of how nervous he sounded on the phone, before. Is this the expression that matches? She's starting to think that maybe all those self-deprecating jokes he makes aren't just jokes.

God, she doesn't know how to do this. She wants to start walking, just for something to do, but she has no idea what direction to turn away from the bus stop. The smile she offers him isn't enough, but all she can think of to say is, "Why wouldn't I come?"

He doesn't officially reply to this, just shrugs. She tells herself this is okay, because she wouldn't know how to answer, either. "C'mon, it's this way," he says instead of dwelling on the subject, and turns to head down the sidewalk. As they walk, he tries to give her an overview on what to expect. This information comes in an overload of names she can't keep straight – the only one she retains is his little sister. Everyone else blurs into a dizzying swirl of aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents, so she just nods along and lets him nudge her with his elbow to guide her around each street corner. Somehow, his disregard for personal space seems far less annoying outside of school.

Scott lives in the middle of a string of houses along the beach that all look nearly the same, like someone has taken cookie-cutter blueprints, changed just a few key factors for each one, and chosen different colours for the walls. He stops just before the front door and looks down at her very seriously. "Thanks for doing this," he tells her, even though she hasn't done it yet.

She's gathered, from all the names Scott spouted off on the way back from the bus stop, that both of his parents have several siblings, and every single one of them appears to have had more than one child. The effect this has is a house filled with people, so many people that it throws her off when they step inside. Noise and warmth envelope her from all sides. This is odd, foreign, so vastly different from anything she is used to. Her parents were both only children and their parents are six feet under, and the closest she gets to being around this many people is at Pym Tech, which is a wholly different sort of environment. After this, will going back to her own house feel different? Will it feel cold, quiet, empty?

Since she agreed to do this, Hope has been preparing herself for all the possibilities the situation presents. She has imagined walking in and everyone stopping what they are doing to stare at her. She has imagined how to answer every question they can throw at her, including anything from How did you meet? to Do you really think you can ever replace Maggie, who we all loved more than life? She has imagined his mother hating her or, worse yet, Cassie, who is arguably the most important person in the world to him. She has imagined someone calling them out for the intricate web of lies they have been spinning ever since Scott volunteered to go to the Christmas party with her. She has imagined it all. Hope van Dyne is good at preparing for things.

But nothing can prepare her for the Langs.

Scott guides her through the house with a hand pressing lightly at her back, and she should hate it. She does hate it, or at least tells herself that. Maybe it's not actually so bad. They weave through the living room and all the people there, and stop in the kitchen before an older, chubbier and slightly balding version of himself, and a woman with eyes nearly indistinguishable from Scott's. "Mom, Dad," he greets them, and doesn't exactly introduce her, but turns his entire body towards her so she is, naturally, where all their attention is diverted.

She steels herself for an interrogation, but that is not what she gets. His father nods and, surprisingly, smiles – and his mother exclaims, "You must be Hope!" and hugs her. Out of nowhere. She's smaller than Hope is, but surprisingly strong, and pulls her in and holds her there for a moment. It's as if there's some maternal intuition embedded in her, something able to sense that Hope has not received a motherly hug from anyone in a decade. When she is released, Mrs Lang (because, God, she can't for the life of her remember his parents' first names, even though he told her what they were multiple times) frames Hope's face in her palms and nods. "You are very beautiful," she says sincerely, and then spins away. "Would you like some punch?"

"Um, all right," replies Hope. Some deep-down part of her remembers that she is supposed to say how nice it is to meet them both. But all her manners seem to have disappeared, as if they've flown straight out the window over the sink and dropped into the ocean.

Mrs Lang turns back and passes her a glass filled to the brim with fruit punch. "So, dear, how's school going?" she asks. As if this isn't the fourth sentence Hope has ever heard her say out loud. As if they have known each other forever. Maybe this is where Scott gets it from, his ability to act like he knows people within minutes of meeting them. It's like some fundamental piece of the Scott Lang puzzle clicks into place.

Scott hovers next to her and leaves her to cobble together a fragmented answer. She thought she prepared for every potential question, but she didn't think a casual conversation about her junior year was in the cards. She has to send several pointed glances in Scott's direction before he cuts in, "Okay, we're going to go find Cassie." Some save – they're really just moving from one set of important people to another, then, aren't they?

His sister is in the basement. She is all long child-limbs and sharp elbows, one of which jabs a cousin in the back as she spies Scott and leaps to her feet. Hope holds her breath as the girl runs and jumps headlong into Scott's arms. She doesn't know how to interact with kids, doesn't have a clue. But Scott is giving her no time to ease herself in, catching the girl with ease and grinning. "Cass, this is Hope."

Cassie presses her hands into Scott's shoulders and turns her big, brown eyes on Hope. She examines her seriously from head to toe; Hope stands there, unmoving. If anyone in this house is going to be able to see right through the whole ruse, she thinks it's probably Cassie. There's something deeply, intrinsically intelligent about her eyes. But the girl only tilts her head and says, "Scott says you're really good at science. Do you wanna see my Snap Circuits?"

Okay, so she knows Scott tells stories about his little sister all the goddamn time, but she never would have thought in a million years that he would tell Cassie a single thing about her.

She glances wide-eyed at him over the girl's head as he replaces her gently on the floor. Infuriatingly, all he does is shrug, as if he has no idea at all how Cassie would know Hope's favourite subject. "I would love to see your Snap Circuits."

Which is how she finds herself being tugged into the corner by a little hand in hers, and she sits cross-legged on the floor with Cassie and feels far more comfortable here than she has in any other space in the house. Maybe they can just stay here until the night is over. But Cassie gets sucked up into a game of hide-and-seek, and when she asks if Scott and Hope are going to play, Scott ruffles her hair and shakes his head. "Not tonight, peanut. We should head back up."

It is surprisingly easy to take on the role of Scott's fake girlfriend. All her worries seem unfounded when not a single member of his family questions it. Nobody asks when they met, or how long they've been together for. They just welcome Hope in with open arms. Literally. She doesn't think she's received this many hugs in her life. They act as if it is perfectly natural for her to be here, trailing along at Scott's side, like she belongs.

How is it possible to feel both uncomfortable and perfectly at ease, all at the same time?

Six minutes before midnight, he suggests that they take a walk. As his family begins to gather closer together, they slip out the back door. He leads the way down a set of stairs, through the backyard and down onto the beach. Wind traces every inch of exposed skin, lifting her hair, and Hope wraps her arms tight around herself. Is this his great idea? To hide from his family's eyes so they can stick to the no-kissing rule by freezing themselves out on the beach? But then he shines the flashlight from his phone and she sees it: A fort, constructed entirely from driftwood. It's far nicer inside, where the wind can't quite reach them so easily.

"Did you build this?" asks Hope, looking around interestedly. They sit on the flattest, smoothest piece of driftwood of them all, clearly chosen carefully, and the place feels far less cramped once they're still. He sits half a foot away from her so that their arms can't even brush against each other. After having Scott's hand constantly hovering in her personal space to guide her around the party, the distance feels sort of strange.

He turns the light off and she blinks in the darkness. The light filtering out the windows from the house above doesn't make it this far, and they're down to just the starlight. "Yeah. Cassie helped choose all the pieces. She has tea parties down here in the summer."

Even though he probably can't see her features at all, she smiles softly. She has never thought too deeply about the fact that she has no siblings, but she thinks it would have been nice to have an older brother like Scott. Maybe things would have been better, after her mother died. Maybe she wouldn't have been completely on her own. "Cassie's great," she says instead of trying to figure out how to word this thought. She used to think that maybe his stories about his little sister were exaggerated, unrealistic, but she doesn't think that anymore.

Distantly, the crowd from the house begins to count down from sixty. They sit in the fort, listening to the ocean waves move in between numbers, and don't count down at all. They just sit, and they listen. Hope's breath feels like it's catching in her throat, and she doesn't know why. Three, two, one, and then everyone erupts into cheers. She glances sideways and Scott smiles, his eyes crinkling at the corners. The light isn't good enough to see that part, but she can see his teeth flash and she just knows that's what's happening. When did she start to know how his smiles affect the rest of his face?

"Happy New Year, Hope," he says.

She smiles back. "Happy New Year, Scott."

When school starts up again, she's worried that something will be fundamentally different.   This thought does not cross her mind until she sees him down the hallway first thing in the morning and smiles   at him. She wouldn't have done that, before. Mercifully, after that, they pretend that nothing has changed. They are both so good at this that Hope almost believes it.

Until Luis gets back from Mexico a few days later. Before that milestone, it was relatively easy to let life carry on, moving forward without focusing on anything – from the Christmas party and the awkward driveway monologue, to New Year's Eve and the beach fort. Hope told Ava about the Christmas party, and she probably told Carol; Kurt and Dave don't pry. The New Year's party is not mentioned at all. But Luis is another story. He practically bounces in his seat in the cafeteria until everyone has arrived, and then blurts out, without actually prefacing it with a greeting, "How was the party? Y'know, 'cause I didn't have service down there and nobody's given me a single update –"

"It was fine." Shrugging, she cuts him off before he can ramble too much.

Scott snags one of her fries, and she swats halfheartedly at his hand but doesn't stop him. "Yeah, and Darren hasn't been bugging you, right, so – success. Hey, Cassie's asked about you, like, a bunch of times. She wants you to come over again."

She shakes her head marginally, and the good-natured grin slides right off his face. It's far too late, though – the word is out there, floating above seven cafeteria lunches, before someone snatches it up. "Again?" questions Carol, and Ava is widening her eyes at Hope from the other side of her. She really should have told them about the Langs' New Year's party. There's no way they're ever going to let her hear the end of this.

"Uh, yeah. Hope came over for New Year's. Part of the deal, you know." Scott shrugs, uncomfortably not meeting anyone's eyes. He tries, but it's not a good save, especially not when everyone sitting around the table was here, in this exact spot, when the deal was struck. And it didn't involve a New Year's party.

She's right; Ava and Carol do not let her live this one down.

—

Towards the end of January, Scott stops at her locker and looks at her with the nervous air she is beginning to recognize. His hands are in his pockets again. "I have to ask you something," he tells her, and she raises one eyebrow slightly in a near-challenge. "Uh, Cassie's birthday is Thursday, and she's having a birthday party this weekend. Laser tag. And I... I was supposed to ask you if you can come. I mean, I know it's short notice, so..."

Her eyes flare slightly wider in panic, an automatic response she can't control. "Listen, Scott, I – I already told my dad that we, you know" – she lowers her voice because there are people around – "broke up. That was the deal." Technically, this is a lie (why can't she stop lying about things?), because she didn't outright tell her dad a damn thing. She doesn't know how to broach that subject. It was almost painful, coaxing him into thinking that they were fighting to begin with, and she didn't want to get into it again. She figures if she just stops mentioning or seeing Scott at all outside of school, Hank will get the hint. "I'm sorry, I can't." He does everything but beg. He pouts, green eyes wide, and swears that they won't have to tell Hank where she's going, and she can take the bus again if she wants to, and Cassie would love for her to be there, and he was supposed to ask her a week and a half ago but he kept putting it off and that's his fault, not Cassie's. He even goes so far as to promise her twenty dollars if she can beat him. In the end, that's what makes her agree.

And she does beat him. She's got good aim and quick reflexes, and he's pretty good at laser tag, but she is better.   They're the only ones taking it even remotely seriously among a gaggle of seven-year-old girls, but he passes over her twenty, anyway.

Again, his family acts as if she belongs here. Cassie drags her over to meet all her friends, and his mother hugs her again, and when they're serving out pizza on paper plates to all the kids, his dad saves her a piece of pepperoni. So now, evidently, Scott has told them her favourite subject in school and   what type of pizza she always chooses in the cafeteria. He's really going the extra mile to make this believable, and it sort of pisses her off, because this was supposed to only cover winter break, and it's nearly February now. Why is he dragging it out? He does it so well that his dad even tosses him the car keys after, and before she can protest that she's got bus fare, Scott is ushering her out onto the sidewalk.

In the car, she's silent until they're a third of the way back to her house. "I wish you didn't ask me to come today," is what she opens up with, because she's been on the verge of snapping since his father handed her that slice of pizza an hour ago. It was very nice of him, and she got this funny floating feeling in her chest when he did it, but it put her on edge.

He doesn't answer at first, just reaches out to turn the radio down until it clicks definitively off. He puts the window down an inch or two. It's cold out, but she appreciates this, anyway; the interior of the vehicle feels too still, like all the oxygen has been sucked out of it. The open window makes it a little easier to draw breath in. She's watching him and pretending not to, so she can see the way his fingers tighten on the steering wheel. His knuckles turn a shade or two lighter. "What are you talking about?" he asks. He speaks very quietly, and it's almost lost in the air at the window as the car curves along the highway. The sound makes it effectively useless for him to have turned the music off at all. "Cassie wanted you to come, so I asked. She likes you. And my parents do, too."

This makes it worse.

A thousand times worse.

Hope turns her head sharply to look out the window so she can't see him anymore. She doesn't say anything; she just thinks about Cassie, her wide eyes and the scattering of freckles across her nose and how maybe she'll be sad   when she never sees Hope again. "What, you think it's just, I don't know, out of her system now or something? If she's this attached already?" She sighs heavily. The sound fills the car up. "You never should have introduced me to her. That would have been better."

It's quiet again. She tries to count the seconds. It feels like there's something stuck in her throat and a soft stinging behind her eyes. Is she going to cry?   She can't remember the last time she cried. She holds her breath and counts and tries to blink in time with each second. Hesitantly, Scott says, "You could have said no," although she tried,   and he poked and prodded at her until she changed her mind. She wants to give him his stupid twenty-dollar bill back. It's folded neatly in the back pocket of her jeans, and she feels acutely aware of it, like its outline is burning into her skin through the denim. "But they think we're dating, and –"

"But we're not   dating," she cuts him off. Why couldn't he have just told his family that they broke up? That was the plan.   This is a mess, and it's a mess that was supposed to be cleaned up a month   ago. Things were supposed to go back to normal. She crosses her arms over her chest. "We're not even friends."

He doesn't say a word the rest of the way home.

Hope hesitates before she gets out of the car. She should probably apologize, but Scott is pointedly staring straight ahead and his mouth is pressed into a thin, straight line, and when she doesn't move right away, he reaches for the button on his door that unlocks hers. So she doesn't say anything. She just pulls the handle for the door and doesn't look back until she's safely inside. He only stays until then, doesn't hesitate to leave this time. The second she shuts the door behind her, he backs out of the driveway; she can see the headlight beams dancing away.

"So what the hell is going on with you and Scott?" demands Ava, cornering her in the bathroom after lunch on Monday. Cornered   is a relative term that doesn't seem to involve an actual corner; Hope is pretty sure she could still push past her friend and straight out the door, except that Carol suddenly appears to bar the exit.

She busies herself with drying her hands so she can get away with not looking at either of them. "What? Nothing," she answers, but she says it too fast. Ava gives an exasperated sigh and Carol a smaller one. She gives up on the hand dryer and wipes her palms on her jeans instead. "Nothing's going on. He came to the Christmas party and I went to the New Year's thing, and I went to his sister's birthday party on Saturday."

She catches the way their eyes both widen in the mirror. They exchange a look, and she doesn't want to know what it means. "You went to his sister's birthday party?" asks Carol.

"Apparently she wanted to invite me. It wasn't anything to do with Scott. I just didn't want you guys to get all pissed I didn't tell you." Hope shrugs, collects herself, and turns for the door. Ava sidesteps to stand next to Carol and crosses her arms. "I have to get to math," she says, as patiently as she can, and taps her foot on the tile until they give up and let her past them. She spins back to catch the door before it shuts and adds, very seriously so they can't miss how much she means it, "Nothing is happening. Really."

But something is definitely   happening, and that something is a tense, frigid wall being built up steadily between them. It's almost like they are back to the normality of before winter break, only it's more intense now. She doesn't even roll her eyes at him, partially because it means acknowledging his existence, and partially because he keeps pretty quiet at lunch these days. Luis rambles onward about everything and nothing to fill in the gaps, but she can see the way his eyes flicker from Hope's face to Scott's and back again, what feels like a hundred times a day. The first week stretches into a second and the second week stretches into a third, and by spring break, nothing has changed.

—

Scott is in her English class. This has not posed any sort of issue thus far, mostly because her desk is on one side of the room and his is distinctly on the other, so they have been able to continue to ignore each other here. But the first day back after spring break, Mr Strange announces their partners for a project, and Hope crosses her fingers in her pocket, but it doesn't do much good (she's never been very lucky, has she?). She hangs back until everyone else leaves the room and then stops in front of the teacher's desk and asks if there's any chance she can switch partners. She's banking everything on her good grades and the fact that all the teachers in her school like her – less luck and more along the lines of bribery. But this doesn't work, either. Mr Strange shakes his head. "The partners are the partners, Hope," he tells her, lacing his fingers together as he looks at her. It feels like he can see right through her. Maybe he can. "Maybe you don't like yours, but you're going to have to push through it, okay?"

When the final bell rings, Scott pops up at her locker. "Hey, partner," he says, somehow sounding resigned and hopeful and annoyed all at once. She slams her locker shut and turns away from him. Maybe Mr Strange won't assign her a new partner, but she can give herself a few hours before texting him. If she really tries, maybe they can arrange their entire presentation without having to see each other face-to-face until they get up in front of the class to do it.

He catches up to her in the parking lot, though, jogging around her to cut her off more effectively. Damn. She thought maybe she'd lost him, left him standing like a statue by her locker. "I don't know why you're acting so weird," he says determinedly, holding his chin high. "You're the one who was kind of a bitch, and I don't normally say that about girls but you were,   okay, and you literally have no right to be mad at me   in this situation, so can you just, like... I don't know, look at me once in a while? And we'll just forget anything ever happened?"

Officially, she doesn't answer, only nods. She doesn't quite look at him like he's requested, either – rather, she looks at his shoulder instead of his face while he suggests that they go somewhere to start working after school tomorrow. She's glad he uses that word: Somewhere.   It suggests a common ground, not one of the places they have been before, not around his family or her father or a single memory. Somewhere that neither of them feel too out of place. In the end, they select a quiet coffee shop midway between his house and hers (or, he selects it and she simply nods along). She takes the bus there; she's getting more and more comfortable with public transit. She doesn't know how Scott gets from school to the café, and she doesn't ask. She just sits down across the table from him and sets her library-copy of The Great Gatsby   down, lining up its edges with the edge of the table, and they get to work.

This is how, slowly but surely, they begin to embark along the path towards normalcy again. They don't talk about the things Hope said or the things Scott didn't; they avoid the topic of that too-tense car ride altogether. It doesn't erase it completely, but she thinks not talking about it will bury it deep underground, at least.

The table farthest in the corner, near the window, becomes their   table. The first available bus after school is the worst one – always crowded, with everyone packing in so close together that there's no space to breathe – but if she takes it, she can stake out the table. It feels as if having that specific table is important – it's in the corner so there are only ever other people on two sides, and it's one of the few spots where a phone charger can be plugged in, and Hope likes things to stay the same. Routine is good for her. She likes the stability of it.

On the third day of coffee shop meetups, her friends catch her at her locker. Ava drums her fingers on Hope's locker door, and Carol leans against the next locker and asks, "So you and Scott are okay? Friends again?"

Hope freezes, just for a moment. Pointedly not looking at either of them, she shoves her books into her backpack, but she can feel their eyes focused attentively on her. "No," she answers stiffly. "We just have to do this stupid English project together." She makes the mistake of glancing up and catching the way they look at each other. Like they don't believe her. Nobody has outright asked what's going on, not since they cornered Hope in the bathroom after Cassie's laser tag party. She imagines the rest of their friends gathering their heads together to talk about Scott and Hope, taking some kind of vote on who should try to pry for information, discussing and speculating behind their backs. These images weigh heavy on her shoulders. "I don't like him. Like, at all. You guys both know that." She slips her arms through the straps of her backpack and shuts her locker purposefully. "Listen, I have to go. I can't be late."

But she misses that first bus. She feels antsy as she sits on the second one, tapping her foot on the floor and twisting her fingers together in her lap. Scott is consistently running ten minutes late, something she has grown familiar with. He seems to flounder a little once there are no bells ringing to signify where he should be and when. And he's even later today – nearly half an hour. When he finally arrives, Hope is sitting at the next table over from their usual one, drumming her fingers on the tabletop and staring unabashedly at the man in her regular seat. "You're late," she remarks, not looking up at him.

He dumps his things unceremoniously on the floor and sits. "Yeah, well. I'm here now."

His voice sounds off, somehow. When did she start noticing the difference between the way he regularly speaks and any deviation? She almost asks what's wrong, but in the end, she doesn't. She just narrows her eyes at the guy occupying their usual table. "The second he's up, we're claiming our territory," she says, and Scott seems to shake himself out of whatever mood he's in to nod seriously. Neither of them reach for their books, and five minutes later when the man pushes himself up out of his chair and starts for the door, they both burst into motion. Hope grins at him as they fall into their regular seats, laughing a little breathlessly, and as they open up their books, things feel almost   normal again.

She's not sure when spending time with Scott became normal,   either.

They're in the midst of reading pieces of dialogue to each other across the table when Darren Cross, of all people, walks in. "Shit," hisses Hope, cutting off mid-sentence and instinctively raising her book to cover half her face. Scott turns in his seat to look, not being entirely subtle about it. "Don't look.   What the hell   is he doing here?" she groans, sinking lower in her seat. She wonders if he asked someone where she might spend her time, or if he's here out of pure coincidence despite living on the other side of town.

He sees them, of course. He's observant. He waits to approach them until he's got his to-go cup in his hand, smiling with his mouth pressed firmly shut. It makes his eyes seem to bug out, just a little. "Hope! Fancy seeing you here," he greets her, and then turns to gesture vaguely with his free hand at Scott. "It's, uh... Simon, right? No, Steve. That's it." He snaps his fingers.

"Scott," she corrects him. Scott, for his part, doesn't say a word. Just sits there, shoulders a little tense.

"Right. Scott. Sorry, man." Darren is still smiling as he says it, tight and unimpressed. It doesn't reach his eyes. She wonders if he knows how to smile properly, but she doesn't have time to think about it more, because he's looking curiously from Hope to Scott and back again, and with his next words, it feels like everything comes crashing down around her. "So you guys are still a thing? Your dad wasn't so sure."

"Um," says Hope. God, there's no way this nearly-normal-again feeling is going to come back after this. She struggles to think quickly. Maybe they broke up but are still friends. That would work, right?

Suddenly leaning forward to rest his elbows on the table, Scott finally speaks up. "That's right," he says, and Hope goes very still. What the hell is he doing?

Darren grins easily. Or it looks like it's supposed   to be an easy grin, but it doesn't quite work out that way. It comes across more like he's tasted something sour. "That's great," he lies through his teeth. Hope can spot it a mile away when he's lying. He switches his coffee cup from his left hand to his right, staring Scott down, but Scott meets his gaze determinedly. Darren blinks first. "Well, I should probably get going," he excuses himself airily, and then he's gone.

Hope lets out her breath in a whoosh   of air. "You didn't have to do that."

Shrugging, Scott leans back in his chair again. The front two legs of it come off the floor and he balances himself with the expert air of someone who has done this a million times in his life. He probably has. He does it in English class sometimes. Once, he fell right off the chair with a crash, but he laughed good-naturedly along with the rest of the class as he got up, anyway. "I know," he answers simply. "He's an ass, though. It just felt like a solid opportunity to piss him off."

After that, it gets easier to talk to Scott again. Which definitely doesn't make any sense at all, but she tries not to question it. They have an unspoken agreement that what happened after Cassie's party is strictly off-limits, but everything else is fair game – the Christmas party, and New Year's, and whatever story Luis told at lunch yesterday. As long as they steer clear of the argument itself (is that all it was, an argument?), and as long as they cling to this common ground they have found at their corner table near the window, they will be okay. Hope hangs on tight to this belief like if she loosens her grip, it will be gone.

—

The day of their English presentation, she realizes that something has changed. Like, really   changed. This recognition comes on the heels of too little sleep and the way that they both step out of the bathroom at the same time. It happens just like it would in a fairytale, except that it's in the third-floor hallway of a San Francisco high school and they're wearing ridiculous 1920's costumes purchased from thrift stores. Bewilderingly, as she looks at Scott in his suit, framed there in the doorway of the boy's bathroom, Hope feels something akin to butterflies in her stomach. They rise up into her chest where they make it hard to speak when she opens her mouth.

"You look, um, nice," she says, stepping forward into the middle of the hall and adjusting her headband even though she adjusted it thirty seconds ago with the aid of an actual mirror.

Scott clears his throat. "You, too," he replies, blinking rapidly. His suit is perhaps made for someone with slightly broader shoulders than him. He rocks forward onto the balls of his feet and then back onto his heels, pushing his hands out of sight into his pockets. "Nice. I mean, you – look nice."

She thinks if she doesn't look at him during their presentation, she won't fumble with her words, and so this is the plan she runs with. Very pointedly, she looks everywhere in the classroom besides   at Scott Lang, and it works quite well. She asks to go to the bathroom immediately when they're finished, stripping off the stupid flapper dress in the stall closest to the door and replacing it with her usual leggings and T-shirt. The clothes make her feel a thousand times more comfortable. Maybe the butterflies were just born from her imagination, something that came hand-in-hand with how damn out of place she felt in that outfit.

He keeps his suit on for the rest of the day. She was wrong about the butterflies.

"Damn, Scotty, you clean up nice,"   exclaims Luis at lunch. Everyone else in their class has changed, like Hope. A number of them opted to ignore the italic line on the assignment sheet altogether: Bonus points for costumes!   Scott is the only guy in the cafeteria wearing a suit, and doesn't seem to care that people are eying him curiously. He plops down into the usual seat he has reclaimed, in between Hope and Dave, and steals a couple of her French fries. This, too, has regained its status as a daily occurrence. It's like whatever was making the world feel off-kilter has returned to normal. Hope has been very purposefully pretending that she had no part at all in causing that.   Luis turns his gaze on her. "Hey. Hope. Hope. Where's your   costume?"

Every single one of them turns to look at her in unison. Ava raises her eyebrows impatiently. "I changed," answers Hope shortly. "It was ridiculous and itchy and uncomfortable."

Scott shrugs and doesn't look directly at her. "I think it looked nice," he says. And damn, if the butterflies don't flutter their wings briefly when he does.

She goes to prom by herself. Or in a group, technically, but groups never seem to stick together the way they're supposed to at this type of function. Everyone pitches in for a limo, which winds its way around the city to stop in front of every house. She very pointedly does not   look out the window as Scott makes his way down his driveway, in an effort to keep those stupid butterflies at bay – they've been multiplying, it seems, lately, and it's incredibly inconvenient.

Their friends peel off one or two at a time with relative speed upon their arrival. Hope isn't sure she really wants to be here at all, and she's never felt particularly comfortable in dresses as fancy as the one she's wearing. It's intricately beaded at the top, with a long, flowing black skirt that reaches all the way to the floor. And it's beautiful, and her father smiled this wistful little smile when she came downstairs, but she feels acutely aware of every muscle in her body, the set of her shoulders, her spine. She's not used to this feeling anywhere besides Pym Tech events.

Scott sits with her at their table, saving spots for their friends to occupy whenever they feel like taking a break from dancing. She doesn't understand why. There are plenty of people who she's pretty sure would dance with him if he asked, and there are even more who he could sit with; he's one of those people who's somehow friends with everyone. This is something she's been starting to notice recently, and is only emphasized by the number of people who stop briefly to talk to him as they make their ways past. Yet he sits purposefully in the seat next to Hope's and talks to her as if it's the only place he'd even consider being. Maybe he just doesn't want to leave her alone. Maybe he feels bad for her. That's the most logical explanation, right?

Around the halfway point, he looks at her sideways and asks, "Do you wanna dance or something?" He barely pauses long enough for her to narrow her eyes skeptically and open her mouth. "Come on, seriously, you can't go to prom   and not dance even once.   That's the law. Or it should be."

With a long-suffering sort of sigh, Hope stands, smoothing out the fabric of her skirt. She holds out her hand and tugs Scott up out of his chair. "Okay, fine. Only because of the law."

So they dance. As friends, nothing more.

It feels a thousand times different than the dance at the Christmas party. She pretends she can't place each and every difference.

They leave early, after they grow tired of dancing and nobody else seems to feel the same. Take the bus home, looking thoroughly out of place with his suit and her dress. He insists on going right past his neighbourhood to make sure she gets home safely. This turns out to be a good thing when she realizes she's locked out: Hank isn't home yet from the Pym Tech event that prom got her out of, and her keys are in her backpack, not the pitifully tiny clutch she's got with her. Her dad will sometimes leave the back door unlocked for her, but not tonight; neither of them were planning on her cutting prom, of all things, short. "I'll just have to wait," she declares, spinning away from the back porch to face Scott again. "You can head out. It'll take a while to bus back to your place."

He looks unsure. "You can come hang out there 'til your dad's back," he offers, hands in his suit pockets. Doesn't make a move for the path back around to the front of the house, just looks at her in the dim gleam from the kitchen light her father left on. It makes a crooked rectangle on the ground by their feet. "My parents wouldn't mind." It sounds like possibly the least practical idea he's ever had – by the time that public transit deposits them at Scott's house, her father will probably be home and render the whole trip useless. Hope shakes her head and moves past him, past the yellowish rectangle of light cast on the grass, and sits abruptly in the middle of her backyard. "Your dress," he objects, following her absentmindedly.

"It'll be fine. It's black. Grass stains won't even show." She lies flat on her back to blink up at the stars, listens to the telltale rustle that means he's shadowing her movements to lie next to her. They stare up into the night sky and all she can hear is his breathing. "I used to do this with my mom, when I was little," she tells him. She doesn't know why she does. He doesn't answer, and she doesn't think she needs him to. But it feels nice, to know that he knows this snippet of information. "We'd lie here for hours and try to count the stars."

Out of the corner of her eye, she can see him reach to point upwards. "One," he begins. Moves his index finger just the tiniest bit to one side. "Two, three."

She lets him get to eight and then nudges his side with her elbow. "You already got that one."

"Shut up. There are billions of stars. You don't even know what ones I'm pointing at. Besides, now you made me lose count." He elbows her back and sighs dramatically. "Now I have to start all over again.   Really, Hope. Okay. One..."

"I'm sorry," she cuts him off, and he looks at her questioningly. It came out quick, abrupt. Hope does not apologize for things very often, isn't quite sure how to do it right. "For before," she tries to explain, what feels like a million years too late. "After Cassie's birthday party, when I said we weren't friends. I... I didn't mean it. We were. Are."

"I know," he says, and clears his throat a little awkwardly. Hope turns back to look upwards. "That was forever ago, anyway. It's okay." He shrugs, lying down there in the grass. She's not looking at him, but she can hear the rustle of his clothes on the ground underneath his shoulders. Very seriously, Scott says again, "It's okay. I forgive you."

It feels like a small weight has lifted off her chest.

"Really, you can go home," she says, and he shakes his head. She doesn't see it, but she knows. She turns her head sideways to look at him better, and he turns his head sideways to look at her, and time feels like it freezes. Very suddenly, she has this image in her head, this idea of moving closer, angling her head to –

No. No way. Rapidly, she turns back to stare straight up again. One,   she thinks, forcing herself to focus. Two.   Her heart is beating faster than she'd like it to. She feels very attuned to how close they are, how little distance is between her hand and his. Three. Four. You already got that one.   Bit by bit, Hope pushes that unbidden image right out of her head, and once she is free of it, it is far easier to lie here in her fancy dress, next to Scott in his fancy suit, and talk to him like she wasn't just thinking about what it might be like to kiss him.

They talk until her father gets home, on and off and filled with comfortable silences and hushed laughter, and she nearly forgets about that particular image entering her mind's eye at all.

—

Okay, so she doesn't forget. But she pretends to.

She's going to get over Scott Lang. She decides this with an air of finality and determination, staring at herself in the mirror over the bathroom sink. There are a handful of feelings attached to his name that she's only just managed to place as that   type of feeling, and she is going to do away with them. They are an unproductive type of feeling, the kind that will only distract her. She's got exams coming up and then she's got a part-time summer internship working for her father, and after that it's senior year, and then college, and then her entire adult life. She has no use for lying in bed at night when she can't sleep, staring at her ceiling in the dark and imagining what it might be like to act on this. Whatever this   is. She doesn't need it, and she doesn't want it.

Besides, there's nothing to act on if it's not mutual. And it's not. How could it be? No, they are friends, just barely. Up until Christmas, she only tolerated him for Luis; now she has extended that just a little, because he's actually sort of funny sometimes and it's easy to talk to him and he's got these green eyes that reflect all the light around him and –

Oh, she's doing it again.

Over the next several days, Hope learns the best techniques to snap herself out of this type of train of thought every time she finds long run-on sentences about Scott running through her mind. It always seems to work extraordinarily well until he does something particularly Scott-like, anything that reminds her that she could have any reason to like him at all. Like occupy his now-usual spot next to her at lunch, or steal her food when she's not paying close enough attention, or look at her pointedly while he says something he knows   is going to guarantee him an eye-roll. Sometimes, when she turns her head to look in his direction, he suddenly becomes very busy, flipping through textbook pages or taking everything out of his backpack to make sure he has some small, obscure item at the bottom of it. He never seems to stop moving, and she never seems to stop noticing these things.

He keeps popping up at unexpected moments, too. Like on Wednesday morning when he appears at her locker out of nowhere and grins at her in that way that tells her he's got an idea.   "Wanna skip?" he asks, and Hope is already shaking her head. "Please? We're all going. It'd be more fun with you." He leans in very close and doesn't break eye contact, lowering his voice to add, "You've never skipped class before, huh? Well, it's tradition. You have to do it at least once. Classes are just going to be review, anyway. Besides, you kinda owe me. For being your fake boyfriend and getting Darren off your back."

"I went to your New Year's party," she objects, reaching for the binder on the top shelf of her locker. "Have fun, though. Really."

Shaking his head, Scott reaches up to block her hand. "I don't mean Christmas," he informs her smugly. "I mean in the coffee shop."

Okay, so it's times like this – with that self-satisfied grin on his face, looking so damn pleased with himself for a loophole that doesn't even make sense   – that it feels a little easier to pretend she's still closer to being annoyed with him than liking him. "I didn't even ask, you just did it. Doesn't count," she tells him, as firmly as she can manage, but Scott seems to have this way of making her want to go with him. With all of them. There's a curiosity piqued in the back of her mind now. She barely listens as he winds some intricate, illogical reason for her to go with him, but when he shuts her locker door and guides her down the hall, she follows.

"You got Hope?"   exclaims Ava as they reach the parking lot. The others are already squished into Luis' mom's minivan, and Scott nudges Hope into the back seat first like he's afraid she'll bail if she doesn't get boxed in on all sides. Ava and Carol twist around from the middle seat to look at Scott wide-eyed. "What kind of magician are   you?"

Luis won't tell anyone where they're going; every time someone asks, he threatens loudly to turn the car around. In the end, their destination turns out to be a street market. They wander around between vendors for the better part of the morning and, a little unexpectedly, it's actually kind of nice. At least, it's nice until the guys' antics turn into something glass being shattered. Something expensive   and glass. This, it seems, is the last straw, and someone – Hope isn't sure who – decides that the best course of action is to run. And so they run, and the thing about running is that someone will probably give chase, and it all escalates rather quickly from there.

A hand closes around hers and tugs her off to the side, and she knows it's Scott without thinking. He leads the way through a narrow gap between two stalls and down a side road, and they lose the people following them. Breathing hard, they stop in the space between two buildings, flattening themselves against the wall when footsteps draw nearer as if they're hiding from the villains in a movie instead of some vaguely annoyed street vendors. If this was a movie, she thinks, this would be when she might kiss him.

She doesn't, though. No, she's supposed to be getting over him.

Scott smiles and reaches out to tap the tip of her nose with one finger, effectively ruining anything about this that feels like the plot of a movie. She isn't sure she should have expected anything less from him, really. Still, she can feel an answering smile curving her lips without her permission.

He whispers something she can't hear and when she only stares at him blankly, leans in close enough to say it all over again. "I said, I wonder if they caught Kurt. For someone that tall and gangly, he's slow as hell," he whispers solemnly, and Hope presses a hand over her mouth to cover the inexplicable laugh that bubbles up. "You know, sometimes I," he starts up again, but then he shakes his head and turns away to peek out from their hiding place instead of continuing. "The coast is clear," he says dramatically, and whatever seriousness was held in the depths of his eyes before is hidden away again. "Let's move."

"Where the hell have you guys been?" Luis demands, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel when they make it back to the van. They've left the same seats open as before, and Hope sort of wishes they hadn't; as Luis guides the van away from the curb, she is painfully conscious of the way that the back seat isn't quite wide enough for her to have her own personal space. It's a lot like their cafeteria table, with her squeezed in between Scott on one side and Kurt on the other, and she holds her breath as Luis presses his foot down on the gas pedal.

They don't go back to school, but to a mini-golf course, complete with ice cream. "Now, kids, let's try not   to get kicked out of this one," Ava says loftily as they pile out of the van in the parking lot. They don't, though there is a mock sword fight with golf clubs that gets them pretty close.

When they return to the van, Hope purposefully makes it through the sliding door first so that Kurt winds up in between herself and Scott. She does this just so,   as casually as she can manage, hoping that nobody will notice or comment, and it appears to work – Luis gives her a brief, meaningful sort of look in the rearview mirror as he turns the key in the ignition, but is distracted a moment later by everyone's relative indignation that they've found yet another thing Hope can beat all of them at. Kurt being in the way of seeing Scott anytime she turns her head to the right is incredibly helpful, just as she predicted it would be, at least until they end up clambering out into her driveway so she can get out. Kurt is back in the van a moment later, but Scott hovers for a moment, uncertain, under the guise of helping pick up their friends' backpacks in the trunk so she can reach hers.

"Hope," he says after he closes the hatchback door, frowning a little. But she's saved by the bell (or, in this case, Luis shouting, "Ay, Scotty! Come on!") from the driver's seat, and he just shrugs. "See you tomorrow."

Summer has crawled up slowly, spreading its warmth over the city and drawing everyone outside one by one. Everyone spends the last Saturday before exams at Scott's because it's a beachfront house, and his mother makes enough lemonade to hydrate a small army. That driftwood fort he built is still there, though it looks like he's renovated, and it's practically twice the size it used to be. He won't let anyone touch it, insisting that they all move several paces down the beach so they're more in front of his neighbour's house than his own. "It's Cassie's," he says seriously, "she'll kill me if you guys break it." Hope wonders if that's true, if his sister is as deeply attached to the fort as Scott says she is, if she would have been upset on New Year's Eve when they sat there in the dark to listen to the ocean. He's looking at her as she lays a towel out on the sand next to Ava's, watching how she glances back at the fort, and she can't tell if it's her imagination or not. Maybe he's not looking right   at her. She doesn't say a word about the New Year's party, about how she's been allowed into the now-off-limits fort. Some things aren't to be shared with everyone.

They order pizza in the middle of the afternoon, and the boys run up to the house to meet the delivery guy. Ava turns onto her side and stares at Hope so intensely that she thinks she can feel the spot where her gaze lands. "Do you like Scott?" she demands.

Hope frowns and moves her sunglasses down to cover her eyes. "No," she lies.

Maybe if she denies it enough, it will stop being true.

But getting over Scott Lang proves to be more difficult than that. Why is it taking so long? It's not even as if there's much to get over. They're not a thing,   never have been, and yet Hope has been slowly slipping into this and now she can't go back. Like quicksand. She's read that the reason people sink in quicksand is fighting it – the flailing and moving and trying to get themselves free. Maybe, then, if Scott is the quicksand, the key is to stop fighting.

Hope's never been very good at that, though.

By the last day of school, she's pretty sure that the only way to get past it is to not see Scott face-to-face even once over the entire summer holidays. Which isn't entirely unrealistic. After all, there's the Pym Tech internship – maybe it's only part-time, but she'll probably be dealing with Darren enough to claim exhaustion anytime Scott calls or texts. She can formulate an excuse to get out of anything if she wants to badly enough, so when Luis inevitably tries to organize something for the whole group to do together when he gets back from Mexico, she'll find a reason not to go. And when school starts up again in September, even Ava will have given up on trying to pointedly ask what her feelings towards him are. It's not a perfect plan, but it's the closest she can get. Only she comes down the stairs after her last exam ends and when she sees him, her entire plan evaporates in about three seconds flat.

No, instead, she walks right up to him as he turns away from his locker and tugs him down by the collar of his shirt and kisses him, right there in the middle of the hallway where everyone can see, and she doesn't even care. Scott's hands settle automatically at her hips and when she breathes, she breathes him in, and it's nice.  

She pulls back just enough to catch her breath. Someone has whistled, the sound infused into the usual start-of-summer noise, the chatter, the locker doors slamming. She only barely registers this, can't take her eyes off Scott's. The green in his eyes looks darker, more mesmerizing, from this close. "What was that for?" he asks.

"Um," she says, as if that's not the most embarrassing thing in the world, having no capacity to speak at all. She takes a deep, shaky sort of breath and shrugs, her fingers still curled tight on his shirt collar. "I guess I like you? Maybe?"

There. Now it's out in the open. She's spent every day since prom thinking that if she ever says it out loud, he'll laugh, roll his eyes, never speak to her again. But there it is, hovering in the space between them, and he just grins broadly. "Really?" he asks, like he doesn't believe it. Hope nods almost imperceptibly, holding her breath. "Hope, I – I've been trying to figure out how to ask you out, but I was scared you'd say no."

"Me, too." He was scared she'd   say no. Has she really been hiding what she's thinking that   successfully?

"You, scared?" He laughs lightly, and his breath tickles her cheeks. "I didn't think Hope van Dyne was afraid of anything." He's wrong; Hope is scared of a lot, more than she likes to let on. It's probably a good thing that he doesn't let go of her, because she really isn't sure which is more powerful: The desire to run, or the desire to stay. Either way, it's terrifying.

She doesn't say that, though. Admitting it to herself is enough. Instead of answering him properly, she slides one hand down over his arm and finally releases his collar with the other, smoothing out the wrinkles she's left behind in the fabric. "What were you   scared about?" she questions.

Scott seems to take the fact that she hasn't pushed him away yet to mean that it's okay for him to tighten his grip on her hips, just slightly. "Under no circumstances, remember? I thought maybe there'd be some kind of death penalty."

"I guess we could maybe, um. Revoke that rule."

"Hey. Lovebirds." It's Carol, rapping her knuckles on the locker next to Scott's to get their attention. Apologetically, she adds, "Okay, so the only way I could talk Ava and Luis into not ruining your moment was if I agreed to ruin it instead, so... here I am. Might be a little less, well. Crazy. Anyway, Luis has his mom's van again and already has a surprise destination in mind, so..." She gestures down the hallway, and Hope twists to see both of them waiting, side by side, Luis jingling his mom's car keys with an ear-splitting grin, Ava looking rather like she might burst. God, she's never going to hear the end of this one. This will be added to an ever-growing list Ava has been tallying mentally since December, she's sure.

Scott releases her, only for a moment, and then reaches to lace the fingers of his left hand between the fingers of her right. At first, she stiffens a little, but then she inhales and breathes out every bit of tension she can. Maybe she's not used to being close enough to touch someone in this way, but she could grow accustomed to it. "The summer awaits," he says grandly, in the kind of tone that carries, even with the noise of an entire student body achieving freedom around them.

When they approach the van, Kurt and Dave are already waiting. Kurt is tapping his foot impatiently. "What took you guys so long?" asks Dave, pushing off the hood of the car to stand up straight.

Luis positively beams. "You owe me ten bucks. It finally happened."

"You bet   on –"

"That's right, Scotty." Luis slides into the driver's seat and twists to face the rear of the van as the others claim their spots. "You all   owe me, actually. Pay up, guys." Hope opens her mouth and closes it again without saying a word. "It's no biggie, you know. I just saw this coming a mile away – or, like, a lotta miles, you know, like two years, maybe? When Scott said you were pretty –"

She looks sideways at Scott, a glimmer of a smile on her lips. "Two years?" she asks. He shrugs vaguely, as if to say he has no idea what Luis is talking about, but they both know that Luis has a knack for details. She lets herself lean into him there in the backseat of the van, his arm around her shoulders like it's always belonged there and always will, and that's how it ends. Or maybe how it starts, depending how she looks at it.