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“You read my book?”
“Every goddamn word.”
-Scott Lang and Dr Hank Pym, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
-
Scott had written a book.
To be honest, Hank wasn’t entirely sure that Scott being a published author was a great idea, especially since Scott spent most of the discussions he had with them asking what any word longer than three letters meant.
And yet, here he was, handing Hank a signed copy of his book.
“I already have your signature, Scott, it’s on the liability contract for the Ant-Man suit.” Hank informed a grinning Scott.
Scott’s face fell. “I never signed a liability contract.”
Hope looked up from page seven of the book. “I signed it for you.”
“You mean you forged my signature.”
“You were busy!”
And before Hope and Scott could start a proper argument about whether they could forge each other's signature and why was Hope so good at replicating penmanship (she had her reasons, Hank didn’t know how many times she must have forged his signature- upwards of fifty, he could imagine), Hank ducked behind a bookshelf and opened the book to the first page, wondering what horrors were in store for him.
Hank did love Scott. You don’t go through quite that much shit together and not grow closer. And Scott had been properly inducted into the Pym-Van Dyne clan, they lived together, his daughter called Hank ‘Grandpa,’ And yet, Hank still felt like he just didn’t quite care for Scott enough to warrant him reading Scott’s autobiography.
Scott had joked that if his book was a success, he would write a biography of Hank’s life too, and Hank was considered sabotage to prevent that event from occurring.
He also didn’t want anyone to know he was actually reading the book, and replaced the dust jacket with that of JH Mann’s A History of Gibraltar and its Sieges , a book he knew even Janet wouldn’t pick up (Hope might, but he knew she had already read it), which made him feel as though the book was safe from discovery of being, in reality, not a tedious book about Gibraltar and its sieges, but actually being Scott’s autobiography.
He also spent most of his reading time lying in his room, in case he had to laugh at Scott without anyone knowing, seeing as Gibraltar and its sieges is not a particularly interesting or amusing topic.
Thursday afternoon found Hank in the living room, sitting in an armchair, Scott’s book open in his lap.
“Hey, Hank,” Scott stuck his head out of the kitchen, “I thought you said you bought potatoes.”
“I did.”
“There’s only one.”
“Food resizing fluid is by the stove.”
“So, you just want me to chop the big potato up?”
“You’re the one cooking.”
“But I’m going to bake the potatoes, Hank.”
“I’m sure it’ll taste fine.” To tell the truth, Hank wasn’t sure it would taste fine- while Scott wasn’t as bad of a cook as Hope (or Hank himself; Janet was the only one in the house with any reasonable culinary skills, though they were mostly in the realm of baking), he was in no way proficient at cooking things that were not usually eaten for breakfast, and it’s hard to eat quite that many pancakes, hence Scott being told to cook something that wasn’t made of pancake.
Hank returned to his book, turning a page and beginning on the next when there was a scream and a crash from the kitchen.
Hank marked his place before going to see exactly what had happened to Scott.
Hope and Janet, slightly more concerned for Scott’s safety than Hank, were both rushing down the stairs, preparing themselves for whatever crazy bad guy that day brought.
Instead, they found Scott lying on the kitchen floor, a giant potato atop his chest.
“Guys,” Scott mumbled, “I think I broke my arm.”
Hope, Hank, and Janet worked together to get Scott out from under the potato, before helping him up and having a look at the arm in question.
“Yeah, I think it’s broken.” Hope said, examining Scott’s elbow, which was angled in an odd and bothersome direction.
“Hank, I think there’s a problem with the food resizer.” Scott grumbled.
Hope scoffed. “Judging by the amount of shampoo you use, I doubt it.”
And that was how the four of them found themselves on the way to the hospital.
“They are never going to believe that your arm was crushed by a giant potato.” Janet said, turning in the front seat to look at Scott.
“Believe me, they know what crazy shit Scott gets into.” Hank grumbled, “If the A&E had frequent flyer rewards…”
“They freaked out really bad the time I had that huge slash across my leg.” Scott adjusted his broken arm to a more comfortable position.
“I’m sure they’d seen large gashes before.” Janet narrowed her eyebrows.
“No, they had, the confusing part was when I told them it was from a cheese grater.”
“I have fond memories of extracting him from that cheese grater with tweezers while Hank frantically drove us to the Emergency Room.” Hope mumbled.
“Yeah. The cheese grater messed up some dial on the suit, so I couldn’t just shrink out of it.”
“That’s not the best story, though.” Hope gave Scott a cheeky grin. “The best one is the one he told me the time Luis got him drunk a few years back.”
Scott looked confused. “Which time?” Realisation dawned across his face. “No. No way. Tell me I didn’t tell you that story.”
Hope just grinned wider. “You did. It was great.”
Scott put his head it his uninjured hand. “No.” He moaned.
Hope burst out laughing.
“What did he do?” Hank asked.
Hope opened her mouth to talk, but Scott shook his head. “No, let me tell it.”
Hope shrugged. “Are you going to act it out, like you did last time?”
Scott thunked his head against the car window. “How do you still have sex with me after seeing me do that?”
“Well, I never want to have sex with you, so I think we’re good.” Hank took a left onto a busier street.
“Well, it was 2004,” Said Scott, “I had just met Maggie, and I was listening to some music to get pumped up for our first date. Anyway, I leave my room and go down the hallway, and this one song comes on.”
Hope burst into laughter again, leaning back against the car door and curling her feet up in front of her.
“Very head-bangy song, right, so I’m going down the hallway, thrashing my head back and forth and jumping up and down, and suddenly, there was a wall in the way and my head was smashing against the wall. And I’m all discombobulated, so when I answer the door for Maggie, she thinks I’ve gone nuts, and takes me to the hospital, where they scan my brain and tell me I have a concussion.”
Hank and Janet had now joined Hope in dying of laughter.
“Now imagine a drunk Scott jumping up and down around the living room and even smashing into the wall for the sake of good storytelling.”
Hank and Janet laughed even harder. “So, Scott, exactly how old were you when this happened?” Hank asked.
Scott looked embarrassed. “28. I think the shock is wearing off, guys, my arm is starting to hurt. A lot.”
“Well, I’m sure that’s license to stop our laughing at you. Twenty-eight?” Hank put a serious emphasis on the last part. “Scott, I am genuinely impressed, and I will never stop laughing at you.”
Scott grimaced in pain, adjusting his arm again.
“What song was it?” Janet asked.
“He never told me.” Hope sent a worried look in Scott’s direction as his face began to screw up in pain.
“It was Kodachrome , by that Simon guy.” Scott murmured, “But I’m not entirely sure, since I had a concussion.”
Hank and Janet burst out laughing again. “You mean Paul Simon?” Hank took another left.
Scott nodded.
“I wouldn’t call that a head bang worthy song, Scott.” Hope pulled out her phone to decline an incoming phone call.
“It seemed like one at the time.”
Scott’s arm was deemed broken, but not badly, and he would need about six weeks. He grumbled about his cast on the way home (Hope tapped a few buttons on her phone to play Kodachrome over the car speakers, at which point Hank and Janet (and Scott, but he didn’t say anything) discovered that you could control the stereo from your mobile phone) but was still extremely excited to have everyone sign it. Janet, Luis, Kurt, Dave, and Cassie happily took the Sharpie and scribbled their names on the plaster, Hope, Maggie, and Paxton gave him sceptical looks but signed it anyway, and Hank flat out refused, reminding Scott that he was, in fact, 44, even if you didn’t count the time he’d been in the quantum realm. Scott gave him a pouty look, he had signed Hank’s copy of the book, so Hank, therefore, should be obligated to sign Scott’s cast.
“I didn’t even want you to sign the damn thing!” Hank complained to Scott.
“Dad, it’ll take you two seconds.” Hope said, handing him a marker. Hank grumbled, but still scrawled his name right underneath Cassie’s cheery ‘Get well soon!’ and next to Kurt’s ‘Это сломано.’
Two days later, while Hope was upstairs, helping Scott find a suitable thing to wear for some book signing that still fit over his cast and Janet was at the shops picking up some ingredients (it was her turn to cook dinner- Scott got off the hook because of his cast), Hank found himself with some quiet time to open Scott’s book to Chapter Twelve.
And, because there was some peace and quiet, the peace and quiet was interrupted by Cassie, who marched through the front door in an awful mood.
“Hello, Cassie,” Hank said, “Aren’t you supposed to be at school?”
“I guess.” Cassie chucked her backpack into the corner by the front door and flopped dramatically into an armchair. “Some idiot in my gym class threw a ball and it hit the fire alarm and set it off, so the school got evacuated and now the fire department is inspecting the building, and it usually takes like an hour, so they sent us home because school would be out by then, anyway. I just walked home.”
“Oh.”
“What are you reading? Is that my dad’s book?”
“No.” Hank closed the book to peer at the cover. “It’s A History of Gibraltar and its Sieges .”
“What’s Gibraltar?”
Hank groaned and let his head rest against the back of the armchair.
It took Hank a month to finish the book. He’s usually quite a fast reader, but interruptions (not to mention having to put the book down to laugh at Scott) prevented him from speeding through the book the way he did others. Also, his new reading glasses got lost in the post. And then he switched the dust jackets back and stuck the book in a dark corner of the bookshelf in the darkest corner of his bedroom to forget about it again.
It’s not until he goes on an adventure with Scott, Hope, Janet and Cassie in the quantum realm that it comes up again, aside from brief references and jokes aimed at Scott.
“You read my book?” Scott asked him.
“Every goddamn word.”