Title: Hey, You Know, This Could Be Something
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~1,800
Characters: Scott/Kira
Prompt: Scott's thoughts when he first sees Kira
Summary: Scott tells their daughter about the first time he saw Kira. — "I know that when you met, you were moving on from Auntie Allison and Mom didn't want a boyfriend, but there's more to the story, right?"

For: the anon that prompted it

Hey, You Know, This Could Be Something

Scott's turning off the burner to let the spaghetti sauce sit when he hears a faint, "Daddy?" come from the other room.

"I'm coming, baby."

Kari turned fourteen a month back and started her first year of high school a week ago and he's handling it just as well as you'd expect him to handle his one and only daughter growing up too quickly right in front of him. She stopped calling him daddy around eight years old (broke his heart, of course, but Kira reminded him that he had to let her grow up) but started again last year, which was Kira's doing, and of course the fact that both of his girls actually do stuff like that to make him feel better only makes Scott love them more.

Anyway, he covers the sauce before heading out of the kitchen, only to find himself pausing in the doorway as he takes in sight of the living room.

Kari's pushed the coffee table and two armchairs aside and covered almost every inch of the hardwood in pictures. He and Kira have always loved documenting everything in photos ever since they were in high school, and so have their friends and families, actually, so between the ones they've taken themselves and the copies they've received from everyone else, they've got an impressive collection. A majority of them have made their way into albums and scrapbooks over the years (mostly when Kira was on maternity leave) and are more or less organized, but there are still a few bins of loose pictures that have yet to be sorted through and those are the ones his daughter has carefully laid out across the floor.

"Baby," he says and Kari looks up, smiling. "What're you doing?"

"It's for school," she replies, gathering a stack of photos into her hands. But then she pauses and adds, "Well, the assignment was to chart our family tree, but then I wanted to scan some photos to go with it and then I got a little sidetracked looking through all of them."

Scott chuckles. "I can see that."

She just shrugs her shoulder cutely and he steps carefully around the photos, sitting himself behind her on the couch. "Look at this," she says, handing him a photo – one of her when she was five and dressed in a little girl version of Captain America's costume for Halloween. Kira had made it entirely by hand as she made all of their costumes, actually.

"You were so cute that night," Scott tells her.

"I'm cute every night, and every day, as a matter of fact," she says, getting this playful grin on her face and looking so, so much like her mother doing so.

"Of course, baby." He kisses her temple and happens to see what picture's sitting at the top of the stack in her hands. "That was the summer after we graduated high school," he explains, pointing to the photo. "Your mother and I were engaged by then."

"What?" He nods, watching his daughter's eyes sparkle. "I mean, I knew you and mom were high school sweethearts and got married like, super young, but still."

"Yeah, I know. All things considered, it probably wasn't the smartest decision for two teens, but…"

"So you guys have always been hopelessly in love," she says, like she's answering her own question from something else.

"Hopelessly," he repeats, amused.

"A really adorable kind of hopeless, I promise."

He laughs and watches as she flips through the photos in her hands, which all seem to be from high school – him and Kira giving baths to the dogs at the animal shelter, Kira and his mom learning how to make pizza from scratch, the Pack at the beach and the mall and a campsite, together on Halloween and Valentine's Day and the Fourth and New Year's. Then there are a lot of Kira by herself – leaning against his bike, playing with puppies, wearing his lacrosse jersey, asleep on the couch, studying on her bed, getting caked on her birthday.

Kari sets that stack down and grabs another handful with more of just Kira. "Did you take all of these?"

"Probably," he admits. "I bought my first Nikon during Christmas our junior year, so I was always taking pictures then. I took pictures of almost everything. But of course your mother was my favorite person to photograph." He notices the contemplative look in Kari's eyes and furrows his eyebrows. "What's the matter, baby?"

She gnaws her lower lip (gosh, she is so much like her mother) before asking, "How could you tell? You know, that Mom was the one."

"I've told you that story before, of when I realized I loved your mother."

"No, I know. I've heard the story of your first kiss and first I Love You and first date, but I've never really heard about when you first met her." She lifts herself up and plops herself beside him on the couch. "I mean, I know that when you met, you were moving on from Auntie Allison and Mom didn't want a boyfriend, but there's more to the story, right?"

"Not a whole lot to our very first meeting," he admits. "We were in class. Your grandpa's class, actually."

"You were?"

He nods, leaning back against the couch, and Kari tucks her feet under her and curls into his side. "Your grandpa taught our history class and… Well, you know how your grandpa can be sometimes." Kari giggles, nodding. "It was his first day teaching at our school, but they'd moved to town three weeks before and your mom hadn't made any friends by then. She actually used to be kind shy," Scott explains, watching Kari raise her eyebrows questioningly. "Yeah, I know. It's kind of hard to think that considering how social she is now, right?"

"Try impossible," Kari laughs. "Mom's like… the mayor. She knows everybody here and everybody loves her the second they meet her."

"She's always been lovable. It just takes a while to grow into it, you know? It's like that for everyone. But, anyway," he says. "Your grandpa actually said this to the whole class – that his daughter hadn't brought any friends home yet – and then introduced her to us."

Kari's jaw quite literally drops. "That's horrible."

Scott laughs. "He wasn't trying to embarrass her or anything. He meant well. He always does."

"I know that," Kari says with a roll of her eyes, but she's smiling now. "But you were a teen before. That kind of stuff is traumatizing at the time."

"I agree. But, as embarrassed as your mom had been, I'm glad it happened. That was the first time I saw your mom. I think it's also why your grandpa claims he's the mastermind behind our relationship," Scott adds as an afterthought. Kari giggles again. "Anyway, your mom was sitting in the back of the room and your grandpa pointed to her and…"

"The rest is history." Scott nods, brushing her hair from her face. "What were you thinking when this happened?"

"I thought," Scott begins, smiling at the memory, "that your mom was really beautiful. She'd had her head on the desk – because she was embarrassed, obviously – and so her hair was kind of falling over her shoulders and… It'd felt a little like the way people described seeing an angel."

"You thought she looked like an angel?" Kari asks softly.

"Yeah, I did. I still do, of course."

"What else?" Kari asks, poking at his side.

He chuckles. "When our eyes first met, it's like… like I couldn't stop looking at her. There was just something about her. Something… magnetic, I guess. Like there was something pulling me towards her and I didn't even want to fight it." Kari smiles, eyes shining, and he shrugs a shoulder. "I still don't know if it was love at first sight, but it felt kind of like it."

"Like a tether," she says, and Scott tenses slightly at that word.

"…What?"

"Oh, that's just something I've heard Auntie Lydia use before," Kari admits with a laugh. "She was helping me hem my dress—you know, the red one I wore for my birthday last month?—and we were working with red thread and we ended up on the topic of soul mates and the red string of fate. She said it was like a tether."

"Yeah," Scott says, feeling himself smile a little wider. "Yeah, it felt a lot like a tether, actually. Of course your Auntie Lydia would have the perfect metaphor for it."

"Because she knows everything," Kari chimes in.

Scott laughs, about to reply when the front door opens, and he and Kari watch as Kira's walking in. She smiles at them, but then her eyes widen a little and she lets out a laugh as she takes in the state of the living room. "Well, what's going on here?" she asks, dropping her bag onto the coffee table and then leaning over the arm of the couch to kiss Scott.

"I got a little sidetracked starting something for homework," Kari explains. "But I'll clean it up before I go to sleep. And Daddy was just telling me about when you two first met."

"When your grandfather embarrassed me in front of the entire class, or when I invited myself to his table at lunch and started talking about death and demons?"

"The first one," Kari replies as Scott laughs. "But wait, you really did that?"

"No, of course not, because I would never be that terribly awkward and embarrassing," Kira jokes, making Kari giggle. "Can you get your brothers and get washed up so we can start dinner? I'm starving and the smell of garlic bread and pasta sauce coming from the kitchen is such a tease."

Kari nods, standing up and stepping carefully around the photos before and calling out, "Jacob! Miles!" as she disappears up the stairs.

Scott gets up, too, standing between Kira's knees and kissing her again, a little deeper and dirtier than before, and loves the little sound she makes as she grasps onto his shirt to steady herself. She's laughing a little breathlessly when he finally pulls away, tilting her head and smiling up at him. Her eyes are sparkling and her cheeks are flushed and he can hear her heart beating a little faster, and he loves that, even after how long they've been together, he can still get the same reaction out of her that he'd get when they were younger.

"If that's how you kiss me when I get home, maybe you should reminisce more often," Kira teases, making Scott chuckle as he pushes his fingers through her hair. "Why were you telling her that story, anyway? Did she ask you about it?"

He nods. "She wanted to know what I thought when I first saw you."

"I wonder if it's because she met someone today and thinks that there might be something between them."

Scott frowns as he considers this. "I don't… Why did would you put that in my head?"

"Don't freak out," she says, eyes sparkling, and Scott just smiles and shakes his head as she adds, "I mean, it's not like the kid's a werewolf or something."