hey, guys! enjoy!

note: yes, the subject here is "you" and the narration is in second-person, but these stories really are wholly from ava's perspective!

November. Sunday. 21:58.

Parker Household. Living Room.

You've always liked the sound of a good keyboard, especially when it's you because then it's the sound of productivity. By now, you can type so quickly that the repetition is like music: a rhythmic little tapping that makes time tick by so much faster than any clock.

(It reminds you of your claws scratching against cement as you leap into action, pushing off with traction you literally scraped off the sidewalk.)

You have a tendency to run your computer battery down to 5% by six or seven o'clock in the evening, so here you are: sitting on a couch in the Parker's living room, your legs folded underneath you, with a magenta computer charger plugged into the only open outlet downstairs. Your eyes track the cursor, your body bathed in a halo of blue-tinted light in the otherwise pitch-black room. Vague sounds muffle and filter from upstairs and the laundry machines, but it is the quietest that the house has been in forty-eight hours.

At some point, you hear light footsteps approaching from behind. It's an effort to make yourself continue typing without looking up until the person is close enough for a nonsuper to discern them properly.

It's Mrs. Parker.

"Lights coming on," she says in that warm voice of hers.

"Thanks, Mrs. Parker," you say. The floors are suddenly lit up in secondary light from the kitchen. You close your laptop and stand up, resisting the urge to stretch until every bone clicks and cricks into place.

Everyone else turned in about an hour ago, including yourself. But it was only a couple seconds into recreating your schedule for the week that this paper caught your attention. Sure, it's due on Wednesday, but who knows what Monday and Tuesday will bring? The itch to clean up your to-do list is too loud to be ignored, so you had snuck back down with your nearly-deceased laptop to get at least an outlet drafted.

"Oh, don't let me bother you," Mrs. Parker says. "I just came down for a bit of tea. Would you like something to drink? Some more milk, maybe." Mrs. Parker is the best, you've decided, and you've only known her for a couple days. Living in her house is surreal even without the added factor of Peter Parker.

"No, thanks." You linger anyway, feeling awkward, and you shift in place as she reaches for a mug. Your outline is a solid first-draft start and just needs some more quotations, but you can do that during tutorial tomorrow, so it's not a big deal.

"I seem to remember you going downstairs dressed like that earlier," Mrs. Parker observes. She stirs a spoon into her mug and you nod at her comment. Absently, you scratch at your knee.

"My pajamas got...misplaced in transport," you say wryly, adding in some sheepishness to mask the irritation. The truth of the matter can be summed up in two brief words: Nova's fault. But Mrs. Parker doesn't need to know that, and she definitely doesn't want to know how. "I'll just hang this up when I shower," you say about the dress that you're still wearing. "The steam should smooth out the wrinkles."

Honestly, it's no problem to do that, since you have it on excellent guarantee that the steam will do just that. Besides, you've slept in far worse before and during your life at SHIELD, and no one at school will either notice nor care if tomorrow's dress is the same as today's.

Mrs. Parker takes a sip of her tea before she straightens with a smile.

"Wait here a moment," she bids, then heads back up the stairs with such casual vigor that you wonder if she isn't a secret superhero herself. Her compassion and overall fortitude would definitely back up the claim. You take the opportunity to unplug and start coiling up the charger, to tuck your laptop under your arm, as you wait. The laptop burns hotly against the side of your ribs. When Mrs. Parker returns, she presents to you some folded fabric.

"Let me know if these fit you." Mrs. Parker says it with a smile, like it's just a loose hair tie she plucked off her dresser, not a pair of perfectly good clothes.

"Really?" You can't help it, your eyes widening and mouth parting in pleased surprise. "Whoa. Thanks, Mrs. Parker. This is..."

Now, you've been told that you're good with words. This is mainly because you read a lot; you know long words with lots of syllables, and you love etymology. But these skills are used for petty insults amongst peers, snarky replies to mean questions, and embellishing the truth in dire times. Making yourself seem more eloquent than you actually are, or sussing out those tricky little emotion things, is a trick that you've never quite mastered.

Warmer in the face now, you look Mrs. Parker in the eyes and say "Thank you."

Radiating a different worth from you, she looks happy. Really happy, actually; it's the same look that Peter gets when his voice softens and slows during those one-on-one reassurance talks atop skyscrapers well after street patrol ends. That genuine sincerity, it seems, was passed down from one Parker's blue eyes to another's.

The printed ink on the shirt is fading now, but the clothes themselves are in excellent condition and perfectly clean. Both of them, the loose drawstring pants and vaguely matching baseball tee, have shadows of neat creases.

You have learned to love SHIELD for what it lets you do. Through SHIELD, you get to give back: to all the White Tigers before you, to the people of New York City, to fellow agents, and to your team. SHIELD is an opportunity to carve out a place in the world for yourself. In return, you offer them your own services, but really you're just glad to keep working towards earning the name and mask and gloves of the White Tiger.

And now? It hasn't even been a week yet, and the Parkers have done nothing but give and give and give to you.

You kind of don't know what to do with all of it. You don't deserve it, this incredible show of hospitality and care. You owe them your undying gratitude and a huge helping of loyalty on top of that.

As much as you enjoy needling Parker somewhat incessantly, you will never forget the amazing kindness that he's given to you.

After a couple days, you can finally give Mrs. Parker her clothes back, because that's the day when she takes you shopping — on SHIELD money, of course. You've never gone shopping like this before. She drives out to a big department store, at the back of which are walls and racks and shelves of women's sleepwear. Frankly, it's overwhelming after years of nothing but SHIELD regulation suits and the mask. Your civilian wardrobe is a pretty dramatic shift from that, and that's nothing but two different dresses in a dozen different colors total, a couple shirts, and a Midtown High gym uniform. Nevertheless, you remember very specifically deciding to never go on such a big-scale excersion every again.

Being allowed — or forced, which is what this feels more like — to choose your own clothes is harder than facing a room of LMDs. You stare at the obstacles in your path — sneaky challenges such as Mix and Match! or from last season's collection — and try to figure out a plan of attack.

But there is definitely nothing in the SHIELD handbook that covers this.

Mrs. Parker watches you look blankly at a wall of pajamas and, even though she probably doesn't know why, she still offers you some suggestions. Her voice is gentle but not overbearingly so, and after a brief consultation, you feel more than a bit relieved.

So it is that you return to her home with a new set of pajamas for yourself and a horribly nerdy t-shirt for Parker. It's got about half a dozen too-intelligent-to-be-funny puns scrawled on it, and it makes you smirk when you see it, so you throw it over your shoulder and pull an extra bill out of your wallet.

When Parker sees the shirt in his aunt's hands, he laughs — geek, you think, but it's fonder than it would have been a few months ago and there is no eye-roll to accompany it — and embraces Mrs. Parker.

For an instant, you actually believe that you might get away with doing your good deed anonymously, but then Mrs. Parker whispers in her nephew's ear and he says his What? a bit too loudly. His face goes pink. You're grateful now that your skin isn't so pale as that, because your blush fades down into your soul instead of showing on your cheeks and you'll definitely take that option.

Parker thanks you. You shrug. Mrs. Parker disappears, only to be replaced by Power-Man.

Power-Man points at the shirt in askance. Both you and Parker immediately launch into a series of explanations about the puns, your words running over each other, though it's for naught because Power-Man just gives you a deadpan look — you can almost hear the what geeks those guys are thought in his head, but that's okay — before doing whatever it was he came in to do.

Parker gives you another long look and you restrain from demanding why. But he might see the impulse in the twitch of your eyebrows because he nods again in gratitiude or understanding or something and heads up the stairs with it clutched in one hand.

It's not much. It isn't anything, really, not when standing in the long shadow of what he's doing for you.

But it's something. You hope so, anyway.

That night, you fall asleep in soft lime and white pajamas. They fit perfectly.