Touch Football mega thread

[nola_eleanor]

There was a field not too far from Phoenix Effect that was too small for all the various sports leagues in the city to have snapped up for weekend practices or games, but big enough for the fairly flexible game of touch football, so that's where they played. People came and went for most of the afternoon, though the game itself only lasted an hour and change. Almost everyone played, but there were several people watching, choosing to cheer or heckle or talk amongst themselves as it suited them.

When everyone got together enough to actually start the game, they divided into two teams, with Matteo as the referee. Zach's team was made up of Hazel, Max, Hanne, Nori, Nick, Alex, and Oliver; Kyle had Elspeth, Joel, Carrie, Caleb, Irene, Sam, and Elena on his team. It wasn't a blowout, but Zach's team won by a few touchdowns and were crowned the victors. Despite a couple minor accidents, everyone came out of it in one piece. More or less.

Comments

[nola_buckybarnes]

"Yeah, for the longest time I thought it just us two getting fucked with. I'll let him know you're here too—maybe it's all the Avengers? Well, and Avengers-adjacent." Joel took out his phone and started texting.

[nola_wanda]

"Pietro's friends aren't Avengers in his world. They're mutants. I think he said he and his boyfriend are in comic books, but their friend is also in movies. But not our movies." The only thing powerful enough to mess with reality on this level was the gauntlet, but even that didn't make sense. Not when Steve was there too, not when they'd ended up in a world with the same problems Thanos had supposedly been trying to solve.

[nola_buckybarnes]

There was a beat of silence before Joel said, "Huh. You know, I can't say this is how I assumed universes worked."

[nola_wanda]

"I never thought much about how universes worked," Dani admitted. In both lives she'd had more immediate concerns to worry about and a lack of experience with pop culture that played with those kinds of ideas. "I'm Dani. In this universe, or however it works. Dani Worthington."

[nola_buckybarnes]

"That's what you'd rather be called?" Joel asked, just to clarify. "I'm Joel here, but it doesn't matter what you all me. Steve's Steve, which makes it easy."

[nola_wanda]

"Wanda's fine." She felt more comfortably Wanda right then than she had so far. "I just wanted to make sure you knew. So you can find me, and for when other people are around." Like this football game, where it would be weird if she got called by two different names in front of strangers.

[nola_buckybarnes]

"Oh, you don't want me to call you Scarlet Witch in public?" Joel asked, but he was teasing. He held out his phone. "Would it be okay to get your contact info and pass it on to Steve too?"

[nola_wanda]

Dani rolled her eyes with a small smile. "Seems a little unfair to deal with the code name when I don't have the powers to back it up," she retorted. She put her phone number and email in his contacts before she handed the phone back to him. "Steve should have it too, yes. I spend a lot of time in the library, so my phone's on silent a lot, but I check it pretty often."

[nola_buckybarnes]

"Are you studying, or just a reader?"

[nola_wanda]

"I go to Tulane. And the public library is usually where I meet up with my brother. Dani's brother, not Pietro." Was it ever not going to be weird to have to differentiate the two?

[nola_buckybarnes]

"I go to Tulane, and Steve teaches there," Joel exclaimed. "Maybe that's a connection." He paused. "Having a brother here must really complicate things for you, though."

[nola_wanda]

It was weird, thinking she might have crossed paths with either of them on campus and had no idea. "It was complicated before all this; I don't know if there's a word for what it is now."

[nola_buckybarnes]

"Surreal? I wondered for a while if this was just me in stasis again and Hydra was feeding me a dream," he confessed.

[nola_wanda]

"I could make people see things, but not on this scale, not nearly. I have to assume it's real, and not a dream or an illusion or anything like that. For some definition of real. There are good reasons I'm not a philosophy major."

[nola_buckybarnes]

"Ha—same. I study history, and I have't heard of anything like this, needless to say."

[nola_wanda]

"That's gotta be weird, studying history that's just a little different from what you remember," Dani pointed out. "Of course my country doesn't even exist here. I guess we'll both have to be careful not to slip in class."

[nola_buckybarnes]

"I never even thought of that," he admitted with a wince. "Note to self: cancel my dissertation on Captain America USO shows."

[nola_wanda]

One would think they'd both be used to experiencing culture shock by now, but it kept finding new flavors to come in. "I mean, someone on the internet would probably want to read it, still." Then again, Joel might not want to fuel the people on the internet discussing his experiences as purely fictional any more than Dani did.

[nola_buckybarnes]

"Probably not as much as they'd like to look at fanart of me wearing lingerie or something," he said. His...popularity, online, was a staggering surprise.

[nola_wanda]

"Well there's an image that's going to pop into my head at some inopportune times," Dani noted wryly.

[nola_buckybarnes]

"Sorry, but you can imagine how I felt to find it."

[nola_wanda]

"I...don't spend a lot of time on those kinds of places on the internet."

[nola_buckybarnes]

"Neither do I," Joel sighed. "But when I google myself, that's where it takes me. If you do the same, make sure Safe Search is on."

[nola_wanda]

"I don't think I'll be googling myself anytime soon. Too easy for it to mess with your head, no matter which life you're talking about." Dani had done a lot of work with boundary-setting for herself, tired of a lifetime of being inundated with things that could, that did, hurt her. But she also knew how tempting it was.

[nola_buckybarnes]

"I was hoping for clues, but instead got to see how strangers interpret my naked body. I've learned my lesson."