defenderofdesmoines | The Vought American Hero Mansion

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The Vought American Hero Mansion | Tuesday Evening

So, that hadn't gone half-bad at all, if you asked Annie. The very first episode of American Hero had just wrapped. She had spent roughly an hour watching contestants try to curry favor and demonstrate their value to a bunch of people who probably didn't really care, she'd sincerely wished them all luck -- they all actually seemed pretty decent, to her? -- and then at the end, she had told one hopeful fellow superhero to hang up her cape and go.

Still such a dumb line. But it could have gone worse.

She'd gotten out from under the lights as soon as they'd called cut, resisting the urge to pull off her cape just yet and instead taking the bottle of water a PA immediately thrust into her hand. She needed to find Diego, who she knew was around here backstage somewhere, and hopefully they could just scurry off to her trailer sooner than later. For all that it had only been an hour of standing around and smiling, mostly, Annie was pretty ready to be out of the spotlight -- literally and figuratively.

"You did great," she told Moonshadow and Supersonic as they wandered by, smiling as the latter stopped to take another proffered water bottle from that PA and waving at the former as she kept going to her own room. "I mean, I'm not supposed to show favoritism or whatever, but just to say."

"So we're just objectively great," Supersonic contributed, grinning at her. "Good to know. You also did great, just to say."

"It's such a cheesy line," Annie offered, checking that her mic was turned off before dropping her voice to an undertone and rolling her eyes. "Like, what a way to tell someone they've lost out on a life-changing opportunity. Ugh."

"And it's discriminatory," Supersonic pointed out. "Some of us don't even have capes."

"That," Annie decided, "is a good point." Maybe enough to get a rewrite? (No.)

[for the fiancé who is around here backstage somewhere, and nfb for distance!]

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"Alex," he amended, raising a slightly amused brow at Annie before offering his hand out to Diego. "Great to meet you, man. Sorry you had to see me dance."

There was gonna be a lot of that over the next couple of months.

"Never apologize for dancing," Diego said, shaking Alex's hand. "I am judging the song though."

"That's just reasonable," Alex assured him. "That boy band shit is so embarrassing."

"I actually like 'Rock My Kiss,'" Annie offered, looking like she was resisting the urge to judge herself for that. "I do. It's kind of a bop." Just a very, very, very firmly 2010ish bop.

"Really?" Alex prompted. "Because I thought it made you puke."

Annie looked puzzled for a minute before immediately blushing scarlet all the way down to her neckline. "Oh my God, I bring my fiancé here one time and you bust out the embarrassing shit."

Good job, Annie, now no one would want to ask any follow-ups. Way to defuse that.

"What embarrassing shit?" Diego asked. "Feel free to go into detail."

"Oh my God," Annie said again, rolling her eyes, but Alex was grinning at Diego in a way that didn't bode especially well for this story not being told. "I can still get you kicked off the show."

Fun fact: she could not.

"He deserves to know what kind of woman he's marrying," he told Annie, before glancing back at Diego. "We were kids -- Annie was...what, nineteen?"

"Eighteen."

"Okay, so, eighteen," he continued, "and the band was performing at the opening of Vought Land St. Louis. But before the show, Annie and I snuck into a cantina, and they had those...you know those, like, yard-long margaritas?"

"I'm familiar," Diego said, smile going wider. He had a feeling he knew where this was going. "Those things are dangerous."

"So, middle of the show," Alex continues, clearly delighted and warming to his subject, "we bring out Starlight to do a number."

"I must have drunk a quarter mile of margarita," Annie said quietly, her stomach actually twisting at the memory.

"And she steps on stage, and just pukes everywhere in front of this festival crowd," Alex told Diego, sighing in happiness at the memory. Still hilarious to this day. "The tweens lost their shit, it was great."

Diego burst out laughing. "Oh, what your mother must have thought."

"She was furious," Annie contributed, sighing and half-covering her face as she shook her head. "I'm just really lucky no one was filming. No one professional, anyway. There was stuff from people's phones."

"Mrs. January was not a big fan of mine after that," Alex contributed, giving Diego a look of sincere sympathy regarding his mother-in-law-to-be and throwing in a wince. "I hope you've had better luck with her."

Alex was of the opinion that the margarita thing hadn't helped, but that Donna January would have never thought he was good enough for Annie, anyway. (Which was fine; his grandmother had never been much of a fan of hers, either, so it went both ways.)

"She seems to like me okay," Diego said. "I got lucky with the circumstances in which I met her."

Lucky was a word for it.

"Remember that whole thing where they said I was a traitor on the news for like a day and a half?" Annie asked, raising her eyebrows at Alex. "Diego got me out of that and met my mom in the process."

Which was, again, kind of just eliding the detail about how Diego had been holding a human hand when he busted Donna out of her cell, but you know. There was being friendly, and then there was getting into the realities of what it might mean to be on The Seven, and Annie didn't really want to scare Alex off. And besides! Things had been good for, like, a whole year, now!

"Kind of hard to hate the guy who came to the rescue," Diego said with a shrug. "And I've somehow kept that goodwill going for a year now."

"Well, congratulations, man," Alex replied, completely sincere as he reached out to clasp his hand again. "Both on impressing the unimpressable Mrs. January, and on your engagement to Linda Blair's stunt double here."

"Oh my God." Like, it hadn't even been that much vomit, Alex.

"Thanks, man," Diego said with grin. "Good luck with the show--competition. Thing."

He didn't know why someone wanted to be on the Seven but...more power to ya.

Lifelong buy-in on an idea, mostly. Alex was in for some rude awakenings not unlike Annie's last spring.

"Thanks," Alex replied, returning that grin. "I better go check in with Ms. Barrett before she sends someone to find me."

"Which is also our cue," Annie added, reaching to take Diego's arm. "Let's go hide in my trailer before Ms. Barrett decides she needs to talk to me."

They probably needed to hang for a bit just in case they wanted her to do station bumpers or something, but they didn't have to do that hanging around where Ashley could find her easily and give her notes she didn't think she needed.

"God, yes, please," Diego said. "I don't want her cornering me either. I think I've so far managed to avoid anybody that would want to put me in front of a camera."

"Yeah, no, if Ashley ever corners you just, like, decline to comment on anything," Annie advised, waving to Alex as he tossed off a little mock-salute their way and jogged towards where the producers were huddled. And Annie, meanwhile, was going to just steer Diego off in the exact opposite direction -- out the back of the mansion towards her trailer. "She hates being stonewalled and she has no attention span. It's your best shot of getting her to just give up and go away."

Diego chuckled, happy to be steered wherever so long as it was out of this cheesy mansion. "Please, tell me all of your Ashley secrets."

"If she starts pulling her hair, that usually means you've gone too far," Annie offered, flashing a smile at a guy winding up an extension cord as they passed. "I think she needs to sleep more."

For a start.

"No kidding," Diego said. "I think she might be the most stressed out person I've ever seen and I've dealt with two apocalypses."

"Yeah. I'm hoping this can actually be kind of...a thing that's on rails for her, you know?" Annie offered, shrugging a shoulder as she led the way through the back courtyard towards her trailer. "Like, she's got her hands full with like, Maeve and A-Train and Homelander -- I think this all seems like it's gonna go okay."

At least from the first episode, anyway.

"I mean, what kind of disaster happen on a fake-reality show?" he asked. "It's not like it's live, right?"

"The finale will be," Annie offered idly, thinking about it as they reached her trailer and she reached up to swing the door open. "But otherwise it's all pre-recorded. Like, I have a script."

And no one on The Seven had ever deviated from a script before.

(Definitely not...Annie herself, very memorably, in fact.)

"Oh man, your fancy trailer," Diego teased. "I'm so excited to see where you spend your downtime."

"I mean, prepare yourself, it's pretty luxurious," Annie told him, pausing dramatically before leading the way into a completely normal camper-style trailer. Kind of a cramped one, honestly. And there was Starlight stuff everywhere.

Including Starlight's cape, which was now unceremoniously tossed over one of the wall-mounted seats.

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