Young gods and their shenanigans Someone call Nyx

kastle + "“Is that.. my shirt?” please and thank you❤️❤️

HI, I KNOW YOU SENT THIS A MILLION YEARS AGO BUT I JUST FINISHED IT SO HOPEFULLY YOU LIKE IT <3

--

If there’s one thing Karen hates most in the world, it’s laundry. Which isn’t entirely warranted, because a majority of her things are dry clean only, and she usually only has to do a load or two herself every other week—but still. She hates that it feels like an all day affair, she hates folding everything, she hates the feel of the lint of her fingers when she removes it from the filter. So when a warm Saturday in June arrives and she’s low on clothes, like really low on clothes, Karen realizes she should start a load. 

Unfortunately, her body is not on board with the idea. She wakes up slow, eats some late breakfast, and lethargically gathers the clothes strewn about her apartment. It’s a Saturday, so she has nothing to do but procrastinate. Procrastination forces her into the shower, and procrastination has her drinking coffee in a towel at the edge of her bed as she realizes that she has nothing to put on. It’s either she wears a skirt and blouse around the apartment or a towel until the first load is done. 

Or, her brain supplies helpfully, there’s Frank’s drawer. 

Karen’s eyes slide unwittingly towards her dresser, where the bottom drawer remains firmly closed. He’s been out of town for the last week or so with Curtis, up in the mountains with absolutely no reception. She knows it’s good for him to get away every once in a while, especially with his friends, but part of her—the smallest part, the only part not thinly veiled in denial—wishes he would have asked her along. It’s a thought she’s had a lot in the last couple days, accompanied by the hollow ache left by his absence. 

God, she misses him. 

She misses his surprise visits that turn into too much wine and inevitably leading to his crashing on the couch. She misses waking in the morning to freshly brewed coffee and he at the kitchen counter, head bowed over a book. She misses walking into the bathroom and inhaling Frank’s steamy post-shower smell: cedarwood, something earthy, something subtly metallic. It’s both a blessing and a curse to have him stay the night at her place; she only wishes it was in her bed, not on the couch. 

Karen sighs. Goosebumps are starting to pebble on her skin from the AC, and so she steels her resolve and kneels before Frank’s drawer. She’d casually offered it to him months ago over breakfast. You spend the night enough, she tells him while staring resolutely into her mug. Might as well have a change of clothes here just in case you need them. 

She had felt his eyes on her, all intense heat and wariness, long enough for her to fidget. And then finally he’d said: Yeah. Yeah, okay. Thanks, Karen. 

The drawer is filled with a myriad of things, and not just clothes. On the top of the pile there’s a paperback by Jack Kerouac, a box of ammo, and a pair of spare keys she suspects is to that intimidating black van he drives. Underneath is a pair of socks, boxers (that she hurriedly paws past), some grey sweatpants (that look absolutely sinful on him, she recalls), and a pair of dark jeans. At the very bottom is a long sleeved henley and a plain black t shirt—Karen pulls out the t shirt and slips it over her head before she can talk herself out of it.

It’s comfortable, if a little too big. The hem hangs just past her hips when she stands, so Karen slips on a pair of underwear and leaves it at that. The rest of the afternoon she spends doing laundry and pretending as if she can’t smell him on her with every inhale. And when the guilt starts to eat at her, she tells herself that the shirt will be cleaned and replaced before Frank even knows it’s missing. 

—

Except it isn’t, because of course it isn’t. 

Hour three of dragging herself through the slowest washing machine cycle in the world (she’d splurged a little on an apartment with a hook up, too unwilling to deal with the laundromat down the block) and the worst dryer to accompany it (she hadn’t so much splurged on the actual machines)—finds Karen on the couch, flipping through the television channels. It’s nearly four o’clock and the temperature outside has finally broken, so the air is off and the windows are open. A soft breeze occasionally brushes over the exposed skin of her legs. And there’s absolutely nothing on the television. 

So she does what any sane person would do, and returns to Frank’s drawer for the book. Not that she doesn’t have plenty of her own reading material, but she’s never read Kerouac and she’s a little curious what Frank sees in him. It’s halfway through the first chapter that she realizes there’s a key turning in the lock, and that Frank’s back. 

Because of course he would walk in to this: her, clothed in underwear and his t shirt and no bra; sitting with her legs stretched across the couch cushions, back against the arm; his book in her hands as she struggles to parse the casual run-ons of Kerouac; a basket of half folded laundry on the floor. And he does—his face appears at the end of the hall leading to her front door and he pauses, bag slung over his shoulders and eyebrows raised to his hair. 

“Hi, Frank,” Karen greets, carefully closing the book. “How was your trip?”

His eyes glance quickly at her exposed legs, and then up to his t shirt, back down to her legs, and then up to her face. Karen relishes in the warm flush that spreads across his cheeks, even if it is partially covered by his beard. “It was, uh, it was good,” he tells her roughly, unmoving. His eyes stray back to her lower half. “Is that...my shirt?”

Karen realizes that she should be embarrassed by her lack of clothes or admonished for going through his things without asking. But the only thing she really can feel is frustrated as a thought strikes her. That day in the hospital when she and Frank were alone--before Amy had interrupted--after Karen had all but blurted her feelings into the stale, tension-heavy room. His entire body had been covered in lacerations and zig zagged with stitches; his face was bruised and battered. He’d been so evasive with her, gaze hardly connecting with her own before darting away again. She’d been so afraid for him. Hopeless. And frustrated. 

“You could love someone else instead of another war.”

“I don’t want to.”

At the time he’d been so determined, so set in his jaw as the hoarse declaration hung in the air. She wonders if that’s changed now, months of spending the night and phone calls and take out dinners later. If she were to ask the same question now—what he would say? 

“It is,” she tells him evenly.

Frank’s hand tightens on the strap of his bag, a nervous gesture. “Why?” he finally asks.

“I haven’t been pining after you, if that's what you mean. I was out of clothes.” Karen offers him a small smile, trying to quell the bout of butterflies that erupt in her stomach at the rough edge to his voice. 

To her relief he smiles. The tension eases from his shoulders. “You don’t seem like the pinin’ type.”

“I’m not.” Liar, liar, no pants on fire. “You just got back?” 

He nods, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “Was thinking about gettin’ dinner.” 

“You find the take out menu, I’ll put pants on,” she wages.

Frank’s blush rises. He coughs and then turns, walking into the kitchen at a pace quicker than usual. Karen fidgets with the hem of the shirt, waiting until she can hear the telling sound of the coffee machine being manhandled. She grapples for a pair of leggings in the basket beside her and hurriedly puts them on. 

“Sorry about the shirt,” she says loudly. “I was completely out of laundry and I figured you wouldn’t be back for a while. I’ll wash it for you.” 

Frank reappears in the doorway, eyes on the floor until he’s sure she’s fully clothed. “Don’t worry about it,” he mumbles. “It’s nothin’.”

“I went into your things, Frank, I hardly think that’s nothing.” 

At that, he meets her gaze. 

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” he counters, shooting her a grin. 

Karen huffs out a laugh. “Whatever. Hang on, I’m going to change out of this and then I'll order the food.” 

“No.” 

Karen swivels her head to give Frank a surprised look. The intensity of his no is startling but he seems as shocked as she is. There’s a beat of silence, and then he clears his throat and looks away as his finger starts that familiar rhythm against his leg. “I mean. You don’t have to. If you’re comfortable.” 

She considers pushing it. She doesn’t. Not yet. 

“I am. Thanks.” 

—

Several hours later, Karen realizes their bottle of wine is empty. She’s sitting against one arm of the couch with Frank against the other. Her legs bridge the gap between them, and if she were to point her toes she could touch the strong muscle of his thigh. Their take out boxes sit empty on the coffee table, and Frank has his head tilted back, eyes on the ceiling. The apartment is quiet.

“So what did you and Curtis do in the mountains?” Karen asks into the silence, hesitant to break it but curiosity finally getting the better of her. 

Frank sips his wine, and then turns his head to look at her. Karen is struck by how handsome he looks, the setting sun’s orange rays highlighting the curve of his nose and the warmth of his eyes. “Stupid shit,” he tells her with a chuckle. “We chopped up some trees, went hikin’--that asshole’s still faster’n me even with that leg--I read a lot. Talked. Drank some.”

Karen waggles her eyebrows. “Does that mean you guys got hammered in a cabin?”

His mouth curves into an amused smile. “Takes a lot to get me hammered, Karen.”

“When’s the last time you were?”

Karen is always careful about asking questions regarding his past. She knows it’s dangerous territory--one small slip could turn their conversation from lighthearted banter to emotional warfare. That’s the last thing she wants for him, for them. 

Thankfully, Frank has a quick answer. “Can’t remember. Years.”

She hums, curiosity piqued. She wonders what an overabundance of alcohol does to someone like Frank Castle--someone who is already so intense, so physical. Someone who already isn’t afraid to cry in front of her, who isn’t afraid to show emotion--would he close himself off, shut down? Would he laugh more? Would he touch her more than the casual touches she already receives? Would he kiss her? A thrill runs through her at the thought. She stays firmly planted on the couch, fighting the urge to grab the whiskey in her cupboard and put her theory to the test. 

“What about you?”

“What?”

Frank fixes her with an amused look. “The last time you were sideways.”

“Oh. A couple weekends ago, Foggy came over.” She smiles, remembering. “Marcie was out of town so he brought over the wine and we did--well, this. Take out and wine. A lot of wine.”

There’s an expression on his face she can’t figure out. A mixture of forced casualness, of caution, of amusement. “So this is--...” He pauses, takes a drink of his wine, starts again. “This is what you do with your other friends?”

Two thoughts settle into the sudden ache in her chest at his words. That on one hand he does, in fact, consider her a friend. She’s not just a warm body to keep the loneliness at bay. Which she’s known that for a long time, of course. They trust each other in the way that only two people who have gone through a number of life-changing and dangerous ordeals together can--why wouldn’t they be friends? The second thought is how carefully he speaks the word friends, as if solidifying the idea. As if reminding her of their relationship status. As if to say, we’re friends, and I know you want more--but I can’t. So we’re friends.

“Yep. This is what I do with my other friends. All two of them.” The joke falls flat, overshadowed by the catch in her voice. Karen finishes off her glass of wine and decides she will get out the whiskey after all. Even if he doesn’t drink it, she needs something a little stronger than just another Rosé. She starts to get up, but his hand catches her ankle and keeps her firmly in place.  

“You’re upset.” He looks at her cautiously from under a furrowed brow. His hand doesn’t lift from her skin, and it sends an unfair thrill through her. Karen’s toes curl before she can stop them, pushing against his thigh. 

“I’m not upset.”

He frowns. “And now you’re lying. Did I say somethin’?”

She doesn’t want to lie to him. She also doesn’t want to tell him the truth. There’s a nagging thought in the back of her mind that says if she’s honest with him, he’ll be scared off. He’ll decide her feelings are too much for him to handle, and then he’ll leave. Again. 

Her heart couldn’t bear it. 

Karen tugs her leg out of his grasp and sets her feet on the carpet. He sits forward, trying to capture her eyes again. “Karen,” he says gently. It’s cautious and worried, and so completely Frank in the way he grinds out her name that the words escape her before she can stop them. 

“It’s nothing, Frank. We’re friends, and that’s all, and I’m being selfish wanting more. I’ve just been--I’m not trying to--...” she glances over helplessly, but he’s giving her a look that she can only describe as stricken. She looks away quickly, desperate for a change of topic. Desperate to pull herself out of the hole that she’s dug for herself. There’s a brief moment of silence where she tries to decide what to do, outside of leaping from her fire escape, and then she hears Frank move. The cushion dips next to her. Warm fingers intertwine with her own, and then his lips are pressed to the back of her hand. 

“Shit, Karen,” Frank murmurs, exasperated. “For a smart woman, you’re bein’ pretty stupid.”

She’s still stuck on her fact that his breath is dancing over her skin, and that he’s pressed against her side, and that he still hasn’t released her. That he hasn’t gotten up and made a hasty exit. His words barely register. “What?” she asks weakly. 

“Curtis and I did a lot of talkin’ this weekend,” he says, staring to look her in the eye. The sudden change of topic throws her off balance. Before she can get a word in, he’s continued on. His thumb strokes her palm. “And a lot of it was dumb shit. We talked about his new apartment, the one he had to get after Billy shot up his old one. He says it gets a lot of sunlight. He talked about how the vet group is going and what team he thinks will win the World Series this year. It was good, and easy. We talk about some hard stuff too. We talked about Maria and the kids, and the war, and you.”

She’s not sure she likes being in the ‘hard’ category, but he seems to be edging towards a point, so Karen remains quiet. 

“And after we talked through all that other stuff, Curtis told me I was bein’ an idiot. He told me that you’re a good woman, and an even better friend. That I needed to make a decision before someone else made it for me.” He pauses, looking away. In the following silence, she digests his words and tries to keep the hope from blossoming in her chest. His hand is still warm in hers, and the earthy, woodsy smell of him fills her nose. 

He doesn’t speak long enough for Karen to finally hedge, “I’m not sure what you’re getting at, Frank.”

He turns back to her and offers a tiny, nervous smile. Not many things make a man like Frank Castle nervous, and the thought eases some of the tension from her body. She grips his fingers and holds her breath. 

“I’m tryin’ to tell you that I’m yours, if you’ll have me. I don’t want to be friends, Karen. I want you. I want more, too.”

In retrospect, her next words could have been a little more eloquent. She could have taken an extra second to think of something romantic and elated. Something that matches his earnestness. What she actually says is, “Frank Castle, you’d better quit keeping me waiting and kiss me.”

His eyes widen briefly, and then he’s grinning at her. His free hand cradles her cheek and between one breath and another he’s doing just that. Karen wont admit to herself how often she thought of this moment, but she does think about how every imagining doesn’t come close. She never could have pictured the tenderness with which he kisses her or the feeling that swells inside her. There’s no daydream in the world that compares to the softness of his lips or the sensation of his beard against her chin. She fists one hand in his coat, letting the other drift up into his hair. It’s longer, curling at his temple, and when she gently tugs he lets out a groan that makes her shiver. His tongue swipes at her bottom lip and she grants him access eagerly. The kiss devolves into wandering hands, heaving breaths, and the distinct feeling that Karen is being carefully, intimately devoured. 

After some time, Karen forces herself to pull away. Frank backs off immediately, a flash of concern in his gaze, but she gives him a small smirk, smoothing her hands over the hard planes of his chest. 

“How do you feel about me taking off the shirt now?” she asks casually. 

Her meaning sinks in quickly. His fingers grasp at the hem, dancing along the bare skin on her hips. Frank gives her a mischievous, sinfully attractive smile. “If you’re comfortable,” he repeats, and then drags his shirt up and over her head.

The buzzer on the dryer goes off in the background, but Karen has never been less inclined to attend to it than she is now. In fact, she thinks, if wearing his shirt gets this reaction, I may never do laundry again. 

It’s a nice thought, but then Frank lips meet her shoulder and she doesn’t think about laundry for a long, long time.

from the ashes

chapter four | read on AO3

din djarin x oc

WARNINGS: potential mild self harm, swearing

WORDS: 2.1K

EXCERPT: Her anger seethed beneath her skin like an ocean, and he could feel the waves crashing just below the surface when he stood next to her. He couldn’t blame her. He was waiting for her to crash her emotions down on him at any moment, because Din knew he was the one who’d convinced her to take this job, and therefore an easy target for them. But, to her credit, she at least kept them contained to her own body.

He knew too well what it was to lose people that he’d put in danger in the first place.

MASTERLIST | SERIES MASTERLIST

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Her mind was numb as she picked up Jula’s stiff body, ignoring the Mandalorian’s offers for help, and carried her towards the garden she knew Jula kept around the back.

Sweet, innocent, Jula, who tended to her ships and her vegetables, and hesitated to even spray her homemade pesticide with the knowledge of the insects it would kill. The galaxy was a cruel bitch to take someone like her, especially like this.

Ten found a flowerbed between some groupings of her herbs, and gently laid the small girl down on top of them. With her eyes closed and a woolen blanket covering her chest, she really did appear to be asleep. At peace. She wished she could bury the girl, but they didn’t have the tools or the time to spare.

She swore, turning around to the nearby tree and slamming her fists into it. She felt the rough bark split open her skin, and rubbed her hands in harder, deepening.

“She was your friend?” A deep voice came from the building entryway. She didn’t know how long he’d stood there silently.

“She deserved to live way more than you or I do.” Ten removed her hands from the tree, flexing them in front of her. Some beads of blood had smeared on her fingers. Looking at the Mandalorian, he nodded mutely.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

She scoffed, moving past him and heading back towards the ship. “You think it was a coincidence someone shot her in the chest after we took this job? After I called her for repairs? This was fucking Imps. An execution.”

He followed her back into the hangar. “She’s been dead for hours. This was planned; there was nothing you could have done.”

“I could’ve let her live here in peace and not be involved with me,” she said, beginning to rifle through the organized crates of parts. The ship was still going to need repairs, after all. “You know what this means, right?”

As she began to separate out parts she knew she needed, he stayed silent. Ten rolled her eyes.

“Do you trust Karga?” she asked, stopping and turning to face him.

“I do.”

“Then there’s a rat in his circle. Someone knows about this job and about me and about my damn mechanic, and I’d be willing to bet it’s one of the job financiers. This is a warning.”

“Could someone have bugged the ship?”

She shook her head. “Possible, but not likely, I have proximity alarms.”

“If it’s a warning…” his modulated voice trailed off. “We need to move quickly.”

“No,” she said, still shaking her head. “No, they have all the information we do, if we go after the informants, they’ll get to them first.”

“Do you have a better idea, then?” he pressed, shifting his feet slightly. She moved her eyes to stare into his visor.

“What else do you do with a rat? We flush it out.”

—

They spent the better half of the afternoon combing the ship for bugs and then, when they found none as Ten had expected, loading the parts she said they needed into the main hold.

Part of Din — likely the part that was remembering Kuiil and Grogu and the people he’d tried to protect — felt guilty for pillaging this poor dead girl’s shop. But a more logical part of him knew they needed it, and the girl wasn’t around to use the parts anymore anyways.

He could see Ten was trying to act unbothered by the whole thing, but she was failing miserably. Her anger seethed beneath her skin like an ocean, and he could feel the waves crashing just below the surface when he stood next to her. He couldn’t blame her. He was waiting for her to crash her emotions down on him at any moment, because Din knew he was the one who’d convinced her to take this job, and therefore an easy target for them. But, to her credit, she at least kept them contained to her own body.

He knew too well what it was to lose people that he’d put in danger in the first place.

They both knew they were on borrowed time on this planet. Imperials had been here, not long ago, and knew they were coming. Even if they had just intended to scare them off by murdering the mechanic, staying there would be stupid.

“We need somewhere close by where I can attempt the repairs,” she said, once they’d loaded the ship and sat in the cockpit. “Unpopulated would be best.”

Her mismatched eyes scanned the chart displayed between them. Din made himself refocus.

“Looks like there’s a small belt of asteroids a couple hours from here,” he said, pointing. “Can we make it there? The caverns would shield us from surface scans.”

“As good a shithole as any other,” was all she said before locking it in and sending them into hyperspace. She didn’t look back once at the planet where they’d laid her friend to rest in the small back garden. Din found he couldn’t help but ask.

“She was your friend, wasn’t she?”

Ten sighed, and he could see her jaw clench. He regretted asking, and was glad when he thought she wasn’t going to answer.

“Her father built this ship. She took over his shop when he got sick.” She leaned back in the pilot seat, crossing her arms. “I should never have gone back after he died.”

She said nothing more, and Din didn’t ask further. For the first time since boarding the Ursa, he pulled out the small metal sphere from his belt, his fingers slowly rolling it back and forth.

He wasn’t sure how long they sat there in silence before he looked at Ten again. He was surprised to see her eyes were closed now, hands resting on her thighs. Her breathing was even, but her back was straight, and Din couldn’t tell if she was asleep. His gaze returned to her hands. They were thin, nimble, he was sure they had to be to handle the knives she seemed to covet so much. Scars littered them, zagging in all directions, creating a web over her hands. He looked back to her face.

“Can I help you?” she asked suddenly. Her eyes were still closed, her head facing forward.

“Pardon?”

“You’re staring at me.”

How the fuck did she know that? “I thought you were asleep.”

She still kept her eyes closed. “I’m meditating. Ever heard of it?”

“I wouldn’t have taken you to be the type.”

“Because you know me so well.”

“You seem to think you know me.”

Her eyes finally opened at this, sliding over to him. For a moment, Din thought he felt his chest tighten and his breathing shallow, as if someone was stepping on him. But she looked away and it stopped, and he couldn’t be sure he hadn’t imagined it.

She studied him for a moment. “Prove me wrong, then, Mandalorian.”

He rolled his eyes, standing to leave the cockpit. “You can call me Mando.”

—

“Shit!” she exclaimed, banging her fist against the metal looming above her. The sound reverberated through the floor of the ship. They’d been on the asteroid a little over a day, she estimated, and Ten had spent most of that time underneath the Ursa, trying to fix its botched landing systems.

She didn’t have much to show for it, however.

A sense of frustration was beginning to settle in the bones of her body. Her exposed skin was covered in a thin layer of sweat and oil and Maker knew what else. And Ten knew the wall of exhaustion was creeping up on her as well. If they didn’t get off this damn asteroid soon, she was going to have a serious problem.

“Not going well?” a modulated voice came from the direction of her feet where they stuck out from underneath the ship.

“What do you think?” she replied, gritting her teeth. “I never said I was a damn mechanic.”

“What do you think the problem is?”

“Well if I knew that, I could probably have it fixed by now,” she snapped, that frustration wrapping even tighter in her insides. It was somewhat unlucky for the Mandalorian that he just happened to be the only one here to take out her emotions on.

As she reached for a new tool, she suddenly felt pressure on her ankle. Before she could react, it pulled, yanking her in one fluid motion out from under the Ursa. She glared up into the visor which was now in front of her.

“You’re damn lucky it’s just the two of us on this rock, or I would stab you in the neck,” she seethed. His gloved hand remained tight on her ankle.

“When was the last time you slept?” he asked, voice even. Damn that modulator.

“You’re concerned about my beauty sleep now?”

He sighed, tightening his grip. “When was it?” Ten thought maybe she heard a hint of anger creeping into the baritone. Maybe.

“I don’t know, Mando, maybe … I think a couple of hours after we left Nevarro.” She tried to act nonchalant, but she knew her body was not pleased. But she had done worse stretches than this in the past.

“You should sleep,” he said, finally releasing her ankle. He straightened to stand at full height. “I can try some repairs while you do.”

“No, Mando, it’s fine, I just need a minute,” she insisted, also standing.

“You’re not fine,” he said. “And you’re going to be less fine as time goes on. Sleep.” Obviously considering the matter closed, he began to walk away, towards some of the tools and parts she’d strewn on the rocky ground.

“I…” she struggled for words, not wanting to say it out loud, but floundering for another excuse. “I can’t sleep if I’m not in hyperspace. It doesn’t feel safe enough … So there’s no point anyway.”

He stilled but didn’t turn around, surveying the ground. She almost wondered if he hadn’t heard. She hoped he hadn’t. Finally—

“I can keep watch, if you’d like.”

She was taken aback, processing his words for longer than necessary. “What?”

“While you sleep. I can sit in the hull, keep watch, wake you if anything happens. Would that work?”

“I—” she fumbled for what to say for a moment. No one had ever offered something so … kind to her. At least, not in many years. “Maybe. I should shower first.”

He said nothing else, nodding.

In the refresher, she stripped herself of clothes, grimacing at the stickiness of her skin. The warm water wrapped around her body as it massaged her muscles. Bracing her arms against the walls of the shower, she took a moment to close her eyes. Jula’s serene face appeared on her eyelids.

Mando was in the hull when she finished, cleaning one of his blasters. He didn’t acknowledge her presence as she passed by him and got into her hammock, for which she was grateful.

She pinched the bridge of her nose as she lay there, starting up at the ship’s metal ceiling. Time stretched on in the silence between them, as it often seemed to. She felt silly, and had half a mind to tell Mando to go try repairs. She settled on distraction, instead.

“Mando?” Ten heard a responding hum from across the room. “On Nevarro … you said you never used to care. Wouldn’t have taken a job like this. What changed?”

She heard some shuffling, then a sigh. “You … were right about what you said. About bounties. I took a job for an Imp. He was offering beskar.” He paused, as if waiting for her to become enraged. But she just shut her eyes. He continued. “But the bounty they wanted … he was just a child. An infant, really. I don’t even know what they wanted him for. I couldn’t hand him over. I didn’t. That’s when it changed.”

A child. It seemed strange that was apparently the key to melt the Mandalorian beskar heart. Ten pondered it, but didn’t ask anything more. Their silence resumed, as it had before.

Darkness pulled her under all at once, and then she was asleep, with the Mandalorian’s steady presence standing guard.

tw: implied/referenced torture, kidnapping

i saw this prompt on tumblr but i cant find it now so if anyone knows who wrote the orginal prompt, i’ll link it here.

Run.

His feet burned in agony as he ran. Legs protesting every time the sole of his foot hit the floor. It was agony, tree branches pricking his feet, but he didn’t care. He didn’t know where he was, or where he was going, but he had to get away. Wherever that was. He could hear the voices shouting after him, lights flashing through the trees in the darkness. He payed no attention to it.

Finally, he lost them. He assumed they had gotten bored, slowing down his pace. He panted heavily and eventually slowed to a stop. Sighing softly to himself, he leaned heavily against a tree, his body weak and aching as he attempted to gather his thoughts.

He didn’t remember anything. Whatever those…men had done to him; they had scrambled his mind completely. He didn’t know where he was, how old he was, whether he had a family. Hell, he didn’t even know his own name. The men in there had called him Spider.

They liked to do tests on him. He knew basic things, like his hands and feet were super sticky. He could stick to anything. He also knew that he had some sort of enhanced healing – well at least that’s what the men in the grey coats called it. Spider wasn’t sure what that meant, but they usually tested his healing by beating the crap out of him.

He wandered further, unaware of what was compelling him to go the way he was, but his gut was telling him that it was safe. And usually, his gut was pretty good at telling him when there was danger around. By the time he had reached any type of civilisation, it was morning. The sun had risen well beyond the tree tops, the bright blue sky swirled with beautiful white clouds. Spider smiled. He didn’t remember the last time he saw other colours than the neutral ones of his prison.

As he walked closer, he found a cabin. It was a rather large building, two-storied and was a rich dark brown colour. The cabin sat facing a lake, with a long dock travelling out and a small rowing boat tied to the end. In the front of the cabin was a tent, propped up by the tree it stood proudly next to. And Spider couldn’t help but feel as if it was familiar.

He attempted to go close, but was startled into jumping up into the tree, as the door to the cabin open. Spider froze, praying that it wasn’t the man come to take him back. He curled himself small in the top of the tree, peering put through the gaps of the leaves. His heart racing as an indescribable panic overtook him – begging that it wasn’t them. That they weren’t here to take him back.

It was a surprise to him when a small girl came running out the house, clutching a small toy underneath her arm as she stalked towards the tent. He observed her – the girl couldn’t have been older than 6. She had long dark brown hair. Spider wasn’t sure why, but he knew her. He couldn’t see her eyes, but he knew that they were a warm, rich dark brown. He didn’t know what her voice sounded like, but her sweet laugher echoed through his mind.

He stayed there silently, watching her. He knew how weird it sounded, but here was something about her that made him feel…warm. The overwhelming desire to protect her from harm caused him to stay rooted in his spot, even after a blonde woman had come out - her mother – and had called the girls name and the girl had obediently gone inside.

Morgan. Her name was Morgan. She was 6 years old, and her birthday was in two months’ time. Her favourite colour was red, although he didn’t know why he knew that and the more he thought about it, the more confused his was and the more it made his head hurt.

Well after the sun had set, Spider was satisfied that Morgan had gone to bed, that she was safe. He finally let his guard down, uncurling from the ball and jumping down from the tree. He wandered over to the tent, peering inside. There was, of course, a tea set placed dutifully on the table in the centre of the small plastic table in the middle of the tent. White fairy light hung in a zig-zag pattern across the top of the tent, giving a source of light in the otherwise pitch-black surroundings.

Spider paused as he looked closer at one of the bears. It was wearing a red and blue suit. He frowned, running his hand over the spandex like material. Why was this familiar. Why was anything about this girl familiar. His head was hurting again as small flashes of a battle crossed his mind, but by the time he tried to think about it, the memory had disappeared like it was never there.

For the next few weeks, Spider watched Morgan from his spot in the tree. Always ready to fend off any danger that might come her way. Always ready to protect her if she needed it. He fell into a rhythm. Morgan would always leave the house early in the morning with either her mother or her father and wouldn't return until late in the afternoon. Five days a week without fail she would leave, but she would always come back. Spider was confused the first week. He didn't know where she went and had panicked. An overwhelming feeling of anxiety rooted deep in his chest as he anxiously waited for her return. And he still felt like that, despite being reassured and knowing that she would always come home.

Spider also watched the parents, and the way the mother would always come out and play with Morgan in her tent. They would have tea parties together, and the smaller of the two women loved it. The mother always had a fond smile that followed her daughters’ wild ramblings and nodded along even though Spider was certain the mother had no idea what she was talking about. The father, well he was different.

The more he observed the father, the more he realised how sad he was. Spider watched as the father would play with his daughter, just as the mother did. He observed how the father would take Morgan out onto the lake once a week in the small boat and they would stay out there until the mother called them in. But unlike the mother, who always had a happy smile, the father would look as his daughter with a sad one stretched across his lips.

He observed how one night, the father came outside and sat on the deck, well after Morgan had gone to bed. Spider watched as his shoulder shook, short and sharp sobs escaping his lips. His heart hurt for this man, and he felt as if he should be there comforting him. Spider had sworn he had done it before. But still, the memories would not come. The mother had joined him shortly after, consoling him. They stayed out there until dawn.

The more time Spider spent with this family, the more he felt connected with them. Like he was meant to be there with them. The names Tony and Pepper had come to his mind once, as he watched Morgan hurt herself. She had tripped over a tree stump and cut her leg. And all Spider could wish was that Tony and Pepper would hurry up. He hadn’t even realised it until later that night.

Tony and Pepper. Tony and Pepper. Why were those names so damn familiar? Spider tried. He really did. He tried remembering why he knew those names – how he knew those names, but nothing was coming back to him. Flashes of a lab, echoes of laughter. But no matter how hard he tried; it was never enough. It frustrated Spider beyond belief. He knew these people were important to him. He cared about them. But he didn’t know why.

Tony was out on the deck again, but this time, he was accompanied by Morgan. The smaller girl sat close to her fathers’ side, her small frame shaking as the father clutched her close. Spider moved in the tree, close enough so he could hear the conversation they were having. He knew it was rude to eavesdrop, but Morgan was so sad, and it took all of Spiders will not to go down there and hug her.

“I miss him Daddy” The younger wept, wiping her face into her fathers’ side. Tony didn’t look down at her, but he subconsciously drew her closer to him.

“Me too Morg. Me too. We’ll get him back. You know Auntie Nat and Uncle Clint are searching for him. They can’t hide him from us forever” There was something resigned about Tony’s tone. As if he didn’t believe the things he was telling his daughter, but he wished he did.

“Tell me a story. A Peter story not a Spider-man one” Morgan looked up to her father, blinking owlishly at him through wet lashes. Tony laughed, rubbing his hand over his face, launching in a story about this boy, a fond and sad smile stretched across his face and Spider could sense the tension seep out of Tonys shoulder as he spoke.

Morgan giggled; the sound was music to Spiders ears. He didn’t know who Peter was, but Spider assumed that it was Tony’s son. And he also assumed that Peter was the one Tony was crying over a few weeks prior. It made him wonder how long Peter had been missing for, which led Spider to wonder whether his own family missed him too. Either way, Spider was glad that Peter made Morgan so happy. He wondered where he had gone. Didn’t he know that Tony and Morgan missed him?

“He’ll come home right Daddy. You promise he’ll come home”

Tony hesitated, clearly unsure what to say. Spider knew that Tony couldn’t promise the safe return of this Peter. It wasn’t how the world worked. But to the six-year-old girl, Spider hoped Tony would just lie.

“I’ll try sweetie. I’m trying so hard to bring him home to us”

-X-

Time seemed irrelevant as Spider watched over the family, only ever leaving his tree at the dead of night to find food and he used the trees as bathrooms. He rarely slept, only catching an hour or two worth of sleep every night. His dreams were plagued with memories that he could have sworn weren’t his own, because all of them contained Tony, Pepper and Morgan in some shape or form. There were other people in his dreams as well. A man, around the same age as Tony who had the name of an emotion, but Spider couldn’t pinpoint what it was. A woman, with long wavy brown hair and circular glasses. He didn’t know her name either, but he felt and overwhelming sense of love towards her, just as he did towards Morgan and Tony.

There were hundreds more, people flitting in and out in his subconsciousness, but he could never seem to remember their names or properly remember what they looked like. It made him wonder what made Tony and Pepper so different. Why he could remember their names. Why he knew them.

Then there was one night the family had a party. Spider had to be careful as Tony and Pepper set up the garden for the party. He hid higher up in the tree than usual, enough so the family didn’t notice him whilst stringing fairy lights from the trees. He watched for his spot as the family had their friends, sitting round a fire pit. Morgan was smiling in delight as she played with children of her own age and it really made Spider smile. She had seemed so sad a few weeks back. He preferred it when she smiled. The adults…they looked sad again. All of them did, and Spider didn’t understand why.

He watched as the day turned into night and eventually the friends left, leaving Tony and Pepper in the garden with a sleeping Morgan on their laps. Tony gently lifted Morgan into his arm, cradling her close to his chest. Pepper followed behind them, opening the door for Tony and then disappeared into the house afterwards.

Spider jumped down from his tree, stretching his legs as he felt the cool grass between his toes. He looked round at the scene, wishing he could have a family like this. As he got closer to the fire pit, he noticed a small green frog on the floor by the chair that Tony had been sat on. Spider picked the toy, running his hand over the soft material. He knew Morgan couldn’t sleep without it. He needed to get it to her.

Silently, Spider entered the cabin. It had been the first time he had ever been anyway near the inside of the family’s home, preferring to stay out and watch over them. But he knew Morgan needed the toy to sleep. He glanced around the cabin, his head starting to ache more and more as his surrounding were familiar to him. But that had to be impossible. He had never been inside before, right?

As he passed the stairs there was a phot o frame hanging proudly beside it. Framed in a rich dark oak, Spider stared at the photo. He dropped the toy and moved closer. It was of Tony and a boy, who looked strangely similar to himself. The boy was holding a certificate, the words ‘Peter Parker’ written on the white paper. Spider’s head hurt.

Spider gasped, collapsing on the floor and he grabbed his head in agony. Why did it hurt so much? Images were flashing behind his eyes.

An airport, Tony, a man in a blue, white and red suit, webs, a boy holding something made out of small bricks, a girl holding a book. The ferry, Tony, the building, homecoming, Liz. Ned. May. Michelle. Titian, turning to dust. Then going to Europe, and Beck. He was taken by Beck and they tortured him. Beck threatened Morgan. He complied to protect Morgan. Tony and Pepper. Tony and Pepper. Tony and Pepper.

Peter let out another gasp, tears streaming down his face. His head was spinning as his memories came flooding back, overriding all of Beck’s programming. He breathed heavily, pain spreading through his chest as he coughed.

Then, a mug shattered. He turned his head.

Tony.

She’s Clueless, Cupid

On Monday, February 11th, Ralph created the Valentine’s Day Lottery. Cute and inconsequential at first glance, as Ralph’s terrible ideas always were, this time the Valentine’s Day Lottery in fact seemed really not so bad. After some convincing. “Secret Valentine’s Day Santa!” Ralph said simply, standing in the middle of the Cortex and trying to change all the blank stares. “It’s team bonding guys. With all this Cicada stuff we need some mushy gushy cheer—And I actually have friends now to do something like this with.” “....Secret Valentine’s Day Santa? That doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.” Ralph rolled his shoulders back, unscathed by catty remarks. “You think of something better then.” Cisco threw his pen in the air. “Won’t take long.” “—Anyways,” Ralph continued, “Ralphy’s on a budget so why don’t we keep this easy? We all draw a name out of a hat.” He pointed at Sherloque and before he could protest Ralph snatched Sherloque’s black hat off his head with his stretchy hand. “Whoever you get you write them a Valentine’s Day card. Type it up, 12 point font, single spaced, Times New Roman. Make it meaningful but don’t sign your name.” Iris frowned. “Why not?” “Mystery,” Sherloque mused. “J’aime ça.” “Exactly Shirley. At the end of the day we have to figure out who wrote the card.” “Valentine’s Day Lottery!” Cisco exclaimed suddenly, his thrown pen clattering to the ground, forgotten. “That’s it. That’s the name.” Barry shrugged, thinking it over. “That doesn’t sound so bad. Could be fun?” Caitlin smiled, “It would be very sweet to do, Ralph. We could all do with a little positivity. I say why not?” Ralph grinned at Caitlin and gave her a high five. “See? Caitlin Snow, everyone. She’s the best. A literal angel. Thanks girl.” Caitlin smiled at the praise, sharing it with Cisco, who was ready with a wink. She rolled her eyes playfully. “No problem.” Ralph urged them all to tear off pieces of paper to write their names so they could draw right away. Sherloque, Barry, Cisco, Iris, Caitlin and Ralph all participated, stuffing their names in Sherloque’s hat. One by one they were then called up by Ralph to pick the lottery, closing their eyes and looking away as they grabbed one of their friend’s names. The silence was slightly awkward as everyone fumbled around each other, now painfully aware they all had to keep a secret, knowing they’ve never been particularly good at it. Once Caitlin slipped her lottery into her lab coat, the very last crumpled name in the hat, the show was over and they all dispelled to continue working on tracking Cicada’s next move. ♡ Cisco got Iris. He folded the paper into his fist and walked out, heading to his workshop. “Hey man, wait up.” Cisco turned to see Barry jogging after him. “Who’d you get?” Cisco stared at him blankly, but Barry continued, nudging his shoulder with his sharp elbow. “C’mon, man. Who’d you get?” “This isn’t how the game is supposed to work. What if I have you?” “Do you?” Cisco crossed his arms. “What’s the point?” Barry looked a little smug. “Well, I was hoping to pick Iris but I have Caitlin—“ Before Barry could finish that sentence, Cisco snatched the scrap of paper out of Barry’s hand, throwing his own at him. Barry looked down at Iris’s scrawl and smirked. “Glad to do business with you.” “How did you know?” “I didn’t.” Barry sped off, not giving Cisco any time to respond. Barry could be weird like that, especially when it came to Iris. But Cisco didn’t care this time, Barry’s quirkiness working to his benefit. He opened the little paper with Caitlin’s name on it and smiled to himself. He tucked it gently into his pocket and began whistling a popular song on the radio. ♡ On Tuesday, February 12th, Team Flash had a completely, regular, ordinary day. As regular as Team Flash could get, all of them sneezing, wheezing and itching irritated eyes from excess pollen. The flower power meta they defeated had germinated at least three million dandelion seeds into Central City’s atmosphere and Caitlin was still picking fluff out of her hair hours later. Cisco was laughing, watching Ralph’s allergies making his nose stretch five feet as Barry sneezed repetitively, zig zag crashing into furniture from the force of it. Cisco hopped off his desk when Caitlin groaned, exasperated. “Just wash it,” he suggested, flicking more of it off her scalp. “Or not. I have to admit, it’s pretty adorable. Caitlin Snow, flower child.” She looked up at him and scowled. “It is not. It’s ridiculous, is what it is. And I just washed it this morning.” “So that’s why it smells so good,” he mused. He took another sniff. “Or maybe it’s the lily petals you’ve still got stuck there.” “Nooo,” she whined. “I thought I picked those out.” “Let me help.” She passed him her brush and he stood behind her, taking her silky hair and brushing it out smoothly. Caitlin leaned her elbow against her desk as Cisco played hairdresser, relaxing like a petted cat. It was lovely, and her attention faded, drifting up into the clouds in a mindless haze. “You know what you should do?” he asked, blowing more fluff into her face. “That you don’t anymore?” She wrinkled her nose, breaking out of the spell. “What?” “Wear ponytails.” “I wear ponytails,” she argued, amused. He ran his fingers through her hair. “But not enooooooough. It’ll solve your issue. Everyone knows you tie your hair back in a fight.” He sounded very insistent, so she satisfied him. “I’ll keep that in mind.” Ralph staggered forward then, miserable, and begged Caitlin for some softer tissues. She asked Ralph to hand her the purse she left in the corner of the Cortex as Cisco kept picking twigs out of her hair. He plopped them into the little garbage bin she had sitting on her lap. “Wait…” she said, after noticing a pattern to his light tugs. She tilted her head up to quirk an upside down eyebrow at him, “Are you braiding it?” “Shhhhhhhhh. It’s soft,” Cisco shushed her, tapping her head back upright so that he wouldn’t be making his braid lopsided. Ralph passed her the bag and she rummaged for the Puffs with extra lotion, finding it in an interior zipper. “There you go,” she smiled, handing it to him. Ralph moaned through his obnoxiously nasal tone. “You’re a godsend.” She wiped at her watery eyes herself, then looked around at her friends all suffering, cringing when Barry sneeze-slammed particularly violently into the wall, glad that she gave him elbow and knee pads to soften any blows. “Cisco,” she asked slowly. “Why aren’t you affected?” “I was wearing my Vibe goggles, remember?” he answered. “....And antihistamines.” They all had antihistamine. That didn’t add up. She narrowed her eyes, even if he couldn’t see it. “...How many?” “Too many,” Cisco mumbled into her hair. That explained his funny giddiness. He was drugged up on Allegra. “Cisco! That’s not safe!” “Not the whole bottle,” he was quick to defend. “Just...Uh, almost half of the spare you keep in your cabinet?” She tried not to panic, wondering if she had the number for poison control. She racked her brain for intoxication symptoms associated with over-the-counter drug abuse. “Do you feel drowsy? Dizzy? Blurry vision?” “Not yet!” he replied rather cheerfully, but she couldn’t help notice the hoarseness to his voice, a symptom of dry throat. And a weird side effect of allergy medicine. Caitlin crossed and uncrossed her legs, shifting the bin on her lap, and made herself roll her eyes. She considered his answer. He did seem to be fine for now and she knew he would never lie to her about something serious if she asked, not after what they went through with the shrapnel in his hands. He probably wasn’t in any immediate danger. “So, hey, what are you doing on Thursday?” Caitlin felt like laughing, confused by the random question. Drugged Cisco was just like Drunk Cisco: Not making any sense. “Um, going to work. Like every day?” “Anything special?” She frowned. Oh, that was right. It was Valentine’s Day. She shook her head, feeling his nails move with it. “You would have already known about it if I did. Aren’t you done, yet?” Cisco laughed, but didn’t stop with the brush. “Oh, yeah. I was done ten minutes ago.” Ralph interjected from his corner. “Caitlin, you’re going to the Lottery Reveal! I’m making it a whole party and everything.” Caitlin dropped the bin back to the floor and folded her hands neatly. “That’s what I’m doing, then.” Her eyes trailed across the room, watching Barry catch his breath in the corner, finally calming down from his bout. “What about you?” she tried to say casually. “Do you have special plans?” “Yes, I do,” Cisco confirmed. Caitlin lost some of her smile, and she swallowed, looking at her nails. “That’s nice. I hope it goes well.” “So do I,” he said roughly, sounding sleepy. He placed his palm at the back of Caitlin’s neck. The room got too hot, and Caitlin was worried that Cisco might actually be overdosing after all, so she got off her chair. The conversation switched over to Cicada. Caitlin was relieved. Ralph and Barry talked strategy as she took Cisco to the Med Bay to check him over, flicking her braided hair over her shoulder as she led the way. ♡ On Thursday, February 14th, Caitlin found her Valentine’s Day lottery card on her desk. She opened it, read it, and sat down heavily in her office chair, nearly moved to tears. She read it again, feeling tingles all the way down to her toes. She curled her fingers into the letter protectively, like if she didn’t cling to it tightly it would grow wings and fly away. When Caitlin picked Sherloque, she decided on giving him a nice simple letter of appreciation with a special touch of writing it in French. She put some effort into it, specifically a lot of time conjugating verbs she forgot had such complicated endings, but it was simply a cute card that took her less than half an hour to finish. This was something else entirely. What she got wasn’t a Valentine's Day card. It was a masterpiece. Cisco walked into her lab, first knocking on her door lightly. He gasped, “A ponytail!” Caitlin’s free hand flew to her head, having forgotten she’d followed his styling advice. “Yeah,” she said distractedly, still feeling flooded with sentiment, staring down at the Times New Roman font, blinking away the blurriness of her emotional tears. “You look happy,” he commented, “You must’ve gotten a nice letter.” Caitlin looked up at him, a wobbly smile spreading across her face. She brushed away a stray tear, wondering why he was stretching. “I did. It was lovely, and, poignant, and, um, very inspiring.” “...Inspiring?” His arms dropped to his sides. Caitlin nodded. “Do you think Iris wrote it to empower me? That’s so sweet. I know we’re supposed to wait until the end of the day, but this letter is so beautiful, I should thank her right away.” She stood up, gathering her purse and throwing out the waste bin from her lab into the bio-sink. Cisco grabbed her wrist. “What makes you say it was Iris?” Caitlin thought about it. “Well, she’s the writer, she’s the one who could compose something as eloquent and powerful as that.” She squeezed his arm as she passed him, rushing off to go find her. She missed the way Cisco’s confused smile froze in place, how he wrapped his arms around himself and frowned very deeply. ♡ Caitlin belatedly realized she should have asked Cisco to breach her to Iris’s newspaper office when she hit traffic south of Killmare street. Parking was tight, but she found a spot right around the corner. She ran up the steps two-by-two and burst into Iris’s still pretty baren brand new office, giving her a giant hug. “Woah, Caitlin.” Iris closed her laptop, and awkwardly patted her back. “What’s wrong?” “What’s wrong?” Caitlin repeated, stepping back. “Nothing’s wrong! The Valentine’s Day Lottery! That was the most thoughtful, caring thing anyone has ever said to me in a very long time!” Iris brushed some hair out of her eyes, still caught off guard. “You need to rewind a bit. I’m really confused.” Caitlin swatted Iris’s shoulder, “Oh, come on, Ralph’s game will be over in a few hours anyway. No need to play dumb.” “I’m not playing dumb, Caitlin. I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Caitlin’s smile fell off her face, realizing Iris wasn’t lying. “...You didn’t pick me for the lottery?” Iris shook her head. “No.” Caitlin didn’t understand. “But you’re the journalist. I thought...” She trailed off, frowning a little, looking out the wide window. She could see the roof of Star Labs from here. Her hand went to her peacoat jacket and held on tightly to the folder paper. Iris tapped her polished desk with her manicured nails, clearing some cluttered police report copies about the murder of Grace Gibbons’s parents out of the way. “Show me the card.” Caitlin didn’t exactly want to, now that she knew it wasn’t written by Iris. Those words were for her eyes only. And whoever gave them to her. But Iris was the investigative journalist, and she was her closest woman friend. She’d probably be able to help figure out who it belonged to. Caitlin pulled it out of her pocket. She watched as Iris scanned it, lazily at first, but then she scooted her chair in, leaning closer to the paper with focus. “What?” Caitlin asked her, when Iris returned it looking a little flushed. “Honey, this is a love letter. Read it again.” “What? No, it isn’t!” “Caitlin. That was more heartfelt than my own wedding vows.” She stared down at the words on the page, going over it again. Iris was right, and Caitlin began to startlingly realize that she was very mistaken in believing that ‘inspiring’ was the most appropriate adjective to describe what was in her hands. Every sentence Caitlin first interpreted as purely friendly was suddenly not so, each word, each phrase dipped with passion, longing, and a deeply intimate tenderness. It was romantic. Caitlin felt the ground tilt beneath her feet. “But nobody on Team Flash is in love with me!” Caitlin cried, starting to feel a little hysterical. How was this possible? Barry and Iris were happily married, Sherloque only fell in love with the same woman over and over again and— “Ralph!” she exclaimed out loud, then recoiled, horrified. “Oh, god.” Iris blinked. “Um, you think it’s Ralph?” Caitlin saw the last twenty months or so flash before her eyes. All of the creepy flirting about her measurements before he shaped up, his checking up on her, the advice he kept giving her. In fact, he was very blunt about his crush on her Frost. He was the one who found her father’s faked death certificate unprompted. Caitlin covered her hand with her mouth, he even went with her to go visit her mother. “It has to be! He called me an angel on Monday. Oh my gosh. And — And a godsend on Tuesday!” Iris opened her mouth, then closed it. “Um,” she said again. “You don’t like Ralph, do you?” Caitlin’s eyes nearly bugged out of her head. “Iris!” Iris held her hands up defensively, “Just checking! What are you going to do?” “I don’t know,” Caitlin said as she paced the floor. She checked her watch. Screw the sulphate fusions Barry asked her to do today, her Cicada plans have now been officially thrown out the window. “What do you think I should do?” Iris opened her laptop again, booting the system. “I dooon’t knooow,” Iris drawled. “Well, that’s not helpful!” Iris turned to Caitlin. “I’m sorry, Caitlin. I appreciate you coming here and for this chat, I do, but considering I’m not a prodigy genius or have any superspeed, I’m going to need some time to piece together my next article before we congregate back at Star Labs for the Lottery Reveal.” Caitlin looked around the new space, becoming self-aware. What Iris said was true. She just flew into Iris’s work office uninvited, interrupting her while she was busy. She picked her purse back up from the floor. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’ll go back to Star Labs.” “Don’t be, I hope you figure it out soon. I’ll see you later.” Caitlin threw a thanks over her shoulder, and hurried her way out. ♡ She almost bulldozed over Cisco in the hallway on her way in, distracted in her haste, thinking of ways to firmly reject Ralph without hurting his feelings. She tripped into him, and he held her steady as she teetered in her heels. “Oh, there you are. You okay?” She looked into his warm familiar eyes, feeling relief, so glad to have found him. “You have to help me!” Cisco was still holding her as he answered, listening intently. “With what?” “You need to help me turn Ralph down!” “What.” It came out all in one whooshed breath, not even a question. Bland. She veered him to the right so she could explain, pressing the hidden switch that unlocked the Time Vault. “Ralph is in love with me,” she hissed, her ponytail whipping violently behind her as she gripped Cisco’s arm. Cisco bristled. “He better not be.” Caitlin didn’t hear that, too busy trying not to panic. Cisco ran a hand through his hair, getting stressed by Caitlin’s franticness. “Why are you freaking out?” “Because I don’t love Ralph, Cisco!” He fidgeted, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Okay. Good to know... And why exactly do you think Ralph is in love with you? Did he tell you that?” “Yes!” Cisco grew quiet, “He did?” Something dark washed over his expression, his gaze said something Caitlin couldn’t quite understand. She could hardly comprehend how Ralph fell for her either, but he wasn’t the devil, there was no need for Cisco to amass pitchforks and rouse an angry mob. Though she could see why he might want to. Hunter and Julian ended terribly the moment love confessions started pouring out, but they both had red flags about them they should’ve seen from miles away, and Ralph, the reformed Ralph, hasn’t ever given them any reason to worry. “Well, not exactly,” she admitted. “Not directly. But his language, his words. And once Iris mentioned the love letter I started to think about Sherloque and his doppleganger ex-wives. I pieced it together after that.” Cisco leaned against the silver wall of the Time Vault, waiting for Caitlin to finish rambling. “Take a breath, Caitlin. Start from the beginning.” She did, exhaling deeply. “I went to Iris. She didn’t write it. The Valentine’s Day card. She said it was a love letter.” Cisco let out an “Ahhhh,” understanding her, now. “You think Ralph wrote you a love letter.” “I know, I know, it’s crazy,” she wrigned her hands. “How am I going to tell him I don’t return his feelings nicely?” He snorted, “It doesn’t have to be nice. Just tell him no and get on your way.” “I don’t want to crush him, Cisco! Not on Valentine’s Day. He’s sensitive. This is probably why he came up with this idea in the first place. Think about it. He wanted a way to be able to confess his feelings anonymously. This was the perfect set up to do that. And he was the one holding the hat. Maybe he never put my name in it.” “Hey, hey,” he said, not liking the way she was biting her nails with worry. If she conspired any more she might start linking this to illuminati. “Don’t stress, okay? Talk to Ralph. He’s a big boy, he can take it.” She nodded, looking up at him through her lashes when he tucked a flyaway hair behind her ear, comforted as always by Cisco’s encouragement. He always believed in her. “Yeah?” Cisco pushed himself off the wall and opened the door. “Absolutely.” “Will you come with me?” Cisco made a face. “Oh, Caitlin. I would. But I have to work on the blueprints for the reverse dagger. I think this is something you need to do alone.” He rubbed her shoulder affectionately, his hand lingering there for an extra moment. “Hey, Caitlin,” he said softly. She met his gaze, wondering why he sounded a little forlorn. “Yes?” He gave her a small smile. “Happy Valentine’s Day.” Caitlin bit her lip, watching him breach away before she could say it in return. “Happy Valentine’s Day, Cisco,” she mumbled quietly to herself, alone in the hallway. She straightened up, squaring her shoulders, and ignored the dread settling in her stomach like stones. ♡ Ralph was in the lounge, decorating for the Lottery Reveal. She walked in slowly, leaning her elbow against the counter of the island, watching him stretch his arm up to stick heart balloons to the ceiling. “Who do you think gave you your card?” He spun around, not expecting to see her there. “Hi, Caitlin. That’s a nice sweater. Dressed for the occasion, I see.” She looked down at her red sweater dress. Yes, she thought so too this morning. Ralph had always complimented her style. It used to make Caitlin feel nice. Now it made her nervous. “I dunno,” he continued, answering her question. “I was thinking it was Barry, but now I think it might be Iris. Does she make a lot of grammar mistakes?” “You’re asking me if the one person out of our friend group who has a degree in journalism can spell?” “Well, when you put it like that…” He chuckled. “I guess it must be Barry then.” He stuck the last inflated balloon from the batch and threw an empty plastic bag into the recycling. “Did you know Star Labs has a bunch of Valentine’s Day decor in the storage room? I only had to buy the balloons.” “H.R,” Caitlin reminisced, remembering he was before Ralph’s time. That was the last time they did anything like this, even though that was for his eccentric Friends Day. It was a pretty similar concept. H.R. even made them all cards. She thought H.R. and Ralph would have gotten along. “Huh? Star Labs Human Resources?” “No no. A man we used to work with. That was his name.” “Oh. Okay.” Caitlin swallowed. Was that jealousy? She winced at what was to follow. She really really hated deliberately causing people pain. She stared at her own hands, unable to look him in the face. “Look, Ralph—“ “Do you mind holding this for me?” It was a red streamer. She took it hesitantly, walking to the corner of the room he wanted her to hang it up. He unravelled the rest, going to the opposite end. It said ‘be mine be mine be mine be mine be mine be mine’ on it and Caitlin prayed this wasn’t some sort of subtext. “Ralph,” she found herself saying, pinning the streamer to the wall. “You’ve become a good man, and a great friend. I am very proud of you.” “I—Wow—“ “—And I’m so flattered that you think I’m breathtakingly beautiful, I really am. Your words touched my heart. But I don’t have feelings for you and I never will. I’m sorry.” The streamer fell to the floor between them, slipping out of Ralph’s extended hand. He stared at her with his mouth hanging open. She left the streamer half taped up, walking to him. She took his hand after hesitating, unsure if he could handle her touch. “Ralph, please forgive me. I know how it feels to love someone who doesn’t love you back the way you want.” He looked at their joint hands and pulled his away. “I’m not in love with you, Caitlin.” Caitlin’s lips parted but no sound came out. Ralph waved a hand over her face. “Hellooooo? You need me to say it again? I’m not in love with you. Stop looking like you’re in a tank with King Shark.” Caitlin blinked, coming back to herself. “No! But that’s not possible! You have to be!” Ralph chuckled, tilting his head. “Uh?” She listed all of her points on her fingers, “You think what I wear is pretty, and you give me nicknames, and you came with me to interrogate my mom!” Ralph sat down on the couch, clearly needing some support. “One, I call you pretty because you are. So is Iris. And Cecile. And Nora. It’s just a fact, Caitlin, I don’t cry myself to sleep over it.” He shook his head, “Two, Cisco gives you nicknames first, I just copy him, and three, I’m both a detective and your friend. I do the nice things I can for you because I like you.” Caitlin opened her mouth to argue— “— As a friend. It’s like I said, before I met you guys I had nobody.” He reached for a new bag of balloons and took a deep breath to blow one up. “But you wrote me that wonderful letter!” Ralph gasped, a blast of air attacking his esophagus. He coughed as the balloon noisily flew to the floor. “Oh. Oh no. Oh no no no no no. I swear you were not my Valentine’s Day Lottery.” This was an absolute disaster. Ralph swore to himself, appalled, “Damnit, I broke the rules to my own damn game.” Caitlin was so frustrated she felt like she was about to cry. Her hands went to her hair, extremely close to pulling at it, desperate. “Ralph, if it wasn’t you, then who was it?” “Your card was romantic?” She nodded miserably. “I felt so special reading that message. Now I’m starting to wish I never got it.” Ralph grimaced. “Caitlin, you know I will never be as smart as you, but this is simple logic. I’m begging you. Please just think about this.” She sank down on the couch next to him, burying her head in her hands. “Ralph I’m so embarrassed. Can we please please forget that this conversation ever happened?” He checked her side with his shoulder, nearly knocking her over. “Done, sister.” She spared him a glance, still blushing red with mortification. “Thank you,” she whispered. “I guess I’m glad I’m not breaking your heart.” Ralph shrugged, “I mean, if you did, I have my book to get me through it. It works every time.” Caitlin huffed a laugh staring at her hands in her lap. “The Book of Ralph never fails.” “Wait…” Ralph said. Caitlin looked up. “Are you in love with someone?” Caitlin’s throat went dry and she immediately broke eye contact, reaching for the deflated pink balloon left abandoned where it landed. She stretched the latex in her hands, jittery. “No. Why?” Ralph pointed at her triumphantly. “Ha! Frost lies the exact same way!” “No,” Caitlin said again on reflex, then wished she could stuff those words back into her mouth. “Yes, she does. What, are we just going to pretend you didn’t tell me you know how it feels to have unrequited love?” “That’s not what I said,” she insisted, “I said I know how it felt to be vulnerable!” Ralph was looking way too amused for Caitlin’s comfort. “That’s not what you said.” She should’ve kept quiet. She should have ran out of there the moment she realized she grossly screwed up with Ralph and her letter. Caitlin jumped up, snapping her fingers, desperately wanting to change the subject. And then she realized, she didn’t have to. “Unrequited love! That’s it! It’s Sherloque.” Ralph stared at her. And she didn’t like it. Couldn’t stand the fear creeping over her skin at Ralph possibly learning her secret. “...You lost me.” “Sherloque. He’s trying to get over Renee with me.” She made a face. “Oh dear.” Ralph shared her cringe. “Shirley? The hots for you? Really?” Caitlin sighed. Somehow she felt breaking it to Sherloque that she didn’t want to be his cherie wouldn’t be so bad. “Let’s get it over with.” “Me?” Ralph exclaimed, “I can’t go anywhere. I have heart shaped cookies in the oven.” Caitlin groaned, forcing herself to shuffle out of the lounge. “Wish me luck, Ralph.” “Uh, yeah. You sure need it.” ♡ Cisco saw a blur of red knit, and called out to stop Caitlin from twisting an ankle. “Caitlin! Did you, uh, talk to Ralph?” She didn’t stop running, but her voice carried down the corridor as she tossed her head over her shoulder after passing him. “I’m so sorry, Cisco, we’ll talk later, I have to go!” He stood there trying to understand what happened, pretty sure he had whiplash. There was only so much more of this Cisco could handle before he’d explode. ♡ He does, in fact, explode. ♡ “Barry!” Cisco all but marched into the Speed Lab minutes later, where Barry was running laps. Barry came to a screeching halt in front of Cisco. “Yeah?” “I”m done,” he burst out, vibe blasting one of the Star Labs coat racks in the corner where they kept their workout crewnecks. The stand went crashing to the floor. Cisco blasted it again, releasing his pent up frustration, and it went rolling. “She thinks it’s Ralph. She thinks it’s fucking Ralph.” Barry was still panting, hands on his knees. Cisco side-eyed Barry’s dramatics. He was the fastest man alive, Cisco would have to be paid a quarter million dollars to believe that actually tired Barry out. Barry made an incredulous noise. “She thinks you wrote the letter for Ralph?” “No! She doesn’t know that I wrote the letter at all!” Barry stood up straight, aghast. “What?” Cisco sat down on the steps, defeated. “She’s my best friend and she didn’t think for one second it could be me.” “Maybe it wasn’t clear enough.” “I threw up rainbows on that thing. Barry, I poured my heart out. It couldn’t be clearer.” “Well, yes, but it doesn’t have your name on it.” Cisco sulked. Barry carted his hand through his hair, trying to come up with ideas. “Buy her roses!” He exclaimed. “A dozen! Sing her Frank Sinatra? And a parade!” Cisco’s voice was dead flat. “A parade?” Barry zipped away. He returned with a single red rose. He threw it at Cisco. His aim was way off, but Cisco reached forward and caught it between two fingers when he stretched. “It’s the last one in Central City. I just checked.” Cisco studied the flower. It was velvet to the touch, red with a water droplet or two hidden in a crevice. “What if she doesn’t love me, Barry?” Barry was quick to sit next to his best friend, ready to pull up the pep talk he’s had saved for this moment for many years. “Dude, come on. You’re the most important person in her life.” “That doesn’t mean she loves me,” Cisco snapped. “I thought I was ready to deal with it when I wrote the letter, but maybe I was kidding myself. Was probably still high on antihistamine.” His laugh was a little watery, and he glanced at the clock. “I thought we’d be together by now.” Barry stopped and levelled him straight. “Did you mean the things you wrote about her?” “Of course I did.” “And do you still now?” “Barry, yes. Look, this isn’t about Ralph’s game, or Valentine’s Day. It’s bigger than that. It was a long time coming.” “Then that’s what you have to tell her. Straight up. Look her in the eyes and say, ‘Caitlin, I love you.’” Cisco nodded to himself, knowing it was true. But that didn’t make it easy, no matter how something as simple as how much she meant to him should be. He lifted his gaze and shared a secret with his best friend. “You know I’ve never told her that? I think I came up with everything under the sun these past few years except those exact three words.” “How come?” “They get stuck in my throat. I was always afraid that if I said it, even just in a friendly way, she’d see right through me, and know what I really mean. I’ve kept this buried for so long. It’s almost like, these feelings for her I’ve kept private are a part of me and I’ve tricked myself into pretending that’s where they belonged. But then I...I wrote the letter. Once it was all out on paper, I knew it would be impossible to go back to pretending.” Barry patted him on the back. “Cisco, take a chance. You already made it halfway, just take it home. Then you’d have done your part. The rest is up to her.” Cisco nodded, twirling the rose stem. Barry stood up, “Listen, I gotta go pick up Iris’s present before she comes back from the newspaper. Will you be alright?” Cisco closed his eyes, inhaling sharply through his nose, gathering his courage once again. “Yeah. I’m going to go find her.” ♡ Caitlin knocked on Sherloque’s station. He was squinting at a monitor, looking very concerned over some ancient greek symbols. “Ah, Dr. Snow, vas-y, come in.” He turned the computer off, giving her his full attention. She sat on a stool across from him. “How’s your day going, Sherloque?” “Fine, thanks to your kind words.” She blinked, having forgotten that he was her lottery pick. “You knew it was me,” she said, although she wasn’t quite sure why she was surprised. This was Sherloque, after all, he noticed these things in his sleep. “Bien sur,” he responded, “Those verb tenses were near perfect.” She ducked her head, “I tried.” He hummed, tapping his nose, “But you’re not here for that.” “No,” she replied. “Sherloque, did you write this letter?” She unearthed the card from her coat, handing it him. “Because if you did, I think we need to talk.” He took it from her, reading it as he stroked his beard. “Mon dieu,” he muttered. “This has so much passion.” Caitlin blushed. “Have you read it?” He asked rather bluntly. Caitlin huffed, affronted. “Of course I read it! I must have read it at least six times!” “Non,” he argued, “À la voix haut, Doctor Snow. Out loud. It will help you.” He raised an eyebrow challengingly, and their eyes locked, tense. This felt like a test. The crisp paper crinkled under her touch. She swallowed, staring down at it. “My dearest Caitlin,” she began, “It is late at night and I have written this twenty-five times, trying to say what I want to perfectly. It has only now dawned on me that I simply can’t. What I feel for you cannot be properly described with words. You are an enigma, Caitlin Snow. A breathtakingly beautiful, intelligent, lovely enigma.” She looked up, and Sherloque gestured for her to continue. She wasn’t sure she could. “Do you feel it yet?” Sherloque inquired. “Feel what?” “Tes rêves." “My dreams?” she translated, a little lost. This letter wasn’t about her dreams. And she wasn’t sure why, but something about Sherloque’s game wasn’t so nice. Still, she soldiered on. “Your hands are lethal, dangerous and cold and yet your eyes melt the hardest hearts. You breathe fire into my life but give frostbite to those you mistrust. I sit and wonder, how could the world’s kindest person be so bold and strong minded.” Her back was turned away from the door, facing Sherloque, so she didn’t see Cisco pass by in the hallway then stop abruptly at the door. She didn’t notice the rose in his hand, the way his mouth quirked up gently. She didn’t notice Sherloque tilting his hat in Cisco’s direction, satisfied with his successful deduction. She didn’t notice Cisco lean against the wall and close his eyes, listening to her talk. Caitlin wasn’t sure why her hands were shaking, why her voice started to crack, “You have taught my life’s greatest lessons. To love, not hate. To stand up when you want to cry. To fight for what you believe in until your dying breath. That good comes to those who wait. That even the worse winters have days of sun, and that you move on. You keep moving on.” “All I could ever hope for—“ Caitlin stumbled over the phrase, realizing she was no longer the only one reciting the letter. The hair on the back of her neck stood up, goosebumps running along her arms under her sweater dress. Someone was speaking along with her. Not Sherloque, who was sitting in front of her, deathly quiet. Not Iris, blocks away in her newspaper office. Not Ralph nearly burning the cookies upstairs. Not him or her or him, either. It was another voice. One she knew very well. Cisco restarted the line along with her, “All I could ever hope for is a life moving on, too.” Caitlin faltered, her throat constricting, heart pounding. She turned around, trembling, and there he was, pushing himself off the wall, coming forward. Her eyes fell back to the letter, and then there was harmony. “Laughing with you. Smiling with you. Saving the world with you. Saving every world with you.” Her cheeks were wet. She touched her face in shock, her own tears at her fingertips. Cisco approached her slowly, expecting her to back away. But she didn't. She couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything but stand still. Cisco took another step and Sherloque took his leave. He knew it off by heart, something inside her screamed, he said every word effortlessly. He said them clearly, strongly, but softly too. She couldn’t speak, but she didn’t have to anymore. Every moment with Cisco she could remember suddenly changed, and the rose-tinted glasses she stubbornly refused to wear opened her eyes, bringing her vision to focus. Every touch on her skin. Like the arms around her shoulder, his hands on her back, the caresses he gave her, his hip checks and how he always leaned to her side. Always sat next to her. Always stood by her. Like the way he always said ‘Us’ and ‘We’. The lingering hands, the deep soulful glances, his winks and grins. His nicknames. His compliments about her hair. His compliments about her everything, actually. How he ran to her the way Barry ran to Iris when fighting metas. How when he vibed with someone he grabbed their shoulder stiffly, but with her, they always clasped hands. How he said her name like it was reverent, sacred, like a prayer. Caitlin. Cait-lin. How after waking up in the Med Bay, her name was always the first on his lips. His sweet devotion and resounding faith in her, not because he saw her as his family, but because she was who he desired. Just like she dreamed and dreamed and dreamed and then pushed away for years now because it would never be. “We are seamless, and honestly do I believe I was made to exist with you. I think about all the memories I cherish, Caitlin, and there’s always you,” Cisco said, the last line coming out in a whisper. It fell silent. When Caitlin looked up, he was right there. Close enough for her to accept the rose, close enough that he could brush away the moisture from under her right eye with his thumb. She pressed the rose stem until her index finger pricked a thorn, but didn’t flinch, her regenerative healing ebbing the cut away. “You wrote it,” she finally said, dumbfounded. He hummed and inched closer, some hair falling in his face as he leaned in so that they were inches apart. “What does it mean?” “What do you think it means?” he murmured. His gaze kept flicking from her eyes down to her mouth and she licked her lips subconsciously. “Say it.” “I just did, Caitlin.” “I need you to say it,” she begged. “Caitlin,” Cisco took a deep shuddery breath. He was expressive, open, his heart on his sleeve. “I’m very much in love with you.” The sentence rang in Caitlin’s ears. A noise escaped from her throat, a quiet whimpered thing. He stepped back, having said his piece. He squeezed both her arms at her side warmly and said, “I’ll see you at the Lottery Reveal, okay?” She blinked and they were no longer a breath apart. This wasn’t a dream or a trick or something Caitlin made up or got wrong. This wasn’t a nightmare or a meta or the speed force or a time remnant or a broken timeline or another earth. These were Cisco’s words both in writing and from his very lips, his revealed heart and soul and body and mind and everything in between. And he loved her. “Wait!” she yelped, unfreezing, realizing he was going away. He turned around and she ran to him, throwing her arms around his neck. Cisco hugged her, and she couldn’t help but breathe him in, his strong arms wrapped around her waist. Caitlin buried her face into his hair where it fell over his shoulder, just breathing, feeling his heart beating against her chest for a very long time. He held her tightly, and she was shaking because she was overwhelmed. She couldn’t believe it. The rose fell to the floor and the letter crumpled slightly, smushing against Cisco’s back in their embrace. Eventually the letter joined the flower on the ground as Caitlin forced herself to pull back. It was ridiculously difficult, like tearing two magnets apart. She drank in the crease in his forehead, his jaw, his eyelashes and the beautiful eyes they framed, his cheekbones and then his lips. Her hands trailed up the sides of his face, grazing his soft skin and she saw the effect she had on him, she saw the way he melts. She tilted her head closer and then he was gasping into her mouth. He cupped the back of her head, right below her ponytail, fingers tangling into the baby hair at the nape of her neck. The kiss broke softly, and then there was nothing but the pounding in their ears. Their eyes met, hers shining, his blown back and wide and Caitlin couldn’t help the exceptional smile that naturally followed. He searched her face for something, for an answer to his very important question, and it was up to her to grant it. So she did. She nodded and it was like something in Cisco shattered, his reserve or his years of self-control and he lurched forward, yanking her to him so hard she bent backwards, stumbling and then somehow he had her against the wall, really having his way. His kisses were wild and desperate and Caitlin tried to keep up, drowning in the new sensation of doing this with Cisco, of being ravished and loving every single second of it. He was talking. Mumbling things into her skin as he pushed her hair back, kissing up the slope of her neck. Things like her name and his secrets. Caitlin let out a small cry, thumping her head back against the wall, thrumming under his touch. He stopped and moved his hand to where she bumped her head, pulling away. “Sorry, sorry,” he rushed, fingers feeling for bruises. “You okay? Does it hurt?” She shook herself off and pushed him, kissed him more, walking them forwards, kissing him deeply, kissing him the way he made her feel, hot and loved and alive. Cisco slowed, but Caitlin kept chasing, addicted, stealing kisses from him until it was impossible because he was starting to laugh. He dug his fingers into Caitlin’s hair, blowing a puff of air against her cheek. She felt weak, lightheaded, like she hadn’t ate all day, but this woozy, dizziness was just about the best thing that has ever happened to her. “What’s so funny?” she asked, giggling as his frame shook. “You thought it was Ralph!” Caitlin bit her lip, heat rising, not knowing what to say. “How could you not think it was me?” He was teasing her, but she could detect the hurt beneath the words. She didn’t answer right away and he immediately subdued. She stepped backwards so that he could see her face, and picked up her precious letter from off the floor. “Because,” she said seriously. “Thinking it was Iris and being wrong was confusing. Believing it was Ralph and getting that wrong was embarrassing. With Sherloque it was a relief. ” She let herself be sensitive, honest with both him and herself for once. Her voice wobbled. “But if it was you, Cisco, who I was convinced about, if it was you and I was wrong. That would have broken me. That would have hurt so much.” She was welling up with tears again. “So I didn’t let myself think it at all.” His face softened. “Because,” she continued, “I thought I accepted some time ago that just being your Caitlin, your best friend, would be enough to get me by, but that’s just not true.” “Caitlin,” he said. “I didn’t know. I wish I did. I should’ve just told you in the beginning when you didn’t get it. I’m sorry.” She shook her head, reaching for him again. “I was silly to think it could be anyone but you.” She let herself be kissed, her eyes fluttering closed, smiling against his lips. “The party's just about to— Woaaaah.” They sprang apart, caught. “Guess you found out who was in love with you after all, huh, Caitlin?” Caitlin blushed, and Cisco pulled her to his chest, glaring. “Go away Ralph,” he all but growled. “We’re going home.” “You can’t go home!” he exclaimed, “It’s the Valentine’s Day Lottery Reveal! You have to show up. Tell him, Caitlin.” They both ganged up on Cisco, giving him matching pleading looks. “The cookies, Cisco,” she pouted. “And you need to guess who wrote yours!” He was unable to resist her, not with the way she snuggled closer, blinking her eyelashes up at him. “Wow okay, you’re playing dirty and I don’t know how I feel about it.” Caitlin twirled a lock of her hair from the ponytail all askew, “You wanna see me play dirty? Come with me to the party and you’ll find out,” she flirted, not knowing where the hell that came from or even meant, but the way his pupils widened gave her a pretty good idea that Cisco liked it. “Fine!” he exclaimed, throwing his hands up. “Fine, we’ll go to the Lottery Reveal!” Caitlin and Ralph cheered. ♡ Cisco was feeding Caitlin heart shaped, red dyed cookies at the island in the lounge as Ralph clapped his hands. “I’ll go first, Barry thank you for your card.” Barry laughed, “Nah, dude. Wasn’t me. I know you’re mine though.” “How’d you know it was him?” Iris asked where she was sitting on Barry’s lap, still admiring the necklace he bought her. “It said ‘thank you for saving me from DeVoe.’” He gave Ralph a very pointed look. Ralph scoffed, “That could’ve been anyone here.” “Bien non. But it was you,” Sherloque interjected playing with a balloon. “Are we wrong?” “No,” said Ralph, shaking his strawberry shake. “So then who wrote mine?” “Moi!” Sherloque said, stealing the last cookie from the plate. “Puis la mademoiselle Caitlin wrote mine.” Caitlin smiled around her mouthful, half distracted as Cisco’s fingers brushed the crumbs off her lips. She wasn’t even sure he was paying any attention to what was going on around them at all. “And we all know who wrote Caitlin’s,” Iris said, and they all turned around to stare at them. Caitlin swallowed the last bit of cookie and kissed Cisco’s cheek. “Yes, well. It might’ve taken me all day but at least I got a boyfriend out of it.” “Hell yeah you did,” Cisco responded. He took her hand and tangled their fingers together, kissing it. “Who do you think had you, Cisco?” Ralph prompted him. Cisco didn’t hear him, and Caitlin had to nudge him out of his lovesick stupor. “Huh?” “Your Valentine,” Caitlin reminded him, touching his face. “You,” he gushed. Caitlin’s cheeks burned as Team Flash laughed. “No, sweetheart, I mean who wrote your letter?” Iris, having had enough of this whole game the moment she found out her husband rigged the lottery, rose her voice. “It was me! I wrote his letter! Not that he’ll even remember it. You’re welcome, Cisco.” She stood up and pulled Barry off the chair, dragging him out the room. “Party’s over. I really want to go home with my husband, can we leave now?” ♡ When Cisco vibed Caitlin to his apartment, she was surprised to find the dining table all nicely set up. “Is this for me?” He hummed and turned on the stove to heat the food. “It’s like I said on Tuesday,” he said, pointing his wooden spoon at the chair for her to sit down. He pushed her in and gave her a fancy tablecloth to place over her lap. “I had special plans.” “Oh,” Caitlin replied, feeling a little stupid. She watched him pull out a bottle of wine and light some candles. “What would you have done if this didn’t go well?” Cisco folded his arms over his chest. “Then I would’ve had a very awkward Valentine’s Day date with Ralph.” He came forward and sat across from her at the table. Caitlin couldn’t help giggling at that image, of Ralph stuck in her place, and cursed it ever crossing Cisco’s mind. He watched her as she laughed into her napkin, eyes full of light. She sobered and placed her chin in her hand, elbow next to her cutlery, mirroring Cisco’s look of incandescent happiness. It fell silent, and Cisco’s dinner simmered on the stove. “Lucky Ralph,” she whispered. Cisco’s face glowed amber in the candlelight. It was playful and ardent and hot. “No.” His finger went under her jaw, tilting it up slightly. Caitlin’s breath caught in her throat, holding his burning gaze until the moment she surrendered, eyelashes fanning closed as she was kissed and he murmured, “Lucky me.”

Before-bed replies. :)

For @emeraldfalconsims, @tamtam-go92, @scibirg, @didilysims, @penig, @ssatinn, @immerso-sims, and @fuzzyspork...

emeraldfalconsims replied to your link “ModTheSims - (Updated!) Mood Swing + Midlife Crisis”

Tbh, I looked at those and was immediately turned off by the terrible English in the popups. I wouldn't care if it was just the post itself, but I'm the kind of person who wants mods to fix the EAxis grammar errors, soooo...

I get you, but...Really, that's all easily fixable. One just needs to find and rewrite the text strings. I've done that often, especially when I used to use custom careers in my game, many of which included chance cards littered with badly-worded and grammatically-incorrect text written by obviously-not-native-English-speakers. This particular modder is obviously not a native English-speaker and obviously not fully fluent in the language, but I'm all kinds of tolerant when that's the case. With EA? Not so much, but even with them? We all make mistakes and typos from time to time that are missed in the editorial process, even when that process involves multiple people. Also, I'm well aware that my own grammar when yakking online and in forum/blog posts and things like that is far from perfect -- often deliberately so because, let’s face it, “speaking” with perfect grammar just “sounds” weird and/or unbearably pretentious -- so I try to be neither a pedant nor a hypocrite on the subject.

Anyway, yeah...Text strings be totes fixable, m'friend. ;)

tamtam-go92 replied to your link “ModTheSims - (Updated!) Mood Swing + Midlife Crisis”

Those Sound like really great Modus but im always a bit nervous about adding stuff like that to my game...

I am, too, mostly because I already use hundreds of mods in my game, so the outcome of adding new ones, especially those that alter lots of things, is always uncertain. 

So, what I do is have a testing neighborhood that I don’t care about. Its associated downloads folder contains a copy of just the Mods folder from my “real” game. I put the new mod in and play with it a bit in debug mode, see if I get error messages or if menu options go missing or any other stuff that’s a symptom of mod conflicts. If I do, I change loading order to see if that fixes the issues. If it does, then I copy the testing Mods folder back over to the folder in my “real” game. If it doesn’t, then I either don’t use the new mod or, if it’s something I really want, I run the Hack Conflict Detection Utility to see if it can tell me what the conflicting mod(s) is/are, and then I decide which I want more. And if the HCDU doesn’t give me any useful info, then I 50/50 until I find the conflicts and then decide between mods. Anyway, this way I find out if I can use the new mod along with those I already have without the possibility of doing any damage to any neighborhood I care about.

tamtam-go92 replied to your photoset “More random captioned pics because, basically, this is a household...”

Hopefully the girls will be old enough when Amalia dies...

Margo was like a day or two away from teenhood when those pics were taken, so no problem. :)

scibirg replied to your post “I'm excited about the olympics too! Especially ski jumping. I love to...”

Did you see the ladies ski jumping? Brave girls!

Honestly, most of the winter events involve bravery. Well, except curling, I guess. *laugh* I guess the worst that can happen with that is you drop a 40-lb rock on your foot or maybe slip and fall on your butt. :) And I guess the cross-country skiing is more physically-taxing than actually dangerous. And I guess the figure skating isn’t that risky, although some of those things that the pairs skaters do look more than a little scary for the female partner. But yeah, the ski-jumpers and downhill skiers and sliders and speed-skaters and snowboarders are all completely nutty in adrenaline-junkie ways that I totally identify with. :D

scibirg replied to your post “dunne-ias replied to your post: I’m excited about...”

Slalom is from Norwegian, meaning ski track with turns. In Norwegian cross-country skiing is called "langrenn" meaning long slide. Probably due to it being used for travelling long distances.

ssatinn replied to your post “dunne-ias replied to your post: I’m excited about...”

We call Nordic skiing "längdskidor" - direct translation would be "long ski". Alpine skiing we call "slalom", no idea where that word comes from though..

Hm, interesting! So in Swedish, any type of downhill skiing is called “slalom?” Because in English that word is reserved for the type of downhill skiing where you’re zig-zagging in a pattern through gates -- as the Norwegian word would imply -- not the kind where you’re just shooting straight down the hill. Or does Swedish have a different word for that, too?

I don’t know why I find stuff like this so interesting, but I do. :) Maybe I shoulda been a linguist or something...

didilysims replied to your post “I'm excited about the olympics too! Especially ski jumping. I love to...”

Woo Olympics! I find just watching the events gives me an adrenaline rush. Watching luge reruns today had me all "oh my-ing" and "oh no-ing" and actually jumping out of my seat a few times. Love those crazy dangerous downhill events. :D

OMG, that poor American luge-slider today! Did you see that? Quite the wipeout she had. Even so, I sooooooooooooooo want to luge. Like, if I could just go and do it once, like how people go skydiving, I totally would. Buuuuuut I suppose it’s something you actually have to learn how to do before you lay on a minimalist sled and zoom down a track of ice at ungodly speeds... :)

emeraldfalconsims replied to your post “I'm excited about the olympics too! Especially ski jumping. I love to...”

It's too bad that marksmanship is so tied in practical applications to killing. It was so empowering for me when I discovered a sport I was actually naturally good at.

That's not really the case, though. I mean, maybe it is in the mind of Joe Q. Public that's been fed a daily diet of crazy people killing other people mixed with glamorized violence in "entertainment," but beyond that, the practical application of marksmanship isn't killing (either people or other animals) but rather marksmanship competitions. Aside from niche things like biathlon, there are all sorts of local, regional, state, and national marksmanship competitions that happen throughout the year, regulated by their own governing bodies. I used to do 3-gun competitions, myself. 

Marksmanship isn't about killing anything because when you get down to it, hunting animals -- or even killing a person, if that’s your goal for whatever reason -- doesn't require sharpshooting levels of accuracy, certainly not with automatic weapons. (With those, you just kind of squeeze the trigger and try to hold on while pretending the thing is a garden hose. I don’t like them; I like precision.) Killing just requires doing enough damage, and you can do that without being at all accurate. Marksmanship's about consistent accuracy, often under pressure. Which can have applications in killing things, and can make you better at killing things (ideally things that are legal to kill, of course) but that's not what it's about. I wish more people would realize that. And I wish the NRA would GTFO, but that’s an entirely different subject.

penig replied to your post “Do you know why some custom doors and arches doesn't work in apartment...”

Custom content that was made before AL came out doesn't update and confuses the already-confused apartment code. To reduce annoyance I tend to use Maxis doors and arches inside exclusively. Windows are no problem.

Good to know. :) I guess I never really noticed because I don’t build apartments all that often. Mostly because I think furnishing them is mind-numbingly boring. :) And even when I do build them, I mostly use Maxis interior doors, often add-ons like centered-on-two-tile versions of a Maxis door, but since those use Maxis coding, I’m guessing they don’t present a problem in this regard.

immerso-sims replied to your post “The feel-good song meme. :)”

Thanks. I tried searching for happy songs in my iTunes collection, but I realised I am a total sad/dark/melancholic/whatever songs lover, so I'll pass on the meme :D

HAH! :) But hey, if a sad/melancholy song makes you feel better, I suppose that actually counts as a feel-good song! :)

fuzzyspork replied to your post “Big long reply post about...lots of stuff”

I've had both the high witches (excluding the neutral one because they are apparently very anti-social) on a community lot at the same time several times. If a Sim interacts with whichever arrives first then when enough time passes the other witch will usually show up. I think they must have negative relationship by default, so I've seen them fight! Fisticuffs style though. This is where magic would have been awesome. :/

Really? I don’t think I’ve ever had more than one high witch on a community lot, even when I’ve had playable stay on them for multiple days at a time, like when I send them on a weekend camping trip or what-have-you. Maybe it’s because I pretty much never have Sims interact with the high witches, since I use other means to have Sims become witches? Maybe I should try interacting with them... Although if there’s just fisticuffs as opposed to zapping each other with magic, I suppose there’s not much point. Then it’s just yet another fight between non-playables.

Advanced Fat Loss - Part I: Calorie Cycling

Calorie cycling is essentially a zigzag routine - you eat a very low number of calories for three days, then spend one day cramming your face full of a huge amount of calories (or two days, if you're already pretty lean.) On the day that you eat a lot, you also want to have a really heavy strength-training day to benefit from the extra calories - this is usually the best day to work out either your back or your legs, since these are the two largest muscle groups in your body.

The idea behind calorie cycling is pretty simple - you want to lighten up the caloric load on a non-workout or "light" workout days, ramp up the caloric load on "tough" workout days, and all the while, maintain healthy levels of the "nutrient transport" hormone known as insulin.

Why We Need To Manage Insulin On A Zig-Zag Routine

We've already discussed insulin in-depth, but there are a few points that need to be rehashed here.

Most people know that insulin is the chemical released by our pancreas that helps us break down sugars. Most of us also know that diabetics don't make enough of this chemical (or their body isn't sensitive enough to it) which leads to potentially life-threatening surpluses or deficits of sugar in the blood.

But insulin does a lot more than maintain sugar.

It also has huge anabolic and energy benefits, provided your body makes enough of it, and that your body is sensitive enough to it that it can actually use the insulin it's making (which is why most us start on an "insulin reset" phase).

When you calorie-cycle, you put your body through intense periods of low insulin, making your body starved for the chemical (and thereby radically increasing your sensitivity to it.)

And then, on the day when you eat a high amount of calories again, your body will be so sensitive to the amount of insulin produced by your now well-rested pancreas that you'll get all of the chemical's muscle-building and energy-giving benefits.

How to Do A Calorie-Cycling Routine For Fat Loss & Some Muscle Gain

     You already know how to determine your BMR and find your TDEE, so when calorie cycling, you can use these metrics to know how low to go (and how high to pop back up on high calorie days.)

     If you're looking for the most possible fat loss, while still gaining some muscle, I highly recommended having 3 straight "low" days, followed by 1 "high" day, followed by 3 more "low days".

     If you're below 15% body fat, you can do 3 "low days" followed by 2 "high" days, followed by 3 more "low days".

     Note: You can also test out eating high or low calorie based on whether you workout or not. This is a more advanced method and especially for fat loss, requires you to be in varying levels of a deficit throughout the plan. That said, I personally find that a simple "3 low, 1 high" program is easiest to adapt to and far more convenient.

 Interested in losing weight? Then click below to see the exact steps I took to lose weight and keep it off for good...

Read the previous article about "Putting It All Together"

Moving forward, there are several other articles/topics I'll share so you can lose weight even faster, and feel great doing it.

Below is a list of these topics and you can use this Table of Contents to jump to the part that interests you the most.

Topic 1: How I Lost 30 Pounds In 90 Days - And How You Can Too

Topic 2: How I Lost Weight By Not Following The Mainstream Media And Health Guru's Advice - Why The Health Industry Is Broken And How We Can Fix It

Topic 3: The #1 Ridiculous Diet Myth Pushed By 95% Of Doctors And "experts" That Is Keeping You From The Body Of Your Dreams

Topic 4: The Dangers of Low-Carb and Other "No Calorie Counting" Diets

Topic 5: Why Red Meat May Be Good For You And Eggs Won't Kill You

Topic 6: Two Critical Hormones That Are Quietly Making Americans Sicker and Heavier Than Ever Before

Topic 7: Everything Popular Is Wrong: The Real Key To Long-Term Weight Loss

Topic 8: Why That New Miracle Diet Isn't So Much of a Miracle After All (And Why You're Guaranteed To Hate Yourself On It Sooner or Later)

Topic 9: A Nutrition Crash Course To Build A Healthy Body and Happy Mind

Topic 10: How Much You Really Need To Eat For Steady Fat Loss (The Truth About Calories and Macronutrients)

Topic 11: The Easy Way To Determining Your Calorie Intake

Topic 12: Calculating A Weight Loss Deficit

Topic 13: How To Determine Your Optimal "Macros" (And How The Skinny On The 3-Phase Extreme Fat Loss Formula)

Topic 14: Two Dangerous "Invisible Thorn" Foods Masquerading as "Heart Healthy Super Nutrients"

Topic 15: The Truth About Whole Grains And Beans: What Traditional Cultures Know About These So-called "Healthy Foods" That Most Americans Don't

Topic 16: The Inflammation-Reducing, Immune-Fortifying Secret of All Long-Living Cultures (This 3-Step Process Can Reduce Chronic Pain and Heal Your Gut in Less Than 24 Hours)

Topic 17: The Foolproof Immune-enhancing Plan That Cleanses And Purifies Your Body, While "patching Up" Holes, Gaps, And Inefficiencies In Your Digestive System (And How To Do It Without Wasting $10+ Per "meal" On Ridiculous Juice Cleanses)

Topic 18: The Great Soy Myth (and The Truth About Soy in Eastern Asia)

Topic 19: How Chemicals In Food Make Us Fat (Plus 10 Banned Chemicals Still in the U.S. Food Supply)

Topic 20: 10 Banned Chemicals Still in the U.S. Food Supply

Topic 21: How To Protect Yourself Against Chronic Inflammation (What Time Magazine Calls A "Secret Killer")

Topic 22: The Truth About Buying Organic: Secrets The Health Food Industry Doesn't Want You To Know

Topic 23: Choosing High Quality Foods

Topic 24: A Recipe For Rapid Aging: The "Hidden" Compounds Stealing Your Youth, Minute by Minute

Topic 25: 7 Steps To Reduce AGEs and Slow Aging

Topic 26: The 10-second Trick That Can Slash Your Risk Of Cardiovascular Mortality By 37% (Most Traditional Cultures Have Done This For Centuries, But The Pharmaceutical Industry Would Be Up In Arms If More Modern-day Americans Knew About It)

Topic 27: How To Clean Up Your Liver and Vital Organs

Topic 28: The Simple Detox 'Cheat Sheet': How To Easily and Properly Cleanse, Nourish, and Rid Your Body of Dangerous Toxins (and Build a Lean Well-Oiled "Machine" in the Process)

Topic 29: How To Deal With the "Stress Hormone" Before It Deals With You

Topic 30: 7 Common Sense Ways to Have Uncommon Peace of Mind (or How To Stop Your "Stress Hormone" In Its Tracks)

Topic 31: How To Sleep Like A Baby (And Wake Up Feeling Like A Boss)

Topic 32: The 8-step Formula That Finally "fixes" Years Of Poor Sleep, Including Trouble Falling Asleep, Staying Asleep, And Waking Up Rested (If You Ever Find Yourself Hitting The Snooze Every Morning Or Dozing Off At Work, These Steps Will Change Your Life Forever)

Topic 33: For Even Better Leg Up And/or See Faster Results In Fixing Years Of Poor Sleep, Including Trouble Falling Asleep, Staying Asleep, And Waking Up Rested, Do The Following:

Topic 34: Solution To Overcoming Your Mental Barriers and Cultivating A Winner's Mentality

Topic 35: Part 1 of 4: Solution To Overcoming Your Mental Barriers and Cultivating A Winner's Mentality

Topic 36: Part 2 of 4: Solution To Overcoming Your Mental Barriers and Cultivating A Winner's Mentality

Topic 37: Part 3 of 4: Solution To Overcoming Your Mental Barriers and Cultivating A Winner's Mentality

Topic 38: Part 4 of 4: Solution To Overcoming Your Mental Barriers and Cultivating A Winner's Mentality

Topic 39: How To Beat Your Mental Roadblocks And Why It Can Be The Difference Between A Happy, Satisfying Life And A Sad, Fearful Existence (These Strategies Will Reduce Stress, Increase Productivity And Show You How To Fulfill All Your Dreams)

Topic 40: Maximum Fat Loss in Minimum Time: The Body Type Solution To Quick, Lasting Results

Topic 41: If You Want Maximum Results In Minimum Time You're Going To Have To Work Out (And Workout Hard, At That)

Topic 42: Food Planning For Maximum Fat Loss In Minimum Time

Topic 43: How To Lose Weight Fast If You're in Chronic Pain

Topic 44: Nutrition Basics for Fast Pain Relief (and Weight Loss)

Topic 45: How To Track Results (And Not Fall Into the Trap That Ruins 95% of Well-Thought Out Diets)

Topic 46: Advanced Fat Loss - Calorie Cycling, Carb Cycling and Intermittent Fasting

Topic 47: Advanced Fat Loss - Part I: Calorie Cycling

Topic 48: Advanced Fat Loss - Part II: Carb Cycling

Topic 49: Advanced Fat Loss - Part III: Intermittent Fasting

Topic 50: Putting It All Together

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