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theateared · 4 years

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You Can Stay if You Like. ❜

Summary: Sometimes, you can’t control what sticks with you.

He didn’t lie to her.

‘’Not nightmares. Memories.’’

The simple fact was that he didn’t need to have nightmares. Whenever those hazy recollections replayed themselves in his head, he was painfully aware of the fact that they did not belong to the fictional realm that most dreams did. Those fingernails that I found under the sink three weeks after the investigation were hers. The locks of hair I found stuffed in my pillow after two months of grieving were his. The pain I had to carry around for the rest of my life, even long after I murdered that motherfucker, was mine.

Edgar awoke with a startled jolt, his trip down memory lane cut short by consciousness’ clean blade. His heart thundered in his chest, arms reflexively tightening around his mate as he struggled to breathe. It wasn’t often that he awoke so suddenly. Most of the time, he suffered only a brief interval of disorientation before phasing into the real world naturally, a poignant sense of relief following neatly every time. It was different now; his hands were pawing desperately along his lover’s body, eager to feel all of her limbs in place.

The disturbance triggered her to wake up, struggling against his vice grip, and it made him panic, made him cling tighter. “H-Hey, what’s going on, what’s wrong?” She would have thrown an accusatory comment his way had he not been heaving for air, the hands all over her body unwarranted when she wasn’t awake to tell him what was acceptable and what wasn’t, but she quickly deduced that his hold had nothing to do with desire. It was as if she’d come in a box, like a wooden doll in need of constructing, and he was desperately trying to slot her pieces into place. She winced as his claws unwittingly sank into her arm, like dirt he was desperately scrabbling for purchase in. With a sharp gasp: “Eddie, you’re hurting me…!”

The words made him fall still, as if her voice alone had penetrated the noise with no effort at all. Though his arms remained around her like a snake, his claws retracted, traces of blood dim beneath his nails. Her soft flesh came into focus then, her familiar body sending a cold chill through him as he realised what he’d done.

“Oh… oh no…”

His arms loosened enough for her to turn around in his grip. She did so slowly, afraid to set him off, still confused as to what was actually happening. When her palms rested on his cheeks, she found that they were clammy and hot, as if a fever had chewed its way through his system overnight. Though she could barely make him out in the dark of the inn room, her sense of hearing was acute and touching him was enough.

“It’s alright…” she whispered quietly, brushing strands of hair out of his face. He shook his head quickly.

“I hurt you--”

“It’s alright,” she reassured, tone firm but patient. She wasn’t used to her Alpha displaying such openly distressed behaviour. He was the type to let his pain age like wine, to laugh it off until it ate him alive; to feel him clutching her so desperately, holding her close as if he expected her to slip through his fingers like sand, made her heart ache. “What happened? What’s wrong?”

He didn’t know what he could say that would illustrate his grief effectively enough. In a rushed tone: “I don’t… I just need to know you’re alright. All together.”

Her brow furrowed in confusion, though she didn’t dwell on it. She didn’t have time to as he suddenly pushed himself out of the bed, feeling around in the dark for his clothes. Her ears perked as she heard the jagged end of his tail collide with the bed frame, then the dresser, futile fumbling apparent as he struggled to find anything of value. Eventually, he located his shirt, tucking it haphazardly over his arm before striding to the en-suite .

The knot in her stomach worsened, and after flicking the light on and sliding her underwear set into place, she approached the bathroom door and knocked quietly. When he didn’t reply, she took her chances and opened it, slowly revealing his form as she cracked it open further. She’d seen him naked quite a lot at this point, though she was always struck by how tall he was. Despite his eerie personality, he was perfectly proportionate, and the only thing that she hadn’t been expecting upon undressing him the first time was the myriad of scars that littered his upper body. They spanned along his arms like grass did a meadow, and his shoulder blades were home to two slightly-raised grooves-- as if he’d had wings in his past life.

You’ve put on weight while we’ve been together. I steadily convinced you to eat more, to stop sparing extra for everybody else in the vain hope that you could keep them all perfectly fed at all times.

He was fiddling with the water, body bent over the side of the bath in a manner that looked painful. She approached him warily, hands hovering momentarily before resting on his back and arm. It was as if he didn’t know she’d been there-- he jumped slightly when touched, tail making a dull fwap noise as it swatted sideways.

“Let me help, okay?” “I can run my own shower.”

Arguing wouldn’t have been good for either of them. Instead, she levelled him with a considerate look, slowly nodding before stepping forward to take over. Surprisingly, he followed her motion without complaint, standing aside while she messed with the temperature.

“Cold…” he rasped. “...I want it cold on my head.”

Her head bobbed with understanding, the heat turned down. She wouldn’t let him climb into a shower that resembled an ice bath, but he received his wish nonetheless. Eventually, the water resembled steady rainfall, chilly against her palm as she tested its warmth.

I still don’t know what’s wrong with you. You haven’t said a word about it.

She was distracted by Edgar clambering into the bath, hissing between his teeth when the cold water hit his skin. However, when he turned his head towards it, he let out an audible sigh of relief, eyes falling closed. The tremors slowly stopped, body soaked in a matter of seconds, his thick red hair flat against the side of his face and back. Had she not been so worried, she likely would have felt a spark of lust.

Hesitantly, she turned around to leave.

“You can stay if you like…” Edgar muttered, voice barely audible above the running water. A feeble smile shaped her lips as she slipped her undergarments off and climbed in with bated breath.

It was freezing in comparison to what she was used to, but when he tipped his head down to look at her, water clinging to his tall frame, she realised that she didn’t care. It doesn’t matter. I’m here for you. I wouldn’t care even if it gave me frostbite.

Though he’d made it explicitly clear that he could take care of himself, he didn’t stop her when he felt her hands on his body, his usual shower gel rubbed into his skin. He even raised his arms at one point, accommodating her thorough scrubbing without so much as a grumble. In truth, he was just relieved to see her before him like this. Feeling her hands on him had him sinking back to solid ground, hammering heart settling like a dead cicada in his chest, shrill screaming now long void.

You’re okay. You’re not going to wind up like Brielle. You’re not going to be a repeat of that horrible atrocity. I won’t allow it, and neither will you. The only man who posed a threat to you has already been dealt with. You saw me do it. And with my scent on you, nobody will dare to threaten you like that again. If they do, I’ll kill them too.

“Feeling good…?” she asked softly. Though he felt quite horrible, he nodded his head.

They didn’t speak for the rest of their shower. She washed his hair for him and he did the same for her wound. They shared a passionate kiss, one that he didn’t think would unravel the way it did until she’d pressed herself close, seeking out his comfort plainly. He simply hadn’t been able to let go of her, afraid that once he did she’d be gone for good. Eventually, they got out together, her teeth chattering as he wrapped her up in one of the inn’s fluffy white towels like a baby kitten, tying one loosely around his waist afterwards.

My head feels much clearer. I still feel heavy, but I don’t feel like I’m going to die.

When they were dry, they exited the bathroom in search of the rest of their clothes, dressing themselves properly before they sat beside one another on the bed. If there was one thing she had come to realise about Edgar, it was that he looked much different when he shed his suit jacket. In just a button-down shirt, sitting in bed beside her, she could have mistaken him for her husband.

I hope that I see you in just a button-down for aeons longer. I like this cushy private life.

“... thank you,” he said levelly, afraid to look at her. “And I am sorry for hurting you.”

He graced her with eye contact as she rose, seating herself in his lap. Warm flesh against his cheek prompted him to look up at her, the compassion in her eyes reaching his cold soul just right. He basked in her love like a cat did sunlight, stretching himself thin in search of more.

“You don’t need to apologise…” she whispered, fingers stroking gently. Wet hair was swept aside so that she could hold his face properly. “... did you have a nightmare?”

“A memory.”

The response was familiar but no less harrowing. Seeing his state all but half an hour ago, she knew that whatever had plagued him was horrendous, something that even his twisted little head had had trouble filing away.

What happened to you? What have you been keeping inside all of these aeons? Who were you?

Her thumb stroked tenderly against his cheekbone. “...a memory of what?”

The silence between them hung like a cloud. As she stared at him, looking for clues while he refused to say a word, images flashed in his head. It cut to him finding the letter; to him throwing up violently all over the kitchen floor; to him finding as many pieces of his dead loved ones as possible and surrounding himself with them, sobbing on the phone to the police as he rocked in a pile of disconnected limbs and vomit. He hadn’t even been able to explain himself to the dispatcher. He’d just wailed, and retched, and wailed some more. At some point, they must have gotten his address from him for he was surrounded by police tape and officers, and something in his head had snapped. He felt it go, in fact, like an elastic band finally being stretched past its limit. As the investigation unfolded, he went from one extreme to the other: anguished cries and profuse upchucking to void, staring into space even when an officer shone a torch directly in his eyes.

Sir. We need to speak with you. We understand this is stressful, but until we’ve checked all of our boxes, you’re a suspect too. We just need to ask you some questions.

“... I recalled the night I lost my wife and son,” he answered. “They were murdered. By some sick fuck. I was a target too, originally, but I got called into my office for an impromptu campaign pitch and…” He stopped, inhaling sharply. Though he had tucked his feelings for his previous life away in a neat little cubicle, discussing the ins and outs of his case brought back a dull pang of nausea. For a brief moment, he felt guilty for sitting there with another woman in his lap. Is this what it feels like to cheat? “... they were brutalised. Completely. Fucked. Tortured. Cut open. Dismembered. Dismembered so finely that I still found pieces of them around my house long after the dust had settled.”

“O-Oh, God…”

“He left me a letter, detailing all he’d done. Though there were a couple of lies in there, the majority of it was true. There were signs of a struggle; semen samples; tiny fragments of makeshift weapons still lodged in body parts; and they were able to determine very basic, approximate times of death based on decomposition of the located limbs. It checked out with what he said: he made my boy watch all the horrible things he was doing to his mother, and then he did most of them to him.” He shook his head, eyes narrowing slightly. When he spoke, there was rage and heartbreak encased in the same voice: “Couldn’t even mercy-kill the poor kid…”

Grace had turned pale quite a while ago, nausea coiling up her throat like a snake. “... why?”

“Heh, well there’s the best part,” Edgar retorted bitterly, a hateful smile curling onto his face-- as if he was watching the person he hated the most burn alive right in front of him. There wasn’t a single trace of his usual flippancy in that sardonic curl of his lips. Even so, he approached the topic with a startling coldness, his explanations clinical and matter-of-fact-- as he was discussing somebody else’s tragedy. “You would think he’d have a pretty good reason to do that to a man’s wife and son, particularly when that son was a young child. But he did it to take things from me for my political beliefs.”

She was clearly stupefied by that. Her brow furrowed with equal amounts of confusion and hatred-- as if she couldn’t believe what he’d said.

Edgar scoffed quietly. “Mm. He took issue with my ‘’anarchist’’ stance.”

“What is ‘’anarchist?”

“Very basically, it’s somebody who believes in ‘’overthrowing’’ those in charge. Abolishing the systems that do not benefit you because you believe that they’re harmful.” When she slowly nodded, he continued: “... I was not an anarchist. I didn’t want to do stupid things like abolish the police force or overrule the High Court. I just wanted standard working people, like myself, to be paid a standard working wage, and I still don’t think that that was so evil. Huron almost had a civil war. I was alive then, and I had a foot in the door for political affairs. I wrote speeches for public figures. I helped build campaigns and advertised the desired party positively. I was originally anonymous, though as I became more coveted as a writer, I decided I wanted my name attached to my work. It was mine after all. By all accounts, I was an advocate for political virtue. But I disagreed with one thing. One thing.”

“The work thing…?” Grace asked quietly. Her heart was beating hard for reasons unknown. Her stomach was in knots-- as if she expected to come across a piece of information that upset everything inside of her at once, one that would send her rocketing to the en-suite and throwing up their dinner date in full.

“Mhm. I didn’t believe in people accepting their poor work conditions as irrefutable. I was for the strikes. I believed in staying away from work if it meant that people could get fair compensation. I stood behind their right to protest-- created slogans and art for them to print on billboards and signposts. Wrote speeches that detailed the desire for fair treatment in the workplace.” He realised that she didn’t really understand what he was talking about, and he decided to fill in the gaps for her. “That almost-civil war I mentioned was because of these unfair laws. It was the working class against the rich and powerful. Back then, it was perfectly acceptable to not pay an employee for their work, especially not if it was overtime. That in itself would have been fine had overtime been optional, but the corporate bosses were legally allowed to use their ‘’discretion’’ in order to determine who worked extra for nothing and for how long. I was a particular favourite because of my brain and my work ethic. I was promised money for my efforts, and at the time I obliged, thinking I could save it for my family, but I didn’t receive a penny of it. By the time I found out that I never would, it was too late. I’d already worked those weeks. I’d already sold them my free time, for no profit. I’d already promised my son a birthday gift that I could no longer afford to get him. So yes, I did agree that the law required some amendments. I agreed with people protesting. I even attended a few myself, made some public speeches, and was publicly smeared for doing so, but I didn’t care and kept going. All until this man decided, ‘You know what, FUCK this man, if he thinks that wages are so important then he doesn’t know what he’s got!’. I knew. I did everything for them-- the protests, the late shifts, the birthday gifts-- everything. I believed in change because of them, too. They kept me sane. They kept me grounded. Whenever I felt like I was spiralling out of control, they would be there to set me straight. I loved my wife more than words could express, and Augustus… Gods, I adored him. Still do. I can let go of my wife but I can’t let go of him, even now.”

She stared at him-- through him-- without a word to offer him. What could she say after all she’d been told? An apology would only fizzle out like infatuation. It was an empty word after all he’d endured.

Dear God… what do I do? My mind is reeling.

His hand distracted her from her stunned state, his cool skin nursing her pale complexion as he cupped it easily. He’d always been so much bigger than her in every sense of the word; his tall frame dwarfed hers completely, and his mind was so much more expansive than she had ever thought possible. She fancied herself as a clever woman, as somebody who knew what she was talking about more often than she didn’t, but she knew that she was nowhere close to where his intellect sat. Even so, he’d barely ever weaponised it. Whenever she’d asked him a question, he’d answered it; whenever she hadn’t been able to understand something he’d said, he rephrased it in words she could grasp without even being asked. She wasn’t dumb, she just wasn’t Edgar Strahv, and he made her feel okay with that.

“... but that isn’t the reason I awoke so troubled,” the Alpha murmured softly. “I’ve moved on with my life. My past life doesn’t haunt me. The bad revisits me on occasion, and it all crops up every so often, but it doesn’t plague my every thought. I’m a different person now. But I can’t stand seeing those things again because I don’t want to associate you with them. I don’t want you to be my deceased mate, the woman who was murdered because her lover was too busy for her. I see you now when those memories resurface. You’ve replaced Brielle. You occupy the space she once filled - and as such, you occupy her role in my dreams, too. I find pieces of you strewn around my tavern like confetti, and I cry. I cry a lot.”

Despite the severity of his confession, she couldn’t help but flush slightly. Though she knew it was cruel of her, she wouldn’t deny that she wanted to feel special to him. She didn’t want him to cling to his long-dead wife; didn’t want him to never let her into his heart fully because it was taken by somebody that he could never return to.

“... this is why you hover so much,” she mumbled softly.

“Yes,” he replied, thumb tenderly stroking along her cheekbone. “It’s also why I apologise for my duties so often. I fear you being left alone. I fear the day that I become busy with a task that costs your life. If I hadn’t gone into the office that night for some worthless political movement…” He cut himself off, teeth grit, a frustrated grimace replacing his typical smile. “... I would have either been able to stop it, or I’d have died with them. My life would’ve either continued as it should have or it would have ended as it should have. I wouldn’t have had to take justice into my own hands. I wouldn’t have tried to fill the empty space with worthless women. I wouldn’t have travelled the path I did.”

A lot of what he’d done was unspoken, and as long as he didn’t want to discuss it, she wouldn’t ask. Not only did she feel that it wasn’t her right to know, she didn’t want to be the reason that he was forced to relive all of those vile memories. She could only imagine how painful it was deep inside, like a wound that could never be sealed shut. Though he claimed he had moved on, she was suspicious of that.

“... I wasn’t a ‘bad person’ until all of that happened. Then I lost my way. And I refuse to lose myself again. If I lose you, Grace, it’s game over. I… can’t, do all of that again. And I don’t want to.” He smiled a strange smile, his other hand settling on her cheek and pulling her closer to him with a firmness that didn’t match the sincerity of the scene. A stuttered gasp caught in her throat, their noses touching delicately. “... so don’t. Die.” It almost felt like a threat, her head nodding slightly in agreement before he loosened his hold somewhat. “Or at least, if you’re going to, let me know. We can arrange it together.”

Before she could comprehend it, she had thrown her arms around his neck. She clutched him to her as if she was scared of him vanishing altogether-- as if he’d promised to commit suicide by dawn. Fiercely, she buried her face into his neck, seeking out his mate mark in the dark. Lips brushed against it softly, provoking a shiver, hands flitting to her waist as she held him tightly.

“We’re not going to die,” she whispered furiously, holding him close. “Not you or me. We’re going to be happy here together for as long as we like. Screw what you’re “supposed” to do ‘’as a hybrid’’. Gods can’t stop people who love each other from being together.”

He chuckled at that, something about the words tickling him. She almost sounded childish, though he knew that her indignation was nothing to scoff at. He’d fallen in love with that brazen side of her almost as immediately as he had her face.

I can’t see that die. Not ever.

His arms tightened around her, holding her in his lap defensively. He’d sit there like that for the rest of his days if it meant keeping her sheltered from the world. She’d already seen so much darkness… he didn’t need more looming over her.

“No,” he agreed, voice placative as he stroked through her hair. “No they can’t.”

#🞮 — if i could i'd trade my heart for a second brain. ❜ ( edgar. )#🞮 — that vixen��she's a master of disguise! ❜ ( grace. )#☆ — i never promised you your dream boy. ❜ ( main. )#☆ — i'm just here to destroy. ❜ ( ic. )#drabble *#/ hoooooooHOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHH

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killervibe · 5 years

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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.”

#killervibe #Valentine's day #the flash #Cisco ramon #Caitlin snow #tkv fic #fluff #holiday fic

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xjustifiedxsundaysx · 5 years

Text

Snuffed Out

WARNING FOR DISTURBING CONTENT. DO NOT READ IF YOU ARE TRIGGERED EASILY OR SENSITIVE TO GORE.

Big hands around his throat. Big, tan trucker hands with the calluses at the tips and a gold ring on the marital finger. Two busted knuckles congealed with blood for the right, four busted knuckles on the left, dotted with crimson. They were dry, cracked, tight and brute, wrapped around his lover's throat.

The sight of said lover was fading in and out of black and gray and white. Just a vicious cycle full of dreary colors and that burn in the cords in his neck. When Ted wanted to choke you, he was damn well going to make it his life goal.

Ted's eyes were a lovely, daunting gray. Epic and lively. At the same time, they were cloudy and nightmarish. They read a tale Donny knew he wouldn't make it to the end of. He was growling, grunting a deep guttural sound in intervals to the beat of his pelvic thrusts. His thighs were keeping him up mostly, flexed and Ohio white. The rest of his three-hundred-pound self was riding right in the center of Donny's throat.

They loved each other. It was a cruel sort of love that smelled like lunacy and lived with an expiration date. It was frigid and tasted like blood, inviting the more repulsive it should have been. It was very painful, the love they held. It was something hard to express outside what they were doing at present. Love was something foreign to Ted. It was alien with very miniscule purpose. He honestly wouldn't feel it at all, had Donny not hitchhiked eleven years ago on the side of an Alabama backroad. Thumb in the air, naive and very willing to latch on the first support beam in the temple. Ted was no support beam, and he hadn't touched his tip-toe on the grounds of the holy for so long, he didn't know what a temple was supposed to be.

The biggest attraction that roped the two together, was the silence. The silence that felt like television static, and sounded like nothing at all. The sizzling of the sun mouthed the routine of their days high above. The moon's pull hummed a grim sensual fairy tale far below. The stars, they sang. They sang a song only they knew. Ted and Donny knew the song rather well, because it felt like absolution, felt like impurity, sounded like knowledge and tasted like their mouths on one another. Their tongues dancing to the back beat of their hearts. Ted's ticker would skip a beat and Donny's would thump like the third hand of a possessed clock. The biggest attraction was the silence. It drew them closer to one another. Ted was always willing to listen to what Donny was never willing to say. He was willing to shelter that young supple soul under his wing, the light shining through the tattered feathers, the pale figure underneath shaking like a leaf. He was always willing to listen to the ladybug that wished to burn down his own home.

They played like this from time to time. Ted's hands squeezed and loosened, squeezed and let go. He used a blue scarf once, and that once was five days into the game, never again. He used a chain, twice, once on the seventh anniversary, another on a Sunday last July. He hated the welts they left in that pretty throat, so that adventure came to an abrupt end. Now, his hands were all he needed, and all Donny wanted. Let society believe what they wanted, when all the stereotypes hit the road, the shell was cracked and the truth spilt onto salty grounds. Ted loved Donny, as unreal as the emotion seemed, and he cared about what he wanted. He cared about what he thought, and nothing really severed the connection between them. They seldom fought. Sensitive moments came, a match lit, the suspense thick. The fire in their narrowed eyes ignited, and the heat lit up the world. No obnoxious window-rattling words of the wicked. Not a hand with the desire to strike. But they did... it, everywhere. They christened every bed and every set of sheets, they marked every piece of furniture and claimed all the walls. If the walls could speak, they'd narrate the irony and play it out with shadow puppets. They'd tell the tale of the time Donny clawed Ted's back out of paranoid instinct, air just a privilege he could not cease himself from wanting to lose, yet not understanding how to really successfully let it go. They'd be glad to spill the beans about how easy Ted hoisted his twenty-eight year old lover up and pressed him to the wall, all his inches inside and all the floorboards groaning. The positions, the hours, the days and the nights, all of them lined up and scraped their names in the paint. They were all unforgettable. All of them were Donny's dances with death. Some of the dances were waltzes, elegant and fashioned of sober intelligence. Ted knew when to tighten, when to wring, when to let Donny cry into his shoulder and hold him until the silence broke apart the past. Other times, the dance was violent with sharp twists of the hips, quick snaps to flesh, heavy breath and nothing to soften the blow. Ted would let him cry, because he liked to hear the effects. He liked to wear his face painted straight and his every tendon taut. He liked to say he was a beam. But he was just a man, that believed everyone had the right to choose how they loved.

Who was he to say this was wrong. Afterward, he never felt dirty. No twinge of guilt in his soul, no twang of regret in his heart strings. Now, he loomed over that swimmer's body, subconsciously collecting the memories of their many hours spent by the pool out back; how Donny got that body. He saw the sweat become cool clear water. He dipped his head down and caught a kiss. Just a little graze of their lips. No remorse just yet. His hands closed a little farther, the opening becoming narrower. Donny coughed a bit, his hands roaming Ted's traps, down his chest, around his waist. His throat was clicking.

All the moments they shared in this bed, they laid in harmony. Donny would lay his head on Ted's chest, and spin the ring on his thick finger. It would glint in the sun dripping through the curtains. Ted would shut his eyes, always shut his eyes, and think. The covers would be up to his waist and Donny's torso, Ted's head resting against the headboard. He would tangle his free hand in Donny's thick, then cool-aid colored hair, opening and closing his fist gently in the straight sea of blue and green. He would feel Donny's curious fingers poking around, comparing their rings. The young man had a matching band. It was gold, name enscribed and the date encrypted on the inside. It was perfect and plain, beautiful and it meant everything. No paper, no witnesses. Just themselves in the bed with the rings matching and endearing. They shared this bed so many times, Donny chose it for this night.

Ted liked the bed for all the qualities beside the fact it squeaked like a hyper erotic rat once the pace was really established. It got loud now and then, leading Ted to prefer the shower, or the wall, something with less sound. But it was what Donny wanted. He didn't resist the hands in his, the blue eyes glossy and innocent, and the silence. He spoke with the twitch in his lips and the lines under his eyes. He was wearing Ted's dress shirt and a pair of black shorts. He drowned in that shirt, the sleeves hiding half his fingers. His hair fell in his face. The rosey blossom blooming in each cheek heated Ted to the core. He didn't resist. He let all of his six-five three hundred pound hulking mass cave and follow Donny through the halls, through the doorway, across the wood floors. Now they were on the bed. The springs ranted on about the activities happening upon them like armageddon. Ted didn't hear the springs now. It was odd. But he chose all of the things he wanted to feel, hear, and see tonight. The springs didn't exist, this world wasn't real, and his peripheral vision curved with blur. All that was happening, was the light, still so alive, flicking around those fighting eyes.

He had stripped down to his nude embodiment, and left Donny in all of what he really desired. The dress shirt. The silken dress shirt was the only one Ted owned. It saw four funerals and the baptism of a Godson he never saw anymore. It was a black shirt, white pin stripes, white buttons. It had been discovered while Donny had been rummaging around one afternoon when the cicadas were rioting and Ted was slipping on a pair of blue jeans, his work clothing for a long ride in his semi. He hadn't seen it when Donny slipped it on over his Motley Crue T-shirt. Out the door he went and knew nothing of it until he came home three days later and it was all Donny adorned while he painted an abstract landscape in his studio.

It was poetic and conjured feelings in Ted that were just as alien as love. It seemed to catch air in his throat and make his heart flutter, skipping that beat like it always did. It made him remember nights of watching Donny paint in that shirt. He drowned in it. Made him look like a lamb in a wolf's pelt. It was warm in the pit of Ted's stomach. His hands slackened. Donny didn't gasp for air immediately like any other man would. He seemed to draw the lack of oxygen on until his primitive instincts forced him to acknowledge human fear. He swallowed all the air he could, coughing, sputtering, trying to stifle the angry gurgle between his tonsils. All the while, Ted was away, sinking in the oceans flooding in the eye sockets. He felt that warmth tingling at the base of his sternum. Donny was able to breathe while that tingling invaded Ted's neck, his temples, down his left arm. He was breathing heavier, almost feeling Donny's distress. He sailed the seven seas, feeling it overflow, watching it soak into Donny's hairline.

His hips never faltered. They never creaked and paused like mechanical gears. His pelvis rocked, his cock sore and weeping in the confines of his fading shooting star.

Donny's hand trembled. But somewhere inside he still found the strength to keep his hands on Ted's thickset waist. His eyes flickered, looking like the sun resting on an Atlantic horizon. Ted swallowed, his jaw wrapped in buzzing tension.

His head was seeing an array of colors. His eyes were fogging, he had to blink away the lurking tears. He felt at home, alive, filled with something slowly nipping at his soul and giving him a pain in his chest cavity.

He hated that feeling. But the more the hips below rolled upward to meet his, the feeling grew more powerful. He felt a burn in his lips, a feeling acidic, moaning and bubbling against his mouth. His teeth were grinding. He was growling, a black sound that devoured Donny's perishing whimpers. His hair was breaking free of the rubber band. The gray and gold strands hanging in his face, drenched and dripping with his temples. He felt like his lungs were filling with salt water, he was deep in the sea of Donny's eyes, breathing and slipping deeper in the suffocating warmth.

Donny was melting in Ted's nuclear pupils. Two pitch black suns hollowed out. His head was throbbing. He felt like the veil over his eyes was lifting. He smiled a little. His bottom lip sucked between his teeth, his eyes aching. His hands fell, crawling up his own stomach, gripping the shirt he adorned, struggling to his throat. He knew he shouldn't fight tooth and nail for air. So he did not. He only needed one hand to find the ring. His right left his control, spasming and then letting go of all power at his own abdomen. His left, it was the strong one. The one that crawled like an arachnid with a pierced thorax. He needed only one hand to find the ring. The one on Ted's finger. His hand seized, then went limp there. His brain forgot what it once could control. He was at peace with it. He could still feel the soft surface of the ring against his fingertips, inches from his own.

So many times they had done this. Never had he made it this far. The fact of it made the excited shiver rack his spine. He tried to breathe, like his instincts couldn't learn at all. He tried to swallow, his tongue dry and stuck to the bitterness at the roof of his mouth. He found no moisture in the bottom. No drop around or between his teeth. He was riveted with the thirst for the pain and the frustration and the way Ted never looked away. He wanted to leave like this. His cock swollen and leaking, his stomach up in webs, his whole life under control, sailing on a cloud right into Ted's black hole eyes. They were blue once. Blue skies before the storm rolled in. Now, a sheet of darkness. It was welcoming, something he loved. He loved Ted so much. the words were never said, because the silence knew it all. But the silence didn't have Donny's voice.

There was no debt to leave behind. No son, no daughter. No mothers, no fathers to cry for their loss. He had a brother, but he was far away on the other side of the world. His Australian sun was just rising right now, when Donny and Ted's angry Ohio eye had just begun to wink out. That brother would not know a thing. He probably wouldn't feel a pinch in his stomach, a twist in his heart. It wouldn't be a problem that his younger brother died, out in an old two-story farm house.

Donny felt like a shredded photograph. Laying in pieces, disembodied, yet completely real. Embossed in the thick atmosphere by a warm blade. His lips moved, mouthed it all, and Ted was the voice behind this moving play.

"I love you," is what he said. What they said. Donny couldn't say a thing. He was leaving swiftly. Ted couldn't respond, he was feeling something he didn't know he could feel at all.

Donny left when Ted hit his breaking point. He died in the house Ted built. The house he himself painted, and painted in. He died in the shirt, his favorite shirt that filled his final moments with everlasting security. He died with his eyes filled with rippling pools. He died with a meek little smile, and a knowledgeable, gratified, mischievous blip in the pools reflecting Ted's face. He died, with his favorite ring, at his favorite time of day, with a brand new, finished painting in the far corner of his favorite room. He let go, in his favorite bed.

Ted felt the tears he didn't want. He felt the tendons lax and the energy empty, leaving him far too alone for his taste. He felt himself release his grip, slowly. His joints resented him, his hair fell from the band. He crumpled in on himself, feeling like worn elastic. His chest filled with cruel embers, still continuing to smolder long after the camp fire event.

He tried to breathe, but somewhere in his heart, he told his own body to keep choking, keep burning, keep far away. He let himself slide to the side, one hand gripping Donny's. He settled partially on his side, his leg falling in place. He was dripping, seething a cream thick and clear. It smelled like leather furnishings. But the rest of the world smelled like Donny.

Everything was sickly silent. The pain in Ted's rib cage was staggering. It felt like hot pokers, a knife, a billion bees. Anything that amounted to this was unrealistic and tacky. He swallowed nothing. His saliva dried up, all his fluids evacuating through his pores. He couldn't see anything but those eyes. The eyes, the rivers, the lakes, the oceans he drowned in again and again, escaping thousands of times before. Now his insides were overridden with the murky warmth. His free hand, the one that wasn't holding Donny's left hand, the one with the thumb that wasn't rubbing the knuckles of Donny's petite hand, came to shut the eyelids. Ted remembered the feeling, the eyelashes kissing his cheeks, his temples, his skin, every time he kissed that man, he remembered. He followed that feeling, and it made his skin tingle. He followed it like a path where shrubs were feather bushes tickling his hyde. He pet the shrubs. He let them fondle him and lead him home.

He shut the eyelids. His shoulder took the wrenching brunt of a painful jab. It gave way, the hand being ripped from the loving touch of the feather lashes, to the throat. Ted let his hand bend to the throat. He let his eyes catch a full view of that face. An angel pristine in its sleep.

His heart was hammering, hammering, thrumming, pinching, twinging, racking itself silly. It was killing him. As much as Ted wanted to leave, he remained, protecting the miracle of his life. He was shaking, sweating, losing his ability to understand how his own body worked. His heart raged on, on, on until he let himself open up.

He tried to let himself understand what was going on. The lights weren't supposed to be so bright, and he wasn't supposed to feel so happy being so weak. He wasn't supposed to cripple like the feathers guiding him from the reality, the senses, the sharp twang in his head.

He let his tendons submit. His head rested to let him find that path to nowhere up through the ceiling. His hand ventured from the throat, from thoughtlessly pawing the Adam's apple, to his own bare midsection. He twitched, spasmed once, and found himself befuddled by the paranoid beats of his heart, overriding the other like the beat of hummingbird wings. The heart did that, squeezing the arteries dry one more time, straining until it threatened to turn to dust, before ceasing purpose entirely.

He lay on the bed that wouldn't speak word one ever again. He lay clutching Donny's hand, his thumb on the ring he was so dumbfounded by, now. He lay asleep, still protecting his greatest treasure, the treasure that shone the brightest with hands around his throat. He lay with Donny, and Donny lay with him. They forgot all about it. All about the ceiling and walls and floors with little material things they cared little for, little things they didn't care for at all, now.

At the favorite time of day, in the favorite house, in the corner of the favorite room, was a finished painting.

In that painting, two in the embrace of the other, on a bed that spoke too much. The sun rays filled them with an everlasting wink, and on the back, was the title "Heartattack".

It was the nicest picture Ted had ever seen. He knew that when he finally let go.

#Disturbing #Original fiction #Nightmare fuel #Bad thoughts #Automatic writing #Gore #horror writers on tumblr

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thiscatastrophe · 6 years

Photo

Black, with a shiny carapace. Six legs, segmented, thick with meat near the body and terminating in tiny claws at the toes and elbows. A grey ring around the throat, reflective green eyes, mandibles.

It skitters in tight circles on the back of Sakura’s hand, and she shrieks.

Leeches are one thing. You need leeches sometimes. All med-nin know that. And the therapeutic bugs, the ones with the long, pointed proboscides, those are a necessary evil.

The beetles are not welcome.

She swats at it frantically, nearly upsetting a bowl of water on the nearby examination table, and whirls to fling the insect at a wall. Dislodged, it buzzes away to land on a ceiling tile, where it folds its wings in an almost self-satisfied fashion.

“Oh, no way,” she grumbles. “Not in my office, you don’t.” Sakura leans down to remove a shoe, then holds it precariously by the heel as she aims for the ceiling. One dead bug on a tile—gross, sure, but it’s much better than a beetle flying around the room for who-knows-how-long. All it takes is one well-aimed throw and—

“Sakura.”

With a start, she drops the shoe. “Ah—oh, who’s—?”

Shino Aburame stands in the doorway, head ducked and hands deep in his pockets. In the afternoon light he looks like a movie villain, shadowed and shrouded, and Sakura can’t help but stiffen, even if the man is a friend.

“Shino! Wait, this isn’t… is that one of yours?” She gestures at the beetle, now rubbing a foreleg over its head as if it owns the place.

“Correct.” He doesn’t wait; Shino steps inside and around her examination table, reaching up towards the ceiling. The beetle lifts its wing casings and flutters in a tight spiral down to his hand, disappearing into his shirtsleeve after a short rest on the back of his hand. “I apologize. The reason it was in here was that I wanted to see whose chakra I still felt in the building.”

With the insect gone, the animal instinct in Sakura says to relax, but the shinobi mind recalls that Shino might be comprised of slightly more bugs than human parts. “Well,” she remarks, apprehensive, “I usually stay a little later on Fridays, since I’m not always around for the entire week…” Her files and messenger bag are conveniently still on her beat-up metal desk, tucked in the corner on the opposite side of the room, and she retreats to them to be farther from the source of the insects.

“Hm. How dedicated of you.”

“Was that… was that sarcasm?”

Shino tips his head, almost imperceptibly, to one side, as if she’s asked timidly asked if he frequently bursts into spontaneous flame. “Why would—”

“—nevermind!” she cries. “Well, listen—” a sudden pause as she sneaks a glance out the window, “I’m just about to leave, so I’m sorry to bother you! You’re welcome to stay—Lady Tsunade gave you a key, right? For the research lab and the side door? I left some calorie bars in the cabinet if you need—”

“—I don’t think there will be a letter from Sasuke today.”

Sakura’s voice dies in her throat. Quietly, with only the shifting noise of his jacket, Shino steps beside her to look at the window before continuing. “The hawks don’t usually go into the civilian districts. Just to the bigger clan houses. That’s why you stay here late on Fridays. It’s because you’re waiting for a letter.”

The air leaves her lungs slowly, and she feels her shoulders curve, heavy and sore from work, stress, an ache deeper than the medical terms she can apply to it. “Huh. Well, you figured it out, I guess.”

“It wasn’t hard to do.”

Sakura watches the light reflect off Shino’s dark glasses before shoving her files into the worn leather bag. “Not hard to do, huh.” There’s a smugness she finds in his words, one that she resents, but her heart feels too heavy in its cage for her to protest. “I’ve got to go. See you later, Shino,” she murmurs.

“Sakura—”

Before Shino can complete his thought, Sakura is out the door. It shuts behind her with a soft click, and her steps retreat slowly down the hallway.

He waits for a moment for any straggler hawks, then checks that his beetles have left the room. Only then does Shino decide to go home.

“Shino?”

It’s still early in the evening, one of the late, bright afternoons in the height of summer, but everyone else has gone home for the day, eager to escape the sticky heat of the hospital. Everyone but the two youngest employees, holed up in their respective offices late into an otherwise lazy Wednesday afternoon.

Shino looks up from his desk, placing a finger delicately before one of his beetles as it moves away from the latest tissue sample. In his doorway is Sakura, shaking the tie-dents out of her hair and fumbling with her bag, looking almost desperately nonchalant--far too posed, he thinks. “Is there something you needed?” he asks.

“I was just thinking,” she comments, “maybe we should both head out? Come on, I’ll treat you to… um.” A pause; she examines his desk as well as she can over his shoulder, watching the beetles with clear apprehension and avoiding a glance at his tank of medicinal maggots. “Whatever it is that you like eating.”

He looks back at the tissue sample, at the beetle (Hatsuko, with her little pale stripes on her wing casings) that keeps trying to step over his finger. It’s been hours since he stood up. His writing hand cramped up long before that. Even the beetles don’t want to keep working; Hatsuko spreads her wings and threatens to flutter away from her job, while the other two workers look as if they want to crawl under the desk to escape.

“I suppose a break couldn’t hurt.”

“Wh—”

He stands up, stretching his back a little and rolling his shoulders as Hatsuko, Hasumi and Hana buzz in celebratory circles around him. In the doorway, he catches a glimpse of a surprised Sakura, her bag hanging limp from her shoulder, pink hair a mess around her face. “You’re really going to come eat with me? Just like that?” she asks.

Shino crouches to retrieve his personal effects from under the table, passing the spare glasses, plastic gloves, granola wrappers and empty water bottle over a shoulder and into the slim pack affixed to the back of his jacket. “I don’t see why not,” he responds. “Did you expect to be turned down?”

“Well…” Sakura ruffles her hair once more and smiles at him, apologetic. “Sort of. You don’t seem like the dinner-after-work type, Shino.”

“Hm.” He stands and joins her in the doorway, rummaging in his pocket for his keyring. “I will pay for my own dinner, in that case.”

Sakura’s hands fly up, flapping back and forth wildly. “No, no, no!” she cries. “I’ll still pay! Let me pay for it, it’s my treat!”

“You did not expect me to join you. I should pay for my own, in that case—”

“—Shino!” Her hands clap sharply on his biceps with a grip much tighter than he expected. Under his shirt, the beetles move uneasily, ready for a fight. “You’re new here and you don’t talk to anybody else, and we were in the same Academy class and we still barely talk, and…”

“And you’re lonely?”

She sighs. “Yes. I’m lonely. Please let me buy your dinner.”

Shino locks his door and follows Sakura down the hall as the cicadas outside call to their mates.

“Naruto has been busy lately, hasn’t he? And with Sasuke gone...” he comments, tipping his head back to watch the clouds roll across the sky.

Sakura leans her head on a palm, picking at her chilly somen noodles with the restaurant’s cheap wooden chopsticks. “Everyone’s busy in their own ways.” She lifts a pair of noodles delicately and dips them in thin ginger sauce, watching the salmon-pink flavor soak in. “Ino’s been working with her dad in the Interrogation department, Shikamaru is… doing whatever it is he does in general, Naruto’s constantly on one mission or another… and of course, Sasuke never writes.”

Hasumi and Hana nibble at an abandoned slice of celery just underneath Shino’s plate; Shino himself crunches thoughtfully on a spinach leaf as he watches Sakura’s noodles slowly disappear. “I understand how you feel,” he comments. “I, too, feel lonely much of the time.”

She gives him a look, shadows under her eyes and a little quirk in her smile. “Y’don’t say.”

“Please don’t remind me that I’m a forgettable person.”

The plate of somen nearly winds up on the ground, and Shino’s beetles flee their celery slice, seeking the shelter of a sleeve. “Shino! I didn’t mean it like that!” Sakura steadies her dinner and stops slapping the table, ignoring the stares from customers nearby. “You’re not forgettable, you’re just…”

“A wallflower?”

“Yes! That!”

“That’s the same thing as being forgettable.”

She sighs deeply and closes her eyes for a long moment before shifting a bit of her noodles onto his plate, retreating with one of his cherry tomatoes. “I really didn’t mean to call you forgettable, Shino.”

“I know you didn’t.” Shino picks up a tiny glob of wasabi from the condiment plate and taps it on the somen noodles before picking them up. “You aren’t a mean person. Rough around the edges, maybe, but not cruel.”

There’s a long silence broken only by the gentle splash of fish in a small pond nearby, migratory birds and cheap plates and cups rattling in a server’s dishbin. “What else do you think about me?” Sakura murmurs. “Not… um, don’t read into that too much. I just want to know what other people see me as.”

Reiko crawls out of Shino’s jacket, shy as ever, and wiggles her antennae at the sun. He watches her slow path along his hand, rotating his wrist just enough to keep her upright on her path to his fingers. “Intelligent, but with low self-confidence. It’s been improving slowly. Resilient, determined and principled. And ever since we were children, strangely unfulfilled.”

A waiter passes silently with a pitcher of water, ignoring them in favor of a noisy crowd of mothers near the back of the patio. Sakura slumps into her chair and furrows her brow with a bemused smile. “That’s way too accurate,” she grouses. “You’re pretty observant, aren’t you?”

“It comes with the territory, I suppose.” He drops his hand gently to the tabletop and watches Reiko descend onto the lacquered wood. “Though I like to think most shinobi are fairly observant.”

Sakura snorts and taps her chopsticks against the plate. “You’d be surprised. Once I watched Naruto walk straight into a trap he’d set up himself no more than five minutes ago. And this other time—you know Kankuro, from the Hidden Sand? Oh, he was your… well, when I was taking care of him after he was poisoned, he mentioned that he sometimes poisons himself on his puppets while he’s working on them, isn’t that just… the dumbest thing? And when Ino was a kid—”

Reiko, in a quick bout of courage, hops onto Sakura’s hand.

She flaps her hand as if it’s scalded, crying out in surprise and tucking her limbs in close. The beetle is flung off and into the air (thankfully, opening her wings in the process and buzzing off to a safe spot on Shino’s outstretched palm), and Sakura’s chair tips backwards just far enough to dump her on the floor. A waiter and two tables of old couples look their way, expressions varying between “startled” and “annoyed.”

In a split second, Sakura’s back on her feet, dusting herself off and picking stray grass clippings from her clothes, bowing furiously to the grandmothers who scowl at her from the nearby tables. Shino watches Reiko as she scurries in tight rings before vanishing, petrified, into his shirt to find her kin.

“Sakura,” he comments, ignoring all of her apologies and the anxious laughter, “I’d like to show you something, if you don’t mind.”

The dim streetlights don’t illuminate the street as well as they should. A flowering vine spills over a wooden fence, casting even deeper shadows on the two shinobi as Shino gently prods through the leaves. “Should we really be here?” Sakura hisses, craning her neck to catch a glimpse of the darkened house beyond the fence.

“It’s not a problem,” he responds. “We won’t be long. I know she’s around somewhere.”

“She?”

A handful of leaves rustle, and a great shadow meanders through the sparse light of the lanterns. Sakura squeaks and bumps into Shino’s arm, watching the shadow bobble about unsteadily, trying to find what might be casting it.

“That’s her,” he says, resting a steady hand on her shoulder. “Hold out your palm, Sakura.”

The shadow continues to waver through the air as if looking for a roost. Sakura eyes it for a little bit longer before scowling at Shino, one hand clenched into a fist. “Better not make me stop trusting you, Aburame.”

But she holds out her hand all the same.

A gentle weight settles in the palm of her outstretched hand. Vast wings dust against her fingers, rustling as the creature makes itself comfortable in the hollow of her palm. Sakura watches as a pattern appears in the calming wings: rust red fields, white triangles, recurved yellow wingtips and little buff circles that line the edges of each massive appendage. Feathered antennae slip across her wrist, and she holds back a surprised giggle.

“She hatched two days ago,” Shino comments. “And she’s the largest moth in the Land of Fire.” He holds his own hand over the moth in comparison; her wingtips are visible even past his spread fingers, and Sakura’s hand is blocked from sight entirely. “In my opinion, one of the most beautiful, as well.”

Sakura considers touching the moth’s broad, vivid wings. They look so delicate, she thinks, and so smooth, but she doesn’t trust her hand to leave the creature uninjured. “She is beautiful,” she agrees in a hushed tone.

The moth sets off again, circling Sakura’s hair as if drawn to the powdery color, reminded of her home in the flowers of some civilian’s garden. It settles on her forehead, brittle legs clinging to a lock of hair, wings leaving scale and dust behind on her forehead protector.

Shino lifts a hand to the moth’s feelers and lets it examine his fingertips. “I wanted to show you how pretty she is,” he whispers, careful not to spook their guest. “But I also wanted to ask you a favor.”

“A favor?”

The moth steps from Sakura’s hair to Shino’s hand, crawling slowly to his wrist, wings twitching to keep balance on the sharp bone at the base of his palm. Just below her, one of Shino’s beetles emerges from his jacket, darting under the moth’s great wings to stand like a tiny lookout on Shino’s extended forefinger. “My kikaichu,” Shino begins, “are not as pretty as some other insects. But please don’t hold that against them. They are more than their appearances.”

She watches the beetle wave its front legs at her, reaching, and watches the moth as it flutters its heavy, awkward wings against Shino’s sleeve. Still those vibrant reds and oranges are more enticing, but there’s something endearing about the beckoning feet and the intelligent green eyes. Even if it is just a beetle.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she murmurs.

They wait for the moth to fly back to its home in the vines before parting ways. High in the sky, the moon shines perfectly silver, a fragment of dazzling light in an otherwise dusky, navy-blue night. Sakura watches it all the way home before it drifts behind a cloud, dropping Konoha into a warm darkness.

#shinosaku #shino #sakura #naruto #konoha guide #naruto rare pair

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readbookywooks · 7 years

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The Platform

Once the mulefa began to build the platform for Mary, they worked quickly and well. She enjoyed watching them, because they could discuss without quarreling and cooperate without getting in each other's way, and because their techniques of splitting and cutting and joining wood were so elegant and effective. Within two days the observation platform was designed and built and lifted into place. It was firm and spacious and comfortable, and when she had climbed up to it, she was as happy, in one way, as she had ever been. That one way was physically. In the dense green of the canopy, with the rich blue of the sky between the leaves; with a breeze keeping her skin cool, and the faint scent of the flowers delighting her whenever she sensed it; with the rustle of the leaves, the song of the hundreds of birds, and the distant murmur of the waves on the seashore, all her senses were lulled and nurtured, and if she could have stopped thinking, she would have been entirely lapped in bliss. But of course thinking was what she was there for. And when she looked through her spyglass and saw the relentless outward drift of the sraf, the shadow particles, it seemed to her as if happiness and life and hope were drifting away with them. She could find no explanation at all. Three hundred years, the mulefa had said: that was how long the trees had been failing. Given that the shadow particles passed through all the worlds alike, presumably the same thing was happening in her universe, too, and in every other one. Three hundred years ago, the Royal Society was set up: the first true scientific society in her world. Newton was making his discoveries about optics and gravitation. Three hundred years ago in Lyra's world, someone invented the alethiometer. At the same time in that strange world through which she'd come to get here, the subtle knife was invented. She lay back on the planks, feeling the platform move in a very slight, very slow rhythm as the great tree swayed in the sea breeze. Holding the spyglass to her eye, she watched the myriad tiny sparkles drift through the leaves, past the open mouths of the blossoms, through the massive boughs, moving against the wind, in a slow, deliberate current that looked all but conscious. What had happened three hundred years ago? Was it the cause of the Dust current, or was it the other way around? Or were they both the results of a different cause altogether? Or were they simply not connected at all? The drift was mesmerizing. How easy it would be to fall into a trance, and let her mind drift away with the floating particles... Before she knew what she was doing, and because her body was lulled, that was exactly what happened. She suddenly snapped awake to find herself outside her body, and she panicked. She was a little way above the platform, and a few feet off among the branches. And something had happened to the Dust wind: instead of that slow drift, it was racing like a river in flood. Had it sped up, or was time moving differently for her, now that she was outside her body? Either way she was conscious of the most horrible danger, because the flood was threatening to sweep her loose completely, and it was immense. She flung out her arms to seize hold of anything solid - but she had no arms. Nothing connected. Now she was almost over that abominable drop, and her body was farther and farther from reach, sleeping so hoggishly below her. She tried to shout and wake herself up: not a sound. The body slumbered on, and the self that observed was being borne away out of the canopy of leaves altogether and into the open sky. And no matter how she struggled, she could make no headway. The force that carried her out was as smooth and powerful as water pouring over a weir; the particles of Dust were streaming along as if they, too, were pouring over some invisible edge. And carrying her away from her body. She flung a mental lifeline to that physical self, and tried to recall the feeling of being in it: all the sensations that made up being alive. The exact touch of her friend Atal's soft-tipped trunk caressing her neck. The taste of bacon and eggs. The triumphant strain in her muscles as she pulled herself up a rock face. The delicate dancing of her fingers on a computer keyboard. The smell of roasting coffee. The warmth of her bed on a winter night. And gradually she stopped moving; the lifeline held fast, and she felt the weight and strength of the current pushing against her as she hung there in the sky. And then a strange thing happened. Little by little (as she reinforced those sense-memories, adding others, tasting an iced margarita in California, sitting under the lemon trees outside a restaurant in Lisbon, scraping the frost off the windshield of her car), she felt the Dust wind easing. The pressure was lessening. But only on her: all around, above and below, the great flood was streaming as fast as ever. Somehow there was a little patch of stillness around her, where the particles were resisting the flow. They were conscious! They felt her anxiety and responded to it. And they began to carry her back to her deserted body, and when she was close enough to see it once more, so heavy, so warm, so safe, a silent sob convulsed her heart. And then she sank back into her body and awoke. She took in a shuddering deep breath. She pressed her hands and her legs against the rough planks of the platform, and having a minute ago nearly gone mad with fear, she was now suffused with a deep, slow ecstasy at being one with her body and the earth and everything that was matter. Finally she sat up and tried to take stock. Her fingers found the spyglass, and she held it to her eye, supporting one trembling hand with the other. There was no doubt about it: that slow sky-wide drift had become a flood. There was nothing to hear and nothing to feel, and without the spyglass, nothing to see, but even when she took the glass from her eye, the sense of that swift, silent inundation remained vividly, together with something she hadn't noticed in the terror of being outside her body: the profound, helpless regret that was abroad in the air. The shadow particles knew what was happening and were sorrowful. And she herself was partly shadow matter. Part of her was subject to this tide that was moving through the cosmos. And so were the mulefa, and so were human beings in every world, and every kind of conscious creature, wherever they were. And unless she found out what was happening, they might all find themselves drifting away to oblivion, everyone. Suddenly she longed for the earth again. She put the spyglass in her pocket and began the long climb down to the ground. Father Gomez stepped through the window as the evening light lengthened and mellowed. He saw the great stands of wheel trees and the roads lacing through the prairie, just as Mary had done from the same spot sometime before. But the air was free of haze, for it had rained a little earlier, and he could see farther than she had; in particular, he could see the glimmer of a distant sea and some flickering white shapes that might be sails. He lifted the rucksack higher on his shoulders and turned toward them to see what he could find. In the calm of the long evening, it was pleasant to walk on this smooth road, with the sound of some cicada-like creatures in the long grass and the setting sun warm in his face. The air was fresh, too, clear and sweet and entirely free of the taint of naphtha fumes, kerosene fumes, whatever they were, which had lain so heavily on the air in one of the worlds he'd passed through: the world his target, the tempter herself, belonged to. He came out at sunset on a little headland beside a shallow bay. If they had tides in this sea, the tide was high, because there was only a narrow fringe of soft white sand above the water. And floating in the calm bay were a dozen or more. Father Gomez had to stop and think carefully. A dozen or more enormous snow-white birds, each the size of a rowboat, with long, straight wings that trailed on the water behind them: very long wings, at least two yards in length. Were they birds? They had feathers, and heads and beaks not unlike swans', but those wings were situated one in front of the other, surely... Suddenly they saw him. Heads turned with a snap, and at once all those wings were raised high, exactly like the sails of a yacht, and they all leaned in with the breeze, making for the shore. Father Gomez was impressed by the beauty of those wing-sails, by how they were flexed and trimmed so perfectly, and by the speed of the birds. Then he saw that they were paddling, too: they had legs under the water, placed not fore and aft like the wings but side by side, and with the wings and the legs together, they had an extraordinary speed and grace in the water. As the first one reached the shore, it lumbered up through the dry sand, making directly for the priest. It was hissing with malice, stabbing its head forward as it waddled heavily up the shore, and the beak snapped and clacked. There were teeth in the beak, too, like a series of sharp incurved hooks. Father Gomez was about a hundred yards from the edge of the water, on a low grassy promontory, and he had plenty of time to put down his rucksack, take out the rifle, load, aim, and fire. The bird's head exploded in a mist of red and white, and the creature blundered on clumsily for several steps before sinking onto its breast. It didn't die for a minute or more; the legs kicked, the wings rose and fell, and the great bird beat itself around and around in a bloody circle, kicking up the rough grass, until a long, bubbling expiration from its lungs ended with a coughing spray of red, and it fell still. The other birds had stopped as soon as the first one fell, and stood watching it, and watching the man, too. There was a quick, ferocious intelligence in their eyes. They looked from him to the dead bird, from that to the rifle, from the rifle to his face. He raised the rifle to his shoulder again and saw them react, shifting backward clumsily, crowding together. They understood. They were fine, strong creatures, large and broad-backed - like living boats, in fact. If they knew what death was, thought Father Gomez, and if they could see the connection between death and himself, then there was the basis of a fruitful understanding between them. Once they had truly learned to fear him, they would do exactly as he said.

#AmberSpyglass

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