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When Idaho asks what Ohio’s doing for Valentine’s Day, she laughs in his face, spraying him with water in the process. She doesn’t feel too bad, even as he grimaces and wipes off his glasses, because he’s the one that made her laugh in the first place. So there.
“I’m sorry, my plans?” Ohio manages.
“Yeah,” Idaho says, wiping his sleeve across his face, “Your plans.”
“I don’t know if you noticed, but we are literally stranded in the middle of nowhere,” Ohio snorts. “And you and Iowa are… not my type.”
Idaho rolls his eyes and takes a bite of his MRE. They’re sitting in their base’s only breakroom eating breakfast. Iowa has yet to make an appearance, which is slightly unsettling. He never oversleeps, so Ohio’s next thought is he’s got something up his sleeve for Valentine’s Day.
The thought of Iowa surprising her and Idaho wipes the grin clean off Ohio’s face.
“Look,” Idaho says, swallowing. “We both know you and Sherry have a thing, so let’s skip the part where you deny you’ve got something cooking.”
“I don’t know. What you’re talking about.” Ohio tilts her mug back to take a swig of water and remembers she spit the last of it at Idaho.
Idaho opens his mouth to respond but he’s interrupted by—
BANG!
“Uh oh.” Iowa’s voice drifts in through the vent above them, followed by a cloud of black smoke.
“What did you do, Mike?” Ohio shouts at the ceiling. She and Idaho both scramble to their feet, praying the building isn’t about to fucking collapse.
Iowa’s voice echoes through the ventilation system.
“I was trying to surprise you but there’s way more spiders up here than I thought there would be.”
“What was that noise?” Idaho asks, even though they all know the answer.
“I, uh, threw a grenade at the spiders,” Iowa replies. “Yeah, they’re all dead now, don’t worry!”
Suddenly the sprinklers kick in, dousing Ohio and Idaho and soaking the breakroom.
As Ohio pushes away a dripping strand of hair stuck to her face, she figures this is probably karma for getting Idaho earlier. She glances over at Idaho. Water covers his glasses, and he reaches beneath the lenses to massage his eyes, resigned to his fate.
“I’m, uh, gonna go get ready for... a mission,” Ohio says, and she sprints from the room.
Behind her she hears Idaho slip as he tries to catch up to her.
“I fucking knew it!” he calls out after her.
Pretending not to hear, Ohio skips off to her bunk.
Idaho did ask a great question earlier, Ohio thinks, toweling her hair off.
What is she doing for Valentine’s Day? Aside from trading chocolates in grade school, she’s never really celebrated it before. Never had the chance to.
There isn’t anything around the Triplets’ base worth mentioning—no chocolate, no construction paper for making cards, no candy hearts. Ohio frowns at herself in the mirror. God, she sounds so freaking childish. Candy hearts?
“You’re a goddamn adult, Ohio, you—you’re a Freelancer… ex-Freelancer… for Christ’s sake,” she scolds herself, leaning up against the counter and glaring at her reflection. “Think of something romantic, like, uh, shit, diamonds?”
Diamonds are supposed to be romantic, right?
Ohio snorts. Romantic, maybe, but ultimately worthless. And unattainable. The closest thing to diamonds—to gemstones in general—out here is the snow.
And yeah, lots of people do romantic things in the snow—write messages declaring their love, snow ball fights, building snow people, stargazing. If Ohio puts her mind to it, she can definitely think of something to do with the hundreds of miles of snow outside. But it’s too cold to make anything out of the snow, and any messages she might write will be blown away by the wind from hell.
Also, Ohio fucking hates winter, which makes being stranded on a perpetual winter wonderland the worst thing to ever happen.
Of course, Ohio thinks, shimmying into her armor, getting stranded here was also the best thing to happen to her.
“Ugh, there’s gotta be chocolate energy bars or something around here,” Ohio groans. Pulling her helmet onto her still-damp hair, Ohio sets out to scour the base for something to give to Sherry.
In the end, there are no chocolate energy bars, so Ohio settles on the last unopened jar of peanut butter. If there was one thing Ohio had expected not to find in the supply crates in their base, it was peanut butter, but the Triplets have absolutely demolished it. People with more self-control might’ve rationed it out, but Ohio, Iowa, and Idaho have never been known for their superb self-control.
On the lid of the peanut butter, Ohio draws a heart in black permanent marker. She frowns, inspecting her work.
A little lopsided, and the lid is green, so the color of the heart is kind of weird, but it’ll do.
With a sigh, Ohio scribbles a little message in the center of the heart, caps the marker, and tucks the jar of peanut butter under her arm.
She switches on her coms and says,
”Idaho, Iowa, I’m, uh, gonna do some recon. Hold the fort until I get back, okay?”
“Recon? Or Reconfession of your love?” Idaho shoots back.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ohio scoffs. She’s been saying that a lot lately.
“Yeah yeah,” Idaho says. Ohio can hear the smile in his voice and her face goes hot.
“Remember not to taste anything you find because you might get your tongue stuck,” Iowa cautions.
“Thanks, Mike,” Ohio sighs.
She flips off her coms, grabs her gun, and ventures into the frozen wasteland outside.
Heart hammering against her ribs, Ohio makes her way through knee-deep snow towards Sherry’s base. Even in armor she feels anxious, naked, not just because she doesn’t have Idaho and Iowa watching her back, but also because she doesn’t have a jeep. That extra layer of metal and bulletproof glass might not be super effective, but it makes Ohio feel safer.
Oh, and the fact that she’s bringing a jar of peanut butter with a crooked-ass heart on the lid to the woman she has a huge crush on might have something to do with the sudden hike in her anxiety.
“You can do this Vera,” she mutters to herself. “You’ve fought creepy aliens, and, and made it into Freelancer, and survived for like two years on this godforsaken planet. Delivering a message? No problem. Deep breath, let’s go.”
Ohio reaches the foot of Sherry’s base as she finishes her pep talk. She looks up at the cold, metal wall, and swallows. Taking a shaky breath, she starts towards the entrance.
“Hold it right there, hot shot!”
Ohio squeaks and jumps back. Looking up, she sees Sherry, clad in armor, aiming a sniper rifle right at her.
She called me hot shot, Ohio thinks.
“What do you want?” Sherry shouts down to her.
“Uh, oh nothing,” Ohio babbles, “I just wanted to give you this!”
She holds up the jar of peanut butter and waits as Sherry peers through the scope of her gun. Her eyebrows furrow, and Sherry pulls away from the scope and frowns.
“Peanut butter,” she says, suspiciously.
“Yes, peanut butter,” Ohio agrees. She wishes her heart would calm the hell down, the whole planet can probably hear it.
“What for?” Sherry asks. The sniper rifle lowered a little.
“For, uh—”
Suddenly, any ounce of courage Ohio was hanging onto whooshed out of her body and she feels her knees start to give. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck….
In one fluid motion, Ohio brings her arm back, tenses, and chucks the jar of peanut butter at Sherry.
“GRENADE!” Sherry shouts.
With reflexes that would put the top Freelancers to shame, Sherry takes aim and fires at the peanut butter.
It explodes in a shower of glass and lumps of sticky peanut butter. Ohio’s heart sinks, but she doesn’t have much time to regret just how badly she fucked this up because Sherry’s turned her gun on Ohio now.
“Well, bye then!” Ohio calls before whirling around and taking off back towards her base. She hears shots, but they all land half-heartedly off to her left or right, sending up a small puff of snow each time.
Ohio bursts back into the base, keeling over as she tries to catch her breath.
Both Idaho and Iowa are waiting for her, and once Ohio is done wheezing, Idaho pipes up.
“So, how’d it go?”
Sherry wasn’t expecting it to, like, actually be peanut butter. She feels guilty as she fires at Ohio, doing her best not to catch the ex-Freelancer in the legs. Once Ohio is out of sight, Sherry sets her sniper rifle down and sprints down to the entrance of the base, nearly knocking Terrill down the stairs next to the mess hall.
She bursts out into the cold, grateful for her armor, and makes her way toward the carnage.
Her boots crunch on a combination of snow and glass as she inspects the damage. Sherry imagines the smell of peanut butter is overwhelming, but she’ll never know for sure.
A round, green object off to the left catches her eye, and Sherry strides over to take a closer look. Reaching down to pick it up, she realizes it’s the lid to the jar, somehow undamaged from getting shot midair.
Then she notices there’s something written on the top, and squints to get a better look.
There’s a little heart drawn on it in black marker, and in the middle of the heart is a message.
Happy Valentine’s Day or whatever, sorry all I have is this peanut butter, Iowa ate all the chocolate energy bars.
Sherry feels her heart skip as a grin splits her face.
Taking the lid inside, Sherry places it next to her bed.
Ohio’s upped her game, she thinks. Time to return the favor.
She doesn’t have any peanut butter (which is, in retrospect, her fault) but she’s pretty sure Terrill’s got some chocolate’s hidden somewhere.
Sherry blows a kiss at the Valentine’s lid and rises to her feet.
“Get ready to have your freaking socks, blown off, sweet cheeks."