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Chapter Text

“I had nothing! And you had everything- here- this whole time!” Valkyrie exclaimed at the discovery of his stock- his stash. “How could you?” She gave him a look of utter betrayal, and Thor mercifully had the presence of mind to stop chewing on the chocolate bunny head he had just bitten off.

“I just didn't want to share!” He defended himself.

“That's no excuse! That's worse than no excuse!”

Thor reluctantly smudged over half his candy pile in her direction, and Valkyrie glared at him, sitting by her new pile, angrily swiping a large chocolate bar off the top and just tearing into it. She even made chewing sound menacing.

He was not forgiven for stowing away with his stockpile and leaving her competing with the Migardian children and their ridiculous hunt if she wanted some candy. She didn't stoop that low- competing with children- but after enough time had passed she had to wonder where he was and why he wasn't down here with the avengers and talking or whatever- these were his friends. Brunnhilde wasn't one for gatherings unless they involved booze, but they were stuck at the tower for the time being, and Thor promised she didn't have to do anything- she could just stand by the wall and eat Migardian sweets the whole time. It was the promise of sweets that won her over.

She had gone looking for him after 20 minutes, with no sweets to her name. It's not like she was his keeper, but she didn't even like social celebrations like this, and her mouth and stomach had been suspiciously lacking in candy, so he had some answering to do.

Of course she found him on one of the upper levels, hiding away with a huge stack of chocolate and candy and just digging into his heart's desire. Of course she did.

“Did you notice how they keep saying Eostre's name wrong?” She asked, something she was curious about, but doubted Thor's Migardian friends had a reason that they would know the answer to. They had look beyond confused when she had used the correct pronunciation of the goddesses name, though it was pretty clear it was her celebration this holiday was supposed to be.

Thor shrugged. “You get used to it. Migardians have much shorter lifespans. Something like 80 years with all the medical technology they have today, so it was even shorter than that for most of their history. They have a way of passing things on even if the meaning his died out with the children's grandchildren of the original celebrators. Traditions get warped, names get altered, but somehow some things never change. Now this celebration is associated with a religious figure that was said to have risen from the dead. A man. But look,” he said, holding up his headless chocolate bunny. “They're still celebrating it with rabbits. Which are in no way involved with the religious story they tell with the celebration these days. All the feminine symbols of fertility and bunnies and eggs are completely lacking from the dead-alive-man mythos they are supposedly celebrating. And yet,” he took another chunk of the rabbit off with his teeth, “here we are.”

Chapter Text

Amy looked thoroughly unimpressed by another one of his movie cliche comments. They'd only been partners for a few weeks, but it was already clear Peralta did a lot of that.

Making jokes, comparing everything to movies, even as they were getting ready for this new undercover op.

“I'm not going to fall for someone like you,” she said, completely confident in those words.

“You never know,” Jake grinned. “I'm very lovable.”

She snorted. “Yeah, right.”

 It wasn't until years later she realized how very wrong she was to say that.

It was on their second official date, and she had the sudden clarity that she'd already fallen, hard. She'd fallen long before even their first date.

And, as she looked at the way he was smiling at her now from across the table, talking animatedly with his hands, filling her chest with utter warmth he looked at her with-

She found she didn't really mind being wrong. Just this once.

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“Gamora!” Peter shouted, absolutely appalled, surprising her enough to make her jump.

She looked over at him with the wide eyed innocence of a kid with their hand in the cookie jar and cookie in mouth who didn’t know that they weren’t supposed to take cookies from the cookie jar, and they were just a dirty cookie stealer with an incredibly guilty look on their face.

“I- I- I thought you-” she tried to defend herself, all flustered at his look of utter betrayal. She helplessly motioned at the screen- the one still playing the next episode of the series that she had started watching without him . “I- you just- I thought-” she stammered, brows pulled together in distress, already feeling so bad. “I thought you said- I was just- it was-” Then she sighed, suddenly realizing something.

“You don’t even care, do you?”

Peter grinned. “Not in the slightest.”

He was just messing with her. Of course he was.

Her panicked face was pretty cute though.

Chapter Text

“Help me,” Thor whined, tugging at the tangled lines he was all trussed up in.

“No,” Brunnhilde laughed. “You got yourself into this mess, you can get yourself out of it.”

Chapter Text

“Give it up. She's gone.”

“Really?” He said, wiping his tears. At the ensuing nod, Jake sighed in relief. “Oh thank god. It's so draining being the bait on this one. Why can't you be the heartbroken daughter who has to get all emotional about her dead parent to sell it to crooked memorial home staffers that are stealing identities, huh? Why do I always have to be the grieving one?”

“Simple,” Amy smirked. “I just can't cry on cue like you can.”

Chapter Text

The rolling waves of pain had ebbed momentarily. Gamora was covered in sweat, her hands shaking, cause there really was no good way to do this, was there? No amount of movement helped, even as she practically writhed in the deepest agony she'd felt for a long time. It had been awhile since she'd had to go through something this painful for this long.

She collapsed back onto the bed with a weak groan. She turned her head to him.

“Tell me you love me,” she begged, her voice desperate as tears welled in her eyes.

Peter took her hand in his, sweeping the hair off her sweat soaked brow as she panted. “Hey, I love you,” he said fervently. “You're doing great. You're doing so good. I love you so much. Almost through, babe. You are so brave, and strong, and beautiful. This baby is so lucky to have you as a mom.”

Gamora closed her eyes, nodding, trying to internalize his words. She winced as another wave of contractions started.

“This sucks!” Gamora shouted through the pain. “Why won't it come out of me!” This time her ire is directed at her stomach. This pregnancy was supposed to officially end today, but oh my god, labor was sucking so hard right now.

“I am-”

“Say one more thing about me being dilated, Groot, say one more thing,” she snapped, sick and tired of the response. “I swear to god I will get Peter to punch you for me.”

Chapter Text

“Stay. Please. Just… stay.” He looks so tired, it's a quiet, desperate plea- small enough that if she chose to ignore it, it wouldn't hurt him too bad, but there's a vulnerability that is undoubtedly exposed right now. A vulnerability that can be taken a shot at or protected.

Valkyrie sighed, taking a seat on his bed, and soon his head found its way into her lap, as she stroked his hair and tried to soothe the nightmares from him.

He was a lot more weary, after the war. Haunted by things he saw in the dust, dimensions that shouldn't exist, that shouldn't be seen, that no one was supposed to see. Images ingrained on the backs of his eyelids. No one was ever supposed to have seen those things. He shouldn't have looked. But he had to- to get them back. And now the dimension that never wanted to be seen, the one with teeth that hooked into one's psyche, was living in his memories. In his dreams every night.

His breathing seemed to have relaxed, the longer she sat there, petting his hair.

“I'll stay,” Brunnhilde murmured. “I'll stay.”

Chapter Text

She stiffens up. “This isn't love…”

“Isn't it?” Peter asks, raising an eyebrow at her. The corner of his lips pick up into an inviting smile, luckily seeming good humored and amused by her response, instead of offended or hurt.

She thinks for a moment he's going to drop her hand, but he doesn't. They keep dancing, much too close for it to be called anything but romantic, intimate. They're still holding hands.

She shakes her head. It's not. It can't be. Still, she doesn't pull away from him. Still, she keeps dancing with him.

Gamora shakes her head, scrounging for words to distance herself from getting too close. “No. This is- attraction.” She frowns. It sounds wrong even to her own ears. She knows it's more than attraction. She can't even get herself to believe that lie. “Infatuation,” she corrects. “Just- that. It's not love.”

“Now you're just nitpicking,” he says, still with a good natured smile.

“It's a chemical response. In your brain. That's all this… this feeling is. It's infatuation. It’s not…  it's not that.”

“Gamora, all you are is a brain full of chemicals. Saying it's a chemical response isn't a good defense of non-feelings when that's just how being alive works.” His expression is still warm, full of mirth, and it's doing funny things to her heart. “Doesn't matter what you call it. It's still there.”

Peter tries to spin her, but she doesn't go for it. Instead, she stops dead in her tracks. Stops dancing too, still in his arms.

His face softens at the alarmed, almost panicked look in her eyes as she stares at him, looking much more vulnerable than she usually lets people see. So bare.

“Hey, it's okay. Let's talk about something else,” his eyes are reassuring, but she doesn't see. She's not looking at his eyes.

No, she's looking at his lips. She doesn't even hear the words coming out of his mouth before she leans in and presses her lips to his.

Peter's clearly surprised by this, a muffled little noise comes out as she kisses him. She's surprised herself- she doesn't really know what she's doing. But then Peter cups her cheek and he's kissing her back, guiding their lips into something more soft and fluid, and oh, he's good at this. Peter moulds his lips to hers, and Gamora just melts into him. She's been wanting to do this so very badly for so very long. There's a weight to it too, a significance, something fraught with meaning that she's certain they can both feel. Something scary and at once wonderful. Something good. Something right.

Their lips part with a noisy smack, and Gamora goes back in for another quick but full kiss that is just as loud before pulling back for real this time.

Peter's eyes flutter open, his cheeks just the slightest dusting of pink on them as he stares at her in wonder. “Don't tell me that's not love,” he breathes.

“Okay,” she whispers.

Gamora settles in back against his chest, closing her eyes as she rests her head against him and they resume dancing.

Peter strokes her hair, and her fingers scrunch up in his shirt, holding on tight.

Gamora thinks that maybe- if this is love- then it isn't so bad.

Chapter Text

“Why didn't you tell me?” Amy held her hand to her forehead, shaking it like she was just giving up. She didn't understand why he didn't just say something, and was completely overwhelmed by the disaster in front of her.

“I- I didn't think it was a big problem at first,” Jake explained, looking utterly heartbroken about all of this, what had happened, and her reaction. It was always the worst- when somebody wasn't mad, just disappointed. And now Amy looked so defeated, and he felt so, so guilty, and all he wanted to do was fix it, but that was half the problem here. “I thought I could take care of it myself…” he trailed off, his voice still apologetic in that little kid who broke something on accident and felt horrible about it sort of way.

Suddenly, Amy started laughing. Not light laughing, or chuckling, or even the hysterical laughter that some victims at a crime scene have when they're in shock- which would've been completely fair since this place looked like a crime scene right now.

But nope, Amy was just cracking up, like this was the funniest thing she had ever seen.

“We are never getting the deposit back on this place. These floors are ruined,” Amy toed at the curling of the cheapy laminate kitchen floor, already coming up around the edges thanks to water damage. There were about 7 soaked through towels on their kitchen floor right now, very bubbly too, and all the evidence led back to their dishwasher that still had bubbles lining the perimeter. That was only half of it though. He still had two fans going, apparently trying to dry their kitchen. She was pretty sure that the rest of the mess came from Jake trying to clean up the first part. She'd come into the room to the sight of Jake sweeping glass off the floor- apparently he'd knocked something off the counter in a panic and broke it. So there was water damage, towels thrown haphazardly on the floor, broken glass, something bright orange that she wasn't even going to speculate on, two fans, some unidentified powder that seemed to have calcified, bubbles everywhere, and- it was a lot, basically. A pretty spectacular disaster.

“How did this even happen?” She was pretty sure of the source, but not the exact cause.

“We're out of dishwasher tabs, so I just put dish soap in the little compartment thing. But all your fancy imported all natural soap stuff have all their labels in French or something. It wasn't until I walked back in the kitchen like half an hour later and saw the dishwasher foaming that I realized that was probably fancy French laundry detergent. So I hit cancel, duh, and then I opened it, which in hindsight might have not been the smartest thing to do. And then,” he motioned vaguely, sweeping his hands over the whole area, because he honestly didn't have a more complete explanation for the rest of this. It just happened.

“We're gonna have to replace the floor,” Amy said, confirming what he had been dreading. That was gonna be expensive. Like what- 500 dollars? The cheapy laminate was already warping in areas, mostly under the dishwasher and the cabinets, and there definitely wasn't any saving it. An impressive amount of it was absolutely ruined. It wasn't worth trying to salvage the farthest bits of the floor that hadn't been flooded with sudsy water.

“We'll get a nicer one,” Amy assured him with a light and forgiving smile, since it was already pretty clear Jake felt awful about all of this.

He sighed, his shoulders slumping forward. “I'm sorry about this, I really am.”

“I know,” she chuckled, nodding. “To be fair, if you didn't even notice it until half an hour later, I don't think there's much I could've done about soaked floors either. We might not be down one glass though,” she teased, since she still had to give him a light ribbing because they were Jake and Amy after all. He should've called her in for help, because she certainly could've done something about the rest of this mess- seriously, what was that orange stuff? But what's done was done, and their kitchen was done for.

It was an accident. A pretty big one, but nothing for him to look so wretched over. No need to be all sad puppy dog face like he tore up the place because she left him alone for too long.

Amy scanned him over. “You're a mess,” she said, lips quirked up, referring to him in a literal state of things. “C'mon babe,” she tugged on his wet shirt sleeve, “Let's get you cleaned up.”

Jake followed obediently to the bedroom, initially planning on just changing out of his soaked clothes, but then Amy informed him he should probably take a shower, since he was kinda orange.

“Don't worry, I'll take care it,” she promised, kissing him on the forehead.

Jake's face softened. “You're the best.” He meant every word of it.

“Yeah, I know,” she smirked, thumbing his nose. He crinkled it in reaction at her playful little swipe, but he truly couldn't complain.

“Now you go get cleaned up. If you don't get this orange stuff off you, you might just stay this way. Looks like it stains.”

Chapter Text

"If you love me, you'll let me go."

Gamora gave him an extremely unimpressed look at that, fixing him with a withering expression that would have made lesser men break. But he was strong. Just not strong enough.

"You're the one who made up the rules, Peter. Tap out."

"But if I tap out you'll win!" He whined, his face red from exertion and the fact that he was too tired to even try and escape her hold anymore, and her legs were kinda crushing his chest as she pulled his arm back and kept him pinned to the mat with ease, the same position she'd had him huffing and puffing in for the past 10 minutes.

"I've already won." Gamora leaned back, bringing his arm with her, and he groaned in pain, trying to twist out of her hold and utterly failing. The strain was like the burn of a stretch but 10 times worse considering how long they've been in this position, and still he refused to admit defeat by his Terran rules of tapping the mat.

For someone who had never seen Terran television, Gamora knew a lot of what he swore were pro wrestling moves. Or some straight up MMA crap right here.

Apparently growing bored with how long he was taking, Gamora moves onto more nefarious tactics to get this stubborn a-hole to admit she had him officially beat in this sparring match. While still keeping him restrained with her leg over his body and his arm pulled back, Gamora prodded his side with her foot and began wiggling her toes against him and Peter shrieked, his body curling up in defense at her ruthlessly exploiting his ticklish nature, running her toes up his side to the sound of the peals of laughter forced from his lungs.

"Okay, okay!" Peter shouted, slapping the mat repeatedly, begging for mercy, because he was either about to cry or piss his pants because oh my god she was so mean and cruel.

True to her word, Gamora let him go the moment his hand hit the soft foam base of the ship's sparring station, and Peter instantly used his newfound mobility to shield his sides from the attack of her freakishly adept toes.

"No fair," he claimed, glaring at her.

Gamora's eyes shone with amusement. "Oh, and I suppose trying to talk your way into me letting you go only to say it doesn't count because you didn't 'tap out' is?"

Which, okay, he totally would've done if she had fallen for his utterly transparent ploy, but there's no way she could prove that.

"You'd better hope our enemies don't find out how easy you are to break with some light tickling," Gamora teased, jabbing her toe in his direction, and Peter jumped back, way too hard to be described as merely flinching, thinking that toe was going for his side again.

"You're the worst," he pouted.

"Clearly, I am the best. You have just proven that. I accept your unconditional surrender."

"See!" Peter threw up his hands. "This is exactly why I didn't want to tap out!"

Gamora rolled her eyes. He was such a stubborn and sore loser, but she didn't really mind. She always had fun taking him down.

Chapter Text

"I don't want this to end," Valkyrie admitted, still standing on the swing as she leaned back, using the momentum from her body when she had jumped on to keep it moving forward. Swinging back and forth as she gripped the chains. She knew swings were intended for sitting, but standing and swinging was so much more fun.

This whole thing was so much more fun than she expected it to be. Sneaking out of the compound in the middle of the night, stealing away to a park built for Migardian children's amusement. The playgrounds were different here, than they were on Asgard, but they were similar enough that it made her chest ache with a bittersweet nostalgia that made her feel oddly innocent, especially after all the things she'd done.

It had been- goodness knows how long since she'd been on a date, or anything close to it. Not that her dalliances on Sakaar meant she was want for company. Those had never been dates. That was just sex with whatever attractive man or woman caught her eye, simple as that, gone in the morning, never to be seen again.

This was the first honest to god date she's been on in… eons, probably. Definitely centuries, at least. And it was going really well.

"There's always tomorrow night," Thor promised, a twinkle in his eye that couldn't be written off as just a trick of the starlight in the middle of the night.

Sure, maybe it had been longer than he'd been alive since the last time she'd gone on a real date, and maybe they were on a peculiar planet full of peculiar people because theirs was gone now. Maybe sneaking out in the middle of the night like a couple of foolhardy kids wasn't exactly the beacon of responsibility they were both expected to be, with who they were and what had happened.

But the only thing that really mattered was the smile on his face and how standing while swinging was fun , and the spark of happiness and laughter in his eyes made something funny swirl in her chest, and how she really wouldn't mind if he kept looking at her like that until the ends of forever.

Brunnhilde tipped her head back, smiling at him upside down as the metal chains creaked at the pendulum motion bringing her back and forth again, far and away.

"Yes, I suppose you're right," Valkyrie granted him before whipping her head back up with a burst of laughter from her lungs, leaning her body back and holding tight to the chains to use the swing as her sails, under the starry sky.

At his resulting grin, she realized she could get used to having a lot more nights like these.

Chapter Text

Carol doesn't look away from her communicator, though she's tempted, since the flicker of mischief she's got in her eyes was yes, sparked by the words of the person she was on a long distance video call with, but it's the reaction of the person in the room with her that she's already anticipating.

Carol narrows her eyes, her face firm, hardened as she stares down the person on the other end of the line.

"There are no men like me."

And with that, she ends the communication.

Maria takes one look at her, then bursts out laughing. "I can't believe you said that with such a straight face!"

She'd of course been sitting at the table and privy to the whole conversation (audience, really) when Carol took that video call in the kitchen. Though Maria's gotta say, watching her girl say the cheesiest thing in the world not five feet away from her was fine morning entertainment.

Carol's previously steely expression completely breaks at the sound of Maria's laughter, and the smile that follows really is blinding, because she honestly didn't expect it to go over that well. She thought that mock delivery would earn a snort from Maria, but an actual laugh? Be still her beating heart.

"What? You saying I'm wrong?" Carol challenges with a smirk, some inviting, teasing little thing at the woman eating breakfast at the kitchen table.

"I'm saying you're ridiculous," Maria corrects her, shaking her head with a fond little huff of a laugh. "That was way too cheesy, babe," she continues, motioning with her cinnamon toast as Carol closes the distance between them. "Even for you."

It's effortless, the way Carol fits behind her, wrapping her arms around her shoulders, sliding right back into place as she kisses Maria on the cheek.

"Mm, love it when you call me babe," she murmurs, rubbing her cheek against Maria's like a damn cat. "Do it again."

"You'll have to earn it, babe," Maria chuckles, her voice warm and velvety smooth, that hint to her teasing tone that's reserved just for the woman hanging off her shoulders right now.

Suddenly, Carol darts forward, taking a bite out of the cinnamon toast before Maria can pull her hand back.

She would go back in for another bite, but Maria's already laughing and shoving her off, telling Carol to go make her own like the grown adult she is and to stop stealing other people's breakfasts.

The surprising thing? Carol actually listens.

Chapter Text

“I really fucked it up this time,” Barry says, staring at the blank screen in front of him. Then, “Iris! I think I broke it!”

She doesn’t have to ask what ‘it’ is. He’s been having some trials and errors with his latest interest, and he doesn’t seem to be picking up on how to do it as quickly as he thought he would. Sure, he’s got curiosity and enthusiasm, and trying to broaden his very nerdy hobbies isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but he’s much more confident than he should be. The problem lies in when he thinks he understands how to do something, and then 5 minutes later he’s calling out how it’s not working anymore and he doesn’t know what he did wrong.

“Barry, if you were screwing around on my laptop again, I swear to god-” she calls back from the kitchen.

He is not allowed to borrow her laptop anymore, especially when it’s because he can’t use his because of something he did to it.

“I was practicing!” He whines, apparently taking issue with her phrasing it as screwing around.

She finds Barry sitting on the floor, his laptop on the coffee table in front of him, looking very befuddled as he stared at the malfunctioning machine (could you really call it malfunctioning when he was the one who gave it the wrong command or whatever that caused all the errors? The computer was just following orders).

Iris takes a seat on the couch behind him, peering over his shoulder as she sipped some of her freshly brewed coffee. 

The screen is completely black. 

“You try turning it off and on again?”

“Iris, it is off. It won’t turn back on again,” he demonstrates, pressing the power button, and big surprise, nothing happens. “Everything was going fine, and then it just- shut off. And it won’t boot back up.”

She shrugs. “Call tech support.”

Barry groans. He was really hoping it wouldn’t come to that. He thought he was finally getting the hang of this programming thing. But he knows when he’s beat, and soon his phone is out and he’s dialing the number that if he didn’t have memorized before he started trying to learn this stuff, he definitely did now.

It picks up after three rings.

“Hey, what’s up?”

Barry sighs, sounding utterly defeated. “Hey Felicity. You know that thing you showed me how to do last week? With the something something command line thing?”

There’s silence on the other end of the phone. Because Felicity knows her friend/student, and she’s waiting to hear how much damage he did.

He bites the bullet. “I kinda tried to do it this morning, and my laptop just got like, really mad at me, throwing up all these errors like the computer version of yelling at me, then totally shut down without any warning. Well, there might have been a warning in all the error messages, but there were a lot of them. Now it uh- it won’t turn back on. At all.”

Iris has to struggle not to laugh- she can hear Felicity’s pained groan. One she empathizes with, because that’s a ‘Barry, for someone so smart, how can you be so stupid’ groan if she ever heard one. Iris should know. She’s an expert on Barry being a dumbass and a genius at the same time.

“Barry, how many times have I told- if you want to play around without supervision- how hard is it to go online and order a Raspberry Pi? 35 bucks! It’s a 35 dollar computer for you to screw around with, and if you really do something irreversible- big deal. You can just wipe it and reinstall- I mean really, Barry, there’s a reason why programmers use things like development kits. Mistakes are gonna happen. I’m assuming you like your laptop, right? It’s got important stuff on it? This is why I keep telling you to not use your personal machine to practice,” Felicity says, knowing that she’s crossed into ranting, but he deserved it. 

It’s not that Barry was a bad student, he could just be a frustrating one. She wasn’t sure what to think when he first asked her if she could show him some programming stuff and maybe teach him a little bit, but it was actually really fun. Barry might not have had any more technical knowhow than the average person of his generation, but he totally got the getting all excited and talking a mile a minute about your passions and interests and railroading people in a geek spiral. He did it just as much as she did. Even if he didn’t understand everything she said, she never had to worry about boring him when she went down a rabbit hole. It was nice having a friend taking a genuine interest in something you were passionate about, and being just as excited to learn about it as you were to talk about it.

It’s just- this was definitely not the first time he’d called for help because he was practicing on a computer that he really shouldn’t be.

Barry winces audibly. “Yeah, sorry. On a side note- you are the best teacher in the world?” He has a hopeful lilt to his voice.

“Yeah, yeah,” Felicity laughs. “You are going to ask Iris very nicely to go online and buy you a Raspberry Pi. Pi like the number. You are not going to touch her laptop, because I will be very upset if I have to fix two computers because Barry Allen got his fingers on them.”

“I promise,” Barry says, crossing his heart, even though she can’t see it. “Thank you so much. You’re a lifesaver.”

“You do not deserve a friend as good as her,” Iris tells him after his phone call is over. She gives his hair a playful little ruffle along with it.

He scrubs his hands over his face. “I know.”

Barry looks over at her. “Hey, can I-”

“Nope!” She says loudly, clamping her lips together, but it does nothing to hide her amusement. “You’re not touching any of my electronics. You are going to do exactly what Felicity told you to do, and if you need to use the internet, you’re going to use your phone. Unless you broke that too.”

Chapter Text

"Is this a game to you," Gamora asks, more tired than anything else. Her bed is calling to her. 

Peter grins. "No, but we can make it one."

Chapter Text

She could hardly believe what she was seeing. There's no way. It was impossible.

Yet there he is, plain as day. Barry Allen walking towards her with the biggest smile on his face, seriously grinning at her shocked expression. 

There's no way this was actually happening, despite the evidence standing right in front of her.

Iris reached out and poked him in the face, like maybe it was a hologram instead, because that was the only logical explanation. 

"Hey, what was that for?" He pouted, screwing up his face, rubbing his cheek at her just jabbing him with her finger.

"How is this even possible?" Iris asked.

He took offense to her incredulity. "It's not like it's that unlikely."

She scoffed. "I beg to differ. It's not just that you're not late. Barry Allen showing up on time is a straight up miracle. But you're not on time. You're early. "

He's at least 10 minutes early to their dinner reservation, something that has never happened before. Barry's never even gotten somewhere five minutes early in his life.

She looked down at her watch. He was 12 minutes early, actually. She never thought she'd see the day Barry Allen arrived with time to spare. "I can't believe this. You're early. I don't even know you anymore."

"Oh come on! Here I am thinking that being early to our anniversary dinner is something nice that you'd appreciate, and instead you're making fun of me for it!"

Iris cracked a smile, "You know you love it. Come on, Bear, let's go find our table."

Barry continued grumbling as she hooked her arm in his, but they both knew he wasn't really upset, just being pouty and adorable. Besides, the kiss she gave him on the cheek more than made up for it. He was already smiling back down at her by the time they sat down.

Because impossible things happen in Central City.

Things like Barry Allen actually being early.

All for her.

Chapter Text

“Did you really think that's what this was?” Daisy asks, genuinely curious. There's no judgment in her tone. She actually sounds impressed.

“Don't- don't even ask me,” Daniel says, because he honestly doesn't know.

Daisy turns to him with a laugh, patting his cheek. “You're lucky you're cute, babe, because only you,” a fond shake of her head and she's laughing again.

She steals a surreptitious glance back at- my goodness, Sousa really did a number on it, didn't he?

“Come on,” she says, pulling his arm over her shoulder and tugging him away. “If we get out of here quick enough, no one will know it was us.”

She's a bad influence. He doesn't really mind.