Work Text:
Mark’s hand was so slippery he could barely hold his phone. He fumbled his fingers against the keypad, crafting a message to the only person he could trust (and even that trust was a stretch). Blood smeared the screen. Mark would have winced, but he couldn’t muster up enough energy.
His shaking thumb pressed five buttons.
h
e
l
p
send
Then the phone tumbled from his fingers and clattered to the pavement, his hand following close behind. He wasn’t awake to feel it buzz against his leg with a responding text:
who the h is this??
W / T \ Y
Frost was just adding a splotch of blood red to her newest painting (impressionistic finger painting, 10/10 would attempt again) when her phone vibrated. She glared over at it, daring it to interrupt her work with a second buzz.
When no second buzz came, Frost nodded with satisfaction and returned to her art. She could use a little more blue, right in the upper corner…
Frost was about to get to work on that spot when the guilt-trip nature (leftover from Caitlin, of course) that she generally ignored tugged at her. She looked back over to her phone. When pretty much the only numbers in your contact book were field-active superheroes, a text could mean anything. Even just one. Especially just one.
Frost groaned and dunked her fingers into her water bowl, wiped them on a rag, and strode over to her phone. She frowned at the unfamiliar, nameless number that had popped up on her lock screen, and then frowned even harder at the message.
help.
Frost rolled her eyes and texted back, shaking her head at the smudge of blue she got on the w key.
who the h is this??
She waited a moment, staring at her phone expectantly, but there was no reply. Frost rolled her eyes again, annoyed, and turned back to her painting. Her guilt-trip nature immediately gave her a kick in the pants.
“Caitlin!” Frost shouted. She was in the spare room in Caitlin’s apartment that she’d converted into an art studio. Caitlin had been a bit sad to lose what had been acting as her mini-library, but she preferred having to read in her bedroom to having paint all over the couch.
Caitlin poked her head into the room dressed in pajamas. “What’s up?” she asked, peeking around the canvas. “Oh, that’s lovely.”
“It’s supposed to be dramatic,” Frost scowled, before shoving her phone in Caitlin’s face. “Do you know who this is?”
“Let me see if I have the number,” Caitlin murmured, pulling her own phone from her pocket and scrolling through her contacts. “No. Is it someone from your back-alley days?”
“I don’t know; that’s the problem,” Frost huffed, glaring at the phone as if she could send that glare straight through to the person who was pulling her away from her art. Her work was going to dry before she had the chance to properly smudge it into the form she wanted, and it was going to be all this unknown-number’s fault. “Whatever. It’s problem just some stupid guy who drunk texted a random number.”
“Maybe…” Caitlin hedged. “Or maybe someone really needs your help.” She hesitated for a second longer before holding out hand. “I could track the text.”
“You can do that?” Frost asked, surprised.
“Cisco may have taught me a few tricks before he left town,” Caitlin said with a grin, grabbing the phone. “I’ll get you a location, and then we can check this out.”
“Nuh uh,” Frost countered immediately, picking up her bowl of water so she could take it to the sink and dump it out. “I have no idea what I’m going to be walking into. It could be a total trap, and I can’t risk you being in danger.”
“It could be a trap,” Caitlin agreed, before adding, “so you can’t risk going in there without back up. Besides, what if the ‘help’ means someone’s really hurt? You bringing me along could save a life, Frost.”
“Fine,” Frost grumbled, already heading for the door. “But I’m driving.”
Caitlin groaned, but she wasn’t about to argue if it meant she could tag along.
W / T \ Y
The location Caitlin derived from the text led the sisters to a grimy alley not far from the bar where Frost and Mark had both once worked. Frost pulled over on the side of the road and put the car into park. “Stay here,” she told Caitlin, and stepped onto the sidewalk.
Frost walked towards the alley, pulling out her phone and turning on the flashlight. Almost immediately, the beam fell on a prone form. Frost recoiled, but she soon realized that the scruffy jaw and muscular shoulders belonged to none other than that of Mark Blaine.
“What a surprise,” Frost snapped, stomping up to him. “You think you can just text me out of nowhere after what you pulled? To be clear, the only reason I showed up is because I didn’t have your number in my phone. Yep, that’s right, I didn’t even input your number, even though you gave it to me like three-“
She broke off suddenly, her light catching on something silver that shone dully against Mark’s dark shirt.
“Caitlin!” she yelled, racing the rest of the way towards Mark and falling on her knees next to him. “Caitlin!!”
Caitlin came barreling out of the car and over to the body on the ground. Her eyes caught on the silver knife handle jutting out of Mark’s stomach and they widened with horror. “Shine your light on the wound,” she ordered Frost, dropping to the grimy asphalt. She grasped Mark’s shirt and ripped it, hard, opening up a large enough tear that they had full view of his stomach.
Mark’s entire abdomen was dark red. Frost swallowed down bile, remembering the red she’d been adding to her painting just before she’d gotten his text. If she’d ignored it, if she’d considered it a waste of time…
“Shouldn’t we take out the knife?” Frost demanded, reaching for the handle.
“No!” Caitlin cried, stopping her. “It’s acting like a cork to the wound. Take out this knife before I can stitch him up and he’ll bleed out in minutes. What we need to get him to a hospital, now.”
“We can’t; he’s known as a criminal at all of them,” Frost said, slapping at Mark’s face in an attempt to get him to wake up. “That’s why I brought him to you at STAR Labs last time.”
Last time. Last time when he’d made them drinks and they’d nearly kissed and then he’d vanished with no real reason why.
“All right then,” Caitlin sighed, resigned but relenting. “Grab his arm. We’re going to need to get him to the car.”
Frost eyed the stab wound nervously as she situated herself in a spot where she could help Caitlin lift Mark. She didn’t like how cool his skin felt, nearly the temperature of hers, and the way every part of him and the surrounding area she touched felt sticky with blood.
She and Caitlin heaved Mark up and began to stumble to the car. Frost was startled by the sound of a groan coming from the man in between them. “Mark?” she asked, unable to see his face past a curtain of her hair that’d gotten caught between their arms.
“Snowflake?” Mark mumbled, tripping as he tried to get his feet underneath him to help them move him. Something must have jostled the knife still imbedded in his stomach and he groaned, slumping. “Thanks for- showing up.”
Frost glowered, fighting the panic in her chest. “Can’t believe you got stabbed. Again. Do you have to get stabbed every single time I see you?”
“Hey, this is- only-“ Mark groaned again, eyes squeezing tight. “The third time-“
“Stop talking,” Caitlin ordered, fumbling for the handle of the backseat and tugging the door open. “We’re going to lay you down back here. Frost, once you can, go grab the towel in the trunk. I’ll need to staunch the wound while you drive us to STAR Labs.”
Frost was somewhat relieved that Caitlin hadn’t suggested she staunch the blood. Stab wound or not, she wasn’t sure exactly how she would handle pressing her hands all over the stomach that she’d fantasized about for months now.
Caitlin situated Mark on the backseat and awkwardly got in next to him. Frost quickly grabbed the towel and then ran to the drivers side, lurching into the road almost before she’d finished buckling.
“Try to drive smoothly, please,” Caitlin said through gritted teeth, propping herself up on the back of the passengers seat and keeping one hand firmly pressed to Mark’s stomach. He was whimpering quietly, neck arched and fingers biting in the leather cushion beneath him.
Frost put her foot down on the accelerator, wizzing through the lamplit streets. Oh, to return to the days of functioning inter-dimensional extrapolators or Cisco at your beck and call.
Their path to STAR Labs was, thankfully, unhindered by any sort of traffic. Frost ran a few red lights and blew passed a few more stop signs and was soon pulling into the parking garage below the laboratory at 30 miles per hour. The moment the car was in park, right next to the elevators, she flew out of the front seat and went to help Caitlin.
“He passed out again,” Caitlin reported, the women beginning to muscle Mark’s body out of the backseat as smoothly as they could. “I don’t know if it was from pain or blood loss, but either way I need to get him stitched up as soon as humanly possible.”
“We should have called Barry,” Frost grunted, wrapping her arm around Mark’s waist and backing into the elevator. She pressed the first floor button and leaned against the wall. “We’d already be done if we’d called Barry.”
“I considered it,” Caitlin admitted. “But Mark’s not nearly stabile enough for that kind of velocity.” She tapped her foot anxiously, eyeing the elevator numbers. “We’re in the home stretch. He’ll be okay, Frost.”
Frost bit down on her lip. It was a habit she was trying to break because it felt too much like it belonged to Caitlin, but now she was too distracted and anxious to bother resisting the temptation.
Frost and Caitlin made it down the hallway and into Caitlin’s lab with no further difficulties. Caitlin yanked down the sheets and the sisters lifted Mark onto a gurney.
“I need a needle, thread, rubbing alcohol, and a cotton swabs to keep the site clear of the blood,” Caitlin ordered, already starting to prep Mark’s midsection for stitches. “When I pull the knife out there is going to be a lot of blood, okay?”
“Okay,” Frost rasped, grabbing the supplies Caitlin needed and rushing them over. She stuck a cotton swab between a thick pair of tweezers and held them over Mark’s stomach.
“Ready?” Caitlin asked.
Frost nodded. Caitlin grasped the knife handle and pulled.
It came out with a sickening sluicing sound. For a moment nothing happened, then dark blood bubbled to the surface. Frost hurriedly stuck her cotton to the gush, but it was quickly saturated. She kept absorbing, trying to keep the spot clean, while Caitlin prepared the needle.
Caitlin was good at what she did. Though she didn’t have as much practice stitching people up as one might except (Speedsters rarely needed it), she’d had more than her fair share. Before long, the large wound on Mark’s stomach was compressed together with neat rows of tiny stitches. Caitlin dampened a towel and cleaned off Mark’s chest, finally able to get the blood clear now that there was none coming to replace it.
After a moment of watching Mark, the two sisters looked at each other. “We are covered in blood,” Frost cringed, eyeing them.
“I’m still wearing pajamas,” Caitlin groaned. “Why didn’t I change?”
“That’s a you problem,” Frost snorted, throwing one of the bloody towels at her. Caitlin squealed and batted it away and Frost grabbed her arm. “Seriously though, Caity… Thank you.”
“Of course,” Caitlin said with a smile, before glancing down at Mark’s lax, unconscious features. “I’ll give you two a moment, okay?”
Frost was mustering up the energy to convince Caitlin that a moment alone really wasn’t necessary, but the young doctor was already turning to leave.
Frost sat down, picking at her nails. She was a mess, paint splattered and sweaty and covered in someone else’s blood. If appearances was all she’d had going for her in Mark’s eyes, he was about to be very turned off.
Not that she cared.
She didn’t care.
Did she care?
Who was she kidding? Her hands were still shaking, had been from the moment she’d realized that Mark could be lying dead in front of her on the pavement. Frost had seen plenty of surgeries, plenty of injuries, but she hadn’t been this terrified since she’d had a panic attack when Barry was injured before Crisis.
“You dumb idiot,” Frost mumbled, reaching out and grasping Mark’s hand and pressing it to her forehead in a desperate attempt to keep herself from freaking out. She drew in shaky breath after shaky breath, fingers biting tighter and tighter, eyes squeezing until sparkles burst behind her eyelids. “You dumb, stupid, idiot.”
“Snowflake?”
Frost abruptly let go of Mark’s hand, eyes shooting up to meet his as they flickered open. “You’re awake,” she said flatly.
“We’re you holding my hand?” Mark rasped, managing a hint of his normal suave grin.
“No,” Frost snapped immediately, before she saw his grin only get more smug. She glared at him. “Fine. Maybe I was. But I thought you were going to die, you jerk.”
“You were worried about me!” Mark cried, sounding pleased. “After everything, you were worried about me.”
“I hate you,” Frost growled. “ ‘After everything’, I hate you.”
Mark’s expression fell and for a second there was a clear struggle on his face as he tried to figure out what to say. “Snowflake-“
“Stop calling me that!” Frost cried, jumping up from her chair as she was suddenly filled with jittery energy. “Just stop! Stop acting like you actually care about me, Mark, because clearly you-“
Her wrist was grasped, her body dragged down. Frost shot out a hand to keep herself from collapsing entirely on top of Mark as he roughly cupped her face and crushed his lips against hers.
Frost’s arm wobbled. She dropped to an elbow, torso falling awkwardly across the gurney as she drove the fingers of her free hand into Mark’s hair and allowed him to entirely ravage her mouth.
“Stop-!” she suddenly gasped out, pushing away. “You can’t just-“
He kissed her again.
And again.
And again.
Finally, Mark eased off her lips and let his hand fall back, breath coming in rough pants. Frost collapsed back into her chair, lips all but throbbing. “You’re- going to rip your stitches-“ she gasped out, face burning in a way she didn’t even know was possible for her.
Mark grinned, eyes dark. “Worth it.”
W / T \ Y
“I don’t have an explanation you’re going to want to hear,” Mark sighed as he and Frost sat in the med bay, him in the gurney and her trying to resist an earlier teasing offer of his to get on it with him. “But I had to leave that night, Frost.”
“Then why didn’t you just leave?” Frost asked, bewildered. “You could have just walked out the door.”
“I guess I just felt like…” Mark swallowed. “You said that if I broke your trust again I’d never get it back. So I felt like you should- you should know that I was breaking your trust again. You should know that me leaving wasn’t- wasn’t just me leaving. I know it doesn’t make any sense, but…”
“You’re right, it doesn’t,” Frost snipped. But then she softened. “But I… get it. I guess.”
“So where does that leave us?” Mark asked quietly. He carefully pushed himself higher on the pillows, wincing slightly.
Frost watched him, his tattered shirt still hanging from his shoulders, his skin still drawn and pale from so much blood loss. She wanted to tell him that he sucked and was a toxic jerk and that she wanted nothing to do with him for the rest of her life, but none of that was even remotely true. Mark wasn’t toxic… he was damaged. Really, really screwed up and damaged.
But that had been her just a few short years ago. That would still be her if Caitlin had never come into her life. Maybe she shouldn’t be putting it upon her own shoulders to fix him or save him or whatever, but… she couldn’t just throw it all away.
Well. She literally could. But Frost knew that if she did, she’d probably spend the rest of her life regretting that decision, even if just a little bit.
“Why don’t you start by telling me who gave you that?” she replied finally, nodding at the stitches across Mark’s stomach.
Mark blew out a breath through his teeth. “You know them, actually,” he remarked. “They just happened to aim better the second time around.”
“It was the same guys?” Frost asked, incredulous. “Didn’t they get the memo that you’re under my protection?”
She cringed the moment after she said those words, realizing she sounded like a protective, well… girlfriend. But Mark just shrugged. “Apparently they thought that memo was only in place when you were actually around.”
The guilt-trip nature was back, knocking on Frost’s sternum like an annoying neighbor. She looked down at her hands, which were still smeared with copious amounts of dried blood, and tried to find away through thinking about how she almost hadn’t been around at all.
“Hey.” Mark reached out and put his hand on top of hers. “You saved my life tonight, Snowflake. Even if you were tempted to let me bleed out the entire time, even if you almost ignored my text… you saved my life. Again, I could add.”
“Yeah, I guess I did,” Frost said with a mock-self-impressed shrug. “I’m just ratcheting up those favors, aren’t I?”
“Anything you want, anytime you want it, I owe you,” Mark agreed vehemently.
Frost swallowed, wanting to know if he was serious, wanting that promise to be more than something superficial. “Then stick around,” she said quietly. “I’ll consider us even if you don’t go running off and dropping off the map without an explanation again.”
Mark eyed her gently, flipping her hand so he could slip his fingers between hers. “You might wanna use your favor on something else.”
“Why?” Frost asked, mustering up the energy for a glare. “That’s too much to ask?”
“No.” Mark squeezed her hand. “Because I was going to stay anyway.”