Birthday celebrations

[quickgenius]

WHO: Jesse Wells and Harrison Wells
WHERE: Heropa 10
WHEN: backdated to June 5th
WHAT: It’s her dad’s birthday, and she’s making him a birthday dinner. And cake.
WARNINGS: None. Unless CUTENESS counts.


Jesse knows that her dad doesn’t make a big deal out of his birthday. She’s not even sure Barry and the rest of his team even know what day it is, and her dad surely hasn’t said anything about it to them if they don’t. But she knows, and he’s not going to stop her from surprising him with a birthday dinner. So she very carefully ushers him out the door of Heropa 10 with a kiss on the cheek and a list, insisting that he has to go pick up the items on it for her because the aisles in some of the shops are too narrow for her to navigate with her wings.

It’s even sort of true.

And once he’s off, and once she’s sure he’s not going to be coming back because he forgot something, she quickly gets to work, bustling around the kitchen. It’s an involved enough list, with enough different shops on it that he should be gone long enough for her to do this. She hopes she remembers the recipes correctly; they’re the recipes her mom used. She wants to do this right. And it seemed... fitting, given that they’re so far away from home.

The lasagne is bubbling away in the oven just about done, the cheese turning just the right shade of golden brown, and she’s just finishing up the frosting and decorating on the black forest cake when she hears him return.

Comments

[harrisonwells]

It's a transparent excuse, he knows what day it is as well as she does, but he goes to the store without complaint. Even drags his feet a little getting everything on her list, to make sure she doesn't feel rushed. Whatever it is she's pulling together that means she needs him out of the house, he doesn't mind running errands. She's gotten so much better with her wings, they lie mostly still now when she isn't thinking about them, and she can glide without any assistant from him now, but moving through the smaller stores, that's not easy.

So he's happy to help. And when he gets home and walks into the garage, he slows to a stop as that smell hits him and takes him back ten years. It takes another minute before he can keep walking.

And there she is at the kitchen table, icing a cake with that little frown of concentration that she gets from her mother, wings folded neatly behind her. "That's your mother's lasagna," he says quietly as he sets the bags aside on the counter, out of the way for now. "And a black forest cake—when did you—Jesse. You didn't have to do..."

But of course she knows. That's why she did it. Because he wouldn't have bothered.

[quickgenius]

Jesse looks up when he comes into the kitchen, expression a little... hesitant. Nervous. And as always, happy to see him. She hadn’t been sure how he would react when he smelled her mom’s lasagne. It had been a long time since they’d had it, and she hoped it wasn’t an unpleasant reminder of her, of the person they’d lost. She didn’t want to bring back the bad memories. Just the good ones. She wanted to try and make Heropa 10 feel a little like home, since they didn’t know how long they were going to be living there.

She nods, biting her lip a bit, nervously. “I wanted to make you something special for your birthday.” Because he’s right. She knows he wouldn’t have bothered. So she did. She gives her dad a shy little smile. “And this was the most special thing I could think of.”

[harrisonwells]

No reminder of Tess could be unpleasant, to Harrison. Even when it had been hard, in those early years, even when they'd been trying to find the way the world fit together without her, they'd been a team, and he's just glad it isn't hard for Jesse to do things that remind her of her mom. She'd been so young when Tess had...he'd been so worried she'd forget her.

Brace yourself for the wings to blink out, Jesse. Harrison crosses the kitchen in just a couple strides to slide an arm around her shoulders and pull her into a hug, smiling down at the cake. "I think you guessed right. Smells great."

[quickgenius]

There are certain times of year when it’s a little bit harder, when their loss hits her harder than usual, but it’s never that hard. Never hard enough that she wouldn’t want to do something like this. Especially on days like today. It’s important.

She’s gotten used to the way his power interacts with hers. There was no other choice; she wasn’t going to let something so simple stand between her and hugging her dad. So he slides an arm around her shoulders and her wings vanish (the sudden lack doesn’t even faze her any more) as she tucks herself against him and hugs him tight. “Happy birthday, Dad.” She tilts her head and kisses him on the cheek. “Love you.”

[harrisonwells]

"Love you too, sweetie." Harrison had never been one to care much about his own birthday, even before he'd met Tess, but Tess had cared, and Jesse cares, and if it's important to her, it's important to him.

He notices the way she balances herself to adjust for the sudden lack of drag when her wings vanish and there's another little surge of pride there. She's really coming along. Flying itself is still a little awkward, but he still thinks that has more to do with overthinking it and needing practice than any lack of talent. But then, he would think that, wouldn't he? "You should get out again this weekend," he says as he lets go and almost dodges the reappearance of her wings, knocking one with his elbow as he moves back.

"Sorry, Jess," he murmurs, before pausing. And looking back at her wings. And reaching out experimentally to brush his fingers down the feathers that...don't vanish when he touches them. "...huh."

[quickgenius]

She’s getting better. She’s made a lot of progress, is getting better at the whole handling her wings thing, and she’s pretty sure a large part of that is because of her dad. She’d be floundering even harder without him being there.

He knocks one of her wings with his elbow and she instinctively goes to move out of the way... before freezing in her tracks and looking at him in surprise. That shouldn’t have happened. And the surprise only intensifies when he brushes his fingers down her feathers and her wings still don’t disappear. It’s sort of soothing, actually, and it almost tickles; her wings shift slightly under his hand, feathers rustling a little – no one’s actually TOUCHED her wings before. “That’s... unexpected.”

[harrisonwells]

"It's definitely that." He can set his entire hand on the wing and it does nothing except flex just a little. "I wonder if it's because they're not...you, the way the rest of you is you," he muses, and smooths a few wayward feathers back into place because he can.

Then he tries setting his fingers a little higher, closer to her back, and keeps going until he finds the point where they will disappear: the joint where they connect to her back. "We never even thought to try it, did we. Some scientists we are," he says with a little laugh, dinner temporarily forgotten in light of this new discovery.

[quickgenius]

His hand is warm on her wing and her feathers rustle a little under his hand as she sighs. Yeah, definitely soothing. Weird, but soothing. It kind of reminds her of her mom running her hand over her hair when she was trying to stay up late with her parents but falling asleep. That sort of soothing. But weird because WINGS.

“Well, we didn’t have any reason to believe that my wings were any less me,” she replies, sounding amused. “Hard to know to test a hypothesis when we’re not aware it’s the sort of hypothesis we should have.” And she’d GROWN the things herself, even if she never would have if not for this place, she’d been pretty sure they were as much her as the rest of her.

[harrisonwells]

"You and your logic-based conclusions," Harrison says absently as he pulls his hand back again and watches them reappear, and stay visible as he touches the feathers again. "How does that feel? Strange? Good strange or bad?"

This could be helpful if she gets caught in the rain, or her wings are somehow distressed and she needs them straightened out again. He can help her put her wings back in order. The thought makes him smile almost as much as the surprise birthday dinner. Which they'll get to soon enough, but a little research first.