15253/Caitlin's Day Off

Caitlin's Day Off
Date of Scene:	28 June 2023
Location:	Labs - Titan's Tower
Synopsis:	Wally tries to help Caitlin...and she ends up helping him.
Cast of Characters:	Caitlin Fairchild, Wally West

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Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
The Titan's lab is something between a fabrication shop and a research facility, and small as it is there's enough special equipment inside it to make any college in the country green with envy. It's a handy resource to have when there are emergencies or challenges that are too imminent to ignore but too sensitive to trust to outside agencies, like SHIELD or private enterprise.

The vent fans are going full blow and pulling fresh air in from the building's subterranean grotto to keep things cool. Caitlin is sitting in front of the anvil with heavy welder's goggles covering her eyes, and her hair pulled back and pinned up with a couple scrunchies and a pencil. The welding torch in her hand emits a low roar of combustion as she works with painstaking precision to attach a metal bracket to what looks like a piece of her Amazon armor. She herself is in a faded grey tee-shirt pockparked with dozens of welding spark holes, and in a baggy oliver-green utility suit tied off by the arms around her waist. The door chimes to announce a visitor, and Caitlin finishes the weld before she kills the torch and looks up at the cameras. "Go ahead and let 'em in, MARVIN," she bids the house's AI. There's a confirmation *beep* and the door unlatches and slides open.

Wally West has posed:
In short: Cait. Needed. A. BREAK.

A fascinating and brilliant scientist who works hard. She stays in the lab, she provides emotional support at the drop of a hat. She even cooks the majority of the time for the team and all that is when they're not kicking bad guy ass and taking bad guy names!

Well, Wally won't stand for it!

When those doors hiss open, Wally is on the other side with a big smile on his face. He's dressed casually instead of his supersuit: Jeans, yellow long sleeve, some friction-resistant kicks (compliments of Vic). His hair is a mess as always, but he blurs to the middle of the lab, eyes looking around as lips purse to make a whistling noise.

"Dang, babe, you making some upgrades to your armor?" Yes, 'babe',because if he can't flirt with Caitlin then how is he gonna convince her to take five?

"Dope. I wonder how I'd be in armor? Think I'd look as good in Amazon-Tech? I think I'd look like a male Wonder Woman and honestly, I don't have the legs for it. Crazy!"

He clears his throat. Slow down.

"How you doing, Cait?"

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Caitlin gives Wally an arch look. "'Babe'? You've been watching too much daytime TV, Wally," Caitlin says. Still, a tolerant smile tugs at the corner of her mouth to turn it into some gentle chivvying. "And I'm doing fine, thanks for asking," she assures him. "Just making some adjustments to my armor so my drone's a bit better protected." She uplifts her chin at the shelving and whistles once. Her faithful little drone assistant beeps and flexes its omni-propellers, but doesn't launch into the air just yet.

"What about you? Off work today, or is something broken?" She reaches over and turns off the gas feed, not bothering with a wrench, and starts tidying up the workstation. Caitlin's not quite as territorial about the lab as she is her kitchen, but there are some pretty firm rules in place about keeping the communal workplace tidy.

Wally West has posed:
"What's wrong with daytime TV?" Wally tries to defend himself. "Sure, it's a lot of soap operas and-" He puts on his best Italian accent. "Gimme my money, Frankie, or your girl gets it!" He stoves the accent and his chirpy voice comes back online. "But you can't deny it's good cinema. Speaking of which, I should head to the movies soon. They made a movie about Barry recently. Should I grill him for it? I should grill him for it." He facepalms himself.

Slow it down.

"Great to hear. You have a DRONE now?! Man, that's cool. Sometimes I wish I was slower so I could use stuff like that. But I think I'm too fast for it. I'd break it!"

He waves Ay her friendly drone.

"Off work and eager to get you out of this lab! You work too hard Cait. I think you could use some fun in the sun." He says in a surprisingly serious voice, like a different, more concerned side of him that's no longer fun and games. "I'm worried about you."

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
"Wally, I'm /fine/," Caitlin promises the speedster in her most reassuring tone of voice. "Yeah, I'm busy, but I'm not overwhelmed with it, either. My dayplanner looks like a train schedule, and I like it that way." She gets up and moves her armor over to a steel rack so it can finish cooling, disregarding the heat it carries, and starts putting the tools up.

"There's not exactly a lot I can cut out of it, either. I knew med school was going to be like this. In fact, I thought it would be worse. At least they're not making me re-take my core sciences classes. And the residency work I'm doing now will count for my requirements post-graduation."

She gestures vaguely around her, as if addressing the whole of the Tower. "It's not like I can hit the brakes on it at this point. Med School is a major commitment of time, and if I stop now, they'll make me re-start the entire educational track I was on. It just means for the next year or so, my free time is under a pretty tight schedule." She shrugs at Wally self-effacingly. "It kinda sucks, yeah, but it is what it is, at this point."

Wally West has posed:
Wally's typical jovial personality has gone out the window for a moment. His eyes are soft as they regard her during her explanations. She's right, she knows exactly what she's doing and while the overall workload is less than she expected, she's /still/ overworking herself.

"Cait-"

Wally meets her eyes, vibrant and overwhelmingly spectacular in their sight, with his own. "I'm not asking you to quit. I'm asking you to take a break. The physical stuff you've always been able to handle. But I'm going to make sure your mental health is in tip top shape."

"So right now, while you're waiting for the armor to settle, let me take you out somewhere, or play a board game or an episode of your favorite show. /Then/ you can go back to working yourself silly."

He raises a brow. "So how about it, uou beautiful intelligent powerhouse? Just a few minutes then you can get back to it. Deal?"

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Caitlin groaaaaans and rolls her head back at Wally's gentle remonstration. "Walllyyyy," she exhales, drawing his name out. The ginger maiden lifts her hands and drops them on Wally's shoulders (a little heavily), and looks him in the eye. And shakes him just a little, ever-so-sisterly.

"This is /how/ I relax. By making things with my hands. Or cooking. Or knitting. I'd love to be able to just chill out and play WoW or watch a game but every hour I fall behind schedule is an hour I have to make up somewhere else in the week. You do want me to get my MD, right?" she asks, rather rhtorically. Her lips thin and she drops her hands to her side, then sighs and rests them on her hips.

"Look, if you really want to help, you can keep me company while I make some brownies. Then I really do need to get back to studying." She lifts a brow at him and spreads one hand open in a 'take it or leave it' gesture.

Wally West has posed:
Her hands find surprisingly well-built shoulders, but she was still strong enough to pick up 1,000 Wally Wests and she'd still make it look SO EASY. But she tells him it's how she relaxes.

He shakes with her movenents, flailing at the feeling of them and trying not to be such a leaf in the wind. "Of /course/ I do. But I'm preventing your burn out. You'll thank me later for the distraction."

She partly yields. "So uou /Do/ want to play WoW!" Wally smirks at her. "Fine, but I'll help you make brownies." He walks and takes her side. "Come on, it'll be fun! I promise I won't eat them all this time." He even offers her his arm!

What a gentleman.

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
"Have you always been such a pain in the keister?" Caitlin asks Wally. But she laughs despite herself, shaking her head, and gestures helplessly at the door. "Fine, alright. Let me get washed up," she excuses herself, and detours to the locker room. "I'll meet you up there, all right?"

True to her word, a few minutes later Caitlin steps off the elevator into the main room of the Tower. She's washed her hands and face, and changed out weld-spattered clothing for athleisure leggings and a bright pink 'Columbia Med' hoodie with still-fresh white lettering.

"All right, let's see what we've got," she says, and claps her palms and briskly rubs them together. "How about we do a batch of classic brownies and then, some cheesecake ones for experimentation?" she offers. "Unless you're a brownie purist. Which is fine, I don't judge."

Wally West has posed:
"Yep."

Wally doesn't even try to hide it. He knows if he pushes enough or tries hard enough to be agitating, she might eventually see it his way. She gestures for the door and asks for time to wash off. "Sure. I'll see you topside!"

In a blur, Wally's gone, leaving Caitlin to do as she had promised. In the main room of the Tower, Wally smiles at her. "Hellooooo Caitlin!" In an overly flirty tone of voice. "Pink's a good color on you." He compliments far more seriously then he's clapping his hands. "Alright!" He smiles.

"Experimenting? You had me at cheesecake. Let's try firing it up. Don't suppose you have aprons around?"

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
"Behind the pantry door," Caitlin offers. She's got her *own* rack of aprons in the small larder, and fishes out a clean apron. It sports a very faded 20-side dice on the front and barely legible 'roll for initiative' beneath it.

"All right, we're gonna need... oh, let's say thirty eggs, eight sticks of butter, sugar, flour..." She starts running down the ingredient mix for the brownies so they can be staged up on the island. Meantime, Caitlin reaches under the counter and pulls out the drawer with the industrial-sized stand mixer hidden in it. "The trick is to add the eggs slowly, you see," she tells Wally, and gets the butter melting while she prepares some other ingredients. "If you try to do it all at once, or before it's blended, you end up with fluffy cake mix. Which is fine if you want cake, but--" she shrugs and gestures vaguely at the task at hand.

Wally West has posed:
"Pantry door, on it!" Wally moves to the pantry door and gets out a very plain apron. When he sees what Caitlin has on hers, Wally starts to laugh. "You know, we should get a new game going when we have a second. I loved those campaigns.." Wally was a nerd too!

She starts laying out the ingredient list and Wally is collecting. "Yes chef!" He moves like a whirling dervish, grabbing items and leaving them organized on the island. "Slowly.../slowly/." Wally confirms to himself.

"Well, we can make cake next time." He moves to playfully bump her with his shoulder. "So how do we do this in order?"

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
"Sweet ingredients first," Caitlin says, and starts pouring the ingredients into the big stand bowl. The butter and sugar quickly turn into a sweet slurry and she sprinkles a liberal amount of vanilla seasoning into the bowl. "Now, the dry stuff-- flour, sugar, etc." She does exactly that, pouring them into the mixer and setting it on high to get it all to mix.

"The eggs are the tricky part. You want the batter to absorb as much of it as possible before you add the next." Caitlin demonstrates by expertly cracking an egg against the bowl with one hand, pouring out the contents, and tossing the eggshell into the compost bin. "So can I ask you something?" she inquires over the low hum of the mixer. "How's things going with Bart and Irie? I feel like we've never really gotten to talk about it before," she apologizes. "I cannot imagine what that was like for you."

Wally West has posed:
"Alright."

Wally is on the move, trying to help as best as he can. She's the general, he's just one of the builders. Wally tries hard to keep up with her instructions. He was never much of a chef, but he has a mindset of trying to follow instruction. "Sure, you can ask me anything." He follows suit and cracks an egg like he was shown, only he's not cool enough to use one hand so he tries to do it with two.

She asks about Bart and Irie. He sighs softly.

"Bart was easy. It's just...keeping up with a younger me, you know? Easy, spick and spam. Can talk about all the same things and I have to worry about him being too cocky about what he does." He stops for a second, resting his hands on the counter. "It's Irie. I don't know how to be the dad she needs. If she ever needed one. She's independent and capable, and I'm scared that anything I do is gonna ruin any image of me she's gonna have." He shakes his head. "And I don't know who her mother is and that's driving me up a wall. I'm trying not to think about it."

He looks at her. "How are /you/ doing? I'm supposed to be helping you, remember?"

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
"I'm fine, Wally, I'm just busy," Caitlin reiterates gently. "Busy isn't bad. It's just... busy." Once the last of the eggs are cracked, Caitlin pours in the remaining ingredients and pushes the running mixer back into its compartment. The whirring motor is almost muted when she closes the door. It takes her just a moment to walk around Wally and get the over warming, too.

"There's a lot of theory about time travel. One of them is the Closed Loop theory. It's this idea that if you go back in time, the changes you make reconcile themselves, and propagate forward to your new timeline," she explains. Her hands move in start-and-stop gestures to illustrate it. "So Irie's mom is kind of like Schroedinger's Cat, existing in a superposition state. When you figure out who she is, that is who it will always *have been*. Does that make sense?"

Wally West has posed:
Wally nods at Caitlin. "I know, Cait. You're a workaholic."

Wally watches as she pours in the remaining ingredients and gets to work on the last of it, but Caitlin continues the questioning and attempts to offer advice. "I already know she'll be amazing. Whoever she is. May have already even met her. Could've never met her before in my life."

He sighs.

"But what if I'm not good enough for either of them? For Irie or for the mystery lady?" He questions softly. "Fastest Man Alive. But I...you know..." He sighs again, deeper than before. "But I don't know how to make it good in /this/ timeline. My dad wasn't...the best. And now I've got anotehr speedster here in the present. I can't keep up with all of this, Cait."

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Caitlin walks around Wally and towards the refrigerator. While he's talking she pulls two SnackyShakes from the dispenser and gives the canisters each a brisk shake in her hand before offering Wally first choice of chocolate or strawberry.

"Then you'll still be her dad, Wally," Caitlin points out gently. "There isn't someone else. There's no plan B or backup or doppleganger who can show up for her and do it better than you."

She purses her lips, thinking. "If anything, you should see their existence as a good omen. You don't just have 'a' kid, you've got a little army of relatives. That means you're going to be active and successful well into the next few decades. Anyone who can do that is on the track of greatness."

Wally West has posed:
A SnackyShake?

For him?

Wally tentatively accepts the Strawberry one and he lifts it in the air. "Cheers." and he'll take a sip of it, feeling the protein rushing through his body. "Dunno about that. What if something changes? Time is...a theory. We don't know if anything changed or not because we're in the past, not the future." Wally sighs. "But...thanks for the vote of confidence, Cait."

He shakes his head softly. "I don't know if I'll be successful, Caitlin. But...I'm hoping for the best." He looks at her. "I just want to be worth it, you know? I don't know how to slow down."