#its all so good! please share your beautiful or silly or dumb traditions with me! i love learning how other people live | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sophiainspace · 3 years

Note

For the HC ask game, here’s a twofer, if you’re up for it: ColdWave + candy, and Spooner + perfume.

Have I shared this ColdWave sweets headcanon yet? It might - might - be based on the real life of me and the spouse. Not that that’s where I get half my ColdWave ideas, or anything. (Just don’t ask which of us is Mick and which of us is Len. Please.)

ColdWave + Candy

[The POV switch in the middle of this is totally fine because this is a headcanon not a ficlet and that’s my story and I’m sticking to it]

Mick likes sweet treats.

‘Likes’ may be an understatement. He can’t resist them. Literally can’t resist.

Sometimes, when Len gets up in the middle of the night for water, he finds Mick at the kitchen table, surrounded by empty boxes of Oreos and Chips Ahoy, halfway through the biggest Hershey bar Len’s ever seen. And Len just sighs and says, “I’ll find a better hiding place for the sweet shit.”

Mick reminds Len of a parrot that Lisa once persuaded him to buy for her. The bastard bird ate every bit of sweet food it could get its mean little talons on, wherever it was hidden in their tiny apartment. Len had to lock all the sweets away - literally, after the asshole learned how to open cabinet doors. The damn parrot lasted a few months, before Len told Lisa to find another home for it, and one of her friends took pity on her and adopted it. She wasn’t exactly heartbroken. She missed ice cream and chocolate.

Alas, Len can’t rehome Mick.

Not that he’d want to.

…Not most of the time.

So that’s how the tradition of the Secret Candy Stash is born. Len hides the candy. Mick gets to ask for a little candy at a time. Mick hates this, and is forever trying to defeat the system. But the latest hiding place has been working surprisingly well, for a few weeks now. Len had a brainwave about where to hide the stash this time. They’re not for nothing, his planning skills. Admittedly, they weren’t really meant for hiding food from Mick Rory, but they seem to be holding up.

Until Mick storms into the kitchen one day, and swipes half of Len’s blueprints off the table with a single sweep of his admittedly large hand. “That’s where you hid the candy?”

Len starts picking up papers. “Found the latest hiding spot, then?”

“It’s the damn hall closet!” Mick roars. “Right under my coat!”

“Indeed,” Len agrees. “Right under your nose, one might say. In a nondescript box that used to hold a pair of my shoes.” He turns his full attention back to his blueprints. “Ah well. I’ll just have to find somewhere else.”

Mick stomps back out of the room, muttering about how he’ll get Len back for this. Len just chuckles. Of course he won’t.

It gets better. Mick can’t find the next hiding place, no matter how many closets and cabinets he empties, roaring about how he needs candy.

“Go to the store,” Len drawls, smirking. Mick will not go to the store. Mick can never be bothered. It’s why the system works so well.

Mick stares daggers at him for a minute, and then stomps away again.

But it’s only a matter of time.

One day, Mick is looking for a pair of shoes in the hall closet, and comes across… the blessed, coveted, wonderful Secret Candy Stash. As he stares at the unburied treasure, he’d swear he can hear angels singing somewhere.

And then it hits him. The stash is the same spot as before. In the same box as before. Oh, sure, it’s a little further back in the closet, in the dark, but that’s the only effort Len has bothered to go to. “Does he think I’m that dumb?” Mick mutters. He prepares himself to rage at Len about how he should know better than to fall for Mick’s brainless act and underestimate him.

A second later, Mick realises how he can use this to his advantage. If not forever, then for a very long time.

Passing Len in the living room, Mick shoots him a very smug grin.

“What?” Len asks, his eyes suddenly narrow and shifty.

“Oh, nothing.”

Len looks at him in abject terror, but Mick isn’t letting go of this secret.

Carefully, slowly, a little at a time, Mick steals treats from the hiding place. Free access to candy, whenever he wants it. No killjoys to tell him “You’re going to ruin your dinner, Mick” or “You had candy yesterday, Mick,” as if any of that matters. He gets away with it for a hell of a lot longer than he thinks he’s going to.

Well, he is a very good thief.

When Len finally notices, there’s hell to pay. And never was anything more worth it.

Spooner + Perfume

She hates the stuff.

If it’s not bad enough that it sets off her chemical sensitivities and chronic fatigue, it gives her sensory overload, too. The days she has to spend lying in the dark to get over it all? Not worth someone else’s enjoyment of a damn smell.

She warns the Legends about this when she arrives on board. They promise to try to remember. And, to be fair, they do their best. Sometimes Spooner walks into the fabrication room after a mission in the 1950s, and she can tell it’s slipped someone’s mind, too focused on wearing an ‘era accurate’ outfit, complete with scent. But most of the time, the ship is a blissful perfume-free zone. It’s a relief, and one more way Spooner knows the Legends really want her to stay.

And then one day she’s waiting in line for the bathroom. Zari disappeared in there just as Spooner was arriving, so she knows she might be waiting a minute. She’s leaning against the wall, staring up at the ceiling, and thinking of asking Gideon to play the next episode of the zombie horror podcast she’s been listening to, when she gets the whiff of a damn scent. Honestly, Zari and her perfect outfits - she’s probably got so focused on looking good, she’s forgotten about—

Spooner blinks. That’s not just any scent. Whatever it is, it sends her tumbling back to childhood. Before Texas, even, when her mother didn’t know about Esperanza’s problems with perfume yet. Back when Spooner was tiny.

“Zari,” she calls out, “what perfume is that?”

There’s a pause. Then there’s a sound like a hand slapping a head, and Zari snaps, “Oh shit.”

Spooner snorts. Poor Zari. “It’s fine, Z. I mean, it’s not fine - you’re an asshole - but you just forgot.“

“I did!” Zari squeaks through the door. “I’m so sorry, Spooner—”

“Oh, shut up, Z,” Spooner cuts her off, laughing. “But I seriously gotta pee, so can you wash it off and get Gideon to fumigate in there, or something? And for fuck’s sake answer my question, would you?”

Over the sound of running water, Zari calls back, “Oh, right. It’s Chanel number 5. A classic. You know they started making this in the 1920s? I used to love it, but then they stopped making it, in my time - silly perfume trends and people thinking it was for old ladies - so when I got here I…”

Spooner stops listening, and just lets Zari’s words wash over her like the water that she can still hear running, and drifts away a little.

We can’t afford this, Celso.

Oh, don’t you worry about that, Gloria, sweetheart. It’s the new one you liked in the store, see? Now you smell as wonderful as you look. Doesn’t Mami smell beautiful, Esperanza?

It’s a full ten minutes before Zari finishes blowing all the perfume out of the bathroom with the air totem. Mostly to preserve her image, Spooner yells at her to get the fuck out of there. When Zari finally scuttles out, Spooner shoots her a grin. “Thanks for cleaning up in there.”

“Least I could do,” Zari shoots over her shoulder, from down the hallway.

“Yes, it damn well was.” And she steps into the - thankfully scent-less - bathroom, chuckling. Maybe a little wistfully.

#headcanon asks #mick rory #leonard snart #dccoldwave #spooner cruz #zari tarazi #gen #my fic #ficlet #the flash fanfic #legends of tomorrow fanfic #none of us can queue this alone

33 notes · View notes