#ralphd

It had been about three days since Ralph Dibny realized that he was completely and totally in love with you and that this wasn’t just about attraction - though you were a very attractive person, he had to admit that. But damn if he could tell you, because every time that he tried to speak to you outside of Team Flash things, he just ended up getting tongue tied - once literally because of his powers.

“I’m - uhh - I’m going to get some burgers, I’m starved, do you maybe, I don’t know, wanna come with me?” Ralph was practicing asking in the mirror, groaning as it came out sounding so stupid. He cleared his throat and tried again.

“Hey, y/n, do you like burgers? Cause I have the you burger for -” He groaned again, and hit his head against the wall. Even just talking to the idea of you was so hard! “Okay, okay - burgers, you, me, making a mess with ketchup and mustard-”

“God-dang it,” He said, cutting himself off.

“I don’t know about the mess part, but burgers are great,” You said from the doorway, making his head turn quickly towards you, near fast enough to snap his spine. He turned as red as Barry’s suit. “Sorry, I heard my name, thought you might have been talking to me.”

“Maybe I was,” He said, trying to act suave and walk towards you, though his tongue felt like it was glued to the top of his mouth. He suddenly realized that his tongue was never actually comfortable in his mouth, what’s with that. “Do you - er - burgers?”

Ralph was a jittery man by nature, probably due to how much coffee he drank on a daily basis. But it was especially bad when he was facing a perplexing problem and didn’t know how to solve it.

He was driving everyone insane with his pacing back and forth in front of a whiteboard that he had been putting ideas on throughout the day. It got to the point where Caitlin was the only one who would look after him, and that was more because she was worried about him passing out due to exhaustion.

“What if I -” He said, looking like he had come up with a solution. He lifted the marker towards the white board, as if he were about to write on it, but then let it drop from his hand. He hit his head against it instead, trying to trigger some sort of idea to come to his mind.

“Uhh - Ralph, maybe you should take a break. A nap,” Caitlyn advised. “We can all regroup tomorrow.”

“So if we harness some of Firestorm’s power, we could make ourselves immune to flames, then we can make these uniforms that are just always on fire!” Ralph said, jotting down notes as he talked to himself. Well, to you, but you weren’t really paying attention to most of what he said. You eyed him warily as he wrote all of that down like it was a good idea.

“Honey, we’re going to burn to a crisp. And if you were to do anything close to that, it would take years to be able to get it all right.” You said. You winced as he hit his head against the board after he realized that you were right. You didn’t mean to shoot down all of his ideas - they were just all really shit ideas.

“Alright, what about if we use Barrys lightning bolts-” He said, raising his head again. But instead of writing it down, he looked over at you, waiting for you to come up with something that would ruin his idea.

You scrunched your nose as you caught his eye. “I think that the best thing that we had come up with is putting pocket warmers into the folds of a hat.” You got onto your feet, stretched, and approached your very frustrated boyfriend. “Or, you know, we can just stay inside. Light a fire in the fireplace. Wear those horrible snuggies that my mother got us for Christmas-”

“- so I’m not sure if I’m ready to put myself into that kind of situation again, Ralph.” You sighed, avoiding eye contact, though you could feel the heat of his stare on you. It did nothing to ease the coldness that was in your chest that came up whenever this conversation topic was brought up. “I like you, I do...”

“Not every guy is going to be a dickwad like that,” Ralph said, remaining serious despite the insult he just gave. “I would never-”

“You can’t promise that. It was always ‘she’s just a friend’ and so on and so forth but I could never trust him. I don’t want to have any reason to feel that way about you.”

Ralph scoffed, feeling insulted. He pulled his phone out of his pocket, and held it up for you to see his contact list. Scrolling through it, he deleted every woman who wasn’t Caitlin, Nora, Iris, Cecile and Mom.

“Does that help you feel better?” He asked, after getting rid of a Zoey at the bottom of the list.

“No, now I feel terrible.” You groaned. “You just deleted friends out of your phone for me? That’s not fair to you-”

“Not one of those girls mean as much to me as you do.” Ralph said, attempting to shrug it off to look cool. “So how about one dinner? I can see Allen’s wallet, I can stretch and get his credit card from here.”

You were shocked at how easy this was. When your boyfriend Ralph offered to help you with babysitting your niece, you initially thought that it was going to be like babysitting two hyper kids, rather than just one. But here you were, sitting on the couch, pretending not to peek as Ralph and your niece arranged a ‘Scavenger Hunt’ for you to follow.

“I know!” Ralph said, putting a finger up in the air. “We’ll save the best prize for last!”

“What will it be?” Your niece asked, forgetting that it was supposed to be a secret. Her little voice was so full of excitement, you smiled.

“A great big mud pie in the backyard! And she’ll have to eat every bite!” Ralph said, making you stick you tongue out at him.

“Ew! No mud! That’s too silly.” Your niece scolded. “What about a barbie?”

“A barbie? That just might be the best idea that you ever had!” Ralph said, jumping onto his feet. “You go pick out the best one that you can find, and then we’ll hide it together, okay?”

After your niece went scampering to her toy room, Ralph pressed a kiss onto your cheek. “You’re really good with her.” You commented, leaning into the kiss.

“Want to try making one? It might take her a couple of minutes to find the very best.” Ralph raised an eyebrow. You laughed and nudged him, though it was a thought for later on....

When you walked into Star Labs, you heard Ralph talking about one of the cases that he had worked on in the past. A married couple of course, one of them having an affair.

“So he was playing hide the salami with his own mother in law?” You asked, raising an eyebrow, injecting yourself into the conversation. “And they weren’t able to lickity split before you took their photo?”

Iris cringed at your word choice, but Ralph just seemed to be a bit impressed.

“I thought I had smelled a mystery but I was wrong. Just a bottle of champagne and chanel number five.” Ralph retaliated, making you grin. You’d seen your fair share of bad detective movies from the past, you spoke the lingo.

“So, the husband bungled it all up and she walked away with all the valuables?” You questioned.

“Ahh - but here’s the hot ticket, the mother was in on it. Did the shimmy dance like she had ants in her pants, brought the poot sucker into bed and presto, gets half the alimony check.” Ralph concluded.

When Ralph turned the corner on his way to Star Labs, he had to slow down his car because he saw you on the sidewalk, crouched low to the ground and talking to a mangy dog of all of things. He parked on the side of the road, got out and managed to get a few bits of conversation.

“It sounds to me as if that butcher deserved what he got. I don’t blame you for doing your business on the hood of his car, not one bit.” You laughed, petting the dog behind the ears. The dog woofed, then whimpered a little, seeing Ralph approach. You looked over your shoulder, then back at the pup. “Don’t worry, he’s a friend.”

You got to your feet and stretched, then smiled over at Ralph. “Headed to work?” You asked.

“Yeah, do you want a ride?” He asked, not questioning what he had just seen. He’d walked in on you speaking to a mouse, an escaped peacock from the zoo, and a horse that was pulling a carriage. He stopped questioning things a long time ago.

“Yeah, we can take a ride. This is Buzz. He was trained to go to Space, but the funding for the program ran out and they turned him out to the streets, isn’t that sad?”

“We’re bringing him, are we?” Ralph asked, not pleased by the concept of a dirty  dog in his car.

No matter how much time had passed, your heart had trouble healing. Leonard Snart, though a bad guy in the eyes of Team Flash, had your heart completely, and you weren’t over his passing. Depressed, you went through the motions of being on the team, fighting bad guys and protecting the city, but each night you would return to your apartment and snuggle up with Leonard’s old coat which had it’s special place on the right side of the bed where he used to lay his head.

But things were slowly improving. You had new people on the team - and it was feeling more and more like a team every day. Especially with Ralph around - he had a way of making you laugh every once in a while, something that you weren’t taking for granted these days.

You were hanging out in the med bay, checking on some stitches that had come loose in your leg in a recent fight, when suddenly a warm, cardboard cup slipped into your hand. You looked at it in confusion then saw the Jitters logo, and then your attention was towards Ralph who had been the one to put it there. “Thanks.” You said with a nod, and took a sip. It was just the way you liked it. “Thought you were broke this week?”

“Allen always pays.” Ralph shrugged and took a seat. “Owie, how’s the other guy look?”

“His stitches are on his face.” You said, then pulled your pants back down to cover the wound. It wasn’t even a bad one, but you spotted a bit of concern on Ralph’s face. “I’m just fine, you know.”

“Want me to get some ice for -” At just the mention of the word ice, your smile disappeared and was replaced by a frown. Even the cold weather reminded you of Leonard. “-Ahh - never mind. Cold makes you think of him.” Though Ralph had never had dealings with Leonard, he knew about your past. Didn’t stop him from falling in love with you though.

You stood up, walked to Ralph and pressed a kiss on his cheek, holding the hot coffee still in your hands. “Hot is nice though, thank you.”

As you excused yourself, Ralph watched as you left with a stunned look on his face. “Hot - okay, I can do heat.” He said to himself.