A tiny bit late, but what better excuse to post Charisk fluff than Valentine's Day!

Dates were a tricky thing to manage when you were only 15 years old and still several months away from being allowed to drive a car, let alone have one available when you needed it. So Chara and Frisk were limited to where they could get on their own two legs. Luckily a new place opened up that Frisk thought would be perfect, so they invited Susie and Noelle along on a double date. The hardest part was convincing Chara to go out while keeping their ultimate destination a secret. Chara protested about being woken up early, and when they got out of the house they hissed at the sun and screamed something about how the Day Star burned. Even as they walked down the street they were still sulking, hands in the pockets of their green hoodie and head down to glare at people they passed out of the corner of their eye. Noelle gave Frisk a supportive smile. She had told them Chara would come around once they saw what they were doing. Frisk certainly hoped so; if they were going to drag Chara out of their room to go out in public they wanted them to have fun.

"What are we doing on Main Street?" Chara groused. "The way you were talking it was like you wanted to go to an amusement park or something. If you woke me up to go clothes shopping I am going to be very cross with you."

"It's nothing like that!" Frisk insisted. "You'll like it, believe me! We're almost there." Their royal blue windbreaker made tiny swiff-swiff-swiff sounds as they swung their arms, almost inaudible except to Frisk's sensitive ears.

"Whatever," Susie huffed, hands in the pockets of her denim jacket. "As long as it's not too nerdy." Noelle shifted uncomfortably and averted her eyes, looking like she wanted to shrink into her sweater and disappear. Privately Frisk felt a little sorry for her. Their date spot was perfect for Chara but not so much for Susie. They thought they had a good argument to get Susie on board, though they had no back-up plan if it did not work…

Finally they arrived. "Ta-dah!" Frisk said with a flourish, presenting the establishment 'Lock-quacious'. From the outside it looked like any other building; the front windows opened into the lobby, empty of patrons but with comfortable chairs for sitting. No products were visible for sale and there was only a single employee behind the desk.

Chara narrowed their eyes. "What… is this place?"

"It's an escape room!" Frisk said.

Noelle nodded. "Yes. Um, the premise is that you get locked into a room with a whole bunch of objects in it. And all the objects form a giant, interlocking puzzle you have to solve in order to 'escape' the room."

"Ugh," Susie grimaced, cracking her neck. "I hate puzzles…"

"That actually works out!" Frisk said. "We need someone to keep an eye on the things we've collected, the puzzles we haven't solved, and figure out what order we should do things. So if you don't want to solve puzzles you can be the manager!"

"So wait," Susie said. "I get to boss you all around, and you'll do everything for me? Okay, I'm starting to come around on this idea…" Noelle blushed at the idea as well, wringing her hands as she no doubt let her imagination run away with the kind of 'bossing around' Susie would do.

Chara continued studying the sign, contemplating the explanation they just received. "Like a giant… puzzle…" they repeated. Their head whipped to face Frisk, their eyes alight. "And we can go in? We can do that, right now?"

"Of course!" Frisk giggled, knowing they had them. "We only have an hour, so we'll all have to work together to solve the room. There's even a high-score board if we do really well."

"A competition, is it? And you need my help to crush the record." Chara tapped their fingertips against each other, completely failing to hide their excitement. "I see, I see. Well, I suppose I can lend a hand."

"Hell yeah," Susie punched one fist into her other palm. "We're gonna smash that record!"

Behind them Noelle and Frisk shared a fist bump. Everything had gone according to plan.

The scenario was that they were investigative reporters looking to uncover a shady financial deal involving a major corporation and the mob. They had one hour to search the CEO's office and find the evidence to crack the case. They were given the ground rules of the room: each item or puzzle was used only once, and while clues could be hidden behind or under things none of them required moving or destroying furniture in order to find. No outside items were allowed in; Chara only grudgingly handed over their cell phone, while Susie had three sticks of chalk in her pocket for some weird reason. Everything was put away in lockers so they would be safe until they exited.

They were led into what appeared to be a normal office. A desk at the far end of the room had a lamp, a computer, and a few sheets of paper neatly stacked on top, like someone who normally kept things extraordinarily tidy had been suddenly called away. A portrait and a motivational poster hung on one wall, and on the opposite wall there was a map of the United States as well as an esoteric design of bold colors and right angles to form a labyrinth. There was a bookcase empty but for a few knick-knacks along the back wall and a closed metal filing cabinet next to it. A television screen hung in the corner, counting down their time from sixty minutes. If they asked for a hint one would also appear there, but between Susie's pride and Chara's stubbornness no one honestly expected them to make use of that feature.

"Alright," Susie shouted, getting into the role of the boss. "Split up and search the place! Call out when you find something cool!" Noelle made a beeline for the portrait, while Chara started rifling through the papers on the desk and Frisk took the far wall. Almost instantly Frisk said, "I found a pair of magnets stuck to the filing cabinet. They pretty strong and don't look like they belong here so they might be important."

Noelle did not find the portrait particularly interesting, but found the frame swung out very easily. "I found a safe!" Noelle said. "Um… it's got a huge eight-digit combination lock with letters on them."

"Eight letters…" Frisk repeated. "Oh! There's two letters in this maze… 'V' and 'I'."

"Roman numeral 6," Chara said. They fished out a sheet of paper from the top of the desk. "There's a number on this notice as well, a Roman numeral 'I'." They read the contents of the notice out loud:

First thing when you get back in the office, you've got to find and hide that
letter X sent. If we want the feds and those reporters off our backs, it
is critical to get rid of all the evidence so it can't be traced. I've spoken with
K about this already, so just get it done!

"… That's what the letter says," Chara finished.

"That's plenty suspicious!" Noelle said. "I bet the evidence that wins the game is in the safe, and part of the combination is in that letter!"

"Exactly. Take another look at it and read the words on the left straight down."

Frisk studied the words as Chara instructed. "First… letter… is… K. Oh! The lock-!"

"And the letter had the number 1 on it," Noelle remembered. "So it must be referring to the safe's combination lock." She went ahead and set the first letter in the combination to 'K' while Chara deposited the letter on the floor. Since each clue was used only once it made sense to put all the clues which had been 'solved' together so they would not waste time on them later.

"I sorta get it," Susie nodded. "So… there's a whole bunch of puzzles, and each one will give us a letter when we solve it. Get them all and we pop open the safe, and then we win! That sound about right?"

"And it's not going to be a word," Chara said. "If it could be guessed that way there would be no need to complete all the puzzles, only enough to figure out what they were trying to spell."

Noelle looked again at the safe tumblers. "Oh! You're right! There are no vowels on this lock. So it's not a word…"

"Eight puzzles," Susie repeated, grabbing her head in one hand. "And only an hour to solve all of 'em…"

"I think the hardest one is going to be that maze," Frisk pointed. The maze was behind a thick plastic sheet, save for a tiny section in the lower-right corner to serve as the maze's exit. A small metal disc was suspended at the top-right of the maze with a roman numeral 'VI' printed on the visible portion. Some portions of the maze had visible metal blocks on them, and were in grooves that hinted they could be shifted or rotated to form new paths.

"And we can't just break the glass and take it?" Susie complained. "That… does look like a real pain."

"I'll tackle it," Chara offered. "It looks like it's going to take the longest to do, so if I work on it while you all solve other puzzles it'll be more efficient. I'm gonna need those magnets from the desk, I think that's the only way I can move things around without being able to touch them."

Frisk gladly handed the magnets over. "Good luck," they offered. Chara accepted them and got to work immediately, using one magnet to guide the disc through the maze while the other cleared a path.

"We have work to do too," Noelle said. "Let's solve as many as we can before Chara finishes!"

18 minutes elapsed

Frisk plugged in a second letter, breathing a sigh. "That one was rough," they said, privately lamenting that Chara probably could have solved it faster.

Susie tapped at the computer on the desk, frowned, and made to smack the monitor before a sharp look from Noelle stopped her. Noelle was kneeling on the floor, looking over a series of photographs of a farmhouse near where a big deal was supposed to go down. They had been contained in an envelope marked with a 'II', so it had to be important.

Susie complained, "So none of you geeks know what's up with this computer? It wants a password and says it's in all caps."

"There wasn't a password under the keyboard or chair," Frisk said. "That's where I'd put a password."

"That's, uh, not very good security…" Noelle said diplomatically. Then she brightened up. "Oh! How about you try 'money'?" She held up the photographs in a new order. The white beams on the barn doors became a capital 'M', the tire swing was the 'O', the tools against a shed resembled an 'N', the field with trees formed an 'E' once it was turned sideways to match the orientation of the other photos, and the forked dirt path looked suspiciously like a 'Y'.

Susie pecked in the word "money" in all capitals, going slowly to make sure she spelled it properly. "Uh, I didn't get in. But it gave us a letter, so I guess that's the best we can do." She swiveled the monitor around to show a big red letter 'D' on the screen. Frisk bounded over and entered it, having Noelle double-check to make absolutely sure they got the right letter.

At the same time Chara made a satisfied grunt. They turned away from the maze on the wall while looking at the back of the metal disc in their hand. "Sixth letter is 'Q'," they said, which Noelle entered while Chara deposited all the bits with the other discarded clues.

"Awright!" Susie grinned. "Halfway there and I've barely done a thing! You three tackle the next one, we're on a roll!"

24 minutes elapsed

Susie nodded her head at Chara. "So what're those scraps of paper again?"

"It's an itinerary along with some plane ticket stubs," Chara said. "Looks like somebody took a flight from Seattle to Boston with a layover in Austin. I think it's a clue that goes with this map." The wall had a map of the United States, marked with a roman numeral "IV" in the corner. Each state was in a different color and had its capital noted. "Let's see," Chara said. "Those cities are the capitals for Washington, Texas, and Massachusetts respectively. Washington is purple, Texas is yellow, and Massachusetts is blue… was there a code or switch that used different color inputs?"

"I don't think so," Frisk said. "I didn't find anything like that." Noelle and Susie also shook their heads.

Chara's lip twitched. "Then, what about the states? If you take the first letters they spell out S, T, M… is that anything? O-or the capitals themselves! S, A, B… do we have to scramble them?"

"Try to slow down!" Susie said. "Your mumbling's making it hard to think! I don't even know where these places are on this map!"

"Oh!" Noelle pointed out the locations being discussed. "Um… Seattle is here. Then the person with these tickets went to Austin, down here… then up to Boston, here."

"Huh," Frisk said. "Doesn't that sorta… it does! It makes a big 'V'!" Everyone looked up at them. "Look, you start at Seattle, go down to Austin, then back up to Boston! That's the next part of the code, the letter 'V'!"

Noelle turned the tumblers on the big safe so the third letter was 'V'. "We're almost done!" she cheered.

Meanwhile, Chara sighed. "There I go, overthinking things again…"

31 minutes elapsed

"Then that makes the seventh letter 'G'!" Noelle flipped the second-to-last dial to the proper letter. "Just one more!"

"Um." Chara deposited the clues of the last puzzle into the pile. "We may have a problem. We're out of clues. Susie, what was marked with the numeral 'VIII' in this room?"

"Uh…" Susie scratched her her. "Come to think of it, I thought it was kinda weird… you guys kept saying we needed to solve all eight puzzles in the room, but I don't recall hearing anyone say they found more than seven."

"What the heck?" Frisk said, crestfallen. "We… we didn't even find the eighth puzzle? Then how are we going to guess the last letter of the code?"

"We must have missed it somewhere," Noelle said. "We'd better split up and look again, it may have been someplace really hard to find…"

"Screw that!" Susie bolted upright and ran over to the safe. She began fiddling with the eighth dial with one hand while pulling on the safe handle with the other.

"Don't break it!" Frisk warned.

"Relax, I ain't breaking nothin'! Just trying out every letter! One of them's gotta work!" Susie explained.

"B-But that's cheating!" Noelle protested. "You can't just-"

"No, she's right," Chara said. "I was going to suggest it if she did not. Logically, with 7 of the 8 letters known and no vowels there are only 21 possible combinations remaining. It won't take very long to test them all out. This may in fact have been the designer's trap… make us believe we missed a puzzle, when in reality there is no 8th puzzle to solve."

"Got it!" Susie roared in triumph as the safe door swung open. As she did so the countdown stopped and a celebratory jingle began playing. The final score was 32 minutes and 18 seconds, beating the previous record by a mere 7 seconds. They all cheered and Susie high-fived Chara, forgetting to pull her blow so Chara came away from the exchange wincing and trying to shake the feeling back in their hand.

After the escape room the four teens took a break for lunch. Frisk and Noelle ended up dominating the discussion, Susie keeping mostly to herself and Chara still enjoying the afterglow of a good puzzle. By the time they were done the skies had darkened and rain appeared to be imminent, so they called it a good time to end the date and return home. Before they parted Frisk saw Noelle shiver and Susie drape her coat over her shoulders, lightly scolding her for not dressing warmer.

Unfortunately, Frisk and Chara had only gotten a couple blocks before a few drops turned into a drizzle turned into sheets of rain in the span of twenty seconds. They hid out at a bus station for a few minutes hoping the rain would leave as quickly as it came; such things were not uncommon. But after five minutes it became clear the rain was here to stay.

"I'm sorry," Frisk said. "I should have checked the weather before we left."

Chara waved off, "There's only so much you can do about the whims of mother nature. Pay it no mind."

"But everything was going so well! I didn't want it all to get ruined by rain."

Their datefriend's eye twinkled with childish mischief. "Why not turn this into an opportunity instead? For as long as I've known you you've loved dancing in the rain."

"Yeah," Frisk conceded. "But you don't."

Chara shrugged. "I'm in a good mood. You showed me a wonderful time today, allow me to do something you want for once." They pranced out from underneath the station on tiptoe, twirling with their arms extended in what may have been an attempt at ballet. They sang a wordless song: "La lala lalaluh tum tum, ba duh tum tum, duh dummmmmm…" They finished their spin and held out a hand, beckoning Frisk to come join them.

Frisk leapt into the rain like a child being told they had eaten enough of their vegetables and could go play outside. They took Chara's hand and sang, "Dada dada duhduh dum dum, da da dum dum, dum dummmm…"

Within seconds they were both soaked through, but neither of them cared. They half-danced, half-stumbled their way down the street while singing in imperfect harmony through their giggles.

"Dad!" Chara shouted as they came in the door. "We're home! Huh, it's not like him to leave all the lights off…" They hung up their hoodie on the coat rack and took Frisk's jacket to put beside it to dry. They had decided to go to Chara's house since it was a block and a half closer than Frisk's, and also because Asgore would not chew them out for irresponsibly walking through the rain.

"I'm here too Asgore!" Frisk greeted, though no call answered either of them. Frisk's hair, normally frizzy and curly, was weighted down by all the extra water; they had to pull the soggy and saggy hair away from their face with both hands and blow a stray hair out of their mouth. "Maybe he's in the garden or something?"

Chara pulled their phone out of their pocket, mercifully undamaged from being caught in the downpour. "There's a text message on my cell phone that came while we were having fun," Chara narrated. "This is what it says: 'Howdy Chara! I hope you, and Frisk are enjoying your double date! Mr. Anderson has a fungal infection in his chokecherries and asked me to help with the emergency removal in an attempt to salvage some of the plants. I may be gone until after dinnertime so help yourself to anything in the fridge. I love you. There, that's it. Er, end it. Stop dictation mode? Come now, how does this thing-' and it cuts off there." They laughed nervously.

"That's like some of the messages I used to leave when I was still getting used to cell phones," Frisk giggled. Chara did not laugh in return. In fact they were holding their phone in a white-knuckle grip. When they returned the phone to their pocket they were visibly shaking. From the cold? Or…

That was when Frisk realized. They were alone in the house with their datefriend. No one would be visiting. No one would interrupt. They had complete privacy. They could do whatever they wanted and nobody would know. Anything at all. Frisk was hyper aware of the situation now. The way Chara's clothes clung to their skin tightly enough for Frisk to see the outline of their chest binder. The silence of the house except for the ti-tip-tip of rain against the windows. The clamminess of their clothes against their skin and how wonderful it would feel to tear them off right now, except what would that lead to? They felt cold down to their bones, and it had nothing to do with being soaked. Chara had still not said anything. Their eyes darted around the room, looking absolutely anywhere but at Frisk.

"Chara…" Their joyfriend looked up at them with a thin smile. In the gloom their red eyes seemed to glow. Frisk swallowed, mustering up their courage. "I… I'm sorry. I'm still not ready."

"Oh thank christ!" Chara exhaled, putting a hand over their chest. They doubled over and took great heaving gasps, blowing away the mounting tension in the room.

A tiny bit of Frisk was annoyed. They crossed their arms and pouted, "You don't have to sound that relieved…"

"That's not it," Chara waved off. "Thank you, for speaking first. I thought if I brought it up, you'd… feel pressured. To agree to something you didn't want. And then there was an awkward pause, and I realized you were thinking about it too, and it got… too hard to speak."

"I do feel a little bad," Frisk admitted. "It's a good chance. We don't know when another will come along. So it feels like a waste."

"Maybe," Chara said without a trace of regret. "But there'll be lots more opportunities. Besides, I kept you waiting a long time. It would only be fair for me show you the same patience." They gave a tiny peck to Frisk's forehead and went over to the fireplace, turning the gas on and lighting it to help them dry off and warm up. If Asgore or Asriel were here one of them could simply light it with their fire magic, but neither Chara nor Frisk had learned how to use fire magic yet. Chara finished lighting the fire and rubbed their hands in front of the flames before sitting down on the couch, stealing to spot closest to the fireplace for themself. Frisk could not really blame them; they got cold so much faster than Frisk. But still…

Well, there was one way Frisk could worm their way closer to the fire. "Um," they started, getting Chara's attention. "We can still make out, right?" Frisk asked with a smirk.

Chara pulled their legs up onto the couch. They smiled devilishly and crooked one finger to answer Frisk. Frisk could not resist making a happy squeal as they skipped over to where Chara was waiting, drying off by the twin suns of the fireplace and Chara's radiant smile.