Three weeks. That's how long Kiké has stuck around and to the unfortunate man in the middle, it felt like neither his brother nor Lynn have been able to be civil for more than a few minutes. Every day was a new fight as well as a fight continuing from the day before; from cooking to cleanliness to the remote, but all Francisco could focus from the last couple of days are headaches that derived from the fighting.

He knew that by letting Kiké stick around that the tension was going to rise, but he and Lynn are being ridiculous.

Loud music begins to play from the hallway bathroom which quickly bothers Lynn, "What happened to a week?! Why is he still here?" she asks into the mattress. She notices that Francisco isn't answering her, so she pulls on his beard to wake him up and get a response.

He slaps her hands away, "I don't know, Lynn!" Francisco groans before he gets out of bed; he feels dizzy and takes a deep breath before walking towards his brother.

"Morning Pancho," the elder brother says. "Are you finally going to get around to shaving after three weeks?"

Francisco grabs his radio and unplugs it, "I don't want to hear either of you two fighting today. One damn day is all I want." He turned towards his room and yells, "Got it?!"

Lynn walks into the hall, "Got what?"

Francisco takes a deep breath before attempting to speak again, but everything becomes blurry and he tumbles towards the wall. Lynn and Kiké hold him to keep him from falling onto the floor, and hear him quietly repeat, "No fighting…just one day…to stop the headaches…"

Lynn and Kiké turn to each other, and despite silently agreeing with the fallen man, neither one is thrilled about being kind to the other, but they will do it just to give Francisco some peace and quiet.

Francisco gets up and walks past them and goes back to bed to enjoy some silence before he has to pick up Elena. Behind his back, Lynn purposefully bumps into Kiké's shoulder and heads to kitchen to get breakfast started.

As Kiké gets changed, he is enticed by the smell of bacon and eggs. He walks over to the kitchen and sees that Lynn has made a simple breakfast, which she is already plating. He looks over to grab a bite, but she quickly slaps it away with a spatula.

'Get your own,' she mouths to him.

'He's asleep. Why let it go to waste?'

'It isn't going to waste,' she responds as she takes Francisco's food to him.

Kiké rolls his eyes and steals a slice of bacon from her plate when she's not looking.

As Lynn approaches the bedroom door, Francisco steps out, "I made breakfast, do you want some?" she asks as she follows him to the front door.

Francisco takes the plate, "Thanks," he says, "but it's a little early, don't you think?"

She shrugs her shoulders, "It's not like I could go back to sleep."

"Fair point," he says, "I'll be back in a bit, I'm going to go pick up Elena."

Lynn looks over at the kitchen, where she spots Kiké eating her bacon, "How long are you going to be gone for?"

Francisco spots the two angrily glaring at one another, but he doesn't care to do anything about it. He tells her, "I don't know, but I should be back soon."

His brother doesn't say a thing, but Lynn notices that Francisco is still stumbling on his feet as he grabs his coat and keys.

"Are you sure you want to go out?" asks Lynn. "I can go get her," she offers with hope in her voice.

He shakes his head, "I'm fine. Besides, I shouldn't take more than an hour."

As soon as he closes the door, Francisco can hear muffled yells coming from the house, and he is tempted to go back inside to mediate, but decides to continue to pick up Elena.

"They'll be fine," he tries to convince himself, until he hears the sound of a window smashing. "Well…I guess I can go to the hardware store, anything to get away from them." Francisco hops into the truck and opens the glove compartment to pull out an amber bottle and take out a pill.

As he drives towards Huntington Oaks, his phone rings – it's Lisa.

"Hey Lisa, how are you?"

"I am well. I am inquiring about why you have yet to return to the experiment. It has been three weeks, and the other subjects have returned."

"I'm still feeling some of the effects, and rather than bother you, I figured that it would be better to get back with you when I know that the medicine if out of my system."

"I can perform a blood test at your earliest convenience."

"I've got Elena this weekend and I told my mom that I would help with a project on Monday. How about I get back to you on Tuesday?"

"I can make a house call," she offers. "I only need one vial of blood, which should only take a few minutes of your time."

Francisco tries to think of an excuse, "Yeah, like I said this weekend is no good, Elena doesn't take well to the sight of needles and blood."

"Her presence isn't necessary for a simple blood draw."

He sighs, "Fine, I'll head to your lab Monday morning before I go see my mom."

"Very well, I'll be waiting."


The Spanish teacher writes on the blackboard, and turns to the class, "Group projects!" she says happily.

The class groans at the thought of a group project, but upon hearing the news, Lynn turns to Francisco and signals him to let him know that she want to be his partner.

He nods his head before going back to paying attention on the assignment. Francisco has never worked with Lynn on a group project, but he figures that working with someone he already got along with would be better than a stranger.

The teacher begins handing out sheets of papers with the guideline as she continues talking, "I want each group of two to do a presentation on a…"

Lynn stops listening to the teacher as she looks down on the sheet of paper, which mentions that each group of two has to do a report and a presentation answering questions in Spanish in front of the class. Luckily, she picked the best person ever to partner up with in the whole class.

As the students get up from their seats to pick out a partner, Lynn makes a mad dash to sit next to him and declare him her partner.

"Why do you want to be my partner on this project?"

"Because you're my friend and because you speak Spanish better than I do."

Francisco chuckles; he's hardly better than her and that's despite him speaking the language every day, "Are you sure about that?"

"¡Si!"

"Fine, let's go to the library after school," he suggests.

Lynn doesn't say a thing; she doesn't want to spend time at the library, it's too quiet which makes it harder to concentrate on what she's doing. She wants to suggest her house, but she can imagine that her sisters will make a big deal that Francisco is visiting, plus it'll be noisy if they're all home.

"How about your house?"

"What? Why? The library is fine."

"But it's gonna full of others doing their projects, full tables, and everyone is gonna be using the computers in the computer lab; we might as well go to your house."

Francisco stops to think about it; she has a point, but he doesn't want her to come over, but he does admit that going to her house is probably worse for a project.

"Fine, but only for a little bit, I want to get this project done before the weekend."


When Elena and Francisco walk through the front door, they are met with the sight of Kiké placing Lynn in a head lock as she tries to knock him over. Neither one is acknowledging the father nor daughter until Francisco loudly clears his throat. The two look up and let go of the other.

Francisco looks over at the broken window in the dining room, "Boy am I glad stopped at the hardware store," clearly bothered by the break in the middle of winter.

"Don't blame me," Kiké says, "she just snapped and tackled me to the ground."

"After you ate my bacon!"

"Because that's the best reason to throw a plate at someone's head."

"Only because it was closer, if not I would have gone for a–"

Francisco stops the fighting, "Enough already! Three weeks and neither one of you can actually make some sort of peace?!"

"Tell him to leave!" Lynn tells him.

Kiké snickers, "He won't. I'm beloved."

"For a microsecond," Lynn snaps.

Francisco can feel a headache creep in; he asked for one day and they couldn't even handle an hour. He knew that asking was a stretch, especially when they seem to fight the minute one of them looks over in the same direction as the other.

"Jeez," Kiké complains, "would it kill you to remember to put on deodorant?"

"Better than smelling like you bathed in cologne."

Elena whispers to her dad, "Why do they argue the way they do?"

"I don't even remember," Francisco says, with a defeated tone in his voice. "Luckily we stopped at the hardware store."

As she points to the broken window, "Is that why we did it?"

"I'm just happy that they didn't break a hole in the wall again," he sighs.

Elena grabs her backpack, "I'm going to go study in my room."

Francisco nods his head, "You may want to put on some headphones to drown out their noise," he warns her, despite Lynn and Kiké heading in opposite directions.

She nods her head and walks away.

For the next couple of hours, Elena turns on her music and pretends to study; she doesn't feel motivated and coming to her dad's place for the last couple of weeks has drained her more than she's willing to admit. Regardless, she comes over, because her dad looks like he could use someone else around to keep Lynn and her tío from burning down the house. Each time she visits, Elena notices that his appearance is getting worse, but she attributes it to the stress that he's enduring of constantly breaking up fights or fixing something that they broke.

Hours later, the thirteen-year-old takes off her headphones; her ears are aching after wearing them for so long, but she is surprised to be met with silence. After the last couple of weeks, she was used to hearing the sounds of fighting that she resorted to hiding away in her room while Lynn and her tío fight for whatever silly reason pops into one of their heads.

A knock at the door grabs her attention, Francisco opens the door, "Dinner's almost ready."

"Okay, I'll be right there."

Elena takes a seat and all four of them eat quietly until Kiké breaks the silence and asks Elena, "How's school going?"

She is surprised, but answers, "Fine."

"Really? No panic attacks from getting a failing grade on your assignment," he mentions.

Francisco doesn't react, but Elena is surprised that her tío knows about that, however not hearing her dad react was stranger. Everyone looks over at Francisco, who is picking at his food with a fork as if he didn't hear a thing.

Kiké shakes his shoulder, "Hey menso, did you hear what was just said?"

The younger brother looks up and notices everyone's eyes on him, "Um…yeah…" he says, despite not paying attention since he took a seat at the table.

The three are surprised that he isn't more upset, they all know how much he wants Elena to do her best in school.

Francisco gets up from his seat, he points to the bedroom, "I think I'm going to…something…" he mutters as he walks away from the table.

Lynn follows after him when she notices that he is stumbling back to bed.

When Elena is sure that they're both out of earshot, she turns to her tío and whispers, "How did you know about that assignment?"

"You don't tend to wake up with heart palpitations and not think that something is wrong. Unfortunately for me, you wouldn't stop thinking about it. News flash, kid – one bad grade isn't going to keep you from going to college or have you ending up in the gutter."

Elena is confused by what he's talking about; she knows that she was stressed after receiving her grade, but she kept quiet about it to everyone around her.

"What?"

"Not important," he tells her.

She doesn't believe him, "Yes, it's important. You can't just tell me that and expect me to accept that answer. How did you know?"

"How about I give you a pair of earrings and you leave me alone?"

"I don't want your ruby earrings," she stresses to him. "I just want to know how you knew about that assignment."

Kiké takes a bite of his food, "Funny, I never said they were ruby."

Elena stares at him; she can feel her heart racing. She can't explain how she knew that they were ruby; she just remembers two red shining lights in her dreams, her tío's voice, and a stranger's voice in a foreign language.

"Calm down already," Kiké complains, "If you keep panicking like that over everything, I won't know when I'm having a heart attack." He pulls out the box with the earrings and slides it to her, "We'll keep quiet, and no one has to know our little secret," he winks, "we'll just have to team up against the little imp in case she tells your dad what I said."

"You can," she points to herself.

He nods his head, "By the way, just ask that kid in your math class out already. I'm sick of you getting nervous out of nowhere."


Francisco drags his feet; he is not looking forward to having guests in his house, but Lynn insisted that it would be better to prepare for their project at his house than the library or her house. It isn't that he doesn't want her to visit, but he knows that they aren't going to have a lot of time to work on the project before his family comes home and possibly interrupts them.

He looks over at Lynn, who is looking around at the unfamiliar neighborhood, "We won't have a lot of time to work on our project today, but we can probably get some stuff done before six."

"Six?" she pulls out her phone; that doesn't give them a lot of time, but a little over two hours is better than holding off all week.

"It'll start to get dark and I doubt you want miss dinner," he teases.

Her cheeks turn red from embarrassment, but he isn't wrong, "I'll be fine. Besides, I'm not always hungry."

"That's not what Paula says," Francisco laughs.

He opens the front door; the house is quiet and he sighs in relief as the two can work in privacy.

"You can take a seat anywhere; I'm going to get my laptop so we can get started," he tells her.

Lynn walks around the living room, dining room and kitchen; she's never visited his house before, and she begins to take in the layout of the house. This happens anytime that she's in a new place; she can't stop herself from turning her head at all of the new things that she is seeing.

He looks over at her, and wonders what she is doing, "Lynn," he calls out to her as he notices her staring through the pages of the calendar.

"Why do the dates have names on them? I've never seen a calendar like that."

Francisco shrugs his shoulders, "I don't know, that's the way the bakery gives them to us."

"Your bakery gives you a free calendar?"

"Doesn't yours?"

"No! Man, I gotta start going to your bakery. So what's with the names?"

"I don't know. All the calendars that we've ever had have them," Francisco tells her. He sets up his laptop on the dining room table, "Do you know what you want to the project on?"

Lynn lets go of the calendar pages and takes a seat next to him, "Nope."

"Can you pull out the sheet of paper with what we need to put on our project?" he asks.

She grabs her backpack and Francisco notices the large amount of papers that she's carrying around. He doesn't say a thing, but watches as she randomly pulls out papers to see if it's the one he asked for.

After creating a mess of the dining room table, she pulls out the sheet and hands it to him, "Found it!"

"Thanks," he says. "Alright, I'm going to make an outline and we should be able to get most of it done before its due."

Lynn happily exclaims, "Alright!"

This is one of the reasons that she wanted him to be her partner; he's organized, he can keep her on track, and it helps that he's pretty cute.

Lynn looks over his shoulder and notices that he is looking at a translator webpage, "Why are you using that? Didn't you say that Spanish was your first language?"

"Yeah, but this it make sure that the accents are in the right place and that I'm not making any grammatical errors," he tells her.

"Are you serious?"

He shrugs his shoulders. Francisco admits that amongst his family, his Spanish is the worst, but it still gets him an easy A in his class.


As Elena heads down to the kitchen for a snack, she is met by her mom and Andrew. For the last couple of hours, she has been in her room trying to catch up on her homework, but has been struggling to make any headway.

Andrew greets her, "Hey stranger, we haven't seen you in the last couple of hours."

"You've been up in your room for a couple of hours, are you okay?" asks Caroline.

Elena nods her head, "Yeah, I'm just trying to catch up on some studying that I couldn't get done at dad's."

"What happened at your dad's?" Caroline asks with concern.

"It was fine. A little annoying considering that Lynn and tío Kiké wouldn't stop arguing with one another."

"Again? What were they arguing about this time?" Andrew asks.

"Same as last week, but it seems like they keep upping themselves every time I see them."

Caroline is surprised to hear that Francisco's brother is still at home; normally the older brother sticks around for a few days, a week at best, but his constant presence is worrying her. Francisco tends to take dips in his 'personality' whenever he spends an extended period of time with his brother, and she doesn't want Elena to catch on to it.

When Elena pulls her hair back, Andrew notices the new earrings that his step-daughter is sporting, "Did you get new earrings?"

She nods, "Yeah, tío Kiké gave them to me."

"Where did he get them?" Caroline asks, afraid that her daughter may be running around with stolen jewelry.

"Myanmar," she quickly responds.

Caroline holds her hand out, "Can I see them?"

Elena knows what this is about; whenever her tío brings her nice gifts such as these, her parents are quick to take them from her. To date they haven't returned a single one, and they never say why, although Elena can always assume it has to do with his 'job'.

"Did your tío mention how much longer he was going to stick around?" Caroline asks.

Elena shakes her head, "No, he didn't say a thing about it."

"What exactly does he do?" Andrew asks.

"I don't know. I just know that he travels a lot and tends to show up randomly at dad's house."

Andrew is curious about what that means; he looks over at Caroline and notices that she's staring intensely at the countertop. He isn't expecting her to tell him much, but when he notices the serious look in her eye, he can't help but wonder what is going on through her mind.

Elena grabs an apple, "I'm going back upstairs to study," she tells them. However, before she goes, "Mom, do you have anything for headaches?"

"I should have something in my medicine cabinet."

The teen nods her head and walks back upstairs; for weeks, she has had a headache, which seems to get worse in the late afternoon, but this weekend was a nightmare. Her head was pounding and she couldn't get anything done, not that she has been able to do so since they started.

When Elena is upstairs, Andrew turns to Caroline, who is pouring some tea in a mug, "What's going on? You seem really frazzled."

Caroline bites on her lip, "It's Francisco. I…just think that…maybe I'll keep Elena home for a few weekends."

Andrew knows that he has to tread lightly. For years, he has wanted to get more information about Francisco and what went on between the former couple, but Caroline would never say much, and Violet always struck him as an exaggerator.

"Are you sure about that?"

"You heard her. She can't study or do anything as long as his brother is around and I…" she doesn't finish her sentence, but she knows what she wants to say. Caroline knows that if Kiké is doing something shady is going on with either him or Francisco and she doesn't want her daughter exposed to any of it.

Caroline hates keeping Elena away, but it isn't the first time that she's done so, and if things keep going the same way, then it may not be the last time.

She tries to think of anything that may have happened to Francisco in the last couple of weeks, "Elena said that Francisco broke his thumb, right?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Just curious. Look, I'll talk with him and she can stay here instead."

"Okay…if it's okay with him."

"I'm doing what's best for her," she stresses.


Francisco looks at the clock; it's almost six and Lynn is due to go home; no one has come home and he hasn't had to worry about his family seeing her. He's not embarrassed, but he can imagine the sort of things that they'll say when they meet Lynn; especially since she's here unexpectedly.

He hears her stomach rumble and asks the bored girl, "Do you want to call it a day?"

She perks up, "Yes! I am so sick of researching and writing sources. Who the hell invented the biblictrophy?!"

"Bibliography," he corrects, "and I don't know." Francisco can't blame her for being annoyed, he insisted on gathering all the information they needed as quickly as possible, but at least they won't have much to do except write the report and set up the presentation. "Do you want to write the report or do the slide presentation?"

Without hesitation, she tells him, "Slides."

"Just make them more than a few words per point, and maybe study the topic cards."

"What makes you think that I won't?!"

While this is the first presentation that the two of them are working on together, he has seen and heard that Lynn does the bare minimum to get by, and he doesn't want to do the bare minimum to get a grade.

"Just in case."

The front door opens, and the two teens turn to see a man carrying a large amount of grocery bags. He doesn't acknowledge the two and sets his down the bags so that he can close the door.

Lynn whispers to Francisco, "Who's that?"

"My older brother," he says, annoyed that his brother arrived before Lynn left.

Kiké walks past the two, stealing Francisco's cap in the process. The younger brother rolls his eyes, but he doesn't let his brother bother him. When he returns, Kiké places Francisco's hat back on his head, but purposely tilts it to mess with his little brother.

The man takes out bags of gummy bears and unloads them onto the table. From the corner of Lynn's eye, she can spot the colorful treat, which lures her towards the elder brother. Francisco follows after her as Lynn looks inside the bags and sees that they are all filled with gummy bears, "Dang and I thought that I had a sweet tooth," she says as she opens the pack to eat the candy.

Kiké takes the bag from her, "I sell them."

"Didn't you learn your lesson the last time?" Francisco asks.

"It's not like I got in trouble, I was just told to leave," he answers. "Besides, I didn't do anything illegal."

"Except walk around a music festival telling people that you were selling ecstasy laced gummy bears."

"Hey! I never said that they were laced with anything, I just told people that I was selling twenty dollar gummy bears, what people assume is their business."

Lynn, who opened another bag to eat, asks, "Weren't they going to know that it wasn't laced?"

Kiké takes the bag back, "It takes a little time to kick in, now stop eating my merchandise!"

The clock on the wall chimes, "Look at that it's six o'clock," he tells Lynn.

"Dang that took longer than I thought," she complains.

Lynn quickly stuffs her papers back into her backpack and heads to the door. Francisco grabs a bag of gummy bears to give to Lynn for the walk home.

"Yeah, yeah, córrele. Ve a besar a tu novio, con suerte no comiste," he laughs.

Francisco flips him off before meeting with Lynn by the front door. She isn't sure what made him upset, but she quietly mutters what Kiké said as the two walk out the door.

He hands Lynn the bag of candy and apologizes, "Sorry about him, I wish I could say that he's just in a bad mood, but he's always an ass."

Lynn shrugs it off, "No big deal, besides it's not like I'm not used to moody siblings."

"Do you want to do the project somewhere else next time?"

"Yeah, I guess we can do it at my house next time."

That wasn't what Francisco had in mind, "See what you can get done before get together again. I'll email you some talking points and if can find anything that could help me with the report send them my way."

She punches his arm, "Got it!"

As she walks towards her house, Lynn continues to mutter, "Ve a besar…tu no…vio. Wait, what else did he say? No…comisti."


"Sigh…" Lucy says she starts the washing machine and leans on it to rest her feet. Even after a year, she is still tired and having a harder time with motherhood as her twins begin walking and making messes everywhere they go. Toys, clothes, and books litter the once-clean home, and while she would love to just say that it was her children's work, her sister also played a role in the mess.

"Almost there, c'mon Arthur, just a few more steps," Lynn tells her nephew, who is slowly tottering towards her. The boy keeps going until he reaches Lynn and falls into her arms. "You did it! C'mon, time for a flying break," she says before lays him on her arm while running around the room letting the boy pretend to fly.

Lucy watches them go, and overhears Lynn pick up her daughter, "Gotcha, Catherine."

The little girl giggles. By some miraculous act, Lynn is able to keep the children balanced on her arms as she dodges toys on the ground and furniture all around her.

Lynn maneuvers the twins towards the laundry room and put both children in Lucy's face, "Say hi to your mommy."

Both give their mother a gummy smile which Lucy returns, before taking her daughter in her arms. It surprises her that Lynn took an interest in her children, considering that she hardly ever extends the same courtesy for her other nieces and nephews, but Lucy isn't going to complain about help that her sister is offering.

Lucy faces her daughter, who began to yawn, "Time for you to take a nap."

"Aww already," Lynn whines. "But I just got here."

Lucy shrugs her shoulders and leads the way to the nursery. Lynn follows her sister upstairs, and watches her sister put the twins down for their nap.

"I still can't get over how you thought that a buncha shades of gray was a good color for a nursery."

The walls – gray. The crib – gray. The bookshelves, the rocking chair, curtains – everything gray, and Lucy thought it was okay; not that she cared about anyone's opinion on the nursery. The only colorful things were the gifts that the siblings brought for the babies before anyone knew Lucy's planned color scheme.

"Man, I still laugh when I think of dad and Linc's faces when they saw your 'haunted house nursery'," she mimics.

Lucy rolls her eyes and gives them their blankets, draws the curtains, and turns off the light which makes the dark room darker than before.

"I appreciate your help," Lucy tells her sister as they walk back down to the living room.

"Yeah, well it looked hard when mom and dad dealt with Lana and Lola, so I figured you would want help, especially when Rocky has those long work days."

Lucy nods. She is proud that he is pursuing what he loves, but being a forensic pathologist in the city tends to cut into his free time and thus leaves Lucy alone with the twins more than either one would like.

"So," Lucy hands her sister a broom, "can you help me clean up?"

Lynn groans. When she decided to visit she didn't make plan on helping clean despite knowing that she was part of the reason that the house got messier than necessary. The floor was trashed and rather than complain, Lucy suggests that they quickly finish before Catherine and Arthur wake up.

Lynn grabs a stuffed bear and looks at it before tossing it in a corner. From childhood to now, she wasn't fond of cleaning up, in her mind she is able to thrive in her own organized chaos; ask her to find anything and somehow she found it, but ask her to clean and suddenly, she is lost.

"I thought that people were supposed to sleep when the babies sleep, why are you torturing yourself?"

"I'm only asking that you clean up the mess you made, I'm not asking you to wax the floors and repaint the house."

Lynn looks around, "On a house this big," she scoffs, "Never, although, if there's ever a blizzard, I know exactly where Francisco and I are running to."

Lucy wonders where that scenario came from, "You wouldn't stay in your own house?"

"Just the two of us? Kinda dull, and at least here we can help you with the babies."


"Are you sure that you want to do the project here at your house?" Francisco asks as he and Lynn approach her front door. "We can always just go to the library."

"Yeah, I don't mind," she says.

Truthfully, Lynn didn't want to risk running into Francisco's older brother again in case she does something that she'll regret; after she came home last time, Lynn looked online to translate what his brother said, she was mad at his comment, and she was sure that she would give him more than a piece of her mind.

She opens the front door and he is met with a cacophony of noises from all around; Francisco can't imagine why Lynn thinks that this would be better than going to the quiet library, but it is better than going to his house again, especially after what his mom told him about Lynn's real intentions during her last visit.

"Mom! Dad! I'm gonna be doing a project with Francisco in my room!"

Lynn Sr., upon hearing 'Francisco' and 'room', runs over to the two teens, "Lynn, can you watch Lily, I'm going to be, uh, busy…with dinner, yup, dinner."

"But we have a project to do, can't someone else watch her?"

He shakes his head, "Sorry, Lori is at golf practice, Luan is helping me with dinner and the others are busy. Please," he begs her.

She sighs, "Fine, I'll go get her." Lynn turns to Francisco, "C'mon let's go."

The elder Loud sighs in relief as the two teens head upstairs.

Lynn points to her door, "You can go in, I'm gonna go get my little sister and then we can get started."

She heads to Lily's crib, "Hey Shortstop, listen, I've got a friend over, but I've got to watch you and we got a project and I kinda like him, but you didn't hear that from me. So can you please be good and cuter than you've ever been and maybe not run around without your diaper or need a changing or anything? Please, for your favorite sister?"

Lily thinks about it. She searches under her pillow and hands Lynn a clipping of a hobbyhorse from a toy catalog.

Lynn takes the clipping, "You want this? Alright, deal."

She spits on her hand to shake, but Lily shakes her head. Lynn wipes her hand on her shirt and takes her baby sister to her room.

"We're here," Lynn says. "Lily, this is my friend, Francisco. Francisco, this is my baby sister, Lily."

Francisco awkwardly waves to the infant, who coos at him. Lynn sets down the baby, who crawls around the room, however, she quickly grows bored, since her older sister neglected to bring her a toy to play with.

Lily walks over to the two teens and Lynn looks over at the baby, who is patiently waiting for someone to play with her. Both sisters stare at one another until Francisco notices that Lynn isn't typing.

He looks up the two and wonders how long Lynn will actually stare at her sister; rather than find out, he calls to her, "Lynn, I think your sister wants something."

She shakes her head, "Right! I should probably get her a toy or her blankie. I'll be right back," she says.

Francisco looks down at the infant, "Do you two always do that?"

Lily shakes her head and crawls to the boy. Francisco looks down, unsure of what to do; Lynn still hasn't returned and he's sure that those crashing noises and explosions are because of her.

"Do you want me to pick you up?"

Lily nods her head and Francisco complies. He isn't sure of what he can do to entertain the girl; he's never dealt with babies, but so far, Lily seems easy. Francisco offers her his finger, but Lily refuses; she's learned her lesson after Lynn has pulled that trick with her.

He notices that she doesn't take it, "Not your thing? How about a…I don't know…what do you like?"

Lucy gets up from her coffin, "She typically likes her stuffed giraffe and blankie."

The two are taken by surprise; unaware that Lucy was in the room with them to begin with.

"Where did you come from?"

"I've been here this whole time, I'm Lucy, by the way," she tells him, as she looks over at the boy that she's sure Lynn mentioned giving her secret admirer letter to.

"Francisco," he introduces himself to her.

Lynn walks in and notices Lucy staring at Francisco, "Holy– where did you come from?"

"I've been contemplating death in my coffin," she says before laying back down in her coffin.

The room grows quiet.

"Anyway," Lynn starts, "here's your blankie, Lily," she tells the infant, who happily takes it.

Lily gets off Francisco's lap and crawls around the bed as she gets a look at two teenagers. Her eyes fixate on the boy, she's never met him up close, but she knows that she's seen him at Lynn's baseball games.

"I should be able to get this done soon, then we can focus on what we're going to say in front of the class," Francisco says. He looks at his project guideline, "The questions are here on the sheet, so we can look up how we're going to say everything."

"Or you could ask your parents," Lynn suggests.

"Or we cut out the middle man and do it ourselves."

"With the power of a translator," she teases.

Francisco looks up at her, "Do you want an A or B? Because my crappy Spanish at best is going to get us a B."

"Can you explain that to me? How is it that you speak Spanish every day, but somehow you're 'terrible' at it?"

"My brothers mostly spoke English and my parents didn't pay much attention to how I was learning Spanish."

Lily calls out to Lynn, with her hands out in the air, hoping that her older sister will pick her up. Lynn complies and Lily squeals in delight as she decides to pull out her best cute routine for their guest. She coos, she smiles, she tries her best to say new words, and best of all, she tries to stay on her best behavior, no matter how tempted she is by the keyboard in front of her; she has to do her best to earn that hobbyhorse that Lynn promised her.

"I didn't know that you were so good with babies," Francisco says.

"When you have six younger siblings, you're bound to learn a thing or two," she boasts, despite not having much experience being responsible to her own younger siblings.

Lily yawns and rests her head on Lynn's lap. She turns to Francisco, "I should probably put her in her crib."

He looks at the time and begins to gather his things, "Alright, I should be heading out too. It's getting late."

"I'll walk you to the door," Lynn says.

With Lily in her crib, Lynn whispers, "I'll buy you your toy as soon as I can."

After, Lynn closes the door thi the infant's room, he two teens walk out the front door, and Francisco turns to her, "You know, I sort of expected your house to be a little crazier, what with thirteen people under one roof."

"You got lucky that you didn't see everyone, but at least we got a lot of work done."

He nods his head and begins to head out, "Look forward to working with you again."


Lynn tosses the papers on the coffee table and crashes on the couch. Another day of being forced to be stuck in that stupid office with that stupid paperwork and that stupidly loud clock; she is ready to snap!

"Stupid Lori…why did she have to get dad all organized…and why the hell did I agree to take the restaurant…stupid everyone!" she yells into a pillow.

Francisco notices Lynn punching the couch; he takes a seat on her favorite chair and asks, "What's going on?"

"I am so sick of doing paperwork. I just wanna go in the kitchen at the restaurant. It's easy! I get an order, the guys and I fulfill it and we do it over and over and over and over again, but it's random. Easy, right? Instead, dad wants me to do paperwork, and I know he hated doing it too, so why do I have to do it?"

Francisco takes a sheet and reads through it, "Because that's part of running a restaurant. No food, no customers. No clean tablecloths, no customers. No soap, no clean plates or silverware, no customers. No paychecks, no employees, no customers. You see where I'm going with this? Someone has to run the back and whether you like it or not that has to be you…and how exactly did your dad run the restaurant before if he hated doing paperwork?"

"Like me…" she gets up from the couch. "Except he had Lori to help. But Lori doesn't want to help me because she's too busy with her Boo-Boo Bear's mercado and being in another state and not helping for years."

"Well, that is a good excuse."

"Hey!" she lightly slaps his arm, "Who's side are you on?"

"No one's. But you have to figure this out eventually, if not then what was the point of taking over this restaurant?"

Lynn crosses her arms. She hates when he made her think about things like this. She takes an order sheet and begins to look over it; soon her eyes began to drift and she stares at a spot on coffee table.

"Well? Anything wrong?"

"With what?"

"The sheet in front of you," he exclaims. He sighs and takes the sheet. It is a simple order form to order meats from a butcher, but Lynn seems to have randomly inserted numbers and cuts of meat on the sheet. "Lynn, are you sure you looked at this form correctly?"

Lynn glances at the sheet, "I think, I was just…filling out stuff…so dad wouldn't, uh…know I wasn't doing it…"

Francisco sighs. It feels like a parent talking to a stubborn child that doesn't want to do their homework. "If you don't want to do it, then why don't you hire someone instead?"

"Because dad said that if I did he would have to take the money from my paycheck and that I have to learn responsibility," Lynn complains. Then an idea pop into her, "Wait a minute, you aren't working for Lisa, are you?"

"Not as much."

"Why don't you do it?! You'd get an easier job that doesn't have you on your feet as much, you get something to do and the paycheck wouldn't need to be split since we live in the same house."

"I'm going to want to get paid, Lynn. No one works for free," he reminds her.

"Don't worry about that, I can probably convince my dad to hire you part-time and if you do a good job, I'll hire you full-time and give you a raise."

He knows that she can't promise that, but he is tempted by having a steady but small source of income while he does his part-time jobs around the neighborhood.

"Fine, we'll see how it goes, but only for a little bit."

"Deal! First order of business – shave your damn beard; it's getting too itchy," she complains. "I mean seriously, how did you forget so many weeks in a row."

He sighs, "I'm waiting for the weather to get warmer."

Lynn pulls him into a hug, pressing her head near his heart, "Liar…your heart feels a little slow."

Francisco can't think of anything to say, so he returns the hug.


And there you have it, the stupid reason that Kiké and Lynn fight with one another. It was never meant to be smart, especially when they don't remember that this was why they started fighting, but insults tend to do the trick.

Unfortunately for our duo, Kiké is the least of their problems, which are about to involve the Loud sisters, Caroline and Elena too.

Thanks for reading and see you next time.