Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“I really think Barry would be a better choice for this,” Cisco whines.

“Ouch.” Caitlin fusses with her hair in the passenger seat, squinting at the small mirror in the visor. “I’m offended on her behalf.” She pauses, thoughtful. “And mine, actually.”

“You, quiet. People who are going to ride mental shotgun during the heist don’t get to tell me to relax.”

“I didn’t tell you to relax,” she points out, but she doesn’t seem to take genuine offense to his grumbling. “It can’t go worse than last time. We both actually have powers now.”

“Barry could,” Cisco starts.

“I’m not going undercover,” Barry himself breaks in over their shared comms. “I’m a married man.”

Cisco and Caitlin roll their eyes in unison.

“I gave him permission,” Iris says mildly. “He was kind of a baby about it.”

“I’m your lightning rod,” Barry says, sounding hurt.

Cisco mimes sticking a finger down his throat.

They’re cute Caitlin mouths at him, and then tugs at her jacket. “Are we ready? Because this collar is poking me.” She shifts her weight, pulling a face. “Leather is so stiff.”

“It’s not leather,” Cisco says, not for the first time. “It’s a highly complex, completely one-of-a-kind polyurethane polyparapheny--”

“Polyblahblahblah,” Killer Frost says, her eyes flaring as she surfaces. “I’m bored.”

“Bored?” Cisco squawks, turning to face her as her hair goes white from root to tip. “Bored? Your suit is bespoke. It is handmade.”

“It’s itchy.”

“It has an alloy made from a dwarf star--”

“Guys,” Barry says. “Can we focus?”

“Caitlin thinks it’s fascinating,” Cisco shoots at her, but he sighs, pulling on his gauntlets and slipping his Vibe goggles from their case.

Icy fingers take them from his hands, so cold he can feel it through the material of his glove. “I’m not Caitlin,” she reminds him, and slips the glasses onto his face. She tweaks his ear just to make him jump.

++

The play is easy--not that Cisco would admit it, because he’s stuck his flag atop the it-should-be-Barry hill--but Killer Frost takes the lead and all he has to do is ferry them to a closeish different earth, engage in a light skirmish, and look pissed off while she threatens various people with frostbite in delicate areas.

There’s a spot of action, just before they leave. He’s opened a portal, and he’s watching her turn, her eyes glowing, her smirk victorious and alive (the spot of blood at the corner of her mouth, frozen in place, just a shade lighter than the blue of her lipstick), when one of the generic goons slumped into a corner straightens, a gun in hand.

Cisco smashes him through the back window before he can fully process the threat, hand outstretched and the ground trembling beneath him.

Killer Frost blinks. She turns back to survey the damage, then shrugs. “Nice,” she tells him, and steps through the portal.

“No problem,” Cisco mutters, and follows her. They’ve stepped into the apartment arranged specifically for this farce, and Cisco sighs, crossing to the kitchen and pawing through the cabinets. “There’s a dearth of snacks in here.”

“Well honey,” Frost says, wiggling her fingers at him. “Why don’t you pop out to the store?”

He glares at her. “I’m taking a shower,” he decides, and stalks off to the bathroom.

He’s got suds in his hair when he hears the door open and shut, and then the faucet squeak on. “Relax,” she says, over his furious high pitched noises. “I won’t peek.”

He sticks his head out from the curtain, blushing bright and hot. “This is so inappropriate, I can’t even--”

“I get it,” she snaps, eyes flaring. The condensation gathering on the ceiling crystallizes into icicles, and the water cascading down onto his back drops two degrees. He squeaks again. “Blah blah you hate me and everything I stand for--”

“You tried to kill me,” he points out, surreptitiously turning the hot water up a notch. “Multiple times.”

She waves a hand dismissively. “So? You tried to kill me back.”

Cisco blinks. He hadn’t really thought about it that way before, but even so-- “You tried to kill me first.”

She glares at him. “Fine,” she snaps, and slams the door on her way out. It ices along the jamb and the crack between the floor, and by the time he gets out of the shower it’s still frozen solid. He uses the butt of his toothbrush to chisel his way out and finds her in the living room, moodily drinking straight from a wine bottle and staring out the window at the night sky.

“We have wine?”

She shrugs, flopping onto the couch and a huff and a glower. “Housewarming gift,” she says, which means Iris left it for them, probably.

“I’m sorry,” he offers. “You’re right, we’re in this together.” Probably the room isn’t bugged, but the whole point of this charade is that it could be, so he doesn’t elaborate. And if that’s a convenient excuse to avoid looking at how he really feels about this… person in his best friend’s body and mind, it’s not like she’s a fount of emotional availability either.

She drinks again, then offers him the bottle. He sits next to her, not too close, not touching, not like he would have if it was Caitlin, his arm slung around her shoulders and her prim bare feet tucked up under her and her indulgent smile at his stupid nerdy joke. Her hair is frosted and her lips are blue and he can feel the chill emanating off her, the white white white of her cold skin and the flatness in her pale eyes. She’s watching him, and he doesn’t know how to read her face, but when he takes the bottle and drinks something satisfied curls at the corner of her mouth.

++

Later, the both of them in sweats and t-shirts, something odd and confusing in his belly at the sight of her in his clothing, they lie on their backs in the same bed, listening to the traffic outside. “I set the alarm,” he says, to break the silence.

She doesn’t respond, so Cisco shrugs, turning his back to her and pillowing his head on his arm. There’s a soft whisper through the darkness, like ice softening until it cracks, and goosebumps rise on his skin as a chill runs straight through him, dissipating into the air.

“Cisco,” Caitlin says sleepily, and rests her cheek on his back. He turns around, gathering her close with a sigh. She’s cold to the touch, and doesn’t warm throughout the night, but her hair is brown and she sleeps just the same, quiet except for tiny little snuffles and her toes tucked against his calf.

In the morning her eyes are blue again.

Chapter Text

“Okay,” Cisco declares at one forty five on a Tuesday. “If you’re feeling evil, put your hand up.”

The five Killer Frosts contained in the large holding cell look back at him, unimpressed. Two of them try to throw ice at him, their eyes glowing and their hands misting, but the containment bracelets glow, keeping them in check. The other three sneer.

“Anyone feeling not evil?”

He’s fixed with five furious glares.

“Okay then.” Cisco turns to Barry and Iris. “Ideas?”

Barry hefts a small paper bag of Big Belly fries. “Late lunch for whoever powers down?”

One of the Frosts slams a fist against the plexiglass. Barry sighs.

“Okay,” Cisco says. “Team Flash meeting time.” He presses his palm against the controls, watching the metal barrier rise. He waits until the containment is fully complete before turning. “Are we worried they’ll kill each other? Our Caitlin is in there too. Somewhere.”

“They seem pretty docile,” Iris points out. “Considering, well. You know.”

“That we have five metas who hate our collective guts from multiple other universes trapped in a small room together?” Cisco crosses his arms and glares at Barry. “I swear to god, if you suggest going back in time to fix this--”

“I wasn’t going to suggest that,” Barry grumbles, sounding hurt. But he also looks a little guilty, and Cisco narrows his eyes at him. “I’m not the one who opened up the portals!”

Cisco’s scowl deepens, his back teeth grinding. “Fine. There’s enough blame for both of us. Are there any solutions to go around?”

“Uh,” Barry says eloquently.

“Caitlin’s notes,” Iris suggests. “She was working on something to contain Killer Frost in case she shifted, right?”

Cisco snaps at her. “Yes, yes, of course--” he pulls up his tablet, tapping away. “--I can’t understand any of this.” He presses a knuckle to the worried crease between his brows. “I need to go do a deep dive into biomedical chemistry. Can you make sure they don’t kill each other?”

“Yes,” Iris cuts in, taking Barry by the elbow. “We got it, you do what you need to.”

++

Cisco goes to relieve them six hours later. “Shh,” Iris says, holding a finger to her lips. “They’re sleeping.”

So is Barry, slumped against the wall of the pipeline with his head in Iris’s lap. He’s drooling a little.

Iris smoothes his hair. “He crashes hard sometimes.”

“I know.” Cisco settles himself with his back against the containment cell, popping open a fresh Red Bull. “Go get him to eat something, I’ll cover you for a while.” She looks like she might object, and he waves her off. “I’ve still got work to do, and it’s easy to think down here.”

Iris rouses Barry with a soft murmur, his eyes slowly focusing on her, his slow smiling mouth. They kiss once, gently, and leave with their fingers entwined. Cisco watches them go, feeling something odd in his chest.

“Gross,” a two toned voice says from behind him.

Cisco doesn’t turn. “You’re supposed to be asleep.”

“Boo hoo,” she tells him. “Forgive me if I don’t play along with my captors.”

He does turn then--it’s the one with her hair braided up, purple tinted more than the others. “Are you a doctor on your world?”

She blinks. “What?”

“You’re the only one I’m sure isn’t ours, with that purple braid of yours. The faster we figure this out, the faster you back to… whatever it is that you do.”

“Crime,” she provides.

“Yeah, great, whatever. The faster you become your world’s Flash’s problem. Were you a doctor or weren’t you?”

She sniffs at him. “My license is current.”

He narrows his eyes at her. “I don’t know enough about physician licensure renewals to call bullshit.”

“My earth is very lenient,” she informs him. “Hold up the screen so I can see.” He complies, and she makes a considering noise, tilting her head. Her eyes flare, then fade away, the blue bleeding into brown, her hair darkening at the roots. When she speaks she sounds like Caitlin. “There’s a formula for a cure, there, or at least the beginning of one. But it’s incomplete, untested.” Her eyes go white. “Why don’t you let me out and we’ll see about finishing it?”

Cisco snorts, bringing the tablet down into his lap again. “Yeah, that’s not gonna happen.”

He can see her shrug out of the corner of his eye. “A girl’s gotta try.”

++

“Okay,” Cisco announces the following morning, running on two twenty minute catnaps on a bed in the infirmary and a truly obscenely large big gulp of hyper-caffeinated soda. “We have breakfast burritos and we’re willing to trade. Barry, show ‘em what’s in the showcase.”

Barry opens the small tray into the cell and drops in a handful of sticker nametags and a couple of felt tipped markers. “Try to pick something unique, so we can tell you apart. And include a number.”

“And,” Cisco cuts in enthusiastically, “as soon as you put on your unique nametag, you get your burrito! It’s a win for us and a win for you.”

I will kill you all one of the Frosts writes. Cisco waggles a paper wrapped egg-and-sausage at the window. #1, she grudgingly adds.

“Ah,” Cisco sighs, dropping the burrito into the tray so she can retrieve it. “Compromise. C’mon, who else is hungry?”

He hands off the bag to Barry to facilitate, tapping his fingers against his chest as his mind wanders back to the simulations he’s running in the infirmary.

“Hey.”

Cisco starts. It’s the Frost from last night, a crooked Purple Braid #4 stuck to her chest. “Nice moniker.”

She shrugs. “I’m trying to get you to trust me so you drop your guard.”

“That’s… oddly truthful.”

She shrugs again. “Any luck on the cure?”

“A little,” he admits. “More than I’d--hey, wait just one minute--”

She smiles at him, and it’s not even that mean. “Almost got you.”

++

It’s six minutes after midnight, and Cisco sits in the pipeline, crosslegged. “Are you awake?”

Purple Braid raises an eyebrow, then turns to fully face him, mirroring his position through the glass. “Obviously.”

One of the Frosts lounging against the back wall--#2 KF, which, well… not very theatrical, definitely not theirs--snorts. Purple Braid flares her nostrils at her, sneering, and the tips of her fingers ice up. #2 rolls her eyes and turns away.

“I’m having a dilemma,” Cisco says, ignoring the in-Frost drama. “A moral dilemma.”

She taps the glass between them with the tips of her nails. The ice cracks, melting against the heated air of the cell. “I’m good with those.”

“I don’t believe you,” he tells her, “but my usual sounding board is somewhere between I’ll kill you all and go fuck yourself--”

“Ah,” she says sagely, “#5. She’s not so bad once you beat the attitude out of her.” She shrugs at his boggling look. “We had some time to bond before you rounded us all up.”

“You had--” Cisco stops, leaping to his feet, eyes wide and brain whirring. “You had time--you were all together, before we--”

“Stun grenade-ded us,” she grumbles. “My head still twinges.”

“You’ll live,” he says, waving a hand distractedly. “Tell me about the others, before Barry got there. You had to see something, a clue, or maybe, maybe an outfit change--our Caitlin was wearing red that day, slacks and--”

“Yeah,” she interrupts. “I’m still a criminal.”

He deflates. “Oh. Right.”

“--so I don’t do things for free.”

“You don’t…” Cisco frowns. “We’re not exactly liquid around here, if you know what I mean.”

“Relax. What good is your earth’s currency? Tell me what your moral dilemma is, and if it’s good enough I’ll scratch your back.” She scratches her nails against the glass, making it screech until he winces. “Or anywhere else you’d like.”

“Gross. But yes, fine.” He sits back down. “I’m making this cure, right, and the five of you are terrible--”

“Thank you.”

“Not a compliment, don’t interrupt--but we don’t really know what you’ve done, if it… deserves this.”

She tilts her head at him. “Death, you mean.”

“Well, no, the cure is designed to.” Cisco falters.

“To kill me,” she says simply. “That’s what the cure would do, wouldn’t it?”

“You were never supposed to exist,” he tries, “it’s Caitlin who, who…”

“I was never supposed to exist,” she echoes in a murmur. She leans in close, her eyes glowing. “Was Vibe?”

Cisco stands. “This was a mistake. It was a mistake to talk to you--” she just looked so much like Caitlin, even with the hair and the lipstick and the attitude, sounded like her, flicked her hair out of her eyes just the same way, and it hurts like a phantom limb, like the processing part of his brain has been incised, like he’s missing half of himself. He aches for her, and it made him soft and stupid when he should have been on his guard.

“Cisco,” she murmurs, when he turns away, and is it in Caitlin’s voice or does he want so badly to hear it again that he’s projecting. “Don’t you know?” He flicks his eyes back: she’s exhaled onto the glass, creating a white cloud, and drawn a single heart with the tip of her finger. “You’ll miss me when I’m gone.”

Chapter Text

Caitlin has been present at four births, assisted in three, and delivered alone just at this one. And she knows every disgusting horrific detail about pregnancy: the mood swings, the swollen ankles, the stitches and the poop and the wailing and the way newborn faces are always so puckered up and wrinkly. Caitlin once go drunk on cheap champagne, Ronnie’s ring on her finger, and told him she loved him more than anyone in her entire life but she’d rather get mauled by a bear than carry an infant to term.

But it is something of a miracle, when she holds brand new Baby Girl West, gently cleaned off and even more gently patted dry and swaddled up in a green knit blanket. Little blue hat on his tiny tiny little head, almost covering his scrunchy eyes.

“Where did you get the hat?” she asks, as she relinquishes the baby back to Joe, who could currently be under the dictionary heading of ‘proud new father’, he’s glowing so hard.

He smiles down at his daughter, besotted. “What?”

“Her hat. It’s adorable, I just don’t remember seeing it earlier.”

Joe kisses his daughter’s forehead, tucking her against his chest. “No idea what you’re talking about, Doc, but I don’t even care.”

Caitlin blinks three times. Baby Girl West isn’t wearing a cap. She never was.

++

Cisco finds her in the kitchen at Joe’s, washing the champagne flutes. “Messing with the timeline,” he says, coming up next to her to help dry. “Really must be Barry’s kid.”

Caitlin smiles. “She didn’t mess with it, she’s just stuck.”

“She’s so grounded, is what she is,” Cisco says gleefully. He bumps his hip against hers. “It’s nice, though, right? To get confirmation that… we’re all still around and okay when Iris and Barry’s kid gets that old.”

Caitlin washes the last glass and watches the suds slide down the drain. “You don’t know that. One or all of us could be dead and she’s putting on a good face to preserve the timeline.”

There’s a short pause as he stares at her. “Dio, that was dark.”

She shrugs, rinsing the glass one last time. “It’s a possibility.”

“Sure. Sue me for thinking positive.” He holds out his hand for the glass and she moves to pass it for him. Just before it touches his fingers he looks straight at her. “Thomas.”

The glass crashes into the sink from her suddenly numb fingers, shattering. She’s frozen, big eyes locked on his.

“I knew it,” he says, and it breaks her stupor.

“The glass,” she says, turning to look for a dishrag and the garbage can. “You startled me.”

“Who’s Thomas?”

Caitlin opens a cabinet and crouches to peer into it. “Do you know where Joe keeps extra trash bags?”

“Caitlin.”

Caitlin sighs. She looks up at him. “Thomas was my father’s name.”

His brow furrows; he frowns. “But… I thought your father was.” He stops, awkward.

“Dead,” Caitlin supplies, standing and smoothing her skirt. “He is. Has been, for many years. I have no idea what Cecile meant, and neither does Cecile. It’s not worth dwelling on.”

“Not worth dwelling on?” Cisco’s eyebrows have almost disappeared into his hairline. “Killer Frost, reached out to you beyond the grave to give you a message about your father and you’re not going to dwell at all?”

Caitlin dusts her hands off, turning away. “Not a single dwell. I’m going to find Joe about cleaning this up.”

“Caitlin please. The man became a father and a grandfather in the same day, he doesn’t give a shit about some broken glass in the kitchen sink.”

Caitlin sighs. She leans her hip against the counter and crosses her arms over her chest. “Maybe I’m dwelling a little.”

He shuffles over and tucks himself into her side, considerably shorter than her barefoot and her in heels. He props his chin on her shoulder. “You want me to do some research?”

“I was thinking Ralph,” Caitlin says, just to make him squawk in indignation. “He is a private eye.”

“We’ve had a long trying few months,” Cisco says, pulling away to point a finger. “So I’ll forgive just this once.”

“We’ve got enough to deal with,” she tells him. “Let’s figure out Nora before we tackle dead fathers. Again.”

++

Except Nora is perfectly healthy. So aside from light brainstorming and a few check ups to ensure Cecile’s powers are truly gone, there’s not a lot to distract Caitlin from what Cecile had said. Or Killer Frost. Or whomever. But it also means that Cisco is not around to be her sounding board, as people stuck out of time or universes or perhaps both is really more of his forte than hers.

She sits, biting her thumbnail ragged and frowning at her phone. “You should,” a voice says, and when she turns it’s Cisco leaned up in the doorway, a lollipop in his mouth and adding an odd rounded sound to his words. “Call your mom.”

Caitlin sighs. “It’s annoying when you can read my mind like that.”

“No it isn’t.”

“It is,” she counters, but he offers her a strawberry jello and she’s smiling before she can frown again. “Thanks.”

“I’ll do it.” The little white stick comes out of his mouth empty on the end and she can hear candy crunching under his teeth. “Hey, Mrs. Caitlin’s Mom, can I ask you some questions about your late husband?”

“She prefers ‘Doctor’.” Caitlin picks up her phone with a sigh. “It’s… I’ve tried to ask her before. It’s one of the few subjects that can really make us fight.”

“I’ve heard her voicemails, I think she might actually always be fighting you.”

“Cisco,” Caitlin sighs, and he shrugs.

“I don’t like the way she treats you.”

“I know.” Caitlin holds her up phone. “Slushies afterwards?”

He points the little white stick at her. “One better. I’ll go get them while you talk.”

He’s going to drink half of hers before she can get off the phone, she thinks, but she can’t garner up anything other than fondness.

++

Her mother picks up the call, which is already a step up from the relationship they’ve had since Caitlin was twelve. “Caitlin.”

“Mother.”

“So you are alive.”

Caitlin leans back in her chair with a sigh. “Yes, I am alive.”

“I appreciate the notice, even if it’s months--”

“Mom,” Caitlin interrupts, “I need your help, I--”

++

“Caitlin?” Cisco is peering at her from beneath a comically oversized pair of goggles. “What did your mom say?”

“What?” Caitlin blinks. She’s sitting at her desk, just like she was, but her phone is dark, facedown on the tabletop in front of her. “I--what…”

“I came in and you were spacing.” Cisco pulls his goggles up on top of his head, baring his eyes. “Call go that badly?”

“I, um.” Caitlin blinks, snatching up her phone and checking the call log. It’s blank for the day, and she boggles at it. “I’m… not sure.”

“Huh?” Cisco slurps at his drink--his pink drink, while his tongue is distinctly blue.

“Hey!” Caitlin snatches it from him. “You don’t even like cherry.”

“Everyone likes cherry,” Cisco grumbles. “Barry needs us, by the way, how new and surprising. Tell me about your mom later?”

“If I can,” Caitlin mutters, and follows him back to the main cortex.

++

“Cisco,” Caitlin practices in the mirror. “I think I might be going insane. Thoughts?”

She groans, wetting the edge of a paper towel in the sink and dabbing at her temples, her throat. She feels like she’s running a lowgrade fever all the time, drifts off in the middle of conversations and comes back to herself in an entirely different room.

“Cisco,” she practices, “I’ve drawn blood four times but can never find the vial again; I don’t know if I’m healing too quick to find the needle marks or if I hallucinated the drawing to begin with.”

“Cisco,” she practices, “I think there’s something really wrong with--”

++

Caitlin wakes up in her own bed. It wouldn’t be surprising, except that the last thing she remembers is being bent over a centrifuge. She fumbles for her phone, except it’s not on her bedside table, where she charges it. And since when has her pillowcase been Batman themed?

She’s jarred out of her musings by the sound of someone humming in the kitchen. She slips out of the bed, grabbing the lamp on the nightstand and yanking the cord out of the wall, hefting it up as a last line of defense as she inches through the doorway, down the hall and into the kitchen.

Cisco is singing along to the radio playing from his phone, barefoot in boxers, the stove sizzling in front of him, his hair sleep mussed. “Morning sleepy,” he greets, then blinks at her. He reaches out and, with a tap of his finger, silences his phone. “Uhh… everything okay, there, babe?”

“Babe,” Caitlin repeats, mystified. She puts the lamp down and freezes, transfixed by her left hand, her ring finger. The silver band around it. “Cisco,” she says, and her voice trembles. “I think there’s something really wrong with me.”

Chapter Text

“So,” Cisco says. “Sorry about the kidnapping. If it makes you feel better, the DA is a personal friend. We’ll make sure the lunatic gets life and then some.”

“Oh,” Dr. Snow says, frowning very slightly. “That doesn’t seem fair, if he’s, you know…” she makes a vague gesture.

“Cuckoo for cocoa puffs? Two fries short of a happy meal? Absolutely and positively out of his goddamn mind?”

Her frown goes more pronounced, her voice sharp and reprimanding. “That’s not kind.”

Cisco turns to her, sudden and still, head tilted. “So you’re a nice doctor,” he says softly, taking a half step closer. His smile is mean. “A kind doctor. Already feeling the bite of Stockholm, I guess. No Mr. Snow at home keeping the ice queen warm?”

Her mouth trembles, then goes flat. “No,” she says coldly, “there isn’t.” She stalks into the nearest office and slams the door behind her.

“That’s my office,” he yells after her, to cover up the sour taste on his tongue. She doesn’t reply and he groans, dropping into a nearby chair and scrubbing his hands over his face.

Barry Allen appears in front of him in a gust of wind, reproaching. “That wasn’t nice.”

“I don’t take constructive criticism from my abductor.”

Allen looks hurt. “I didn’t abduct you. I’m just--”

“Holding us against our will?”

Allen scratches the back of his head. “Just for like, one more day. If fixing the timeline doesn’t work, you can throw me in prison yourself.”

“Great,” Cisco starts, but before he can really get rolling Allen’s vanished again, papers fluttering to the floor around him. “I almost hope he’s right,” he says, pulling up to a nearby computer and booting it up. What kind of moron leaves Francisco Ramon unguarded around technology? “Because if he’s the best defense the city’s got I don’t want to stay in this timeline either.

He could alert the authorities immediately, and he toys with the idea, but…

He’s bored. He’s conquered the public the private and the underground sectors, and while he’d never admit out loud that the money and the celebrity and the perks can get old… they can get old. His mind is a terrible thing to waste.

So he decides to give Allen the benefit of the doubt, at least for a few more hours. To amuse himself, he looks up Barry Allen, and is immediately disappointed. What a boring, cookie cutter upbringing with a boring cookie cutter pair of parents and a boring potential girlfriend who’s definitely too good for him.

He looks up Caitlin Snow.

++

He knocks timidly at his office door. “Dr. Snow?”

“Mr. Ramon,” is the icy response. He winces. Then he fishes his phone out of his pocket and taps a few commands, hearing the printer inside whir and whistle. There’s a short rustle of paper. Then the door swings open, her eyes red rimmed (he winces) and shocked. “You bought the practice I work at.”

“Yes.”

The printouts are clutched in one shaking hand. “You… you put it in my name.”

He shifts, uncomfortable. “It’ll take a little while to make it official, but my lawyers are fast.”

She boggles at him. “You paid off my student debt.”

“I’m kind of an asshole,” he tells her, “and I make it a personal habit to avoid apologies, at least verbally.”

She blinks. Her eyes narrow. She rips the papers in half, then shoves them into his chest. “Go stare into the sun,” she says hotly, and slams the door in his face again.

The papers flutter to the floor as Cisco blinks. “Are all your burns centered around optometry?”

Silence.

“Ripping these up don’t do anything,” he calls through the door. “Legally, I mean. You know that, right?”

Silence. He sighs.

++

Cisco’s second sally is a bottle of vodka he finds in a nearby bottom desk drawer. “It’s caramel flavoured,” he tells the closed door, “which is horrifying, but I suppose at long last I am finally a beggar who can’t afford to be choosy.’’

Silence.

“It really is caramel flavoured,” he says, sipping with a grimace. “And there’s no cups or anything, but you’re a doctor, right? Hygienic one, I hope, if you’re touching people’s eyeballs--”

The door opens and he tips backwards, almost falling over before he rights himself.

“I don’t,” she starts, all riled up and prim-faced, but her momentum halts at his clumsiness. She rallies. “I don’t touch people’s eyeballs with my bare hands, Mr. Ramon. That’s idiocy. I wear gloves.”

“Okay,” he says. He lifts up the bottle. “Do you want to drink and talk trash about Barry Allen?”

“Who?”

“The guy who kidnapped you. Us.”

“Oh.” She frowns. “I still think we shouldn't make fun of someone with obvious mental issues.”

“And also superpowers.”

“That too,” she agrees.

They share a smile, then both drop it at the same time, the silence lapsing into awkwardness.

Cisco runs his thumb over the threads of the bottlecap. “So. A drink? No mocking.”

“Fine,” she says, and removes her white lab coat, neatly folding it up and setting it aside. She steps out of her shoes, abruptly just a little shorter than him in her bare feet, and he blinks twice, affected more than he anticipated.

This whole interaction has been like that, actually, blindsided and off footed and it’s been ages since he wasn’t in perfect control, since the entire picture was so awfully, starkly, blindingly obvious and so boring he could scream.

It makes him cheerful.

“So,” he says, dragging a few office chairs close to each other and plopping into one. “We can talk about my eyes.” He winces as soon as it comes out, too flirty in a way that’s kind of gross instead of endearing, but Caitlin brightens as she joins him in the other chair.

“Refractive eye surgery can be intimidating,” she says, and then she’s off, pausing only when he passes her the bottle to take small sips, the tiny little grimace at the cheap burn of it, somehow both sour and sickly sweet at the same time. “By the way,” she says suddenly, jarring him out of idly lingering on the bright enthusiasm of her voice and the way the light glints off the sheen of her nails when she gestures. “That Excimer Laser system of yours--”

“Yes, because I know the name of every product my multibillion dollar company produces--”

“It’s garbage.”

Cisco chokes on a mouthful of shitty vodka. “Excuse me?”

“The initial calculations are always off by almost three percent.” she sniffs slightly. “That’s a pretty large margin of error for a ‘multibillion dollar company’.”

Cisco shoves the bottle (a lot emptier than he thought it was) into her hands and snatches up the tablet, scowling as he hacks his way into the specs.

“It’s not a slight on you personally,” she continues, hefting the vodka up and taking a long easy draw--and where did all that stuffy anxious nerd stuff go, anyway, this barefoot woman with little snowflakes on her manicured thumbs and the easy curl of her fingers around the bottleneck, the way she tells him to his face his product is sub-optimal? “It’s just--”

“Quiet,” he orders sharply. “I’m working.”

She shrugs, drinking again and pulling a tiny face--the scrunch up of her nose and very slight crossing of her eyes--Cisco yanks his attention away, refocusing with a vengeance.

He exhales, slamming the tablet down on the desk hard enough to crack it. “Goddamnit.”

She pats his wrist, the nerve of her, and her voice is sympathetic. “No one’s perfect.”

He squawks. “I am! I am perfect, I am never wrong, I am--”

“Not drunk enough,” she advises sagely, and presses the bottle into his hand.

It stops his furious rant in its tracks and he looks at her. Her cheeks are slightly flushed and her smile a little loose and it makes him smile back, helpless. “You’re drunk.”

“Tipsy,” she corrects with a sniff, looking down her nose at him and getting cross-eyed in the process. “And it’s your fault, anyway.”

He accepts the bottle, taking a sip. It’s been a while since he wondered where the hell Barry Allen is, he realizes. When’s the last time somebody shook him up so much he lost his focus?

“When I’m sober,” she’s saying, oblivious to his internal confusion, “we are going to have a serious talk about you thinking your money can solve your interpersonal issues.”

He blinks, then takes a longer drink. He thinks about sliding his chair a little closer and is surprised to find himself hesitant, unsure, nervous about what she thinks of him. He hopes she hasn’t read the interview he did with Penthouse. “Okay,” he says, after a pause that goes on a beat too long. “Maybe over dinner.”

She considers him, head tilted and lips pursed. Then she smiles, sweet like summer and the joyous crinkle around her eyes. Cisco thinks--he thinks he could take her to that restuarant in New York with the five year waiting list, he could fly her out to Paris and rent out the Eiffel Tower, he could… he could take her to the taqueria down the street and around the corner from where he grew up, where he ate the first time he got shoved down in the halls of his high school, where he went instead of prom because every girl he asked said no, where Dante took him after he made his first billion. Yeah, he decides, he wants to see her there, where he was himself before he was ever Mr. Ramon.

“Dinner,” she agrees, and their smiles match, too big and too hopeful and Cisco thinks maybe if Barry Allen needs another day to fix the timeline that’s just fine with him.

Chapter Text

Once, after Ronnie, Cisco bought Fading Cream. It was a specialty store, with quiet music in the background and brochures for support groups at the cashiers, and it costs a pretty penny, but he grits his teeth and takes the stares of the people passing by outside.

He leaves it on her desk on the morning that’s supposed to be her last day, and doesn’t sign his name to it. When he comes back from making coffee it’s disappeared, and Caitlin is tapping away at her computer.

“Hey,” he’d said, trying for a smile and not quite managing it. “I was thinking about getting you a cake.”

She doesn’t look up. “That’s unnecessary.”

“Right.” Cisco deflates, the guilt twisting up sharp and angry in his chest.

“Cisco,” she says softly, and he looks at her. “I’ve decided to stay.” She casts a quick glance over at their newest coworker, the dude in the coma with the girl who comes to cry at his bedside at least once a week. “I don’t know how you’d manage without me, anyway.”

“We wouldn’t,” Cisco says, and tries to infuse it with enough humor to mask the truth of it. “I’m thinking we get a cake anyway.”

She smiles, and it’s just as messy as the one he’d tried, a little too broken and a lot too sad, but they’re both trying, he guesses, and that’s the best anyone can do right now. He gets her a hostess cupcake from the closest store and she rolls her eyes at him when she blows out the candle.

And he’d forgotten, in all that relief and forced normalcy, that she’d never mentioned the cream.

++

Cisco’s mother’s mark is the skyline of the city where she and his father had met. It stretches from the outside of her wrist down to her elbow, which would maybe be gorgeous and impressive except they’d met in Albuquerque, in the airport on their respective layovers, and it’s boxy and asymmetrical, with gaps between the squared peaks.

His father’s mark is the opening notes to an old love song her grandmother used to sing in the kitchen, across his fingers like the keys to a piano. They dance to it at their wedding, Dante plays it at Carnegie Hall.

After Dante dies his father tattoos over it, twisting it into a mess of black and blue knots, the mark resisting cover up until the very end. His mother doesn’t take offense, just buys her husband the best fading cream they can afford. It’s how Cisco knows where to get it for Caitlin.

++

“Caitlin doesn’t have a mark,” Jay says, under that grotesque mask, under all that hate. “Doesn’t that just burn you up inside? You know what they say about people who can’t form marks.”

He and Barry disappear into the darkness, Barry’s shout of fury echoing out through the night air as he gives chase. Cisco pulls out his tablet, unable to keep up physically but faster than anyone else, on any earth, with his fingers on a keyboard.

When they get back to the cortex, Caitlin is already there. He squeezes her too tight, but he can’t help it and she clutches him closer, her nose tucked against his neck and the hitching in her breath and he’s thinking about Jay’s rakish blond hair and his boyish charming smile and the way he showed his teeth when he said it, Caitlin doesn’t have a mark, all the smug certainty he had.

Barry hugs her too, and over her shoulder he and Cisco lock eyes.

++

“Did you know?” Barry asks later, when the cortex is dark and they’re lingering in the doorway watching her sleep curled up on a couch, sedated and wrapped in blankets.

“No. I thought--” Cisco has a flash of memory, leaving the cream on her desk without a note or a word. “I didn’t know.”

Barry is frowning.

“You can’t be serious,” Cisco says, keeping his voice down with an effort. “You can’t believe all that stupid outdated shit people say, like she hasn’t saved your life a hundred times--”

“Cisco,” Barry says with a sigh. “Of course not.” The line of Cisco’s shoulders, drawn up sharp and protective, relaxes. “But you know what they say.”

“Old wives tale,” Cisco dismisses, but it’s hard to swallow and when he meets Barry’s eyes they’re knowing. They’re the two of them scientists, in their different ways, and they know how statistics work.

“Seventy percent more likely to die young,” Barry says, and that’s not it, that’s not the exactness of the real statistic, which is on the tip of Cisco’s tongue, burning sour and ugly.

“Well,” he says instead, “we’ve both got superpowers. It’s not gonna happen.”

“Not on our watch,” Barry agrees.

++

“Ronnie’s parents never liked me,” Caitlin says, eyes hollowed out. She started crying in the middle of the cortex two hours earlier and hyperventilated until Barry zipped away and returned with a sedative. She still hasn’t said what triggered her.

Cisco, sitting on the hospital bed just beside her, legs crossed, tilts his head. “They sound dumb as shit.”

It surprises a smile out of her, short lived but real, and he smiles back.

“It’s because I don’t have a mark,” she says, and her voice is hoarse and cracked from the crying but her eyes flick away and then back. Forced confidence, bracing herself for a rejection.

“I know,” he says, and watches her in the dim glow of the infirmary lights, the sweats too big and dipping low on her hips, the STAR labs logo, responsible for every loss in their lives and every scar on their bodies, stretching across the chest of her t-shirt. She climbs up next to him and curls into his side.

“How’d you find out?”

I see him everywhere she’d told him. Jay took everything from me.

“Dontcha know,” he says, hand smoothing her hair. “I’m a genius.”

++

“Do you have one?” she asks him once. “You know.”

A mark, she means.

“Yes,” he says, and for a split second her breath catches. It’s not… it’s not done, what they’re doing, not done except between partners in the most intimate settings. This isn’t two lovers, it’s just the cortex, the lights on low and the night cool and dark outside, just the two of them, alone. “Here.” He touches the spot with two fingers, watching her watch him.

“What is it?”

“Caitlin Snow,” he faux-gasps, and she giggles at him. “You are being very forward. It’s a secret.”

She laughs at him, outright and eyes scrunched up, and he buys her a coffee and she buys him an ice cream and they walk down the street with their arms linked.

When he walks her home she kisses his cheek, then lingers, lips against the curve of his ear, mint chocolate chip on her breath because she stole bites and he let her. “I don’t have a mark,” she whispers, like it’s the first time, like it’s her choice. Like she trusts him enough to know.

He squeezes her once, then releases. Her nose is red from the cold, her hair tousled from the wind. He’s known her now longer than anyone else in his life outside his family. “I know,” he says, and watches the smile bloom sweet and pink across her lips. “Who cares?”

He walks the long way home, winding and winding despite the snap of coming frost on the air. He thinks about the way she says his name and the way she holds his hand. The ways they take care of each other.

++

“Just promise me you that you’ll never ever tell him,” he mutters, digging his spoon into the jello cup, artificial lime on his tongue, grumbling about HR like that’s the worst thing that could happen to him.

She’s smiling at him, alive and brown eyed, Julian’s chain around her throat. “Cross my heart and hope to--”

++

“Caitlin Snow,” she says, hours and hours later, her smile cold and her eyes colder, the frost swirling at her fingertips and in her heart, the flat pallor to her skin and the blue of her lips. “Is dead.”

Cisco touches two fingers to his mark, over the fabric of his pants, watching her eyes widen in recognition. She remembers. He’s the Vibe, he’s Cisco Ramon, he was the brownest kid in his doctoral program, the nerdiest kid on the playground, and he knows if seventy percent die young that means the other thirty live long, and if there’s one thing he can do, it’s work the math.

“Not to me,” he promises.

++

Here’s Cisco’s secret:

The mark is small, just below the point of his left hip, above the crease of his thigh, the skin paler there than the rest of him. It’s the Rutherford atom, the whirls harsh and stark and gorgeous, the electrons blue and caught in motion:

And at the center, curling out in fractals:

A snowflake instead of a nucleus.

Chapter Text

“The last time this happened it went very poorly,” Caitlin feels obliged to point out.

“Yeah,” Cisco agrees, “but that’s because we didn’t actually have powers yet. It’ll be way smoother this time.”

Caitlin shrugs one shoulder. “Well I say yes, but it’s not really up to me.”

Cisco blinks, looking confused for the first time. “It’s… oh. I thought you’d like, pretend. And then switch later.”

Caitlin raises one eyebrow.

Cisco winces. “Yea I know. Okay. You think she’d be on board?”

“She likes you,” Caitlin says, “and she likes fighting.”

“I like you,” Cisco says, almost anxiously, eager to validate her, and she pats his shoulder.

‘Maybe she’ll betray you,” she says brightly, and it makes him smile a little bit. Not a lot, but they’re--she can joke, and he can smile, and it doesn’t make them think about a forest and trying to kill each other anymore. Or at least not for more than a second.

++

Caitlin picks out an outfit she thinks Frost would like, but that also wouldn’t make her want to crawl into a paper bag and die when she inevitably wakes up sprawled across the cement surrounded by her friends, civilians, cops, other villains. It’s about minimizing embarrassment.

I wish I was as confident as you she writes neatly on a post-it note, and sticks it to the mirror. Honest compliments, she reminds herself.

Caitlin closes her eyes, then opens them. The last thing she remembers is seeing her eyes flare white.

Frost yanks the note off the mirror, reads it, groans. “I have got to kill that therapist,” she says, and stuffs it into her bra.

++

“Drinks,” Cisco pants, slumped against what used to be the back wall of a mall. “We deserve drinks after this.” It takes him three weak finger twitches to open a breach back to the labs. “Strong drinks.’

“There’s a nice bar on the east side,” Frost says, made idle and almost sweet by a good fight. “Classy enough for Caity, dive enough to be fun.”

They pop through the breach and it closes behind them, the lights low in the cortex and the world quiet outside, the sun long set.

“How about with you?” he asks, and she pauses.

“Me?”

He shrugs. “Caitlin’s my best friend, and you’re not going anywhere. We should be friends too.”

She hesitates, uncertainty an odd expression on her face, unfamiliar. “She won’t like it.”

“She’ll come around.” Cisco removes his goggles, his jacket, his gauntlets. “You gonna change?”

Frost looks down at herself. The suit he’s made her has flair, which she appreciates, but less cleavage than she used to sport, after she went flying through the air and lost a little coverage and Barry almost fell into the ocean trying to avert his gaze. “Yes,” she says, “definitely.” Then she smiles. “You did surprisingly good as Reverb, Ramon. Almost believed you myself.”

He follows her as she ducks behind a curtain in the medlab, changing briskly into civilian wear. “And you were very convincingly evil,” he reciprocates. “Which is less surprising.”

Frost emerges, stretching sore muscles. “I’m on team Flash. For now.”

Cisco squeaks, shirtless as he clutches a fresh t-shirt to his chest like a maiden aunt. “I’m not done!”

“Don’t be prudish.” She looks him up and down, then smiles with sharp teeth. “No shame in your game.”

Cisco blushes. “Oh god. This is gonna be so awkward when Caitlin wakes up.”

“Oh?” She stalks towards him and he stumbles back, knocking into one of the gurneys. “Should we double down?” She’s taller than him in her heels, and she gets right in his face, hips bumping. His hair is wild from the fight and she can see his pulse flutter in his throat, smell the sweat on his skin. “You’d look good with blue lips.”

Cisco makes a strangled noise. “Even your come ons are vaguely murderous.” He sidles around her, tugging on his shirt. “Drinks?”

Frost settles. She can feel Caitlin poking at the edges of her consciousness and she hides her hand behind her back to vent some ice into the air. “I suppose. Just until Caitlin wakes up.”