#Barrisco

[kathrahender]

A man and a woman share romantic themed scenes and other wholesome moments.

Everyone: Omg they're an awesome couple! They belong together! They're beautiful and perfect! They're my OTP 😆😆❤️❤️

Two men/two women sharing literally the same scenes or even more emotional/romantic themed scenes than the main canon straight couple has.

Everyone: They're just friends/rivals. They have a platonic relationship. Why do you ship them? Why can't two men/two women be just friends???? Why they have to be boyfriends/girlfriends????? 😭😭😭

Don't make excuses. Just say you're homophobic. And if you really aren't homophobic, if you don't like the ship for other reasons, not because they are two men/two women, just directly say "I don't like them because X" but don't use those arguments because if you do I'm just gonna assume you're queerphobic. I don't know, use the "I don't like the trope of their relaitonship" "I prefer another couple". But don't use the "they're just friends" because that argument is so overused.

[chadrickmd]

The Flash

I'mma be honest, I wish Iris wasn't Barry's love interest. First, I always found the foster sibling thing weird, not that it's always bad, just they always felt more like siblings than lovers. Second, the writers just sucked, and once they were together, completely ruined Iris.

Eddie should have lived, and literally anyone else (Caitlin, Leonard, Cisco, etc.) for Barry.

[purplecyborgnewt]

[vexic929]

Barry Allen deserves all the partners get this man more boyfriends and girlfriends

[shrinkthisviolet]

im curious. why do you ship flashvibe. i see them as just best 100% platonic bros and i cant imagine them romantic

Ooh this would be a better question for @alittleflashvibe (who can absolutely feel free to hop in with reblogs or comments or whatever, really 👀) but I will take a crack at it myself:

So first of all, let me preface by saying, none of this is going to be me going “see?? No platonic explanation!!” because that’s a) canonically false and b) nonsense. Barrisco, for all that I do ship them, is canonically a friendship, and I value that highly. You can absolutely choose to interpret this all as solely platonic, and that’s totally fine! Their relationship is strong either way, and it’s not “better” or “worse” from either perspective. So just keep that in mind.

Second of all, I’ll assume you’re someone who’s open to shipping Barry with guys (otherwise this discussion is sorta pointless 😅).

Third of all, this will include comparisons to Westallen because...duh, they're canonically romantic, and I need a point of comparison. I love both ships, mind you, this is simply for academic purposes.

With all that said, let’s begin! And since this got long, the rest is below the cut :) enjoy!

Heart Eyes:

Okay so we know Barry does this a lot, right? Almost exclusively with Iris (his canon best-friend-who-he-has-a-crush-on -> girlfriend/fiancée -> wife)…and with Cisco. Cisco, too, does this a lot. Observe, if you will:

This post by the amazing @icedteaandoldlace (who can also hop in if so inclined), compares the Westallen proposal and the "the unvierse wants us to be bros" speech. No, seriously. Look at how alike the scenes are. Barry's heart eyes in those scenes...IMMACULATE! He doesn't give those heart eyes to anyone else

Bonus: notice Cisco’s reactions when we do see them. Earnestly hanging on Barry’s words…and Barry’s encouragement gets him to smile 🥰 just like Iris whenever Barry encourages her (see: the s4 scene when he encourages her as Team Leader and she smiles sincerely through her tears)!

Also...this parallel: "You've always been my hero" ~Barry to Cisco as he's walking toward sort-of-death + "The Flash may be the city's hero, but you, Barry Allen, you're my hero." ~Iris to Barry in her vows

Physical Touch:

Physical touch is canonically the way Barry shows his affection/love (“we all know touch is your love language” is a canon line of dialogue). He does it with Joe, Henry, Iris…and a lot with Cisco, who constantly touches/hugs Barry too:

Something interesting about that last one…I feel like I’ve seen that one somewhere before:

(I made that gif :D)

Oh and uh...remember when I said we'd get back to talking about Cisco doing something risky to save his life? Let's talk about that for a second.

Let's talk about how Iris and Cisco react to losing/the prospect of losing Barry post-s3/s4 and s6:

Post-s3:

Iris: Quits her job, becomes Team Leader in Barry's absence so she can use her skills to help out, wanting to honor Barry's words ("keep growing, keep loving, keep running, for me") and knowing Cisco can't lead the Team alone because he's strung out. Argues with Cisco about getting Barry back, because she is understandably worried that it'll make things worse, cost them someone else...and/or Barry will either already be dead, or will die as a result of their actions (i.e. she fears losing Barry all over again)

Cisco: Hyperfocuses on saving Barry ("quits his job", so to speak, because he's not being Team Leader as Barry intended), uses his skills to help out by building a Quark sphere to save Barry, goes forward with his plan despite Iris's misgivings so he can honor Barry's words ("he also said that everyone would look to me after he was gone. So look to me."). In the aftermath, modifies the suit extensively because he fears losing Barry all over again)

s6:

Iris: Is distraught and horrified at how easily Barry accepts his death, tries to talk him out of it. She takes up the charge of recruiting Ryan Choi, Paragon of Humanity, empathizes with him about his fear, draws on their similarities to convince him.

(She does not pull risky manuevers here, since it's E90 Barry who saves our Barry, but she did back in s3, when she shot Savitar, a speedster and her almost-killer (and also a future version of Barry), to save Barry's life)

Cisco: Makes a risky call to try and save Barry's life, defends himself fiercely when Barry gets upset about it, is distraught and horrified at how easily Barry accepts his death

Bonus:

it's relief in Barry's eyes there, and worry. Barry was mad at Cisco earlier in the episode, but...in this moment, none of that matters. Cisco's doing something risky to save his life (as he canonically does often) and Barry's relieved but also terrified it might go sour. And...well, you saw from one of the gifs earlier how enthusiastic he was once this rescue succeeded - he beamed up at him, all "you've always been my hero" (canon quote) and took his hand to be helped up, just like in a fairytale.

Just a couple of guys nerding out together 🥰

Barry using a shared memory to prove he's not an imposter 👀

Iris and Cisco teaming up to pull Barry out of the Speed Force! Note that Cisco almost succeeds at this 👀 he only fails because Barry is not yet ready to leave - by the time Iris tries, Barry is ready. I've always thought Cisco could've pulled Barry out of the Speed Force too, lightning-rod style.

This post compares some Westallen and Barrisco moments! Specifically, some Iris and Cisco reactions to Barry (very similar, you'll note!)

And there you go! As mentioned, none of this is me going "AHA see, Barrisco is definitely romantic", but moreso pointing out why I ship them via their parallels to Westallen (which is widely considered one of the It Ships of DC in general, especially for Barry). Hopefully this changed your mind, and if not, hopefully you enjoyed the ride anyway!

(and I meant what I said: @alittleflashvibe and @icedteaandoldlace, feel free to weigh in. Same for any other Barrisco shippers! I'm sure I didn't get everything, though I did try to hit the major highlights)

[biologyologyy]

[arrow-v-flash-polls]

Which of these two highest ships for Cisco is your favourite?

(based on amount of ao3 fics)

[roboticnebula]

Fake Fic asks: 🐝 Refraction

🐝 send me a fake fic title, and I’ll make up a summary for it!

Cisco doesn't know why he keeps dreaming of Barry - their patient in Star labs. Sure, it could be the guilt for what happened to him, and he's been spending a lot of his waking hours looking him up and talking to the man's family.

Barry sounds exactly like the sort of person Cisco would love to hang out with, but it doesn't explain why Cisco has such specific dreams of the two of them watching Star Trek and placing bets on who can eat the most Belly Burger nuggets (spoiler alert for himself: Barry always wins, the man is a bottomless pit).

It gets very worrying when the dreams slowly grow into strange, waking visions of Barry moving at superspeed, fighting a man in yellow, and into very creepy flashes of Doctor Wells standing over Barry's comatose body.

Cisco can't explain it, but he knows Barry is in very grave danger at Star labs and he's determined to save his future best-friend-maybe-something-else. He also really hopes Barry wakes up soon, because this will all be a lot to explain.

(In which Cisco gets his vibe powers before Barry wakes up from his coma. Set in the CW Flash show.)

(Fake fic ask game!)

[kitkatt0430]

49, 51 and 60 for Barrisco, please please please?

49.) Does either of them have a hard time being away from the other?

It definitely depends on the circumstances. They both get a little antsy when the other is away for too long, but it never verges into separation anxiety territory... unless one of them is off hero-ing without the other.

Cisco likes being the voice in Barry's ear, the person Barry can depend on to give good advice and direct him from a big picture vantage point. And who can breach to Barry in a second if things go wrong. So when Barry goes to team up with Team Arrow or the Superfriends and Cisco is not the voice in his ear, it makes him super nervous and fretful because what if Barry needs him?

Caitlin and Iris (and eventually Frost) get pretty good at distracting an anxious Cisco.

Cisco is less likely to leave Central City for team ups without Barry going with him, though. He is more likely to be heroing without Barry when Barry's access to his powers is blocked or Barry's out of town, however, and it does make Barry anxious for Cisco in those circumstances. Especially when Wally leaves. If something goes wrong, will Frost or Ralph be able to get to Cisco in time? It's at it's worst when Barry is cut off from the speed force because he feels so slow and helpless when Cisco is in trouble. He's not really, because Barry can absolutely pick up a gun and go be badass still, but a lot of Barry's self confidence only really built up after he got his powers, so losing his powers can trigger those feelings of self doubt very easily.

51.) What’s a non verbal way they say I love you?

They're very touchy-feely with each other, so they definitely have a whole range of non verbal communication going on.

When Barry inspires Cisco for something tech related - especially if it's the answer to their latest villain problem - Cisco will kiss Barry on the mouth before running off to implement whatever brilliant idea he's had. Leaves Barry standing their grinning because he likes being Cisco's muse, especially when he gets kissed like that. Of course sometimes Cisco gives Barry the insight he needs for a breakthrough in a case for work or something they've been struggling to understand about a meta's motivations for causing trouble and he'll do very much the same. Cisco likes the warmth Barry leaves lingering on his arms when they kiss like that.

If something dangerous is going on and they're having to split up to deal with it - whether it's one of them staying behind to run comms or them both running into danger in different places - one of them will put a hand on the other's shoulder or run their hand gently along the back of the other's neck. And they just look at each other and they know.

60.) Who pulls the other closer when they’re sleeping?

Barry's an octopus when he sleeps and he latches onto Cisco if they don't go to sleep tucked together already. If Barry's asleep and Cisco gets into bed afterwards? Barry immediately gravitates to him and snuggles up super close. Which can be just a little bit annoying if Cisco is still too close to the edge of the bed.

If Cisco's asleep first and Barry joins the bed later than Barry will snuggle right up as he gets comfy. At first he was probably a bit wary about waking Cisco up, but as they got more comfortable in their relationship Barry stopped worrying so much.

That said, Cisco is quite the snuggler too and when he's holding Barry at night he will absolutely pull Barry closer if at all possible and if Barry stays up reading for a bit while Cisco falls asleep, Barry may find a Cisco snuffling against his side before he's ready to call it a night.

[icedteaandoldlace]

36 + Barry and Cisco! Either as a ship or friendship is fine by me

36: “I’ll do anything. Anything at all. Just let my friend go.” (from this list)

Here it is, hot off the Google Doc: one angst loaded prompt fill, with an extra side of "ow" just for you. 💝

Links for AO3 and FFN.

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This Can't Be How It Ends

Cisco really didn’t need any help having a terrible year. Losing Dante was already the hardest thing he had ever had to go through, and that alone was enough to upend his entire world, leaving him feeling hollow and incomplete as he struggled to process how someone who had been a part of his life since the day he was born could be gone forever. He would still be just barely holding it together if that was the only problem he had to face right now, but while Dante’s death was certainly the worst of his current troubles, it was also only the first thing on a growing list of reasons why he felt like his life was falling apart. His powers were getting stronger, for one, and developing new uses for him to explore—which should have been exciting (and to a degree, it was), but it was hard to focus on the positive aspects when the whole experience was inundated with its own unique and very unpleasant set of growing pains; more unwanted visions, more headaches, more nosebleeds, and more fear of what becoming too powerful might do to him. Especially with grief making him more irritable and impairing his sense of humor, he feared he was at an even greater risk of losing control of himself than before.

The icing on the very crappy cake that was Cisco’s 2016 had been learning about Flashpoint, and then dealing with all the fallout that had come from that. Now he got to worry about his best friend as she fought off her own powers, and with them a dark side that had emerged within her and was trying to take her over like a cancer; only instead of killing her, its intent was to turn her evil. And as for his other, former best friend…well, he was the reason that Dante was dead and Caitlin was struggling in the first place. And thanks to an arrangement Cisco had agreed to before he’d known the full story, he was also his roommate—which meant that he was virtually unavoidable, given that they both worked and lived together now.

Cisco had gotten past his previous beef with Barry, and he understood now that trifling with time was loaded with risks that were too dangerous to take. He also understood that healing through grief wasn’t attained by rejecting the reality of the loss, but by learning how to embrace his memories for what they were, and to be open to a future that was different than the one he had imagined. He didn’t expect Barry to change the timeline for him anymore; he knew that that was asking too much, and he didn’t harbor any resentment toward him for refusing. But getting Dante killed in the first place—not even telling Cisco that he’d been the one responsible—and then acting like it was no big deal, and like all it would take was an apology to make everything okay again? That was too much for Cisco to forgive. He didn’t seem to even care that he had made Cisco’s worst nightmare a reality, or that he would be missing Dante and regretting letting their relationship deteriorate for the rest of his life. Now not only had Cisco lost his brother, but he had lost his friend and his confidant and his hero as well. The person he should have been able to lean on when he was at his lowest was instead the person who had put him there.

So Cisco really had enough to deal with right now without anyone else coming in and adding more turbulence to his life. As his luck would have it, someone did, anyway.

It would have to be a break-in in the middle of the night, and it would have to be when Barry was the only other person around, and the last person Cisco wanted to be handling a break-in with. Yet here they were, crouched in the hallway outside Cisco’s bedroom, following the sound of someone rooting around in his kitchen.

Barry reached the doorway to the kitchen first, and he peered around the edge cautiously, while Cisco hovered right behind him, both grateful and annoyed that Barry had taken the lead on this mission. He definitely didn’t want to be the one to come face to face with the intruder first, but the thought of having to wait until a fight broke out to see what they were up against was not a desirable position to be in, either.

A moment later, Barry drew back, turning slowly to Cisco and motioning to him to stay where he was. Then, facing forward again, he took a deep breath, and in an instant, his presence beside Cisco was replaced with a sudden breeze, a streak of yellow light trailing in his wake. There was a sound of rapid whooshing in the other room, and intermittent flashes of speedster lightning coloring the walls—until a crash somewhere in the kitchen brought it all to a stop.

Cisco tentatively inched forward, checking to see if Barry needed his help or if he had been the victor in the fight—and then he jerked back immediately when the whole room became flooded in light.

A familiar female voice laughed as the sounds of Barry groaning and an upset chair rocking against the floor reached Cisco’s ears, and he slowly leaned forward again to see what was going on.

Barry grabbed hold of Cisco’s countertop as he pulled himself to his feet, and a look of bewilderment crossed his face as his assailant came into view.

“Trajectory?” Barry let out in disbelief.

“In the flesh once again,” Trajectory returned with a satisfied flourish at herself. “And you still can’t keep up with me, Drag.”

Barry shook his head, still looking a little thrown. “But you—you died,” he stammered confusedly. “That’s how we discovered that Velocity—”

“Uh, wrong,” Trajectory snapped over him, still smiling, but shooting daggers at Barry with her eyes. “You put me in Iron Heights after I poisoned your little friend. Remember?”

Barry’s eyes narrowed in puzzlement, and then they shifted to the side as he visibly tried to make sense of what he was hearing.

Oh god, Cisco thought, realization dawning on him. This was another thing Barry had changed in Flashpoint. His memories were all remainders from an earlier timeline.

Trajectory had almost died, running into a wall at S.T.A.R. Labs and knocking herself unconscious after taking a dose of Velocity 9 that Harry had willfully made too strong. And short though that run had been, it had taught Team Flash that Velocity 9 was what caused speedsters to have blue lightning. That had to be what Barry was talking about; her head injury must have been fatal in the original timeline.

“Okay, but you’re out now,” Barry said in a measured tone, eyeing Trajectory cautiously. “And you have speed again. How’d you manage that?”

Trajectory smirked. “Paid a little visit to your lab again after my release. Yeah, that’s right,” she added before Barry could ask, “They let me out on a technicality. Gotta love seeing our justice system hard at work. And you know, I’m not the only person you put in there that has unfinished business. Does the name Edward Clariss ring a bell?”

Cisco swallowed, fighting back the memory of the speedster that he and Barry had so recently taken down together. It had seemed so great at the time, working together as partners in the field, playing off each other’s strengths to stop a criminal who would have been too much for either of them to take on on their own. He wished working with Barry still felt cool and satisfying like that. Now it was a chore just to get through the day with him by his side.

Something that looked like sadness briefly crossed Barry’s face, but he kept his focus on Trajectory and just shrugged. “What about him?”

“Even in the women’s wing, word travels about what goes on on the men’s side,” Trajectory continued. “And before Clariss died, he had rambled to one of the guards that the Flash had taken a better life away from him—with time travel.” She shrugged. “Everyone else brushed it off as insanity, but I’m smart enough to know that speed is the key component in every credible theory on how to make time travel possible. And now I wanna know how you figured it out.”

Barry shook his head. “Eliza, time travel is dangerous,” he started.

“Trajectory,” she corrected testily. “And don’t think your noble hero act is gonna convince me you’re not just gatekeeping this ability for yourself, just like you did with the V9.”

“No, no, it’s not like that,” Barry explained. “I don’t even use Velocity 9—and I don’t time travel anymore, either. You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“Oh, Flash,” Trajectory chuckled. “I’m not asking for anything.”

Cisco frowned. That sounded like a threat. He drew a slow, silent breath, and kept his eyes fixed on Trajectory as he waited for her to either continue speaking or make a move on Barry. If she was going to attack him, he would have to move fast if he wanted to block her from hurting him.

All of a sudden, Trajectory was standing right in front of Cisco and looking him dead in the eyes, and he jumped back in fright. She had moved faster than he could even blink, and now he had nowhere to hide. It felt like a moment taken straight out of a horror movie, complete with the creepy, malicious grin she was giving him right now.

Everything that happened next was too fast for Cisco to process. One second he was standing face to face with Trajectory in the hallway, the next he was on the floor in the living room, his arms behind his back and the omnipresent vibrations around him now undetectable. A pair of hands grabbed him and drew him up to his knees, and it was then that he saw that his TV and multiple shelves had been knocked over, his whole apartment in disarray from what looked like a knock-down drag-out that he had never heard happen. Barry was once again on the ground, this time under a pile of broken model spaceships, and he was clutching his head in pain as he tried to reorient himself.

Cisco registered that it was Trajectory holding on to him now, and he tried moving his arms to get her to let go of him, but they wouldn’t budge. Something was fastened around his wrists, fettering them together.

Of course. Cisco rolled his eyes in frustration. She had found his spare power dampening cuffs that he kept in his junk drawer. Lovely.

The matter of not being able to move his arms quickly became a lesser concern, however, when she curled one arm tightly around his neck, and pressed her opposite hand against his head, forcing his neck into a tense, rigid position.

“You even try to fight back, you’re dead,” she snarled directly into Cisco’s ear.

Cisco remained completely still, taking his breaths slowly and deeply in an effort to keep calm.

Barry looked up at the sound of the threat, and he scrambled to his feet, nearly falling again as he stumbled over half a model X-wing and the now-smashed Millennium Falcon. “Eliza, don’t!” he exclaimed, starting forward.

“One step toward me and your friend dies!” Trajectory snapped, compelling Barry into freezing where he stood. “Get. Back,” she commanded then, and Barry obeyed, lifting his hands in surrender.

“Okay,” Barry said slowly. “Okay, I’m not gonna fight you anymore. Just let him go. He has nothing to do with this, alright? This is between you and me.”

“He has everything to do with this,” Trajectory retorted. “Because he’s the reason you’re gonna tell me exactly what I need to know. You teach me how to time travel and I let him live, that’s the deal.”

“Eliza,” Barry started again, a desperate look in his eyes. “Eliza, you don’t know what I know. You could end up destroying your life if you start changing time. Altering just one moment is all it takes to irreversibly screw up everything.”

Trajectory hummed boredly. “Sounds like you want him dead,” she said, and made a loose twisting motion that made Cisco’s stomach drop.

“No, wait, wait, wait!” Barry cried.

Cisco breathed in shakily as his heart began to pound. She was gonna kill him. She didn’t have the patience to deal with Barry’s attempts to talk her down, and there was no way Barry was giving another evil speedster the ability to toy with the timeline. Cisco’s life was about to end before he had the chance to see it get better.

“I’m trying to protect you here,” Barry continued.

Trajectory snorted.

“No, I mean it!” Barry said desperately. “Just hear me out, I can explain everything!”

“Yeah, you know, I’m not really interested in some big speech about speedstering responsibly,” Trajectory said. “I just robbed a big mall before I got here, and security cams will’ve caught the lightning, and y’know, if I could go back to before that moment, I’d still have all the money I took without any evidence that could send me back to prison. So if you could spare me the lecture and just skip to the part where you give me what I want, I can be on my merry way without having to snap this guy’s neck.”

Cisco honestly didn’t know which would be worse—Barry standing his ground and letting her kill him on principle of protecting the timeline, or actually breaking his own no-changing-time rule for him and making an even bigger mess of things by creating a Reverse Flash 2.0. Not that he actually expected him to care enough to do the latter; saving his life couldn’t be worth the risk it would pose to everyone else’s, especially the people he loved.

“I’m not trying to lecture you,” Barry said, “and I’ll help you any way that I can, honestly—but I’m serious, it’s not a good idea. You could die if you try to time travel.”

“And how’s that?” Trajectory asked. She gave Cisco’s head a slight push, straining the muscles in his neck uncomfortably, and he began to tremble involuntarily as the threat of death loomed ever nearer. “Better make your argument good, and you better make it fast.”

Barry nodded, breathing heavily as he hurried to make his case. “I have powers because I’m a metahuman,” he explained. “My speed comes from an organic source, so my body’s equipped to handle running at high speeds. Your speed comes from Velocity 9—you’re putting something into your body that makes you a speedster temporarily, but you have no natural defense against the force you’d be running against in a wormhole—which you would have to do if you were traveling through time.”

“Except the V9 gives me speed healing,” Trajectory rebutted, “so anything that happens to me in a wormhole would be quickly reversed.”

“Theoretically, maybe,” said Barry, “but at the speed you would have to reach to open the wormhole in the first place—”

“Blah, blah, blah—Caity already gave me the ‘don’t do speed drugs’ talk, and I didn’t buy that any more than I’m buying this. The V hasn’t made me sick or weak any of the times I’ve used it, it just makes me powerful, and if you think you’re gonna convince me that if I run too fast—”

“Damn it, Eliza, I ruined Cisco’s life!” Barry shouted, startling Trajectory into silence, and nearly making Cisco’s heart stop.

This was the first time he had acknowledged the damage he’d done. He had tried to apologize once—in a tired, halfhearted sort of way, right after Caitlin had outed his secret about Dante’s death. And then he had asked Cisco if their relationship would be okay later, and passively walked away when Cisco told him that he wasn’t sure. But he had never once given any indication that he grasped the full weight of what he had done, or that what Cisco was going through had any effect on him at all.

“I went back in time to save someone that I love,” Barry continued in a rush. “My parents—I created a timeline where they never died, and I thought that meant that everything would be okay—but I was wrong. I lost my brother in that timeline, and other people that I love lost him, too, and my friends didn’t even know who I was. So I changed it back—I thought I could fix everything, but I just ended up screwing up everyone’s lives even more, and it’s impossible to reset things to the way they were before. Every time I change time to try to save one person, I risk losing everyone else in my life, and I can’t—I can’t keep doing that. My last stunt cost me my best friend, and now he’s the one having to go through life without his brother—something I couldn’t handle going through even for one day—and if I try to use time travel to fix things, he may not even be alive next time, and I’d rather have him hate me forever than never get to see him again. I am stuck in this horrible paradox where I want to go back in time and undo all the pain I’ve caused him, but I can’t, because trying to fix things with time travel is how I hurt him in the first place. So trust me, you don’t know what you’re asking for. Even if you manage to survive the initial journey to the past—and there’s a very real chance that you won’t—it’s not worth risking everything else in your life and the entire rest of the world, just to change one thing that didn’t go your way!”

Cisco bit down on his lips and blinked back tears as his heart pounded in his chest. All this time, he’d thought that Barry simply didn’t understand or care how his actions had affected him. And here it looked like the Barry that he’d thought was his friend might still exist after all—but it was too late for it to matter now. Because he had just unwittingly shown his whole hand.

“So, just so we’re clear,” Trajectory drawled, “you’re definitely not teaching me how to time travel? Because if that’s the case, then there’s no reason for me to stand around and keep your friend alive—”

Barry’s eyes widened. “No, stop, I’LL DO IT!”

He was lying—he had to be. Even if he did care about Cisco, he had already made his stance clear, and there was no use trying to backpedal now.

“I don’t believe you,” said Trajectory. “You’re just bluffing so you can stall some more, and I’m not gonna waste another—”

“No, I’m not! Really! I’ll do anything. Anything at all. Just let my friend go.” Barry’s breath caught, and he was on the verge of tears himself now. “Please—please. I’ll show you how to time travel, I swear, I will. Just please don’t hurt him. I couldn’t stand to lose him forever. He’s too important to me.”

There was a pause as Trajectory seemed to consider his offer.

Cisco’s jaw clenched anxiously, and he locked his eyes on Barry’s, silently pleading for him to have a plan. They could not let another evil speedster learn to time travel. But even so, he wasn’t ready to die.

Please. Please get us out of this. Please be the hero I want you to be.

“Okay,” Trajectory said smoothly after a little while. “If you really mean it, then let’s do this. But first you gotta say the magic word.”

Barry just stared at her in confusion for a moment, then he tried hesitantly, “Please?”

“Wrong,” said Trajectory. “Panda.”

Barry looked even more confused at that, and Cisco was right there with him.

“Go back in time to the exact moment I knocked you into that shelf,” Trajectory explained, “say ‘panda’, and I’ll know you’re a man of your word, and we can go somewhere else, you can teach me how to time travel, and your sad little friend will never have to get mixed up in this. You have three seconds after I say it to change the timeline, or no deal. Panda.”

The panic on Barry’s face was clear, and Cisco swallowed back a sob as it sank in that Trajectory had won. Barry had never intended to let the timeline change again, and now that she’d proven it, she had no reason to bargain with him any further.

“I—wait,” Barry stammered desperately. “How do I know that—”

“Too slow,” said Trajectory.

And then she did it. For one horrible second, Cisco was in excruciating pain as his neck jerked in an unnatural direction, and he had just enough time to hear Barry scream out his name in anguish, only picking up the first syllable, before he lost consciousness. If there was any more to Barry’s reaction than that, Cisco didn’t live long enough to see it.

-

Cisco’s whole body seized up as he awoke with a gasp, shivering uncontrollably as one form of darkness was replaced with another. He continued to take his breaths in heaves as the shape of his bedroom door appeared before his eyes, and he started to pull himself into a sitting position, instinctively reaching up one hand to feel his neck—which was straight and unbroken, and not in any pain.

“Hey—hey, hey, hey,” a gentle voice came through the darkness as two hands lightly took his shoulders. “It’s alright. You’re okay.”

Cisco blinked, and the glaze over his eyes cleared up and he could make out Barry’s features hovering in front of him. He could also make out the other shapes in his bedroom, and he quickly looked around in a panic. “H-how am I—where did she—?”

“It’s okay, Trajectory’s not here,” Barry soothed. “It was just a dream. You’re okay. You’re safe.”

Cisco deflated with relief as his words sank in. Just a dream. Just another dime-a-dozen nightmare from all the stress and sorrow that had persistently overwhelmed him for the last few months. Exhaling a heavy sigh, he dropped his head into his hands as adrenaline beset his whole body with tremors. He was alive. He wasn’t in any danger. He was okay. It was just a dream.

He could feel Barry still gripping his shoulders in a familiar, protective way, and massaging them soothingly with his thumbs. The instinctive urge to lean forward and let himself be enveloped in a warm Barry-hug nearly took him over, as he wanted to be held and comforted as the residual fear from the nightmare faded away. But as his memory of the dream began to fog over, his view of reality became clearer, and a heavy feeling settled in his chest. If dying had been a dream, then so had everything Barry had said just beforehand. From the speech about regretting changing Cisco’s life, to the way he had begged Eliza to let him go, insisting that he couldn’t lose him…

With a shudder of resistance, Cisco wrenched himself out of Barry’s grasp and slid away from him. None of it had been real. He wasn’t really that important to him, and Barry didn’t really care how deeply he had hurt him; he had just been saying what Cisco had wanted him to say because he’d been a figment of his unconscious imagination.

“Cisco?” Barry said in a soft, hesitant voice.

Cisco hugged his arms to his chest, turning away from Barry and forcing back the tears forming behind his eyes. Nothing in reality had changed; Dante was still dead, Barry was still acting like everything was normal, and everything still hurt, and Cisco was never going to get the friendship he had thought he’d had with Barry back. They were still just coworkers temporarily sharing an apartment, nothing more.

“Hey, man—” Barry reached out a hand to touch Cisco’s shoulder again, but Cisco promptly shrugged it off.

“Can you please just leave me alone?” Cisco said shakily, his voice coming out more fragile than he would have liked.

There was a pause. For a good while, neither one of them said anything. Then finally, Barry answered quietly, “Yeah, alright.” And he left it at that.

He then began to make his way back to his side of the room, and Cisco swallowed another upsurge of emotion as Barry once again gave in too easily. It was what Cisco had asked him to do, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt that he wouldn’t even try to object.

Cisco honestly didn’t know what he even wanted from him at this point. Maybe he really did want to be left alone, or maybe he wanted Barry to try to fight him a little, because then at least he wouldn’t feel like he meant nothing to him. As it was, Barry was always more interested in assuaging his own guilt than he was in really being Cisco’s friend, and even though it hurt to be around him right now, it hurt even more being abandoned. Though on the upside, at least leaving him to grapple with his late night demons alone wasn’t as bad as letting him die.

Cisco let out a small, bitter huff of a laugh with no humor in it. That was one thing about the dream that had been accurate at least; no way would Barry ever put saving Cisco above protecting the timeline. His priorities had been made clear, and his friendship with Cisco was not one of them. He had covered up the truth about Dante’s death, he let himself be pushed away, and he never made any effort at all to try to mend things between them. He just didn’t care.

As Barry settled again onto the couch at the end of the room, Cisco curled up under his blankets, and tried to calm himself enough to be able to sleep again. His mind was full and his heart was heavy, and he could only hope that he wouldn’t fall victim to any more nightmares tonight; the first one had left him rattled enough already.

If only he weren’t so tired and if only he weren’t so distraught, it might have occurred to him to question how Barry knew that his nightmare had been about Trajectory.

[kathrahender]

Please can the male character of a fantasy show/shonen anime not end with a female character for once? Stop with the heteronormativity dear God.

Give the main male character more female friends instead of giving him female love interests. Male characters deserve to have female friends. They don't have to be always romantically involved! I'm tired of people always wanting to ship a girl and a boy without any other option. They could be just friends! (and this feels very close to me because I had a best male friend in high school and people ALWAYS saw us as lovers and it WASN'T true at all! It was so irritating I swear. "You look good together" "You are a good couple" "Are you two together?" Why can't you leave us alone??? He was just my friend). Because YES, a girl and a boy can be friends without feeling romantic love for each other.

Annabeth could have been Percy Jackson's first female friend and she could have been the first girl who cared about him, just like a "female version of Grover" and just a friend- but no, they had to end up together because God forbid a main male character not being the boyfriend of a girl (and the same happens with Hiccstrid, Jlaire and Anidala, they could also just have been friends)

Naruto and Hinata could have been besties instead of lovers but no- they had to make Hinata a girl whose life was only centered in "How do I make Naruto-kun love me?" (and the same happened to Iris West. She could have been more important to the plot and Barry's best female friend- but instead she was just his love interests and her development was null. And the same happened with Allura. At first she was a good character, but then she was only there to be Lance love interest, what he should have been overcome. And btw Allura's romantic love towards Lance felt very rushed. As well as Hinny was so bad developed in the movies and Ginny's development didn't exist).

Seriously people stop with these things. Stop reducing a female character to a love interest. Don't make the main male character end up with a female character because that "it's better for the plot" "it's better for the world" "people won't accept the male character dating another male character" "people won't accept the male character not dating anyone". Not everything has to be a straight couple. Actually, not everything has to be a couple! All relationships in the book/show/movie/anime could be platonic and it wouldn't be a big deal! (Although personally I like romance, but aroace people also exist and they deserve to be represented in media).

[angst-is-love-angst-is-life]

now you got me curious and i have to ask, what would the angstified version of my hc be? i really need to know now, i think.

Referring to my tags in this post

Oh I was just thinking about one of them (specifically Barry for reference) getting kidnapped/going missing and the other waking up alone. Cisco opening his eyes to the other side of the bed empty, the initial moment of ‘oh it’s fine he’s just out somewhere’ to ‘no no no’ and remembering whatever happened the previous day. And when they inevitably rescue him, Cisco wakes up and the first thing he sees is Barry, safe, sleeping across from him.

[purplecyborgnewt]

[vexic929]

Cisco Ramon is the biggest hype-man and the most encouraging person anyone could have on their team in this essay I will

[shrinkthisviolet]

trick or treat! :) 🧡🧡🎃

A little Barrisco ficlet for you (3 sentences? What's that?):

“So I was thinking.” “Dangerous.” Cisco teased. Admittedly, though, he wasn’t paying a lot of attention, focused on getting the pancake batter right. Barry was usually the one who made pancakes for them both, but Cisco had insisted today. “Christmas has mistletoe." “It does,” Cisco agreed. “Time-honored tradition. We’ve gotten some good use out of that.” “Yeah. We sure have.” Cisco looked away from the pancakes to see Barry smiling at him, dreamlike and blushing. “Would you be averse to…expanding that tradition?” Cisco tilted his head, smiling in amusement. “Expanding it how?”

“Well…I was thinking…like this.” Barry took out a sprig of mistletoe and held it out to Cisco, blushing. “It’s not really in the spirit of Halloween, I know, but—” Cisco laughed. “You know you don’t need to bait me with a plant to kiss me, right?” “Oh come on!” Barry huffed. “I’m trying to shake things up here! And all I get is bullied by the love of my life.” “Yeah…sorta part of the deal, Barr. But if it means so much to you…” Cisco took hold of Barry’s arm and raised it above his own head. “What are you waiting for?” Barry grinned, leaning down to kiss Cisco soundly, pulling him closer. Cisco, as he eagerly reciprocated, decided that making this a biannual tradition was a fantastic idea. Especially if it meant getting kissed like this.

trick or treat ask game!

[zaritarazi]

My plane lands and i'm still riding the amazing high of the onlyoneof concert and i turn off airplane mode to discover that in 2023 thomas grant gustin was asked "if barry wasn't with iris who would he be with and why is it leonard snart" and this fucking guy answered "i think barry would be with cisco. Barry loves cisco like no one else" what the fuck is going on