#and that is cool on its own merits but like christ above you should pay yourself more than pennies

[oldtestleper]

it's crazy to go to a gallery and see truly mediocre work being sold for hundreds of dollars and then come on here and see someone selling a stunning, vibrant, skillfully executed, meticulously detailed original piece for double digits

[imsfire2]

Out of darkness: chapter two

(Author’s note: So I started a fix-it fic for “Solo quiero caminar”; it was going to be a one-shot but I couldn’t resist taking the story a bit further.  Not sure now how long this one will end up being, though I hope not quite on the scale of “In a dark time...”  Anyway, you can read chapter one on AO3 now, and here’s chapter two).

He starts in the only place he can.  Algeciras. The sea is fiery blue in the spring light, the town comfortably dirty and alive.  Kids drinking cola on the sea front; a market, a shopping mall, a few tourists; ferries putting in and heading out, and the perpetual smell of fish and dust in the air.  The big British rock at the end of the bay, a bulk like an elephant turd, streaked with chalk-white.

A simple place to stay the night, right on the waterfront, Hotel El Bahía; unpretentious, nondescript, the room is small but the bed is good, and he pays extra for a window looking onto the sea.  The sea, not the ocean; not the waters he dimly remembers from some long-ago trip, the memory of warm Pacific waves and sand, all tangled with a child’s fears and hopes and desperations; this is the Sea, the Mediterranean, the hot enclosed sea of legends and histories and myths that are not his own.  Aurora’s sea.

Did she ever pass this hotel, look at this self-same view?  He drinks his coffee in the ground floor bar, looking out at the azure water, the dusty sun umbrellas.  Gulls drift by in the distance, white as torn paper between blue and blue.  

There’s a public library, and a librarian who smiles, and remarks on his accent; asks “Are you trying to trace family here?”

“An old friend.” Gabriel smiles back.  It’s strange how the untruth doesn’t feel like lying. Did he even exchange a hundred words with Aurora?  Yet the memory of her feels as real as any in his life; she’s everything vivid and concrete, her complete certainty of self, calm and brave with him, her face bending unhesitatingly into the kiss and then not looking back.  He smiles at the kindly woman looking up at him from the desk, and accepts the help she offers without looking for motives.

It still feels strange to do this, living without calculation, finding and understanding his own emotions, smiling just for himself.  He’s barely known what it is to feel at all, the last few years.  He must remember to be calm with himself, not to panic and shut his mind to this strangeness.  

His heart is on fire as he reads the local telephone directory.  The air-conditioned reading room is cool and quiet, and the cool and quiet do nothing but inflame him further.

There are dozens of Rodriguez’s but no Aurora.  The cold place under his rib opens up again, it aches with the certainty of coming failure. He’ll never find her – he’ll find her and she’ll be gone – he’ll find her dead - or find her married after all, he’ll find she was a woman who would lie to console a dying man and that mere small kindness will kill him now – and he tells himself Shut up, shut up, cabrón, shut up you idiot and closes the pages, flips to the publication date at the front.  The directory was issued last month.  Just to be certain, he takes it back to the desk and asks for last year’s.

Waiting for it to be fetched his hands are shaking and again the inner voice starts up with its chatter. He never had an inner voice before. He’ll find her gone, he’ll find her and she won’t remember him, or she’ll look at him with ice in her eyes and he will go back to Mexico to find out what it is to grow old and be this much alone…

He turns whole slabs of pages thumping together, D to M to R, and individual sheets crumple as he leafs through them.  His thin fingers slip on the coloured paper: Radigüer, Rafael, Reyes, Rocio, Rodrigues, Rodriguez – and – Abraham Alvise Amaral Antonia Antonio – a stack of Antonio’s –

Aurora.

He’d breathing deep and fast, his nostrils flaring; he has to blink back moisture in his eyes and for a moment his mouth works with shock, before he permits himself to go into the place of emotion again.  To feel this shock, this hope, so intense, almost painful.  To smile this hard.  He’s found her name, and the street she lived on, a year ago.

He thinks of paying bribes or offering threats, of what once would have been his only move now, and his smile shifts sideways and grows even more incredulous as he realises he will not do any of that.  It’s an idiot grin, but he’s an idiot with happiness.  He never really had any hope of it before, he thinks, this thing called happiness; all the hope was just threads, like hairs tickling his skin.  

Dark hairs, long dark hair, he remembers the silken feel of that hair gathered in his hands, heavy, unbound.  If he’s to merit this, he must be whole in his commitment.  No more of Félix’s methods.

He’s not there yet, but it’s a start, and he’ll follow as far as he can, walking down this road.

It takes a few days, a few times standing in front of a stranger and asking plainly for help; but by mid-week he knows where she moved to.  In the course of those questions and requests he hears the word “stalking” used and feels that inward fear again, though the speaker says it only in passing.

Am I a stalker?  Will she see it that way?  

Should I go home now and put this insane idea out of my mind?

And then he is standing in the hallway of an apartment building, outside the door of flat 1A-left, as the naïvely chatty occupant tells him that 1A-right has gone away on holiday and won’t be back till Saturday.  He asks “Where did she go?” and is told

“Mexico.  Mexico City.  She was pretty excited about it.”

He’s shaking.  For a moment it’s hard not to sink down on the tiled floor.  All the excitement and anxiety of the last few days is suddenly a focussed point like a laser, and it strikes him in the side, there where each muscle lines up along the memory of that killing blow and that pain.

“Oh no.  No, no, no. I’ve just come from there.”

“I thought you had that accent,” says the neighbour.  He leans on the door jamb, amiable and very young, and stoned, his frayed yellow jersey hanging around him, too long at the hips and in the arms, a roll-up in his grinning lips.

Gabriel would like to tell him he needs to be more careful.  If he were a stalker he’s just been told far more than he has a right to know.  

But he isn’t, and he won’t come back to the apartment until she invites him.  He’ll watch from outside.  It’s still stalking, it’s disconcertingly close to the way he staked her out, before; but what else can he do?  He came here to find her.  

“Here” is Granada; she moved inland, into the mountains, into the city.  He has a hire car now, and a room in another hotel, a high-ceilinged room overlooking the Plaza Bib-Rambla with its fountain and its café tables.  A bronze Neptune above the fountain exhorts passers-by to raise their eyes to heaven. Beneath the god’s feet is a row of stone lions’ heads with green moss dripping in their eyes; pigeons bathe in the lower basin and tourists sit on the edge as the afternoon sun beats down on them.  Gabriel sits on his balcony and pictures Aurora below, stopping, looking up at him. She must have passed those weeping lions so many times.  

Locals sit under the arcades in the shade, and above the square the squat bell tower of the Cathedral rises in the heat.  Over the rooftops he can see the Torre de la Vela and the walls of the Alhambra, pale and rose-gold on their hillside.

He could be perfectly happy too, he thinks, living here between Neptune and Christ, looking up to the hills.

He can’t rest.  The remainder of that day and all of the next he quarters the streets, looking, seeing, touching.  It’s a consolation to his eyes in her absence.  Her roads, her cafés and stores and market stalls, all the places where she lives now, the pavements where she walks.   He is in her world, while she is in his.  He imagines her visiting her sister’s grave, carrying an armful of flowers, granting herself the blessing of farewell.  Until she returns, he can watch over her streets and know that if he leaves now he’ll cause her no grief, no thought at all.  Until she comes.  

There are long shadows and the Calle Marqués de Gerona is cool in the shade and busy with the beginning of evening.  In the Bar La Riffeña the TV is showing the UEFA cup, and when he orders a drink it comes with a dish of olives and cubes of cheese, and a small slice of bread.   Gabriel takes a seat on the terrace, where he can enjoy the evening air and watch both the street and the screen.  The second rum, half an hour later, brings a spoonful of scrambled egg with asparagus, and more bread.  By now he’s enjoying the match even though neither of the teams is his.  Sevilla have just equalised, to the delight of the regulars at the zinc.  

The third drink gains him a tiny dish of Russian salad, tangy with gherkins.  At this rate he’ll have an entire meal gratis if he orders enough drinks.  ¡Viva Andalucía!

At the next table two exhausted Italians are poring over a spread map and downing large beers. There’s a goldfinch in a cage hung over the terrace; it hops about, singing over the buzz of talk and street noise, the rapid glee of the sports commentary.  At first he doesn’t hear the sound of suitcase wheels, and then thinks nothing of it when he does, such an ordinary noise, rattling and meaningless. Then he sees her.

Aurora Rodriguez, in her scarlet jacket, wheeling a bulky grey case towards him.  His eyes go to her as to a fire in the street.

He’d forgotten, he thinks, though he’d thought he remembered every nuance; her lips, her hair, her way of walking as though the guilty world were laying its heart beneath her shoes.

There’s no chance to think through what he will say, or to hide himself.  She’s forty metres away, thirty, twenty, and still walking.  She’s looking straight past him; her eyes are tired and both glad and sad, so that he wonders what she’s seen in Mexico City; does she know something now, for sorrow or for peace, that she did not know before? He’s looking at her approach as if she’s just marched down from paradise with her case in tow, and as she comes nearer he turns his head involuntarily to keep her in his sight.  A slow movement, focussed upon her, like a fixed star. She sees it and it draws her eye, her glance catches onto his, a hand catching on a rough edge of silk.  She takes two more steps and comes to a halt, ten metres away, with her lips parting.  Impassive, watching; then very slowly, slow as heaven, smiling.

The last time he saw her, her lip had still been split, her face bruised, from Félix’s fists.  She’d looked at him with defensive eyes.  He’d known he would have died for her, to atone for what had been done to her and her family, if he had not already been dying.

He stands, to meet her on his feet.

He’s never been a man given to fear; he barely recognises it, it’s so unfamiliar, this thundering of his heart against his sore, scarred ribs.  She is smiling at him and he is afraid.

He’d wanted to smile at her. In all his dreams of this moment he has been smiling.  But his lips will not move, except, for a second, to open, breathless, silent.  He exhales.  His throat tightens on a thousand unsaid things.

Aurora takes the next step, and the next, careful, deliberate.  The suitcase bumps heavily on the cobbles behind her each time.  

“Gabriel?”  So guarded; she was always ice, she was a loaded gun, an averted head, a figure walking away…  Her smile wavers and grows cautious, readying herself to strike or to turn away, and his heart tears apart.  He forces himself into a smile as frail as breathing.

“It’s you.”  

Which of them was it who spoke?  There’s so much tension in his ribs, his spine, he’s a steel guitar string, taut and tightening, coming into tune at last.

“Aurora.”

One more step forward, one more crunch of the suitcase wheels; and Gabriel inhales and flexes his hands, and takes a step also.  Suddenly he’s almost panting for air; but light seems to flood into him as his smile anchors itself in her.  “Aurora. Aurora…”

“Be careful,” she says. “You’ll hyperventilate.”  Her smile grows again.  It gives him life.  All the muscles in his face seem to be twisting, a stupid grin coming and going, helplessly shy.

His hands are shaking, that brief mortal fear still racing in his veins.  He reaches for her and she for him, their fingertips touch suddenly and she presses her lips together and then beams, quivering with mirth that is half shock.  “I’m glad to see you.”

“Would you like a drink?—“

The electrifying touch on his fingers, the dark eyes on his; humour, astonishment, joy.  Their hands slide into one another and clasp.  He’s not sure whether it’s her that is trembling, or him.  Where the boundary is.  She’s barely fifty centimetres away and he can feel the warmth of her body and smell a clean herbal scent coming off her, not perfume but some pleasant everyday thing like shampoo.  Her skin is unblemished, a slight blush of suntan on her brow, her nose, her cheekbones.

“To drink?—“

“Something to drink?—“

They’re speaking over and through one another, still holding hands.  He begins consciously to try and slow his breathing.  “A drink, yes.”

“Perhaps a – a beer…”

“Of course.”

Somehow, he’s holding a chair for her; somehow he’s managed to let go her hand for a few moments. She sits, looking up at him as he tucks her seat in; and as he takes his own again their hands find one another and grab, and hold on.

He eyes her lips her touch…

He’d like to bring her hand to his forehead in fealty; to his lips, in worship.  She’s here, she’s beside him, he found her.

[itsclydebitches]

Summary:

"Good things come to those who wait... provided they know what they're waiting for."

Moments in Barry and Cisco's lives as they slowly and surely fall in love. It's simultaneously the easiest and most complicated thing they've ever done.

(Part of the "Worth the Wait" series.)

Fandom: The Flash (TV show)

Words: 3,207 

Warnings: None

Pairings: Barry/Cisco

This Section: Barry and Cisco’s first date. Picks up directly after Cisco asks Barry to coffee in "Worth the Wait."

Where to Read it: Below the cut or on AO3 (AO3 recommended for formatting)

Sickly Sweet 

There was monitoring Barry’s speed, hearing about it, even imagining it in his dreams... but then there was seeing it.

And holy Hannah. Jesus Christ, goddamn, let’s just get the whole family involved because it was so much more than he’d ever pictured. Cisco knew in that moment what it felt like to be visited by divinity. It was like the whole world had just opened to him, revealing more magic and possibility than he could have ever conceived.

It was awesome.

He was splayed out on his ass, the asphalt freezing his thighs and the wind—no, the kickback generated by Barry—was stinging his already cold cheeks. Cisco didn’t care though. He grinned until it felt like he was porcelain ready to crack and then he just kept on grinning. He wanted to live in this moment, bottle it and take a shot of it daily with his coffee.

“Hell yeah!” he cheered. “Hell fucking yeah!” Cisco hardly recognized his own voice. He pumped up the fist that held the speedometer, still generating numbers that kicked his heart into high gear. Cisco turned to make sure Caitlin and Dr. Wells were seeing this, understanding this, and let out another laugh at the scene splayed out behind him. Barry had massacred their stuff, papers strewn every which way and their tent drooping from a misaligned pole. Caitlin looked like someone had knocked her upside the head, complete with befuddled expression and fly-away hair. Cisco was a little afraid she was going to start drooling if she didn’t close her mouth soon. Dr. Wells, on the other hand, was cool as ever, courtesy of a great pair of sunglasses and, well, him being him. Cisco did catch his lean forward though, that same itch clearly thrumming through Dr. Wells’ body. It was the call to investigate.

“How fast?” he demanded. Yeah, Cisco could hear the thrill in his voice too.

“305. No wait, 375. He’s almost at 400!”

“And almost out of road—” Wells said, which was the exact moment the endless shhhhh of wind that had been emanating from the speakers connected to Barry’s suit cut off with a terrific crash. It suddenly occurred to Cisco, in the awful, stomach-dropping manner of someone who had Not Thought This Through, that Barry might know how to run, but he didn’t necessarily know how to stop.

He also realized that plastic barrels might not make for the most comfortable landing.

As well as what could happen to the human body when it hit a solid object at 400 miles per hour.

Cisco caught Caitlin’s eye and saw a similar horror reflected there.

“Oh shit,” he whispered.

Barry began screaming over the coms.

***

Cisco leaned heavily on the glass wall separating him from Barry, very firmly keeping his gaze on Caitlin instead. He let out a sigh he was sure she’d be able to hear.

Caitlin kept pouring over her x-rays. Cisco sighed louder.

“Did you want something?” she asked and it was only the smooth brow—she got crinkles when she was mad—that let Cisco know she was teasing. Which made sense. Who had time to be upset when they had a friend healing multiple fractures over the course of an hour to geek over?

Or who had time to pay attention to him?

Not Caitlin, apparently.

“I’m not good at this,” Cisco moaned.

“Actually you’re excellent at annoying me.”

“Ha. I mean this. Waiting.”

Caitlin finally looked up. Her gaze swept over Cisco before settling on Barry in the other room. He was still getting x-rays done, the machine personally adapted by Caitlin to take far more images than normal, separated over micro-seconds to catch minute changes in the healing process. She’d begun developing it about a month after they’d discovered Barry’s regenerative abilities. Looks like it was already coming in handy.

Her gaze shifted back to Cisco. “He’ll be out in a minute.”

“You know that’s not what I mean.”

“...yeah, I know.” Caitlin ran a hand over her face. “I get the feeling we’re both going to have to get used to it though.”

Cisco finally turned to look at Barry. He was just lying there, too much like while he’d been in the coma, staring up at the ceiling as the x-ray moved slowly above his hand and wrist. Cisco had done his waiting then and it seemed a little unfair that he was suddenly required to do more. Worse was Barry’s scream echoing over and over in the back of his head. Cisco had heard people’s screams before. No duh. You weren’t at the heart of a goddamn particle accelerator explosion without witnessing certain shit only found in the movies: like the unholy screech of metal as it bent and collided with itself, hot flames on the back of your neck that sputtered out into noxious fumes, voices mangled into something unrecognizable, stemming from grief and pain. It had given Cisco nightmares for months, still did sometimes... but Barry’s cry was somehow worse.

Maybe it was the change: happy running sounds to sudden screams. Or maybe it was just the fact that he knew Barry.

Loved Barry.

Cisco thumped his head lightly against the glass. “You know what I am, right?”

“What are you?”

“The wife. I’m the one waiting at home while the hero runs off into danger. Sitting useless at the window, hoping for letter or a glimpse of him coming home—

something sappy like that. Tell me I’m wrong.”

Caitlin made a strangled noise that might have been a laugh. “Oh my god, just go talk to him,” and she practically shoved him out the door.

Cisco went, heels skidding the whole way.

Barry looked up and if he found it odd that Caitlin was manhandling him and then beating a hasty retreat, he didn’t mention it. Hell, not like that was odd in the grand scheme of things, yeah? Barry just sat up, carefully easing his arm out of the x-ray.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey back.”

Great one, Cisco, he heard and firmly told himself to shut the fuck up already. So Barry was easier to talk to while unconscious? Big deal. He was an intelligent, semi-responsible adult who could totally talk to cute guys okay it was easy—

“—Wells?” Barry was saying.

Cisco opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again, not unlike a fish. “Wha?”

“I asked where Dr. Wells is.” The corner of Barry’s mouth twitched. “You okay?”

“Oh yeah. Fine. I mean, jeez, shouldn’t I be the one asking you that? Ha! Guess a totally shattered wrist kind of puts a damper on coffee, huh?”

Aaaaand there it was. Cisco, of the genius IQ, was keenly aware that 1. Barry’s earlier acceptance of the invitation could have just been him being polite and 2. He probably didn’t feel like going out now anyway and 3. What had ever made him think he’d want to go out with him because 4. He’d just clocked in at nearly 400 MPH like that was rad as hell so 5. What were they even supposed to talk about, the weather? Like ‘Oh yeah, nice day we’re having, what’s the wind speed like when you’re going that fast?’ and 6. Cisco was so very aware that he was internally rambling but he just couldn’t stop.

Barry, miraculously, hadn’t left.

“—see why,” he was saying this time, and Cisco screamed at his brain to focus for one goddamn second. “I mean, I think I’m fine now.” To demonstrate Barry lifted his hand and very slowly rotated his wrist in a figure-eight. He did wince a little at the bend, but there were certainly no screams like before and for that, at least, Cisco was grateful.

“You’re good to go!” Caitlin called through the window, scaring the living hell out of Cisco. Barry snorted as he jumped and accidentally knocked a bottle of somethin’ or other off its tray. “Just go easy on it!”

That was all, apparently. Caitlin had already abandoned them for the new x-rays coming through to her laptop.

“Great!” Barry hopped off the bed, pausing only to grab his sweatshirt off a nearby chair. “Let’s go.”

“...right.”

They were going out. That was cool.

That was fantastic.

This time it was Barry dragging Cisco out the door and Caitlin gave him absent-minded thumbs up as he passed by.

***

If Cisco had thought that he was in control of this little outing, or that Barry in any way needed a refresher course on life after his nine-month nap, he was quickly disillusioned. They spotted Dr. Wells in a side workroom on their way out, somewhat obsessively going over the videotape of Barry’s first run. He waved them off, distracted, and with a happy cry at the freedom Barry practically bounded out of STAR Labs, dragging a starry-eyed Cisco along for the ride. He said that they should go to Jitters because the coffee there was easily the best ever. He said they should walk there because it was too nice a day not to. He said he liked Cisco’s “This is bullshit” t-shirt complete with bull and shit emojis and it took Cisco all of fifteen minutes to fall a little more in love with Barry Allen.

And by ‘a little’ he meant ‘a lot.’

“I got you, I got you,” Cisco said, flapping a bill at Barry when they finally reached Jitters. “‘Least I can do after all that is buy your drink. Besides, I don’t think Caitlin wants you carrying stuff just yet. Go sit.”

Barry saluted in thanks. “You a couch or a table person?”

Tables meant getting to stare at Barry without it being weird. Couch meant close, physical contact. Both had their merits. “You choose.”

“Couch it is,” and Barry jogged off to commandeer the spot in the corner, the one that had a 99.9% chance of being his usual haunt. Cisco smiled.

Because yeah, he might not know this joint, but it was clear that Barry felt at home here. There was an easy smile on his face and a looseness to his shoulders that Cisco hadn’t seen in STAR labs yet. He watched Barry texting on his phone with the kind of intensity he’d previously only given to circuitry.

“You feel like ordering this century?”

Cisco’s head whipped around, making eye contact with the barista and immediately wishing he hadn’t. There was nothing quite as scary as an overworked woman who needed to be done with her shift an hour ago.

Except maybe Dr. Wells without his coffee, Cisco was determined to never experience that particular horror again.

He tried for a winning smile. “Yeah, sorry. Head in the clouds there for a sec.”

Ah, and that completely cheered her! Not. Barista: 1, Cisco: 0.

Just get on with it, dude!

“Sorry,” he said again, muttering. “Right. Just—Iced mocha for me please and a—”

Cisco stopped, mouth snapping shut so fast and hard that he nearly bit his tongue in two. He could literally feel his eyes widening as he realized he’d never asked Barry his order.

“Uh...” he said, training off.

There were moments—awful, needless moments—when Cisco was all too aware of his awkwardness and the ways in which it dug him into deep, dark, and terribly dank holes. All at once he could feel the barista’s impatient glare boring into his forehead, the bodies of customers pressing against his back, and his poor brain trying to rifle through seven months worth of research... and coming up with absolutely nothing. How the hell could he know Barry’s shoe size and not his drink order?

“Sir?” she snapped.

He could stall, of course. Tell her to wait just one moment and hoof it over to Barry. That would absolutely be the smart thing to do, which was why Cisco opened his mouth and said,

“Large hot chocolate, please.”

The barista was too scary. He valued life too much.

Which was how he ended up back at Barry’s side five minutes later with a panicked expression and a kind of insulting drink.

“I don’t think you’re five,” he led with, causing Barry to blink owlishly up at him. “And you’re totally welcome to my mocha, or something else. Definitely something else. I mean I will brave that woman’s wrath for you, man, just say the word—”

At some point during his spiel Barry had snuck his hand out and snatched the second drink, taking a curious sip. His grin was the only thing that could have shut Cisco up in that moment. Which it did.

“How’d you know I like hot chocolate?”

I didn’t, I just figured literal rays of sunshine probably liked sweet things.

“Oh thank god,” is what he actually said and Barry laughed out loud.

The rest was, to Cisco’s shock, surprisingly easy. He settled in next to Barry (knees almost brushing, shoulder to shoulder as conversation got intense) and they just talked, like they hadn’t got a chance to yet, like he’d wanted to for as long as their ‘conversations’ had been one sided. Cisco blabbed everything to Barry, from the simple (“Born and raised here, dude. Never plan to leave.”) to the defining (“Star Trek kicks Star Wars’ ass!!”) Barry mostly told him things Cisco already knew... yet they became so much more coming from him. Details made all the difference, and Barry giving him parts of himself, rather than Cisco stealing them away, was the difference between a black and white film and color. Freaking vintage vs. HD.

“I just can’t believe it,” Barry was saying, lifting his hand as evidence. “I mean, the storm, the coma, waking up like—like this.” His whole body suddenly vibrated in a way that made Cisco gasp, then grab hold as if to shield him from view. No one noticed though, and he just ended up with a handful of Barry’s sweatshirt, Barry himself grinning a few inches from his face as Cisco grinned back. “Right? It’s crazy and awesome and... and I want to do something with it.”

Cisco was nodding rapidly. “You will, man. You’ll help people. I know it.”

Barry’s face had shifted into a scowl. “How though? I’m not exactly Green Arrow material, you know? I’m just a guy who got struck by lightning.”

“Oh that guy is crazy cool. Not that you’re not! You are. Only with a whole lot less of the crazy. Which is so completely the point here. You’re made for this, man. Besides, we’ll help you. I told you before: Dr. Wells is the world’s foremost genius—you know that—you’ve got Caitlin for all your patching up needs, I’m gonna supply you with the toys,” Cisco punched his arm, warm and pleased when Barry rocked with it, exaggerating a wince. “We’re the quintessential team, dude! Besides, no one knows what they’re doing at first. You’re in your freaking origin story faze. Volume one, alright? So chill and take it a day at a time. We’ve got your back.”

Barry was practically bouncing and Cisco made a mental note to never give him legit caffeine.

“We’re going to make the best team.”

“I never doubted it,” and Cisco honestly never had.

“Here.”

He went still because out of goddamn nowhere Barry’s hands were flat against his chest, pressing and kneading in a way that was both ‘hello’ and ‘oh my god.’ It took Cisco a good moment to realize that Barry was pawing for the cell in his shirt pocket, what with him imitating a deer about to be road-kill and all.

Mission accomplished (he could breathe again oh god breathing was good), Barry started entering his contact info, rambling about how he’d need to ask Singh to re-arrange his schedule a bit, and he could totally come into the lab at nights too if that was okay, because he’d been keeping track and he didn’t think he needed to sleep quite as much as he used to...

Cisco listened, but a part of him was on his knees in the back of his mind, raising hands and praising every deity he could think of. Because this never happened to him. He just wasn’t the guy who asked for coffee and got an honest ‘yes’ in response. He didn’t have gorgeous guys scrambling to give him their number. He didn’t get guys like Barry, complete with the happy ending.

“Barry!”

And of course it was his name that took it all back.

The call came from Iris, halfway across the room with a tray on her hip and an apron tossed over one shoulder. Cisco vaguely remembered her mentioning working here and he raised a hand in greeting, peripherally seeing Barry do the same. She gave a brief ‘one moment’ gesture and went into the back. Cisco went back to Barry.

He found a man sitting there, besotted.

Like his demeanor between the labs and Jitters, it was easy to spot the difference once it was there. With a feeling like plunging off a cliff Cisco catalogued the bright-eyes and dopy smile, Barry’s hands twisting around his cellphone and his teeth ever so lightly catching his bottom lip. It was the expression of someone head over heels and Cisco recognized it because he’d caught sight of his own reflection more than once lately.

Love often came down to assumptions... or perhaps more accurately faith. Cisco had accumulated a lot of both over the last seven months and now reality was knocking a sledgehammer against his carefully crafted facade. Because coffee wasn’t always coffee, was it? Not when Barry had an endless social life and was probably willing to share food, clothes, touch, and even beds with ‘best buds’—not just boyfriends. It was just the kind of guy he was. And it occurred to Cisco with a pang that his seven months was nothing to Barry’s seven days. That Barry might have rightfully viewed all this as friendship—which is was—but not the kind that needed to go anywhere. Hell, Cisco didn’t even know if he was gay, or bi, or pan, or anything. Pictures of Barry with a painted face at Pride could just be solidarity. The selfie of him kissing a guy’s cheek could be humorous, or another example of his touchy nature. Everything he’d built into a Something could be nothing at all.

He wasn’t the ‘wife’ waiting for the hero, was he? Nah. Cisco was the two-bit sidekick and they never got the romantic lead. Didn’t he know the stories by now? The gorgeous guy always got the pretty girl.

They were their happy ending and Cisco felt sick.

“You okay?” Barry asked. He laid a hand on Cisco’s shoulder, the touch burning, but at least it was entirely for him. He’d torn his gaze away from Iris to look at Cisco and really, was he entitled to ask for more?

No. Barry didn’t owe him anything…but Cisco would take what he could get. He always had.

He clapped his hand on top of Barry’s.

“Of course, dude. Never better.”