Two alerts popped up on Caitlin’s work computer, one reassuring, the other less so. Far less so, really. Breach detected sang the first, a cheerful chirp programmed to mimic the Tardis noise, at Cisco’s request-- it played for his signature only. Cisco was home again, and that made Caitlin smile despite the other window’s message: pipeline cell 16 activated. That wasn’t right. There wasn’t supposed to be anyone in the pipeline at all, and as the seconds ragged she realized that Barry hadn’t rushed up, Cisco hadn’t breached directly here. They’d be here by now, if they’d put someone in a cell, so why….
She took off, checking the medbay and finding it empty and bolted faster. Frost whispered in her mind that it would be faster to ice everything over and skate, but Caitlin refused to spend even the second handing over control would take. Something was not right, she could feel it in her marrow.
She hit the pipeline door, relieved to see it still up. A cell--16-- was still locked into place. Cisco was inside. After being… gone-slash-missing for most of a week Cisco was back. They’d thought he’d just gone on one of his trips, soul searching with his powers back, but he hadn’t called even once.
“Cisco, Cisco-- hey--” Caitlin pitched her voice low in case whoever had put him in an activated cell was nearby--but urgency bled through. “Are you ok?”
Cisco turned to look at her, smudges from lack of sleep under his eyes. Still, he beamed at her. “Caitlin. Thank God. I was worried no one was here. I’m-- been better.”
That he admitted it scared her as much as his absence had.
“What happened?” she asked, moving forward. If anyone tried to stop her from getting Cisco out of that box, Frost would teach them a thing or twelve. “Are you hurt? Here, let me get you out of there.”
She reached for the control panel, worry gnawing at her brain. Only a member of Team Flash should have been able to activate the blockers in the cells--it was tied to their DNA and frequencies. No one else should have been able to lock Cisco down in a way he couldn’t just breach out…
“No!” Cisco yelped as her fingers brushed the buttons. “Caitlin, don’t!”
The force of his voice stayed her hand, though for one perilous moment she swayed, remembering another moment in this vestibule, another door sealed shut. No. She was not going to be helpless this time.
“What’s happening?” she asked, feeling the cold tingle along her spine and scalp as Frost worried, too.
“You can’t turn off the dampeners. It’s the only thing blocking the signal.”
“What signal?” it was Caitlin’s turn to yelp.
Cisco winced, reaching up to finger comb hair that looked to have lost a battle. He stopped, tapping at a spot she couldn’t see for the shadows, below one ear.
“Caitlin, I need you to go up to my workshop. Locker 203. It’s, uh, the thing we built to help Lisa Snart.”
Caitlin rocked on her heels. So much had happened in the last 4 years, it took her a moment to remember the last time they’d seen Cisco’s one-time-abductor. “The--oh, oh-- no.” She felt ill. The signal. “The thing you made to get the bomb out of her neck?”
Cisco winced again, and Caitlin sees more clearly now. The bruising around his eyes was from a fist, not exhaustion. Two of his fingers seem to hover apart from the rest, curled slightly, and her years of serving as medic told her they were broken.
“It, uh, turns out Amanda Waller really doesn’t like being told ‘no.’”
If you're still taking prompts: “Come on, give me one good reason not to jump in the lake.” Cisco to Caitlin?
I actually wrote a good portion of this back when you requested it, in March or so. Then I forgot about it until just recently, when I felt like writing a fun, fluffy summer story and went, “wait, didn’t I have one of those already?”
So finally, here it is!
Life’s a Beach
Cisco stared longingly at the blue, blue water. “Come on, give me one good reason not to jump in the lake.”
“Cryptosporidium,” Caitlin said, flicking her towel out with a snap of her wrists. “And giardia intestinalis. Both of them are extremely nasty parasites, transmitted through the fecal-oral route.” She looked up and down the beach. “With the number of families here today, at least one kid is going without their diaper. Guaranteed.”
He stared at her. “The fecal-oral route - is that what I think it is?”
“Almost certainly. Also, we have to keep an eye out for nefarious activity,” she added, struggling with a giant beach umbrella.
“You could have opened with that one,” he said, going over and taking it from her. The button was very stubborn. He swore, smacked it with his palm, and the umbrella almost took his nose off when it sprang open. He swore again. “In fact, you could have closed with that too. I only asked for one.”
She took the umbrella back from him and stuck it in the sand. “You still would have argued with me for the next ten minutes. This way, no argument. Sunscreen?”
“I’m good. I got the spray-on stuff.”
She flicked open the bottle with a little snick and started rubbing sunscreen into her legs. He tried not to stare.
He was pretty sure Iris had just been kind, sending them to do recon on the beach where a lot of people were reporting large amounts of missing money this summer. They didn’t even know if there was a meta behind it. But it was a gorgeous, sunny day, just on the edge of hot, and they got to hang out at the beach.
So he wasn’t complaining.
Although the fact that he was hanging out at said beach with Caitlin was causing some issues.
He was supposed to be looking for suspicious characters, but he kept getting distracted by Caitlin in her sunglasses and floppy sun hat and thigh-length black net cover-up. Cover-up was a wild misnomer, because it was basically covering nothing and distracting him with constant glimpses of pale skin.
Or maybe he was just incredibly distracted by her lately.
He didn’t know where this all had come from. Sure, he’d always thought she was beautiful - come on, he had eyes - but lately, it was awfully hard to remember that they were good buddies and no more, when he wanted to touch her and look at her all sorts of places that a good buddy had no business touching or looking.
He busied himself with shaking out his own beach towel and settling himself in the warm sand. He told himself not to stare at the movement of her hands, and the places her hands moved over.
A rustle of cloth made him look up involuntarily. The cover-up was sliding down Caitlin’s arms as she shrugged it off. She let it slip to the beach towel and glanced up at him.
He scrambled to find something to say that wasn’t I think my brain is running out my ears. “Hey. That’s a new suit, isn’t it?”
“Mhmmm,” she said, rubbing sunscreen down her arms. “My old one is about done for. What do you think?”
“It’s nice,” he said airily, sliding his sunglasses back up his nose.
Nice was the understatement of his life.
The last time he’d hung out with Caitlin at the beach, she’d had a sensible red one-piece. This was a green bikini, and clearly the reason her not-cover-up had kept showing skin was that skin was mostly all there was to see. Smooth, creamy skin, a few little moles that looked like dots of chocolate he wanted to lick, the curve of shoulders and legs and hips and stomach.
Stop, he ordered himself,
When she started dabbing sunscreen on her chest and throat and the shadow of her cleavage, he felt pretty proud that he only had to remind himself not to stare at her three times.
He realized that she was saying his name. Had been saying his name for a minute or two now. “Huh?”
“I said, can you get my back?”
Could he rub cream into her nearly-naked back, running his hands over her sun-warmed skin, down the line of her spine? Well, sure, he could. Whether he should was another question.
“Please?” she said.
“Okay,” he said because he was weak, and she was tilting her head and making puppy eyes the way she did. God, he was so weak. “Turn around.”
“Hmm?” She was looking over his shoulder.
“Turn around.”
“No,” she said suddenly. “Come around behind me.”
“What? I’m right here, I - ”
She tipped her sunglasses down and glared at him. “Come around behind me, I said.”
If puppy eyes made him weak, her glare turned him into the puppy.
He came around to sit cross-legged behind her, focusing on the nape of her neck, with the soft little baby hairs curling against it. Yep. This was going to be exactly as bad as he thought.
She handed the sunscreen bottle over her shoulder to him. “Is my phone in my bag?”
“Uh,” he said, rooting around. “Yeah. Here.”
“Thanks.”
He squirted sunscreen onto his fingertips and dabbed it against her shoulder blades. Oh man. That was actually worse. Not only was it supremely inefficient, she wiggled as it tickled her, which made him think of tickling her in other situations, and no, no, stop.
“Hey,” he said. “I’ve got an idea. Why don’t I just spray your back? With my sunscreen!” he added hastily. “It’s the spray-on kind.”
“What SPF is it?” she asked, fiddling with something on her phone.
"Twenty-five? Maybe thirty.” He thought it was overkill putting sunscreen on himself at all, but Caitlin and Iris had teamed up to terrorize him with statistics on skin cancer in people of color, and he wasn’t about to sit through that twice.
“In this sun, I’m going to broil like a lobster with anything less than fifty, trust me,” she said. “Just get a big glob on your hands and stroke it all over my back, okay?” She sounded distracted, looking off at something behind where he’d been sitting earlier.
He breathed through his nose and squeezed the bottle hard. A giant splat of sunscreen landed in his palm. He rubbed his hands together and settled both of them flat on her back
She leaned back into his touch and in spite of the hot sun, he broke out into a cold sweat.
“Cisco,” she murmured. “Do you see that?”
“Uh-huh,” he mumbled. "What?”
How was he supposed to look anywhere with her skin under his hands?
“That,” she said. “Straight ahead.”
Straight ahead was a scatter of freckles to the left of her spine. He wanted to trace them with his fingertip, make them into a constellation.
“The ice cream seller.”
“I’d love some ice cream,” he mumbled. Anything cold. Cryptosporidium or not, the lake was starting to look more and more appealing.
“His customer just handed him a fifty-dollar bill.”
“Must be nice.”
“No, and he got a handful of change back.”
Cisco blinked. Everyone knew shit was overpriced at the lake. That’s why you brought your own treats. But close to fifty dollars for three ice cream cones? He squinted at the stand. “Don’t suppose that’s gourmet ice cream?”
“It would have to be infused with gold flakes to cost that much.”
“How are you seeing this?” he asked. The ice cream seller was a good hundred yards away.
She held up her phone, set to video mode. “That super-zoom app you developed. Very handy.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. What do you think, some kind of mind control?”
Cisco watched the ice-cream buyer come back their way, trying to hold all three cones. “Maybe, but he doesn’t seem that out of it.” He noticed the guy glance up at Caitlin, look away, and then look back.
He couldn’t blame him one bit.
He leaned over Caitlin’s shoulder, maybe a little closer than he needed to, and said, "Hey, wave him over.“
"Sir,” she called out. “Excuse me!”
As most female-attracted types would when a gorgeous brunette in a bikini waved at them, he detoured. “Yes?”
She took off her sunglasses and smiled up at him. “Hi.”
“Hi,” he said, smiling back.
Caitlin put the earpiece of her sunglasses in her mouth. “Can I just ask how much that ice cream cost?”
She was practically fluttering her lashes. What the hell? Was she flirting with this jerk and his drippy ice cream?
Clearly the jerk thought so, because he answered, “Oh, like, four-something. You want me to go grab you one? I’d be happy to.”
“And what did you pay with?” Cisco asked.
The guy looked over at him, frowning. “What does that matter?”
“Just doing a poll,” he said, scrabbling for a believable story. “On how many small vendors accept credit card.”
Ice Cream Guy looked skeptical. The chocolate cone began dribbling down over his knuckles.
“It’s for CCPN,” Cisco added, because hanging out with Iris had taught him there was some magic in the vague promise that you’d see yourself in the news.
“I paid cash.”
“What denomination of bill?” Caitlin asked.
He frowned. She leaned back, stretching out her bare legs, crossing them at the ankle and wiggling her toes with their gold toenail polish.
Cisco resisted the temptation to grab her cover-up and throw it over her, because they were her long, sleek legs and her cutely polished toes and she could show them off if she wanted to. Also, the frown was easing off Ice Cream Guy’s face.
“A five,” he said. “I remember because I didn’t think I had any fives in my wallet.”
She looked over her shoulder at Cisco. “Thanks so much,” she said. “You’ve been so helpful.”
“Bye,” Cisco added, because Ice Cream Guy showed signs of lingering, maybe asking for Caitlin’s number or something. And that was happening over his dead body.
He reconsidered. Not dead. He’d done that, 0/10, would not recommend. Maybe his extremely unconscious body. It wasn’t happening, was his point.
Because they had a meta to catch. Yeah. They didn’t have time to waste on some horny fool lusting after Caitlin.
Good reminder.
“What do you think?” Caitlin asked him in an undertone as Ice Cream Guy departed, shoulders sagging, ice cream melting faster than ever. “Could that be where people’s money is disappearing to?”
They’d thought it was a pickpocket, but after seeing that - “Leprechaun gold,” he said.
She gave him one of her patented Caitlin Looks. “Leprechauns?”
“No,” he said. “Leprechaun gold. Oh come on! I know you read Goblet of Fire.”
“The money’s not dissolving,” she pointed out.
“Right, but he is deceiving them. Making them think they’re giving him a way smaller bill than they really are.”
She scrunched up her face in thought. “Do you have any big bills in your wallet?”
“Got a twenty.”
“That’ll do. I think I want some ice cream.” She got up, dusting sand off her butt. Her cute round butt, barely covered by that damn bikini, and the sand stuck to her skin like a dusting of sugar …
“Cisco?”
“Huh?”
She gazed down at him, straightening her sun hat and shrugging into her cover-up. “Are you coming?”
“Yep,” he said, scrambling to his feet. “Yep, right there with you.” Right, they had a job to do, which didn’t include drooling over one of his best friends.
Iris looked up as they breached into Star Labs. “Hey, guys, good work.” Cisco had texted her from the beach while Caitlin was turning the Illusionist - “no, Cisco, we’re not calling him the Leprechaun, pick something else!” - over to the police.
“Thanks,” Cisco said. “Guy had made an easy thousand dollars or so this weekend already, screwing with people’s perception of the bills they were giving him. It was hard to catch him because he switched up what he was selling.”
Iris nodded. “People generally don’t remember the person selling them something, just what they bought. Sorry your beach day was interrupted, though.”
“Eh,” Cisco said. “Too hot anyway. I’m going to go get something cold. Real cold.” He headed off, his flip-flops thwacking against the tile floor, leaving Caitlin and Iris in the cortex.
Iris asked Caitlin, “You said you got video?”
“All on here.” Caitlin passed her phone over, and Iris hooked it up.
She glanced over her shoulder as the video started uploading, and asked in a lower voice, “And how did the bikini work out?”
Caitlin scowled. “Less well. I don’t think he even noticed I was wearing it. And not in the I’m thinking about you naked way. More like the you’re a piece of furniture way. He gave the damn umbrella more attention.“
"What, really? Did you try the sunscreen trick?”
“Yes! And I flirted with someone else, right in front of him. See, right there!”
Iris watched Caitlin-on-the-screen cock her head and smile at the man with the three ice cream cones. “That didn’t work?”
“He just kept asking questions about the case. I think I screwed up when I mentioned intestinal parasites.”
Iris hummed. “On the one hand, that’s generally not regarded as sexy. On the other hand, if he was going to be put off by disgusting medical facts, he wouldn’t be your friend.”
“I want him to be more than my friend, though.”
Iris patted her shoulder, one eye on the video. “I know.”
“Maybe it’s time I faced it,” Caitlin said sadly, plopping down at the desk and resting her chin in one hand. “We’ve just been friends for too long. He’s never going to see me in any light other than platonic.”
On the screen, Caitlin got up and went striding toward the ice cream vendor. Cisco was so busy staring at her that he tripped over the umbrella on his way to follow.
the thing about using your laptop in your old lady rocking chair is that when you forget you have something in your lap and rock your laptop falls in between the coffee table and the chair and it’s really shitty
I called it from the beginning. Everyone said that Savitar couldn’t be Barry cause Barry would never hurt Iris, and of course Barry wouldn’t. But Savitar did. He became Savitar somehow because of Iris’ death, and became more powerful to the point of thinking himself a god. He is so far lost in the future that he doesn’t care about Iris, or the pain. He wants to make sure he will always exist. He ensures his own creation. He creates himself.
LOL OMFG!!! Poor Cisco that poor boy has to put up with so much from the council of Wells. I love this scene. I laughed so hard I gave myself a headache.
@sssssssim this is the moment I was telling you about and you had to think for a moment what I was talking about. I am posting this for you as you have been awesome and helping me get my Flash dose each week.
