It's the coldest day of the year, nearly record-setting in its blistering, subzero brutality, and Dr. Caitlin Snow orders an orange-pineapple smoothie from the S.T.A.R. Labs canteen for lunch.
The gal behind the register has to ask her to repeat herself.
The skies beyond the Labs' great curved windows are clear as crystal, cut to a brilliant edge by a diamond-tipped wind. She claims a table at the deepest swell of the building's arc, a seat which commands a sprawling vista bracketed to the left by the river and by the frosted hills to the right. Of course, it wouldn't be Central City's industrial waterfront without that dingy parking lot front and center, but you win some you lose some.
Caitlin settles down with her daily sustenance: icy blended fruit, the epub version of Doctor Zhivago, and sweet, sweet solitude. It's something of a hike up from the subterranean labs, but it's more than worth it; the level of physical effort required to make the journey is exactly what guarantees that the thirty-five minute remainder of her lunch hour will pass undisturbed.
(She knows they know that she knows they call her the Ice Queen. It's hardly a secret - she owns the title, and easily. Geniuses are prone to possessing many natural talents.)
They think she thinks she's better than them, but really her distance is mostly about getting the chance to put reality on pause. The time to take a breath, clear her head. A sanity check. To step back from the Doctor-Scientist and just be Caitlin for a while.
Most days her work is challenging and incredible and sometimes even chill-inducing, forging along the bleeding edge of her field in the company of some of the greatest minds of her time. But every breathtaking success is invariably offset by the endless shuffle of bright people with dumb questions in and out of her office, the tedium of reviewing her subordinates' ambitious proposals, the frantic scramble across the lab with a fire extinguisher at the ready - she can, on the worst of days, feel ever so slightly like a glorified babysitter.
That's why, for thirty-five blissful minutes a day, Caitlin Snow bundles up against the world and sits alone by the window of the canteen, quiet, contemplative, content.
The first time Caitlin sees Ronnie Raymond, she inadvertently shields her eyes because god he's gorgeous.
Now, Caitlin's one of the least boy-crazy girls on the block, and it's probably only his first day at S.T.A.R. Labs, but he's two steps into the canteen and already she's had flashes of a future where they've bought that suburban house with the white picket fence - you know, a house in which she sweeps the contents of the dining room table to the floor so they can get started on those 2.5 kids.
The explicitness of this fantasy, not to mention its startling velocity out of left field, sets her ears aflame. Leaving the e-reader up in front of her face as a blinder, she swivels away from the door and puts her back to the room.
She's mentally recited the Wright-Fisher model of genetic drift to herself and moved on to the Moran process before the sizzling sensation in her spine finally cools.
Then she realizes she can see him reflected in the curved window.
He's paying at the register and grabbing a sleeve for his coffee and now he's leaning casually against the pick-up counter, surveying the nearly empty canteen (lunch for Caitlin today started at 3:19 PM), and she's shoving her e-reader into her purse and bolting for the exit so as not to risk finding out whether he's the outgoing type of new guy or not.
He is.
"Some weather we're having," he says from over her shoulder, causing her a minor internal breakdown.
Her panic must not register, because he invites himself to sit down at her table with his tray (she hadn't realized the kitchen served pizza until this very moment) and be-sleeved coffee cup.
"Reminds me of winters we had when I was a kid - my aunt would invite us over on Sundays and no matter how bad it was out there, we'd all pile in the car and drive ten miles in a blizzard just for a bowl of her homemade chili. Have you ever had moose chili?"
"Please, sit down," Caitlin replies. It's not the right thing to say, but it's not the worst. She could have said some version of what she was thinking, which would have been something in the vicinity of "Right here against the glass is fine."
He finally catches a glimpse of the situation and for a moment apologetic distress is slapped all over his boyish good looks. "Ah, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to intrude. I'll just -"
Again, out of all the things Caitlin could have said in that moment, the words she hears herself say are, "It's okay, really. Please stay."
He chews anxiously on the inside of his cheek and looks up at her under his eyelashes to gauge her sincerity, which is - wow - somehow heartmeltingly cute and bloodrushingly hot at the same time. She can feel her ears going red under his studious gaze, but she scoots her chair closer to the window and pats the space between her e-reader and his tray as a gesture of welcome.
His mind seemingly made up for him, he sits more comfortably in his seat and holds out a hand. "Ronnie," he says, "Ronnie Raymond. Structural engineer."
"Dr. Caitlin Snow," she returns. His hand is huge and just as hot as he is and it's hard not to get lost in something as simple as a handshake. "Bio-engineer. It's very nice to meet you, Mr. Raymond."
"The pleasure's all mine, Dr. Snow."
Oh lord what has she done.
Contrary to what recent events would have you believe, Caitlin knows to to play it cool. They don't call her the Ice Queen for nothing.
Point in fact: it's been two weeks since her impromptu lunch date with Dreamy McHotterson, and she hasn't talked to him since.
That might be putting it a little harshly. It's not like she's gone out of her way to avoid him . . . except for once she might have caught sight of him talking with some technicians around the curve of a hallway and therefore ducked into the women's restroom and stood guiltily in the handicap stall for as long as reason could allow.
Ok. So that did happen. But she's not exactly giving him the cold shoulder, alright? Even including the time he got onto her elevator and she stepped off on the next floor, walked up two flights of stairs, and then took the next elevator to the ground level. That's a perfectly normal thing for a normal person to do . . . .
Let's be real. Caitlin Snow has no idea what she's doing.
The analytical part of her brain assures her that she's a strong, independent woman who is serious about her work and doesn't need to even think about distractions like pretty boys. Off the top of her head she knows three different formulas to quantify her biological response to the sum of his genes. She knows that she doesn't need romance (not to mention sex) in order to be the most complete person she knows how to be.
But there's more to Caitlin than just a razor-sharp mind, and of course there are slushy, melty bits puddling away at the edges of her icy resolve. Pudding-brain Caitlin wants to tear his clothes off with her teeth.
Reconciling these two mirror universe Caitlins is the underlying cause behind her temporary short-circuits. She can spend hours rationalizing her aloof behavior, but the second she claps eyes on him a whole host of unholy notions come over her and the end result is adrenaline-rich panic.
The other side of it is that in the two weeks since their meet-cute, Ronnie Raymond hasn't shouldered into her sphere of perception beyond the casual and coincidental crossed path. His polite greetings and sunny smiles set her fleeing without a valid excuse and it sort of sucks that he respects her reaction enough not to give chase.
The real casualty of this predicament is the sanctity of Caitlin's me-time.
Her scientist's mind assures her that all that needs be done is for her to exert her dominance and return to her normal schedule and habits, end of story.
But, seeing as her scientist's mind pulls the plug on itself whenever Ronnie Raymond enters a room, Caitlin hasn't risked her thirty-five canteen minutes in a while. Even if she tried, even if she hiked up there and he never showed, she'd still be sitting there all a-fluster, just waiting for the inevitable. It'd be awful, and totally not in the spirit of me-time.
Pretending not to hear her co-workers' raucous bet-taking on how much radiation it'll take before this cell sample mutates is not doing the trick, either.
One afternoon she even hustles herself out to her car, a venue in which she can maintain both silence and solitude. It seems like a great idea until she's sitting there like a frozen sardine. But it's okay! It's going to be okay. Then she flicks on her e-reader and notes the time with heartsinking disappointment.
The careful trek back across the parking lot seems to take twice as long, head down against the wind, skirting treacherous black ice and exhausting her supply of G-rated curses directed at whatever higher power whose bright idea it was to send Ronnie Raymond to Central City.
"Dr. Snow," he says by way of announcing himself, "They told me I could find you here, pardon me for interrupting your . . . lunch break?"
Despite the frostbite-threatening chill of the cold storage locker, Caitlin feels her face flush with heat. She tries to throw off the insulated jumpsuit she's been using as a snuggie, tries to tidy up the remains of her freezer-burned lunch, tries to get her feet off the shrink-wrapped crates she's converted into a table.
Dr. Harrison Wells, the man himself, leans in through the hatch. He lifts a hand to stay her, his breath fogging in the air. "No, don't get up on my account. I just read up on your team's latest breakthrough on the allele sequencing project. Brilliant work. Had to come straight down here and tell you myself."
"Oh!" Caitlin sits back in her chair, arms full of food wrappers and reflective microfiber. Her heart's racing with equal parts mortification and euphoria. "Thank you, Dr. Wells."
He makes a humble, self-deprecating noise and waves her off. "It's I who should be thanking you. S.T.A.R. Labs sits on the shoulders of giants, Dr. Snow, and please don't forget that you are, beyond a shadow of a doubt, one of those giants."
Caitlin can't think of anything intelligent to say to help validate that statement, so after a moment Dr. Wells excuses himself with a quiet, "That's all."
She sits a long time in the cold storage locker after that, through to the end of her lunch hour and then some. It's not like her boss will mind.
(Some claim that external validation is overrated, but it certainly doesn't hurt to hear it from The Harrison Fucking Wells.)
So here's how it finally goes down:
It's the mildest day of winter, one of those optimistic ones where the sun's out and the ice is starting to drip from the rooftops, and Dr. Caitlin Snow barely bats an eye to see Ronnie Raymond queuing up behind her at the canteen.
"Hi," she says. God, it's so easy. Why did it take so long to get her act together?
"Hello," he returns. The single word is warm, courteous, and just a tad surprised, like he thinks she might bolt if he tresspasses into actual conversation. His smile is honest, though, because she knows by now he's the type of guy who gives them freely even to the least deserving of screw-ups.
(A technician had installed a quarter mile of the wrong gauge electrical cable in the Pipeline, and she'd heard through the rumormill that Ronnie had pulled an extra shift just to help the poor kid re-lay it.)
She can see that the strength of her returning smile, with its sly little twist, surprises him all the more.
Stepping up to the register, Caitlin orders her regular smoothie, the novelty of which has ceased to shock the hired help. When prompted for any additions to her order, she flicks her eyes quickly to the side.
"Yes. I'd like to pay for whatever the gentleman in line behind me will have, please."
The kid behind the register squints. "Would you like to put in on the same bill, then, or?"
"Oh, um." Caitlin knows that this is a thing that people do, at least in the movies and things like that, but she's never actually thought through the logistics. She guesses she could just leave a twenty on the counter or something, but then how would she get her change? What if a twenty isn't enough to cover it? "Well, yes, I would, I suppose."
Caitlin draws up her shoulders and turns to Ronnie Raymond, whose eyebrows are preemptively raised. He's heard the whole exchange, of course.
"Ronnie Raymond," she says, "Today I am buying you lunch. If that's alright with you." She probably could have forgone the addendum, but at the last second she decides that she ought to show him at least a little of the same deference he's shown her.
"Are you sure?" He takes a step forward, though, tentative acceptance of her offer.
She nods solemnly. "I've never been more certain about anything in my life."
He chuckles and sidles agreeably up to the counter. "Can't argue with that," he says in aside. To the cashier: "Medium coffee, please. Room for cream."
He turns a beatific smile on Caitlin, but she just looks at him blankly.
"That's it?"
He shrugs. "Busy day. We have to have the full electromagnet array ready for Dr. Wells to inspect this afternoon. It's pretty crazy down there right now, and I can't be gone long. Thank you, though, for offering."
"I see." Caitlin quietly pays for their drinks, thinking quickly. They move to the pick-up counter, and she hands him a sleeve for his coffee. "Maybe we could do lunch some other time, then."
He's just as quick. "How about dinner?"
Her ears burn, but she's cool, this is cool. Everything is under control. "Yeah! Dinner. Dinner would be . . . excellent."
They grin at each other, a little awkward, a little spun up, both on the same page but still slightly startled at having arrived there so suddenly.
"Okay, wait," Ronnie says, and she braces herself for the inevitable question, "So, did I do - or say - something wrong when we first met? Because this whole time I've thought you were avoiding me for some reason? I mean, I'm glad that you're not, or if you changed your mind, that's great, but I just wasn't sure if we got off on the wrong foot or something."
Caitlin screws up her mouth in a little rueful smile, her head tilting to one side. "Would you take, for an answer, that it was me and not you? I just had some weird . . . brain malfunctions, or whatever, and I'm sorry if I made you think that I didn't like you. Because, I think, that you seem to be quite likeable."
He sighs, almost in relief. Then he ducks his head and does that sheepish cheek-chewing thing that makes her heart go pitter-pat. "Well good thing you've come to think so, because I was just about to give up apples for good."
The abrupt non-sequitur makes her laugh, and successfully eases the last of the twitchy tension between them. "I'm sorry?"
"Apples!" he says insistently. "You know, 'an apple a day' and all that. I had a working theory that my regular consumption of Granny Smiths was keeping you away."
"Oh! Oh, that's-" she thinks of what to say in response to this. Something witty? Something flirty? Ah, screw it, she's done enough over-thinking to last a dozen lifetimes- "That's not very scientific."
"You're telling me!" He cracks open the coffee sleeve and bends it into a circle a few times. "Anyway. You like pizza, by any chance?"
"I can do pizza," Caitlin agrees, something like giddiness bubbling up inside her. She dares to stab a finger into what turns out to be the iron-firm muscle of his upper arm. "You pick the place, 'cause I'm paying."
He holds up his hands playfully, an innocent. "Alright, alright, Dr. Snow, I readily accept your terms." The gesture shifts into a proffered handshake. "It's a date."
"A date." Caitlin puts her hand in his, just like on the day they met. For a brief flash, it really feels like they're signing a pact, sealing their destiny. Like that house-and-kids future might actually be waiting for them down the line.
Their drinks arrive on the counter. Ronnie turns to retrieve them both, sliding his cup into the readied sleeve and handing over her ice-blended concoction without comment. Then he takes her gently by the shoulder and leans in for a brazen kiss on the cheek.
"Thanks again for the coffee," he says, winking, which she would have hated if it had been anyone else, but from Ronnie Raymond she swoons. He's moving off before she can recover. "Catch you later, Cait."
Caitlin watches him go, left to the business of inhaling her smoothie, trigeminal headache be damned, feeling like she'll never be able to ice this blazing ardor he's sparked in her.