(A/N) For the date prompt: "gym date" from Tumblr
"So, wait," Cisco said, pulling his straw out of his cup and sucking slushie out the end. "Gym dates, this is, like, a thing? That people do, on purpose?"
"Yes."
"You lift weights together? Treadmill together? Get all hot and sweaty and gross and then, what, make out dripping sweat on each other? Explain to me how that's sexy."
"Endorphins," Caitlin said primly. "Anyway, don't tell me you've never been to a gym."
"Nope."
"Please."
"Nope."
"Surely you work out." With those arms? With his sweet tooth? He had to work out.
He shrugged. "I have a free-weight set I got off Craigslist and I do Fib sets when my brain is all scrambled. Plus, besides running around here - " He gestured at the entirety of Star Labs with his slushie cup, "I live on the fourth floor and if the elevator isn't broken down, it's about to. I get plenty of cardio."
Well, that was a fair point. Certainly she got an excellent workout every time she went over there. "Fib sets? Like the Fibonacci sequence?" Those numbers got big in a hurry. No wonder those arms.
He shrugged again. "It's mostly about the counting, really. Why are you so fixated on this?"
She played with one of the strings of his hoodie. "Well. Now that we've gotten Barry to agree to getting our help in the field more often, I really feel like we should work on our overall health and fitness if we're going to be fighting a lot."
"Lightning didn't give us abs, that's for sure," he muttered. "Okay, I get that, but look, I'm not the gym type, Caitlin. I don't put on a tank top and go show off how much I can bench press or how fast I can run. Who wants to run? I leave that to Barry."
"Nobody said you had to do any of that." Although privately Caitlin would not have minded seeing her boyfriend in a tight tank top. He wore such enveloping clothes all the time, and he refused to believe her that his body was very appealing, even though she should know. "Let me put it this way. Come to the gym with me today. Try it. You'll get to see me in a sports bra and yoga pants while I work out."
"Come over to my place in that getup and use my free weight set. Boom."
She brought out her big guns. "They have a smoothie bar."
He chewed the end of his straw. "Keep talking."
In the parking lot, he turned to her. "You know what, if you'd led with, 'I think the smoothie guy at my gym is an evil metahuman,' you wouldn't have had to wheedle so much."
"I wasn't one hundred percent sure and I didn't want to risk confirmation bias." She ducked under the caution tape that the cops were setting up. Her ponytail swung over her shoulder with the motion and she checked it. Back to brown, thank goodness. The physical transformation when she opened the throttle on her ice powers wasn't exactly subtle.
Cisco looked over his shoulder. "Instead, your gym is shut down for renovations for - " He cocked his head. "I'd say four to six weeks?"
She pouted. "And anyway, I didn't know he was evil. People can be metahumans without being evil. Look at you and me."
"Yeah, okay, I get that, but you have to admit, statistically? We're kind of an anomaly."
"I'm sure there are plenty of metahumans living regular lives without causing mayhem."
"Right, sure, yeah, but we never meet them."
Unfortunately true. "It wasn't just about the smoothie guy. I really do think we should both work on our physical fitness."
He was still sweating and out of breath. "Okay, after that fight, I can't argue with you. But I still don't know why I had to do squats."
She kissed his cheek. "That was for me. I wanted to check out your butt."
"You were in front of me."
"And you were backed up to a mirror."
"Wait, that's what they're for?"
"Please. Of course that's what they're for."
"Hunh," he said.
At her car, she leaned against the door. "So, are you coming around on the idea of gym dates?"
"Hell, no," he said, bracing one hand next to her hip so their bodies hovered about an inch apart. "If I'm gonna work out, I wanna do the Fib sequence without wondering if I'll have to fight somebody in the middle of it. But - " He reached up and flicked a tendril of hair that had escaped her ponytail and curled in front of her ear.
She rested her hands on his chest, smiling heavy-lidded at him. He was deliciously overheated, and she drew some of it out (gently gently gently mmmm). There was a little dark edge of sweat around the neckline of his Star Wars t-shirt, and she thought that if she kissed him right there, she would taste salt.
He bumped her nose with his, grinned, and planted a kiss on her lips. "I actually do see your point about the endorphins."
FINIS
