A/N: Big thanks to TigStripe for a speedy, late notice beta for this. Written for the dctvfluffweekend2018.
Barry/Iris is mentioned during the story and there is also a brief reference to racism.
On My Skin It Sinks In
Barely anyone is born with a soulmark. It's common knowledge that nearly everyone will develop one at some point. Some people get them early, others crushingly late, but one thing is considered true: your mark will come, your time will come.
Dante got his early on in life, treated by their parents as if that was a fabulous surprise to contrast their disappointment each year as Cisco confirmed he still had none. Dante's mark was the opening few chords of a tune, and their parents jumped on it. They did everything they could to encourage that connection, to ensure their son's happiness. Cisco grew up in the shadow of Dante's great start, around people who ignored the evidence showing Dante seemed to stagnate after discovering his mark. Especially annoying to Cisco was the fact that no one ever talked about how incredibly depressing the beginning of Dante's song actually sounded.
Cisco gets on with his life – mark-less - because there really isn't anything else to do about it. He's young, he has aspirations of his own, and there was hardly any shortage of things to pour his time into, even if his parents did look at him like he'd grown a new head anytime he said more than two sentences about what he studied. Unlike other people, he doesn't put much stock in what you could tell about someone by their mark, but some people definitely do react badly if they find out you don't have one yet. Freaking interviewers ask him about this from time to time – très professionnel of them. They treat it like some awful crime of character to not have found where you belong by the tender age of twenty. That type of shit only compounds the ache he feels inside, because he does want to get his mark. The sadness he feels at not having any hint of where he belongs is a hurt he tries to distract himself from, with dreams of changing the world. He ain't gonna let other people define him, not with their assumptions, and not by the 'who' he lacks – he's over being judged by his skin, in either sense that gets applied to him. So he wears geeky t-shirts to interviews, has snarky comebacks for the asshole questions that get asked - it's not like he wants to work for anyone who asks stuff that craptacular – and waits for someone to see him for who he is. He waits for someone to see who he could be on his own merits - for someone to want his energy.
The day he starts at S.T.A.R. Labs he notices an itch in the place over his heart. Common sense says it isn't anything significant, but he just knows something has changed. Touching the sensitive skin, he can't see or feel any difference whatsoever. Cool your jets, Cisco, what did you expect?
Eventually, he is proven correct - he didn't imagine it. Day by day, he watches the skin darken, forming at first into a black spot – kind of piratical there, he thinks - and then spreading out into more of a splotch. He squints at it over and over, trying to figure out what the hell it could be. At last, it takes on a more definitive form with shapes almost like tendrils spreading out from the center of it, but they soon solidify into straight lines, most of them filling out over weeks. It isn't too long before he realizes what it is – the logo of S.T.A.R. Labs.
The day the mark blooms, stark and complete upon his chest, is the day the particle accelerator goes online – fitting for the culmination of everything he, and everyone else in the building, have worked so hard for. His fingers absent-mindedly trace the mark over his shirt as he watches Dr. Wells hit the switch. It feels so incredibly right in that moment, as they succeed in reaching for the stars his mentor has sought. But that night, his world implodes, and Cisco can't help but feel the explosiveness of the star could be practically prophetic.
There are many reasons Cisco sticks it out with S.T.A.R. Labs post-kaboom – guilt, wanting to help Dr. Wells, wanting to make it up to the city somehow, helping hold Caitlin together in her grief – but it's no lie that he feels tied to the place, wondering if what he has been given is this ill-fated building that used to be more of a home than any he'd actually lived in. So many of the people are gone now, but it's still the only place to be; the only place he can imagine being.
It hurts to walk the empty halls, to listen for footfalls that won't come, and yet he knows this is where he should be, coming from a sense he can't dismiss. As he stands in the Cortex, there's a different energy there now, an echo of what it once was, but it's on a frequency that feels in harmony with his own. He doesn't know what that says about him. He puts that to the back of his mind because honestly, he doesn't think much about himself in the aftermath; too many other people need him and he always has welcomed distractions.
He'd thought for years that the place was what he was tied to, but when Caitlin leaves to 'find herself' and Barry walks into the Speedforce like the hapless hero that he is, Cisco suddenly doesn't feel at home at S.T.A.R. Labs anymore. He's hardly alone – there's Iris and Wally and Joe – but everything is thrown off by the recent departure of his friends. No matter how much time passes, he can't give up his plan like Iris asks him to. He tries desperately to track Caitlin down and keeps trying to find a way to bring Barry back. Because he wants to bring Barry home. It isn't home without him, without Caitlin – and when they are there on the airfield, wind blowing in his hair, hopeful, Cisco feels it again: the sense of place that he's pretty sure is something more substantial. He's not sure the airfield being property of S.T.A.R. Labs should really count the same, and that sets off an alarm in his brain - a thought ticking over behind the chaos that comes from their efforts.
After Barry has come back to them, in body and mind, Cisco hangs about, watching Caitlin do her thing. There's a strange and simple joy at seeing her and Barry there, almost as if nothing has changed. A little while into the exam she's performing, Cisco busies himself in the background on one of the computers, giving some privacy. When Caitlin gasps, he is utterly clueless about the cause and on high alert, scrambling into the room.
"How long have you had that?" Caitlin asks, voice high, not exactly panicky and yet hardly calm. What that is is not clear, Caitlin looking like she jumped back from Barry but waving erratically to motion at his torso.
Cisco sees Barry stretch the hem of his white t-shirt up, peering at something black underneath on his abs – Cisco's breath catches at the hint of familiarity to the shape he spies, shown too rapidly for him to be sure.
"Oh, that, I think it's new," Barry replies casually, like it's no big deal he has an entirely new soulmark, compliments of his sabbatical in the Speedforce. They'd all known Barry has one he shares with Iris, completely head-over-heels with her, but another soulmark is unusual, if not previously thought impossible, like Barry himself and the odds stacked against him for his return to the team.
Cisco doesn't feel that way – all romance and flowers style - about Barry or Caitlin, but he would die for them. Hell, he'd probably kill for them, and that's a thought that makes a chill run through him, a recognition of the power of their connection. A connection he'd felt in the past but never seen for exactly what it was - what he'd made of it. Growing slowly but surely, with every day, like his mark had once. Around about the time he'd started getting to know Caitlin, when he'd first felt at home here, which makes him feel extra dense to not have noticed the correlation that was totally causation too.
"I gotta know," Cisco says, shaking a bit as he undoes several buttons of his shirt and clasps the collar of the t-shirt underneath, ready to reveal, "Does it look like this?"
Caitlin claps a hand over her mouth at the sight of his soulmark. In contrast, Barry's eyebrows raise in very slight surprise before cracking into a smile and nodding firmly to Cisco. Cisco looks back to Caitlin, concerned. It isn't like her to shock easily. She turns her back to them, and Cisco is irrationally scared for a second, afraid this will cause a rift between them. All that happens is she sweeps her hair back, baring the nape of her neck, sharing a matching mark.
As she hides the black star away, she faces them again and explains, voice quieter than usual, and less certain, despite the revelation. "I waited so long for my mark. I've felt it for years, as if it was just under my skin but it didn't appear until I left," Caitlin takes a moment to glance to each of them, a look equally relieved and sorrowful. "- when I realized how much I missed you both, how this was my home."
Cisco can't help but grin, though it's his turn to have two sets of eyes on him, awaiting the all-important lowdown.
"I totally have you both beat," he says, finger guns splayed out in their directions to illustrate his point. "Had mine from pretty much the day I signed on here. I thought..." And this is where it becomes hard to speak, thoughts that have been milling about his head for years coalescing into a new configuration, finding meaning he hadn't ever intended to put out there, but if there is anyone he can spill his guts to, it's the people in front of him.
"I thought," he hesitates to swallow down the old fears surfacing at the memories, "- that this place was my thing. My responsibility, my culpability, tying me down. I even thought this," he says, pulling at his shirt to indicate the mark underneath, at how torn the idea caused him to feel, "might tie me to 'Wells'. To him."
"Thawne," Barry adds, catching on to what he means, understanding his worry. He says the name lowly, with an edge of anger Cisco gets as well. He'd been so afraid he couldn't escape the legacy of what Eobard had put him through, and it wasn't really much different for Barry, except in the specifics, in how Thawne had forced unseen marks – invisible scars inflicted - upon them all.
"I thought, at best, I had a place, but now I know, I have my people. You're my people."
Embarrassingly, tears are rolling down his cheeks as he reaches his conclusion. Happy tears, he realizes, grinning again, and decides that he should screw feeling bad about it; he's earned this, he has zero regrets about being vulnerable with his friends, his soulmates.
Cisco's compelled to step forward, to close the distance that is way too much for his liking, and he's clearly not the only one, as Barry hops off the bed and Caitlin rushes forward too – they meet in a clumsy huddle and Cisco has his arms around them in no time. He's never been shy about hugs, but this is another thing entirely - not brief in any way.
He lets himself be overcome with the comfort of knowing they're safe in his arms and the gratitude of finding what he's been waiting so patiently for. Finally, he has his place with his people. They've already shared so much history, the experiences that built the foundation of their friendship, and whatever comes, he's relieved they'll do it together. Stronger together, happier together.