Moon

By: Riley

Summary – A third grade science project is something that even Barry can't resist. You don't have to read Flash Fire or Crossfire to understand this. Please read and review.

"I don't see anything. Is it pointed the right way?"

Barry stood up from the picnic blanket spread out along the ground and brushed off the seat of his pants. He walked over to Brady and gently pushed him out of the way of the telescope, pressing his eye against the eye-piece. His eyebrows furrowed as darkness met his gaze and he took a step back, glancing at the moon that rested in the sky. Then he turned back to the telescope and gazed over it.

A light chuckle escaped his lips. "No, it works fine. The coordinates are put in wrong, so it's pointed towards the ground." He turned back to Cisco, who made a sound of offense, also going as far as to put his hands on his hips.

"Those coordinates are not wrong," he defended himself. "This telescope is one of STAR Labs's greatest inventions and has sold numerous units throughout Central City alone." He walked over to Barry and reached out his hand, pushing him back out of the way. "I'll have you know I invented it myself."

"Which explains a lot," Caitlin added. Barry turned to look at her as she and Cadence unfolded a picnic blanket and spread it out along the ground. She stood up straight, crossing her arms over her chest. "There was a recall of the telescope because of an exploding lens."

"Yes, I seem to remember that," Harrison added from where he sat quietly in his wheelchair, a blanket tucked around his legs. "We narrowly managed to avoid having a lawsuit placed against us."

"Okay, okay, let's be honest here. It wouldn't have been the first lawsuit placed against STAR Labs, okay?" Cisco defended himself, holding up his hands. He gave Caitlin a knowing glance and in the moonlight Barry could see she was blushing. "So I'm not the one who should have the fingers pointed at them."

"I did offer to bring my telescope," Barry pointed out.

"That dinky thing probably couldn't even find Mars. If you want to do some star-gazing you need to do it right." With that, Cisco knelt down on the ground by a keyboard mounted on the side of the telescope and started to type in the coordinates.

Brady twisted his mouth to the side and turned to Cadence. "Mom, does Cisco always get upset over his telescope like that?"

"Not just the telescope, bud. If you say anything bad against one of his inventions, or imply that his suit is yours he gets really anal retentive," Cadence remarked. Brady shrugged and walked over to his mother, as she sat on the picnic blanket, and sat in her lap. He played with her fingers as he waited for Cisco to fix the telescope. "Um, excuse me, but this is your homework, why are you making the rest of us do it for you?"

"I just have to look at the moon, draw a picture of it, and describe it," Brady pointed out. "It's not a rocket scientist."

"The correct phrase you're looking for is it's 'not rocket science'," Harrison corrected him.

"Whatever."

Barry laughed.

He turned and glanced up at the clear sky once more. It really was the perfect night to do it; there wasn't a cloud in the sky and the hill top they had picked out in the park faced away from the city so the lights wouldn't get in the way. Stars dotted the skyline and the background blues, blacks, and purples swirled together perfectly a direct contrast to the brightness of the moon.

It was really romantic. Actually, he remembered times where he and his dad would go out into the backyard on a particularly clear night to look at the moon and whatever planets were visible at the time. Then his mother would come out with refreshments for the two of them and would join them. While Barry stood at the telescope, turning it this way and that to find anything and everything across the starry plane his mother would snuggle up against his father and the two would look on with pride.

He was sure there were stolen kisses that went on behind him, of which he would have been mortified to see at that age, but now missed the moments of his parents together as much as he missed the three of them being a family.

A disappointed sigh escaped Barry's lips. He knew not to expect when Cadence asked him to check out the moon that night for it to be a date. She had straight up mentioned it was to help Brady with his school project. And with Cisco, Caitlin, and Harrison being as big of scientists as he was, at least one of them had to be interested in doing it as well. It wasn't so bad; being able to all hang out without the pressures of metahumans was becoming more scarce as the days passed.

Earlier that day Barry was so engrossed in his forensics work that when Cadence teleported into his field of view he let out a startled cry and jumped backwards in his chair. His chair wheeled across the floor and started to tilt backwards at the same time, but he used his super speed to quickly right himself.

"Lunch break?" She asked as he fought to catch his breath.

At the moment Barry figured he'd need to skip his lunch break and go to the hospital to make sure he wasn't having a heart attack. Or at least go to STAR Labs. The machines at the hospital couldn't catch his heartbeat when it was moving fast due to his powers it wouldn't help with how fast it was beating now.

"You really have to stop doing that," he said. His eyebrows lowered as Cadence chuckled. "What if someone else was in here when you did that?"

"I made sure there was no one around and besides, what's the point of having powers if you don't get to use them every now and then Mr. I-use-my-powers-to-make-my-day-of-work-go-by-faster."

Barry smiled. "You try doing as many forensic tests and paperwork that I have to do and tell me you wouldn't use your powers to make it go by faster."

"Well, if there was any way I could do autopsies faster without burning them to a crisp then I'd agree with you," Cadence said. Barry made a face and she laughed again. "You work in the medical field and you get used to gross things fairly quickly. Anyway, do you want to get lunch or what?"

Leaning back in his seat, Barry rubbed his eyes before glancing at his watch. They had been working all day. Of course Captain Singh had been keeping a close eye on his work for the past couple of days due to his consistent excuses to leave for some metahuman related reason.

Cadence seemed to read his mind as she said, "Captain Singh's already went off on his break. I made sure before I came up here." With that Cadence reached out and grabbed onto his hand, pulling him out of his seat and towards the door. He relished the warmth of her hand, wondering if-even without her powers-she was always so warm and inviting; personality aside. As they walked Cadence tilted her head, looking at him funny. "I don't know about you, but he seems to have a bit of an obsession with what you're doing."

"Yeah, well, Captain Singh has had it out for me ever since I started working here," Barry replied. He rolled his eyes. "I think he was really weary of having someone so young on the force but he was impressed when I showed I knew what I was talking about." The two left his office, heading down to the bottom floor of the precinct side-by-side, to the point that whoever was coming up the stairs had to squeeze out of the way as they went. "I think he's only said 'good job' to be me once since I've started."

"Or he might be trying to get you to be the best CSI you can, just to play devil's advocate for a second," Cadence reminded him.

Barry laughed sarcastically. They made it out to the street and wandered down the sidewalk. "And how many times have you come complaining to me about Captain Singh being a hardass to you?"

Cadence rolled her eyes but had to admit defeat. "Too many times to count. Okay, maybe he's as high-strung as everyone else says. But I'm telling you, I'm going to make that guy be nice at least once!"

"Good luck."

The strolled to the park, stopping at a hot dog stand as they went. Finally they then sat down in a grassy area to enjoy their lunch which made Barry realize that Cadence had let go of his hand. It confused him a little; they were great friends, best friends even. They'd always been so open to each other since they met and he did like her he just...couldn't understand why she would like him. By that point he talked himself out of the possibility; girls never really liked him that way except for his high school girlfriend...and Felicity.

But they were different, they were all different form each other. But why would anyone want to go out with Barry when they could go out with The Flash? Even as he looked over at Cadence now, causing her to smile back, he had to push the thought away that she was, indeed, flirting with him.

Barry laughed once Cadence finished her hot dog and stretched out onto the grass, a big smile on her face, eyes closed as she turned towards the sunlight.

"Enjoying the weather, huh?" he teased.

"Don't you just love it? It's so warm!" Cadence rolled her head to the side and shielded her eyes with her hand. "I just love the feeling of the sunlight. If I could go the entire day sunbathing I'd be happy." She paused. "It also makes me kind of lazy, but it's a win-win."

"Lazy?" Barry thought for a moment. He stretched out his legs as well, crossing them at the ankle. "Oh, you mean lethargic? That makes sense. It's like when a lizard lays out in the sun. It needs to use the heat from the sun to jump start its metabolism and body temperature. Any source of heat you can absorb must do the same to your powers."

Cadence frowned and her eyes narrowed for a minute. "Did you seriously just compare me to a cold blooded reptile? I'd like to think I'm cuter than that."

"Oh." Barry's eyes widened when he realized the mistake he made. "No! That's not what I meant. I didn't mean to imply…I'm just saying t-that your powers are similar to h-how that works. I think you're really…" Then he realized Cadence was laughing and he blushed, looking away "I hate it when you do that."

"Sorry, it's just so hard to resist," she apologized. She sat up, brushing her hair back out of her face, flashing him—if it were possible—an even warmer smile. "It's really funny to see you get so worked up like that."

"It is until you realize you've managed to offend numerous people from your motor-mouth," Barry reminded her. He bobbed his head back and forth. "Which, honestly, is probably another reason why Captain Singh dislikes me so much."

"No one in their right mind can dislike you, Barry," Cadence reminded him. "But this is Captain Singh we're talking about so…" The two laughed again.

He was glad she never asked him to finish what he had been saying before. Even with his motor mouth he didn't think he'd be able to finally spit it out. Instead they changed the topic to practically everything else; from work to family to friends to things they had seen in the news that day. Which was when Cadence brought up her son's homework.

"I figured STAR Labs would probably have a good telescope we could use but I have no idea how to work it," she said.

"It's really simple once you get the hang of it," Barry replied. "I used to go stargazing with my mom and dad all the time." A wistful smile came to his face. "Actually, for a while I wanted to become an astronaut so I could explore space more than we already have."

"Would you mind coming over to help us out? It'd be a great favor to me and I'm sure Brady would have fun."

"Yeah…that sounds like it could be fun."

Next thing he knew he was asking Cisco about the power of the telescopes in STAR Labs, he and Caitlin invited themselves along, and Caitlin invited Harrison as well.

"Okay, I think we got it working now." Cisco's voice broke him out of his thoughts. He moved around Barry and looked into the eye-piece. "Yep, we've got a picture-perfect view of the moon."

"Come check it out, Brady," Barry called him over. Brady leaned over and picked up his notebook from the ground. He eagerly ran over to the two scientists and Barry knelt down by his side as he looked through. "You can see it perfectly, huh?"

"Yeah, I can see everything. Those are really big creates on the moon," Brady replied. Then he frowned. "I can't see the American Flag though. Isn't there supposed to be an American Flag on the moon?"

"That's so far away. You'd have to get a lot closer to see it," Caitlin gently reminded him.

"Even the footprints?"

"Even the footprints." Harrison maneuvered his wheelchair over on the soft grass. "You know there are many people that don't believe people actually walked on the moon. Of course we have science to back up one of the greatest feats in American history let alone in aerospace engineering."

Now Brady looked even more incensed as he pulled his head back from the eyepiece. "How can people think its fake? It's in all the history books. They even had the land rover up there! I know, we went over it in class."

"Well, that's the point about science, there are always going to be people that don't believe it." Harrison smiled over at him, resting his hands in his lap. "But we just have to prove them wrong."

Brady smiled back.

Barry took a step away from the group as Harrison and Cisco both started to explain the history of NASA—of which Barry wasn't entirely sure Brady had any interest in—and walked over to the picnic blanket, finding Cadence watching the group with a peculiar look on her face. No, not peculiar, serene.

"They seem to be having a good time," Cadence remarked as Barry sat down next to her. He stretched out his legs and crossed them at the ankle as he had done earlier that day.

"Yeah. I never knew they were so into this stuff," Barry murmured in response.

"Well, I figured anything scientific they wouldn't be able to resist. I just didn't think it'd work so well."

"I guess—"Barry suddenly trailed off, realizing what Cadence had said. He could feel himself start to blush a little bit and looked over to see her smiling a small, secretive smile. "You…you planned this?"

Cadence pulled her hair behind her ear. "Sort of." There was a long moment of silence before she spoke again. "You know for a long time it's just been me and Brady. But now with you and Caitlin and Cisco and Harrison it's like we have a family again. And you've been a really big part of that Barry, especially towards Brady. But you've helped me, too. I don't feel like the odd one out with my powers and everything else I couldn't explain…It just puts things into perspective." She shifted closer to him, gently resting her hand on his arm.

Barry looked down at her hand then back at her face. She looked intently at him, he could feel heat radiating off her body, she sat so close. Gently licking his lips, Barry started to lean towards her, then stopped for a second when he felt her breath on his face, then leaned in, closing the gap between them.

Barry closed his eyes as his lips moved over hers. He gently tilted his head to the side, bringing his hand up to cradle her face. Despite the colder temperatures of the night Cadence's body heat kept the two warm within their embrace.

"You know, I was flirting with you all day and you didn't make a move," Cadence remarked once the kiss ended.

Barry shrugged and smiled. "I guess I'm kind of slow."

THE END