(A/N): Sequel to A Basis for Comparison, A Question of Definition, and a Moment in Time.
Rain drummed against the skylights as Caitlin shut down the computers and the lights. She was the last out. It was late enough, and the weather bad enough, that she briefly considered just staying. Sleeping on a futon in a spare office, showering and changing into the extra clothes they all kept here for late night Flash related drama.
But she was definitely going to cry tonight, and she'd rather do it at home.
She took one last pass through the cortex and saw a phone sitting on a countertop. It wasn't hers. When she hit the button, the lock screen showed Iris, sticking her tongue out.
Caitlin pulled out her own phone and texted Iris - Tell Barry I've got his phone. I'm going home.
Without waiting for an answer, she put both phones in her pocket and shrugged into her coat.
She'd waited all day, her shoulders knotted tight, for something to turn up on her desk from Cisco. Chocolates or a balloon or a cheesy stuffed animal clutching a pillow with some dumb, punny motto on it. He'd given her something every other year, grinning at her when she rolled her eyes and grumbled about Hallmark holidays.
But he'd been quiet today, working on the treadmill, buried in his lab, even tinkering on the cells in the pipeline. Avoiding her, maybe.
Which was fine. Totally fine. She didn't want some fake, jokey expression of love and devotion.
Not from him of all people.
Valentine's Day was almost over. She had about four more hours and then it would be done and she wouldn't have to dread it anymore. The hearts and the flowers would be gone from all the stores, replaced with Easter things - always weird for the Jewish girl, but incredibly welcome this year. If she stayed out of her local Albertson's for about a week, she wouldn't even have to see the half-price boxes of chocolates and clearance-rack stuffed animals.
God, Valentine's Day was the worst when you had a broken heart.
You did this to yourself, she thought fiercely, swiping at her burning eyes. You broke it off.
Could you even call it "breaking things off" when you'd never exactly started anything? It had all been so loose, so casual that the easiest thing to do was just stop.
So she'd stopped.
Stopped going over to his place when he suggested it on their way out the door, stopped answering sure when he texted can I come over, made up excuses to avoid their regular get-togethers (not dates, they'd never been dates).
Just … stopped.
He'd kept asking for about a week, the look in his eyes gradually going from surprised to confused to wounded to resigned, and then he'd stopped too. That had been a week ago.
And while she'd spent most of those two weeks completely miserable, she also hadn't once had to stop herself from kissing him outside of the bedroom, or saying no, stay when he got up to leave. Or saying I love you when they were curled up together, skin to skin, and she could feel his heartbeat slowing in time with hers.
From doing something complicated.
She wiped her eyes again.
You just wanted different things, she told herself. It happens every day. Two people who care about each other but they aren't in the same place. They don't want the same things. He wants casual, easy, uncomplicated, and she wants -
Oh, she was getting started on her crying now.
How efficient of her.
When she stepped out into the rain, she realized she'd left her umbrella inside. She was just miserable enough not to care. Fine. Rain on her. Let her get soaked to the skin. Let her makeup run and her hair get all stringy. Just really go for the drowned rat look.
But it was cold, too, a biting chilly wind that boded freezing rain overnight. As long as she got home before that started. Her day was bad enough; she didn't have to compound it by wrapping her car around a telephone pole.
With that in mind, she sniffled and snuffled and took deep breaths for about five minutes before she started up her car. She was able to drive most of the way home by concentrating hard on the dark road and the swish of the wipers and how cold her soaked feet were getting, even with the heater on. Maybe she should take it in for service.
At the last stoplight before her house, she blew her nose. Her phone buzzed with a text against her hip. She left it. She could read it in a minute, when she got home.
Then it buzzed again, and twice more.
Either somebody was really trying to get ahold of her or -
Cisco texted like that. Short, rapid-fire bursts of somebody who had unlimited texts and liked to test that theory.
With a screech of tires and a burst of horns from other drivers, she pulled over into an empty parking lot. She fumbled her phone out of her pocket and found the screen dark. She woke it up and checked her texts. Nothing.
One more buzz at her hip, and she realized - oh. Barry's phone.
She slid her hand into her pocket, intending to pull it out and stuff it in her purse, but something made her look at the lock screen. A line of texts stacked up.
Chng / plans
Not gttg drnk
Smthg stupider
Tkng ur advice
Did u no they sell roses at Safeway
She stared at the screen until it went dark on its own.
Obviously Cisco thought he was texting Barry. It had been a breach of privacy to even look at the screen.
But.
Roses?
On Valentine's Day?
She tried the first passcode that came to mind, (4-7-4-7 for I-r-i-s, oh my god, Barry, please at least try to be secure) and quickly typed Who are the roses for?
She stared at the screen, chewing her knuckles.
An eternity later, he wrote back who do u think
She growled.
What are you going to do?
Go full romcom
Dont hv a boombox 2 hold up
but I got roses
Shitty shitty roses
Tulips r her fave but I couldnt find any
Caitlin clapped her hands over her mouth. Tulips were her favorite flower. She didn't even know Cisco knew that.
She had to try three times to type out Are you just going to leave them for her?
no im going 2 sit here til she gets home
& then beg
on my knees
For what?
dont no
Her 2 take me back
or xpln what I did
or just tell me when she stopped wanting me
She dropped the phone on the passenger seat as if it had burned her. Her breath came in hiccups.
Stopped wanting him?
She wanted too much, that was the problem. It was never about stopping.
She wished she could stop.
The phone lit again, bathing the interior of her car in cold bluish light.
I dont get it
Y did she leave
She pressed her fingers to her eyes to stop herself from texting back: Because when you touch me or kiss me, I want to settle for less because even that much is so good. And I hate that what we do is enough for you.
He would feel awful.
That was one of the worst parts. She knew he loved her, as his best friend, as one of his favorite people in the world, but not like that. Not like she wanted. And knowing he'd hurt her would hurt him almost as badly.
It was why she'd decided just to walk away. Even at the time, she'd known it was a bad choice, but it was the best of the options that she could see.
Shes not home yet
I hope shes ok
She wiped her face, panting slightly. He was sitting on her doorstep. And while the rain had let up a little, it was still coming down.
She had a moment where she debated avoiding him completely. Just sleeping here in her car, two blocks away from her own house and her own bed.
But no need to compound her cowardice. This had to come sooner or later. They had to talk about it. And better now, alone, then it bursting out at work somehow.
Maybe once he understood, they could agree to keep it quiet and never tell anybody. Things would be rough for a while. But eventually, maybe, things would go back to normal.
Close to normal.
She blew her nose again and started up her car.
When she pulled into her driveway, she sat for a moment, staring at her front door. The rain had slowed enough that her wipers, still going at top speed, screeched against the glass. He was leaning against her door, staring at his phone.
As she approached, he looked up. "Barry leave his phone in the lab?"
She gulped. "You," she said. "You knew."
He gestured with the roses. A whole bloom fell off and splashed into the puddle by the side of her front walk. "You're the only person I know that uses punctuation in texts."
She wiped her eyes, hoping that he would attribute her smeared makeup to the rain.
He flicked his thumb back and forth over the ends of the stems, then let out his breath and started to get down on his knees.
"Don't," she croaked.
He froze, staring at her. After a minute, he straightened up. "Yeah, okay," he muttered, and tossed the roses into the bushes.
She felt more hot tears trickle down her face.
She should invite him in. It was awful out here, chilly and soggy. The teeny awning over her front door was doing precisely nothing to shield either of them from the rain, never mind the wind.
But if they got inside, it would be too easy to start kissing him, touching him, pulling his clothes off. Inevitably, it would end with them tangled up together on the nearest flat surface, where she would close her eyes and hold him tight, pretending to herself that he felt the same way she did.
"Just tell me something, okay?" he said.
"What?"
"What happened? Things were okay, I thought. Things were good. But then you were acting weird and - and then you never came over again. You were busy, or you weren't feeling well, or you'd already eaten dinner, or - " He gulped. "What'd I do?"
"You didn't do anything. It - "
"Do not say 'it's not you, it's me,'" he said. "Because that's the worst, I swear to God."
She clamped her teeth into her lip until it stopped quivering, and then said, "The thing is, sex was just something we did together."
He looked at her blankly.
"I mean - I mean, we would get a drink or we would eat dinner or watch a movie or have sex. It was just part of - of being best friends."
He shook his head slowly. "Still not getting it. Was it too much? Too little? Was I doing something wrong? I don't know what to fix unless you tell me."
"I loved it," she said. "It was perfect." His hands on her skin, their breath coming in bursts, their lips greedy on each others', her brain swamped with the pleasure of his nearness, burying everything but that for a little while.
"Then why did you stop? And while we're on the subject, why did you stop everything? Because I've only seen you at work for the past two weeks, that's the longest we've gone without hanging out since the explosion. And you don't text me back and y-you don't give me high fives and - and - we don't talk - " He trailed off, looking miserable.
"Cisco, please, just give me some time and we can go back to the way things were before, okay? But without the sex."
"But why not? You loved it. You said it was - "
"That was - that was just too - close to what I wanted."
"What did you want?" he asked in a low voice. The rain was picking up again, drumming down so hard that the drops hit the sidewalk and bounced up again.
Her voice shook. "Complicated."
She barely heard the word over the thudding of raindrops, but she saw it register with him, a jolt like he'd been struck by lightning. His mouth shaped a couple of words.
"What?"
He took a gulping breath. "I said - with me?"
"Who else are we talking about?"
"I don't - I - I never - "
"I know," she said. "I know that's not what you want, which is fine. I understand. I really do. But I can't make myself not want it anymore than I can change what you want. So, see, it is me." She wiped her eyes again. "Cisco, I'm sorry, I need to - "
She pushed past him, expecting him to step back and let her go inside.
But he didn't move.
"Please," she said wretchedly, feeling sobs rise in her throat. "I want to go inside, I -" She hiccuped.
His arms came around her, and he said, "Caitlin. Caitlin," in her ear.
She let herself sink into his arms, pressing her face to his damp hair, shaking all over. She shouldn't. She should be strong, she should -
"I love you."
And now she'd gone and said it, and - wait. She hadn't said anything.
"I love you," he said again.
She pushed him away so hard she almost fell off her porch. He reached out and grabbed her before she did.
"That was awful," she snarled, slapping at his hand until he let go. "That was an awful thing to say." She'd started to shiver, deep earthquake shivers that rattled her bones.
"I said I love you," he said, looking confused.
"I know! I heard you! And you've never, ever pretended like this was more than what it was - " She was crying again. There was snot, probably. " - and I know that when you say that, you love me as a friend, but don't you think that right now is a very, very bad time for me to hear that?"
"A friend? Are you serious right now? Will you step back and take a look at what's going on?" He stuck his hands into the bushes, yelped, swore, and pulled out the roses he'd tossed aside, a lot the worse for wear for their time in the holly. "I'm standing on your doorstep in the pouring rain, freezing my ass off, with - " He shook the roses and more of them fell off their stems. " - the best roses I could find at eight o'clock at night on Valentine's Day, and believe me, that's one picked-over sorry-ass selection right there. Does that sound like somebody who just loves you as a friend?"
"But," she said.
"Does it?"
"You kept saying it didn't have to be complicated. We were just best friends who slept together. You said it all the time, Cisco! Why?"
His throat worked. "Because I wanted you to stay."
She shook her head slowly. "I don't understand."
"Because if you knew how I felt, you'd feel bad for me. Guilty. Sorry that you'd hurt me. I didn't want to put that on you. I mean, I thought about this and worried about it and decided that I'd be a good guy when you found someone better and step back."
She stood looking at him, feeling rain drip from her bangs, feeling the past months reframe themselves around her. Both of them feeling the same thing, too scared to say it to each other and upset the delicate balance of their casual, easy, uncomplicated relationship.
For two geniuses, they were really stupid.
"But you came here," she said. "Tonight. With roses."
"Some good guy, right?" He looked down at the bedraggled roses, dripping onto her porch. The wind caught his sopping hair and plastered some to his cheek. "I didn't expect how hard it would be to let you go."
"You really thought I would find someone better?"
"Sure, yeah. Someday."
She put her hands on his face. His eyes lifted to hers. There were raindrops in his eyelashes, sparkling in her porch light. His skin was almost as cold as her fingers. "You've been the best thing in my life for a long time. How could I possibly find better? Why would I want to?"
He trembled. She didn't think it was from the cold.
"Easy was too easy, Cisco. Too easy to stop, too easy to just let things slide. I want complicated. And I want it with you. Is that okay?"
"Yes," he said. "Oh my god. So much more than okay. Yes."
She didn't know who pulled the other close - did it matter? They kissed fiercely, icy cold lips smashed together, his breath the only spot of warmth. She clutched his coat with her numbed fingers and felt his arms tighten around her.
This.
This was what it was like, not to have to pretend that she didn't love him.
He must have dropped the roses again, because when she shifted her feet, plastic crinkled and slid under her boots. She didn't bother checking. She just wanted to keep kissing him.
"I missed you," she panted against his skin. "I missed you so much. It was worst when you were two feet away and I - couldn't - touch - you."
"You can touch me now," he said, pulling her somehow closer. "You can touch me anywhere. Please do."
"Too many clothes," she said, squirming against him as if she could burrow right through layers to his skin.
"Way too many clothes." He kissed her, one long, deep kiss, and pulled away. "Okay, I really, really wanna make love to you as soon as humanly possible, but honestly? I'm soaked through and frozen solid and my balls are somewhere around my kidneys, so if that's gonna happen, we'll need to thaw out pronto."
"Right!" She fumbled with her keys, almost dropped them, but managed to undo the locks. "In, in, in!"
He let out a groan and kicked the door closed behind them. "Holy shit. Heaaaat."
She lurched toward the thermostat and turned it up. She always left the heat down low during the day since she spent so many hours at Star Labs.
But it would take a long time for her house to warm up, and they were freezing now. "Shower," she said, shoving him toward the bathroom as he struggled to toe off his soggy sneakers. "Fastest way."
They stripped as they stumbled down the hall, leaving their soaked clothes in a trail of puddles on the floor. She shut the door, turned on the water, and hauled him into the shower stall.
They huddled close together under the warm spray. He rubbed her arms to warm them up, and she burrowed into him, chafing her hands over his chilled sides and back. Eventually, the water streaming from her hair went from icy cold to tepid to warm, and their teeth stopped chattering in unison.
"So much better," he groaned.
"So much," she agreed, tracing the contours of his face.
He rested his forehead against hers and sighed. She sniffed, tears springing to her eyes - why? Wasn't she done crying? What was there to cry about anymore?
Her own stupidity. Theirs.
God, she'd almost lost him.
They kissed with water running into their mouths, over their eyes, down their naked bodies. He pushed his hands through her hair, slicking it back, and peppered her face with kisses. She returned them, stroking his chest, his sides, palming his ass, greedy for the feel of the body she thought she'd never touch again.
Eventually she pulled away, but just far enough to retrieve the shampoo.
He protested against smelling like cherry blossoms until she handed him her body wash and a loofah with a significant look. He said, "Oh," in an interested voice.
It took a while, because it was strictly necessary to pause at regular intervals for more kissing, with hands sliding over each other's skin, slick with bubbles. But eventually they were both clean and warm and more than thawed out enough to leave the shower.
He pulled the towel off the bar and rubbed it over her skin, his hands gentle. She looked down at him as he knelt to dry her legs and feet and toes and thought giddily, He loves me, he loves me, he loves me.
Overcome with tenderness, she brushed her hand over his dripping hair. He looked up with a grin and more love in his eyes than she would have thought possible, except it matched what spilled over from her heart. She said, "My turn."
He allowed her to towel-dry his hair into damp waves and rub the terry cloth over his shoulders, down his arms, and his back. She lingered over his front, light strokes along his hips and stomach, and extra-feathery ones up the length of his hardening cock.
"I think that's dry," he told her, grinning.
"Oh? Mmmm. Maybe." She moved the towel down over his legs.
"Or maybe not," he said hastily.
She snickered and turned to hang the towel up. He put his arms around her from behind, his erection pressing up the small of her back. She let her head fall back onto his shoulder. "I missed you," she said in a trembling voice.
He didn't say anything, but he pressed his cheek to hers and his arms tightened.
Outside of the steamy sauna of her tiny bathroom, the air of her bedroom raised goosebumps on her skin. She dove into her bed, sheets sticking to her in patches. He paused just long enough to pull the extra blankets out of her closet and pile them on top of her quilt before following her, pulling the heavy layers up over their shoulders so they cuddled together in a cocoon that smelled like soap and shampoo.
"Those were the worst two weeks of my life," he said quietly.
She pressed her face into his shoulder. "I wish I'd said something," she said shakily.
"God. No. I wish I had."
"If only both of us had been a little more selfish."
"I used to lie here," he told her. "And I used to hold you and just breathe you in and then eventually I'd think, I've been holding her too long. She's going to know."
"I didn't."
"And then I'd just hold you a little while longer until I knew it was way past time to leave."
"And you'd kiss me on the cheek," she said bitterly. "And you would say 'gotta go,' and you would leave. I hated that."
"When I would leave?"
"Yes. That. But also the cheek kiss."
"I kiss you like that all the time. Do you always hate it?"
"No, but - Cisco, that's the way you kiss me when I bring you a bubble tea, or when I say thank you because you took my salad back to get them to take the olives out. I hated that you kissed me like that when we'd just had sex."
He rubbed his thumb over her collarbone. "I'm sorry. I was - I guess I was reminding myself."
"I know. I know that now. But before it always felt like a slap in the face."
"You wanna see how I wanted to kiss you, all those times?"
"Yes."
He pressed his lips against hers, soft and open, warm, sweet, drizzling tenderness like caramel. She sighed into his mouth.
"I never would have let you go if you'd kissed me like that," she whispered.
He tucked her hair behind her ear. It was starting to dry from their body heat, soft and curling. "Whenever you were at my place," he said, "you always left faster."
She tucked her face into his shoulder. "I know. I'm sorry. If I didn't make myself leave I would have stayed there all night."
"That's why I started coming over here more."
"Really?"
"Uh-huh. I wanted all the time alone with you that I could get."
They held each other silently for several minutes. Eventually he whispered, "What if we screw it up again?"
"Well, tell me next time," she said sternly.
"If you tell me."
"I promise."
He kissed her deeply and she wrapped herself around him, arms and legs tight, kissing him back. His hands dove into her damp hair, holding her close until they both gasped for breath.
She rested her forehead against his and they just breathed each other in for a few minutes.
He moved one hand between them, running his hands over her breasts and stomach and arms. The head of his cock rubbed her stomach. She snuggled deeper under the covers and touched him, her hands moving in the heated closeness between them until he groaned her name.
She kissed his shoulder, his neck, his ear, and said, "Condom."
"Same place?" He meant in her bookshelf headboard, in a ceramic bowl she'd made during an ill-fated college course.
She nodded. She'd tried to put them away after she'd broken things off and couldn't do it. She'd sobbed into her pillow for half an hour instead and hadn't tried after that.
He stretched up for one, then tugged the quilt up again. "Your bedroom is freezing," he informed her.
"I know, I know." She kissed his nose. "Keep me warm."
They hunched down into their cave of blankets and between them, managed to unwrap the condom and get it on. She hooked her knee over his hip and let her head roll back, moaning with pleasure, as he pressed into her. He wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her close so they fit together, skin to skin, mouth to mouth. They moved together, panting a mishmash of pleasure and love and yearning and satisfaction against each others' lips.
He kissed her eyes when she came, her gasping mouth, her arched throat, and said, "I love you, Caitlin, I love you," and came himself.
She held him through it, feeling every jolt and moan, whispering that she loved him, too.
By eleven, the bedroom had finally started to warm up. "Seriously, it takes forever," Cisco told her. "I'm getting in there tomorrow and looking at your vents."
"You can look at my vents anytime," she leered, and he almost fell off the bed laughing.
They'd kicked off the heavy quilts and just started a tickling match that was really an excuse to grope each other as much as possible. Then the doorbell rang.
They looked at each other. "At this hour?" Cisco said. "Want me to get it?"
Caitlin pulled her robe toward her. "It's probably my neighbor. She locks herself out all the time and I've got an extra key to water her plants."
She checked the peephole anyway, then leaned back and frowned. "Barry?" she said, opening the door.
"Hey," he said, looking her up and down. "Sorry, I know it's late. Did I wake you up?"
"No, I was awake."
"Only Iris said you had my phone."
"Oh!" She'd forgotten all about that. "Yes." She looked around until she located her coat, tossed over the back of her couch, leaving big wet patches on the upholstery. She dug his phone out of the pocket, checked that it still worked after the soaking it had undergone, and held it out to him.
He was looking around at the discarded shoes and clothes scattered over the floor, half of them clearly not hers. "Ummmmm. Was I interrupting something?"
"Dude!" Cisco howled from the bedroom. "Yes! You were!"
Barry said, "Erp!?"
Caitlin slapped his phone into his chest. "Have a nice night, Barry."
FINIS