"Cynthia!"
At first, she tried to pretend she hadn't heard it, and kept walking down the street. This wasn't the first time she thought she'd heard his voice, and she couldn't let it distract her from her life. Then she heard it again, and this time it was unmistakable.
"Cynthia! C'mon. Stop ignoring me."
Cynthia turned around and saw exactly what she had expected to see- Cisco Ramon standing right in front of her, though he wasn't really there. He was slightly translucent, and his image flickered a few times, like an image on an old TV screen. She glanced around quickly. It was early enough that it was still dark out, so the streets of downtown Hamiltonia were deserted. That didn't mean that nobody was watching, of course; somebody was always watching.
"Cisco," she hissed. "What are you doing?"
"Trying to talk to you," he said, as if that explained everything.
She folded her arms. "Yeah, I got that. Why?"
He shifted awkwardly. "I… wanted to talk to you?"
She stared at him incredulously. "You realize this isn't video chat, right? You can't just pop into my life every time you want to talk."
"Not that many times," he argued. "This is only the-" He paused, adding it up in his head.
"Third time, not including the times you had actual business."
"They were all business!"
She huffed, exasperated. "Last time, you showed up while I was in the middle of a fistfight to ask if we have Terminator on Earth-19. How was that business?"
"I was collecting data relevant to my interests."
She rolled her eyes. "You realize that I'm working, right?"
"It's the middle of the night!"
"So? People like us don't exactly keep regular hours."
Cisco nodded his assent, but then his lips turned up into a smile. "People like us? Are we an us now?"
"Do not read into that," Cynthia commanded, but he broke out into a grin that said he was so reading into it. She rolled her eyes and started down the sidewalk, but only a few seconds later, he reappeared in front of her, still grinning.
She ground to a halt. "Where'd you learn how to do that?"
He shrugged. "I've been discovering new things here and there. We can't do that in real life, can we?"
"What, teleport? You wish." She crossed her arms. "I don't have all night. Is there something you want to say?"
"No, I just vibed over to talk about boys. there's this cute server at the local taco joint," he teased, and she rolled her eyes again. He sobered up. "You're right, I'm sorry. I should stop doing this. It's not respectful to you, or your boundaries, or anything, I just-" He broke off, looking awkward. "I'm sorry. I'll stop."
"Wait," Cynthia said hastily, before he could disappear. He was wearing flannel pajama pants and a faded Star Trek t-shirt. She wondered vaguely what Star Trek was, but didn't care enough to ask. "Why are you awake? Don't you sleep?"
He looked taken aback by her question, but recovered. "Don't you?"
"Yes." She did, most nights. "But there's a difference between being awake to chase after low lives- which is my job -and being awake, alone, when you're supposed to be sleeping." She scrutinized him again. His hair was messy and his eyes were shadowed and slightly red, like they'd been open for too long. "Are you okay?"
He raised an eyebrow. "Is that actual concern I hear?"
She combed a strand of hair behind her ear. "Not concern so much as wondering why you look awful."
"Stop it, I'm blushing," he said dryly. "Um, if you really care- which is kind of astonishing, but, I can't sleep." He shrugged. "I don't sleep much these days."
His shoulders slumped slightly and she recognized the defeat in his eyes. "Is it the vibes?" She asked quietly.
He looked surprised. "Yeah. They just turn on without my permission. I thought I was starting to control them better, but now it's like I reverted to when I first got my powers. They just… slam into my head." He squeezed his eyes shut and shuddered. "I keep seeing everything that I don't want to. Iris and Savitar and…" He trailed off. His hands were clenched into fists, and his knuckles white.
Cynthia sat down on a nearby bench. "Iris is the Flash's girlfriend, right? The one who Savitar kills?"
He grimaced, as if it pained him to hear that said out loud. "Everyone keeps asking me to vibe back to it over and over again, and now that's all I see when I close my eyes. I can't even go near Iris. The other day she bumped into me, and then I saw her with a gaping hole in her chest, right in front of me." His arms were so tense that they were trembling slightly. "And the other night, I saw Caitlin-" He halted, like he was stopping himself.
"You saw Killer Frost?" Cynthia asked. Cisco stared at her blankly. "I vibe too, remember? I know all about her alter ego."
Cisco nodded slowly and ran a hand through his hair. "Was it ever this way for you?" he asked, and his eyes looked desperate. Cynthia glanced at her GPS watch- no hits. She could spare a few minutes.
"Hold that thought," she said, and Cisco's shoulders slumped.
"Right. You gotta get back to the Die Hard movie that is your life. I get it." He sounded slightly bitter, and the arms crossed over his chest only added to the effect.
"No, just hold on," she said, and held her hand out to open a breach. She jumped through and felt her boots slam against a hard surface.
She looked up, and Cisco was in front of her for real this time. He was curled up on an IKEA couch, under a tattered afghan blanket. He looked even worse than he had via vibe.
"What'd you do that for?" he asked incredulously. "I thought you were working."
She shrugged. "Slow night. I was bored."
He looked like he wanted to contest that, but at this point, he knew better. "Right," he said slowly. "So are you here to knock me out? Because that's what you've done every other time you've come to my world."
"I might, if you keep running your mouth." She glanced around. His apartment was small and cluttered, and although she'd never thought about what his home looked like, this seemed to fit the picture. She felt awkward just standing in the middle of his living room, but there was no way she was sitting on the couch next to him. "I just wanted to answer your question in person."
He tilted his head. "My question?"
"This has happened to me, too," she said. "The vibe overload. Not just when I was learning to use my powers. It just happens on and off."
The corners of his mouth drooped. "So it doesn't get better?"
She shrugged. "You learn to deal with it. At least, I did."
"Oh." His fingers twisted up in the afghan, a thin, greyed thing that looked like it might have been blue once. He looked so small, huddled in the corner of the couch under a blanket. "Well. Thanks for not making me feel better. I'm not sure what I expected, really."
He sounded so bitter again, and his acrid tone hurt. Not that she was hurt by him, but the thinly veiled pain on his face made her stomach hurt. She was drenched in a wave of emotions that didn't belong to her- bewilderment and frustration and panic and desperation and loneliness and dread. She felt a twinge in her chest, forgetting for a moment that the feelings weren't hers.
"What was that?" Cisco was on the edge of the couch, the afghan covering his legs still.
She jumped. "What?" she asked blankly.
"Your eyes- went unfocused for a second."
She shifted, bringing herself back to the present. Those weren't her feelings. Were they his? She didn't really want to know. How could he stand feeling like that?
She realized he was still waiting for a reply. "Spaced out, that's all," she said brusquely.
Cisco shook his head. "You're full of it." He stood up abruptly and the afghan fell to the floor. "You vibed me." Cynthia looked away, but he took two large steps forward and they were face to face. "What did you see?"
"Nothing," she said coolly, and when he didn't look convinced, "I didn't see anything. I could just feel… what you feel, I think."
He froze. "Oh," he said again, and he looked small again, even though he towered over her slightly. "What did you… feel?"
"It's your screwed-up mind," she retorted. "Don't you know?"
"Honestly, you'd be surprised," he muttered. "Sometimes I don't know what's from my mind and what's from the vibes."
Listening to him made her feel seventeen all over again. Scared and alone and knowing she had so much power but not knowing how to control it.
Cisco was looking at her closely. "You were seventeen?" he asked softly.
Cynthia stumbled backward. "Don't do that," she snapped.
"You just did it to me," he retorted.
"Not on purpose."
"Well, neither did I."
They glared at each other for a moment, and then his face softened. "That's rough. I mean, seventeen is already rough, any age ending in 'teen' is, but with the vibes? Jeez." He had a strange look on his face, one she wasn't used to seeing. Pity? No. Sympathy? Maybe.
She shrugged. "I handled it."
"You're stronger than I am. I couldn't have handled it. I was a mess as a kid, I-" He broke off again, but Cynthia instantly felt and knew all of it. A brother who vanished into thin air, another who was always jealous of him, parents who forgot he existed. A struggle of identity and wondering if the people around him would reject him for it. Cynthia knew what that felt like.
"Everyone's a mess as a kid," she said, and quickly tried to think of anything but her adolescence, so that he wouldn't see it, although she knew that wasn't how it worked. He didn't seem to pick up on anything, or if he did, he was smart enough to pretend not to.
Cisco was watching her again. "Why did you come?" he asked. "You don't even like me."
She stared back at him, trying to think of a satisfactory answer. She didn't not like him.
"We resonate on a similar frequency," she said finally, and his brow furrowed up, confused. "That's why I let you bother me while I'm working. That's why I'm here. Because you and I, people like us-" His eyes lit up with mild amusement. "Don't read into that. We vibrate on a different frequency than the rest of our worlds. Even though we're from different ones, we vibrate on the same frequency." She shrugged. "Maybe I don't like you, not sure yet, but we're alike in a way that nobody else is."
"We get each other like nobody else can," he murmured, and edged forward. She didn't back away this time.
"Maybe," she said.
He stepped closer, so close that she could see details that she'd never noticed before. The flaws and blemishes on his skin, a healed-over piercing on his left ear, a faded scar across his jawline.
"I noticed that too," he said. "The similar frequency. I just feel different around you. At first I thought I was just really turned on-" She scoffed and he grinned. "-which I am, a lot of the time, not gonna lie, but it's more than that. Caitlin and Barry, the team, they try, they mean well, but they just don't get it. They don't understand what it's like for me to have all of these timelines and universes crashing into my head. They don't know what they're asking of me when they ask me to vibe Iris's murder over and over again." His hands were clenching again. "Trying to explain it to them feels like trying to communicate across a language barrier, but I don't feel that way around you."
His eyes were locked with hers, holding her gaze earnestly, and she recognized his expression. It wasn't pity, or sympathy. It was pure adoration. He was telling the truth, he wasn't just attracted to her. He felt something deeper. Which was fine. She was very comfortable with captivating men and letting them down hard. The only problem was she felt something burning under her breastbone that felt a lot like Cisco's eyes looked. She shoved the feeling down and smothered it.
"I gotta go," she muttered, and stepped away quickly.
"Hey, where are you going?" Cisco asked, looking bewildered and a little hurt.
"Back. I have criminals to catch, remember?" She opened a breach and jumped through.
"Cynthia-" he shouted after her, but she was already through and back in Hamiltonia. Her city, her earth, where her job was the only thing that mattered.
He was the only thing that mattered to her on that earth. Maybe that was why she couldn't stand it there.
Days passed, and she wasn't sure what she expected Cisco to do, but it wasn't ignore her, which was exactly what he did. Not that she tried to initiate contact herself, but he was the one who did that. She only realized now that he had stopped that she kind of enjoyed it. Or, at least, that she didn't mind it. She couldn't leave a loose end like this, so she could swallow her pride for two minutes. That she could do. Another late night, she was done working, so she decided to go make things right. She opened a breach and jumped through, and when her feet hit solid ground she was in Cisco's kitchen.
He was standing a few feet away, holding a coffee mug in his hand, and he almost dropped it when he saw her. "Geez," he muttered, his hand grasping at his shirt over his heart. "Maybe knock next time?"
"I figured the giant purple breach would be warning enough," she said lightly. He crossed his arms and backed away. He looked even worse than the last time she had seen him. His hair was limp and stringy like he hadn't washed it in a while, and the shadows under his eyes looked like bruises. They stood out even more on his pale skin, under his unshaven face.
"What do you want?" he asked suspiciously. "And don't pull that whole concern card on me. After you walked out like that-"
"That's why I'm here," Cynthia interrupted, and he raised his eyebrows. "I-" Swallow your pride. "I shouldn't have just left like that. It wasn't fair to you."
He nodded. "I agree," he said, and his voice had that bitter tone again. "That was pretty uncool of you."
"I know." She swallowed. "I'm sorry."
He shrugged. "I'm okay. I'm getting used to the idea that you mean more to me than I do to you. And that's cool for you if you want to do the whole villain fighting/meaningless make-out combo, but getting me to open up, making me feel like we had a connection, and then leaving me high and dry? That's not as forgivable."
She bit her lip. "You are important to me, Cisco. It's just… feelings are hard for me."
He snorted. "It's official. I have a type."
She stared at him. "What?"
He shook his head. "Sorry. You were apologizing. Go on."
She tried to regain her train of thought. "What you said before was right. We get each other in a way that no-one else can, and that scared me, I guess. I didn't like how easily you tell what I'm thinking and feeling. I don't like being vulnerable."
His face was softening. "That's okay. I'm sorry I made you uncomfortable, but I wasn't doing it on purpose, I promise. I think we just get each other."
She nodded. "And I think that's a good thing." She glanced at the clock on the stove. "Are you still not sleeping?"
He nodded reluctantly. "Not for a while, to be honest."
She glanced at the mug in his hand. "That's certainly not helping."
He rolled his eyes. "You sound like Caitlin. And it's not for lack of trying. I figure if I'm not gonna sleep anyway, I can use the extra energy to help me get things done."
Cynthia was quiet for a moment, and then she said, "Is it the vibes still?"
He pushed his hair back with his hand. "Yeah. I can't close my eyes without seeing-" He clenched his fists shut. "Lately I don't have to close my eyes. I just see horrible things in the back of my head all the time. Caitlin has given me every medication she can think of but nothing-" He opened his fists and let out a sigh. "Nothing helps."
He looked defeated, exhausted. She wished she knew what to say, but she didn't, so she said, "Is it happening right now?"
He paused, and then shook his head. "No. Now that I think about it… it doesn't happen around you." His lips curled up into a smile. "We do get each other. The universe agrees."
She suppressed the smile she felt at her mouth. "I agree. Who cares what the universe thinks?"
He nodded. "Um, I don't know what you have to get back to on your earth, but, I haven't slept in a very long time. And I think I might be able to with you here."
"Are you asking me to stay?"
He bit his lip nervously. "Um… yes?"
He did look terrible. She remembered all the sleepless nights she'd had over the last decade-and-a-half, how much she wished she had someone there to help her. Or someone who was just there so that she wasn't alone.
"I'll stay the night." She walked over to his living room and threw herself on his couch. She didn't have to see his face to know that he was smiling. "You have to bring me some coffee, though."
"Anything for you." She heard cups clink together as he searched for a mug. A few moments later, he sat down on the couch next to her and handed her a black coffee mug that said "Talk nerdy to me".
Her lips quirked up into a smile. "Thanks. I exhausted my supply on my earth."
He reached behind him and pulled the same afghan off of the back of the couch and onto his lap. "You ever seen The Walking Dead?"
"We don't have television on my earth," she deadpanned. His eyes widened and she cracked a smile to show that she was joking.
"Jerk," he muttered, but he was smiling again. He turned on the TV and started playing an episode of what she assumed was The Walking Dead.
It was an episode from the middle of the season, so he rapidly explained to her what was happening. "Okay, so that guy? Is in love with that girl but they're too stupid to do anything about it. Oh, and that girl shot her little sister a couple episodes ago."
"I don't get it," Cynthia said after a while. "Why are they so worried about those zombies? They're so slow and loud."
Cisco scratched the back of his head. "To be honest? I have no clue."
He curled up into his corner of the couch, and she watched his eyes slowly closing. His head dropped to the arm of the couch and he started breathing slowly, regularly.
He was sleeping. Good.
She would stay there until he woke up, she decided. She didn't like being vulnerable, but if it meant being there for Cisco, she could endure it.
Maybe eventually, she could be strong enough to let him be there for her, too.