(A/N) Takes place just after 1x01. Thanks to bisexualmelindatorres for looking this over for me.

"Heyyyy, stranger."

Cisco paused and eyed the cute guy behind the counter of the sub shop. That head tilt, that smirk, about four "y"s in his greeting - Kenny was single again. And from the sounds of it, pretty recently.

They'd dated for about two weeks, eons ago. Until Cisco had disclosed that he liked girls, too, and Kenny had dumped him so hard Cisco was pretty sure he'd left a crack on the sidewalk outside the movie theater.

But every time Kenny broke up with someone, he always seemed willing to forget (temporarily) that Cisco enjoyed hot dogs and tacos in equal measure. Depending on how low Cisco himself was feeling, he either shut Kenny down or flirted back. Once, right after the particle accelerator disaster, they had done some things in the back room that the Health Department definitely would not have been okay with.

"Hey, you," Cisco said now, leaning on the counter. "How's it going?"

So, yeah, he was not at his best today.

To tell the truth, he felt weirdly deflated. Which was crazy. There was a guy now who could outrun a tornado. Like, that was a person, in the world, that Cisco knew. That he'd helped. He should be doing the fucking Macarena.

But after all the dramatics of last night, with Clyde Mardon and the tornado and shots fired and all that stuff, today had been a complete anticlimax. He'd bounced in, hoping for more excitement, more derring do, more … well, more, okay. But when he'd asked whether Barry was coming in, Wells had said, "I don't think we need to bother Mr. Allen today."

Cisco didn't think it was bothering to try out a few more things. He really didn't think it was bothering to game out some ideas for the public good. One little police scanner, okay? Just one. And maybe one to monitor the fire department too. Not like they'd even have to buy any new equipment. Just dedicate a few gigs of RAM on the servers, set aside a monitor or three. He'd donate his own, even. He did more work on his tablet anyway.

But he'd been overruled, so he'd spent the morning tearing apart the coffee maker, until Caitlin had yelled at him because she was undercaffeinated, like it was his fault she'd run out of teabags and couldn't deal with Starbucks. So he'd put the coffee maker back together without any improvements and left to get lunch, sulking because his world was supposed to be way more awesome today than it actually was.

(Also Barry still had Cisco's suit. Which. Hey.)

He was edging closer and closer to the abyss, aka plans to hang out with Kenny after work, when the door rattled wildly in its frame. They both jumped a foot. Kenny peered out the front windows. "Jesus. What was that?"

"Freak wind gust," Cisco said. He'd caught a blur of red out of the corner of his eye, and suddenly his heart was a lot lighter. He turned to Kenny, "You know, can you make my usual, real quick? And make two. I remembered I'm meeting somebody and I'm late."

He was ambling back to Star Labs, relishing the pout he'd left on Kenny's stupid cute face, when the wind blasted again. Cisco shook his hair out of his eyes. "Hey."

"Hey," Barry said. He was wearing the suit, but he'd left the hood down and his hair was windblown times five. "I. Uh. I can't."

"Get inside without a passkey?"

"Yyyyyeah."

"Gotcha covered." Cisco tapped the plastic ID card clipped to his belt loop, and handed him a sub and a drink.

"What's this for?"

"It's a thank-you. Hope you like meatball."

"Yeah, sure. For what, finally bringing the suit back?"

"For keeping me from making a terrible mistake."

"How'd I do that?"

"Long, boring story."

"Well, okay. Thanks!" Barry flashed him a grin.

Cisco registered the cuteness, let it wash over him and recede like a wave rolling out to sea. He'd gotten used to comatose Barry like a gorgeous mannequin in his lab. And okay, he'd been a little weak the other day and given in to the urge to put his hands all over those unexpected muscles. Now he was going to have to learn to enjoy the hilariously dorktastic live version of Barry Allen without hitting on it, because he was ninety-nine percent sure that Barry was as straight as a T-pin.

Okay, maybe eighty percent, because the dude didn't even seem to notice any women except for Iris. Like, maybe he was an extremely specialized orientation. Hopeless-sexual. Turned on by thorough frustration.

When they got inside, they discovered the main lab quiet and empty. Caitlin had stuck a note on his screen: Gone to lunch. Text me if you want a bubble tea.

He spoke fluent Caitlinese - that meant sorry I yelled. He smiled a little and pulled out his phone to say, Yes please, green apple, which she would accurately translate as, apology accepted.

He also wrote himself a note to buy more instant coffee packets and tea bags for the break room.

"Where's Dr. Wells?" Barry wanted to know.

"He just disappears sometimes. We give him space. You know."

"Oh, yeah. Understandable. So, uh, I did leave my other clothes here, right?"

"Yep. They're in my lab." He led the way.

After a mildly hilarious attempt at speed-changing - "Dude! Careful with my suit!" - Barry disappeared to the bathroom to make the switch. He came back with the suit over his arm, and Cisco took it tenderly. It kind of stank.

"I would have washed it," Barry said apologetically. "But I didn't know if it had to be dry-cleaned or what."

"Nah, it's pretty easy-care." Good thing, too. Wow, it really did reek. Of course, Barry had put it through its paces, and that had been several hours ago. Plus, Cisco had used some unusual polymers that just might react badly with human sweat, the way polyester stayed rank even when you washed it.

Or maybe it was just super-human sweat.

He sort of expected Barry to say, "Yeah, bye," and zip out again, but the other guy hung around while Cisco detached the lining from the suit and shoved it into the thickest plastic bag he could find. He was going to have to run up some more linings, he thought, in different materials.

Or maybe not. If they weren't going to do this very often.

He'd gotten into natural materials after he'd first built the suit, so he doodled on a post-it, Wool blend? and stuck it to the mannequin that had worn the suit originally. A really finely-spun merino wool might be lightweight enough for a lining, and it wouldn't get quite so stinky quite so fast. But damn, it would have to be fine. He chewed on his pen, thinking, and noted, 15 microns on the post-it.

Barry ate his sandwich and answered all of Cisco's questions about the suit's performance. At the same time, Cisco sponge cleaned the shell and made notes on stress points. When he pushed the mannequin back to its corner, Barry made a noise like a five-year-old in a candy store.

"Ohhhh my god. Is that a 3-D printer? There on that table?"

Cisco grinned. "Yeah, that's Bessie Jr."

Barry hovered over it, making whimpering noises. "Bessie Jr," he said. "Is there a Bessie Sr.?"

"Big Bessie? She's this industrial grade one up on the fourth floor. She could build things with different materials all in one job."

"No!"

"Yes! Hooo, you gotta see, she's the size of my apartment."

Barry whimpered some more. "What can you print with her?"

"Nothing right now. She was damaged in the explosion and I haven't really gotten to fixing her."

"Aw. Still awesome, though." Barry eyed Bessie Jr, then turned puppy dog eyes on Cisco.

Cisco grinned. "Wanna print something?"

They had a little pile of plastic doodads from schematics off the Internet, when Caitlin came in with Cisco's bubble tea. "Oh. Hello, Barry."

"Hey, Caitlin."

"How are - things?"

"Things are good," he said.

She gave him a beady eye. "Any physical anomalies to report?"

"Nope."

"Okay." She turned on her heel and left.

Barry raised his brows at Cisco.

"She takes awhile," Cisco said, stirring the tapioca beads with his straw. "With new people." He grimaced. "And with people she knows. With … people."

"Considering the first thing she asked me was to pee in a cup, she's actually warming up."

"Yeah. She didn't used to - she eventually - she's been - well. I give her space, too." Cisco twirled in his chair a little. "So, how come you get to hang out with me today instead of serving the good people of Central City? Didn't you, like, just get your job back?"

"Oh, I'm on leave after the shooting last night."

"What?" Cisco sat up. "You didn't tell them about your speed, did you? Did they put you on psych leave?"

"No, of course not. It's just admin leave. Procedure in an officer-involved. Shooting, I mean. Officer involved shooting. I had to go in to be interviewed this morning."

"How'd you do, without mentioning the speed?"

"Just - didn't mention the speed. Perp with a weapon, pointed at my face, I mean, they didn't question it. Anyway, I've only got the one day. Joe has to be out for four."

"That sucks."

"Yeah, kind of does. I'm worried about him. That's only, like, the third time he's ever had to kill somebody in the line of duty. It's always hard on him."

Probably harder on Clyde Mardon, Cisco thought, but then again, he had been a psycho and from the sounds of it, the choice had been down to him or Barry. Cisco knew what he would have picked. "Hasn't Joe been a cop for, like, decades?"

Barry's shoulders went stiff. "Look, being a cop is not a video game. A good cop doesn't go out shooting perps on a daily basis. Just because they have a gun. It's a thing, okay."

"Okay," Cisco said, holding his hands up. "Chill. Sorry. Joe's a good guy, I know that." He pointed. "I mean, he raised you, right?"

"Yeah," Barry said, sitting back. "Sorry. I'm a little - I spent some time on the Internet last night. Catching up on stuff that happened while I was out." His face went tight. "It's not the best time to be a cop."

Cisco thought of all the crap of the past nine months, of shootings and dead kids and protests, of all that hitting you between the eyes, and knowing that people in the profession you'd chosen were responsible for it. He sighed.

Barry stared at his hands. "Do you ever feel like the world's just going to shit?"

"I try not to think like that too much," Cisco said.

"I started working for the CCPD because I wanted to help people," Barry said. He leaned back in his chair until it teetered on two legs. "I still do. I wanna - God. I don't know. I mean. I got this speed now, right? It's got to be for a reason. But what am I supposed to, run around the city until I see something happening?"

Cisco said, eyes trained on the plastic gears that he was lining up in size order, "I can get the police scanner feed."

Barry turned his head.

Cisco started rearranging the line of gears in Roy G Biv order. "Also CCFD."

"Handier if you could hack into the 911 dispatch system," Barry said after a moment. "You'll get both."

"Sweet. Yes!" Cisco abandoned the gears and fired up his desktop. "Dude, okay, here's the thing, I'll call you when there's something and you come get the suit and it's got a radio system and I can use GPS from here and okay say something."

Barry rocked back and forth on his chair's two legs. Squeak, squeak, squeak.

"You wanna help," Cisco said.

Thunk. Barry's chair dropped back to all four legs. "Would it work?"

"It's totally doable, man. We've got the equipment, we've got the totally fucking rad suit, we've got the feet," he pointed at Barry, "we've got the eyes and ears," himself.

"Yeah, but I mean." Barry tried to rearrange his grasshopper legs and nearly fell out of the chair. "Do you think it's a good idea?"

"Helping people is never a bad idea."

"I could screw up. Again. I could screw it up again."

"Are you asking, do you think it's more than we can handle?"

"Yeah, maybe."

"Look, between you and me we can think our way out of just about anything. I mean, what does your gut say?"

"That I should do this," Barry said immediately.

"Mine too. And no urge to say, 'I have a bad feeling about this,' so."

"Yeah? Who shot fi - "

"Han. Duh."

Barry laughed. "Dude, you may actually be my hetero life-mate."

Cisco's smile dissolved. "Ah."

He actually kind of hated this business. Openness, yes, absolutely, best way to go. He totally subscribed to that, on a theoretical level. Especially after the Kenny fiasco. On a practical level? It was sort of nerve-wracking. Every damn time. His whole life was a series of closets. "Hetero's, ah, not the most accurate adjective there."

"Huh?" Barry's eyes widened.

Cisco braced himself.

"Wow. Wow! Shit. Sorry. I-I didn't mean to be, like, micro-aggressive. That is kind of a douchey thing to say, isn't it? Hetero life-mate. Jeez. I'm sorry."

Okay, and this was yet another annoying reaction. "It's okay. Really. You didn't know."

"I-I mean, you said Iris was hot, and you've got Ms. Marvel over there - " He pointed at a framed poster. "- but if you're, like, not out at Star Labs, I -"

"Duuude. I'm not compensating, Ms. Marvel is not my beard. I'm not straight, but I'm not gay either. I'm sort of - " He made a swiping motion. "Open. To the whole spectrum."

"Oh."

Cisco dropped his hands. "Does that weird you out?"

"Well, it - it's new. That's a new one. To me. I've never known anyone who described it like that."

You just didn't know you did, Cisco thought, but left it alone. There was only so much consciousness-raising you could do on a daily basis before you got worn out.

Barry's brain was still stuck. "So-so-so is that like - bisexual? Or omni? Or pan - "

"I go with queer, that works for me."

"Wait. That's an insult. We learned that in, like, eighth grade."

"Not if I'm using it about myself," Cisco said patiently. "Man, you don't need to call me anything but Cisco, okay?" He eyed Barry, wondering if the other man was going to decline to call him anything at all, ever.

But Barry bit his lip. "Okay," he said a little squeakily. "Sure. Yeah. Uh. Thanks for sharing."

"I tend to get it out of the way. Just so people know who they're working with. That's if you still wanna work with me."

Barry blinked a few times. "Shyeah. Of course. I mean. What use are the feet without the eyes and the ears?"

Cisco didn't completely relax. People could say all the nice, supportive, open-minded things they wanted, but the real litmus test was how they acted after.

As they worked out their city-guarding plan, Barry was a little twitchy, a little nervous. But watching him, Cisco realized that it was the twitchy nerves of trying desperately not to say or do the wrong thing. He gave him space. You gave people space after disclosing. Let it settle in.

Over the rest of the afternoon, Barry relaxed, and by the time he whooshed away - "Late to meet Iris, aw, man, I thought that wasn't gonna happen anymore" - Cisco felt a lot better about him.

The nice thing about being all the things he was - short, nerdy, brown, queer - was that it gave him such a finely tuned asshole meter. He could pick 'em out a mile away. And Barry Allen was no asshole. He was a gigantic dork, it was true, and he had all the chill of the Sahara, but he was a good dude.

Which on the whole was a bonus. Because Cisco would rather not have an asshole saving his city.

FINIS