Title: I Would Know You
Rating: Teen
Relationships: Cisco Ramon / Eaobard Thawne
Warnings: emotional manipulation
Chapter One
It's not exactly a surprise when Eobard returns with a smug smile and a bounce in his step. Because isn't that always how it happens in the comics? The villain always manages to come back and cause trouble for the heroes, only to be defeated again.
And the cycle repeats.
What is a surprise is the kiss that Eobard pulls him into once he's alone. He catches his eyes before he does, gaze searching for something in Cisco's expression and when he finds it he leans in and presses a kiss, then two and three in quick succession against his lips. It's achingly familiar, this side of not-Harrison, to what he had before and he can't help but lean into it.
"Cisco," Harri- Eobard says, soft and near desperate as he presses his lips to the corner of his mouth, his cheek, his jawline and down further to the right side of his neck. "Cisco, Cisco."
He's ticklish there and Eobard knows it. He had trained him long ago not to flinch away, lavishing attention to the sensitive skin there with the sting of soft bites and the brush of fingertips over his pulse point. It causes a full body shiver now instead of the instinctual recoil of a fight or flight response that it used to and he can feel Eobard's smile against his skin.
"I missed you, my clever boy." Eobard tells the hollow of his throat and it's like a switch is flipped.
"No," He pulls back and shakes his head. "I cant. You're not-"
"Wells?" Eobard doesn't laugh at him, not out loud at least, but there's the gleam of it in his eyes. "I never was, not truly, but that doesn't changed the fact that I know you."
He says it with such certainty, like it's a known fact of the universe instead of the reflection of a lie floating in the air between them. The question is, is it really that much of a lie? There was a time when Cisco thought he knew Wells too. Back before Joe started looking further into Nora Allen's murder, back when things between them were a lot more simple.
"I know you Cisco." Eobard repeats, voice firm as he brushes the hair from his face. His hand stays there for a moment then migrates back and down so that he can wrap his fingers in his hair. He's careful about it, fingers collecting every strand with equal attention. When he tugs, there's no pain, just simple pressure that Cisco leans into without really meaning to.
Eobard smiles. "There you are." He breathes and Cisco swallows the soft noise that wants to rise in his throat.
When Eobard kisses him this time, it's less simple. There's a question in the way he parts his lips, an apology in how he waits for Cisco to respond before he seeks out his tongue, and a promise in the way he leans into it.
The hand not holding his hair is firm on his side, pulling their hips as flush as possible despite the height difference. When Eobard pulls away slightly for breath, Cisco rises up on his toes like he always has and that hand moves around his waist.
"This is a really bad idea." Cisco says and Eobard hums.
"By your standards or by someone else's?" He replies and Cisco sighs, focusing on the metal snap-button on Eobard's collar so he wont have to meet his eyes.
"Both. Maybe." He steps back and Eobard lets him. "I'm helping Barry. I'm finally doing something good with my powers instead of just bottling them up and thinking I'm crazy."
"You helped Barry before." Eobard points out and Cisco blows out a frustrated breath.
"Cisco, Cait and I-" Barry cuts himself off as he comes in the room and sees Cisco standing alone in his workroom with a breeze blowing his hair into his face and his clothes a mess. "You okay...?"
"Yeah," Cisco's voice is too cheerful and his smile feels tight, but Barry doesn't seem to notice since he's busy looking for the source of the breeze. "Yeah, I'm fine. I was just practicing my powers..."
"The Vibe hands thing?" Barry wiggles his fingers and Cisco's smile becomes a little more genuine.
"I can't get the gloves to work right." He waves a hand toward where the Vibe gloves are lying on the table as Barry throws an arm around his shoulders.
"Well how about you take a break and come to Jitters with Cait and I?" He breaks out into a grin. "I'll buy you a Flash."
"You know one day I'm going to have a drink named after me too." Cisco points out and Barry laughs.
"Oh really?" He asks as they join Caitlin in the hall and she loops an arm through Cisco's with a smile.
"Oh really, what?" She chimes in and Barry starts walking backwards so that he can face them while he talks.
"Cisco's going to get a drink at Jitters." The speedster tells her and Cisco bites back a smile in favor of scowling at his friend.
"The Vibe." Caitlin makes a noise of consideration. "It could be iced."
Cisco makes a face at her. "I am not having an iced coffee named after me. Maybe an expresso. Or a mocha.
"Both of which won't taste half as good as mine." Barry adds and Cisco doesn't bother telling him that he's about to run into the elevator doors.
...
When Cisco makes it back to his apartment that night, there's way too much caffeine in his system and a light shining in his kitchen that he knows he didn't leave on. He may be an engineer, but he doesn't make enough money working for the CCPD to waste electricity.
"Hello?" He calls as he sits his satchel on the little old table by the door. He fishes his phone out, finger hovering over the app that'll call Barry in case he is actually getting robbed.
"The lack of actual food in your refrigerator is worrying." Eobard says once he rounds the corner into the kitchenette. His head's halfway into the shelves as he scrounges around for something to eat that's not a condiment and Cisco almost calls Barry anyway.
There's something to say about his life that he finds more comfort in a time traveling murderer than he does a robber, but he'll think about that later.
"How did you get in here?" He asks as Eobard makes a triumphant noise and emerges with the foil wrapped plate of his Tia Dolores' tamales. "Don't eat that."
Eobard puts it back and grabs the leftover carton of Chinese food instead. "You still leave the key over the door." He says as he shoves the whole thing into the microwave after checking for silverware and starts it.
"So you didn't... phase through the door or anything?" Cisco asks, just to clarify and his ex-boss (lover, boyfriend, partner) smiles.
They stay like that for a long moment, watching each other as the microwave droans in the background and the smell of too-oily chow mein fills the tiny space that he's dubbed his kitchen. Cisco breaks the silence with a sigh and runs his hands through his hair.
"This is really weird." He groans and there are two quick steps before familiar fingers intertwine with his own, loosening his grip on his hair as Eobard presses a kiss to his crown.
"It doesn't need to be." He says, soft and reassuring and the tension in Cisco's muscles melts away a little. "There you go."
And it's so easy to fall into the embrace of familiarity he has with this man. Easy to not run when his face is tilted up and he meets clear blue eyes. Easy to reciprocate the kiss that's pressed to his lips and loop his arms around Eobard's shoulders, because he knows this. This was something that he called home for years and for a moment he lets that be true again.
Then the microwave beeps and he pushes the button on his phone.
...
"I'm sorry." Cisco tells him as he paces the cramped 4x6 of his cell. His voice is defeated and when Eobard glances in his direction he wont make eye contact. He'll have to fix that eventually, but for now he'd rather have Cisco's confidence back. He'd spent too much time molding this boy into what he is for him to revert back to how he was when they first met.
"I wouldn't expect anything less from you, Cisco." He tells him and Cisco may think it's a lie, but it's not. Eobard is an enemy in the eyes of his former team and he wont have Cisco fault himself for choosing Barry and Caitlin over him. "I once told you that choosing between two people that you love would be the hardest decision you'd ever make."
Cisco looks up at him then, eyes wide as he teeters between grief and disgust. "I don't-"
"You do." He interrupts firmly and Cisco's mouth snaps shut. "And just like before, you made the right decision."
Whether or not Cisco believes him, he doesn't say, and instead switches topics to something that he thinks Eobard will want to hear."You want to go back to your time, your home." He's wrong. "I can help you now."
"Now?" Eobard asks and Cisco looks away again. There's something there, something that he won't bring up because it's too painful or because it's finally stopped being so. Perhaps it's both. "We've had this conversation before. In the previous timeline."
It's not a question, but Cisco nods anyway, closing the distance between them just that little bit more as Eobard taps a measured pattern on the glass of his cell. He wishes it wasn't there. "And I killed you."
"Him and a lot of other people." Barry adds from the entrance to the pipeline and Cisco jumps, hands twitching toward his chest in reflex. Eobard doesn't look at Barry, not now, but Caitlin is there too, with a half-hopeful, half-saddened look on her face.
"Dr. Wells?" She asks and she's dressed in her pajamas with a jacket hastily thrown over it and there are fuzzy slippers on her feet. Barry must have gotten her after he'd made sure he was safely locked away.
Eobard dips his head in a bow and smiles. "Hello, Caitlin." He greets her and softens his expression more when she blanches. "I never did get to introduce myself to you better."
"Caitlin, Eobard Thawne." Cisco introduces, waving a hand between them and Eobard can see through the false confidence there, the need to prove that whatever lies between them doesn't effect him anymore. Eobard wonders how far he thinks that lie will get him.
Across from him, Barry makes a noise in the back of his throat and Eobard smiles at him. Barry doesn't smile back and instead turns his attention to Cisco. "Hey, can I talk to you for a moment?" He says, tilting his head toward the door and Cisco shoots one last lingering look in Eobard's direction before following him out of the pipeline.
"Was it all a lie?" Caitlin asks once they're gone, hands folded in front of her in what he knows is nervousness. "Hiring us, teaching us? Saving Ronnie?"
There's pain in her voice, raw and bleeding like an open wound and Eobard remembers that she's lost so much too. While everyone looks out for Barry's feelings and Barry's life, no one has thought to look to the other two. His children in everything but blood. The two brilliant young minds that he had gained the trust of and built a bond with, only to betray for the chance to go home.
"No." They matter too, they always have. "Not all of it."
"But enough? Enough that you could do all of this," She throws a hand out toward the Pipeline, to the place that's caused them all so much greif. "For what? We cared about you, we looked up to you and you threw all of it away. People died, Cisco died-"
"Ronnie died." He interrupts and the utter misery in her expression at that moment is flooring. "I never wanted that. If Barry had listened to me, he would still be alive."
"This is not Barry's fault! None of this would have happened-"
"If I had stayed?" She doesn't nod, but he knows that it was what she had wanted to say. "Could you stay in a world where you had to live with the knowledge that the people you love would die no matter what you do? Where all the relationships you've built over so many years were doomed from the beginning?"
"I do every day." She tells him and holds his gaze for one endless moment, body rigid as ice even as tears flicker in her eyes. "It's a part of being human, knowing that you're going to die. But you don't stop caring about the lives of others just because of it."
There's a beat of silence between them then, as he thinks over her words and she composes herself.
"When we first got Barry, you made a call to one of your colleagues and recommended me for her molecular neurobiology team."
"Dr. Peirson, yes, and you turned her down." He had wanted to chide her for it at the time, had wanted her to see that he was offering an out from the grief that he would inevitably cause her, but she had surprised him and stuck by his side despite the tragedy he had already made of her life.
"Did you offer the same thing to Cisco?" She asks, once again filling the role of the older sibling that Cisco should have had. "Did he get a chance to leave too?"
"He didn't want one." Or really, he hadn't offered one. Eobard had been his home. Presenting him with the option to leave would have resulted in Cisco thinking that he had done something wrong and Eobard hadn't needed that.
"But you thought I would?" There's anger in her tone now, cold and biting despite the fact that she hasn't raised her voice. "That I would be perfectly fine leaving you and Cisco behind?"
He doesn't have a reply for her and she doesn't need him to. She doesn't want one.
"We trusted you, we loved you, and you used us for it. Think about that before you try getting in our good graces again." She pauses with her hand on the control pad, one quick code from sealing him in darkness again. "And stay away from Cisco."
The blast door closes behind her with a hollow thud and Eobard begins to pace.
There might be more of this. I have a thing halfway planned, so who knows?