Cisco hears things.

People say things around him. They let things slip and then look at him like, oh it's only Cisco. Sometimes even people tell him things, because they have to tell someone and he'll do. Although they make him swear - on your mother's grave, Cisco, on your 3-D printer, on your favorite Enterprise scale model with working lights - not to tell, as if he needs to be blackmailed to know that a secret is a secret.

So he's used to hearing things he's not supposed to, and if you really want to know, he's actually good at keeping them shut up behind his teeth, under his tongue. Even when he's put the things he's heard together, like a puzzle or a pipe bomb, he doesn't let them out.

People don't expect that, he knows. They probably think he'd blab to the first person who'd buy him a drink. He blabs about all his own stuff, they know that.

(They think they know that.)

But inventions and scientific advances and new movies and just really fucking rad shit, those are Cisco's things to blab about.

Other things? Those aren't.

Like Caitlin asking him where a particular set of cross-streets is, one that he knows holds a women's health clinic. Like Ronnie suddenly looking sort of grey all the time and telling Cisco not to let her overdo (and Caitlin making a noise like an annoyed cat when she hears). Like Caitlin growling, This is the worst possible time! to Ronnie in the parking lot, and somehow Cisco doesn't think she's referring to a little quirk that the particle accelerator has developed, three weeks before it's slated to be turned on.

Then both of them coming in pink and relieved one morning, and not taking the afternoon off together like they'd planned, and Caitlin eating her own weight in French fries at lunch, which is something that happens once a month like clockwork but is a little late this time.

That's really nobody's thing but theirs. Not even his.

So he doesn't let that out. Not even to them.

But somehow when Joe says, "I can trust you with my suspicions," it sounds different.

Somehow, Joe West thinks that Cisco can not only hear something - not a scrap, not a fragment, but something whole and real - he can also be trusted not to let it slip.

When Cisco actually hears his suspicions - the whole nauseating scope of them - he wants not to be that dude. That one Joe can trust. A dude Joe West couldn't trust never would have heard them.

He tells Joe exactly what he thinks - because those suspicions are crazy, clearly - and storms out.

He half-expects Joe to call him and reiterate - don't tell. But he doesn't. And that's surprising.

Joe doesn't treat him like some twelve-year-old who just got a hot secret and is about three keystrokes away from posting it to Twitter. He doesn't say anything at all.

He also doesn't nag him about the blood test. Like he understood that Cisco said he would do it and he's going to do it even though he's mad at Joe for his unfounded and ridiculous suspicions.

When Cisco calls him back to tell him he ran the samples (reluctantly - grumpily - sort of hating himself - but he'd said he would) and he drops his other bombshell, he expects to hear, "That's ridiculous, Cisco. Run them again. You must have made a mistake. That's impossible."

Joe just says, "How?"

"Time travel?" Cisco expects that to elicit scorn, too. Because time travel.

Joe sighs in his ear. "No more impossible than anything else in this town."

"Are you going to tell Barry?"

"I need to think about that. Thank you, Cisco."

"Mmm," Cisco says, and hangs up without saying goodbye.

(He's not entirely proud of that.)

Joe's suspicions - the things he trusted Cisco with - stay swimming around inside him. Even after he's disproven them.

Lack of proof does not constitute proof of lack, Wells says one day, about something else, and Cisco kind of wants to throw up.

He can't get rid of Joe's suspicions. He's awfully worried they're going to become his suspicions, just by sticking around. He really wishes Joe hadn't told him, because he can't find enough evidence to completely refute them. But he could refute them, he bets, if he pays attention.

(Or he could prove them.)

Cisco has always heard things.

Now he's going to start listening.

FINIS