Summer was not the time to go off ice cream.
It was okay, though, because it wasn't a bad summer, heat-wise. And he still ate popsicles by the dozen. Although not slushies.
The last time he'd eaten ice cream (waffle cone, one scoop of strawberry and one scoop of Moose Tracks) had been the night that Caitlin told him she was leaving Star Labs. He'd kept eating, choking it down past the knot in his throat, and left without saying goodbye.
She'd been gone the next day.
He'd stayed mad for a month. How dare she. Just taking off. After everything. After Eddie and Ronnie and Barry (and Wells) had all vamoosed.
Okay. Fine. Most of those exits hadn't precisely been planned. But the fact was they were gone, okay, and now Caitlin was too.
Cisco was well aware that he didn't handle gone very well. Just one of those my-brother-disappeared-without-a-trace-when-I-was-five psychic landmine things. It was good to know about those things when you were being kind of an asshat and not calling your friend, who wasn't calling you either, so there.
After he quit being mad (and that had happened all at once, like the air being let out of a balloon), he'd spent the next five months alternately talking himself into and out of contacting her.
He'd written up messages on Facebook ("how's Mercury Labs TRAITOR LOL," all right, maybe he wasn't entirely done being mad that day) and deleted them.
Composed texts ("u, me, ice cream?") and never sent them.
Looked at her number in his contacts and never tapped the little phone icon to leave the message he'd carefully worked out ("Okay, so guess what, Joe got me a job at CCPD. I know, right? Don't you think I'd look dope with a badge?")
The longer he did that, the harder it was. Like every time he'd backed off was another pebble in a stone wall rising between them.
And she didn't call either.
Yeah, well, that was fine. She was probably better there. At Mercury Labs. Without all the memories. Without him.
(Maybe that was what she wanted. No him.)
He tried to be fair.
Caitlin liked things orderly and calm, predictable even. She liked for her shoes to go in her shoe rack when she got home, and for visitors to line theirs up by the door. She got twitchy if somebody parked in her parking spot.
("Caitlin," he would say. "It's not exactly the Parking Lot Hunger Games out there. We have over a thousand spots for, like, three cars. Joe can park in your spot today." She would mutter that yes, she knew, and go out and move her car when Joe left.)
She liked that one particular brand and flavor of Greek yogurt in the morning, even if she was eating it while running tests on talking gorilla DNA, and had a list of backup stores to go to if her regular one was out.
She'd spent the past two years in a constant state of whiplash. Honestly he'd never known why she'd stayed except maybe she was hanging onto what she could, while everything was falling apart. But losing Ronnie that last time, on top of (Wells) everything, well, he shouldn't be surprised that she'd thrown in the towel on Star Labs and gone to find herself a new normal.
Shouldn't be mad.
Mostly he wasn't, anymore.
The Mercury Labs security guard gave him a suspicious look. He smiled brightly and tried to look not-shifty. Totally not here to steal corporate secrets, not me. Should he have worn a blazer? Tied back his hair? Okay, did he own a blazer anymore? A question for the ages.
Maybe the smile did it, because the security guard picked up the phone. "Dr. Snow? There's someone here for you."
Without meaning to, he leaned forward, trying to hear her voice. But the phone was too quiet, just a little glurble glurble instead of actual words and timbre.
"Cisco Ramon," the security guard said, then jumped.
Cisco jumped too. "What? What is it?" His first thought was, awwww no, that dude got in here, I'm gonna hafta call Barry - he scrabbled for his phone before remembering that he'd surrendered it already. He had a ticket for it and everything. Great. A ticket would be so useful.
The guard said with not nearly enough urgency, "Dr. Snow? Are you there? Are you all right?"
Cisco yelled at the phone, "Caitlin?"
The security guard glared - at him, what! - but the phone said glurble, glurble again. His shoulders relaxed. She was still talking. Not screaming. Good sign, right? His fingers worried the ticket in his pocket.
He was at Mercury Labs, he reminded himself. Things like that happened at Star Labs, not Mercury Labs. That was why she was here and not there.
The security guard hung up.
"Is she okay?"
"She says you're a friend."
"I - oh." Really?
He got a badge on a string, directions, and an escort to the elevators. He rode up, thinking, A friend, a friend, a friend.
But people said that. It was a word that didn't necessarily mean anything really except that you knew the person.
Her lab was white and shiny. That was mostly it. White and shiny and neat, as sterile as an alcohol swab. It made him babble, trying to fill up all that negative space with words.
She smiled at him, but sort of sadly, and her voice was soft when she said, "Hi, Cisco."
He didn't hug her hello, and didn't know why. He covered it up by geeking out over her equipment, which to be fair, was amazingly awesomely geekworthy.
"You deserve it," he told her, trying to be generous. Because she did. She did.
This was better for her, this Mercury Labs gig. Really. She probably had a steady schedule and a designated parking spot and a work buddy who didn't constantly drag her into mortal peril, going "Here, hold this, don't touch that part if you don't want to get slightly electrocuted."
He should be a good friend and not blame her for doing what she needed to do.
Like a totally not-good friend, he hit her with the information that he'd spotted her at the rally, and watched for her to look guilty. She just looked kind of resigned.
"Cisco, I can't come back," she said and his heart thunked a notch lower in his chest. He hadn't wanted to hope for that.
He plowed on, waving the badge in front of her face, babbling out the story of the drained radiation tag, and his heart leapt up when she gave him that frustrated face - Cisco, ugh - because unless she'd changed completely in the past six months that meant he was getting to her. He just needed to apply some judicious puppy eyes and a little more curiosity-tweaking weirdness and -
Another Cisco ugh face and she went off toward her carefully ordered shelves.
Fist pump.
She gave in surprisingly easily. Apparently his puppy eyes had gotten mightier. Either that or her lack of exposure had made her more susceptible.
He wondered what was the best way to ask, "So, you got any work buddies yet?"
He was not a good friend, he explained to himself, driving back. A good friend would have ignored the knowledge that Caitlin wouldn't be able to stop thinking about a drained badge (weird, right? right?) and done the tests himself.
It would have been slower, sure, but when you factored in going to Mercury Labs and talking his way past security and then talking her into it, he hadn't actually saved that much time. Like, hardly at all. Like, maybe he'd spent more time on it, in the end.
He wondered if she'd picked up on that, too.
Oh, yeah, she'd picked up on it. She made that totally clear.
He smirked and told her "you're welcome, Caitlin" and listened to her idea about overloading Atom Smasher with the radiation he craved, with a smile tugging at the edges of his mouth.
it felt right, her being back at Star. The few times he'd been there over the summer had been horrible and awkward, mostly because Barry was being a total butthead, but also because Caitlin was missing. He'd felt like he was missing his right arm, without her there to exchange looks with.
But now she sat next to him, twitchy with nerves as they played backup for Barry, springing the trap on Atom Smasher. It felt like no time at all had passed. Like it had been just yesterday that she'd been there, murmuring concerns and countering suggestions, the two of them like a well-oiled machine.
No, she didn't want to be here, he reminded himself. She was doing a friend a solid right now, it didn't mean -
Still, after it was all over, he walked her out to her car, both of them discussing who Zoom might be and how he'd kicked poor dead Atom Smasher out of his own universe and why he might want Barry dead, and it could have been any night from a year ago.
She looked at her watch. "God, it's late," she said. "I'm going to be so sluggish in the morning."
"Call in sick," he suggested. "Tell 'em you ate a bad oyster."
"I can't do that," she said, sounding vaguely scandalized.
"Right," he muttered.
She shifted her weight, hooking her left foot around her right ankle for a minute before standing on both feet again - a tell of discomfort, although whether it was from actual awkwardness or just her shoes pinching her toes, he didn't know. He'd seen both before. "So," she said. "So how long will it be before Henry gets out, do you think?"
"Cecile's aight," he said. "The DA? I think she'll push it through."
"You know her?"
Joe had lunch with her sometimes, and once they'd invited Cisco along to partake of food truck treasures. After that lunch, he'd told Joe he shipped them, then had to explain what that meant. Joe had mumbled and blushed and cleared his throat a lot before telling him to go work on his gadgets. Cisco had giggled all the way back to his lab.
"Met her a couple of times," he told Caitlin now. "It'll still be a week or so, I'd guess. Paperwork. Red tape. You know."
She nodded thoughtfully.
"So, Iris is already planning a welcome home bash," he said.
"Yes, she told me. She's going to text me details."
He swallowed back the same offer, hovering on the tip of his tongue. "So," he said instead. "See ya there?"
She nodded, and he nodded, and they both got in their cars and drove away, and he thought, I'm not going to see her tomorrow.
It felt like a tooth getting yanked out.
"It's a great badge," she said, sitting down next to him. The party continued over their heads, bright with laughter and energy, although Barry was weirdly down for a guy whose dad had just gotten out of prison, geez Louise.
She was right. Joe had gotten him a pretty damn sweet badge. He angled it to catch the light, grinning. "I'm still gonna consult for them. I got a lot of gadgets set up already, so my work was starting to slow down after I got the officers trained and stuff. I figure I can balance that and you know, my old gig at Star Labs. Lots of overlap."
"You're going back?" she asked. "To Star."
"Now that Barry's extracted his head from his butt, yep, I'm headed back." You could come too, he thought, and told himself to bite it back. She had a gig. A better one. One that was better for her.
She turned her cup in her hands. "It'll be a lot of work on your own."
"Stein will be there. Iris is going to help out where she can." He made his voice chipper. No prob here, Caitlin. You don't need to feel obligated, or anything.
"Neither of them are medically trained," she said. "It just seems to me that you could use someone who's medically trained."
He ran his finger around the stitching on the leather case of his shiny new badge. "So - you wanna get the band back together?"
"It mostly already is," she said. "I just think you have a need for a particular skill set that I can provide."
He nodded, telling himself that it might be conspicuous if he did a victory lap around the living room. He picked up his cup and drained it to stop himself from doing one anyway. "What about Mercury Labs?" he asked, making his voice suuuuuuuper-cazh. "What're you gonna tell them?"
Byeeeeee, he imagined her saying to the white lab and the tight-ass security guard. It's been real, but I gotta go to where I belong.
She folded her lips up the way she did. "Hmmmm. Well. I'll have to go back there, obviously."
He dropped his cup. "But I thought you were coming back. To Star, I mean, not to Mercury. To us." Me.
What was she going to do? Split her time? Like a noncustodial parent, seeing them only on the weekends and alternate Tuesday nights? Was this all she'd meant?
But she gave him a scandalized look. "Cisco. I have to give two weeks' notice to HR. That's just unprofessional, not giving two weeks' notice or wrapping up any of my projects. I'm being rude enough, bailing after six months."
He said, "You gave me twelve hours' notice."
"You walked off without saying goodbye."
"I thought I was going to see you again! To say goodbye!"
She crossed her arms. "Well, I thought that you stomping off in a snit said all there was to say, really."
"I did not snit."
She rolled her eyes.
"Huff, maybe. I'll cop to a huff."
The corners of her mouth quirked.
He said softly, "I'm sorry about that."
Her eyes went sad and she reached out to touch the back of his hand briefly. "I knew you'd be upset. I just couldn't stay, right then."
"I know. I do. I really, really do, Caitlin. I thought about it after I de-huffed -"
"Unsnitted," she contributed.
He narrowed his eyes at her briefly. "- and I get it. Honestly." He squeezed her shoulder. "Are you sure you want to come back?"
She shrugged. "God knows what kind of trouble you'll get into without me."
Which for her meant, absolutely, yes I do, no doubts whatsoever.
If he was a better friend, he'd insist that she go back to Mercury Labs. To her nice white lab, glowing with sterility and order. Everything on shelves, no post-it notes stuck to her monitor with OMG flavor/month = blue raspberry or CHECK UR EMAIL kinetic batteries WHAAAAT
Man, she hated when he did that.
He decided to stock up on post-it notes.
Over the next two weeks, she stopped by Star Labs after work and on the weekends, taking inventory in her medical lab and huffing about the mess that Barry had left.
Cisco teased her that a single wrapper down under the cabinets did not constitute a mess, and joined her in abusing Barry for stashing stuff on the tall shelves and cranking all the chairs really high, but the knot between his shoulders didn't go away entirely.
At exactly eight o'clock on her first day back, he sat in the cortex listening for the sound of her heels on the linoleum.
When the click-click-click came, he let out his breath in a whoosh, and the knot went with it.
"Hey," he said cheerfully, like it was any other day.
"Ungh," she grunted, and took a deep gulp of her coffee, still not a morning person by any stretch of the imagination.
Yep. Back to normal.
When she pitched the cup, he knew she was back in the realm of human, and he swung his chair around to show her what he'd been working on and get her opinion.
Midway through the morning, he realized something. "Hey," he said, blinking. "You changed your hair."
She rolled her eyes at him. "Last month."
"Well, it doesn't have gears, so what do I know." He reached out and flicked it out of her eyes. "S'cute, I like it."
"I'm still getting used to the bangs. They fall in my eyes." She made a face.
"You've had the same haircut since I've known you."
"I can change things," she said. "I can handle change."
"Okay." He grinned. "Where'd you park?'
"In my spot, of course."
He laughed, and she wrinkled her nose at him.
Yeah, Mercury Labs probably had been better for her. Steady and predictable and prestigious - and she'd given notice and come back here anyway.
He wondered if she wanted to go get ice cream after work.
FINIS