Description: How in my opinion 4x12 should have happened. Cecile's advise to Harry after hearing his thoughts.
AN: I was so, so freaking pissed! And still am. I was really looking forward to 4x12 and I was so let down that I can just curse and scream in anger. It's probably because it's this time of the month, but seriously! I could get over not seeing any romance between those two on screen just yet, but what really pissed me off was the fact that Caitlin didn't even try to make Harry feel better! She's the most compassionate and sweet person in the whole team and that is usually what she does, right? She follows him into a bar (season 2) and makes him laugh and come back and join the team. And he follows her into the Jitters (4x09) to make her feel better. Seriously, writers! Major screw up here! I get the Cisco/Harry friendship, but that man really needs to get laid and it's really all you write about the last three seasons! Those two being bickering friends! Okay… now I may be as angry as Harry usually is… Can I throw my laptop across the room? Or maybe that's not such a good idea… because I actually need it.
All was well that ended well. Harry felt relieved when he and Iris brought the boys home – now in a normal size – and they didn't hold anything against him. After all, he did kind of almost kill them, but apparently, being brought back to a normal size erased that and Cisco only patted his back when heading home for the night. Joe dropped by with Cecile to pick up Iris as they were getting dinner together. Just when they were leaving, Cecile lingered behind.
"Harry?"
"Oh, God, no, please do not bring that up," he pleaded as he turned to face her, though he had trouble looking her in the eye. "This day was crazy enough. Can we just pretend that nothing happened and you haven't had a trip straight to the centre of my mind?"
"I just wanted to say go for it."
"Come again?"
"Just go for it, Harry," she repeated with a smile.
"What do you mean?"
"You know what I mean. Ask her out, speak up about your feelings. You might even be surprised," Cecile encouraged him.
"What did you hear in her mind?" Harry asked then, completely taken aback and not actually knowing how to behave or react. Eventually, he just brought his hand to his head and scratched nervously.
"That would be invading her privacy. Just use my advice, ok?" Cecile sent him another smile and then left the building, catching up with both Joe and Iris.
Harry just shook his head, feeling stupefied.
In the end, it was actually Snow who sought him out in his lab that was located in the far end of the building for a reason. It was meant to give him the much needed peace and quiet and some escape from the loud team. Only then again, who was he kidding? He might be bickering and complaining in front of those people all the time, but they all knew he secretly loved them all and would jump into fire after them. Which he kind of proved today even though it was more about righting his own terrible mistake. He should consider himself lucky he managed in time.
"What are you doing here?" he just asked her gruffly when not even turning to face her. "I thought you went home." Because seriously, this luck of his couldn't possibly extend to this, right?
"I couldn't go home. Not just yet," she said softly. That was just another thing he loved about her. She always cared. She never let it go. She always tried to make the world a better place, to make the people she cared for feel better even if she herself was falling apart, too.
"Snow, I'm fine," he tried to assure her, his voice growing exasperated, but she wouldn't be fooled by it and he should have known better, too.
Soon enough, he could sense her standing just behind him and then he finally felt her touch as she tentatively put a hand on his shoulder.
"You are not fine," she insisted and then pushed gently, finally forcing him to turn to her and look into those beautiful hazel eyes. "You haven't been fine ever since Barry got arrested. Maybe even before that," she then added when briefly looking aside, her lower lip now trapped between her teeth as she was wondering about something. And damn if that sight didn't enchant him in a matter of seconds. She was just too beautiful an too gentle and too kind to ever be his. At least that had been what he thought until Cecile successfully seeded that doubt in his mind. "And what happened today… Harry, I know you think it's your fault, but it isn't, ok? You tried. You failed. It's only human. You made it right in the end."
"No," he denied hoarsely, forcing himself to stop looking at that lower lip and bringing his eyes to hers again. Which might've been a mistake all over again. "I failed because I was distracted, ok? That is why. And that is why I feel so guilty. Because it was my fault."
She blinked a few times, processing those words.
"But it's still only natural. After all, it wasn't some random metahuman we were dealing with. It was helping our friends. Helping Cisco, because somehow I don't think you care much for Ralph," she tried a lighter approach, but that didn't do anything to Harry's mood, so she only sighed.
"That's not it either," he just said, his voice growing soft and hoarse in the same time, if that was even possible. Caitlin marveled at the two opposites which somehow matched perfectly when it came to Harry. "I have been distracted for days now. Weeks," he added. She recognized that voice just then. He used it sometimes to address her by her last name which didn't exactly sound like one in his lips. It sounded more like a nickname. And then he did tell her in the very same tone that she got it when they were talking names with Ralph.
"What do you mean?" Caitlin asked, nearly breathlessly and that was the first time Harry actually saw that maybe Cecile was right. Maybe Snow had just been hiding this as well as he had. Maybe they were both afraid to admit what this would mean or were simply afraid of rejection that wasn't that far-fetched when he thought of it some more. In fact, it was one of his greatest fears.
"Cecile gave me a certain advice today," he began slowly, knowing he was treading on thin ice, "so I'm gonna risk it and just go for it."
"Harry, what are you tryi…?" her voice was muffled by his lips as they landed on hers, kissing her softly, carefully, looking for a reaction.
He surprised her with the kiss, so at first she just stood still, letting him move his lips against hers gently. He finally sighed, wanting to pull away and trying to come up with a way to apologize, to brush it all off as something insignificant, because maybe, just maybe, Cecile was making fun of him, getting back at him for something.
Only when he was about to retreat, Caitlin grabbed his face into both of her hands and he felt her kissing him back and then opening her mouth, letting the kiss grow deeper. And he forgot his own name as she did that, feeling actually happy. And he hadn't seemed to feel that way for years, he realized.
"So, is that a yes?" he finally asked when they parted, but pressed their foreheads together, breathing heavily, their heads spinning.
"Well, I don't know. You haven't asked me anything yet," she teased, smiling to him widely and he couldn't help but smile right back at her.
Yes, he would most definitely have to thank Cecile.