(A/N) A prompt from Fiction-Over-Fact on Tumblr: "Cisco and Caitlin's first official date, and their 10th, and their one year anniversary" This is a three-part fic.
When He Didn't Notice
Every time they told the story of their first date, Caitlin would say, "He almost missed it completely."
Depending on how well the listener knew Cisco, they would either say, "Oh, did something come up?" or laughingly ask, "So what were you working on?"
"I was there," Cisco would say. "I just - didn't know we were on a date."
Caitlin would shake her head disbelievingly. "I wore the green dress that always made you look at me twice. And lipstick."
"You dress up a lot," he would argue back. "You're way fancier than me. And okay, you always wear lipstick. See above, re: fancy-dressin' lady."
"Not that shade of red. That was fuck-me red." (When they told the story to his family, she changed it to "kiss-me red" because omigod. His mother. Was right there. Caitlin didn't realize that Lupe Ramon had a dirtier mind than her son until later, when the older woman told the joke about the camel, the priest, and the oil rig.)
He would shrug. "I dunno, I thought it was supposed to go with the dress."
"Okay, what did you think when I asked you out to dinner?"
"We got dinner together all the time as just friends. It was not that rare."
"We went to diners, and places where you got a straw and a lid for your drink."
"Sometimes bars."
"Okay, granted, but that's my point. I asked you out to dinner at a place with linen tablecloths."
"It was this Russian restaurant," Cisco would tell the listener. "And there was this soup with sour cream in it. It was actually pink, but holy crap, it was good."
"Cisco! I spent the whole meal flirting with you!"
"I kinda thought they'd given you vodka in your water glass by accident."
Somewhere around this point, the listener would be laughing too hard to hear anything more, and Caitlin and Cisco would grin at each other.
The truth was, Cisco had noticed the dress. He'd noticed the lipstick. And the restaurant. And the flirting. (And he'd known it was just water.) But he'd spent so long trying not to feel anything for Caitlin Snow that it had all seemed too good to be true. For most of the night, he'd been waiting for his clock radio to blare in his ear.
When, at the end of the night, she'd said, "Oh, for God's sake, Cisco," and kissed him, he had stopped expecting to wake up and kissed her back.
But Caitlin's version was funnier.
