Hello! I'm so sorry it took me so long!
I'm kind of in a hurry here, so I'll just say 3 things:
1. I realized that some of you seemed confused because I used the word "miscarriage" in the first chapter. I apologize for that. As I've said many times, english is my second language. I used that word as an alternative for "mistake" (sleeping together was a mistake), I didn't mean to imply that Barry and Caitlin had lost a baby. They've only slept together once.
2. I know we have a couple of rough weeks ahead, so... be still! And keep a bucket near while you watch the crossover lol
3. Excuse my grammar xD
The songs I used to write this chapter are:
"Careful" - Michelle Featherstone.
"State of Grace" - Taylor Swift.
"Hunger" - Ross Copperman.
"Not Today" - Imagine Dragons.
"Scudder," Barry grumbled, taking the mirror from the cart and holding it at his eye level.
"Allen," Mirror Master laughed from his prison. "Barry Allen. That's your real name, isn't it?"
"What do you want? How did you get here?"
"I followed your girlfriend." The reflection's little fingers pointed at Caitlin, who frowned. "Humble girl. She would've seen me if she spent more time looking in mirrors."
Barry tried his best to hide his uneasiness. Great. That was just great. Since Scudder had probably followed Caitlin from his apartment, he didn't only know his identity, but also his address. The good news was that he didn't know hers.
"So, what are you up to?" Barry mocked him. "You can't escape the mirror prison."
"Oh, it's not me you should worry about…"
"Barry!"
From the corner of his eye, Barry saw a thin figure emerge, apparently out of nowhere. Caitlin, who was still facing the wall, swung her arm in that direction. A curtain of frost came out and hit the wall.
Barry turned around and what he saw left him speechless: where he had expected to find a man standing in front of the wall, there was a man… in the wall. His face, part of his chest, and a stretched arm were the only visible parts of his body. He didn't seem to be frozen solid, just paralyzed by a thin layer of ice.
Barry checked the mirror he was holding, only to find it empty. Scudder was gone.
"He's still alive," Caitlin said, looking at what she had done with obvious guilt. "I just immobilized him. He was going to kill you."
"I know, Cait. Thank you," Barry told her, reassuringly. "Joe left me this guy's file this morning." He approached the wall to examine their little crime scene. "Roger Peters. The three people he mugged swore that he fractured their knees… phasing through them with his bare hands."
Barry and Caitlin defensively turned to the door when they heard quick steps and panting in the hallway, and relaxed when Cisco appeared at the door.
"The alarms went off in the cortex, are you guys o…?" he meant to ask, before the sight of the trapped meta startled him. "Holy Han Solo!"
Caitlin, who didn't seem to have the time for explanations, ran to her desk and grabbed a syringe from a drawer.
"What now?" Barry asked, when she placed herself between him and Cisco.
"Now we wait," she said, taking a deep breath.
Immediately, a loud groan made the trio jump back. The metahuman had awaken and was trying to bring the rest of his body out of the wall. Caitlin rushed to his side, raised her arm above her head and stabbed him with the syringe. One second later, he fell to the floor with a loud bang.
"Tranquilizer," Caitlin explained, since her friends seemed in awe. "Now we can lock him up. He still needs to recover, don't forget to turn the heat on."
"You just frosted him up and knocked him out but suuuure, poor thing needs me to turn the heat on," Barry said, sarcastically.
"I used a pretty big dose. He's going to sleep for at least fourteen hours."
"Have you ever wondered what would've happened if she had gone full psycho?" Cisco hypothesized, exchanging an anxious look with Barry. "With her expertise, imagine all the kinds of torture she could've…"
Caitlin gave them a 'for real?' look.
"She hasn't, she obviously hasn't," Barry said with a squeaky voice. "Pipeline!"
He sped out with the meta in his arms to find him a cell. Once he made sure he was correctly placed and locked, Barry returned to the med bay before his friends even started a new conversation.
"What happened?" Cisco finally asked them.
"Scudder," Barry answered, with disdain. "He's still trapped in the Mirror World, but somehow found us and sneaked that metahuman fugitive into the lab. Caitlin took care of him," he added, pointing at her with his thumb.
"It was too easy," Caitlin said.
"Modesty. I love it."
"No, Cisco: it was too easy." She took her mirror from the cart and turned it over, looking for any clue of Mirror Master's intentions. "Why would Scudder send one metahuman against two? He already knew about Barry and our powers…"
"I don't know, but now he also knows where we operate from." Barry approached the closest wall, took down the only mirror in the room and turned it over. "We need to get rid of anything that has a reflecting surface, so he can't see what we're doing when he comes back."
Even with that optimistic belief in mind, Barry put his hands behind his neck. Scudder wasn't the first supervillain to discover his real identity, but he should've put more effort into protecting his friends. Trapping Scudder in the Mirror World had been his idea and, with his new knowledge, could use that against them.
"Guys, you need to stay at my place tonight," Caitlin decided, probably thinking as Barry. "Scudder can't follow us if we breach there. I think it's safer that we stay together until we fix this." She looked around. "Does anyone know where is Harry?"
"Do I smell movie night?" Cisco intervened, rubbing palms together. "Harry? He's giving a lecture or something on Earth-2, in a room full of students to throw things at."
"Oh, shoot. I was looking forward to see you guys spooning in my couch again."
"I got Barry."
Barry hit Cisco in the head with his palm when he blew him a kiss.
Since Roger Peters' file had all the information they needed at the moment, the team took the time to hide all the objects that had a reflecting surface before breaching to Caitlin's apartment. Once they were there, it was inevitable to turn that security measure into a normal game night. Cisco won four rounds of UNO, before Caitlin and Barry noticed that he was vibing their hands.
After dinner, Caitlin insisted on washing the dishes alone while Cisco and Barry picked a movie. Nevertheless, Barry had almost finished scrolling through Netflix when he felt Cisco's head fall against his shoulder. Rolling his eyes, he gently pushed him to the opposite side until he accommodated against the arm of the couch. His slow-paced breathing was enough to assume he was too far gone already.
Barry hadn't expected to be left alone with no choice but admit that his mind wasn't at ease. After spending two minutes nervously staring at the kitchen door, he got off the couch and tiptoed through the living room.
Caitlin's back was facing him when he reached the door and, from that angle, it seemed like she was trying to dry each plate as slowly as humanly possible.
"Did something happen to the dishwasher?" Barry asked her, stepping into the kitchen.
"No," Caitlin answered, turning around with an unreadable, neutral look on her face. "Why?"
"Because…"
He sped to the sink and, in a few blurry movements, dried all the dishes left and put them back in the cabinets.
"… that was taking forever." Barry finished, taking the towel from Caitlin's shoulder to dry his hands.
"I'm a little obsessive," she excused herself, awkwardly. "Where's Cisco?"
"Sleeping."
"Oh."
Barry put his hands behind his head and exhaled when Caitlin took one step away from him discreetly. He knew that what had happened earlier, before Scudder interrupted them, needed to be addressed, but the tension between them was thicker than he thought it would be.
"I'm sorry about what happened in the med bay," he apologized, trying to keep his distance.
"Well, thank you… but something tells me it won't be the last time," she said, looking down at her hands.
"It's just… you're not making things as easy as you think."
"What do you mean?"
"This."
Barry touched Caitlin's nose with the tip of his finger and a small giggle escaped her lips.
"There it is," he chuckled.
"Yes, I am ticklish. Your point?" she asked.
"And this…"
Barry took a step back, looked at Caitlin up and down and smiled wickedly once he locked eyes with her again.
She giggled away.
"That… had never worked with any girl before," Barry said, unable to hide his surprise. "For some bizarre reason, I make you laugh."
"Stop that. Now," Caitlin warned, rising a finger, unable to hold back the laughter.
"Why should I? You're smiling. And it's a genuine smile, you're using your entire face…"
"Barry Allen, stop hitting on me." She bit her lip, trying to prevent herself from smiling again, but Barry's amused expression seemed to make it impossible. "God, if you could see yourself right now…"
"Do you think I'd be embarrassed? Why?"
"Because… it's you and me. It's weird"
"Caitlin, that argument would've been valid almost twenty-four hours ago, before you..." He smiled at the naughty memory that had just popped up. "That wasn't weird. It has never been weird between us."
"Oh, and what do you think this"—she gestured between them— "is or has ever been?"
"An unspoken thing."
Caitlin rolled her eyes and bit her lip nervously when she noticed that Barry had leaned closer and now had her cornered against the kitchen counter.
"What's that unspoken thing?" she enquired, patiently.
"I don't know. That's why it remains unspoken," Barry said, shrugging. "Don't you wanna find out? I mean, this is gonna keep coming back…"
"It doesn't have to… It's just… a physical act, Barry. We can forget about it and move on…"
"It's not what happened that makes me wonder, Caitlin, but what lead us to it." His eyelids felt heavy on his eyes, alerting him of how tenderly he was probably looking at her. "Why it had never happened before? We've spent plenty of time alone these years."
"Fine," Caitlin sighed, crossing her arms and waving her hand to encourage him. "Tell me: what's your theory?"
Barry smirked at her. Any other girl would've snapped at him and told him he was being a creep… but there was Doctor Caitlin Snow, demanding facts.
"I think… we had a green light," he told her, fondly. "Neither of us are hung up on people right now. It's actually the first time since we've known each other."
Caitlin didn't try to look away, but apparently had no intention to comment on that. Barry had expected to find exasperation all over her face, considering how annoying he had been that day, and yet he recognized something very different.
Pain.
Barry had to remind himself that, despite her empathy, Caitlin was still a scientist. Although he didn't know what her specific struggle was, it was obvious that she was trying to rationalize the situation. A situation that was like a dangerous experiment: mixing the wrong ingredients (in this case, feelings) could make things go horribly wrong.
Maybe he needed to stop being so vague.
Okay, there were two things he knew for sure: 1) He was head over heels for Caitlin since the night before, and that was the scariest thing he could possibly say; 2) That hadn't come out of nowhere: He hadn't fabricated feelings overnight, something had awakened inside of him.
If Barry didn't need the speedforce to explain to him how that strange bond worked, he shouldn't need help finding something concrete to tell Caitlin.
"Do you remember the day I signed my divorce papers?" Barry asked, with the first thing that came to mind.
"Yeah," Caitlin answered, wrinkling her forehead.
"You know? I don't. I don't remember much from that day… just what happened at night." Barry smiled at the worried look on her face, happy to see her willing to listen instead of wondering about the sudden change of topic. "I was sitting in a park bench, drinking that disgusting mix of vodka, scotch and gin, knowing it wouldn't get me drunk… I don't know how much time I stayed there until I heard you and Cisco talking behind me… and then you sat next to me, grabbed the bottles and poured yourself a glass…" He cracked up before finishing the sentence. "You raised the full glass at me and said 'cheers', probably the only word we spoke in three hours, and took a deep sip… I was so sure you were gonna puke…"
"Oh, I was definitely about to puke. I even thought about letting myself puke to make you laugh, but that would've been disgusting…"
Caitlin stopped talking suddenly, probably realizing that reminiscing the anecdote wasn't Barry's only intention. Sensing that she was more comfortable with him now, he reached out and placed his hand on her cheek, caressing it with his thumb, hoping to restore some familiarity between them. Despite being an intimate gesture, she closed her eyes thankfully.
"I thought Cisco would be all over me, trying to make me feel better… but only you appeared…" he continued. "What did you tell him? Why did he stay away?"
Caitlin remained still for a few seconds and then let out a long sigh.
"'Let me'" she mumbled.
"What?"
"That's what I told him: 'let me'." Caitlin opened her eyes and gave him a sad smile. "I had a hunch. I approached you as slowly as possible, choosing my words carefully… but, once I got there, I realized there was nothing you could've possibly wanted to hear in that moment… so I just sat there, next to you. I felt like an idiot, but since you weren't exactly hiding… I assumed you didn't want to be alone."
Barry swallowed, fighting down his emotion. Surprisingly, reliving the experience from her point of view had been more enlightening for him than for Caitlin. He had accidentally just dived into one reason why he was falling for her, and it was overwhelming to wonder how many more he had.
Amazed, he placed his other hand on her other cheek, cupping her face and looking down at her with glazed eyes.
"I thought I would never feel okay again," he admitted. "Having you there with me kind of reminded me that the world hadn't ended… I would still have to put on the suit the next day, but you and Cisco would still be there…"
"I am glad to find out, one year later, that I actually helped," she joked.
"Of course you did. You understand, Caitlin" —he brought her face closer to his to emphasize on that—"You always understand better than anyone… It's ironic, now that I think about it… It was like you put a symbolic bandage on me. You're a healer in every sense of the word."
Caitlin didn't say anything, but it surprised him to see her lingering on him for a little bit… and he tried not to look too shocked when she tiptoed and softly crashed her forehead against his.
"I got a secret," she whispered, knotting her hands on his shirt. "You did that first."
"What?" Barry whispered, caressing her nose with his.
"Patch me up… symbolically." Caitlin smiled at Barry's evident confusion. "When Ronnie passed away the first time… coming home after work was the hardest part of the day. I tried to keep myself as busy as I could, and the fact you needed to be watched 24/7 was the perfect excuse to spend my nights at STAR Labs…"
Barry felt strangely glad that she started talking about Ronnie. Not only because it meant she still trusted him, but also because he had been wondering if he'd feel jealous of him now. And he didn't. He'd listen to anything she needed to get out of her chest, no matter how many other guys were involved.
He was falling for her that much.
"I spent most of my time looking through my microscope, doing some research, with you in the next room… but, one day, after checking your vitals, something came over me… and I sat next to your bedside," Caitlin proceeded, with obvious embarrassment. Barry knitted an eyebrow. "Don't worry, I didn't talk to you. I barely knew you." She laughed. "But doing everything with you in the room became some sort of routine. I would do my research, read a book, watch tv…in the company of the only person who wouldn't tilt his head with pity every time I walked into the room… I found you reassuring."
"I was in a comma," Barry chuckled softly, trying not to make it sound like he was making fun of her. "I guess we all know a crazy lady who sits with comma guy at the hospital." He gave her a little wink.
"Well… you turned out to be just as reassuring when you were finally awake."
Barry mirrored her smile, a feeling of relief coming from every portion of skin that was in contact with her. He had spent the last twenty-four hours feeling like he had a missing a limb. She had suddenly taken down all the walls that disappointment and pain had built around his heart in the past year.
"I can't stop thinking about you," Barry said, knowing it was the right time.
"I can't stop thinking about you either," Caitlin confessed, snuggling up to him as he continued stroking her face. "I am so sorry about this morning…"
"It's okay."
"No, it's not…"
"Hey."
Barry pressed his forehead more insistently and affectionally against hers, making it impossible for their eyes not to meet.
"I got you," he promised, ghosting his lips over hers. "It's me this time… and it's gonna be okay and… hey, your heart is beating so fast," he grinned, when her arms snaked around his back and she pressed her body against his.
"You're one to talk," Caitlin said. Her eyelashes hit his when she blinked. "We are gonna wake Cisco up."
"And all your neighbors."
"Barry!" She gave him a small shove.
"Can I kiss you now?"
"Let me."
Smiling, she grabbed the back of his head and pulled him into a kiss. Barry tried keep up by putting his hands on her waist, but he felt his throat close when she brushed her lips against his. Although he had hoped that would happen, he didn't really expect it, and the growing sensation in his belly and chest was a little too much to handle.
When he pulled away to take a breath, Caitlin seemed amused.
"Nervous?" she asked, smugly.
"Me?" he exclaimed, pretending to be offended. "Never."
He crouched down to pick her up. He put her in the kitchen counter and placed himself between her legs. When he leaned up to kiss her, she hit her head against one of the cabinets and groaned in his mouth.
"Geez. Are you okay?" he asked, stretching out his neck to kiss that side of her head, hitting his own in the process. "OUCH…"
"We are a hot mess," she giggled, wrapping her arms around Barry's neck and tilting her head towards the door. "We need more space."
Without double checking if that was what she meant, he sped them into Caitlin's bedroom and closed the door behind them. After a few more kisses and laughs with her in his arms, Barry gently put Caitlin on the bed and hovered over her. Before he could reach her eye level, she pulled up his shirt off and threw it across the room.
They took things slower than the night before, making out hard as they arched against each other. Barry, who knew this was his first opportunity to show his feelings, wanted to romance her as much as he could before progressing. He intertwined one of his hands with hers, placed them above their heads tenderly and stroked her thigh with the other. Caitlin used her free hand to caress his cheek and kissed a path down his neck.
He didn't notice something was wrong until she joined their mouths together again, and suddenly tried to shake off his hand violently. He raised himself on his arms to check on her.
"Are you o…?"
Then he felt it. It started as slight pain in his teeth that extended to his temples, burning his eye globes.
"Barry, get off me," Caitlin urged. "Barry, get off me. Now"
Barry, who had closed his eyes to draw out the headache, opened them again just to see a horrified, blue-eyed Caitlin pushing him away from her and getting off the bed.
It was then that Barry realized what had just happened.
Brain freeze.
"Hey, hey," Barry said, quickly putting his shirt back on and trying to approach her, but she took one step back for each one he took forward. "Cait…"
Her pupils had changed back to normal, but she seemed petrified, leaning against the chest of drawers. She had covered her mouth with her hands and her eyes were watery and wide open in panic.
"I knew it," she sobbed. "I was right."
"Caitlin, I don't know what's happening, but I'm okay. I'm perfectly fine," he promised, holding his arm out, inviting her to reach him. "Hey…"
"Stay away from me!"
Barry jumped back with both hands in the air. The look on her face him tore him apart. He hadn't seen her so terrified since Killer Frost had almost put an icicle through his heart.
"Did I do this to you?" he asked, mortified.
Instead of answering, she turned around, ran to the bathroom and locked herself up. Barry, who was still recovering from being caught off guard in a considerably intimate moment, decided to grant himself only two seconds of extreme fear before following her.
"Caitlin, please let me in," he begged, leaning against the bathroom door. He then noticed the thermostat on the wall: she had turned the heating up. "What the hell is going on?"
Before he could plead one more time, the bedroom door opened, and Cisco peeked inside.
"What's happening here?" he groaned, rubbing his eyes.
"It's Caitlin," Barry whispered, trying to sum up the situation without giving so much away. "She… took a little bit of my heat by accident and freaked out."
"What? That's not possible, she doesn't do that anymore." Cisco walked in, crossed the room and knocked on the bathroom door. "Caitlin, what are you doing?"
"Leave me alone," she demanded. "No one should be so close to me right now."
"C'mon, it was a little accident. You're exaggerating."
"Cisco, I didn't anticipate this. Please, take Barry to your apartment."
"Caitlin, Barry is okay!" Cisco exchanged a look with his friend just to corroborate that last statement. Barry nodded fervently. "And, as much as I'd like to play Anna and Elsa all night, you're making us very nervous here… whoa!"
Cisco let go of the door handle with a squeal. It was completely frozen.
"Should I vibrate through the door?" Barry susurrated.
Cisco shook his head and exhaled to show Barry the white breath coming out of his mouth, as the cold from inside the bathroom creeped through the space between the door and the floor. He then indicated him to go to the other side of the door.
"She's coming out," he whispered. "You know who."
Barry gesticulated an angry 'are you serious?' with his lips when he saw that Cisco's intention was to ambush Caitlin. He didn't want to accept that Killer Frost was back, even when there were plenty of reasons to believe it.
They didn't have time to discuss it though, because Barry reacted as soon as he saw Caitlin stepping out of the bathroom, with a white streak of hair. He super-sped his shoe laces off, ran behind her and tied her hands together. Cisco shoved her down and immobilized her against the floor with his knee.
"You have a lot of explaining to do, K.F.," Cisco said, easily keeping his prisoner down. "How did you come back?"
Barry, who was watching Caitlin from above, made a high-pitched noise when he noticed her lack of resistance.
"Uh oh," he let out, when she looked up at him, frowning. "I know that look…"
"I know that look too" Cisco yelped, looking down at Caitlin's face. "Not even Killer Frost could make that Twenty-Angry-Mothers look…"
"Are you idiots done manhandling me?" Caitlin huffed, confirming her identity. "How many times do I have to tell you that she's gone?"
"Well, excuse us for doubting it when you've clearly haven't stopped keeping things from us." Cisco offered her a hand to help her get up.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Barry asked, since Cisco hadn't spent enough time with her to notice that.
Cisco pointed at the open bathroom door: the bathtub was full of frozen water.
Caitlin sighed.
"It's not Killer Frost," she insisted. "But there's something seriously wrong with me again"—her eyes glowed — "You guys need to leave."
Barry noticed that Caitlin was staring at him with an even more broken expression than before. He looked in the mirror on the opposite wall and noticed a superficial, red ice burn in the left side of his face. She then looked down at his hand, covered by small, itchy blisters. The adrenaline had probably made him numb to the pain before. He tried to silently appease her before she turned to Cisco, swallowing. No matter how quick those wounds healed, she would beat herself up about it for a long while.
He almost wished it was his fault, so he was the one torturing himself. He knew her: She was doing double duty, hating herself and suffering from the self-loathing.
"Excuse me, are you listening to yourself?" Cisco questioned her. "You accidentally hurt Barry, locked yourself up in the bathroom, froze 62 gallons of water and told us there's something wrong with you. Not to mention it feels like freaking Arendelle in here. Sure, I'll be out in a minute."
"It's for your own good," Caitlin insisted. Barry noticed that layer of frost had covered her eyelashes and nose, and another streak of white hair had formed a few inches from the other. "Please, leave."
"No. No until we get an explanation."
"No touching!" She frantically pulled her sleeves down to cover her hands when Cisco stretched his arm towards her. "Guys, I…"
Caitlin groaned in frustration and rubbed her face with her hands.
"It's the heat…" she started, waving her hands in surrender. "My powers… they work by turning heat into ice projection. As you already know, I recharge them with coffee, hot baths, the steam room in STAR Labs… but lately the craving has grown stronger and those methods are not enough. I need more. Without the proper amount, my powers go out of whack and I can't control them or regulate my own body temperature, which right now is dropping and dropping… The thing is, as long as I am here, the cold wave around me will be enough to kill anyone near." She alternated her look between Cisco then Barry. "That's why you guys need to leave."
"What do you mean 'as long as I'm here'?" Barry asked, ignoring the rest.
"Barry…" Caitlin tried, but she was interrupted.
"What did you mean, Caitlin?"
"Aren't you guys listening to me?" Caitlin backed off from them and cornered herself against her bedroom door. Another layer of frost had appeared on her upper lip. "You'll die from hypothermia if you stay here."
"And so will you," Cisco interfered, pointing an accusing, trembling finger at her. "Of course! The super healing Killer Frost provided repaired cold tissue. Without it, your body won't be able to resist that much cold… and you'll die."
At a bearable temperature, Barry would've panicked, but the cold was preventing him from thinking clearly and he knew they had to react fast. He whooshed to Caitlin's side and grabbed her by the arm.
"I'll take you to STAR Labs," he told her, calmly. "We'll figure something out."
"I tried everything, and I don't have that much time," Caitlin said, her voice breaking on the last syllable. "There's nothing in STAR Labs that can help me."
"Cisco?"
Cisco was walking around the room frantically, pulling his own hair.
"She's right, we don't have anything that can provide that type of energy," he said, desperately. "We can bring her some wild animal she can suck the life out, like the Twilight vampires did…"
"It won't be enough," Caitlin interrupted, sitting on the floor and pulling her knees against her chest. Barry kneeled next to her. "There's nothing you guys can do. I'm sorry."
Barry, who had been oddly focused the whole time, knew exactly what he had to do. Caitlin, too weak to shove him away, shook her head lightly when he got closer to her.
"Take my heat," he said, determined.
"No," Caitlin protested, trembling and battling to keep her eyes open. "No way."
"You just need a little bit. It will buy us some time to find a way of saving you. Please."
"No! What if I can't stop?"
"I trust you." Barry lifted her chin up with his fingers, ignoring of the burning pain he felt from the skin-to-skin contact. "Do you trust me?"
"Dude, let's not get ahead of ourselves," Cisco said, behind him. "We can still come up with something that will keep us all alive."
"You're not gonna kill me," Barry continued, ignoring him. He stroked her cheek with his hand and clenched his jaw. It was like touching dry ice. "Look at me." She looked up at him and sobbed, although it was impossible to produce tears. "You're gonna start asking for help, okay?"
"Not this kind of help," Caitlin whispered weakly. "I'm not watching you guys die."
She closed her eyes and stopped moving. Barry, losing his last shred of calm, tried to shake her back into conscience.
"No, no, no!" he shouted, desperately. "Wake up!"
"Oh, my God," Cisco exclaimed, kneeling next to him and pointing at Caitlin's eye. It was twitching. "She's holding her breath!"
"Caitlin, don't be ridiculous!"
Knowing there was no way to convince her, he leaned his face down to proceed with his original plan, but Caitlin opened her arms and released a cold wind that sent him flying a one meter away from her. He got up at the same time she did and tried pathetically tried to catch her, being easily avoided. Barry suspected that the only reason why Cisco and him were still alive was their meta genes, because the temperature was already low enough to neutralize his superspeed.
"Caitlin," Barry grunted, starting to lose his patience. "We're trying to save your life."
"My life is ruined anyway," she said, with a chilling chuckle. Her skin was dangerously pale.
She kept on moving clumsily around the room, trying to keep enough distance between them. Her mistake was being too focused on avoiding Barry. Cisco sneaked behind her, threw a wave of energy and trapped her against the wall.
"Now!" he yelled.
Barry ran to Caitlin, pulled her face to him and covered her lips with his, trying to breath in her mouth. She put up a good fight at first before the instinct for self-preservation triumphed and she relaxed her grip on his arms.
Maybe he was being biased considering the person involved, but Barry had already had his life force sucked out of his body by time wraiths once and this wasn't feeling remotely as bad as that.
Also, he wasn't cold. Where was the cold?
It didn't take him long to figure it out: just like a few hours before, big amounts of energy coming from different parts of his body reunited in his chest. Barry, basing on a hunch, held them back as much as he could and then redirected them to his lips. An electric shock separated him from Caitlin and sent him to the floor.
"IT WORKED!" Cisco screamed, stopping Caitlin from falling to the floor. "It worked. Dammit, Caitlin." He kneeled down with her in his arms. "Are you okay?"
"Yes," she coughed. The white streaks in her hair had disappeared and the frost has melted on her face. "I'm fine."
"Frost lives." He shared a smile with Barry and then looked down at her. "If you weren't my doctor, I'd be sending you all my cardiology bills."
Barry heard the central heating turn back on and the cold wave slowly started dissipating.
"How are you feeling?" he asked, helping Caitlin get up and displaying his most relieved smile.
"Sweaty," she replied, drying her face with her sleeve. "Did you know that would happen?"
"Of course I did." He shrugged and let out a loud laugh. Maybe too loud. "We talked about my energy excess today, remember? I knew you'd absorb it."
"You're a terrible liar." She smiled at him with infinite gratitude. "Thank you."
"Anytime."
Cisco, who had been mumbling uncompressible words, walked in circles around Caitlin's room.
"Eureka!" he announced. "I just had the best and most obvious idea!" He smiled, apparently expecting his friends to share his happiness. "I need to go."
"Cisco, the whole point of coming here was not being at STAR Labs and staying together," Barry told him. "We just went through something pretty intense. Caitlin needs some rest. We can get there early tomorrow, ask Peters some questions and get rid of Scudder…"
"You stay with Caitlin. I'll use my panic button if I need it."
"Cisco…"
"Barry, I'll call you. No matter how hard you're sleeping, my panic button is the loudest one. I just can't let this one slip."
Barry rolled his eyes, but didn't try to persuade him. His friend crouched down in front of Caitlin, who was sitting in the edge of her bed.
"I promise you I won't sleep until we find a solution," Cisco reassured her. "I don't want you to ever say your life is ruined again."
"Okay," Caitlin said, with her fists firm against her knees, probably still afraid of showing physical affection. "Thank you."
Cisco nodded, waved his hand and created a little portal.
"Beam me up, Scotty," he quoted and, with a snap of his fingers, he disappeared along with the portal.
As soon as they were left alone, Barry sat next to Caitlin and buried his face in the space between her neck and shoulder.
"I'm sorry," Caitlin muttered.
"For what?" Barry asked, his voice muffled against her skin. "For scaring us? For making it hard for us to save you?"
"For putting you in danger."
"At least that wasn't on purpose."
Caitlin grabbed the back of his head gently and pulled him away from her. Her glance then wandered from there to Barry's face, and he knew from her gloomy expression that his words had hurt her… or she was about to say something he wouldn't like.
"I think… I think that the heat craving grew stronger because of what happened between us," she explained. "I had my suspicions, but… I was good last night, and I really thought things would be normal from now on… turns out I was wrong."
"You were cold as soon as you stepped out of the shower," Barry remembered.
"Yeah. I always managed to restrain myself, prevent my body from learning how it felt to feed on natural heat… Now, not only the craving is stronger… the heat I absorb runs out faster."
"That's why you were pushing me away."
"And then put you in danger, thinking I had everything under control. I'm sorry."
"We'll find a way, Caitlin. We'll find a way."
Would they, though? What if Cisco's plan didn't work?
Barry had momentarily wished all that was his fault, so Caitlin didn't feel so bad about it. Turns out, it was. Each one the problems Caitlin's powers have caused were his fault. Two years later, the girl he was in love with was still suffering from the consequences of Flashpoint. That was the devastating truth, the elephant in the room, the real reason why he felt so insecure around her.
He didn't deserve her.
"Barry, whatever we are doing here… it has to stop," Caitlin said, in a heartbreaking, apologetic tone. "It has to stop now that there are no strong feelings involved."
'No strong feelings involved'. She can't be serious, Barry thought. His mind was having so much trouble processing her words that there was no room to elaborate some of his own.
"…Is that okay?" she asked, as the last part of a sentence Barry didn't hear. "Friends?"
Of course it's not okay, say something! Tell her you'll wait for her.
"You're right," he let out. What the hell are you doing?! This self-sabotage again? "I just want to make things easy for you. Don't worry about me."
"I'm sorry. I can't pretend I can have a normal relationship. You and I work together..."
"I understand. Do you want to sleep?"
Caitlin gave him a confused look. She was whether disconcerted or a little offended that he had given up so fast. It was like he was in autopilot, shielding himself from anything that could give him hope for a future with her. For now, he knew he had to let go.
"I don't think I can," she answered, after the pause. "I… I don't wanna be alone."
"You won't be," Barry assured, trying to keep his tone platonic. "I'll stay here with you."
"I've been doing some math in my head and I think I have around 24 hours of heat… but I don't think it's safe that we..."
Barry disappeared from her side, came back and spun her around at superspeed. She found herself wrapped in a blanket.
"I call it the Cait Roll," he grinned. "See? We don't need to touch each other. Come here."
Caitlin gave him a wide, thankful, heart-melting smile. Barry scooted Caitlin up on the bed until they reached the headboard. He then placed one of the tiny cushions on his shoulder, wordlessly telling her she could rest her head there. Contrary to what she believed, she fell asleep almost instantaneously.
As good as it felt to have Caitlin wrapped in his arms again, Barry couldn't sleep. He was devastated. Pretending that he was okay with being just friends again was one thing… but worrying about her future, a future he had jeopardized, was simply excruciating. What was he going to do?
Around 3 AM, his cellphone started vibrating on the night stand. He wriggled away from Caitlin carefully, sat in the edge of the bed and picked up.
"Barry, I need you here," Cisco prompted, before he could even say 'hello'. "Just five minutes."
His friend hung up on him without he could say yes or no. Barry got off the bed slowly. Even though he could feel that Caitlin had fallen into a deep sleep, he didn't want her to wake up alone in the dark, so he had to leave immediately.
He tiptoed to the bedroom door, closed it behind him and ran to STAR Labs, appearing in Cisco's workshop.
"Tadaaaa!" Cisco exclaimed, as soon as he saw him, both of his arms pointing at a some kind of cubicle that wasn't there the day before.
"What is that?" Barry asked, following the cables and realizing that the machine was wired to another artefact he knew very well.
The treadmill.