Disclaimer: Yeah, I noticed a few minor mistakes on the last chapter and I'll get it fixed real soon, sorry about that. Hm, other than that, I own nothing from this TV show.
"Where are you going?" Barry asked as he heard Iris' how many inches are they heels clucking against the floorboard over while he was setting up the video game for his game night later with Wally and Cisco. He tried getting Joe into joining them because they thought it would be awesome if all the dudes were there to let off some steam once in a while but Joe was having none of that and picked scouting for some possible cases over them. Three dudes playing video games for the entire night worked just fine for them.
"You have your Dudes Night. I have my Ladies Night." she smirked when Barry tossed her a feigned disgusted look.
"Nobody calls it the Dudes Night," he told her.
"What do you call it then? Game night?" she asked as she picked a paper to leave the rest of the family a note.
"No, Game Night would be the night we'll play games all night long." he said. "We didn't call it anything."
"Yeah, isn't that what you guys always do, anyway? Playing games all night long and eat pizzas and take outs?" she snickered as she was done writing the note walked towards the door. "See ya later, Barry." she waved as she opened the door, "That is, if you're still here by the time I get home if I do get home tonight." she added and received a semi-nonchalant wave from Barry. Boys and their games.
…
"Oh, the lobsters here are ridiculous!" Caitlin tried to keep her excitement down to fancy dinner restaurant mode. "Thank you, Iris for thinking of that one and putting it on the list." she said while raising her glass to Iris.
"Don't thank me yet, there's still a lot more we have to do before the night is over." she raised her glass to meet with Caitlin's nonetheless. "You know the next on the list isn't that interesting as eating at the place you've always wanted to try but never got the chance to because you've never seemed to find the right reason to. Wow, that's a long description for something to go on a list." she said.
"Yes, but next one will be challenging, so it should be fun because I would most probably get so intoxicated that I would do stupid things that I will be embarrassed of if anyone brought it up the next day." she beamed at Iris as she was starting on her dessert.
"Look at you, Caitlin Snow. Who knew you're such a fun person to be around with outside of work."
"I'm not always a geneticist." she said. "And I do have a life, so thank you Barry Allen and Cisco Ramon for not making sense at all." she rolled her eyes and Iris laughed while struggling to keep her fancy dinner restaurant in check.
"Don't worry about them, they're probably living a life of some out stationed soldiers, street racers and maybe something of mythical warriors as for tonight." her body shook slightly with the laughter as she recalled the previous encounter she had by walking on them playing some RPG that looked nothing like Halo as they claimed they would be playing earlier that day. It turned out they jumped from game to game on Game Night.
"So, where is this next place at?" Iris asked Caitlin, looking at the list they had made together the last time they went out together. "Skate Valley? Are we going ice skating?" she raised her eyebrow and started to question her judgement on why had she ever agreed to let this to be on the list.
"We're going ice skating! We're going to do that." she nodded as they were walking towards the car.
"In dresses?" Iris asked to reconfirm.
"We're wearing knee length dresses." she said when she sensed Iris was recoiling from what could possibly be a fun night. "Besides, the place is really lame and we're supposed to make it fun. I say we'll just try and then we'll just never go back to the place ever again." she reasoned.
"Fair point. Now, let's get going before I change my mind." Iris ushered Caitlin into the car.
Their trip to the skating ring was by all means out of ordinary. For a start, the place was almost seemed forsaken with scarcely any people on the skating room and that made them by far the two most attractive person to walk into and skated in the ring that night. There was not many people there but it had been fun, given that both of them were doing pretty fair as ice skaters. Once in a while, Iris would call out to Caitlin from her end of the ring and made some inside jokes about the breezy air rushing past her and the Flash and Caitlin would laughed as she glided over to Iris to mock the ever so often run, Barry, run moment, and Iris would skate at her top speed.
"It wasn't much. This place used to be really cool when I came here as a kid." Caitlin told her as they walked out from the Skate Valley.
"Are you being serious? I had fun, this much fun!" she reached her hand for the sky to indicate the fun she had been having. "I gotta say, I'm impressed." she added.
"I had fun, too." Caitlin admitted. "Now, let's go have fun like any other normal working adults in their twenties would."
"Oh, yes. Lets!"
They did exactly that. Caitlin and Iris walked into a bar that they have never been to before and neither of them thought at the moment they walked into the place that they would be having some surprises. Caitlin, for one, was surprised to see that she had let herself walked into a karaoke bar once more and on Iris part, she had started a tab. Silently, Caitlin was hoping that she would not have to wake up with a serious hang over issue.
"Okay, Snow. Let's catch up with what's going on in our lives. You tell me something I don't know and I drink, but if I already know it, you drink. Vice versa." Iris said when she came back to their table with both of their drinks.
"Here it goes." she took a deep breath as she searched through her mind what she should tell Iris first. "Oh, I got one. Cisco met a girl," and Iris drank.
"Scott asked me out, or I think he asked me out," Iris said and that had stunned Caitlin.
"What did you say?" she asked, leaning forward the table in interest.
"Hey, drink." Iris pointed at the glass in Caitlin's hand.
"I told him I'll think about it." Iris said and Caitlin nodded in understanding.
"I know you'd say that, honey, you'd have to drink." she smiled sweetly.
"Ooh, cold to the core." Iris raised her glass in a mock of a gentleman tipping his hat to another gentleman. "What about you? Do you have any dirt that I could dig and make you drunk the next time we play this game?" she quizzed.
"Hm, I think our Movie Night is getting into my head." she said, earning the same reaction from Iris as she had given her a while ago.
"Honey, I knew that and you'd have to drink." she copied Caitlin's same tone. She was about to tell about the story she is currently working on but she stopped since Caitlin would probably knew about it already since it was related to her field of expertise, so she asked a question following to Caitlin's statement instead. "Barry was right, you do that biting your lower lip thing when something's bothering you. Does it have anything to do with Movie Night?"
"No, I was overthinking the movie at work, and I as much as I just want it to be just me being the overthinking me, my random theory based on a movie was proven." she told filled Iris the whole length of the story, alternating between chugging down drinks and telling stories was not easy, if she had not known that before, she knew it now. By the end of the story, both Iris and Caitlin was pretty drunk. Iris was drunkenly walking, or maybe staggering towards the jukebox to start a dance off with Caitlin when Caitlin pulled her by the arm to stand close by her. "Shh, look over there." she pointed over the counter where a girl around their age was waiting for her drink. "That's the girl. Cisco met her at Jitters once. Do you know her?" she told Iris.
"No, is she new? I've never seen her around before." Iris asked Caitlin. When Caitlin shrugged, it was Iris' turn to whisper into Caitlin's ears. "Why don't we just ask her?" she suggested, already making her way towards the counter. "Hey, I'm Iris and this is Caitlin. She is pretty drunk right now." she chirped to the girl.
"Yes, I am drunk right now, but I can still make a good conversation out of this one." Caitlin was struggling to keep herself from losing her balance and quickly settle on a stool. "This is Rhen and we met through Cisco." she turned to Caitlin.
"Hey, Caitlin, fancy to see you here." Rhen said as took her drink. "Are you girls on a night out or something?" she said as referring to both Caitlin and Iris' drunken state. That was pretty much what both of them remember of that night.
The next morning both Caitlin and Iris woke up on a couch in an unfamiliar room across each other, staring at each other questioningly before looking around the room to figure out whose apartment did they crashed into and what exactly they had been doing to get there.
"Oh, you're up. The breakfast is ready if you want to join in." Rhen said when she walked out from the kitchen. "I'm sorry you had to crash on the couch, my room isn't exactly a room at the moment, I'd still have to fix that stupid ceiling after my friend came over and rammed his sword through it. I don't know how he'd even get into my room." she explained. "The bathroom is over there, by the way." she pointed to them.
"Oh no, that's fine. I'm afraid we're the ones who are sorry to bother you. I can't remember anything from last night." Iris said as she made her way to the bathroom.
"Uhm, me too." Caitlin groaned.
"Bother me? Please, that was the best night I've spent in that bar. You managed to start a sing-along concert, the only thing was that I wasn't drunk enough to bring down my violin or that would have been some heck of a night." she laughed as she hummed Dancing Queen on her way back into the kitchen.
"Oh, god. That I do remember." she shuffled into the bathroom as Iris got out and walked to the table full of breakfast.
"You live here alone?" she asked Rhen from her seat.
"Don't we all?" came the replied when Rhen came from the kitchen with a jug of coffee in her hand. "I was looking for a roommate, money is getting tight since I have to fix some things around here." she admitted as she spread some butter on her toast. "But I figured, with the rate I'm currently going with both my career and social life, I guess finding one isn't a high priority for me right now." she added.
"Have you asked Cisco?" Iris inquired innocently, resulting in pure shock on Rhen and mortified look on Iris' face as she fought against her slightly lingering hangover with her journalist intuition to come up with a damage control. "Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you're dating him." she apologized. "I guess that's what happened if you talk about things under alcohol influence. You get the wrong idea." she said.
"I actually get it how you get the idea, it would've been the same without alcohol." Rhen casually took a bite on her toast. "It's inevitable." If her previous comment of the confusion had not gotten Iris' attention, this definitely had.
"Are you implying that if Cisco Ramon had the balls to ask you out, you would go out with him?" she tested her theory.
"I won't be hasty but I'll give him a try." she replied after some time and let out a nervous laugh. "I don't think he's the kind of guy who thinks dating is all that important. I mean, he has a cool job that pays well and some equally dorky friends to keep him company. He's contented to a good life." she reasoned.
"Oh, you'd be surprised when you get to know him." Iris countered as she bit down on her omelet.
"Iris is right, you know. There are things about Cisco that Dante doesn't know. The stuffs that he told his friends but not his family." Caitlin joined them fully dressed, obtaining a look from the other two girls at the table. "What? I have work today. Don't you?" she said to Iris.
"Well, yeah, I do. But it's still early." she retorted as she eyed Caitlin fixed herself some breakfast and started working on it like some tightly scheduled businesswoman. "I like you better when you are not a high school principal." she said jokingly.
"I'm sorry that my work starts early and I have to dress like a school principal to work, but I don't work at a fashion magazine to wear whatever I thought runway-worthy." she said when she took a pause from shredding her breakfast down her gastrointestinal tract.
"Nice. You gotta give her credits for the comeback, though," Rhen said to Iris with a gleeful look.
After finishing her breakfast, Caitlin spent some time searching for her keys before exchanging thank you's with both Iris and Rhen and headed for the door. "Well, this is fun, us girls hanging out together. Shall we do it again sometime?" she asked before walking out.
"I'll leave Iris my card for you to contact." Rhen said before Caitlin left for work.
"Or I could… You know, ask Cisco for your number." Iris teased. Rhen's laughter left Iris dumbfounded because she was expecting Rhen to be blushing furiously and what have you like those girls would in cheesy young adult romance novel. "Iris, Cisco doesn't have my number." she said.
"Oy." That explained everything.
…
"I'm three minutes late and I'm still the first one to arrive? Unbelievable." Caitlin said to herself in the hallowed lab and reached for her white coat. That was when the gust of wind passed her by.
"Caitlin. You're not gonna believe what I'm about to tell you." Barry panted.
"Try me."
