A/N: Made for simplysnowbarry Snowbarry Week 2021 and the artist prompt 'fall/autumn aesthetic'. This also works for day 7 'established relationship' though. This also has a moodboard - which I obviously can't post here but is on my ao3/tumblr/twitter if you want to look it up (it's post 667876149912862720 on my tumblr). There's some angst but also some cute I hope.

Next Step

"They won't want me there," Savitar says, though he's turned away from her right now so she can't read anything extra from his expression to tell how he feels about it. Even if that would just be whatever micro-expressions she got a sense of before he put up his usual mask of indifference.

When she started this conversation - about the long-overdue Team Flash vacation - he started pacing around his lab. Picking things up here and there, giving every appearance of being busy, but it seems more like a distraction to her. He's avoiding her earnest gaze that might have an effect on him, whether that be rooting out the cause of his feelings or swaying his mind.

"I want you there. And besides, the cabin has plenty of spare rooms so it's hardly a bother. Mine has a kingsize bed too. If you wanted to share."

"Do you really think they'd be happy with that?" Savitar asks sharply, looking at her again briefly, if only to scrutinize her feelings on the matter instead.

"We agreed we'd tell them eventually. Why not now? Let's make it official," she says, aiming for more optimistic than perhaps she feels to try to counterbalance his pessimism.

Savitar's gaze shifts downwards to the floor, eyes unfocused and settling on a random spot there as he considers her statement. The set of his jaw and his furrowed brow give away how seriously he's thinking about the suggestion. She's not used to seeing him so pensive; normally he knows exactly what he wants to do or say, having long since figured out his strategy using his speed thinking. Savitar being effectively speechless, or uncertain, isn't like him.

Of course, this is one situation he couldn't plan for because neither of them expected to end up together. And anything related to them he can't entirely plan out when it involves someone other than himself. Strange as it is to her, she's aware to him she's a wild card he can't fully account for, and she'd say the same of him, always keeping each other on their toes. But every step of the way so far in their relationship they've managed to bridge their differences and stick together. She really hopes this won't break from that and cause some kind of rift. She hopes that, deep down, he wants this too, and it's simply fear stopping him from allowing himself to want it.

When he doesn't say anything, lost in thought, Caitlin knows she has to do something, say something more, to get him back from that black hole of everything that could go wrong he must be imagining.

"I need this, Savi," she says, taking a step towards him. "I don't want to sneak around anymore."

She sidles up next to him, pausing to try to catch his eye before she enters his personal space. There's a flicker of his eyes meeting hers before he turns his head subtly to the other side and away from that inquiring gaze of hers.

"I don't want to keep saying 'nothing' when people ask me why I'm smiling."

Her hand finds his, opening up his grasp, that he allows, so that she can thread her fingers through his.

"I want to spend my vacation with the people I love. That includes you. And I want the world to know it. Starting with my family here."

He turns to her then but doesn't say anything in response. It takes a moment for her to realize that this time he isn't masking his emotions, she can see the complicated mix of hope and fear and awed love written across his face. She tightens her grip and hopes that firm handhold will ground him further, remind him what it is he should fight for. And it's not the team who he needs to fight, to prove his worth to. Really, it's himself; to fight against his anxiety and the excuses he might make to avoid the possibility of getting hurt again.

"Don't worry, however they react, you're not doing this alone. Which is kind of the point. We're in this together now."

Savitar says nothing, but he does lean in slowly before kissing her tenderly. For once, he doesn't do a quick check of the rooms around them first, nor going to turn off the security feed for the room. He's throwing caution to the wind and taking the first step of letting go of their secret.