Author's Note: Hey, The Flash fans! I've been lurking off and on in this fandom for... Three and a half years, I think? Probably more. Anyway, this story finally poked me long enough and hard enough to make me actually really start it. I hope you enjoy this, and definitely let me know your thoughts!
Twirling slowly around and around in his chair behind the Cortex's main desk, Cisco moaned unhappily, "I don't wanna."
"You have to," Caitlin said unsympathetically from her spot by the hospital bed of their resident comatose man.
"But I don't wanna," Cisco insisted.
"You call yourself a child genius," Caitlin pointed out. "So you're supposed to be smart. It isn't very smart to skip out on your schoolwork, Cisco."
"It is too smart to skip out on your schoolwork when it's just Language Arts and you know you're going to be a mechanical engineer," Cisco countered hopefully.
"Even mechanical engineers need to know basic reading and writing skills. How else would they communicate their ideas and learn about the ideas of others?" Caitlin pointed out.
"But it's not 'basic reading and writing skills.' It's like eleventh and twelfth grade reading and writing," Cisco complained, gnawing on his licorice unhappily.
"Yeah, and you're going to have to know eleventh and twelfth grade reading and writing to do college reading and writing, and you're going to have to do college reading and writing to graduate from a college, and you're going to have to graduate from a college to get your engineering license," Caitlin told him.
Cisco puffed out his cheeks in obvious displeasure. When that didn't seem to convince Caitlin of anything, he let out all the air in a huff and took an angry bite of his candy. Somehow the kid even made chewing and swallowing seem annoyed.
"Not to mention your dad wants you to do it," Caitlin reminded.
"I knowwwww," Cisco whined. "But it's so boring."
"So do it, get it over with, and then do something fun," Caitlin offered. "You know you're going to have to do it eventually, so put down that candy, stop complaining, and just go get it done. Then you and I can hang out, because I'll probably be done with this check-up by then."
Groaning, Cisco put down his candy on a napkin on the desk, stood, and sulked around the desk. "Fineeeee."
"There you go," Caitlin stated, ruffling Cisco's long, wavy hair approvingly as he passed her by. "Head on over to your workroom, get your schoolwork done, and let me do my job."
Patting his hair back into place, Cisco left the room without any further hesitation, and Caitlin returned to her check-over of their coma-bound patient.
"I'm back!" Cisco announced cheerfully, footsteps pounding against the floor as he ran back into the Cortex.
Caitlin turned and gave him a stern look, eying him up and down. "That was nowhere near enough time to get your schoolwork done. That was five minutes, maybe ten at the absolute most."
"I'm a child genius, what can I say, I work fast," Cisco dismissed, shrugging his shoulders dramatically and nearly dropping the computer he was holding in the process.
"Yeah, but not that fast," Caitlin told him. She folded her arms and arched an eyebrow at him. "What's the deal?"
"I grabbed my computer so I could do my schoolwork in here instead," Cisco admitted.
Caitlin considered that for a moment.
"C'mon. Dad doesn't care where I do my school stuff as long as I do it and do it well, and that's the nice thing about online schooling, you can do it anywhere. C'mon, lemme work in here with you," Cisco coaxed.
Caitlin sighed. "Fine."
Whooping with glee, Cisco dashed over to the main desk and set his computer down there. "And I've got just the soundtrack for work!"
"No," Caitlin warned flatly.
"Yes," Cisco mimicked her tone of voice back at her and pressed a button on his computer. A mildly familiar song came blasting through the speakers.
"No," Caitlin said again, more strongly this time.
Ignoring her, Cisco snatched up his candy from where it lay abandoned on the desk, practically bounced over to the hospital bed where Barry Allen lay unresponsive, and looked at him very closely.
"What are you doing?" Caitlin asked exasperatedly.
Cisco looked up at her with wide eyes, an overly innocent look on his face that she had seen too many times to believe, and explained, "He likes this song!"
"How could you possibly know that?" Caitlin wondered as flatly as she could manage when the corners of her mouth threatened to twitch upward in amusement. She bit back her smile, watching Cisco stare intently down (as far down as his short stature could, at least) at the man in the hospital bed as if the power of music could wake Barry Allen from a nine-month-long-already-and-probably-going-on-forever coma.
"I checked his Facebook page," Cisco said, biting off a bit of his candy smugly.
"How did you even get on Facebook? You have to be thirteen to have an account, and you won't be thirteen for about two and a half years," Caitlin pointed out, continuing to check over her patient.
"Yeah, but you don't need an account to stalk somebody's page, especially when they don't put their settings on 'private,'" Cisco countered. "It's gotta be good for him to have music he likes. I mean, he can hear everything, right? That's a thing, right?"
"Auditory functions are the last sensory facilities to degenerate," Caitlin allowed as she finished with her check-up, although she secretly doubted that the man in the coma had any of his facilities left. She wasn't telling Cisco that, though. The kid liked to see the bright side of things too much.
Cisco started dancing a little beside the hospital bed, singing along under his breath with the song that was playing. Somehow, despite the fact that the song had come out when he was maybe five or six (Caitlin wasn't completely sure when the song was made), he knew it very well.
Smirking, Caitlin headed over to her mobile console and was just starting to input her data from the check-up when behind her there came a gasp and a surprised shout from Cisco, a sort of "Yahhh!"
Whirling around, Caitlin saw Barry Allen sitting up in bed.
"Where am I?" He demanded.
"He's up!" Caitlin exclaimed. She took only a fraction of a second for her own shock as she hurried over to him and started to look him over. "150 over 110, pulse 120."
Behind her and far to her left, she could hear Cisco saying into the intercom, "Dad, you've gotta get to the Cortex, really, right now."
Barry Allen groaned and tried to push her away, but Caitlin persisted, checking his eyes and declaring, "Pupils equally reactive to light."
Still trying to get away, Barry Allen swung his legs over the side of the bed and started standing up.
"Look at me, look at me," Caitlin directed, trying to get the rest of the observational data she needed from him even as he stood and stumbled forward.
Cisco was trying to help in his own way, kind of, telling Barry Allen, "Hey, hey there, whoa, whoa, relax. Everything's okay, everything's going to be okay, you're okay."
In a way, he sounded like he was imitating someone, Caitlin reflected, and she realized that was almost exactly the boy's adoptive father sounded like when the man was comforting Cisco for one reason or another.
"It's fine, you're fine, you're at STAR Labs," Cisco was telling Barry Allen.
"STAR Labs?" Barry Allen repeated, sounding incredibly confused and dazed. (Caitlin couldn't blame him; she probably would be feeling the same way if she had been struck by lightning, put in a nine-month-coma, and woken up to strangers trying to get him to calm down.) Barry Allen continued, still sounding very out of it, "Wha- Who are you?"
"I'm Cisco!" Cisco practically chirped, pointing at himself.
"Cisco?" Barry Allen repeated, bleary eyes going wide. "Cisco of STAR Labs? Cisco, the child genius, that Cisco?"
"Told you I was a child genius," Cisco told Caitlin, lifting his chin and sounding incredibly satisfied with himself.
Caitlin barely resisted the urge to roll her eyes as she turned away, grabbed the sample collection cup she needed, and turned back around.
"Who's she?" Barry Allen asked, trying to gesture at Caitlin herself.
"She's Caitlin, sorry, Dr. Snow, she probably won't let you call her Caitlin. Not yet, at least," Cisco said, not resisting his own urge to roll his eyes.
Caitlin held out the sample cup to Barry Allen. "I need you to urinate in this."
"Not now," Cisco practically chided, plucking the cup from Caitlin's hands much to her irritation.
"Wait, wha- what is happening? What is going on?" Barry Allen asked, pushing them away and stumbling across the room.
"You got struck by lightning!" Cisco enthused.
Caitlin tried very, very hard not to slap her own forehead and only narrowly succeeded. Never let it be said that the kid had any tact. If it had been up to her, she would have broken the news much more subtly.
Clearly still not caught up on what was going on, Barry Allen turned away from them as if looking for a second opinion but then stopped, staring into a nearby mirror. He stated slowly, "Lightning… Gave me abs?"
Cisco shrugged. "Guess so?"
"Your muscles should be atrophied, but instead they're in a chronic and unexplained state of cellular regeneration," Caitlin told him, her voice barely betraying just how amazing that was to her.
"C'mere, have a seat," Cisco directed, tugging Barry Allen by the arm back to the hospital bed.
For some reason, probably some combination of Cisco's general small-child adorableness and sheer won't-take-no-for-an-answer attitude as well as his own bewilderment, Barry Allen went and sat willingly.
"You were in a coma," Cisco told him in probably the most serious tone Caitlin had heard from the boy in the three and a half or so years they had known each other.
"F-for how long?" Barry Allen breathed.
"Nine months," came a very familiar voice.
Already grinning, Cisco spun on his heel. "Dad!"
"Hello, Cisco, hello, Caitlin. And hello and welcome back, Mr. Allen," Dr. Wells stated. He stared intently at Barry Allen in much the same way Cisco had stared not five minutes ago. "We have a lot to discuss."