Summary: In which Cisco and Hartley briefly swap bodies and finally get a chance to discuss the elephant in the room.
Notes: I'm going to have to a longer body swap story for these two at some point, as I'd love to really to go into detail with Cisco dealing with Hartley's hearing and Hartley suffering through some of Cisco's visions while trying to make the vibrational blasts or breaches work. But I felt like this prompt was just asking for something a little cute and silly, so that's what it got.
For the Hartmon Bingo General Card Prompt O4 - "No, I'm Cisco."
I'm working off the general card for now, but I intend to pick up a personalized one once I get a bingo. :D
A Friday Flip
The world was fuzzy and loud when he opened his eyes. Which was weird and he blinked a few times to try and clear his vision. When that didn't work, Cisco sat up slowly, not feeling any aches or pain in his head that might account for his blurred vision and the weird stuff he was hearing.
"Caitlin," he croaked out, throat dry. And then Cisco froze because that... that wasn't...
"Oh, good, Hartley. You're awake," Caitlin said, bustling over and handing Cisco Hartley's glasses.
"What?" Cisco stared at her, uncomprehendingly, her voice strangely loud in his ears. Then he looked down at his hands. His... white hands. Not his skin color at all. Tentatively, Cisco put on the glasses in those hands and the world came into focus. He glanced over to the right and then to the left looking for...
Another bed. With what looked like Cisco laying unconscious on it. But of course, that couldn't be Cisco because, well... Cisco was Cisco. And apparently he looked like Hartley, which meant guy-who-looked-like-Cisco must be Hartley.
Oh, no, no, no...
"What happened to you two?" Caitlin was asking while Cisco internally freaked out. "When Barry found the two of you, you and Cisco were both passed out on the floor of the warehouse."
"That's not Cisco," he said numbly.
"What?" Caitlin frowned at him. "Of course that's Cisco, he's..."
"No," he interrupted. "I'm Cisco. That's Hartley. I think... the meta we were after pulled a Freaky Friday on us."
Caitlin opened her mouth. Shut it. Looked over at the patient asleep on the other bed. "Cisco?" she finally asked, looking right at him.
"Yeah. And..." he winced as something went loud somewhere behind the wall. "What the hell is that?" he turned to look, but there was nothing there because... because it was from somewhere behind the wall, of course. "How does Hartley put up with it being so loud?" he muttered, burying his head in his hands as if that'd help the hearing aids block out the sound any better.
"Where'm glasses?"
It was surreal hearing his own voice coming from someone not himself. Cisco watched as Hartley sat up, slowly, and then froze as his eyes caught sight of Cisco looking like Hartley. (At least the loud noise had turned off again.)
"What the hell?"
"I know what the meta's powers are now," Cisco observed.
Hartley groaned and massaged the bridge of his nose, a habit born of wearing glasses all his life no doubt. "Cisco. I guess that's you over there. Does that mean I...?"
"Look like me? Yup. Body swap and, sadly, the powers stayed with the body so it's really loud over here and I suddenly have way more sympathy for those headaches of yours."
Hartley grimaced. "I really don't want to have one of those visions of yours. But..." his expression evened out, "it's nice to have normal hearing again. And peripheral vision." He waved his hands off to the sides and smiled faintly. "Maybe I really should just get lasik..."
"Yeah, well first we need to find a way to swap back. Which probably means we need to track down the meta again, because I doubt we're gonna be so lucky that this just wears off over time."
"Right."
Unfortunately, tracking down the meta in question is easier said than done. They spend pretty much the rest of the day trying to track her down - they both remember seeing a brunette with a distinctive face that Hartley draws, if more awkwardly than normal because he isn't used to Cisco's hands. But Hartley can't figure out how to trigger Cisco's visions, so they're stuck running the drawing through facial recognition... which turns up nothing even after Cisco finally gets the hang of Hartley's longer hand-span for typing. (He kept overshooting the keys at first.)
It's not just the differences in their hands that are tripping them up, though. Cisco feels weird walking around in Hartley's body. His center of gravity is different and he keeps forgetting Hartley's natural stride is longer than his by just a little, so he keeps tripping himself up. And things taste different, just a little. Cisco's red vines are suddenly not right and Hartley has to remind him to stick to tea, not coffee, because the body he's in is coffee intolerant.
Hartley's no better off in Cisco's body, also tripping over himself and grumbling about food tasting different. His favorite tea is apparently just a little off, just like Cisco's red vines, and he spends five whole minutes staring balefully at his tea cup after the first sip.
With all this weirdness going on, Cisco can't help but be grateful that when he inevitably has to go to the bathroom, it's not the first time he's seeing Hartley's dick. Not that it isn't still incredibly awkward for him.
"So, we, uh... we should probably stick together tonight. In case there are weird after affects of whatever the meta did to us," Hartley pointed out as the day was coming to an end and Caitlin insisted they call it a night.
"That's a good idea," Cisco agreed, though he honestly thought that any weird after effects would have made themselves known by now. Probably. Well, they had stayed within a good proximity of each other all day, so who knew what distance might do to them. Better safe than sorry.
And also Cisco didn't want to let his own body out of his sight because he might be having a very uncomfortable sense of possessiveness towards it. That was his body and he'd like to swap back now. Presumably, Hartley felt the same towards his own body.
Also there was an elephant in the room that they probably ought to discuss at some point. Maybe not when they were body swapped, though...
Dinner was picked up at a Big Belly Burger on the way home, Hartley driving for a change because Cisco just could not focus with how loud traffic was.
"Now I get why you're always having me drive," Cisco muttered, sinking lower in his seat as someone started honking at least one street over, for all that it sounded like it was going off right in his ears.
"Yeah, it's a pain in the ass trying to focus on driving when I can hear someone honking down the street as loudly as a car honking right behind my own." Hartley smiled; despite seeing that expression on his own face, as it were, Cisco still felt a little breathless.
Just a few days earlier, they'd been horsing around, play fighting over the playstation controller to pick the next show to watch on Netflix when... play fighting sort of turned into something else. They'd fallen over onto the couch together, Hartley on top of Cisco, and...
God, he'd been so turned on all of a sudden, laughter turning to arousal and the delicious feeling of Hartley stretched out on top of him... he can't remember who kissed who first, just that it was amazing and hot and Hartley made the best little noises when Cisco sat them back up and peeled Hartley's shirt off to suck kisses down his chest.
Eventually they got off the couch and stumbled their way into the bedroom, searching out Cisco's stash of condoms and lube reaffirming this was what they wanted before tumbling into the sheets together. Not the best sex he'd ever had, but for their first time together it had been pretty spectacular.
And Cisco really hoped it wasn't going to be the last time they had sex. But they got called into STAR Labs early the morning after and it was basically one meta after another after that, with no chance to really talk about what happened.
"So," Hartley said as they pulled into the lot at Cisco's building, "this is probably a terrible time for this, but we should probably talk about... uh... the last time I was over."
"Hartley..."
"I, um... I get it if that was just a one time thing, but I... I really..." parking the car and turning off the engine, Hartley leaned back, head tilted up and...
The long expanse of Hartley's neck really shouldn't be this enticing when it was really Cisco's neck, but Cisco was definitely hungry for something other than the Big Belly Burger in the back seat.
Both their stomach's grumbled and Cisco chuckled, liking the way Hartley's voice sounded as he did. He leaned over to kiss Hartley's - his own? - cheek. "We'll talk about it inside. But I've been really hoping you didn't want it to be a one time thing."
"Oh thank god," Hartley breathed out, grinning in relief.
"Dinner first," Cisco added as his stomach grumbled again.
Cisco woke up with his face pressed against Hartley's back and it took him a long moment, as the sunlight filtered in through the blinds across the bed, to realize he was in his own body again. Smirking to himself, he kissed along Hartley's spine.
"Five more minutes..." Hartley mumbled into the pillow.
"Hartley," Cisco murmured, knowing he didn't need to speak up for the other man to hear. "We're back in our own bodies. And I'd like to try that thing you did with your fingers last night. If you don't mind."
"Yes." Hartley rolled over. "First though..." he put on his glasses and grinned up at Cisco. "I wanna see your face instead of mine this time." Then he pulled Cisco in for a deep kiss. "Maybe we should brush our teeth first instead," he amended when they parted.
"Yeah... morning breath," Cisco groaned.
"You don't think it was the sex that fixed us, do you?" Hartley asked, tone playful as he watched Cisco get out of the bed.
"If it was, that's not what we tell Caitlin," Cisco replied, snickering.
"Hey, Cisco," Caitlin greeted Hartley.
"Nope, sorry Caitlin, I'm Cisco." Cisco waved with a grin while Hartley shrugged.
"It wore off in the middle of the night. We woke up back to normal," Hartley told her, glancing at Cisco in amusement.
"That's good to hear," Caitlin told them. "I actually just heard back from Barry about the other victims. Apparently the first set of body swaps wore off last night too. They were hit right before you two, so the rest should be returned to normal over the course of today."
"Now I just need to vibe her location and we can try catching her again," Cisco said. "Though, uh, maybe this time we'll bring along one of the ranged boots."
"Sounds like a plan," Caitlin agreed. "Oh, and Hartley?" She smirked and pointed to her neck. "You've got a little hickey right there." She walked off with a laugh while the two men both blushed bright red.
