Notes: Thank you once again for all your reviews. Reading them really encourages me to keep writing. Shoutout to the Guest who left a review here and on Tumblr—that was incredibly sweet, and your messages made my day too. And I'm also dedicating this chapter to the anon on Tumblr whose car got stolen—I can't do much about stolen cars but I do hope this'll lift your mood. :(

Well, this chapter is a bit shorter than the others, because it was supposed to be part of the previous one until it got out of hand. It's a bit more serious but I hope you'll like it.

"Are you alright? You look a little ill."

"Me? Nah, I'm fine."

Caitlin arched an eyebrow at him. After the horror movie, the four of them opted to go back to the dorms to give Felicity and Oliver some alone time ("I'll just stay to help him reformat his hard drive," Felicity had said, to which Jax had commented, "So that's what you two call it, huh?" which earned him an indignant glare and a slap on the arm), and right after Jax and Cisco had parked their bikes in front of the guys' dorms, they made some lame excuse about having to go ahead, while giving Caitlin exaggerated winks and thumbs-ups. Barry Allen, as they had probably expected, promptly offered to escort her back to the girls' dorms.

"You're still scared, aren't you?"

"Nah, I'm not."

He was obviously faking it. "At this rate, I don't think I'm the one who needs escorting," she told him dryly. "I'll be fine."

"What? No, I'm cool—"

"—wait, what was that?"

"Shit, what was what?" He took a step closer to her and dug his hands deeper into his pockets while taking quick, furtive glances at the surrounding landscape. "What was what?"

"I think I heard something…"

Now he instinctively placed a hand on her forearm and gave her a grave look that she had never seen on him before. Interesting. "Caitlin, stop, this isn't funny."

"Oh, but it is," she said, smirking. "This is very amusing."

"Hey, don't be amused without me," he said, attempting to be light, but his body language clearly conveyed that he was still on his guard. And his hand was still on her forearm. He was still touching her. Once again her knee-jerk repulsion to it was acutely absent, but her previous anxiety regarding her earlier realisation was absent as well. In fact, the only interior monologue in her mind, so insistent it was like white noise, was he's touching me he's touching me he's touching me… His touch had enough force to silence any other thought, directing her attention instead on the contact of skin on skin.

"Well," she sniffed, taking more effort than usual to string words together, "now you know how I feel when you make innuendoes."

"Touché." His hand was warm on her forearm. Bleeding hell, even if she wasn't looking at it, and even if she tried her best to ignore it, she couldn't escape the fact that it was just there. "But seriously, you didn't really hear anything, did you?"

"But seriously," she said, mimicking his tone, "I think you should just stay. Your attempt at chivalry is duly noted."

"Look, it goes against my good breeding to not"—his fingers pressed lightly on her skin when he emphasised the word—"accompany you," he insisted. He continued, gesturing wildly with the other hand, "I mean, it's a Saturday night, and people are getting drunk and high, and it's nearly midnight—"

"I don't need a lecture on the bad habits of college students, Dad," she said. "And it obviously goes against your instinct to walk around in the middle of the night. I have a pepper spray, too, which will be more useful than you at this moment, since you seem ready to bolt at the slightest sound."

"Ouch," he said, with no real hurt in his voice. "Well, fine, it is against my instinct, but mind over matter, right? I mean, ghosts don't really exist, do they?" At the end of every question, he tightened his hold on her imperceptibly. "Hey, you weren't scared at all during that movie, so that means you don't believe in ghosts, so they aren't real, right?"

She shrugged. Her arm, throughout this whole conversation, had remained immobile while his hand was on it. "I don't believe in them, but whether or not you believe in something doesn't say anything about the fact of its existence. I would allow for the possibility that science can't explain all phenomena."

"…That's not helping," he said. His thumb curved upwards, as if tracing a half-moon on her skin—

"Barry," she said, finally unable to bear this hyper-vigilance. She lifted her arm ever-so-slightly. "You're touching me."

"What…? Oh—oh, sorry!" He promptly dropped his hand and gave her a sheepish smile. "I didn't even notice—wait, how long was I holding onto you?"

"For… awhile."

His eyes widened. "And you let me touch you for… awhile?"

"It seemed like you needed the comfort."

He grinned. "I think I need more comfort. Can I have a hug?"

"Don't push it."

"Aw, c'mon, considering that you've already felt me up—"

"That was an accident."

"How about an accidental hug? I'll pretend to bump into you and just casually fling my arm around your shoulder—"

"The fact that you have to deliberately pretend to," she emphasised, "makes it non-accidental. Besides, I made one accidental touch and you made one accidental touch, so we're even."

"Even?" he said incredulously. "The only way it'll be even is if I also—"

"—don't you dare continue that or I will maim you."

"…how badly?"

She rolled her eyes at his cheeky smile, and turned to the direction of the girls' dorms. "Good night, Barry."

"Hey," he said, and from her peripheral vision she saw him take a quick glance back at the dorm before striding towards her. "Hey, wait up, I'm still walking with you!"

"So, tell me more about Ronnie."

Caitlin gave him a sidelong glance. He had just been yammering on about paranormal experiences, and now he was asking about Ronnie, of all things? "Why?"

He shrugged. "Just curious about the kind of guy who'd ask you out."

It was quite out of the blue, but Caitlin didn't think much of it at the time. It wasn't unusual for Barry Allen to quickly shift gears in a conversation, after all, and besides, she'd gotten used to it over the course of their dinner. Sometimes, he hadn't even finished pursuing a certain question before he'd ask yet another one, without remembering to return to his original question. It was like talking to Cisco, only Barry Allen seemed a little more… intentional in his questioning, like he wanted to ask what came to mind before he forgot it.

In any case, she wasn't even going to try to comprehend the set of associations his mind had navigated to arrive at this topic. "I already told you," she said, deciding to just go along with it, "he's smart and pleasant. He likes pizza. He's in Keystone City now, if I'm not mistaken."

"You guys still talk?"

"Occasionally. He chats with me from time to time."

"And… you never liked him?"

"No," she said. "He's objectively good-looking, I suppose, but no."

"Really?" Barry looked incredulous. "He was smart and good-looking and he was into you and you never liked him? Ever?"

"No." Feeling mildly annoyed by his insistence at this line of questioning, she added tersely, "What, does every smart, good-looking, and interested male deserve to have their affections reciprocated?"

She glanced at him again, and she saw something shift in his expression—it looked like a pensive frown, but since the street lamps casted strange shadows on his face, she couldn't be sure. She didn't know what to make of it.

"Hey, that's not what I meant," he said, before looking away and adding, "But, yeah, I guess not."

An uncanny silence followed.

Having gotten so used to his effusive chattiness, and having fallen into the habit of getting him to shut up, Caitlin realised that she didn't know what to say to him now that he was the one being quiet. She worried her bottom lip as the silence stretched, going through an internal monologue of panic—panic for what, she wasn't sure—before her rational mind took over, and a few moments later she found herself saying, "So, what was your favourite date?"

He blinked at her, looking as surprised at her asking a question as she was. "My favourite date?"

"I told you about Ronnie. I think it's only fair that I ask you about yours."

"Hm, let's see," he said, shoving his hands into his pockets. "It would have to be… our next one."

He gave her a cheeky grin.

Caitlin scowled at him, even as her pulse quickened. Stupid, stupid pretty smile.

"My question was in the past tense."

"Then it'd be our date earlier."

Her first thought to that was, Could he be telling the truth? but it was quickly dovetailed by That was bullshit, and the strength of the longing that came with the first was matched by the vehemence of the second, resulting in such confusion in her that she had no other recourse but to narrow her eyes dangerously at him.

He seemed to sense the hostility radiating off her. "Alright, alright," he said, holding his hands up in a placating gesture. "Let me think… Ah, here. It's not exactly my favourite, but it was one of my most memorable ones."

His use of the plural made her acutely aware of the fact that he was quite experienced at this, and that knowledge made her feel suddenly smaller. But externally, her face was a blank mask. "Go on."

"Okay, so, I was a high school freshman, and I was just starting out in the track team," he said. "Believe it or not, I wasn't as cool as I am now."

She rolled her eyes. "You do know that by calling yourself cool, you're no longer 'cool.'"

"…Hey."

"Felicity and I call it the paradox of cool. We call Cisco out for it all the time."

"Fine. I wasn't the hot stuff I am now. Happy?"

"Can we just move on with your story?"

"No, wait, I want to know what sort of self-description you'd approve of. I wasn't the… hunk I am now?"

"How about you weren't as annoying then as you are now?"

"I wasn't the stud I am now?"

She gave him a withering look.

"Oh, come on," he pressed. "Don't I have any appealing physical qualities?"

"You certainly never needed me to affirm them."

"So I do have appealing physical qualities?"

She threw up her hands. "…Yes, objectively speaking—"

"Wha—did you just say yes?"

"—objectively speaking, your facial structure is very symmetrical—"

"—I can't believe you just admitted that I'm good-looking—"

"—I didn't say that, all I said was that your face is symmetrical—"

"—would you like to examine what other parts of me are symmetrical—"

She groaned. "You. Are. Insufferable."

"No. I'm. Symmetrical." He smirked. "Which is probably your code for 'bleeding hot as hell'—"

"—anyway," she gritted out, "your memorable date?"

"Fine, fine." He looked amused, as he shoved his hands back into his pockets. "So. I wasn't as… symmetrical as I am now. I was like, well, the skinny, geeky outcast in the track team. I've never been on a date before, and the only girl who'd approach me then was Iris, who's practically my sister, so you can just imagine how bad I felt when I heard my teammates talk about the girls they went out with or kissed or made out with—hey, don't judge me."

"What? I'm not judging you."

"Yes, you are. You're giving me your judging face."

"This is my normal face."

"Okay, fine, fine. But just saying. Wanting to date is normal. Now where was I…? Ah, yeah, so in one of the parties that one of the seniors threw, I decided I'd approach this cute girl I'd been crushing on then—her name was Kara—once her friends left her alone."

Caitlin was already filing the name away in her mind under the file 'to look up later on', and she wondered vaguely if Barry had a type. Just out of curiosity, she assured herself, this could be an investigation into patterns of attraction…

"So, I did, after a couple more shots," Barry continued, oblivious to her stalker-like musings, "and after we talked a bit she was like, 'This party kinda sucks, do you wanna go somewhere else?' And she started stammering that she didn't mean it in that way, but I didn't think of it that way anyway. I mean, all that mattered was that she was talking to me,and I was just freaking out outside I had to keep my cool, so I was all, 'Yeah, sure, why not?' So we went to a cafe and just… talked, for a really long time. Until the owner drove us away so he could close shop."

When it became clear that that was the end of his story, Caitlin scrunched her brow in confusion. It had been… anticlimactic, to say the least. "That was your most memorable date? It doesn't even sound like you asked her out in the first place."

"Yeah, well, we later agreed it was our first date," he said, shrugging. "I mean, we realised we were better off as friends by the third one, but I still had a great time with her. It was just really spontaneous, and I didn't feel like I needed to impress her. I know, I know, my impressiveness may come off as natural, but I do put in some effort…"

She arched a brow at him and ignored his bluff. "So aside from Kara, you've always been trying to impress girls."

"Well, yeah." He shifted. "I mean, at first, I was really trying. But after awhile it became easier to do the things I did or said around girls I wanted to impress. Wait, that sounded wrong—I mean, it's not like I don't mean what I tell them, it's just, I get better at figuring out what makes them smile or laugh. Like, girls seem to like it when I talk about science. Most of them don't really understand what I'm talking about, and they only half-get the jokes, but I guess they find geeky sort of hot on me." He looked almost pensive when he said this. "I mean, don't get me wrong. I don't like science just because it helps me get girls. It's more like, I let that part of me stand out more. But after awhile it starts feeling like… an act, somehow. And back with Kara, before I figured all this out, it didn't feel like an act."

Caitlin was silently observing him, and she found this new aspect that he was revealing to her both intriguing and frightening. There was something almost mechanistic in his approach to girls, similar to how she supposed she sounded when she was fitting social interactions into a scientific framework, and it was all the more intriguing because she would have never guessed it from his playful demeanour. But then again, she had already discerned that part of his ability to be friendly with all sorts of people came from good observational skills of their thinking and behavioural patterns, and from being able to copy them well. A social chameleon, as she had previously pegged him as. She just didn't expect him to be so aware as well of how he was doing what he did, and it frightened her to think that he could perhaps be reading her better than he let on.

Presently, he blinked and gave her a sidelong glance. "Wow, I can't believe I just told you all that," he muttered. "It's not like it'll work on you, anyway. You're already pointing out the flaws in my science jokes."

It's not like it'll work on you, anyway—did that mean that he was trying to impress her? Was he getting her to like him? She bit her lip. No, surely it wasn't that… Surely he was just trying to point out that it would never work on her had he really tried. It's not like he was currently trying to do so. Yes, that must be it. But perhaps she should clarify just to make sure—no, she shouldn't let on that she had actually been considering that he was thinking of impressing her—that would reveal too much about her own intentions, too, even if she was deliberately keeping her own intentions murky to herself…

And she couldn't tell whether or not she wanted to be the object of his… tactics, or whatever they were. On one hand, that would mean that she was also the object of his attraction. But that also meant that she was would just be like all those other faceless girls he'd tried to impress, and for some reason that did not sit well with her. But he had just said that he hadn't used those tactics on her, and he'd clearly set her apart from that faceless mass by stating that what he usually did to those girls won't work on her anyway. But then again, that didn't mean that she could draw the conclusion that he was attracted to her. There was some logical gap in her reasoning here, and she couldn't seem to figure it out—

"You don't think I'm a douche, do you?" he said again, and she realised that she hadn't said anything yet in reply to what he'd disclosed to her. She glanced at his face, and he was looking at her apprehensively.

She bit her lip again, and after a brief pause, she said, "Maybe a bit. I think all of us, to some extent, put on an act before other people."

"Even you?" he said, with a faint smile.

She looked him in the eye even as her pulse thrummed at the sight of that smile. It wasn't his usual cocky grin—it was sadder, more vulnerable, like he'd stripped off his easy-going, geeky guy act, even if it was for just a moment.

"Yes," she conceded, looking away. "Even me."

"The sky's not so cloudy tonight, huh?" he said, as they were approaching the driveway that led to the girls' dormitory. His head was tilted to the sky, and Caitlin, obliging him, looked up as well.

"I hadn't noticed it was cloudy last night," she said. "But there does seem to be more stars than usual. Like during midsummer nights."

"Yeah." He squinted at the sky. "Know any constellations?"

"No, not really."

"Really?" He grinned at her before looking back up at the sky. "Finally, something I know that you don't."

She rolled her eyes. "Gloating isn't becoming on you."

But he was already completely absorbed again in scrutinising the sky. The look on his face reminded her of when he had been talking about his thesis earlier in the evening, and she willed herself not to cringe at the memory of what came out of his intense concentration and her careless distraction. "There's Lyra," he said, lifting his hand to point at a general section of sky, before drawing invisible lines that connected a cluster of stars.

Caitlin couldn't make out which cluster stars, however, and anyway none of those clusters of stars looked like they formed a harp. "You could refer to just about any group of stars and I wouldn't be able to verify if you're telling the truth," she said.

"True," he said, giving her an impish smile. "Guess you'd just have to trust me, then. I've been stargazing with my Dad since I was ten years old, so I've got plenty experience. May I?"

He gestured to her hand, and she looked at him blankly. "May you what?"

"I'll help you trace Lyra," he said.

She narrowed her eyes at him. "Watching you trace it again will suffice."

"Dammit," he said good-naturedly. "Fine, fine. Here." He sidled closer to her side so that his shoulder was nearly touching hers. She didn't flinch, but again, she couldn't help but be aware of his every movement. "See that really bright bluish star? That's Vega. It's the brightest one in Lyra—one of the brightest stars we can see, actually—so that's how I'm usually able to tell that Lyra's in the sky." He lifted his arm and started tracing an inverted triangle, and then a parallelogram below the triangle. "The other stars aren't so visible, so I'm just guessing the outline. But yeah, that's Lyra. Cool, huh?"

Caitlin wasn't exactly able to follow the pattern he traced, but she still had half her mind about her to not take up his previous offer to 'help her trace it.' She unconsciously pinned her arms to her side. "Lyra was the lyre of Orpheus, right?"

Barry Allen hummed in agreement, and put his hands back into his pockets. "It played such beautiful music it could charm anything and drown out the voices of the Sirens." He glanced at her. "Ever heard the story of Vega?"

"No… Was there a Vega in Greek mythology?"

"Asian mythology, actually," he said. "The Weaver Girl and the Cowherd. Ring a bell?"

"No," she said reluctantly.

He cleared his throat, and she promptly rolled her eyes at his theatrics and faux-solemn air. "Once upon a time…" he began, and he proceeded to tell the story of how Vega, the Weaver Girl, and the star Altair, the Cowherd, were lovers, and how the Weaver Girl's father didn't approve of their relationship, so he decided to separate them by condemning them to live on the opposite sides of the Silver River (the Milky Way). They were, however, allowed to reunite once a year. On the seventh day of the seventh month, they crossed a bridge of magpies over the Silver River to meet each other. The Cowherd didn't always make it, though, and when he didn't Vega would shed tears that would become rain on earth.

After he told the story, he glanced at her and said, "Romantic, huh?"

She scrunched her brow. "Romantic? It sounds more like tragic to me."

He was still looking at her. "Yeah, but imagine the kind of love that'll bear with the agony of that wait, but will keep hoping anyway," he said.

He sounded half-joking and half-serious, and as usual she didn't know what to make of these expressions of his. And what was he trying to convey? Was he somehow hinting that she was Vega and that he was Altair, and that they would have some kind of doomed romance? Or was he implying that he was willing to wait, whatever that meant?

Or was he really just telling a story?

Besides, did everything have to mean something?

Caitlin briefly closed her eyes and resisted the urge to rub her temples. "Well, we're here," she said, gesturing to her dorm. In fact, they'd been standing there for around ten minutes already, and she felt a bit silly for pointing out the obvious, but she felt like she needed to end this conversation. It was skirting too close to unfamiliar territory, and she had no idea what to make of anything yet. "Thank you for accompanying me."

He shrugged, and with it the atmosphere between them seemed to lighten again. "Hey, no problem. Tonight was fun, wasn't it?"

"Sure," she said half-heartedly, because she wouldn't classify uneasy revelations as fun, but she wasn't about to let him in on that, either. "Will you be okay walking back?"

"Yeah," he said, looking confident and nonchalant again. "No big deal. Ghosts don't exist. But… Well, just in case," he rubbed the nape of his neck sheepishly, "would you mind talking to me on the phone on my way back? I mean, you know, in case of supernatural kidnappings or such…"

Her lips quirked up in amusement. "Well," she said, "I think that can be arranged."

Caitlin hadn't even reached her floor yet when he called, and as she made her up another two flights of stairs to her room and settled on her bed, she listened to him chatter about his meet on Monday, and his roommate, Iris's younger brother Wally. She hardly got a word in edgewise—even when he apologised for talking too much, he couldn't stop talking anyway—but she felt strangely content to listen to him ramble on. When he'd announced that he'd reached his room and she heard the metallic sound of a key sliding into the keyhole of the doorknob, she bade him goodbye, but then he started the whole "No, you hang up first" gimmick just to annoy her, so she promptly did hang up first.

She then lay her phone face-down on her bedside table, folded her hands on top of her stomach, and stared blankly at the dark ceiling of her room. Her mind drifted to the memory of Barry tracing the outline of Lyra, the harp whose beautiful, clear music drowned out the voices of Sirens, and she absentmindedly lifted her own hand to the ceiling to trace an inverted triangle, starting from Vega the Weaver Girl down to the small, faint star at the foot of the harp's body. She thought of the Weaver Girl and the Cowherd, of the kind of love that mostly consisted of—as Barry Allen had so eloquently put it—the agony of waiting. She thought about all these things, and as she did, a realisation alighted on her consciousness, as softly and lightly as a feather, so much so that she didn't even think to resist it.

I like Barry Allen.

For the next few seconds, she had remained uncharacteristically calm, still feeling like a detached observer to this thought. I like Barry Allen. Perhaps the calmness came with the fact that this thought was not exactly new—it felt like something she had known all along, like knowing that the sun was a star but never really thinking of it as a star.

She spent a few more moments in quiet contemplation before it. Then she turned the words over and over again in her mind, and as she did so they began snowballing down the slopes of her consciousness until they lodged themselves firmly her heart.

I like Barry Allen, she thought again. I like Barry Allen…

Well, now. She supposed that she had gone and developed that silly crush on Barry Allen, after all.

She was so screwed.