"They're having a baby," Cisco said.
"Yes, I was here."
"A baby! That's crazy!"
"Mmmmm," Caitlin mumbled around a pencil sticking out of her mouth.
"Like, honestly, I don't even feel old to drink sometimes and Barry and Iris are gonna have a kid of their own." He spun around in his chair. "Whoa, you think it'll be a little metababy?"
She took a note. "We'll have to wait and see."
She'd gone right into superhero's-personal-physician mode when Barry and Iris had made their big announcement, hustling Iris into the med bay for five or six hundred different tests and measurements, even though Iris had said, "I have an OBGYN" and "I'm fine" and "What are you going to do with that?"
Barry had rescued his fiancee and whisked her off to tell Joe. Cisco kind of wished he could control his vibes well enough to listen in on that because woohoohoo, was that going to be a show.
He watched Caitlin for a few minutes, typing notes to herself with a line between her eyebrows. "Hey," he said.
"Mmm?"
"You ever, um, thought about it?"
"What?"
"You know."
"You're the mind-reader, Vibe, not me. Thought about what?"
"Babies. And stuff. And I don't read minds, I see things. You're trying to distract me."
"I'm not exactly the maternal type."
"Well. I know. But you were engaged. Did you guys ever, like, talk about it?"
"We talked about it." She frowned at nothing. "Once, I thought - well, never mind that. Obviously it's a moot point now."
"You're still alive, Caitlin."
She turned her head to stare at him for a moment, then got up and started putting things away. "What brought this on, anyway? Isn't the woman supposed to be the one falling under the influence of baby fever when somebody announces a pregnancy?"
He pointed at her. "Hey, don't you box me in with your gender norms. I reject those. I defy your boxes."
She snorted with laughter. "Seriously, are you telling me you want kids all of a sudden?"
"Not all of a sudden. I kinda always did. Not now, god, no way. But someday." He laughed a little, shrugging. "Poor kids."
"You'll be a good dad," she told him, suddenly serious.
"I'll feed them candy and let them stay up past their bedtimes."
"No, you won't. I mean, not more than most dads, probably. And you'll let them experiment and cheer them on and hide the debris from their mom, or their other dad. Any kid would be lucky to have you."
"Thanks, but you're deflecting," he said.
"And you're fixated. Why do you think I want kids?"
"I don't, exactly, that's what I'm trying to figure out. Cuz as your best friend, I'm uniquely qualified to know that if you really, truly didn't want kids, you'd've already said, 'oh my god, Cisco, I don't want rugrats, shut up about it.'"
She fussed with a cord for a moment, then said, "I am a scientist."
"Oh, are you," he said. "I'm glad you told me. I never would have noticed."
She shot him a look over her shoulder. "And when I was in school - undergrad, graduate school, even internships - every female mentor I had told me I needed to think about that very, very carefully. Every single one."
"Think about kids?" At, what, eighteen? Twenty-two? Twenty-four, five, six, whatever it took to get a simultaneous master's and an M.D.?
"About the choice I'd have to make. Between having a career or having a family. Because we were women in STEM, and by and large, we don't get to have both. Or at least, not both at the same time. It's not that I never wanted kids, it's that I decided back then that I wanted a career more, and I still do."
"You should have everything you want," he told her.
"I know. I should. And Ronnie should be alive. And war should not happen and children should not go hungry and the world should be fair," she said. "But it's not."
Wow. This got heavy in a hurry.
She said, "I haven't completely ruled it out, don't make that face. I mean, this - " She waved her hand. "This is already so not what I pictured. Maybe someday I'll have kids. When the time is right. In my thirties, or my forties - "
"Y'know, my Tia Ana had my cousin Mateo when she was fifty-two," he contributed. "Totally natural."
"Exactly. Maybe I'll make that choice too. With the right person. Or the right sperm bank. Or the right adoption papers." She shrugged breezily. "In the meantime, we've got a possible metababy to prepare for, and a city to protect."
He stood up so they were eye to eye. "You know, I really do think you should have everything you want."
She smiled at him. "I know you do."
"So," he said. "If the time comes and there's anything I can do to help - I'm here for you."
She blinked at him a few times. "Well. I - " She swallowed. "I'll hold you to that."
Cisco woke with a little snort, and blinked at Caitlin in the darkness. "Hey," he said, his voice muzzy with sleep. "Hey, it's like - " He twisted around to look at his phone on the nightstand. "Quarter to six, jeez, damn. What are you doing awake?"
Caitlin shrugged. She wasn't usually a morning person. "Just woke up. I was lying here thinking."
"Yeah?" he yawned, pulling her close to snuggle. "'Bout what?"
She settled into his side, resting her head on her favorite spot on his shoulder. "You remember back when Barry and Iris told us they were pregnant with the twins?"
"Are we having nostalgia now? You know, they graduated from middle school, not college."
"You told me that if I ever decided I wanted kids, you'd do whatever you could to help."
"Yeah, I 'member," he murmured, eyes already sliding closed.
"Cisco, I'm calling in that marker."
That woke him up. He propped himself up on his elbows. "You - what?"
She rested her chin on his bare chest, grinning at him.
"Hang on, f'real?" He reached out and turned on the light, then put on his glasses to stare at her. She smiled wider. She loved him in his glasses. He looked like a sexy mad professor, with his hair all unruly. "Were you seriously just lying here deciding you wanted a baby?"
"I've been considering the point for a few months now. Off and on. And, not a baby," she corrected. "A family."
He stroked her hair back from her face. "We're a family. The two of us. I told you that when we got married."
"I know. I want to make it bigger." She poked his chest. "Well? Are you gonna go back on your word, Ramon?"
He cupped her face in his hand and studied her, staring into her eyes. She met his gaze steadily, hoping he could see how this had quietly gathered itself together in her heart, how she'd considered their lives and their routine and where they both were, and how right it finally felt, years after most women.
Finally, he smiled. She thought, My baby is going to have that smile, and got giddy. "Well," he said. "A promise is a promise."
FINIS