...Year 2 Month 1~2

Another year, another hustle. However, he could say he started off the year more refreshed and less stressed. Taking vacation had helped him relax, go figure.

"Boss, remember we have a new group of doctors starting their residency this week."

Barry nodded, "Thank you Jessie, let me have a copy of the orientation program,"

Five new doctors for the oncology, pediatrics, and neurology departments. One candidate, in particular, was quite promising.

"So," Jessie began casually, "are you planning a visit to the Engineering department?"

The CEO raised an eyebrow, "Excuse me?"

She began to fiddle with her files, "It's Wednesday, Ms. Caitlin will be there in the afternoon, I thought maybe….you would…" his expression was clearly amused, so she stopped before digging a deeper hole for herself. "I'm going to get those copies for you now."

"Please do."

She turned on her heel and right before she closed the door behind her she heard him say:

"Afternoon round at four."

{-}

This was her last semester as an undergrad and she couldn't be happier. A year ago, the sole idea of finishing her degree seemed so far out of reach. A lot had changed since then.

"Class is dismissed, I expect a full report on the principles of biomedical engineering by next week," the stone-cold tone of Dr. Wells was heard in the auditorium.

What was up with her choosing the most difficult electives every semester? Well, the topic shouldn't be too hard. She can take care of the biomedical portion and the guys could teach her the engineering side.

"A bit overboard for an elective, don't you think?" His peer from the next seat spoke up.

Who was he again? "Many times the hardest classes are the ones you learn the most in."

The man scoffed. "Which cereal box did you get that from?" He shook his head, "Nevermind, name's Julian," he outstretched his hand.

She didn't even get a chance to feel offended at his comment, "Caitlin," she shook his hand in response.

"You heading to the library?" He asked as they walked out of the auditorium.

She nodded, "I need to turn in some books and check out a few others."

"Well that is the purpose of the library," he quickly added, "I need to do the same, I'll join you."

Caitlin pursed her lips as they continued to walk in silence. They parted ways once inside the building, right after she showed him the medicine journals section.

"Well he's a strange one," she said to herself.

"I get a weird vibe from blondy," her former boss said out of nowhere.

"Ma'am, were you there the whole time?" That woman could hide inside the library like it was nobody's business.

Leslie laughed, "Well the library is my home. Not my home away from home, but my actual home. Spend more time here than my own house," she popped a piece of gum in her mouth. "Is that sad?" She wondered aloud.

Caitlin shook her head, "You're just passionate about work is all."

"Speaking about work, how's that workaholic husband of yours?"

"Barry? He's fine," Caitlin said with a small smile. "Still with his workaholic tendencies."

"I can see some resemblance," Leslie muttered to herself. "Keith liked the gift by the way."

The auburn-haired girl narrowed her eyes suspiciously, "Just him?"

The older woman rolled her eyes, "Okay, maybe not just him."

{-}

"So now that we covered the basics of thermodynamics."

"Again," Wally rolled his eyes.

"As I was saying, now that we've covered the basics, we can move on to more —Caitlin! Just in time."

"She hates thermodynamics, remember?" Wally pitched in.

"Children, children," Cisco shook his head, some things just never changed.

"Hello guys!" She waved happily, "I brought you mocha lattes and almond croissants."

"At this rate, I'ma need to go to the gym every day," Cisco patted his stomach.

"Do you even go at all?" Jax said.

Cisco glared, "Do I see overtime and generator duty for the next few months?"

"What was I saying again? Oh yeah! Thank you, Caitlin and the biggest croissant is for the best boss in the world."

Wally and Caitlin laughed, "Promise I'll bring healthier treats next time."

"And this is the Engineering department," a female voice said from the entrance

"Must be the new residents," Cisco said as he bit into his croissant.

"Oh yeah, I heard something about that from Jessie."

"New residents?" Caitlin wondered.

"About time we get some new blood here," Jax said with excitement.

"This is because of the new female doctors, isn't it?" The woman deadpanned.

"Yup," Cisco and Wally agreed.

The crew thought all the residents had left after they peeked at their workspace, but a visitor stayed behind.

"You guys have a nice place here," he admired.

A shiver ran down Caitlin's spine, that voice was far too familiar.

"A doctor actually stayed behind?" Cisco mused to himself and turned towards the stranger, "It sure is, isn't it?" He got up from his seat and went to greet the stranger. "State-of-the-art technology here," he patted a 3D printer for emphasis.

"And Star Wars fans too?" The man said with glee as he devised Star Wars themed Funko Pops, "This place rocks!" He saw the back of a female figure that looked slightly familiar.

Jax furrowed his brows as he noticed this young male doctor looking their way.

"My name is Ronnie Raymond, nice to meet you," he said with a kind smile to the engineer.

Before Cisco could respond, they heard Caitlin speak.

"Ronnie?" She said with surprise.

"Caitlin!?" He beamed at her and walked past Cisco, "You look amazing! I haven't seen you in years."

She smiled awkwardly, "How have you been?"

"Good, doing fine," he couldn't believe his eyes, "I would've never thought you would become an engineer."

"I'm an intern actually," she clarified.

He nodded to himself, "Well we all have to start somewhere," he said, "you're not in school are you?" He asked hesitantly.

"My last semester actually," she answered.

"Grad school?"

"Undergrad."

He raised his eyebrows in surprise, but quickly composed himself, "Better late than never, am I right?"

His condescending tone wasn't missed by his audience.

"Maybe we can catch up sometime?" He said tentatively, but hopeful.

"Uhm," she looked around briefly almost as if searching for an escape, "Yeah, sometime."

"Well, see you around then," without any warning he kissed her cheek and then left jogging after his group.

Jax was the first to speak, "I don't like him," which was the understatement of the century.

"Oddly enough, I'm with you on that one," Wally said as he finished the last bit of his croissant.

"Make that three," And the guy had started off so well. Well, no matter. If there was one thing Francisco Ramon was, it was loyal. Loyal to a fault. No Ronnie Raymond, or anyone else for that matter, would change that.

He would need to talk to Barry about him. How soon could this new guy get transferred?

"He sounds like a jerk," Jax said to Caitlin.

The poor woman was still recovering from the shock, "He's...he's special," that's all she would say about that.

The question still lingered in the air: how did Caitlin and Ronnie know each other?

{-}

He had noticed Caitlin acting a bit odd. More so than usual. She would space out a lot and would lose focus when studying. He'd caught her on more than one occasion just staring at a black screen instead of finishing her homework. She also seemed a bit on edge.

Initially, he thought it might be the stress of school, but he's seen stressed!Caitlin. And this wasn't it.

"Hey Cait, everything alright?" He asked.

She continued eating aimlessly.

He cleared his throat a bit loud to call her attention, "Is everything alright?"

She looked up, "The salad is fine thank you."

It was too early for midterms, so what could it be? Was it the "intruder" Cisco mentioned not too long ago? That was the more plausible idea.

"I was thinking of going grocery shopping naked, would you join me?" He asked out of the blue.

The woman nodded, "Sure, sure."

Her mind was definitely someplace else.

"Okay then, take off your clothes," he continued.

"Yeah," she answered mechanically and brought her hands to her blouse but then stopped, "wait what?"

"We're going grocery shopping."

She nodded again, "Oh okay, for a moment I thought you said —"

"—Naked."

"Right."

"We're going naked."

She only stared at him clearly confused.

He smirked, "You agreed to it."

More confusion.

"Cait, what's going on?" He dropped the act. "You haven't been yourself in days, and I'm starting to worry,"

"Barry I…"

"I mean, you're the most insane person I know, but you're acting odd even by your own standards."

"Hey!"

"I'm just teasing," he smiled, "but seriously, what's going on?"

"It's nothing."

"Really now?" He obviously didn't believe her.

"Yeah, you know school and stuff," she toyed with her salad and avoided eye contact.

"What stuff?" He knew this wasn't school related. The woman was too smart and had too much life experience to worry senselessly over school.

"Just stuff."

He had this weird deja-vu feeling. Is this what it felt like to pull words out of people?

Before he could prod any further she placed the utensils on the table with force.

"Okay, not just stuff," she said with a bit of anxiety, "remember when I told you, I wasn't naive enough to believe you didn't have a life before our agreement and there had to be at least one woman in your life before me?"

"Yes," said woman being Iris, who he really needed to schedule that catch up appointment with.

She sighed, "Well it goes both ways, Barry."

Now it was his time to look at her with a blank expression. Thankfully, he was much more skilled in veiling his confusion.

"There was someone in my life also."

Ah, that explains it —Wait, what did she just say?

"I just...well he appeared suddenly, and now I just," she shrugged, unsure of the words she even wanted to get out.

So there was a man in her life...perhaps it wasn't that serious. It's not like she had any pictures of men when he went to visit her apartment over a year ago. Or did she? Great, now he would be thinking about that the rest of the night.

"Back in the day he...he meant a lot to me," she said softly.

Well, he guessed it had been serious.

She shook her head and looked at Barry with a bright smile, "But that was eons ago. Have I told you that I'm planning on having Magenta and Jax meet? I think they would be a good match," She began rambling about her match-making skills.

Barry's mind, however, continued thinking about this mysterious man that had made a reappearance. He shouldn't have brushed off Cisco last time, board meeting be damned.

{-}

"...With that we would see check-in efficiency increase by twenty percent," beamed a proud administrator.

Barry looked around the room, the people were clearly disinterested, all except for one. This one person took diligent notes as more speakers continued presenting ideas to improve hospital operations.

From the intel he gathered from Jessie, he must be the new neurology resident. What was his name again?

"Sir, I'd like to introduce you to our new residents," a head doctor spoke to him.

"Yes, of course."

Four interns were introduced and finally, the one Barry had deemed the most promising was announced.

"And this is Ronald Raymond, new resident for the neurology department."

"Please don't hesitate to call me Ronnie, sir," the resident said with a confident grin, "it's an honor for me to be here."

"That's good to hear," Barry said, as he continued to assess this man.

"Yes, not only is it the best hospital, in the Allen Group, it is also the one with the best neurology department."

Barry nodded. At least he had done his homework.

"I'm very excited to be here and learn under one of the best."

"Yes, Kara is quite skilled, we are fortunate to have her."

"I meant you sir."

"I'm not practicing too much right now," Barry clarified.

Ronnie waved his hand, "But you are still well known in the medical and business field. I hope one day to be as successful in both fields as you."

The man was clearly ambitious, not bad. Not bad at all.

The group of residents left shortly after that. He was right, Ronnie seemed to be a great asset to the hospital. He hoped the rest of the residents were at least half as ambitious.

As he walked back to his office he crossed paths with his noisy engineer friend.

"Yo! Was I late to the monthly meeting again?" He asked innocently.

Barry gave him a stern look, "I'm not even going to dignify that with an answer."

Cisco waved him off, "Anyway, I sent you efficiency proposals from the engineering team last week. So can we move on to important stuff now?"

They walked together towards Barry's office.

"Go on."

"So your lady love is doing great as usual, we are definitely helping her ace her biomedical engineering class."

Those were good news. It will definitely help alleviate Caitlin's stress during finals.

"Wally is thinking of proposing to Jessie sometime this year," he whispered, "so don't ruin it," he warned.

"Wouldn't it be better if you hadn't told me at all?" He raised an eyebrow at his friend.

The engineer shrugged, "I trust you."

"You just couldn't keep it to yourself could you?"

"I have all these great ideas for the proposal!" He said excitedly and coughed to gain back a semblance of seriousness, "But let's not digress."

"Please."

"Jax and this new girl Caitlin introduced him to seem to be hitting it off pretty well."

Barry hid a proud smile.

"But I'm still concerned about something."

They both stood outside of the main office.

"That guy Barry," Cisco narrowed his eyes, "he's been looking for Caitlin and she doesn't know how to hide anymore. I feel bad for her."

Barry furrowed his brows, that didn't sound like Caitlin, "The guy that appeared out of nowhere?"

"Yes!" Cisco exclaimed, "What's worse is that the guy is SO good looking! It's like I want to hate him, but it's so hard! He's even into Star Wars! Ugh! He's just that guy that you love to hate," he said in distress.

Barry gave his friend a blank expression, "Cisco, you don't need to 'hate' him. This isn't grade school."

Cisco stopped him, "No, no, you don't want to go there Bart-Man. We need to hate the guy, trust me."

The CEO rolled his eyes.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, don't go rolling your eyes at me," he chided, "you haven't seen the way he looks at Caitlin," clearly the guy was interested, "AND he had the audacity to kiss her," detail he wasn't able to get out the first time he brought the new guy up.

Barry tried really, really hard to keep his cool after that. Kiss her? Why would this guy kiss her? Caitlin didn't say anything either, but she wasn't one to omit such an important detail would she? No, of course not! Even from the very beginning, she was the one to insist on respecting their marriage.

"Well it wasn't like a kiss, kiss," Cisco corrected, "more like a quick peck on the cheek, but you get what I mean."

"Sir, here are the reports for the two o'clock meeting," Jessie stepped in.

Cisco took his leave, but Barry's mind stayed occupied with multiple kissing scenarios.

Scenarios that didn't involve him.

{-}

She'd been avoiding Ronnie for weeks. However, she knew that this day would come, despite her best efforts.

"Caitlin," Ronnie greeted from the middle of the hallway, with his signature grin.

She tried to hide her cringe as best as possible, "Ronnie, hey!"

He walked towards her, "Finding you is harder than getting a hold of our CEO," he joked.

She laughed a bit awkwardly, "Work and school keep me very occupied."

"What are you doing now?"

Great, she was a terrible liar and her class had been just canceled, "You know school stuff."

He looked at his watch, "It's lunch time, how about we do that?"

She waved her hands in front of her quickly, "No, no. I'm sure you're busy, new job, new people. Maybe some other time," she said gently.

His grin grew wider and he took her hand, "Come on, stop with the excuses, and at least let's go to the sandwich shop upfront."

He dragged her over, while the woman sighed in defeat.

{-}

Cisco, who had seen the pair step out of the hospital quickly turned to his phone.

"Mayday, mayday! Get out of your office pronto!"

"Cisco, I don't have time for this right now," Barry said, annoyed from the other end of the line.

"You don't have —? This is a DEFCON five threat!"

"Just calm down, and tell me what the problem is."

"Problem IS that your woman is being taken, kidnapped, sequestered!" he said in alarm.

There were a few seconds of silence, "Is Caitlin alright?"

Cisco removed his phone to glare at it as if it was Barry, "Mr. Perfect Smile is taking her,"

"Taking her where?" His voice remained calm.

Ugh! Does it matter!? Cisco asked himself, "The sandwich shop across the street."

"Okay."

The call dropped.

"What the—"

{-}

Caitlin didn't feel comfortable at all. In fact, if she never saw Ronnie again she would not have minded. Life had other plans for her as usual.

"Wow, what a small world," Ronnie said with a smile, "I didn't think I would see you again, at least not like this."

She gave him a small smile, "Yeah, what a small world indeed."

"So when did you go back to school? Last I remember you were still working full time."

"A year after we…" she paused, "...parted ways."

He nodded, "Good for you," he took a big bite of his sandwich, "I didn't think school would take that long though. Undergrad I mean."

She suppressed a scoff, she hated how condescending he was, "Yeah, some people have to work and go to school, go figure."

He smiled and looked down briefly, "Yeah...some people do."

Could someone just come and save her from this awkward encounter?

"Hey, so what have you been up to? What are you studying? What's the plan after graduation?"

Her sandwich remained untouched, "Uhm," did they really have to go through the motions? She sighed, "I'm studying biology with a pre-med concentration."

"Still thinking of beating me?" he teased.

She knitted her brows in response, "My life stopped revolving around you a long time ago."

He was taken aback by her response and blinked in surprise.

"If you must know I—"

His cellphone rang, "Hold that thought," he answered his phone and nodded, "Yes, yes ma'am I'll be there," he stood up and left a twenty dollar bill on the table, "Sorry Caitlin, an emergency came up, but it was nice chatting."

She glared after him. Why did it always feel like he had the upper hand?

{-}

It seemed something had happened today if Caitlin stabbing her food and glaring at it was any indication.

"So," he began, "how was your day?"

"Infuriating."

I can see that, he thought to himself, "You want to talk about it?"

She shook her head, "How was your day?"

"It was busy ac—"

"Who does he think he is!?"

Well, there went the account of his day.

"So I have to be available whenever he has time, but he can just leave whenever he pleases," she said aloud, "how is that fair?" she asked Barry pointing at him with her fork.

He held his hands up, "Should I fear for my safety?"

As if the spell had broken, her anger dissipated, "Sorry Barry, I just —"

"It's alright. Really, if you need to get it out of your chest, I'm all ears."

He definitely didn't have any ulterior motives or anything like that. Not that this would avoid him having to ask her questions about her sandwich shop date meeting.

"It's really nothing, don't mind me," she smiled.

Great, just great, he needed to go with plan B. "So what did you have for lunch?"

Just thinking about it irritated her, "Nothing really."

He toyed with his food a little, "Really? Not even a sandwich?"

"Well sort of but—," she stopped and narrowed her eyes suspiciously at him, "Bartholomew Henry Allen, were you spying on me?"

He scoffed, "You think I have the time for something so childish?"

She kept looking at him without blinking and raised her eyebrow inquisitively.

"Seriously Caitlin, I barely have time to eat some days."

"I just find it mighty suspicious that you are being very specific," she said but resumed with her dinner.

After a few moments of silence, Barry spoke again.

"So, about that sandwich…?"

"Barry!" she chided, but laughed throughout, "You're impossible."

"It was an innocent question," he shrugged.

She rolled her eyes, "Sure it was."

"Anyway, you were saying."

"I was invited a sandwich, but didn't eat it, if that puts your mind at ease."

He nodded in approval, "I mean there is nothing wrong with having a sandwich."

"Oh trust me, there is something very wrong with this sandwich."

And for better or worse, he did trust her.

{x}