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Cisco was a genius.
He masterminded everything from advanced weaponry to specialty suits to metahuman containment. He was a mechanical engineering prodigy with a prestigious position with S.T.A.R. Labs, one of the most cutting-edge research facilities in the nation. He was an expert hacker and skilled combatant, capable of breaking almost any system and more than a few bones. Yup, he was a fucking genius, with all the immaculate credentials to back it up.
So, what the hell was he doing?
Despite knowing there was nothing to gain from a confrontation, he'd excused himself from the lab, practically sneaking out from under the oblivious eyes of his coworkers. He hadn't even told anyone he was coming here. In fact, he'd intentionally taken all the less-frequented hallways, feet treading across cold floors with sure, quick steps. Yeah, he knew this was a bad idea - there was not getting around that, no matter how many arguments he went through - but there was this…unexplainable, irresistible draw. A sort of compulsory magnetism.
He needed to to have this conversation. Logically, he could rationalize the desire to thoroughly investigate any and every lead that might reveal even a fraction of information about the Particle Accelerator Incident. After all, the weight of that catastrophe was still draped over his shoulders, crushing him into the floor, the keyboard, the mattress. Tenacious as he was, Cisco would never give up searching for answers. However, he was also acutely aware that this - this risk, this dialogue, this rendezvous - was absolutely not the right way to coordinate a legitimate investigation. Being temporarily imprisoned didn't make Rathaway any less perilously treacherous, nor any more likely to be honest. The guy was brilliant and had nothing left to lose, which made him an unhinged genius of the most volatile and dangerous sort. Thus, the prospect of interrogating his ex-coworker for verifiable, useful information was a hazardous goose-chase, at best.
And he knew that, from the start. And yet.
"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good," Cisco muttered under his breath, fighting off the hint of a smile that threaded to break across his lips as he hung back and waited for the security patrol to pass. Moving again, the smile faded all too quickly.
This wasn't just about the answer - the wracking guilt, the paralyzing nightmares, the aching loss, the scathing self-doubt. While all those elements were certainly burning under his skin, there was a buoyancy in his step that defied the dread and weight. Maybe he just needed a fight and knew that Rathaway was always good for one, always smart enough to piss him off and clever enough to lure him back in again. Maybe this was some kind of penitence for not finding a workable solution in time. Maybe Cisco just needed to stand in a room with at least one person he hadn't failed. Maybe he really just wanted to witness some justice in the world and revel in seeing Hartley get his comeuppance.
As an an engineer and inventor, Cisco loved 'maybes'. They were the building blocks of new worlds, the blueprints of possibilities, the instigators of imagination. He loved to puzzle them apart and tease out their potential. However, in this particular set of circumstances, he was reticent to evaluate all the maybes, leaving them to skirt the edges of his mind in half-formed thoughts. Frankly, he wasn't sure he wanted to put words to the multifaceted, complicated, convoluted reason for instigating this conversation. If he wanted to dig in and evaluate his own psyche to find the dragons in map margins, then he could have answered all kinds of maybes, but there were some questions better left unanswered.
For example: what the hell was he doing down here, in this room, with this enemy?
"I have had the biggest craving for Thai food," Rathaway initiated aloud, words dripping off his tongue in a deliberately suggestive drawl as if they're supposed to mean something significant. Maintaining an impassive expression, Cisco ignored the memory that immediately surfaced - the vivid recollection of that one night when they'd ordered Thai takeout so they could keep working overtime on a critical project, complete with flustering images of Hartley glancing up at him through thick lashes with those stupidly blue eyes and repeatedly doing obscene things with his chopsticks. The guy was being an ass then, and he was being just as much of an ass now. So, Cisco ignored him.
The sentence meant nothing. It should have meant nothing.
"You said you knew what happened to Ronnie," Cisco redirected the conversion, determined not to let himself get derailed any more than he already was by default. By being here in the first place. If he could use his own guilt to stay on track, then maybe - just maybe - he could walk away with a few more scraps of the puzzle. "And how he was still alive." From where the guy was practically lounging across the seat in his cell, Rathaway's lips curled into a knowing smirk, as if he could read in Cisco's purposefully blank - yet obviously not blank enough - expression the exact reason for his visit. "And you said Professor Stein was at S.T.A.R Labs the night of the explosion," he soldiered on, ignoring the nagging feeling that this was already spiraling into a colossal mistake. No one in their right mind would trust this snake.
And yet, here he was. With the genuine goodwill of a child (or an idiot), he was standing here and asking the questions that were weighing on his shoulders. He was turning to his enemy with questions he didn't even raise with his friends and coworkers. Shouldn't that be worrying?
"Yes, he was," the bastard replied, tone an unpleasant, irritating mixture of condescending and cocky.
Affirmation. That was it? Repressing the urge to swear in Bocce under his breath, the engineer tried to wait the guy out for a moment, but that self-satisfied, smug little smirk was getting under his skin. Again. He didn't understand why, but he couldn't seem to find the desire to disengage, much less actually walk away.
When Rathaway didn't offer so much as a word of insight or insult, Cisco pressed, keeping his expression carefully neutral, "Why?"
Despite Cisco's best efforts, Hartley didn't appear to be buying his disinterest, smirking as his stupidly blue eyes dropped to the floor…only to look up at Cisco through his lashes, as if flirting with his 'inadequate' teammate was now in vogue. Had they literally stumbled into the twilight zone in the last five seconds? Or, more horrifyingly, had Hartley always looked at him like that and he'd just never noticed? For the span of a second, dark brown eyes dropped down to the damningly frustrating curl of his ex-coworker's mouth, brows twitching minutely as he recognized that 'I figured it out first' expression. That self-righteous, know-it-all arrogance was infuriating, and Cisco knew better than to let it get to him. But, that knowledge never stopped him from feeling riled up when they were working together, and it certainly didn't stem the tide of his frustration now. Rather, seeing that particular smirk always made him work harder - mostly out of anger - and challenged him to push the boundaries of his own genius to come up with better shit than this asshole.
Their rivalry was almost…helpful, on reflection.
'Almost' being, of course, the key word.
Regardless, Hartley now had his full and irate attention. And the fucker knew it, judging from the easy lounge of his body language. The bastard leaned forward, bracing his arms around his knees so that, when he looked up, he could ply the distracting power of his intense, blue eyes, coy smile still playing across his lips. His answer, when it came, was deliberately slow, as if he knew Cisco was helplessly, motionlessly hanging on every word, "The mystery…isn't why Stein went to StarLabs that night…its why he didn't leave."
Cryptic and infuriating. As usual.
Fighting to keep the frustration from showing on his face, Cisco demanded, temper cracking through his facade, "Tell me."
For a split-second, Rathaway let the tension mount exponentially between them, before abruptly breaking off with a shrug and a nonchalantly delivered, "Can't." Cisco felt anger flare beneath his relatively calm expression, fingers itching to just grab the guy, throw him back against the wall, and really get in his face. But, he needed something from this bastard, and he'd already seen that their prisoner did not crack under threat of violence. Or death. As Hartley settled back against the wall, his eyes dropped to inspect his fingernails in his lap, he added, as much taunt as promise. "Have to show you." Now there was a line Cisco couldn't wait to test. Just kidding. There was no way in hell that he'd be stupid enough to let this psycho out of his cell to 'show' anyone anything. He'd sooner try his luck with an intimate engagement with a hard, nearby surface. At least, that's what he'd like to think.
A bitter, disbelieving huff of frustrated, dark amusement escaped Cisco's sealed lips, looking away to pin the wall with a bitter look that said he should have known better. There were no answers here. He knew that - he'd known that from the start. So, why the fuck was he here? Oh right, he didn't want to know the answer to that question, not unless it involved guilt, and heartache, and trauma. Turning his attention back to the prisoner, he pinned their resident villain with dark, unamused eyes, stating, "You are not getting out of this cell." Obviously. Pursing his lips to keep from saying anything more, he turned to leave, finally pissed off enough to storm out and sulk in the privacy of a storage room up on the 3rd floor.
"Fair enough - but I know you Cisco." The words that followed his retreating footsteps were a bit too quick, a bit too rushed. Rathaway was never anything less than meticulous in deed and delivery, so the catch in the lilt of his words snagged on the engineer's ears. Perhaps leaving their prisoner to the silence of an empty room was just enough to throw him off his game. After all, from the confines of that cell, the guy was restricted to the meager benefits of his own company, and that would be terrifying to any sentient creature.
Hiding the faintest hint of a smirk, Cisco pivoted around, eyebrows raised in deliberate, blatant challenge. Sure, their captive might have thought he knew a few things about one of his captors, but that street went both ways. And if there was anything that this arrogant genius hated, it was having his audience escape, particularly when that audience was one mouthy, assertive engineer. Now, the trick was: would Hartley give him more to work with, under the threat of severed contact? Ever ready to test his hypotheses, Cisco shot his ex-coworker a dismissive, unimpressed look, as if he'd lost patience for a simple, boring game.
"I know how much you looked up to Ronnie." Ok, that wasn't the turn he was expecting this conversation to take. Actually, he hadn't realized Rathaway'd been paying enough attention to notice his somewhat inappropriate, awkward interest. While Cisco genuinely tried to find the observation creepy, that was somewhat overridden by a strange feeling of satisfaction. "He was like family." Oh. Well…sure, close enough. His passing interest in Ronnie had almost immediately mellowed out into hero-worship and familial appreciation. And hey - on a bright note, apparently the indiscretion of his little crush(es) had gone entirely unnoticed. Two points to House Cisco. "Family you built for yourself…here."
Oh, fuck. He was starting to see where this was going.
There was an unsettling degree of openness - an expression that almost looked genuine under the blue mood lighting - in Rathaway's expression. Coaxing this foreign, deep sense of regret that welled up and spilled over through Cisco's chest, the words resonated, and he had to resist the impulse to step away, repeatedly reminding himself who he was speaking to. However, the possibility that Hartley felt similarly about their family in the lab was as non-consensually heartwarming as it was disconcerting, and it threw him off balance, which was surely the point. "I know how much you wanna see that family healed." Now that was just unfair. Of course, he wanted to protect the people he cared about, to heal the consequences of his mistakes. "Let me help you."
Rathaway's expression was too innocent. Too eager. Too kind.
In that moment, it hurt to realize that he wanted to believe the guy. He genuinely wanted to believe that there was more under this man's skin than his angst, mood swings, temper, and attitude. For whatever fucked up reason, he saw the intellect, the wit, the challenge, and the puzzle buried underneath the sarcasm, arrogance, and rivalry. And it hurt to see that blatantly, obviously manipulative care.
Why did he want to believe that? Another question he didn't want to answer. He knew he shouldn't. He knew he couldn't. But, despite the best application of logic and rational, he wanted to. There was a strange pull to believe in this snake. As he stood here now, he recognized that there'd always been that pull. After a while, he'd accepted it as a grudging respect for his brilliance or the side-effect of being stupidly hot. However, in this split-second of reflection, he realized that he hadn't quite nipped that crush in the bud quite as thoroughly as he'd imagined, because it shouldn't be this hard to tell truth from fiction. "I don't believe you," Cisco lied, unable to keep the slight waver out of his voice even as he knew he was giving the right answer. The safest answer. He couldn't believe him; he wouldn't believe him. But, it wasn't necessarily true to say that he didn't believe him.
Working with Rathaway was always a risk - not because the guy would ever hamper the success of a project, but because the two of them fed off each other in unpredictable, inexplicable ways. And there was always the potential for epic greatness, side-by-side with the potential for absolute, mutual destruction. There was too much of a risk in this equation; there'd always been too much of a risk, but with a cell wall between them, there was definitely too much at stake.
Cisco turned to leave, dragging his feet even as he thrust them forward to put necessary distance between them.
"I'm telling you the truth, Cisco," Hartley spoke to his back, voice smooth, warm, and soothing as his lips formed around the words like a gentle caress. If there was anything that rang true, it was that statement. He had no idea which truth his enemy was referring to, but there was a truth here, stretched out between them. "When you're ready, you know where to find me."
Cisco hesitated, not quite turning to look back, because he was sure that - if he looked back - he'd get caught in that wide-eyed gaze and dragged back into a conversation he shouldn't be having. He shouldn't have come, least of all because he now wanted to come back again. He shouldn't have come precisely because he always wanted to come back. He always wanted another challenge, another opening for wit, another opportunity to prove he could do it better. Matching wits, proving intelligence…that was always the draw of coming to work in the morning. The thrill of demonstrating his competence against a well-matched opponent and those flashing blue eyes.
Also, having Hartley Rathaway at a distinct disadvantage? That was something to be treasured. To be enjoyed. It was an entirely different kind of thrill, and all he would acknowledge in the privacy of his own head was that he definitely enjoyed the site of Hartley in handcuffs. Of course, that was an opportune moment to remember that his brilliant counterpart was also a sadistic asshole with a hard-on for fucking with people's heads. And while Cisco hadn't ever been able to keep himself from regularly rising to the bait, he wasn't into psychotic-dick.
Braced and armed with the knowledge that he was making the best decision of the past 15 minutes, Cisco turned around to stare back, glaring defiantly at their Pipeline prisoner. He made deliberate eye contact to prove to himself that he could do it without getting drawn back into that intensity. He could turn away. He could walk away. He could close this door. He could. He would. And he did. If it took him until the door cut off their view of each other, he would still count it as a victory. As for the 'why' questions that he wasn't answering, well…he was an engineer. He built things - like walls, and locked doors, and nifty gadgets. For today, he'd leave the self-reflection out of the equation, eyes lingering on that damn smirk until the door cut off his view.