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“She seems nice,” Cisco says as he watches Caitlin walk away, and he means it.
If you’re defining “nice” as “I’m pretty sure this woman is the sun and I’d like to revolve around her forever and ever until we all explode in a fiery death.”
And if Hartley was anyone other than Hartley—and is it possible to hate someone so much after so little time, Cisco wonders, and then thinks it probably is because he’s sure people felt this way about, like, Hitler; not that Hartley is Hitler but they probably have a pretty similar temperament, Cisco’s just saying—Cisco would probably ask about this boyfriend. Is it serious? Vacation, anniversary, no big deal, right?
But Hartley is Hartley and he rolls his eyes and scoffs a little bit and stomps off. Cisco follows him, but he feels a pull in the other direction.
There are Things To Do after the whole… blowing up the city. There are funerals to attend and parts of the lab to try and salvage and visiting hours for Doctor Wells. Cisco does all of these things in a flurry of energy, because if he keeps moving, he won’t have time to think about that night and locking Ronnie in and the way Caitlin screamed.
He keeps his distance at Ronnie’s memorial because Caitlin looks dazed and her mom is sort of propping her up in a way that makes Cisco think she took a few too many benzos. Caitlin, who can’t handle more than two cocktails, hopped up on pills to get through the day, and it makes Cisco so fucking sad that he can’t stand it, wants to go back in time and lock himself in the goddamn chamber instead.
He skips the food and coffee and small talk at Ronnie’s parents’ house and goes to the grocery store. Spends two hours and money he should be saving (does he have a job anymore? Is he seriously going to have to tell his brother that he’s unemployed?) on every ingredient for every single comfort food he can ever remember his mother making. Spends another two days cooking it all: empanadas, arroz con grandules, papas rellanas , fried plantains, carne guisada, tembleque. Puts it all into neat little Tupperware containers (also buys Tupperware containers at the grocery store because his kitchen is generally lacking the things a functional adult should own). Packs it all up and drives over to her apartment.
She answers the door in a pair of dirty leggings and a sweater that is at least four sizes too big. Her hair is pulled back in a messy ponytail, and Cisco thinks that in all the time he’s known her, he’s never seen her hair like that. Ever. She looks pale and tired and there are dark circles under her eyes and her eyes themselves are a little bloodshot and swollen, but Cisco thinks she’s beautiful anyway. He’s missed her.
“Hi,” he says, softer than usual. “I, uh, come bearing food and lots of it.”
Her face softens a little, but she doesn’t say anything, so Cisco keeps babbling.
“I kind of figured you weren’t eating, because you’re really good at taking care of other people and sometimes bad at taking care of yourself. So, I have enough food to last, like, a year, and it’s all stuff my mom used to make for me. There’s also two pints of ice cream in case you don’t like Puerto Rican food, but I’m being completely serious here when I say that if you don’t, I think there’s a very large chance we can’t be friends anymore.”
Her lips curl up into something that once upon a time might have been a smile and she steps aside to let him in. “I love it.”
It becomes a Thing, and soon enough he’s at her apartment way more than he’s at his own. He makes sure she does things like eat and shower and drink enough water. She’s quiet and Cisco thinks she does all her crying in the shower and when he’s gone.
One day he comes in—she’s made him a key at this point and Cisco doesn’t want to dwell on it too much because that’s not what this is about, this is about keeping her safe and healthy and the Caitlin he knows and totally does not love—and she’s sitting on the couch, staring at the wall opposite.
“What are you—?” Cisco stops short, grocery bags in hand, when he sees her wedding dress hanging from the curtain rod.
She’s watching the dress with this sort of determined look on her face, and it’s one Cisco’s seen often. It’s the look that says there’s a problem, and she’s going to tackle it, and she’s going to solve it, because Caitlin Snow is nothing if not efficient and neat and capable.
(Cisco didn’t even know she had a wedding dress, but now that he sees it all he can think about is how she would look in it smiling up at Ronnie, the way the dress would cling to her hips and flare out and how she would laugh when Ronnie twirled her around, and how Cisco would ask her for a dance and have to hold her in his arms and be happy for her.)
“Oh, Cait.” Cisco drops the bags and sits next to her. He drapes an arm around her shoulders and pulls her in close. “Cait, you don’t have to do this.”
She turns inward to bury her face in the crook of his neck. “Cisco, can you not… please don’t call me Cait.”
He pulls away as if shocked. “Oh. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…”
“No, it’s just that—Ronnie called me Cait. He was the first person to call me that and I don’t think I can hear it anymore if it doesn’t come from him.”
“Of course.” Cisco hugs her close again and she takes several deep breaths. In, out. In, out. Her breathing eventually slows, and so does his, matching hers.
They visit Doctor Wells—Caitlin for the first time—three months after the explosion. “He’s my boss, Cisco, he’s in the hospital, it’s rude not to visit,” she says as she brushes the tangles out of her hair, and for a moment Cisco is transported back in time to when everything didn’t suck so bad.
But when Caitlin steels herself as she gets into the car, he remembers.
Cisco does most of the talking, describing the plot of a movie he’d seen months and months and months ago, back when he had time and energy to do things like go to the movies. Caitlin sits stony and silent, her back unnaturally straight. Doctor Wells is in a rehab facility, learning to do things like lift himself in and out of a wheelchair. It’s all very uncomfortable.
At one point, Cisco trails off because Wells is staring at Caitlin with that sort of creepy intense way he has. “Doctor Snow,” he says quietly, “my deepest and most sincere condolences for the loss of Ronnie. He was a remarkable young man, and you two deserved to live your lives together.”
Caitlin nods stiffly. “Thank you.”
In the parking lot, Caitlin leans into Cisco. “Is it bad that I hate him, just a little?”
Cisco wraps an arm around Caitlin’s shoulders. “Caitlin, you can hate everyone and everything. I’d say you’ve earned that right.”
Her face softens. “I don’t want to go home.”
“So where to?” He gestures to the car as he unlocks it. “Anywhere you want. I’ve got a full tank of gas.”
“Can we just go to your place? Eat some ice cream?”
He puts his hands on his stomach and jiggles it a little. “Are you trying to fatten me up?”
Something that might be a smile crosses Caitlin’s face and Cisco breaks into a full-on grin.
On the way there, he does the typical bringing-a-girl-home mental inventory: are there dishes in the sink, is there underwear on the floor, when was the last time I cleaned the toilet? It turns out that when you spend most of your time at Caitlin Snow’s apartment, your own stays relatively clean aside from the thin sprinkle of dust over everything. Cisco just opens a window when they get there to air things out a little.
She looks extra tiny on his oversized couch, curled up with a bowl of ice cream and a spoon. She’s tucked her hair behind her ears and drawn her knees up to her chest, shoes on the floor and toenails painted pink. Cisco takes this as a good sign; a clean and well-maintained Caitlin is a Caitlin on the road to being Caitlin again. Sometimes he gets these little glimpses of the old her—the real her, the happy her—and he wants to grab onto them, squeeze them tight, and never let them go. He’d do anything to have that Caitlin with him again, even if it meant watching her be happy with Ronnie. Cisco thinks, bitterly but only just, that he never expected to have her, anyway. Not that she was something to be had. But she was something. She was something.
“Your place is cozy,” she says. She burrows further into the couch as if to prove her point.
“You can stay as long as you want.”
She nods and scoops more ice cream into her mouth. When she finishes, she stands up, stretching slightly on tip-toe, and takes both her bowl and his to the kitchen. “Mind if I explore a bit?”
“Go for it.” Cisco wants to follow her around and see his home and his things through her eyes, but he stays on the couch and flips through the TV channels instead. There’s some sort of cable news special about the particle accelerator and all the people who died and all the people who are in comas or paralyzed or missing, and Cisco quickly clicks past it before Caitlin can hear. The last thing he wants is for her to hear the anchor’s nasally voice say Ronnie’s name in a long list of victims.
After a round through every station, he gets up to look for her. He finds her in his bedroom, perched on the edge of the bed, holding a picture frame. “Is this your mom?” she asks.
Cisco sits next to her and looks over at the photo, of him and his brother standing on each side of his mom, all beaming. It was the day of Cisco’s college graduation, and he’s still wearing the robe. His mother is almost mid-laugh, it looks like, her eyes shining as they squint a bit in the sunlight.
“Yep, that’s her.”
“She looks sweet. You guys have the same smile.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. It’s a good smile.”
Caitlin puts the photo back on the nightstand and gives her own barest hint of a smile, and goddamn it if Cisco’s heart doesn’t speed up just the tiniest bit. He shouldn’t be having thoughts like this, like how Caitlin looks sitting on his bed, smiling softly, her hair tucked behind her ears in the way she does when she’s putting all of her effort into something.
“Cisco? Why are you taking care of me?” she asks. Cisco might be imagining things at this point, but she shifts almost imperceptibly to her right, and he can feel the heat of her leg against his.
“Because someone has to. Also there’s the fact that I’m unemployed, so what am I going to do all day anyway, besides watch Battlestar Galactica for the millionth time?”
Cisco isn’t imagining things. She shifts toward him more. “You’re really good at taking care of me.”
He swallows the lump in his throat. It hurts, almost. “It’s my pleasure.”
Suddenly she’s too close and he can feel her breath on his face, the smell of chocolate from her ice cream. Her hand brushes his shoulder and it burns, feels like his entire arm is on fire.
“What are you doing?” he whispers, afraid to break the moment but also afraid to go on.
“Everything feels horrible all the time, and I just want something that doesn’t.”
This entire situation is about fifty shades of fucked up; Cisco thinks of a lot of things in this moment, like how could he do this to Ronnie, how could he do this to her, how could he not do this, what will it mean either way. Because he wants to—good god does he want to—but Cisco loved Ronnie, too, and Cisco loves Caitlin, and if Cisco turns her down he’ll be the biggest jerk in the world, but if he doesn’t he’ll also be the biggest jerk in the world, and why isn’t anything making sense right now?
“Cisco?” Caitlin asks. Her voice is tiny and on the edge of hurt, like she knows she’s about to be rejected and she’s embarrassed and sad, and Cisco can’t deal with her being sad anymore. Caitlin doesn’t deserve to be sad anymore.
So he kisses her, full on the mouth, and she tastes like every happy moment he’s ever had. She tastes like mornings used to feel before the world went to shit. She tastes like a new beginning.
The glare from the streetlight shines in through the window, making shadows on Caitlin’s face. She’s almost glowing in the strange orangey glare. Once upon a time Cisco thought she was the sun, but now he thinks she might be the moon, waxing and waning, pulling him in like the tide.
(You can’t look directly at the sun for too long, anyway, and Cisco doesn’t want to imagine a life where he doesn’t get to look at Caitlin.)
Caitlin Snow has a constellation of moles to the right of her belly button (or, Cisco’s right, Caitlin’s left; and Cisco might be a scientist but even he’s prone to sappy sentimental things like comparing moles to stars). Her hipbones are sharp and jut out from her body; Cisco leaves a faint purple bruise on the left one with his mouth. Her moans are breathy yet high-pitched. She has tanlines from what was obviously a bikini, and a small one at that.
She sleeps on the right side of the bed, curled up on her left side, her left ankle hooked over Cisco’s right leg. He files these things into the drawer in his mind labeled “Things About Caitlin Snow,” and then locks it tight, so nothing escapes.
Cisco keeps candy hidden pretty much everywhere he goes; there’s a box of Sweet Tarts in the glove compartment of his car, there’s a bag of Kit-Kats in his gym bag, there’s five Blow-Pops in various places around the living room. So when he wakes up to find Caitlin sitting in bed with a pack of Twizzlers propped up on her knees and two coffee mugs in her hands, he’s not too surprised.
(No, the surprise comes from the fact that a) she’s in his bed and b) she’s wearing one of his t-shirts. Cisco has never understood that whole possessive-about-girls-wearing-your-clothes thing because frankly it’s a little barbaric and he knows Caitlin would agree, but there’s still something about her wearing his shirt that tugs at something inside of him and he tries not to dwell on that something for too long.)
“Uh, morning?” he says hesitantly.
She holds out one of the mugs. It’s not coffee, but hot chocolate, steaming and thick and creamy. “Morning. Breakfast is lots and lots of sugar.” She says it in her Doctor Snow voice, the voice that means these are instructions he has to follow, and it’s been so long since he’s heard her speak this way that he can’t help but smile.
“You don’t have to tell me twice.” He reaches for a Twizzler and takes a big bite.
They eat in silence, but it isn’t awkward; there are a lot of things Cisco wants to say, but he doesn’t say any of them because he isn’t sure how. He should tell her, he thinks, about that night, about locking Ronnie inside the chamber and how Ronnie sacrificed himself for all of them—for her—and how Ronnie is a hero. She should know how he died. He shouldn’t keep this from her, not now, not anymore.
But he doesn’t say anything.
Then he gets a phone call.
He shows up at Caitlin’s door at eight in the morning. She’s still in her pajamas, a mug of coffee in her hand, and she looks at his anxious face carefully. “What’s wrong?”
“Let’s go for a drive.”
They drive for an hour, the windows down, in almost silence. Cisco parks the car near the lake, and it’s a sunny and almost-hot day: the first signs of summer.
He turns off the ignition and takes a deep breath, steeling himself.
“Cisco, you’re scaring me,” she says quietly. “What’s going on?”
“Doctor Wells called me. He offered me a job. He offered us jobs.”
She doesn’t say anything, and he continues: “Apparently there’s this guy who was struck by lightning the night of the explosion and he’s been in a coma ever since. His heart keeps stopping and starting, and the doctors at the hospital aren’t sure why. Doctor Wells thinks if we take him to STAR Labs, and monitor him, we can study the effects the explosion had and also figure out a way to help him.”
“What did you say?”
Cisco turns in his seat to face her. “I said I’d do it, but only if you were on board, too. I told him we were a package deal, and if you’re not okay with it, I’m not, either.”
Her face softens. “You said that?”
“Well, yeah. I don’t want to go back there without you.”
“Why do you always take such good care of me?”
He shrugs. It’s the second time she’s asked and his answer still hasn’t changed. “Someone has to.”
“It’s been five months and my mom and sister seem to think I should be moving on. But I’m not ready to move on. I can’t wake up every morning and suddenly be okay. And you’re the only one who seems to understand that.”
There are approximately forty-five thousand things Cisco wants to say to Caitlin. He’s been biting his tongue since the night they slept together; it hasn’t been awkward or uncomfortable, but Cisco isn’t the kind of person who can have sex with someone he might be in love with and then just forget about it. It’s not that he regrets it, because he’d do anything for her, but he feels like he got a glimpse of a life he could have lived. He feels like he owes it to her to tell her the whole story about Ronnie’s death. He feels like he wants more.
“You’re my best friend,” he says instead, carefully.
She smiles and reaches out to squeeze his arm. “I know I’m not the easiest person to deal with. Maybe it’s why you’re the only person who’s stuck around. And everything you’ve done for me, everything, I appreciate it more than I can say.”
He nods, and that’s when he realizes he would do it all again.
“I think we can help this guy,” Cisco says as he loads gummy bears over his frozen yogurt. “Make up for all the damage we’ve done, you know?”
Caitlin chooses raspberries and a sprinkle of chocolate chips. “And I think we need a project. Something to focus our attention on. We’re not the kind of people who can sit idle for long.”
“I don’t know,” Cisco jokes, “there are a lot of TV shows you’ve never seen before.”
“One day I will watch all of The Walking Dead with you, I promise,” she sighs. “But for now we have work to do.”
They’re supposed to be at STAR Labs in an hour, to meet with Doctor Wells and Joe West, to talk about this guy Barry and what they might be able to do for him. Caitlin looks like she’s going to throw up at the thought of going back there, so Cisco thinks if he can stuff her full of enough sugar, the high will keep her going.
“Hey,” he says. “You say the word and we’ll leave. Fire up the ol’ Netflix queue and I’ll even make you more of my mom’s fried plantains.”
She takes a thoughtful bite of yogurt. “I’ll be okay. I want to be Doctor Snow again. I miss her. Regular person Caitlin is kind of a bum.”
“I like her just fine. Although Doctor Snow does dress a whole of a lot better. Regular Caitlin wears all my t-shirts.”
She flings a raspberry at him. He knows they’ll both be okay.