Work Text:
- Here we go again. Everything is fine. I guess we could pretend -
It was never going to work.
Cisco had told him as much, the day before their wedding.
What a time to tell him.
He’d asked how long Cisco had known.
Four months, he’d said.
A week after Hartley had proposed.
He wanted to be angry, to yell at the man, his fiancée, the person he’d thought was the love of his life, because you don’t just keep something like that from someone.
But he was less upset that Cisco had been skeptical enough about the success of their marriage to Vibe the future, or even that they were divorced in the future, than he was about the fact that he’d done it a week after they’d gotten engaged and not told him until the day before their wedding.
That should’ve been a red flag (Hartley had never learned to look for red flags. Or at least, he didn’t look at them as a warning to stay away, but an invitation to come closer). But Cisco’s red flags were… subtle. Invisible, really. Compared to what Hartley was used to.
“Why didn’t you call it off months ago?” Hartley asked, finally finding the words, pacing the hotel room they were in (because their wedding was tomorrow and it was downstairs in the reception hall and it was tomorrow and their wedding was tomorrow) and stopping at the mini bar, pulling out an Orangina—because this was a sober conversation, and he didn’t want to be hungover at his wedding that he may or may not still be having.
“Because I love you! I want to marry you!”
“Even though you know how it’s going to end?” Hartley clarified.
“I don’t know that! I can change what I see in my Vibes, you know I can!”
Hartley scoffed, cracking open the bottle and taking a slow drink.
“And you know that’s gonna add twenty bucks to the bill. I could get you one down the street for three dollars,” Cisco said, and Hartley glared at him.
“Do you really want to go there right now, Cisco?”
He looked down. “No.” He sighed, twisting his hands in his lap. “I’m sorry.”
“So you’ve said.” Hartley looked away from him, refusing to cry about this. “I’ve never been this happy before, Cisco,” he said softly.
“Weird time, but okay,” he joked, and it didn’t land, but it didn’t piss Hartley off either, and he softened, sitting back down next to Cisco and offering him the soda bottle.
“Even if… even if we are doomed, I don’t-“ Hartley cut himself off, closing his eyes for a few seconds. “That doesn’t mean it’s bad. That doesn’t mean it’s a terrible mistake that’ll ruin us, right? Plenty of people break up and are friends after.”
“I don’t even want to get to the breaking up part of that,” Cisco said, and Hartley’s glare was back.
“Well, you’re the one who was so damn worried about it you had to stick your nose in the future, so here we are now.” Hartley swallowed, staring out at the city through the dark window. “You still want to marry me.” He didn’t say it like a question, because it wasn’t a question. If Cisco hadn’t wanted to stay with him, he wouldn’t have waited this long to tell him.
“Of course I do.” Cisco hesitated, “Do you,” he didn’t finish the question, took a long drink, and then a deep breath, and said, finally, “do you, still want to marry me?”
Hartley didn’t answer for a few seconds, unsure if it was because he wasn’t positive of his answer, or because he wanted Cisco to suffer a little bit (he deserved it, after this). “Yes,” he finally said. “But if you pull any of this bullshit ever again, I am walking out. I don’t do well with secrets.” Actually, he did amazing with secrets, he was just trying very hard not to feed into that part of himself anymore.
“I promise. Won’t pull any more bullshit.”
- But ever since that day everything has changed -
He broke that promise. Of course he broke that promise.
It was inevitable.
As inevitable as Hartley’s relapse back into secrets had been.
They both let each other down, in different ways. Ways the other really should have seen coming.
But it wasn’t… bad. That was the problem. It was normal. They didn’t cheat on each other, didn’t hit each other, didn’t gaslight the other into making him feel like he was insane all the time, so, naturally, Hartley assumed it was good. Because, in comparison, it was.
Until Cisco said, as they sat on the couch together, after their nightly argument over what to eat for dinner, “I’m tired, Hartley,” and he knew what it meant.
Inevitable.
Clock ticking down, timing their relationship, it couldn’t be helped.
“Go to bed, then.” He knew what he meant, and he didn’t want to say it. Because being with Cisco meant coming home to someone. It meant not being alone anymore, having someone to talk to. To touch.
“That’s not what I meant,” Cisco said, and Hartley tilted his head back, closing his eyes.
“I know,” he said. “Tired of me.”
“That’s not what I meant, either.”
Hartley squeezed his eyes shut tighter. “I know that, too. But it still feels like that.”
“I’m…”
“Don’t.”
- If you really want to leave, I'll never make you stay -
The divorce was amicable. Aside from the arguments.
There was a fight over the Laserdisc player, of all things, that actually turned into yelling, and was only quelled at Caitlin’s threat to get a divorce lawyer on the phone.
Cisco conceded, because it was Hartley’s from college, despite the amount of tinkering Cisco had done with it over the years, additions he’d made, weird features, and despite the fact that he was the only one who actually used it.
A month later, Cisco was leaving S.T.A.R.
He insisted to everyone (not Hartley, he didn’t talk to Hartley, anymore) that it wasn’t because of the divorce. He would have left, anyway, if this job opportunity had presented itself. No one believed that for a second, but no one worried too much. He was doing fine.
In terms of who ‘won’ the breakup, it was, in a landslide, Cisco.
Hartley kept the apartment, but it was too big and too empty, but he couldn’t bring himself to find a new place. So he spent most of his nights in other people’s apartments. Caitlin worried about him. He said he was fine, and stopped talking to her.
He didn’t lose the job at Mercury, but he stopped caring.
And started snapping.
Like before.
Only this time, he didn’t have a boss who was willing to look the other way every time he verbally abused a coworker. So he started going to therapy, before he lost even more than he’d already lost.
Antidepressants were not a cure-all, but a year and a half later, he was doing better. Not… good. But better.
And then Mercury wanted him to go to Metropolis for a conference, and, well, Hartley had Cisco’s address—-he sent him his mail when it still got delivered to the apartment, sometimes.
They hadn’t talked, not since Hartley had called him to congratulate him on his new job nearly two years ago, and even that had been a five minute conversation at most.
The Laserdisc player weighed approximately eight million pounds, had to be checked, and it cost seventy-five dollars to check it, and Hartley regretted everything, but he lugged it with him across five states and to Cisco’s apartment complex, and buzzed at his intercom, and waited.
He probably should have called (if he dedicated himself to calling, he’d end up never doing it, and then never going, and possibly never talking to Cisco Ramon ever again for the rest of his life, and that hurt too much to accept), but he didn’t, and Cisco answered, with a suspicious, “Yeah?” and Hartley didn’t realize until right then how much he’d missed the sound of his voice.
“Hey, Cisco,” he said, and there was a pause, and the static-filled intercom did not shut out the surprised breath Cisco let out from Hartley’s hearing.
“Hartley?”
He hummed. “You gonna let me up?”
“I- Jesus, dude, you ever heard of a phone call, or a- I mean this place is not-“ a small sigh of frustration, and then the buzz of the lobby door unlocking.
Hartley took his time walking up, not just because the Laserdisc player was heavy, but also to give Cisco time to frantically clean his apartment as best he could in approximately three minutes. Eventually, he knocked on the door, and Cisco swung it open quickly, a little out of breath—yep, that was his frantic cleaning for unexpected company expression—and stared at Hartley for a few seconds.
“Hey,” Hartley repeated, adjusting his grip on the box. “You mind letting me in? This thing is fucking heavy.”
“I- yeah.” Cisco stood to the side, watching Hartley set the box down on Cisco’s counter. “What’s-” he started, as Hartley opened the box and he peeked inside. “Oh.” He froze, staring at it, his face twitching like he was trying not to cry.
“Peace offering,” Hartley said.
“Were we at war?” Cisco ran his hand over the player, before pulling it fully out of the box. It had seen better days (those better days had been in 1994) but still, Cisco looked at it like it was the most beautiful piece of technology ever created.
“Something like it,” Hartley said in answer to his question, and Cisco looked up at him, frowning.
“Well. Peace offering accepted. Thank you.”
Hartley waved his hand. “Sorry for being petty about it. I literally haven’t used it since…” he swallowed.
“Yeah. I figured. Considering I took all the discs with me.” He gestured to a shelf near his TV, where they were displayed.
Neither of them said anything for a second.
“You want dinner?” They both asked at the same time, and then laughed a little, and Hartley had forgotten how nice Cisco’s laugh was.
They ordered pizza from a place around the corner and brought it back to Cisco’s apartment to eat on his couch, caught up over dinner, and strayed away from anything too significant, too real. Cisco offered him a beer but Hartley declined, even though he doubted one beer would lead him to making a very regrettable mistake, he wasn’t about to chance it. Cisco didn’t drink, either.
“I’m here until Wednesday,” Hartley said when the conversation dwindled, and Cisco cringed a little, and Hartley mentally bashed his head against the wall.
“I’ve got… plans. Pretty busy week, at…” he didn’t even bother finishing the sentence. They both knew it was a lie.
“It’s fine.” Hartley kind of wished he’d had that beer, now. “Next time.”
“Yeah.” Cisco relaxed visibly. “Or, you know, next time I’m in Central, I’ll… give you a call.”
Hartley smiled. “I’d like that.”
“I’ve been back a few times. I just figured… you wouldn’t want to see me,” he said quietly.
Cisco, I always want to see you. He didn’t say that. “I’d love to see you,” he said instead, and Cisco smiled at him, and didn’t say anything else.
Eventually, Cisco picked up the remote and started messing around with the neighbor’s Netflix account that he was borrowing (hacking into). When he finally picked a show, background noise to distract them from getting too serious, he moved on to a new conversation topic. “Are you seeing anyone?” he asked, in a tone that made it clear he was trying very hard to stay causal about it.
Hartley shook his head. “You?” He asked it in the same exact tone.
Cisco made a face. “Eh. There was a girl, but…” he trailed off.
“Sounds like you really liked her.”
“Shut up, asshole.”
Hartley laughed, and looked at him for a few seconds, reaching out and playing with a curl of his hair. Cisco’s eyes tracked his fingers until he couldn’t see them anymore, but he didn’t pull back.
For a minute, neither of them said anything, and eventually Hartley’s hand dropped. “I should get going,” he said softly, and Cisco nodded.
“Sure.”
He got up, showed him to the door, and Hartley paused in the doorway, tapping his fingers against the frame. “Hey, Cisquito,” he said, as Cisco made to shut the door.
“Yeah?”
“Love you.”
A pause, that went on a little too long, and Cisco’s face softened, and a smile twitched against one corner of his mouth. “I- yeah. I love you too, Hart.”
- And it’ll just take time, to go back to being friends -