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The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning but taking part; the essential thing in life is not conquering but fighting well. - Pierre de Coubertin
Barry is fresh off his last swim of the games, and fresh off the medal podium when he stumbles into the gymnastics arena just in time to see Iris standing proud at the top of her own podium, grinning out at the crowd as the anthem plays and a gold medal gleams around her neck. He catches her eye as he cheers and she winks at him, looking just as exhausted and as happy as he feels.
The anthem ends and the crowd launches into another round of raucous applause. Iris invites the two other medallists up on to her podium and the cheering only gets louder.
“Oh man I am so proud of her right now, dude.”
Barry jumps at the unexpected voice next to him and turns to see a very sweaty grinning man. His heart skips a beat. He’s possibly the most attractive sweaty grinning man Barry has ever seen.
“Wha-um, I-“
“Iris, right?” The man asks, wrapped hand gesturing up at Iris on the screens, “You’re her Barry right?”
“How did you-?”
“No offence dude but you smell like a swimmer.”
Barry feels his face scrunch up into a wary smile.
“What does a swimmer smell like?”
“Sweat and chlorine,” The man jokes with a grin, “And us gymnasts smell like sweat and chalk. The sweat’s kind of baseline in every field really.”
Barry grins and the break in the tension gives him an opportunity to realize that oh he’s talking to one of the men’s gymnastics team members. Barry wasn’t sure at first because he’s got his jumpsuit thing pulled down to his waist and Barry wasn’t exactly looking at the tiny American flags on his hips. He was looking at the man’s tossled black curls, and his very nice looking shoulders, and chest and his thighs in the white jumpsuit, and the way the wrapping on his hands makes them look very strong and agile and oh my god these games are going to explode his tiny bisexual heart.
The man chuckles and Barry blushes like a fire truck when he realizes he’s been caught staring. Ogling. Either way it’s mortifying.
“Oh my god,” Barry groans and drops his face into his hands, “I’m so sorry.”
He chuckles again and steps a little closer to Barry.
“Well, I hope you’re not too sorry.”
Barry’s head snaps up. The man is biting his lip and smirking at the same time. Up this close his hair is even curlier, and fluffier, and Barry can see the good humour and … heat behind his eyes. It makes his knees knock together. Flirting with a swimmer just after a heat is a good way to arrange a short and sudden trip to the ground. He’s seen it happen, cute smile + weak knees and tired muscles = broken nose.
“I d-don’t even know your name,” Barry breathes, already overcome by this very attractive stranger.
“Cisco,” he says smoothly hooking a finger into the pocket of Barry’s sweat pants as he turns away, dropping a piece of paper with a number scrolled across it in there as he does, “Maybe I’ll see you later at the after party.”
“Oh, yeah- what party?”
Cisco laughs, the sound light and goofy. Barry feels his heart spasm in his chest.
“Iris will tell you.”
“Ramon!”
Barry jumps at the shout from down near the crowd of couches, and looks up to see the famous and formidable Harrison Wells, legendary gymnastics coach and world record holder, glaring straight at him.
“Stop flirting with Allen and go cool down!” he shouts, face stony, “You’ve got the Uneven Bars tomorrow and I expect you to win!”
“Whatever, Harry!” Cisco calls back, rolling his eyes even though he can see them.
“I don’t want you off your game because you went all jelly legged for some swimmer!”
Barry blushes and hunches like he could maybe hide behind Cisco.
“He doesn’t like swimmers?”
“Harry doesn’t like fun,” Cisco shrugs, and then smiles softly at Barry, “All flirting aside though … I’ll see you later, yeah?”
Barry can’t help but smile back, just as softly as something new flutters to life in his stomach.
“Yeah! Yeah defiantly, totally.”
“Awesome,” Cisco grins, “just, um- awesome, dude.”
Barry whole heartedly agrees.
Barry watches Cisco stroll off towards the physical therapists, unable to not notice how phenomenal his ass looks in that jump suit, and he is almost immediately ambushed by Iris and Jessie and Linda.
“Oooh!” Iris teases, bold make up flashing on her grinning face, “Did he finally work up the nerve to ask you out?”
“Iris!” Barry crows, “What do you mean finally?”
Linda and Jesse both roll their eyes at him and Iris looks like she’s resisting the urge to do the same.
“You’ve never seen him do an interview have you?” she says, exasperated with him like usual.
“…no?”
“There are two things America knows about Cisco Ramon, Bear,” Iris tells him, holding up her fingers so she can tick them off in front of his face, “He looks damn fine in his team USA get up, and he has a major crush on Barry ‘The Flash’ Allen.”
“Its common knowledge,” Jesse says sagely with a nod.
“What? How does he even know who-“
Iris glares him into killing that sentence before it embarrasses everyone present.
“Get it together, Bear,” she says with a shake of her head.
Before Barry can work through the shock in his brain, Wells walks over clapping his hands with that stern look still firmly on his face.
“Good work, Ladies,” he says sparing a warm look for them, “Go warm down and grab some dinner.”
“Ugh, Hamburgers,” Linda groans, a look of euphoria on her face, “Two years before I have to give up hamburgers again, I’m in heaven.”
“You can have all the Hamburgers you want, after you cool down.”
“Thanks, Dad!” Jesse says with a grin and hugs the stern man.
“Well. You girls deserve it…” his eyes slide sideways and fix on Barry, “That offer doesn’t extend to you, Allen. Joe’s told me how much you can put away.”
Barry laughs nervously through his embarrassed blush.
After that he gets swept up in the girl’s stories on how their sets went and how it felt to win. Jesse won’t stop beaming and Barry can’t blame her, he was the same way when he won his first medal to. After they are allowed to leave in search of the best Hamburgers Brazil has to offer, Iris pulls out her phone and shoves it under his nose.
“Watch this and you’ll see what I mean.”
He looks down at the video loading on her screen. It looks like a courtside interview with Cisco.
“Oh and Barry,” Iris continues, “You’d better not mess him around. We need him at his best.”
“We also kinda like him,” Linda says through a mouth full of burger.
“Even if he is weird,” Jessie finishes for her.
Barry decides it’s safer for him to keep his clueless observations about how he just met the guy to himself and just watch the video.
It follows the usual route of sports interviews. The interviewer is flirty and Cisco looks cute fresh off the bars and wrapped in his team usa windbreaker. His hair is shorter but no less curly and he seems honestly flustered by the attention. And then the interviewer asks him who he would like to marry out of the whole of the usa Olympics team.
“-maybe your teammate, Iris West? Fans have noticed a certain something between you two!”
Cisco’s expression shifts to a mixture of embarrassed and flustered.
“I’m uh, I’m kinda more into swimmers.”
“Oooh! I can see that, those girls are all sleek and muscular!”
“Um, I wasn’t actually meaning from the women’s team.”
“Oh,” the interviewers smile turned somewhat sharp, sensing a scoop, “And who exactly has caught your eye, Mr Ramon?”
Cisco shifted uncomfortably, probably regretting giving this interview so soon after working out. It tends to make you overly honest. Barry’s said some overly truthful things fresh out of the pool that he’s regretted later.
“I um,” Cisco laughed softly, his face obviously heating; “I’ve been watching that um, Barry Allen killing it in the heats. It’s kind of hard not to fall a little bit in love.”
The interviewer makes a string of schoolgirls ‘ooh’s’ and its obvious when Cisco realizes what he said because he plunks his head down in his hands with a groan.
Barry grins down at the screen. Cisco has a crush on him. Cisco has had a crush on him for a while.
He lifts Cisco number from Iris’s phone and sends off a text.
-You’re right
-what??
-it is kind of hard not to fall a little bit in love
-…dear god I hope this is Barry.