Chapter Text
When Hartley walked into STAR Labs the first thing he noticed was it was more… orange than usual.
The second thing he noticed was the chains of bats across the glass separating the medical and engineering offices from Team Flash’s meeting space.
The third thing was Cisco Ramon, standing amid the green, purple and orange chaos.
Hartley couldn’t stop the sigh that escaped him, tossing his bag onto the nearest chair. “Do I want to know why it looks like a cheap craft store threw up in our office?”
Cisco turned to face Hartley, grin widening. “It’s Halloween, man! We gotta get our spook on.”
“It’s the 19th of October. Nearly two weeks until Halloween. Also I wasn’t aware we were all still children.”
“Come on, Hart.” Cisco drew out the ’n’ sound obnoxiously long while maintaining those stupid puppy-dog eyes on Hartley. “You gotta get into the festive spirit or else it’s just like any other day since we’re adults. Also, I’ll have you know that plenty of adults celebrate Halloween.”
Hartley made certain he didn’t stare at Cisco’s eyes for too long to maintain the bite in his argument. “Yeah, but adult celebrations of Halloween tend toward the side of getting drunk in a nightclub vaguely schemed around wearing costumes. This looks like a more sanitised version.”
“That’s only because Barry can’t get drunk, Wally is too young to drink and the sound would probably make a rave awful for you. Also Caitlin said we can’t take a night off to all go clubbing with Dr Alchemy around.”
Hartley held in his first retort, because that was actually really considerate of Cisco to think about having the whole team off, but realising that almost half the team wouldn’t enjoy a traditional celebration.
“Well, Caitlin was always the smarter one between you two,” Hartley finally responded, but with far less bite than he first anticipated the comment to. Cisco smiled back as though Hartley had just said something hilarious.
“So you keep telling me, and yet I’m not entirely sure that you believe it. Anyway, I’m gonna be headed off for the start of November to chill with my grandparents for Día de Muertos so it wouldn’t be smart to take Halloween off as well.”
“I thought that wasn’t celebrated much in Puerto Rico.”
Cisco blushed infinitesimally. “No, but my abuela was Columbian, and she made us celebrate it for a good few years before mum and dad made her stop. Dante liked Halloween more because of the free food and that.”
Suddenly the conversation seemed to have dove from workplace banter to deeper, more personal conversations and Hartley felt vaguely like he was drowning, if he was forced to finish that metaphor.
“I never really did Halloween with the costumes and free candy. I went to a couple of Halloween balls with my parents, though. Not that they were ever really fun.” Why had Hartley brought up that information, unbidden? He didn’t need Cisco to realise he was even more oblivious to normal things than he inevitably thought he was.
Cisco made a sound a bit like a shocked deer. “You’ve never gone trick-or-treating before?”
Hartley shook his head, determinedly looking somewhere that wasn’t Cisco, until his eyes landed on a giant fake spider and he turned instinctively to Cisco so as to not look at the spider.
“We’ll go out then, and totally do that. In like a week or something I’m taking my niece around to trick-or-treat and you can join us, like, if you want?”
“I’ll consider it,” Hartley replied shortly. “In the meantime, was there something particular you planned to do with the crepe paper infesting my work station?”
Cisco beamed at Hartley. Did he always smile like that? All sincere and warm and so openly happy? How were Barry and Caitlin not blinded regularly?
“I was thinking that would frame the screens on that wall,” he said, gesturing vaguely behind him.
“Next to the Flash costume?”
“Yeah.”
The two still hadn’t broken eye contact, and Hartley could feel his cheeks going red under Cisco’s grin.
He awkwardly cleared his throat, and moved toward the mounds of crepe paper. “Do you,” Hartley began, before feeling the redness return to his cheeks, “I mean, will you need help putting it all up? I mean, what with Barry being the Flash, speed will be of the essence if this decoration is supposed to be a surprise.”
As if the mention of Barry snapped a spell on Cisco, he bounded toward Hartley. “That would be really great, man! Thanks!”
“You’re welcome,” Hartley mumbled back, staring determinedly at the purple paper beneath him and trying to dispel the blush from his cheeks.
And if when putting the paper up and stuffing the rest in the medbay Hartley’s hands brushed against Cisco’s he didn’t notice.
And if Cisco kept their hands together for a fraction longer than would be considered socially acceptable, he didn’t notice either.