#firevibe

Ronnie looks back at her, then nods out the clear glass walls into the cortex. “I forgot he does this.”

Caitlin follows his gaze and sees Cisco sitting at his computers. His eyes are on them, or on the wall dividing them, and he’s as still as he ever is as he openly gazes.

Caitlin has a flash of memory suddenly, of a dozen discussions she and Ronnie used to have about Cisco and the way he looked at Caitlin and whether it was cute or potentially harmful towards all of their growing friendships. She hasn’t thought about that in ages. To hear Ronnie talk Cisco spent all his time gazing adoringly at Caitlin, but every time Caitlin worked with Cisco on something back before the accident, she never noticed.

And she wasn’t ever blind to the looks of other men. She's a conventionally attractive woman who got her PhD in bioengineering, she has always been aware of the reactions of men around her. Usually she’s either ignored, resented, or considered a mascot. Doctor Barbie.

But Cisco isn’t like that with her. Not before the accident, despite Ronnie’s insistence. And definitely not since the accident.

"Was it bad?" As if reading her thoughts and completely misinterpreting them, Ronnie looks away from Cisco’s oblivious staring and turns back to her. "You two have had to work closely for a while, does he ever get—"

"No." Her answer is fast, sharper than she intends. "And don’t start speculating about it, okay? He is literally the only person I had after the accident. He’s my best friend, and he has never been inappropriate with me. This…this is just…" She gestures out the glass partition, and regrets it when in the other room Cisco realizes he’s staring and they’re watching him, and he drops his head instantly and pretends to work. He only uses his hair as a curtain when he’s really embarrassed. She knows that.

She knows a lot of things about him. He is the closest person in the world to her.

So she doesn’t finish what she was saying to Ronnie, because no matter how wrong Ronnie is…Cisco had been staring. And he’s embarrassed to be caught. Cisco isn’t the kind to embarrass easily.

But she’s not lying to Ronnie. Cisco hasn’t been inappropriate. They have spent days on end alone together, working right on top of each other, no one else to talk to. They’ve gone to dinner together, gotten drunk together, passed out on one or another of their couches while watching bad movies and eating take-out. She’s come to work in Cisco’s clothes once or twice, but there’s no one around to notice so it was never a big deal.

She and Cisco have made life-altering decisions together. They chose, together, to stay at STAR when everyone else was fleeing to salvage their careers. They chose, together, to involve themselves in this metahuman insanity, at first against Doctor Wells’ wishes.

He is the first one she looks to, no matter what, when there’s something big happening around them. She isn’t entirely sure, honestly, that he won’t still be. It will take her a little while to get used to Ronnie being the one who should be in that position.

And this, the staring and the shyness and the embarrassment, this is new. And it’s old. (She argued with Ronnie months ago whenever he brought it up, but she wasn’t blind. She caught Cisco a few times. Only when Ronnie was around to make her aware of it, though.)

It won’t be a problem. She knows that. Whatever it is making his old fascination return now that Ronnie’s back, she’ll just have to talk to him…

Oh.

She understands, just like that, from one thought to the next.

"He’s great! He’s just…kind of awkward." That’s how Ronnie used to describe Cisco. "Funny guy, just needs to get over how self-conscious he is."

But Cisco isn’t, wasn’t ever, self-conscious. Cisco took on Hartley Rathaway his first day of work, and every day afterward, without ever once apologizing or being embarrassed by the flaws Hartley harped at him about.

But she has seen Cisco embarrassed and self-conscious in rare moments. With Bette San Souci, with one of the investigators the FDA sent around to the lab for weeks after the explosion who used to send Cisco out of rooms blushing at the slightest glance.

With, apparently, Ronnie.

Not Caitlin. Ronnie.

She looks back out at Cisco, catches his eyes on them, their little glassed-in room, again. She makes a sound, soft, realization and sympathy and understanding all in one.

He wasn’t looking for Ronnie for her, he said once. She thought he meant he was doing it because of his own guilt. She thought all his choked-up words at the service she had for Ronnie were just to help her get through. She thought he drank so much for a while there because she was drinking too, and he was too nice a guy to make her drink alone.

She thought his sorrow was empathy. She thought his recent obsession was guilt.

She sighs, tearing her eyes from Cisco and his unusual stillness, his vacant, sad gaze as he looks right through her to the man on the table behind her.

He’ll be mortified when she brings it up, and she’s already dreading the conversation. But they’ll have it anyway, because she loves Cisco. Adores him, in a real, deep way, and he would never make her suffer alone, so she isn’t going to abandon him to this.

She looks back at Ronnie with a small smile and speaks honestly. “Don’t worry about Cisco. I’ll take care of it.”