Every time he looked at Caitlin Snow, Jay Garrick got dizzy.

It wasn't because she was pretty, although admittedly she was. She was very pretty.

He was just always waiting for her to grin wickedly, fire a snowball at his head, and try to rob a bank.

That was Louise, he told himself, Louise. Killer Frost. Who was back on his world. A universe away. (A breach away.) (Possibly.)

Caitlin was different. Her eyes were honey-brown, not icy, and they were soft when she said, "Just because it's a different life doesn't mean it's a worse one." Her mouth was pink and smiling, not blue and smirking.

She was warmth, not heat.

And yes, he understands how badly that fits, when talking about Killer Frost. But even though she could freeze a man solid, he always thought of Louise as crackling with heat and fire.

When he tested the waters with the barest, tiniest flirtatious remark, which Louise would have topped, upended, and in all other ways decimated, Caitlin had blushed instead. She bubbled over when Louise would have sneered, she reached out when Louise would have mocked. And when the others teased her, she got flustered instead of firing back snarky remarks.

Jay felt like grabbing everyone and yelling, That's Killer Frost, you don't tease her, you taze her!

No, no, it was Caitlin. A different woman. A different world.

But her face.

He didn't know why he recalled her face so well, either. He'd barely seen it.

The lighting in the alley had been terrible, clouds shifting across the moon, the streetlight flickering madly at its mouth. It had all been sensation - her legs locked around his hips, the taste of her throat under his mouth, her breath in his ear, taunting him to a fever pitch. His knuckles grinding against brick as he held her up, braced against the wall. She hadn't let him kiss her, twisting her face away every time he tried, until he got frustrated and grabbed her hair, knotting his fingers through it to hold her still. She yelped and moaned, and the string to her mask had snapped in his grip, so his first sight of her unobstructed face was as she climaxed, arching against him with her blue-painted mouth slack and her eyelids fluttering closed over her vivid eyes.

(He never had managed to kiss her.)

It had taken longer for his knuckles to heal than it had taken for her face to be burned into his brain, and that was when he'd still had his abilities.

But on this world, that face belonged to Caitlin Snow.

God, had he gotten a shock when he'd spotted her at the rally.

(Flash Day. Nice for some. He'd certainly never gotten a Flash Day, back in his own Central City. And of course, he didn't want one. He did what he did for the good of others, not himself.)

(But you know, a thank you would be nice once in awhile.)

When he'd spotted her next to an ambulance, he'd huddled into his hoodie, breath coming fast, feeling flayed open and vulnerable even though he was covered from head to toe. His heart beat her name in his throat - Louise.

But then he'd looked again, every muscle tense for whatever mayhem she was planning, and realized.

That dress, those shoes. The tightness in her shoulders, the uncertainty in her face. None of them belonged to Louise. She was always comfortable, always easy, even in the most inappropriate of circumstances.

He'd followed Cisco Ramon to Mercury Labs, described Louise to the guard at the front desk, and learned that in this world, her name was Caitlin Snow. Some more research - thankfully, public libraries and public records were the same - told him she had always been on this world, that she had worked at Star Labs during the explosion, that her fiance had been one of the victims.

He hadn't been able to stop himself from re-reading the article about the explosion, feeling sick to his stomach. All those people.

All that death.

If nothing else, he could honor that young punk Barry Allen for trying to make up for it.

And that. Young punk. Where was this grandpa attitude coming from? A decade, give or take, shouldn't be this big of a gap between speedsters, especially speedsters who fought on the side of justice. But sometimes he just wanted to give Barry detention, or take away his allowance, until he decided to stop posturing like an adolescent baboon, stop pushing his friends away, remove his head from his sphincter. It had been such a long six months, watching that. Didn't he know how lucky he was to have those people?

Cisco, laughing, loyal, clever. Caitlin, curious, intelligent, thorough. Joe, Stein, indulgent, wise, supportive. Iris, willing to take up his slack and lay down the law.

Maybe Jay was jealous. Years and experience were about the only advantage he had. He didn't even have his speed anymore.

The Speed Force was out there. He could feel it crackling along the edges of his brain, the ends of his toes, the tips of his fingers, especially when he was around Barry. But it had deserted his muscles, his bones, his tendons, and left aching, leaden slowness in its place.

He'd find it again. He had to.

He was stranded here, until they found and neutralized Zoom, or even until they worked out the science to get him back to his own world. While he was here, he should take the opportunity to bask in this feeling of being part of a team, which had been something he'd never thought he wanted. Maybe he could pass the time flirting, or more, with a sweet, smart, beautiful woman.

And if he did sometimes look at Caitlin and wonder why he wasn't more on his toes, why he didn't have to watch out for her to freeze him to a handy chair or go commit minor felonies, and to actually miss all of that …

Well. It was all right to be a little homesick.

FINIS