Cisco checked the food and turned the heat down to barely a whisper, just enough so it would keep warm. He put the lid back on and ran both hands through his hair, then looked at the time.

Fifteen minutes.

"Okay," he muttered to himself. "Okay, okay, okay."

He ran around his apartment, last-minute checking. The scattering of DVDs and game boxes that usually decorated the floor under his wall-mounted TV had been gathered up into neatish stacks. The device he'd been tinkering with, all over the coffee table, had been scooped into a shoebox and shoved unceremoniously under the sofa. The blanket on his couch had been folded up and laid across the back.

He ducked into his bedroom. Sheets: changed. Bed: made. Socks and underwear: in the dresser or the laundry basket according to degree of cleanliness.

Condoms?

He rushed to the bathroom, unearthed them from the cabinet, and grabbed his toothbrush on the way out. He scrubbed his teeth on the move, carrying the box of condoms from the bathroom to his bedroom, stashing them in the night stand.

He pressed the palms of his hands into his eyes. "Okay," he mumbled around his toothbrush, and bit his lip. If he said the word okay one more time, he was gonna strangle himself. Seriously. He'd find a way.

"Thish ish Caitlin," he said aloud, pacing back to his bathroom and spitting the toothpaste out into the sink. Rinse, spit, mouthwash? Maybe? Or would it be too much? Ugh. "This is your best friend, she's been over here before."

This was nothing special, tonight, right?

Sure, he was cooking for her, but he'd cooked for her before. A lot. They even had a deal that if he cooked, she would clean up. It was that normal.

And he probably shouldn't worry that much about the living room. She'd seen it way worse than the way it had been before he'd cleaned up.

And the bedroom - well. Yeah. She'd seen his underwear and his socks all over the floor before. Had teased him about it, in fact.

He leaned against the sink and wondered about the condoms. Like, maybe having them stored in his night stand implied that he had to have them handy all the time, which honestly, sadly, he didn't. He could set them on top of the night stand? He studied himself in the mirror, pulling at his lip. Would having them right out in the open make it look like he expected to have to use them?

Because he had no idea. Sure, they'd fooled around last night at her place. But they'd been drunk, and he'd more or less dared her to test him out and see if he was better than a vibrator. Okay, yes, she'd given him a blow job, but that was more like an apology for accidentally giving him a black eye when she came.

She'd said something about expanding the parameters today, but for all he knew, that meant -

Well, he didn't know what it meant, but he knew it was sort of a dick move to automatically expect to need condoms. Especially when neither of them was going to be nearly as drunk as they'd been last night.

He decided to leave the condoms in the drawer where he'd put them in the first place. Fine, whatever, so it looked like he needed to have them handy, so what? That was bad? She knew that wasn't the case anyway.

"Dude," he said to himself. "Breathe. Breeeeeeathe. This is Caitlin."

But see, that was the problem.

How did he handle this, with his best friend? There was no mystique. There was no ice-breaking getting-to-know-you BS to fall back on. The food, as awesome as it was, wouldn't be a sexy surprise because he'd cooked for her before.

There was her and there was him and there was a night of spectacular inebriation and sexual meta power experimentation behind them, and then in front of them - what?

In front of them, there was a yawning chasm of fear because if they screwed this up or made it awkward, they couldn't just stop calling each other or quietly unfriend each other on Facebook. Their lives were too woven together.

Cisco couldn't imagine how all those people who put "I'm marrying my best friend" and crap like that on their wedding invites had actually done it. Probably they hadn't. Probably they'd gotten to have all the mystique and the sexy surprises, and the friendship had come as part of the relationship.

Not that this was the beginning of a relationship.

This was just sex.

Or just fooling around.

Or - oh god - maybe Caitlin just coming over to hang out and say, "Wow, that was a crazy thing we did last night, wasn't it?"

Which … would … be okay, right? He would be okay with it, for his best friend's sake. He would make himself be okay with it, because he refused to be the dude who didn't listen when a woman said stop, even if he'd dreamed of the smell of her hair and the feel of her breasts in his hands and the sound of her voice screaming his name.

Cisco strongly suspected he had feelings for Caitlin. Stealth ninja feelings, that had hidden under the surface for years because, hello, engaged, and then hello, dead fiance, and then, hello, fiance back again, and then, hello, goodbye, where the hell had he gone this time.

He was exhausted and he wasn't even in that relationship.

His doorbell rang, and he let out a yelp, then clapped his hands over his mouth.

Caitlin was always a little early. He'd wasted valuable grooming time standing here freaking out. He shoved his hands through his hair again (trying to achieve that magical disheveled-yet-sexy balance that had happened once, two years ago, so he kept attempting to replicate it), checked his shirt for suspicious cooking-related stains (none, yay, although what he possibly could have done about it in six seconds, Cisco didn't know), and raced to the door.

With his hand on the knob, he took a breath and let it again. Calm, calm, calm, this was just Caitlin coming over to eat dinner and hang out and possibly have mind-blowing sex, no, no, that was not a calming thought.

He wrenched the door open just as her finger rose to ring his doorbell again. "Hey," he said cheerfully.

"Hi!" she said in a slightly squeaky voice. She'd switched from the knee-length blue dress she'd been wearing all day to a shorter black one with little white polka dots and buttons from the neckline all the way to the hem. Cisco couldn't decide whether he wanted to unbutton all the buttons one by one or just put his hands right up the flippy skirt.

He put his hands behind his back to control them. "Oh, hey, you changed."

Her eyes widened, and she tangled both hands in the handle of the plastic store bag she held. "Too - fancy?"

"No! You look nice."

"Thank you." She shifted from foot to foot on his welcome mat.

Normally Caitlin just walked in, one or both of them already talking about work or the movie she'd brought over or continuing some silly argument like oh my god, Cisco, don't be ridiculous, a shark could not fight a train, how even would that work, okay, the train if I have to pick.

But today she just stood there. Looking awkward. Was she - ? Oh.

"So! Come on in." He stepped back, Vanna-Whiting his arms as if to show off his apartment. Which was ridiculous. She knew his apartment almost as well as she knew her own.

But she smiled at him and came in, looking around. "Oh! You cleaned."

"You knew I was going to."

She breathed in as she set the bag on the little table where his mail usually piled up until it avalanched to the floor. He'd shoved it all in a grocery bag and stuffed that in a cabinet, so the table was actually clear. "And you cooked!"

He shrugged. "I had all the stuff lying around for arroz con pollo, so I figured I'd throw it together."

Lie. On his way home, he'd hit the grocery store like a Viking plundering a seaside village. He hadn't been able to remember what he already had so he'd gotten all the ingredients plus some spares just to be sure, and he had enough rice now to last him clear to Thanksgiving.

"It smells really good," she said, breathing in again. "Is it ready now? Or does it need to cook some more?"

Figuring she was hungry, he said, "It's ready now, I'm just keeping it warm."

Her face fell. "Oh. I was hoping we had a few minutes."

He shook his head, baffled. "Uh, I've told you, arroz con pollo is the kind of food that's just as good eaten cold out of the fridge at 2 am as it is fresh. We can eat whenever you want, goof."

"Oh! That's good."

"What'd you want to do before we ate?" he asked casually, praying that she wasn't going to say something like, We need to talk.

"I - uh - " She swallowed, then took two quick steps forward, put her hand on his face, and kissed him.

He was so startled that - in a move he would regret until his dying day - he stepped back.

She stared at him, her hand hanging in the air, her eyes filled with dawning horror. She started to put her hand down, turning her head away.

"Oh, my god," he said, and stepped forward again, catching her around the waist, and kissing her back. Their noses bumped for a moment, and then they adjusted.

Her arms wrapped around his neck, and he slid his arms further around her waist, until they were plastered together chest to knees, kissing hungrily.

When they had to pause for air, she gasped, "I've been thinking about doing that all day."

"All day?" he panted, trying not to give into the shit-eating grin. "Is that good?"

"It was very distracting," she said primly, and destroyed that by kissing his neck, and his ear, and his jaw. He was so glad he'd shaved.

He pushed his hand into her hair and kissed her mouth again, all luscious softness and sweetness. She tasted like toothpaste, so she'd brushed her teeth, too, before coming over, and for some reason the thought filled his heart with lust.

Something growled, and he thought it was her, growling in a sexy way, until he realized that it had come from the middle of their bodies, and - "Was that your stomach?"

" … No."

It happened again. "That was totally your stomach."

"I can't help it! Your food smells really, really good."

"It does," he said.

Her stomach growled a third time.

He rested his forehead on hers, laughing helplessly, then grabbed her hands. "C'mon, hungry girl," he teased, walking backward and dragging her toward the kitchen. "Let's eat, and then we can get back to what we were doing."

Dinner was weird.

It was weird because it wasn't weird.

Somehow, Cisco found himself falling into all his usual rhythms with Caitlin, the subtle dance of setting the table and dishing up the food, oh-I-forgot-forks and I've-got-them-do-we-need-napkins? Caitlin getting up in search of beer, huffing at him when she realized he hadn't put them in the refrigerator, and doing her little trick with the wet paper towel and the freezer.

They didn't flirt or tease each other. Instead, they talked about their latest metahuman, throwing out theories that piled up like children's blocks. At one point, he waved his fork so hard that a pea flew off and hit her in the shoulder, and she just rolled her eyes and brushed it off.

If Cisco avoided thinking about it, this could be any time he'd fed her dinner for the past two years.

But every so often, she would lean forward and he would catch himself looking at where the neckline of her dress gaped, and look away, and then think, Oh, I don't have to do that, and look back. At which point, of course, she would have straightened up again and he couldn't see anything.

Or when their knees bumped under his tiny table, she didn't apologize and scoot her chair back, but just gave him a little smile and looked down at her plate.

The time came when both their plates were clean, and both their beers drained and - and - and.

"Well," he said. "You done?"

She hopped up. "Dishes!"

They cleared the table, circling each other in his tiny kitchen. Was it his imagination or was she giving him more space than usual? Or maybe it felt like it because he wanted to be closer.

She turned on the faucet and started running everything through the water, scrubbing the plates with a little sponge on a stick that she'd brought over a couple of years ago.

"Hey," he said, coming up behind her. "Just put 'em in the dishwasher, okay?"

"I have to rinse them first," she said stubbornly, "or there'll be little bits of food all over."

"Okay, so, drop them in the sink and let 'em soak."

"Oh, right, and you'll forget about them and the next thing you know there'll be little mold civilizations in here."

It was an old argument, one they had every time she came over, and it usually ended with Cisco rolling his eyes and Caitlin cleaning the plates so well that they barely needed the dishwasher. But he was pretty sure he held a trump card he never had before.

He settled his hands on her hips, and whispered in her ear, "Leave 'em."

Her hands went still. The water cascaded down over them. For a moment, he thought she wasn't going to say anything back, but then she said, "And do what instead?"

He kissed the curve of her neck. "Probably we can think of something."

"You'll need to be more specific," she whispered back.

His brows rose, and he grinned into her skin. Okay, wow, Caitlin was actually flirty. That was unexpected. "Really? You can't - " He slid one hand around to her front and ran his finger along the line of buttons down her dress. "Extrapolate?"

When his finger passed over the vee between her legs, she caught her breath, but he kept going, all the way to the hem. Then he paused, brushing his fingertips on her thigh just under the cloth.

She reached out and turned off the water. Then she turned in his arms. His hand slid around her leg, from the front to the back. "I really can't," she said in a husky voice. "What's the next step?"

He grinned and kissed her, loose and soft. She cupped her wet hand around the base of his neck and opened her mouth so he could lick the little spot just behind her top lip. A bead of water rolled down his spine, sending shivers everywhere.

He slid his hand up under her skirt, along the back of her thigh, until his palm slid over the silky panties she wore. He curled his fingers into the elastic at the waistband and lifted his head. "The next step? How about this?"

He slid down her body, to his knees, eyes still trained on hers. Her kiss-swollen lips parted as he pulled her underwear down over her ass, down her thighs, over her knees, until they slid down her shins and dropped to the floor. She stepped out of them and kicked them across his kitchen linoleum, then reached down and pulled her dress up, clutching the fabric in her fist and resting that fist just above her belly button, exposing herself.

He breathed in the clean smell of her. "I always knew you were smart."

"They don't give out bioengineering degrees in Crackerjack boxes," she said.

He settled his hands on her hips and kissed her inner thigh, the border of her bush, the bump of her hipbone.

"Cisco," she said.

He nuzzled the little pooch of her belly, which she was always trying to exercise away. But he loved it, especially now, right here like this. "Yeah-huh?"

She shifted, spreading her legs wider. "Would you - "

He ran his tongue around her belly button, and she dropped her dress. The soft material fell around his face and head. He smiled, knowing she could feel it, and delicately parted her folds with his first two fingers, dipping his head to lick inside.

She whimpered, her hand pressing on his head through her dress.

He briefly considered using his powers, since he could still remember a few of the combinations that had made her moan and writhe the night before. But he had a pretty good tongue and he liked using it. Plus, right now, this first time, vibration felt like a cheat.

Anyway, from the way her hips pushed into his face when he sucked on her clit, he was doing just fine without it.

He steadied himself by grabbing her hip, dropping his other hand into his lap to massage his dick through his pants, and went to town. Her whimpers turned to yelps and then moans and then one long, drawn-out gasp as her slickness coated his mouth and chin.

He licked her clean, reveling in the pants and sighs and the wild quivering of her knees. When he ducked out from under her skirt to grin up at her, she blinked open bleary eyes, and it was a hazy moment before she could smile back.

Aw, yeah.

"How're you doing up there?" he asked.

She crinkled her nose at him. "You know perfectly well. And you? How are you doing down there?"

He licked his lips. "My favorite dessert."

She dissolved into giggles, pressing her hands to her face, which was all flushed and soft and pretty.

He laughed too, using the edge of the counter to haul himself to his feet. It was a cheesy line, teetering on the edge of skeezy, and he was glad she knew him well enough to laugh at it.

He wanted to kiss her but he didn't know how she felt about tasting herself. Sometimes people were weird about that. So he wiped his mouth on his sleeve and grabbed his half-full glass of water from the counter, taking a couple of gulps.

She looped her arms around his waist and draped herself against him for a moment. He hugged her close automatically. She had to feel his erection, pressing hot and frantic against his fly. She kissed his cheek and slid away.

"Hey," he said, turning to watch her. "Hey. Where ya going?"

She padded across the kitchen floor, stepping daintily over her own underwear. "Aren't you curious about what I brought?" She bowed her head over the plastic bag she'd brought, carefully untwisting the handles.

"A surprise?" he asked, following her. "Is it as good as last night's?"

She looked at him through the spill of her hair, her mouth curling up. "I think it's better, myself, but - " She pulled the bag open and brought out a cardboard box.

He blinked at it, then focused, and said, "Oh," in a somewhat high-pitched voice.

It was a new box of condoms.

She looked uncertain, suddenly. "If - if that's - "

"No, it - I - "

"I mean, if you want. I - "

He plucked it out of her hands. "I want, Caitlin, I do."

He kissed her, and she put her hands up to his face and kissed him back, both of them trying to tell each other, This is good, this is what I want, you are what I want.

They pulled apart and he rested his forehead against hers. They panted, sucking in each other's air.

"Bedroom?" he asked.

"Couch, closer," she murmured.

"Yeah."

Suddenly they were both frantic, kissing, biting, dragging at each others' clothes as they lurched toward the couch. He definitely heard a few buttons pop off, and wasn't sure if they were his or hers. He wrestled briefly with her bra, until she got it herself, hurling it off into a corner of the room before she collapsed onto the couch, dragging him down on top of her. They bounced and almost fell off, but he caught them.

"Okay, did we drop the - oh, wow, no."

"Goddamn packaging," she growled, yanking at the tab on the side.

He pulled the box out of her hands and ripped it in half from the top down. Foil-wrapped condoms spilled to the carpet and he caught one. She contributed by peeling his boxers off and stroking him, and he moaned.

"Condom, on," she ordered. "Dick, in."

"Little help, please?" He fumbled with the wrapper.

They managed it together, and she guided him in, until her legs could wrap around his hips and he gasped for air, because she was so hot and slick and tight and he couldn't actually believe this was happening to him right now.

He told her so, because he was a talker when his mouth wasn't otherwise occupied. If he'd ever stopped to think about it, he would have thought Caitlin wouldn't have any truck with that, but it seemed to be okay with her even if she didn't say anything back. She met his thrusts with her own, eyes half-closed and dark, whimpering his name when he dropped his head to kiss her breasts, sucking at her nipples.

After getting her off twice within the past twenty-four hours, he was starting to categorize the sounds she made, and it wasn't long before she was letting out the particular hiccuping moan that were the lead-up to her orgasm. She arched against him with a soft yelp, her inner muscles clamping tight around his dick, and he was so glad, because he was about two seconds from coming himself. He braced himself against the arm of the couch and thrust hard, twice, and the world went white-hot and glorious.

Eventually, when he could formulate words again, he mumbled, "M'I smooshing you?"

"No," she whispered, combing her fingers through his hair.

"Sure?"

"Maybe a little."

He snorted and rolled a little to the side so she could breathe. Opening his eyes, he found her smiling at him, her own eyes soft and tender. He smiled back.

"Cisco?"

"Mmm?" He pressed his face into her hair, breathing her in.

She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and snuggled. Awww. She was a snuggler. "What is this?"

He felt himself go still all over. Quit that. Move. Or she's going to think something's up. He forced himself to drop his hand down to stroke her side, idly. Not a hardship, she was all soft and warm there, but - "Whaddya mean?"

"I mean, this, what we're doing."

He nipped at her ear. "Look, if you're confused about that, maybe I'd better demonstrate again."

She thwapped him between the shoulder blades. "I mean, we're best friends."

He kissed her neck. "Yep."

"Who are - you know - "

"Fucking," he supplied helpfully.

She grabbed his head and made her look at him. Her eyes were wide and dark and he couldn't read them at all. "I mean, there's a word for that. Isn't there?"

He swallowed. He felt himself teetering on the edge of some canyon whose bottom he couldn't see. Deep inside him, things were trembling, shuddering, not in the good way or the powers way but in the terrified-to-move way because if he moved wrong, he would fall all the way down.

"Yeah," he said. "Us. That - that's the word for it. We don't have to make it complicated."

She let go of his head and settled her arms around his shoulders again. "Okay," she said quietly.

He nodded at her. "Okay."

She kissed him, and he kissed her back, relief trickling all down his spine because she'd dropped the subject. Caitlin didn't just drop subjects until she was satisfied, so she must have been satisfied with that bullshit answer.

Because, yeah, there was a word for that.

He just didn't want to say it in case it wasn't the same word she was thinking.

FINIS