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Of all the unexplained phenomena that could have made themselves at home in human culture Cisco would not have chosen Soul Marks. It wasn’t that he didn’t see their purpose, he did, he saw how happy they made some people, even witnessed first-hand what it looked like when someone finally found their soulmate. The joy in their eyes, the rush of surprise, the instant change in mood like nothing could ruin their day anymore, it was a sight to behold...but he also saw how miserable the Soul Marks made others.
Cisco’s parents weren’t soulmates, his mother’s died when they were young and his father had never met his but they had to do their duty by their culture and families and get married and have kids but they each ended up miserable and forever pining for people they’d never have. Dante, his brother, denied the girl he met was his soulmate and reasoned that they both had pretty common names so his dream girl had to be out there somewhere, had to be better than the coincidental Sofia he was faced with. Sofia didn’t take the rejection well and couldn’t move on, and after spending months watching Dante go out and about with several other girls got too much for her, she decided to end it.
While Dante got the overwhelmingly common SOFIA at the age of twelve, at the same age Cisco got the downright bizarre and ancient BARTHOLOMEW, a name he had never seen outside of a bible. Most would see having an uncommon name as a blessing, it would make narrowing down the love your of life a lot easier, but he didn’t see it that way. Bartholomew, as a name, gave him one of three options:
A) His soul mate was decades older than him,
or
B) Some kind of backwards religious nut who wouldn’t accept a relationship with a man,
or
C) He was dead.
If that wasn’t enough to make him weary about the name etched on his wrist then what happened to the first perfect pair he witnessed certainly was enough.
When Cisco started working at STAR Labs Ronnie and Caitlin hadn’t met yet. Caitlin was pretty lonely, one of the few women in the building and far away from her home and friends, she was even considering leaving until Ronnie came to fix one of the machines and he offered his hand to her. CAITLIN may be an arguably common name, even with the traditional spelling, but RONALD certainly wasn’t. The happiness and sheer giddiness on both their faces almost made Cisco melt in his seat. He was so happy for them, even when they became too nauseating to handle sometimes, he always saw them as the perfect relationship in his new makeshift family, which was what made it ten times worse when he allowed Ronnie to go into the accelerator and die.
The Soul Marks did bring people together, but that didn’t mean they promised a happy handing.
He didn’t think he could handle that kind of disappoint after being belittled and ignored by his parents, sidelined and wronged by his brother, cut off from most of his friends and after personally playing a hand in the death of Ronnie and the crippling of Dr. Wells, he really didn’t want to deal with never meeting or even losing his soulmate.
With that in mind, Cisco went on with his life, focusing on his work, trying to go on dates with every agreeable pretty girl or the occasional guy, and quietly glaring at the happy couples he passed by on the street, and he was almost content with that. Almost.
Sometimes, when he got painfully lonely, he’d roll up his sleeve and trace the name on his wrist and wonder which path would he be in, his mother’s, his father’s, his brother’s or Caitlin’s? One thing was for sure, judging by the name itself, the first two options were very likely.
Life went on and almost ten years after Bartholomew appeared on the inside of his wrist everything went to hell. The accelerator exploded, Ronnie died, everyone abandoned STAR Labs and Cisco’s entire life seemed to be falling apart but then the unthinkable happened -- a few days after Caitlin and himself signed on to stay, Wells brought a fourth person back to the labs, a comatose twenty-four year old man called Barry Allen.
Barry had been struck by lightning and was suffering from bizarre side-effects while he was sleeping, he flat-lined regularly for the first week or so and convulsed randomly for almost as long. After a while under Caitlin’s watchful eye Barry settled into the deep sleep of a regular coma patient, his brain activity normal, his health perfect and his heartbeat a bit indecisive but he was more or less okay.
As the months dragged on and Barry kept on sleeping, getting regular visits from his foster father and sister, Caitlin started to get more and more withdrawn and Dr. Wells, while mildly fascinated with Barry’s condition, didn’t say much. They both always left earlier than Cisco, leaving him with Barry. At first it was a bit of a burden, leaving him with someone who could flatline at any minute, who didn’t move or talk or do anything but breathe loudly, but he quickly got used to Barry. He’d pull up a chair and either finish his work or set his laptop on the bed and watch movies or shows he normally watched alone. Over time he found himself making loud comments, chiding the characters or the writing, explaining things to Barry, pointing out his favorite characters and scenes, and although Barry never answered back Cisco still felt like he had company.
On one particularly bothersome day that ended with him making up the most ridiculous excuse to avoid a family gathering, Cisco was once again alone at STAR Labs but he didn’t feel like watching anything or working, he sat by Barry’s bed and folded his arms on the bed and put his head between them. What felt like hours passed until Cisco’s phone rang and Lady GaGa’s Poker Face broke the silence punctuated by the beeps of Barry’s monitors. The ringtone was one last joke left behind by Ronnie that Cisco didn’t have the heart to change and the fact that it was a wrong number made it far more annoying.
The same number rang again and Cisco tried ignoring it but when Barry’s brain activity suddenly spiked up and the graph of his brain on the screen lit up, Cisco allowed the phone to keep ringing.
That was the first time Barry showed any signs of consciousness and with Caitlin’s suggestion, Cisco officially started talking to him, or at him, and settled for getting most of his answers from Detective West and his daughter. Barry was a CSI, one of the youngest on the force, and he seemed to be just as much of an awkward nerd as Cisco was. He was taken in by the Wests when he was a kid and had no family other than his dad in jail, and he seemed to firmly believe that his father didn’t kill his mother.
While Joe was filling him in on Barry, Cisco was watching Iris tell Barry about her week. She always held his right hand, one that had the same wristband Caitlin wore to hide Ronnie’s name. Some people, the widowed or the ones who didn’t believe in their lives being dictated by a mark on their skin, hid their Soul Marks, others did it out of ‘decency’ or ‘respect’ so it be seen for the first time by their soulmate and others, like Cisco, just liked to forget it was there. That didn’t stop him from being infinitely curious about whose name was on Barry’s hand.
“Were his parents soulmates?” he asked Joe, the question escaping him without a thought.
Joe’s slight fondness at recounting what Barry wore for his last costumed Halloween vanished and the hint of laughter in his eyes became nothing but a dull haunted gaze. “Yes, they were.”
Great. Alongside his parents, brother and Caitlin, Cisco can now add Barry’s parents as an option, he could meet his soulmate and end up being murdered.
Joe remained uncomfortable for the entire visit. Cisco wanted to apologize but he didn’t how to go about being sorry for asking a random question about Barry’s parents. Iris didn’t seem to notice anything odd about his behavior.
Before Caitlin left for the night Cisco asked her, “Do you think it would be too bad if I peeked?”
Caitlin’s tired slump and half-closed eyes were suddenly infused with alarmed energy. “It’s invasion of privacy.”
“What privacy? We’ve seen him naked several times, we bathe him and take samples of his blood.”
“That’s something he has no choice in, but if he covered up his Soul Mark before he was struck and that has now effect on his health then we need to respect that.”
Cisco sighed, resting his face on his arm as he half-lied on Barry’s bed, looking up at his snoozing face. “I know, I know, I just can’t help being curious.”
Caitlin touched the bracelet covering Ronnie’s name and smiled at him sadly. “I know you can’t.”
She left, turning off most of the lights as we went down the hall. Cisco eyed Barry’s hand and got to guessing. “Is it a man or a woman?”
Barry didn’t answer, but a slight spike in his brain activity told Cisco he was somewhat listening.
“Is the name in English or is it in a different alphabet? I’ve never met someone with, like, Japanese characters or Cyrillic as their Soul Mark, but I’ve heard that that happens sometimes, it might narrow things down or it might make them worse.”
Barry’s heartbeat slowed slightly and the up and down movement of his chest smoothed as if he was stiff and starting to relax. Cisco took that as a sign to continue talking.
“My brother has a name that could be from almost every continent, from Brazil to Italy to Russia to here, for the trendy parents who opt for an F rather than a PH. I got one of the most random names, but I’m pretty sure only people here would still consider using that name, unless he’s British.” Cisco unwrapped a lollipop and stuck it in his cheek. “Dude, what if he’s like one of those really fancy Brits and that’s why his parents gave him a mouthful of a name, his brother’s probably called Balthazar or Benedict. Can you imagine?”
That was the last thought that left his mouth for the next hour or so. Cisco had pulled out his laptop and started searching for the statistics on successful soulmate matches and found that a whopping forty-percent didn’t end well or as well as they started. Twenty-five percent never met their matches and the remaining thirty-five percent were pretty happy. Some of the cases that ended badly were a case of Mistaken Matches, where both sides of the couple had very common names like Sarah and John but the ones they married weren’t their Sarah and John and others were thanks to the mix-up of more and more women having men’s names, confusing both gay men and women into heterosexual relationships until they happened upon their male Tracy or female Tyler.
“Did I ever mention that one of the reasons my family isn’t happy with me is because I have a man’s name on my arm?” Cisco spoke from around his shrunken candy, the inside of his cheek now numb with the tangy taste of coca cola imprinted on the side of his mouth. “They haven’t said anything to my face but I’ve heard them whispering, thinking they’re being subtle, seen them judging me and boasting about how their kids had the proper kind of name destined for them. I figured if I was already weird I’d go all-out weird and become a scientist.”
Cisco shifted his chair up a little so his face was on level with Barry’s. “Did you meet yours and not like them or do you just want to avoid it like I kinda do? Did you get a really common name like Kate or Jennifer and just give up?”
He kind of laughed at his own jibe. The first time Caitlin told him not to call her Cait he told her it was probably better than way since it seemed that all white women were either called Kate or Jennifer and must be giving whoever was looking for them a royal headache.
“Barry isn’t a common name, it’s a bit of an uncle name, don’t you think?” Cisco wondered. “Were you named after a singer? There are a lot of Barrys in music, there’s Manilow, Gibb, White and someone else I’m probably missing.” his eyes wandered back to Barry’s wristband. “Unless Barry is short for something.”
Cisco touched Barry’s hand and a blue spark lit up between their fingers, shocking Cisco.
“What was that?”
As if his brain had been waiting for those exact words, Barry’s monitors went crazy. Cisco panicked and called Wells and Caitlin back to the labs.
Within the next day, Barry was awake and Cisco felt like he was welcoming home an old friend as he watched him get up and glance around, conscious and sane.
“Who’re you?” were Barry’s first words to him.
“I’m Cisco Ramon,” Cisco said, barely holding in his excitement though unsure why.
Barry mouthed his name with a curious little frown and raised his right arm to frown harder at his wristband, slightly surprised that it was still there. Cisco figured now was the chance to ask whose name was under there but Barry didn’t stick around long enough to chat, he had taken a sweater and made out of STAR Labs like a bat out of hell, leaving Cisco with a heavy sinking feeling of disappointment in his gut.
Most of that feeling left when Barry came back, claiming he could run like Sonic the Hedgehog. Cisco, Wells and Caitlin quickly ran tests and tried to figure out how and why this was happening to him and after his first successful mission as a speedy superhero Cisco was pretty happy to present Barry with his suit and there the Streak was born.
Months fell one after the other as Barry got a hold of his powers and went from the Blur to the Streak to the Flash to the Man Who Saved Central City and the man who Cisco found himself going from fond of to downright in love with -- which was made Barry’s single-minded obsession with Iris go from annoying to sickening.
Right around the time Cisco started to believe Joe and find Wells’ encounter with the Reverse-Flash suspicious, he found Barry’s unopened mail in the cortex. He picked up the letter, ready to snoop out of boredom, and found BARTHOLOMEW HENRY ALLEN staring up at him.
Cisco wanted to say something, anything, literally anything about this to Barry but after exposing Wells as the Reverse-Flash and dealing with the vivid visions of the alternate route or reality he’s been having, it didn’t seem important. Not until Barry said he was going to help Wells get back to his timeline and travel back to the past to save his mother and alter all of their realities.
Faced with the idea that he would never meet and become Barry’s friend, Cisco figured it was now or never.
“The universe wants us to be bros,” Barry assured him.
Heart swelling and hands sweating in nervousness, Cisco bit his lip unsurely as he watched Barry's face. “Just bros?”
Barry gave him a questioning look. Cisco rolled up his sleeve and kept his hand over his wrist and his eyes on Barry’s. “Can you do something for me, just incase this works out and I end up stuck with all these memories, can you make sure you leave me with some kind of peace about all this?”
He uncrossed his arms and put a hand on Cisco's arm. “Of course. What is it?”
Cisco couldn't stop his eyes from looking down at Barry's covered wrist, his mouth suddenly drier than desert sand. “Whose name is on your arm?”
Barry seemed a bit taken aback, removing his hand. “Why?”
“Just tell me. Is it Iris? Is that why you never gave up on her even when she turned you down?”
Barry gave Cisco his best impression of a fish, mouth opening and shutting, eyes unfocused and glazed. “Why do you want to know?”
“I just do.”
“Yes, it is Iris.”
Cisco’s knees wobbled with sudden weakness, his legs almost fell out from under him as he felt his entire world crashing around him. When Barry asked him if he was okay he could only gather up enough motor control to answer a rushed, airy “Y’m’fine,” and push past Barry and go all the way back to Wells’ backup accelerator, still clutching his arm.
Barry ran straight into the past and Cisco dropped his head against Caitlin’s shoulder, anticipating everything around them vanishing into a new reality.
They waited and waited and waited and then Barry came out of the portal Wells was about to leave through and hell broke loose.
Between Eddie shooting himself, Wells disappearing, the Singularity opening up and Ronnie dying again, STAR Labs was once again only open to three people. Caitlin left this time and Cisco tried going back to ignoring his Soul Mark and covering it but after meeting Barry and believing him to be the one and letting himself fall deep into that feeling and that hope it was impossible to forget. He couldn’t ignore the Flash, couldn’t forget about Wells killing him in another timeline or of losing Ronnie again, or, worst of all, of losing Barry without even having him.
Just around the time they came back together in STAR Labs, with Caitlin leaving Mercury Labs, Barry letting them back in, Stein finding a replacement for Ronnie and Harry joining them, it seemed that they were back where they started in a warped way, like the universe tried to fix a broken figurine with SuperGlue and pretend it was as good as new.
“How are you coping?” Barry asked him on a slow day, no metas in sight and no Harry or Caitlin hanging around the cortex. They were right in the same spot Barry’s bed used to be in and Cisco considered mentioning it but thought better of it.
“Haven’t been getting any good vibrations this week, so that’s a plus,” Cisco said distractedly. “What’re you still doing here anyway?”
Barry hopped up on the desk and swung his legs idly, a slightly mischievous look in his green eyes, like he knew a secret. “Thought I’d hang out and bother you while you work.”
“Go bother Iris, I’m sure she’d love to have you hanging around her,” Cisco said, a bit too bitterly.
“I don’t want to hang around Iris.”
Cisco turned away from Barry, his drawl of “Whoa, that’s new.” dripping with sour sarcasm.
Barry's hand on his shoulder made him turn halfway back to look at him. “Dude, I haven’t been obsessive about Iris in ages.”
“So, you admit it was obsessive?”
Barry laughed awkwardly, showing Cisco a small space between his index finger and thumb. “Just a bit.”
“What changed?”
“I realized that I didn’t love her, I mean I do, but not like that, I just convinced myself that she was the one and there was no one else because I think I knew it would never happen.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because that wouldn’t let me have any real relationships or even pursue them because I knew none of them would work out.”
Cisco stopped what he was doing and ran a hand through his hair. “I thought her name was on your wrist.”
Barry shook his head. “It’s not. Not even close.”
“Then what? You never met the person or you didn’t like them?”
Barry's hand on his shoulder squeezed lightly, thumb stroking the jut of his collarbone, getting Cisco to finally look at him. “It’s not that, it’s just I got so wrapped up in my mother’s murder and trying to find an explanation for the man in the lightning and helping my dad, it’s like I couldn’t think about being happy until I caught her murderer. Couldn’t even consider it.”
“But now you did.”
Barry’s hand slid from his shoulder down to his forearm, long fingers wrapping around his arm. “I did and he’s gone, and so’s Eddie and I just keep thinking about how much more guilty can I feel about things I can’t control? If I ever deserve to be happy.”
“Barry, if there’s anyone who deserves to be happy then it’s you.”
“You think so?”
Cisco put his hand over Barry’s. “I know so.”
Barry moved in and kissed Cisco with clumsy aim and the force of a punch, knocking their foreheads together.
Cisco almost hit the ground from both the shock and the pain, he staggered back, rubbing his nose and forehead. “What was that?”
“Something I should have done the second I woke up,” said Barry, his pale skin nearly turning as red as his suit. “And something I should have done with a bit more care. You okay?”
“I’m great,” Cisco admitted, both stunned and hopeful. “Is there any reason you decided to headbutt me or tell me Iris was your soulmate?”
Barry’s fingers found themselves back around Cisco’s arm. “Because I knew if anything changed you’d remember and I didn’t want to do that to you.”
“Remember what, Barry?”
Barry nodded his head down as he pushed the sleeve of his right arm up and placed it next to Cisco’s.
Side by side on their arms were BARTHOLOMEW and FRANCISCO.
Cisco’s mind moved in slow-motion as it put everything Barry said together and fully understood them. He stared at their Soul Marks, at Barry’s name on his arm and his on Barry’s, and slowly slurred out, “I knew it.”
Barry busted out laughing, sounding as tired as Cisco felt. “Did you really?”
“Of course I did, how many guys out there do you think are called Bartholomew?”
The embarrassed flush grew further up Barry’s cheekbones. “It was my mother’s father’s name, be nice.”
“I figured you were like me, named after some random saint.”
“That’s not far off. I mean, Francisco and Bartholomew, what were our parents thinking?”
“We sound like a pair of medieval Catholic monks.”
“Right?”
The embarrassment waned down as their laughs became nothing more than small coughs and them clearing their throats. Barry edged his hand closer to Cisco’s who threaded their fingers together, hands clasped so that their Soul Marks sat atop one another.
“Is this how you figured you’d meet your One?” Barry asked him jokingly.
“Hell no, this was quite long-winded and a bit anti-climactic.”
“At least we’re finally here now, right?”
Cisco squeezed his hand, not even bothering to hold back the overwhelming disbelief and love flooding his chest. “It could have gone a lot better, you could have actually kissed me instead of head-butting me.”
“We could always try it again,” Barry suggested somewhat coyly, trying to be suggestive and coming off like the awkward blushing nerd that he was.
“And again and again and again, until you get sick of me.”
“I could never get sick of you, Cisco.”
Cisco got a hold of Barry’s cardigan and pulled him close. “Shut up and prove it then, you’ve made me wait long enough.”
None of this went the way he imagined but in the end he didn’t take any of the paths he thought were ahead of him, not his mother’s, his father’s, Dante’s or even Caitlin’s, he took his own path and damn, was he glad to have finally reached his destination.