Chapter 18 : Deeper
The pasta was overcooked.
I watched Caitlin plate the meal with a concentration that suggested she already knew it had gone wrong. The noodles clumped together in sticky masses. The sauce—from a jar she'd forgotten to heat until the last minute—sat in a cold puddle around them.
"I'm not a great cook," she said, setting the plate in front of me. "Ronnie always handled meals. I've been surviving on takeout and lab vending machines since..."
She didn't finish the sentence. Didn't need to.
"It looks perfect."
"It looks like a crime against Italian cuisine." She sat across from me, poking at her own portion with obvious reluctance. "We could order something. There's a Thai place that delivers—"
I took a bite. Chewed. Swallowed.
The pasta was genuinely terrible. Mushy texture, no seasoning, the sauce contributing nothing but vague tomato flavor. In my old life, I would have pushed the plate away after a single forkful.
I took another bite.
"It's good," I said.
"You're a terrible liar."
"I'm an excellent liar." The truth slipped out before I could stop it. "But I'm not lying about this."
Caitlin studied me across the table, her expression somewhere between skepticism and hope. "You actually like it?"
"I like that you made it." The words came from somewhere genuine. "I like that you wanted to cook for me. I like being here, with you, eating whatever you put in front of me."
"Even if it's objectively awful?"
"Especially then." I set down my fork. "The last meal I ate before... before my life changed... was a microwave burrito from a convenience store. I ate it alone, at my desk, while reviewing quarterly reports that meant nothing to anyone."
The memory was real, even if the context was different than she assumed. My last meal in my original life—alone, meaningless, consumed without joy or connection.
"This is better," I said. "Everything about this is better."
Her eyes glistened. She looked away, blinking rapidly, and I pretended not to notice.
"Seconds?" she asked finally.
"Please."
We moved to the couch after dinner, a routine that had become comfortable over the past few weeks. Caitlin tucked herself against my side, her head resting on my shoulder, while some movie played unwatched on the television.
"Harry." Her voice was soft, contemplative. "What are we doing?"
The question I'd been expecting. Dreading, maybe.
"What do you mean?"
"This. Us." She shifted to look at me directly. "We've been... whatever this is... for weeks now. And I need to know if it's going somewhere, or if I should be protecting myself."
"From me?"
"From getting hurt again." Her jaw tightened. "I've done this before. The slow fall, the building hope, the plans for a future that never happens. I can't do that again without knowing it's real."
The strategic response was obvious. Reassure her. Commit just enough to maintain the relationship without exposing myself to genuine vulnerability. Keep the asset secured while limiting liability.
The words that came out weren't strategic.
"I care about you." My voice sounded strange to my own ears—raw, unguarded. "More than I planned to. More than I should, probably."
"Should?"
"I came to Central City to rebuild my life after the coma. Start over in a place where no one knew me, no one had expectations." Truth wrapped in misdirection—the coma was real enough, even if everything before it was fiction. "I didn't plan on meeting anyone. Didn't plan on... this."
"But here you are."
"Here I am." I met her eyes. "And I don't know what that means, Caitlin. I don't know if I'm capable of being what you need. But I know I don't want to be anywhere else."
She reached up and touched my face. Her fingers were cool against my cheek—always cool, something I'd noticed but never commented on.
"That's not quite an answer."
"It's the most honest thing I can give you right now."
"Then it's enough." She leaned in, closing the distance between us. "For now."
The kiss was different from the others we'd shared. Slower. More deliberate. The kind of kiss that meant something beyond physical attraction—a declaration of intent, a promise of things to come.
When we finally separated, she was smiling.
"Stay tonight?"
The question hung in the air between us. I knew what she was asking. Knew the implications. Knew that saying yes would cross a threshold I couldn't uncross.
"Are you sure?"
"I'm sure I want you here. I'm sure I'm tired of being careful all the time." Her hand found mine. "Stay."
"Okay."
I left Caitlin's apartment the next morning with a key in my pocket.
Not a spare—the key. She'd pressed it into my palm over breakfast, casual enough to seem spontaneous but deliberate enough to carry weight.
"In case you want to come over when I'm at work," she'd said. "Or if I forget to unlock the door. Or whatever."
Whatever covered a lot of territory.
STAR Labs was quiet when I arrived. Barry was off dealing with some crisis—speedster business that the team discussed in vague terms I pretended not to understand. Wells was sequestered in his private lab. Caitlin had stayed home to catch up on sleep.
Only Cisco occupied the cortex, hunched over a workstation with the intense focus of someone debugging a particularly stubborn problem.
He looked up when I entered. Something flickered across his face—calculation, assessment, the expression of someone about to say something difficult.
"Harry. Got a minute?"
"Sure."
He saved his work and swiveled to face me. The usual enthusiasm was absent from his posture. This wasn't Cisco the friendly colleague—this was Cisco the protective friend.
"You and Caitlin," he said. "It's getting serious."
"Is that a question or an observation?"
"Both, I guess." He rubbed the back of his neck, clearly uncomfortable with the conversation but committed to having it. "Look, I like you. You're smart, you're helpful, you don't make me explain my Star Trek references. Under normal circumstances, I'd be thrilled that Caitlin found someone."
"But?"
"But she's been through hell, Harry. The accelerator, losing Ronnie, watching everything she built fall apart." His voice hardened slightly. "She's just starting to put herself back together. And I need to know that you're not going to be another thing she has to survive."
The protectiveness was genuine. Cisco cared about Caitlin—not romantically, I'd observed, but with the fierce loyalty of someone who'd stood beside her through the worst moments of her life.
"I'm not going to hurt her."
"Everyone says that."
"I'm not everyone." I met his gaze directly. "I know what she's been through. I know what she lost. And I know that I can't promise her a perfect future, because nobody can promise that."
"Then what can you promise?"
"That I'll try. That I'll be honest with her about what I'm capable of." The irony of that statement wasn't lost on me. "That if it's not working, I'll tell her before she has to figure it out herself."
Cisco studied me for a long moment. Whatever he was looking for, he seemed to find it—or at least found enough to satisfy his immediate concerns.
"Okay." He nodded slowly. "Okay. I'm going to trust that you mean that."
"I do."
"Good." His expression lightened slightly, the protective friend retreating behind the friendly colleague. "Because if you hurt her, I have access to technology that could make your life very uncomfortable."
"I believe you."
"You should." He turned back to his workstation, but not before I caught the hint of a smile. "Now help me figure out why this frequency modulator keeps resonating at the wrong amplitude."
The conversation was over. The warning had been delivered. And somewhere beneath my carefully maintained composure, I was processing the realization that Cisco's threat had actually mattered to me.
Not because I feared his technology. Not because I needed to maintain my cover.
Because I didn't want to prove him right.
That evening, I sat alone in my apartment, staring at the key Caitlin had given me.
A simple piece of metal. No intrinsic value. But it represented something I hadn't anticipated when I'd started this operation.
Trust. Connection. Belonging.
The system pulsed at the edge of my vision, reminding me of abilities and levels and extraction targets. The path it wanted me to follow was clear—accumulate power, eliminate threats, become something beyond human limitation.
But the key in my hand represented a different path. One where I was Harry Griffin, security consultant, boyfriend, friend. One where I belonged to something larger than myself.
Could I walk both paths? Could I be the predator the system demanded and the person Caitlin needed?
[EMOTIONAL VARIABLES DETECTED] [ANALYSIS: INCONCLUSIVE] [RECOMMENDATION: PRIORITIZE PRIMARY OBJECTIVES]
The system couldn't quantify what I was feeling. Couldn't reduce love—or whatever this was becoming—to numbers and efficiency metrics.
Neither could I.
I pocketed the key, grabbed my jacket, and headed for the door. Caitlin would be home by now. She'd probably ordered Thai food, the good place she'd mentioned.
The system's priorities could wait.
Tonight, I was choosing a different kind of progress.
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