Sound Waves (The Flash Universe)

Chapter Three

"You're lucky he didn't drown both of you", Caitlin said worriedly while carefully pulling Hartley's ear protection devices out of his ear. He grimaced full of pain as the loud noise began pervading his head once again. "He got... away... how long until you can fix them? This really isn't... pleasant... I would do it myself, but who can concentrate even a tad with this stinging in his ears?"

Cisco entered the room. "Don't worry, I'm at it, though I'll use aluminium instead of iron fiber if that's fine. We wouldn't want them to break every time you get wet." 

Hartley stared at him with an amused twinkle in the eye.

"What?!"

"Oh, nothing. Nothing... at all. Since I can practically... hear your heart rate increase... from 89 to 114, which is happily... over the adult average, I see you've... probably figured out on your own."

"Jerk. How come you made your sonic devices waterproof but not your ear pieces?"

Hartley shrugged. "I was in a bit of a... hurry when developing them. Like I... Like I said, concentrating is... hard when your ears were blown... by a particle accelerator and f... fill your whole head with this... noise. Speaking of that, I'd be... very grateful if... you concentrated on res... restoring my ear devices instead of... engaging in small talk."

Cisco answered with nothing but a "You haven't changed a tad, Rathaway" and continued working. "By the way, how's Barry?" 

Caitlin, who was as always responsible for the medical work, turned to him. "Barry is fine. I had to make him cough a bucket of water out of his lungs, but I couldn't stop him from leaving five minutes ago. Said he had an important appointment... Whatever that may be. We'll have to work on our techniques if we want to catch that metahuman any time soon, that water he could disgorge from his mouth was both weird and terrifying at the same time. It was like a... Like a spit fountain."

"Caitlin, I assign the names, and that one sucks. He's clearly the Force Fountain."

"THERES... WORK... TO... DO...", Hartley muttered from the corner he was sat in.

"Yeah, whatever. You're not the chosen one anymore, we're all on the same level, and if I do something, it's certainly not because it was your command. You can stop complaining anyway, your ear snails are back in business." He stood up, handing over two brand new ear devices to Hartley, whose gaze was a mixture of annoyance and gratitude. The annoyance was familiar to Cisco, but the gratitude was something he had never seen in those blue eyes.

"Ah, finally." And there was the arrogant tone again, which like so often cloaked what was really going on inside the physicist's head. "You claim you don't listen to what I say, but you did fix these very fast indeed. If what you say is right, why is that?"

Oh god, how he hated that take of Hartley's. It was simply impossible to stay quick-witted when he was staring at you like this, ocean blue eyes framed by mahogany glasses. "Because... Because unlike you, I actually care about when people are in pain."

And because you were my role model from the second I entered STAR Labs, even though you were an arrogant snob and you hated Star Wars, which completely opposes my lifestyle. And if I look up to someone even though they insult my favorite movies, there has to be something special about that person, Cisco thought, but he would never have said any of that, not even in the case of torture.

"You know, I don't actually hate Star Wars. I had my reasons to say what I said", Hartley suddenly remarked with the well-known amused and arrogant expression on his face, and when Cisco looked like he'd seen a ghost, he added: "No, I'm not psychic, but you had exactly the same facial expression a second ago like you had back then when I insulted your Han Shot First Shirt."

Cisco didn't quite know what to answer (How the hell did that guy remember the way he looked, anyway? The mentioned day had been over three years ago!) and was relieved when Caitlin interrupted their conversation. 

"Now, let's focus on how to stop the Fountain Force or however you named him."