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2015-11-22
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I've got the Midas touch (let me touch your body and your soul)

Summary:

“How did you impersonate him so well?”
His gaze is slightly more piercing as he takes her in. “Ramon is an excellent teacher. He told me to be more creepy but also sincere.”
She nods and thinks back to the first moment she saw him in that suit, making him seem more daunting and bringing back all the memories of the previous Wells, standing outside S.T.A.R. Labs dressed as the Reverse Flash, fighting Barry.
“That about sums it up.”

A coda for 2x07.

Notes:

All that delicious chemistry just ripe for the picking.
This is Earth-2 Harrison Wells and Caitlin, to be clear.
Title from Ellie Goulding's "Midas Touch".

Work Text:

Caitlin finds Wells in Cisco’s lab after everyone has gone home, still pouring over the data about the breaches. He looks tired and rumpled but still so mesmerized by the numerical values he keeps chasing with his fingertips and the circles he draws in certain places.

“What are you still doing here, Dr. Wells?”

In a move utterly unprecedented, he is startled by her voice but turns his head to look at her.

“Dr. Snow. I just…wanted to wrap things up. It has been a crazy night.”

She nods slightly because it definitely has, just like most nights – and days – at S.T.A.R. Labs are. A walking telepathic mind-controlling gorilla is possibly one of the least weird things about their lives right now.

“You know, you were really good at pretending to be Dr. Wells. The other Wells, I mean. Thawne.”

He stills in his ministrations and stands up to turn fully towards her, discarding the data for a moment, and facing her with such seriousness she hadn’t been expecting.

“I am not him.”

He would almost sound bored saying that but Caitlin always detects an undercurrent of something more, of something sad and defensive. It’s not his fault that he’s been given this face, this image, this life to lead but it is also not their fault that these are the notions he has to carry with him.

“How did you impersonate him so well?”

His gaze is slightly more piercing as he takes her in. “Ramon is an excellent teacher. He told me to be more creepy but also sincere.”

She nods and thinks back to the first moment she saw him in that suit, making him seem more daunting and bringing back all the memories of the previous Wells, standing outside S.T.A.R. Labs dressed as the Reverse Flash, fighting Barry.

“That about sums it up.”

Wells assesses her with a sympathetic gaze and she feels like he can see inside of her, like he is trying to figure something out, to make judgements. “What was he like?”

He’s never once shown interest in his counterpart, never once asked anything specific about him before, at least not from her. “Why do you ask?”

“Something in the way Ramon said…I guess they were close. The words he had me practice were very personal, not something he just thought of in the moment.”

“What did you say?”

He looks off into the distance for a moment and when he turns back to her, he seems to have hardened himself and there is something eerily familiar in the way he looks slightly down at her. “Cisco, in many ways, you’ve shown me what it’s like to have a son.”

A shudder runs down Caitlin’s spine because this is Dr. Wells. His voice becomes an octave lower and the cadence of it slower and smoother while his gaze takes on a more menacing glare, something uncomfortable and threatening behind it and she almost wants to take a step back because this is what she heard when he tricked Grodd into believing that this was the reality.

But it is gone in the blink of an eye and only when he smiles a bit nervously, does she snap back to reality and focus on the man who is actually standing in front of her, whose only fault is his arrogance and the fact of being a doppelganger.

“That was intense.” She smiles hesitantly but the voice keeps replaying in her head, and she needs to remind herself that none of this was real.

“I’m sorry, I know this is an unfortunate situation.”

“You don’t have to apologize.”

“No, I…Dr. Snow, I was not the most pleasant person when we first met and I made some things very uncomfortable for you. So, I am sorry.”

His sincerity is touching and she smiles; it doesn’t make her feel like she is being charmed, the way it sometimes felt with Wells but rather that he truly means every word.

“Grodd was right, you know. When he said that fath- Dr. Wells never asked but took. But he was very good at making everyone feel like he was asking, even if that might have never been his intent.”

Caitlin thinks of everything Wells did for her, everything he seemingly fought for and while she knows that he must have had an agenda behind all that, she still finds herself wistful at the memory of how he argued with her dissertation board to give in and let her have her Ph.D., or just how many times he would pleasantly but firmly remind everyone who made the mistake, that she wasn’t Caitlin or Miss Snow but Dr. Snow.

“Is it strange for you to look at me and remember another? I have seen the footage and read the autobiography but even if he has – had – my face, I don’t really feel anything. But you…”

His words hit right as they land, not intentionally hurtful but still painful in their own way and she looks away from him, to not see those blue eyes imploring with her.

“You know that he killed my fiancé. But he was also the first person who believed in me and I know it is foolish to think of those things now, to consider any of it in the light of what he actually was but…I owed him for my career. And I can never change that.”

“So tell me about him. Not him as Thawne but him as Dr. Wells.”

Caitlin doesn’t want to drag it all up; she’s consistently stopped herself from even considering that part of her life which involved him but truthfully, her mind has been wandering on those paths already, and who better to tell it to than this Wells?

But she remains quiet for a long time and he must take her silence as an answer. “I shouldn’t have asked, Dr. Snow, forgive me. It was foolish of me to think that this might be a good idea.”

He turns back to his work, clearly intent on letting her leave without having to say anything more but the sudden urge to do exactly that comes over her and so, she goes over to the desk and sits down next to him, all the while not looking straight at him.

“I was a 22-year-old Ph.D. candidate when we met. I always thought it was fate or a fantastic consequence that he met me at a conference and knew who I was, and took interest in me. The great Harrison Wells knew my name. It wasn’t hard to fall under that spell.”

He’s not clicking away on the keyboard so she knows that he is listening and paying close attention.

“He believed in my research about the possible applications of particle accelerators in biomedical research and I thought it was amazing that something which everyone else looked down upon, was finally getting the recognition I had wanted for it. Of course, I had no idea just what the implications of it were but it just felt so good to be noticed.”

She thinks back to that first meeting, that exploration of intelligence and ideas which they traded over drinks for nearly four hours and it leaves her with the same painful reminder as every other memory related to him has.

“He would give me so much for my career, for my position, for doing these fantastic things with Barry and I never knew that he could be someone else. I guess we’re all weak when it comes to being told that we are doing something well and he was excellent at telling people that.”

This is something Caitlin hasn’t let herself think before but it hits deeper than she would ever care to admit, the idea that she’s not as good as Wells always told her she was, that he was merely using her and flattery was the cheapest way to do so.

“And you know, the worst thing is that I never suspected anything and instead, I forgave him everything. I stayed with him after he basically admitted that he had sent my fiancé to his death. I mean, who does that?”

She can hear the small break in her voice but this has been a long time coming, there is too much which she has never said out loud but which has been weighing on her since everything.

“Betrayal of those closest to us is always hardest to overcome.”

He says it slowly but gently and when she finally turns to look at him, she finds more understanding in his eyes than she had expected; more than she has ever wanted to admit to.

“For what it is worth, I think you are the best at what you do. I can see why anyone would want to hire you on their team of experts, nefarious purposes and deeds notwithstanding. You’re extraordinary, Caitlin.”

She doesn’t miss that it is the first time he calls her by her first name without pretense and his words make something light up within her. It is reminiscent of when Wells used to tell her things akin to this but this feels more sincere and more honest than all of that, perhaps because she can see that he is slightly nervous about his own bravery at going through with this admission.

“You asked me how I could pretend to be him so well. The truth is, I see it in all of you, the traces he left behind. I see Ramon looking at me like he’s been abandoned by his father and his words today were almost unnecessary to confirm it. I see Barry taking his cues from me, glancing my way when he needs to be pushed, when he needs more because his mentor is seemingly still standing in front of him. And you, Caitlin…I see you looking.”

He doesn’t add a qualifier but the look in his eyes says more than any words could and Caitlin feels the beginnings of a blush in her cheeks because he is closer with his words than she would necessarily want him to be.

Because she has been looking and she knows it; because the idea of a Dr. Wells without any evil side-effects as Cisco so neatly put it, is so enticing that she could’ve never stopped that thought from entering her head. They are two different people and she knows it but the ice blue eyes which have haunted her dreams for too long are identical.

“Today, I saw you trusting me to save you. I have no superpowers to speak of and our plan was hardly a good one to start with but when I saw you in that room… Even when you thought I was him, you still trusted me not to hurt you. That is not something I have earned of my own merit.”

If Caitlin only could, she would deny it right this moment and tell him how she was scared when she saw him in that suit, that she thought for an insane minute that Thawne had really come back and that none of them were still safe.

But his words are true in a way that she doesn’t want to explore; even with Thawne in the room, telling Grodd that they don’t need her anymore, some part of her never believed that he would actually hurt her.

“And you know, the craziest part of it is that I want to be worthy of that trust. Really earn it, not just get it because of some dead man, because Caitlin, you truly are exceptional.”

She hasn’t been able to turn her eyes away from his and so she doesn’t miss the quick moment he takes to flick his gaze to her lips and she knows this is not a great idea. She should say something reasonable, like remind him that her husband just died, again, or remind herself that she was just about to do this with Jay Garrick a very short while ago, and that she cannot let herself fall for another Harrison Wells because it almost broke her once before.

But he raises his hand to her ear and gently pushes her hair back there, and that one tender touch makes something ache so deep that none of her objections hold any merit and she leans closer to him, to feel his hand move to the back of her neck and when his breath ghosts over her lips, she closes her eyes and it all seems to take forever and yet only a second-

And the computer beeps loudly, startling them both and he pulls away so fast that she almost loses her balance from how much she was already leaning on him.

She blinks her eyes open and he’s already at the computer, clicking away, but slightly flustered and has to clear his throat twice.

“Metahuman alert at Central City radio station. We should let the others know.”

All she can feel is the warmth of Harrison’s hand and the anticipation still coiled up inside her, and the disappointment of not getting to know finally just how Harrison Wells can kiss; metahumans are very far from her current state of my mind.

She thinks that it must be only her because his voice is steady but then he meets her eyes and smirks slightly, eyes glittering behind the glasses.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

Oh, what a promise.