A few weeks ago, I did one of those question memes on Tumblr that asked for the most problematic trope I just can't quit. I answered, "Sex pollen" because of the whole highly dub-con aspect but smugly said I'd never managed to write one.

So of course my brain starting churning on this. I really should know better. It's like waving a red flag in front of a bull.

The tupperware came in a refrigerated bag. Caitlin had to sign for it and show her ID.

"Oooo, what'd you get?" Cisco wanted to know as she carried it through the cortex.

"Something from Dr. McGee," she called over her shoulder. "I got an email from her this morning. She said to expect a treat by courier." She opened the tupperware and blinked down at the palm-size buds that half-filled the container. "Oh! Um."

Cisco's face lit. "Squash blossoms!"

She raised her brows at him.

"Remember last summer I made fried squash blossoms? With the cheese inside?"

Although Cisco seemed to exist on a ten-year-old boy's dream diet, every few months he invited everyone over for dinner. They would arrive to find every pot and pan in his kitchen piled in the sink and something ridiculously, insanely delicious steaming on the table (lasagna, jambalaya, arroz con pollo, enchiladas, chicken korma), while Cisco beamed at them like her bubbe from Hoboken and encouraged them to dig in, which they always did.

(She'd tried to get him to teach her one of his recipes, but since his idea of a measurement was "eh, that looks like enough," that hadn't lasted long.)

She poked at the flowers. They were mostly green, with shades of yellow and orange near the tips of the petals. They looked like they could easily cook up into the delicious fried and stuffed blossoms she'd eaten at his place. "Is this what they look like raw?"

"Sure do. Why is Dr. McGee sending you these?"

She frowned at the blossoms. "We were talking about exotic foods the last time we met for coffee. I must've said something about that meal." Funny, she didn't exactly remember mentioning it.

"Whoa, white girl, watch what you call exotic. Fried squash blossoms are home cooking for me."

"I'm sorry, you're right. Exotic to me. And I did like them, very much."

He preened. She could always soften him up by complimenting his cooking, and it had the bonus of being true. "So, Tina sent you your own supply," he said. "Sweet. You gonna make me fried squash blossoms?"

She cringed and made him laugh. "Maybe something simpler. That was nice of her." She thought of the courier. "I hope she didn't spend a lot of money on these just for me."

"I hope not either, because they're in season. I got a dude at the farmer's market who'll hook you up." He reached in and plucked out a blossom, peeling one of the petals back to check the inside before biting it in half.

Caitlin tried to swat his hand and missed. "You should've washed that," she admonished.

"I checked for bugs," he said, crunching away.

"Ewww."

He laughed at her. "They're plants, Caitlin, and they're grown without pesticides. Bugs are a possibility." He made a face. "This tastes a little off. Like, bitter. Wonder if it's a new hybrid or something." He popped the rest of it in his mouth.

"Oh, so you eat it anyway," she said, rolling her eyes. She put the lid back on the tupperware.

He headed back toward his workbench. "Better eat those today if you're gonna," he called over his shoulder. "They don't keep."

She wrinkled her nose at his back and stuck the tupperware in her small pharmaceutical refrigerator. They would be all right until she went home. She occupied herself by looking up recipes online. The simplest one, with the least amount of preparation (so sue her; cooking flowers was a little out of her skill set even if she had been taking cooking classes for two years) seemed to be a salad.

She got up and opened the fridge again, retrieving one for herself. She could easily taste-test one to see how it would work with that recipe. She was going to wash it though.

As she turned off the water and shook the excess water off the blossom, she heard a footstep. "Hey, Cisco?" she called out. "You said it was a little bitter. Was it bitter like spinach, or kale, or stronger?"

"I don't know," said a husky voice.

She looked up and forgot all about the taste question. Cisco stood at the bottom of the ramp that led up into her lab. His eyes looked strange - glazed.

"You look a little flushed. Are you feeling okay?"

"I - " He rubbed his forehead. He seemed to be avoiding her eyes. "I'm just kind of overheated. Mind if I turn down the thermostat?"

She hugged her lab coat around herself. "It's at seventy-four already and I'm freezing."

"You're always freezing. C'mon, I'm boiling."

"Are there still popsicles in the break room fridge? Maybe that will help."

"Uh - yeah, good idea." But he didn't move.

She started toward him. "Are you sure you're okay?"

He jumped back. "I'm fine!" he almost yelled. "I'll go - I'll go get that popsicle." He practically fled.

"Okay," she said to herself. "Weird." She peeled a petal back, checked for bugs the way Cisco had, and broke off a petal to nibble.

It was a little bitter, she thought, but not unpleasantly so.

She clicked back to her test results on their latest meta and studied them, jotting down notes to herself as she ate the rest of the flower, petal by petal. When she'd finished the stem, and her notes, she stretched and tugged her lab coat off. It was pretty warm in here, now that she thought about it. Maybe she should have let Cisco turn down the thermostat.

Where was he, anyway?

She went into the cortex and looked around. His notebook and tablet were still sitting at the workstation, but he was nowhere to be found.

She pressed her fingers to her face and found the skin hot. She couldn't seem to catch her breath.

She checked the break room - no Cisco, enjoying a popsicle. His lab, then.

Sweat prickled at her hairline. She hugged her elbows and gasped at the way her arms pressed into her suddenly sensitive breasts.

The thought crossed her mind that Jay had been the last person she'd slept with.

After that disaster, she hadn't been able to so much as masturbate for nearly three months. Her Magic Wand had reclaimed its place in her bedside table several weeks back, but arousal was still intermittent and elusive.

But here it was, turning up when it was least expected. What was going on?

She needed -

She needed to find Cisco.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew she wasn't thinking straight, and that same part of her wondered just what the hell she was going to do when she found him.

But she kept going, feeling damp swelling between her legs and heat crawling along all her nerve endings.

The door to his lab was shut, which it almost never was. She knocked, because who knew, he might be welding. "Cisco," she called out, and gulped at how husky her own voice sounded. "Cisco?"

There was a deep groan and a curse in Spanish.

"Are you okay?"

"No! But - "

Too late. She'd already shoved the door open and found him hunched over, one hand braced on the table, the other wrapped around his erect cock.

"Jesus fucking Christ!" he yelped, yanking his shirt down to cover himself. "Caitlin!"

She slammed her eyes shut, but what she'd seen was printed on the backs of her eyelids. His cock, full and hard, the way his hand jerked up and down his shaft, the shining drops of precum at the tip - it made the heat in her body roar up into a blaze, fogging her brain until all she could think of was how close he was. Two steps. Less.

She turned her head and opened her eyes, staring fixedly at the surface of his lab table, acutely aware that she should be bolting out the door but unable to make herself do it. "I'm sorry. You didn't sound okay."

"I - " he said. "Shit. Caitlin. I'm not, but you need to let me, um, finish this and then I'll tell you what's going on, because - "

"I think I know what's going on with you," she said, and heard the strain in her own voice. "It's happening to me too."

In the silence, she thought, I'm not going to grab him. My brain drives the bus. My brain drives the bus. My brain -

He said, "It is?"

The two husky words broke her.

She panted, "Cisco, I need - " She spun toward him, reached out and grabbed his hand, pulling him toward her. "Cisco," she whimpered, and slammed her lips against his.

After a frozen moment, he kissed her back, shoving her back against the table so hard that something clattered to the floor. His hands dug into her waist, and his hips ground obscenely into hers, rubbing his erection against her belly. "Fuck," he moaned.

"Yes," she whimpered into his mouth. "Cisco, please, fuck me. Fuck me right now."

She let go of him with one hand, enough to reach up her skirt and yank panties and hose partway down. His hands followed, pulling them further down. She felt something rip. But she didn't care because he was lifting her up, pushing her skirt up, planting her bare ass on the table, shoving her knees wide and thrusting his thick, hot, hard cock into her slick, gaping, wanting pussy.

She let out a moan that was almost a scream.

He kissed her again, so hard she tasted blood, but she dug her nails into his shoulders through his t-shirt and kissed him back, locking her ankles behind his back. After a few hard thrusts, she braced herself with one hand behind her on the table so she could meet them with equal force, and he groaned into her neck.

Something else fell off the table and crashed to the ground.

She let her head fall back and focused on the thickness, the heat, the friction between them, and heard her own sobbing moans as if from a long way off. "Please," she gasped. "Please, please - "

"God, I - Caitlin, I'm going to - "

Her climax yanked her tight and then snapped like a rubber band. She shrieked and arched against him, feeling his hips slam into hers once-twice-thrice and then he went still with a long, drawn-out groan.

She clung to him, trembling. All of a sudden, her head was clear, and she thought, Oh, god. Oh my god. What did I do? What did we do?

Her brain drove the bus? Who was she kidding?

Her libido had just hijacked the bus and screeched off down the highway, honking the horn and flipping her brain the bird out the window.

He rested his head on her shoulder. "Caitlin."

"Yes."

"What the fuck just happened?"

She heard her voice shake. "I have no idea."

He lifted his head. He looked like she felt - exhausted, storm-tossed, and baffled beyond reason. "Are you okay?"

"Am I okay?"

They stared into each other's eyes for a moment. He was still inside her, starting to soften.

She forced herself to think logically. "Blood samples," she said. "We need to take them. Something's going on here."

"Right. Yeah. Your lab." He pulled out of her - she caught her breath at the luscious friction against her tenderized flesh - and suddenly froze. "Fuck. Shit. Fuck!"

"What?"

"We didn't use anything. We were completely out of our minds and we didn't - "

She grabbed his face. "It's okay. We're both clean since our last tests. And I have an implant. It's still good." She rubbed her thumb over his cheekbone. "We'll be all right. It's not ideal, but it'll be okay."

"Okay," he said, looking dazed. He was very firm about protection, she knew. She wondered if he'd ever had sex without it.

She scooted herself off the table and stumbled. He grabbed her elbows. "Whoa. You okay?"

"Just off-balance. My shoe fell off," she said. "Um. During." It was several feet away. She kicked the other one off.

In her stocking feet, they stood almost exactly eye to eye. He rubbed her arms. "This isn't going away," he said in a gravelly voice. "Including this, I've come three times in the past half hour and all that does is back it off some. It comes back. You feel it?"

She felt as if the hot fog that had taken her over earlier circled around her head, waiting to close in again. The itch whispered somewhere just beyond her nerves. She swallowed hard. "Yeah," she said. "I do. We'll figure it out, okay?"

"Right," he said. "Yeah."

It felt natural to kiss him then, pressing her bruised and sore mouth to his and smoothing her hand over his shoulders. He wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her close.

When she licked his lower lip, he pulled away with a gasp. "Lab. Blood samples."

"Yes." She almost stumbled again, going for the door, and she had to stop and yank her torn hose off her legs and drop them to the floor. She left them there, along with her panties and shoes, and tugged her dress straight. Her thighs were sticky and damp and her pussy throbbed, both from the hard, thorough fuck and from frustrated desire.

They had to figure this out, she thought, and walked faster.

He stayed on her heels, barely a step behind all the way to the cortex, and she wished he would back off because she was hyper-aware of him, of the warmth rolling off his body, of the amazing way he smelled, of the smudge of her lipstick on his neck, and how easy it would be to whip around and shove him up against the wall and -

She was losing her mind.

Why?

Cisco had played assistant enough times that he knew just what machines to turn on and what drawers to open for supplies. He set out two vials, labeling tape, and a Sharpie as she retrieved gloves, syringes and sterile needles. Her fingers fumbled wildly at the first needle pack. She got it open and promptly dropped it on the floor. She cursed, picked it up carefully, and threw it into the sharps biohazard container.

"Whoa," he said. "Breathe."

"I - My hands are shaking." She put the other needle pack down and braced herself on the table. The heated fog had crawled back over her brain, invading all the spaces she usually kept clear to do her damn job, to help people -

He grabbed her shoulders and steered her toward a chair. "Sit."

She sat. He crouched in front of her. "You're feeling it again."

She nodded, feeling like a bobblehead doll.

"You need to get off, don't you?"

She opened her mouth to say no, it was fine, she would be fine, and then looked at the other pack, with the wickedly sharp steel needle that she was planning to stick into his vein. With shaking hands and unsteady breath and a brain that couldn't focus on tearing open a sterile pack.

She thought of the way her head had cleared after they'd fucked downstairs and said, "I think yes."

"Okay. Let's get that taken of, you and me. All right? We're just going to take care of it and then get back to figuring this out."

She swallowed. "Okay."

He ran his hands up her thighs, pushing her dress up. "Scoot forward - yeah. Like that. Open your legs." He dropped out of the crouch, down onto his knees, and put his hand between her legs, his fingertips sliding right through her slickness.

She let out a whimpering moan and pushed her hips into his hand. When his fingertip slid over her clit, she let out a squeal that made him jump.

"Okay," he mumbled. "Okay. Sweet spot, right there. Got it." He rubbed the tips of two fingers hard over it, and she choked on her own breath.

She clutched the seat of her chair, biting her lip against the inhuman noises that wanted to escape. "Put - " she gasped. "Put your fingers in me."

He ran them lower and thrust them into her channel. She arched into the sensation of fullness, staring blindly at the speckled ceiling tile. He pulled his fingers out partway, then pushed them back in, harder, flicking his thumb hard over her swollen clit. She squirmed against the chair, against his hand, biting her lip.

He rose up a little on his knees, still fucking her with his fingers. Bracing his free hand on her thigh, he leaned forward to press his soft, hot mouth to the inner curve of her breast, revealed by the v-neck of her dress.

She said, "Gnnh!" and clamped her thighs tight around his hand as she came.

When the white haze cleared from her eyes and took the brain fog with it, she realized she was still holding his wrist and hand captive. "Sorry!" she gasped, letting him go. "Sorry."

"I took it as a compliment," he said, pulling his hand free. "How you doing? Okay to perform blood draws?"

His fingers and palm were shiny, gleaming. She felt her face heat and spun her chair to grab a stack of paper towels, splitting them between her and him to clean up. "For the moment," she said, trying to ape his matter of fact tone. "But I've absolutely got to scrub up first."

When he pushed himself to his feet, his waist was briefly at eye level. His pants were on the baggy side today, but she could still clearly see that he had the beginnings of an erection.

She looked up at him.

A dull flush crept over his cheekbones, and he shrugged one shoulder. "Never said I wasn't starting to feel it again too."

"Will you be okay?"

"Yeah, for a little."

They both washed their hands, him quickly, her more thoroughly. She drew blood, him and then her. She capped the vials, labeled them, and put them in her analyzer, which sat next to her fridge. She went still. "Cisco."

"What?"

She put her fingertips, still gloved, to the glass door of her fridge. The tupperware container that she'd signed for sat inside. "What if it was the squash blossoms?"

"How?"

"I don't know, but we haven't come in contact with any new metas - "

"That we know of," he interjected.

"- and that's the only thing we've both ingested recently. And it fits the timeline. You said you'd been feeling it for about half an hour, but I'd just started to feel it when I went looking for you. Maybe fifteen minutes? That difference corresponds with when we each ate them."

He shook his head. "I've never had a reaction like that. If anybody ever had in the whole history of the world, it'd be a curandera's first answer to limp-dick-itis."

She stripped off the gloves and grabbed for more. "Maybe it was some kind of mold or a microscopic parasite - "

"Gross," he mumbled.

"You were the one who mentioned bugs," she reminded him, pulling the tupperware out and retrieving a flower from it. She pulled open a cabinet and pulled out a couple of knives and two sets of mortar-and-pestle.

"I meant a dead bumblebee, not a libido-revving brain worm!"

"Let me test it," she said firmly. "We'll see if the same chemicals turn up in our blood stream." She started prepping the blossom for analysis, pulling it to pieces and mashing them to a paste with the mortar and pestle.

"Aw, shit," he said suddenly. "If it was the squash blossoms, we'd better find out where Dr. McGee got 'em."

"Oh, no," she said softly, her hand pausing for a moment.

"Right?" He was already scrolling through his phone. "Top story tonight: Farmer's market orgy. Fuck local."

"Ugh, Cisco." She got a vial down.

"Am I wrong? Damn. Voicemail."

"Call her office. She'll have her cell phone turned off if she's in the building. Company policy." She scooped the paste out of her mortar and into the vial. She could smell the bright, clean smell of the mashed plant and held her breath, wondering if that would set her off or if you had to ingest it.

"I'm on hold - yeah, hi, I need to find Dr. McGee? This is Cisco Ramon from Star Labs. Yeah, it's an emer - and I'm on hold again." He rested his forehead against the side of her cabinet. He looked flushed and glazed again. When she looked down, his zipper strained under the full thickness of his cock.

She capped her vial and put it in her analyzer, then stripped off her gloves and went to him. "You need to come again," she said. "Don't you?"

"I'll be okay," he said. Sweat shone at his hairline. "Not like I'm performing any medical procedures here."

She took his hand and squeezed it. "I need your brain at full power. Let's get it taken care of and we can go back to figuring this out, all right?"

He swallowed and nodded, putting the phone down. Tinny hold music floated out of the speaker, almost lost under the heaviness of his breathing.

She reached between their bodies and stroked him through his pants. He shuddered, and shuddered again when she undid the button and pulled the zipper open over the hard ridge of his cock.

When she went to her knees and took it in her mouth, he moaned aloud.

She had to bring him off fast, she thought, licking the swollen, sensitive head. That hold music could pause at any time. And - she squeezed her knees together. This was turning her on, too.

She spat generously in her hand - not the best lubricant but she didn't really have time to go looking for the bottle - and wrapped it around the base of his cock, stroking gently as she took the rest of it in her mouth, lavishing sensation on him with the swirl of her tongue and the movement of her slicked palm and the suction of her lips.

His fingers combed through her hair and his hips jerked. "God," he moaned. "Caitlin. Right there. Fuck. I'm. Caitlin, I'm going to - Unh!"

Hot cum spilled into her mouth and she swallowed, sucking him clean. She sat back on her heels, wiping her mouth. She felt dizzy with heat, as if all the blood in her body throbbed between her legs right now.

He helped her to her feet and pressed a kiss to her lips. He was kissing his own cum out of her mouth, she thought, and moaned.

He pulled back. His eyes had cleared. "Shit. You liked that?"

She nodded, feeling her face heat. "I usually do," she mumbled. "So it's not just the squash blossoms. Maybe it was a bad idea, but - "

"No, it was a fucking good idea, but now you're - " He brushed her hair behind her ears and kissed her again. He pushed his knee between her legs and gripped her hips. "Ride it, honey," he breathed in her ear. "Just grind on me, just - "

She slid her arms tight around his neck and pushed herself down onto his hard thigh. He pressed his mouth to the hinge of her jaw, the tendon in her neck, and his warm hands palmed her ass. Those sensations, and the rough texture of his cords against her hypersensitive clit, had her trembling and moaning into his ear in only a few minutes.

They held each other for a moment.

He sighed into her ear. "This is kind of unfair," he mumbled. "I usually like taking my time."

"Not precisely an option," she whispered back.

"Hello? Hello?"

They jumped apart like a couple of teenagers caught necking in the backseat, and Caitlin stabbed the speaker button with her finger. "Dr. McGee!" she gasped. "Sorry, we had it off speaker, and - never mind. I'm so glad you were available." Uhoh. Had Dr. McGee heard her come? Caitlin fought her blush.

"I wasn't, really," the scientist said. "But my staff have been given strict instructions that when the words 'Star Labs' are combined with 'emergency' I'm to be retrieved immediately. You peoples' definition of emergency is rather more dramatic than most."

Caitlin blinked a few times, unsure whether to be delighted or insulted.

Cisco nodded. "She's not wrong," he said to Caitlin. He leaned toward the phone. "Doc, this is a little less crash-boom-bang than most, maybe. We just need to know where you got those squash blossoms you sent over."

"The - flowers?" She sounded taken aback. "You want to know their provenance? But all that's in the packet I sent with it."

"What packet?" Caitlin asked. "All I got was the box."

"I included a packet with a great deal of information for you - printouts, and a USB stick - "

She opened her refrigerator and checked inside the container, pushing the blossoms aside so she could see the bottom. She even checked the underside. "Nothing. Just the squash blossoms."

"Hmm," Dr. McGee said in a way that didn't bode at all well for the courier company. "Well, they're not precisely squash blossoms, although they are in the same family. One of our Central American expeditions brought them back and we thought we'd have a go at growing them and seeing what came out of it. The gourds are inedible for humans, but the blossoms produced very interesting results in the lab mice, I must say. I thought you might enjoy having a look at their biochemical makeup and trying out a few things." She laughed. "Just as long as you didn't eat them, for heaven's sake."

"Um," Cisco said.

"I beg your pardon?"

"We were talking about interesting foods the other day and you did say to expect a treat - " Caitlin said.

"Oh, hell," she said, and Caitlin blinked. Mild as it was, it might be the first curse word she'd ever heard out of the other woman. "When?"

"About forty-five minutes and half an hour ago, respectively. Are they poisonous?"

"Not as such," she said, and Caitlin let out her breath. "Are you feeling any other effects?"

"You could say that," Cisco muttered, looking down.

"Mr. Ramon, this is no time for coyness. You've ingested a substance that hasn't been tested in human subjects and if it comes to that, what on earth possessed you eat a strange flower in the first place?"

"Okay, you know what? Just because it's neither a fish nor a chip doesn't mean - "

Caitlin hissed at him. "We're both suffering intense sexual arousal," she said into the phone. "Suffering being the operative word here. Um, uh, orgasm seems to help, but only for a short time."

"Yes, that's precisely the effect I'm referring to. Anything else?"

"That's not bad enough?" Cisco said sourly.

"Is there any kind of antidote?" Caitlin asked.

"We've not tested that yet." Dr. McGee was brisk now, as if she'd digested their colossal blunder and was now just focusing on the logistics of how to handle its effects. "But I can tell you that it's not permanent, and no mice have actually died of its effects."

"Oh yay," Caitlin said faintly. "What did happen to them?"

"In our trials, the mice that ingested a small amount of the blossoms demonstrated signs of sexual arousal within a very short amount of time. If they were alone, they would self-stimulate - "

"Hang on. Mice jack it?" Cisco asked.

"Most animals do, in some way," Caitlin muttered. "Shh."

" - and if there were any other mice available, they would engage in coitus multiple times, with a very short refractory period between each episode. When it was over, they generally slept for a long time, ate and drank heartily, and returned to normal, with no noticeable aftereffects." She paused. "We've got a lot of baby mice now."

"So how long does it last?"

"Well, as I said, we've not tested it on human subjects - "

"Ballpark it, please, Doc," Cisco pleaded.

She sighed. "Give me a moment to calculate that. How much did you eat?"

"One flower each."

"Mm. And your respective weights?"

They gave them, and listened to the faint tapping of keys. Cisco took her hand, running his thumb over the sensitive inside of her wrist. She leaned into him.

"Very, very exceedingly rough estimate - I would say three to eight hours."

"That's a spread," Cisco said.

"Yes, it's quite a ballpark, isn't it? Interestingly, the effects tended to last longer for the mice who were only able to self-stimulate."

"Up to eight hours," Caitlin said. "Really?" She couldn't picture feeling like this until nightfall.

"Of course, as I've said, that's a rough estimate. Practically a guess. All I can tell you for sure is, if it lasts longer than eight hours, you need to contact me immediately."

"Just like Viagra," Cisco said rather pitifully.

Caitlin took in a breath and let it out. Heat tapped lightly at her nerve endings, and fog ghosted the edges of her brain. "Okay," she said. "Right. We'll handle it. Thank you."

"Mr. Ramon, Dr. Snow. Take care of yourselves," Dr. McGee said, suddenly maternal. "You're about to embark on some considerable physical activity for an unknown amount of time. Keep hydrated and pay attention to your blood sugar."

"Yes. We will. Thank you so much. We'll let you know how it all turns out." She ended the call.

Cisco sighed. "I'm sorry," he muttered. "I feel like this is my fault. I was the one who was all nom-nom-squash-blossoms."

"It's as much my fault," she said. "I should have known that's not the way Dr. McGee would send over a yummy treat. I should have stopped you."

"Since when have you ever been able to stop me from putting something in my mouth?"

She snorted. "Let's just agree that we were both pretty stupid and focus on handling this, okay?"

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, that sounds - good. So. Uh. Did you catch that? How it doesn't last as long with, um, a partner?"

She swallowed, thinking of what had happened downstairs in a rush of mindless heat, and what had happened in this lab. "I'm okay with - I mean, we've already - "

"Yeah. But." He looked at her carefully. "Are you really okay or are you just being like, 'whatever, barn door's open and the horse is over the horizon?'"

She had to take a moment to sift through his metaphor. They tended to get more convoluted, the more important the question was to him. When she had, she told him, "It's you. I don't think there's anybody in the world I'd be more okay with." She bit her lip. "But if you don't want to, it's all right." No, it wasn't. "I'll handle it." Well, she probably would.

He looked down. His thumb moved over her arm. "It's not that - I mean, I don't want it to be weird. After."

"I think it's going to be at least a little weird no matter what," she said. "But we can get through it. We've been there for each other for a lot of things. This is just one more, if you think about it."

He thought that over - she could almost see the gears grinding away behind his eyes. Then he smiled at her, and she smiled back. He kissed her, sliding his hands to her back and running them down to her hips. "Viva le weird, I guess," he murmured, sucking her lower lip.

She slid her fingers under his waistband and ran her fingertips over the top of his ass. He sighed and his hips rolled lusciously into hers. Mmm. That was a cause and effect she was filing away for future reference.

Hopefully not that far in the future.

Like maybe about two minutes.

"You think - mmm." He was kissing her neck now. "You think if we have sex right now, we can manage to drive to one of our places?" she asked him. "Without having to resort to road head?"

He nipped at her ear and she shivered. "As smart and sane and non-traffic-accident-causing as that sounds," he said, "I've got a better idea."

Across town, Tina McGee got off the phone with the courier company, who'd practically widdled themselves before the end of the conversation. She rubbed her temples and groaned.

Two aspirin and a bottle of water appeared on her desk.

"Thank you, Tracy," she said without looking up.

Her assistant said, "Well, when you didn't come running right back out again, I figured you'd have a headache."

"Indeed. You know, I am very fond of them, but those young people at Star Labs are going to be the death of me."

Tracy snorted. "Do we have to evacuate the building?"

"No."

"Does any part of Central City have to evacuate?"

"No, actually. It's really rather a localized emergency this time. They're - erm - handling it, now they've the proper information." She swallowed the aspirin and drank half the water. "Is the board meeting still going?"

"Oh, going strong."

"I'd better get back." She looked at her calculations for a moment, then shut down the window. "But let me know immediately if they call again."

He'd annexed a spare office on the second floor, near his lab, and stocked it with all the necessities of life: a futon, a video-game system, and a stock of junk food that would feed a frat house. "What?" he'd said when telling her about it. "You thought I was sleeping on the break room couch all those nights I stay here?"

She edged her way in the door with her arms full, trying to keep enough out of the way so he could pull the futon flat. It was resisting vigorously, until there was a screech and it suddenly flumped out flat.

He threw both hands in the air, and she golf-clapped for him. "Thank yew, thank yew ver' much," he said, plucking some of what she carried out of her arms. Condoms, lube, personal cleansing cloths, and several large bottles of water.

He was red-faced and sweating. That might not all be from wrestling the futon, she thought, shifting her weight. Heat crawled under her skin and she was so wet she was fairly dripping. If their refractory periods were about the same, they didn't have too much longer before they'd be jumping each other like they had in his lab.

But there was something less urgent about it now. She wondered if that was because she wasn't resisting it, or because she'd already gotten off four times.

Four times!

This was going to make up for her entire dry spell and then some.

He waved the box of condoms at her. It was a hundred-count box. "Think this'll be enough?"

"I've got plenty more if they're not," she said dryly. She bought them in bulk and used them to isolate and protect field samples. As condoms, they weren't the best, but they were protection and she was fine with that right now.

While he was lining the water bottles up against the the wall and finding spots for the box of condoms and bottle of lube that were easily reachable, she crawled onto the futon, which took up most of the space in the office now.

She undid the tie at her waist that held her wrap dress closed. The front panel of her dress fell open, and she undid the other tie, on the other side, so both panels draped to her sides, leaving her mostly naked underneath.

She waited for him to look around at her.

"Hi," he said softly when he did.

"Hi," she said, smiling at him. She shrugged the dress off and folded it, laying it on a shelf next to a box of Pop-Tarts. Then she reached behind herself and undid her bra. It sagged a little, and she went on all fours so it slid down her arms by the straps and fell onto the blanket that covered the futon.

His eyes had gone dark, drinking in the sight of her. She could say with perfect confidence that he was completely turned on now.

"I think you're overdressed," she said, tossing her bra at the same shelf with her dress. It hit and slid off onto the floor, but she had more important things to focus on right now.

"Think I am," he said, bracing one knee on the futon and leaning toward her. "Gonna help me with that?"

She scootched forward on her knees and pushed her hands under the hem of his shirt, pausing to stroke his erection through his pants. "Mmmmmm," he groaned.

She smiled and pushed his shirt all the way up, pausing to kiss his stomach and lick his nipples, listening to the uneven gulp of his breath. He pulled his shirt the rest of the way off and tossed it to the floor before pulling her up against him, skin to skin.

They kissed hungrily, all tongue and spit and heat. She rubbed her aching breasts against his bare chest for the way the scatter of dark hair felt against her tight and sensitive nipples. The fog had taken her brain completely now, but since all she wanted or needed to do was fuck Cisco, she let it happen.

"Pants," she said, and together they managed to get his pants undone and down in about twice the time it would have taken one of them alone. He laughed and choked a little when she cupped his balls, stroking them.

She smiled at him again and sat back. "Come on," she said, scooting backwards toward the pillows and settling back, spreading herself out before him. "What are you waiting for?"

He swallowed. "Just realized I forgot to get my shoes off before we got my pants down."

She pressed her hand to her mouth, giggling. He had to hang onto a shelf to maintain his balance as he tried to kick his shoes off while his pants were all tangled up with them.

"Nice," he said, grinning back at her as he climbed onto the futon, finally successfully naked. "Wow. Just what every guy wants to hear in bed." He reached down and brought up a condom, tearing the packet open and rolling the sheath down the length of his cock. He held her gaze the entire time, his eyes hooded, his lips parted.

Heat lightning danced along her nerve endings. She braced her feet wide apart, smiling at him, thinking, Get that cock over here and into me.

He knelt between her legs and put his hands on her knees, running them down her shins, then up again. He laid a kiss on the inside of her thigh, his mouth hot against the sensitive skin there.

"What are you doing?" she asked him, propping herself up her elbows.

He smirked. "Told you I like to take my time."

"We have up to eight hours," she said, but when he tucked his hair behind his ears and put his mouth between her legs, she dropped back to the pillow with a gasp.

He licked and sucked her for a few delicious moments, enough so she wondered if he was going to eat her all the way to orgasm before he fucked her. But then he pushed himself up, kissing the softness of her belly, licking into her navel, running his hands up her sides and then sliding them under her body to settle them in the small of her back.

She cupped her breast, offering it to him like a cupcake. He kissed the soft curves, sucking and licking. She sighed and put her hand in his hair, curling her fingers through it as his tongue swirled around her nipple.

At the same time, she squirmed, wishing he would stop this teasing and just fuck her already. How was he not feeling it?

He scooted higher to kiss her neck, and she felt the blunt, hot tip of his cock nudge her folds, and she knew he was, he was just being really, really superhuman about it

She decided to make it more difficult, and ran her hands down his back to lightly scrape her nails over that sensitive patch where the small of his back began to curve out to his ass. He groaned, and the head of his cock bumped her clit. Then it slid lower through her folds to brush her entrance, but only brush, not press in, not thrust, and what?

She realized he only had one hand in her hair and the other down between their bodies, holding his dick, and he was doing that on purpose because he was evil and awful and if he didn't fuck her soon, she was going to go crazy.

She told him so. "If you don't fuck me soon, I'm going to go crazy."

He huffed out laughter against her shoulder. "You know what I like about you? During sex, specifically."

"My patience?" she inquired sweetly, trying to maneuver his dick into her with little motions of her hips.

He evaded her and grinned. Asshole. He knew what he was doing. "Those noises you make."

She felt herself flushing. Ronnie had always thought they were cute, but Jay had once told her they were distracting when he was trying to make her come. But then again, she'd always had the faint, nagging feeling that Jay was getting her off as a generous favor, and she'd told herself that no relationship was perfect and -

No.

No Jay.

He wasn't here. Cisco was here, and Cisco was kissing her throat and telling her, "You grunt and you moan and you whimper and you squeal and you sigh and fuck, it's sexy. It's unbelievably hot. But you know what my favorite was?"

She ran her nails lightly down his back to feel him shudder. "What?"

"When I fucked you in my lab, you screamed. Dios mio, you screamed." He rubbed noses with her. "You gonna scream for me again, baby?"

"You know what you have to do to find out," she breathed, pressing her hips up again.

He smiled and slid into her. She let out a moan at the way he filled her up, arching up against him.

He whispered in her ear, "Oooo, close, let's see if I can do better," and starting fucking her in earnest.

Some five hours later, she watched his eyes roll up white as he moaned out his climax and sagged back into the pillows, panting and sighing.

She kissed his throat, tasting salt, and climbed off him, curling into his side. He turned his head toward her and nuzzled her hairline.

Somewhere around the two hour mark, she'd lost count of how many times she had come. She had meant to keep a tally, and a rough record of how long it took from one climax to the next swell of arousal. She might as well get some scientific knowledge out of this.

But honestly by that time, it all blurred together into need and heat and skin and fluids and the noises he made in bed, because he might talk about the noise she made but he wasn't silent by a long shot.

When the pattern of their arousal didn't sync up, they used fingers and tongues to get each other off, to relieve the clawing hot itch of it for each other. When they did match up, they fucked in every position and variation Caitlin had ever known, and some she didn't. Every muscle in her body trembled with exhaustion, and her pussy throbbed, sore and swollen from all the use.

During the downtime, they'd sipped water, eaten snacks, or just dozed, sprawled on each other like tired puppies. They'd taken two longer, more deliberate breaks to clean themselves up and rest their sore, tired bodies. Even to try to sleep. But the heat inevitably crawled back. The one time she'd tried to resist it long enough to finish her shower, she'd found herself walking out of her stall, shampoo still in her hair, and into his, where he'd pushed her up against the wall and fucked her until her moans bounced off the tile and probably echoed throughout Star Labs.

Not that there was anybody to hear it. In one of the clear moments just after he'd come, Cisco had texted Barry - Do me the biggest favor of ur life bro and don't come to ⭐️ until I say ok

keep Iris and Joe out too

Why? Barry had texted him back.

He'd raised his brows at Caitlin. She'd blushed and shaken her head.

Don't ask pls just do it

Are you OK

Totes ok just stay away I'll explain later

Ok if you say so

IOU man

Over the last hour, however, the downtime had lasted longer and the arousal had taken longer to build to frantic levels. She was hoping they were close to the end.

"Hey, Caitlin," he slurred.

"Mmmm?" They both sounded drunk, she thought.

"I think I'm done."

She blinked her eyes open. "Do you mean done done?"

He yawned and squirmed into a more comfortable position, eyes still closed. "You know how a can of whipped cream sort of goes ppppllllppppt when it runs out? That's what that last one felt like."

"Oh, good, " she said. She'd been watching the time, worrying about what would happen if they hit eight hours and had to call Tina McGee.

"How about you?"

She hadn't had that feeling he described, but she said hopefully, "Maybe?"

He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. "I'ma sleep now."

She stroked his side and tucked her head under his chin, letting herself float on the sea of her own tiredness, hoping she was done too.

But her gossamer dreams warmed up, and then went hot and needy and woke her up. She bit her lip against it, hoping she wouldn't have to masturbate for the next three hours.

Cisco would help her out, but if he was as tired as she was, he needed the sleep. She smoothed his sweat-damp hair back and watched him for a moment. She sighed and rolled away, getting a little space between them.

She put her hand between her legs, touching her sore clit as lightly as possible. But it was still too much, too rough, and she whimpered pitifully.

He hadn't been as asleep as she'd thought, because he murmured, "Cai'lin?"

"Shhh, it's okay." She fumbled for the lube. Maybe that would help. There wasn't much left. They'd been liberal with it. Maybe too liberal. The bottle spluttered like the whipped cream can Cisco had compared himself to.

"Hey," he said, getting his eyes open. "Baby. Come on. I can help." He pushed himself up and kissed her. "Let me help."

She made some noise that might have been protest but came out as a sigh when his mouth skimmed over her tender nipples. "I'm just - I'm really sore right now but - "

"I'll stop if it's too much," he said, kissing his way down her stomach. "Okay?"

She whimpered as he dipped his head between her legs, his hands smoothing up and down her thighs, cupping her ass, lifting her hips to his mouth, so he could give her the softest, gentlest cunnilingus she'd ever gotten in her life. His tongue slid flat and slow over her overstimulated clit, circling it lightly. He kissed it so softly it was like a feather touching her, and even that made her shudder and moan, caught on the razor-thin line between pain and pleasure.

But he was so soft, so gentle that the line slipped away and she dropped into the pleasure side like a warm pool. She rested her head back and let it rise and crest in a slow wave, until - "Mnnnhhh," she moaned out. "Ci - Cisco."

He paused, his breath soft on her clit. "Okay? Did you - ?"

"Yes," she whimpered. "Yes. Good. Perfect. Okay."

He crawled up next to her and collapsed.

They lay six inches apart, not touching. She felt all touched out suddenly, as if the contact of even a square inch of skin to skin would rasp like sandpaper, unbearable. The heat was gone. Not even the faintest tingle anywhere under her skin. She blinked at the ceiling, stupid with tiredness and an overload of endorphins.

Dr. McGee.

She rolled over and found her phone, underneath a couple of empty water bottles. She sent an email that was more like a stream of consciousness than a business communcation. Effects worn out now, both okay, thank you, talk to you later. She hit send and dropped it with a thud, rolling back onto her back next to Cisco.

She fumbled for his hand. His fingers curled around hers.

They would sleep now, and they would wake up and take long, hot showers and take several ibuprofen and apply several ice packs each. She would draw their blood to analyze and compare to the blood she'd drawn at the height of their intoxication.

They would text Barry that it was safe to come back to Star Labs, and order enough food (Chinese? Mexican? pizza maybe) to feed a small army. And they would eat together and look at each other and maybe have that extremely weird conversation you had to have when you now knew exactly where you had to kiss your best friend's hipbone to make him shake with sensation.

But as she'd told him, they'd gotten through a lot of things together, and this was just one more.

Maybe they'd tell the others what had really happened, maybe they wouldn't.

Maybe they'd do this again, without squash blossoms.

Maybe they wouldn't.

But he was next to her, snoring very softly, and his fingers were woven through hers, and for the moment, she was happy and this was good.

She slept.

FINIS