Reciprocal Altruism || Snowbarry College AU

Less Than Three III

They stopped at a nearby ice cream store and selected their flavors. Caitlin, of course, went for her classic mint chocolate chip in a cup, while Barry opted for Superman ice cream in a cone because he liked the colors.

Once they received their food, they sat at one of the tables set up outside the creamery and enjoyed their tasty treat.

It was nice, spending time with Barry. With all the time in the world and no one to impress, they discussed their favorite shows and books, different classes they were taking, and other random conversations that made Caitlin feel light-hearted and open.

This friend date was different from her and Barry's double date from a few weeks back. This date didn't have rules or expectations. It was just two people getting to know each other for no other reason; they just enjoyed being in each other's company.

Caitlin reminisced on how far she had come to accepting Barry's friendship when at the start of her switch into Stein's class, she had no idea who Barry truly was.

He had certainly wormed (or turtle crawled) his way into her life and her heart.

She laughed when Barry's cone started melting and he started to lick the hand that was holding it in a desperate attempt to clean himself.

"This is why you get a cup instead of a cone."

"Yeah," Barry stuck his tongue out at her, "If you want to be a boring grandma." He went back to licking his ice cream cone.

With a strike of inspiration, Caitlin pulled out her phone and snapped a quick picture of him. She smiled to herself as she looked at the image and then leaned forward towards the middle of the table with her phone hand stretched out. Barry leaned forward as well, a smile on his ice cream smudged face, and Caitlin took a quick selfie of the two of them with their ice cream.

"Are you posting it?" Barry asked. "You know, since we're already Facebook official?"

Instagram was an app that she used pretty often when she was bored. She, like any other person her age, enjoyed mindlessly scrolling and blocking out any thought for an hour or so. However, posting on Instagram was a completely different story. The last time she had posted something on the app was three years ago and it was a picture of her cat, Killer Frost. She didn't even have any posts with Ronnie because he was always too busy for pictures... or dates... or her.

"Yep," Caitlin agreed, brushing those thoughts aside, "I'm gonna post it now." She uploaded the two images in a post and thought of a caption. When she came up with the perfect one, she grinned and posted it before showing it to Barry, who was still working on finishing his cone.

She held her phone up to his face. "What do you think?"

Barry squinted at the phone and read, "Melting my heart, less than three," even though it really said: Melting my heart <3

"Barry," she drawled out his name, "it's not less than three. It's supposed to be a heart."

"Caitlin," he repeated in a similar fashion, "you do realize most phones have actual emojis now, so you don't have to write it like that."

"I wanted to go for the old school vibe!"

"Fine, it's cute. Extra points for the ice cream theme."

"Thank you." Caitlin smiled proudly.

"But you lose points for being an emoji-illiterate grandma."

"Rude. I don't less than three you anymore. I greater than three you now."

"That's not even a heart anymore!"

"Exactly."

"But, Caitlin," Barry whined, "I less than three you! Even if you are a boring grandma! I two you! Even better I one you!"

"Well, I four you. Five you! Even better I infinity you."

"Infinity stretches into the negatives, which is less than three, ergo you love me for infinity."

Not denying the statement, Caitlin said, "Remember when you made fun of me for saying 'i.e.' out loud? Now here you are saying big ol' fancy words like ergo."

"This is terrible," Barry gasped dramatically, though the image was slightly ruined by the bright cotton candy blue ice cream that dripped down his hand, "I less than three you so much I've adopted your personality."

Caitlin giggled at his childishness and startled at the sound of her phone chiming with a notification. "Check it out, Barry. Iris just saw the post and she liked it." Her phone chimed again with a stream of excited emojis from Iris in the comment section.

In the back of her mind, her thoughts whispered about how her posting this meant that spending her time like this with Barry finally wasn't a waste. Like she had to justify enjoying herself and being around Barry. Her thoughts whispered about how Barry was probably taking her out on this friend date, so she would do something like this to attract Iris's attention.

But contrary to her evil thoughts, Barry only seemed mildly interested in Iris's comments. He took a quick glance at her phone and then went back to what was more important: his ice cream cone.

Caitlin fondly wondered if maybe Barry really was taking her advice to heart. It made her feel warm inside that Barry would actually listen to her and try to see beyond just Iris.