The Flash - On My Skin It Sinks In (platonic Snowbarrisco)

On My Skin It Sinks In

A/N: Big thanks to TigStripe for a speedy, late notice beta for this. Written for the dctvfluffweekend2018. Quote in the moodboard by Elizabeth Gilbert.

Barry/Iris is mentioned during the story and there is also a brief reference to racism.

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Barely anyone is born with a soulmark. It's common knowledge that nearly everyone will develop one at some point. Some people get them early, others crushingly late, but one thing is considered true: your mark will come, your time will come.

Dante got his early on in life, treated by their parents as if that was a fabulous surprise to contrast their disappointment each year as Cisco confirmed he still had none. Dante's mark was the opening few chords of a tune, and their parents jumped on it. They did everything they could to encourage that connection, to ensure their son's happiness. Cisco grew up in the shadow of Dante's great start, around people who ignored the evidence showing Dante seemed to stagnate after discovering his mark. Especially annoying to Cisco was the fact that no one ever talked about how incredibly depressing the beginning of Dante's song actually sounded.

Cisco gets on with his life – mark-less - because there really isn't anything else to do about it. He's young, he has aspirations of his own, and there was hardly any shortage of things to pour his time into, even if his parents did look at him like he'd grown a new head anytime he said more than two sentences about what he studied. Unlike other people, he doesn't put much stock in what you could tell about someone by their mark, but some people definitely do react badly if they find out you don't have one yet. Freaking interviewers ask him about this from time to time – très professionnel of them. They treat it like some awful crime of character to not have found where you belong by the tender age of twenty. That type of shit only compounds the ache he feels inside, because he does want to get his mark. The sadness he feels at not having any hint of where he belongs is a hurt he tries to distract himself from, with dreams of changing the world. He ain't gonna let other people define him, not with their assumptions, and not by the 'who' he lacks – he's over being judged by his skin, in either sense that gets applied to him. So he wears geeky t-shirts to interviews, has snarky comebacks for the asshole questions that get asked - it's not like he wants to work for anyone who asks stuff that craptacular – and waits for someone to see him for who he is. He waits for someone to see who he could be on his own merits - for someone to want his energy.

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The day he starts at S.T.A.R. Labs he notices an itch in the place over his heart. Common sense says it isn't anything significant, but he just knows something has changed. Touching the sensitive skin, he can't see or feel any difference whatsoever. Cool your jets, Cisco, what did you expect?

Eventually, he is proven correct - he didn't imagine it. Day by day, he watches the skin darken, forming at first into a black spot – kind of piratical there, he thinks - and then spreading out into more of a splotch. He squints at it over and over, trying to figure out what the hell it could be. At last, it takes on a more definitive form with shapes almost like tendrils spreading out from the center of it, but they soon solidify into straight lines, most of them filling out over weeks. It isn't too long before he realizes what it is – the logo of S.T.A.R. Labs.

The day the mark blooms, stark and complete upon his chest, is the day the particle accelerator goes online – fitting for the culmination of everything he, and everyone else in the building, have worked so hard for. His fingers absent-mindedly trace the mark over his shirt as he watches Dr. Wells hit the switch. It feels so incredibly right in that moment, as they succeed in reaching for the stars his mentor has sought. But that night, his world implodes, and Cisco can't help but feel the explosiveness of the star could be practically prophetic.