It's a good, reasonable question, but Cisco finds he doesn't have an answer ready beyond the truth, and it's probably too early in their relationship (whatever it turns out to be) to bring up metahumans in general (even if Cisco plans to keep his own status a secret until he's sure things are serious). Cisco's not a fan of lying (partially because he's terrible at it), and the idea of lying to Matt, someone who is so open an honest and clearly very kind, makes his stomach hurt. He's not keeping secrets for deceptive reasons, it really is for Matt's protection (and also the fact that Cisco likes this guy and doesn't want to run him off by sounding like a lunatic on their first sorta date), so he decides to just be vague but not outright dishonest.
"There were some criminals in my city that were proving difficult to catch by conventional means," Cisco says, taking another sip of his beer. "My best friend, who's a CSI himself, his foster dad is a detective with the Central City Police Department. When I found out the trouble they were having, I had a couple ideas for things I could build for the department to help them out," he explains. "It ended up working out so well they put me on retainer. I like it because it's practical work; my day job is more... experimental." He's not meaning for it to sound so dodgy, but it's not exactly untrue. Before the accelerator explosion STAR Labs had, technically, been a research laboratory, and the work Cisco does there now still has a measure of that involved, prototyping and testing theories. It's just the driving factors that are different now.
"I have a masters degree in mechanical engineering," he tells Matt, just to give him an idea what he does more generally. "It's just always been something I liked do, building things, taking them apart. The number of toasters my parents had to replace when I was growing up was fairly substantial," he adds with a laugh.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2016-08-15 06:03 pm (UTC)"There were some criminals in my city that were proving difficult to catch by conventional means," Cisco says, taking another sip of his beer. "My best friend, who's a CSI himself, his foster dad is a detective with the Central City Police Department. When I found out the trouble they were having, I had a couple ideas for things I could build for the department to help them out," he explains. "It ended up working out so well they put me on retainer. I like it because it's practical work; my day job is more... experimental." He's not meaning for it to sound so dodgy, but it's not exactly untrue. Before the accelerator explosion STAR Labs had, technically, been a research laboratory, and the work Cisco does there now still has a measure of that involved, prototyping and testing theories. It's just the driving factors that are different now.
"I have a masters degree in mechanical engineering," he tells Matt, just to give him an idea what he does more generally. "It's just always been something I liked do, building things, taking them apart. The number of toasters my parents had to replace when I was growing up was fairly substantial," he adds with a laugh.