I love the way you smell.

That's weird to say out loud. It shouldn't be. We can comment on cookies, and laundry, and even gasoline, but I can't talk about how delicious you smell at all hours without blushing. It's silly. But God I wish I could bury my face in your shoulder for a few years. Maybe lifetimes. Lifetimes would be perfect.

I'm selfish, Barry. I want a thousand years with you, and then once I'm tired of you I want to walk into the woods and remember what it's like to be alone, and miss you, and come back to you, and then I want to be part of you.

You're my hands, my feet, my working world. When I fall, you're there to catch me. You're often there before I know I'm falling. I feel like I can fall when I'm with you. You make it safe.

And I'm glad – I'm so glad, Barry – that you trust me enough to go into the unknown, into the Speed Force, with nothing and no one but my tether. My lifeline, the last tie you have to this life and this world and this everything. If I let go or you were torn from it, I might never get you back. Some other world would get you.

Lucky them.

I'd never stop missing you.

I wish I could say I would move on but I'm not that kind of person. I pine in my sleep. I daydream in my waking hours, aching for a time when I could make those idle thoughts reality. I love how our hands fit together. I love how you're too tall for me to rest my chin on your shoulder, but the perfect height for me to hug you. I feel like I was meant to be hugged by someone like you. Does that make sense?

I'm so tired, you're so beautiful, and the world is so unfair.

I can't believe how young you look. 2017, huh? How did seven years change us this much? Where did the essence of Barry Allen go? Why is it here in you, sleeping, purring, Golden Boy, but not in the tomblike creature roaming the labs beneath me? (Why am I still aware of him even now, with you so close I could reach out and touch you?)

I want to touch you. I want to run my fingers through your hair; it's soft and tufted and short, like it's supposed to be. I'd support you through any fashion choice, Bar, however absurd, but I have to say, you look better than you have in years. And I know you like your hair short because you have such a thing for running your hands through it, when you're nervous, or excited, or scared. God, let me do it for you. Let me be something to you, someone.

I just want to sculpt you. I can build your suits, which is almost enough, and when I yell at you about tearing them and damaging them and otherwise mauling my babies (and they are my babies and you do maul them, Barry Allen), I'm still wildly euphoric that you surrender them to me, your armor, the greatest thing standing between you and desolation.

I've saved your life with these suits. I'm proud of them. I'm more proud of you.

I wish I could put my head on your shoulder, just close my eyes, pretend there are stars above me and flesh and bones beneath my elbows. I wish I could feel your hands on mine. I wish for a lot of things. You make me want to wish things, because when I'm with you, I feel like anything could come true.

(Could you, darling? Could you bring them back for me?)

I haven't slept well in years, not since—

I haven't slept well in a long time.

When you look at me with sleep-stupid eyes full of liquid gold, your tongue heavy in your mouth (mm, I want to kiss you), your request to stay is met with too much enthusiasm for 1:39AM.

We're old. We used to stay up till six in the morning, laughing deliriously and eating Doritos, pretending we somehow knew what we were doing as we played cops and robbers.

I want to be young again. Make me like you. Erase the memories of the past seven years. Take me apart and put me back together, omitting the pain that caused scars that don't show. Please. I know you can. You're the Unmaker. You can undo anything.

But you won't. And you say my name with that familiar slur, inarticulate, one syllable, and I love you more than the air in my lungs.

Stay with me.

Please.

Would you hug me this tight if you knew how I felt? Or would you hug me tighter?

Would you recoil if I confessed? Or would you reciprocate?

Hold me.

Hold me for the rest of our lives, please.

Take me away from this place, take me somewhere I am whole again, take me – take me anywhere.

Anywhere with you.

I didn't think you'd ever come. Why would you want to visit this place? The king of everything has no need to dwell in the cities of scarcity. He can travel where he wills. So why come here?

Because you wanted answers, of course, and I think we're finding them, even if yours are decoded in dream-text, and mine are spelled out in song-form, written to the rhythm of your too-fast heartbeat and rhythmic snores. I want to melt into you. You want to melt away. Don't run, Barry. Don't run where I can't follow.

I can't hold onto you, but I can still try.

(I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.)

Would you forgive me if you knew I took your speed from you?

I could have done it without the tech years ago. Back when I could feel your pulse with my palms without touching you. When the entire world was written in a language like textures or colors, a unique subset that I could feel, and now it's gone, and I feel worse than deafened, I feel blinded, muted, deceased.

I took your speed from you for many reasons. Because you were and are stubborn. Because you were and are reckless. Because you were and are prone to serious injuries and it's less painful to watch you heal slowly, doped-up with morphine, than it is to watch you scream for hours afterward. Maybe not out loud, although sometimes. But always with your speed. You are so loud and so vulnerable through speed.

I love that I can still feel it when you sleep.

I can feel it all the time, but it's muffled. This close to you? I can't detach myself from it. It spills over between the two of us. It's breathtaking. Perfect.

Can't we stay like this?

You stretch and grumble and shuffle and next thing we're cuddling proper. I love you. You restless, sleepful space-heater.

It's been too long, my darling.

Don't leave me too soon.