(A/N) Inspired by the gifset of smiling Wests that's going around. Originally written in August so some things aren't canon anymore.
"Barry?"
"Hey," he said, trying to juggle his phone and his chemicals. "Iris. Hey. Wow. Is everything - " He dropped the chemicals, then the phone. He caught them fast enough to finish his sentence. "- okay?"
He put his chemicals down. He didn't feel like having to tell Caitlin he'd burned himself with acid. She would give him that stern look and ask him what he'd been doing, messing around with those when he was distracted, and honestly she acted so much like a big sister some days that he wanted to steal her Barbies and cut all their hair off.
Cisco didn't seem to have a problem with it, but then, Cisco kind of liked being dominated.
"No," Iris said, and Barry forgot about Cisco's preferences.
"What's wrong? What is it? Where are you? Who - "
"Barry! This is a regular-person kind of emergency, not a you-know-what emergency. Okay? I don't need - you-know-who. I need Barry."
There was a Voldemort joke he could make, but it probably wasn't the time. "Okay, what can Barry do for you?"
"Wally. I dropped him off at the university to register for classes and buy his books and I told him I'd meet him at Jitters, in, ugh, two minutes and it's going to be way more than two minutes before I get out of here, and please? Can you meet him? Take him back to the station? Hang out with him until I get there?"
"Sure, I can, but … he can't take the bus?"
"He's new to Central City."
"He's twenty years old, he can figure out a bus system."
"Barrrrrrrrryyyyyyyyyy."
"Okay, okay, okay." He could never say no to her. She knew that. "But I still haven't met him. How am I going to know who it is?"
"He's tall and he looks like me," she said. "Thank you, thank you, thank you. I've got to go, my editor is giving me the murder eyes." She hung up.
"Um," Barry said. He didn't think walking into Jitters and asking for the most gorgeous man to ever cross its threshold was going to work. Or, it might work in a way he totally hadn't intended. He sighed and texted her. Pic?
He hates pix, she wrote back. Haven't managed to sneak one yet.
O … kay.
He secured his chemicals - who knew how long it would be until he got back here, if he had to walk like a regular person - and zipped to Jitters. He paused at his usual spot and strolled around the corner, studying the people he could see through the big plate glass windows.
There were a few tall, young black men, in booths or at tables or in line. Some were in CCU shirts, although since he'd just registered for classes today, Wally probably wasn't one of them. Barry sighed.
Seriously, Iris hadn't managed to get one picture? She was a camera ninja. There were shots of him on Facebook where he'd swear she was nowhere near her phone.
He scanned them, trying to find one who looked like Iris. None of them did, not really. He wondered if she'd imagined the resemblance because she wanted to believe that they had things in common, her and this kid half-brother who'd turned up out of nowhere.
He could always stick his head in and yell, "Wally? Wally West?" like a teacher on the first day of school.
As he walked in the door, a boy in one of the booths, slouched over the remains of a muffin, caught his eye. He had a bag of books at his feet. He looked sulky and a little frustrated as he texted.
He also looked nothing like Iris. His ears stuck out, and his face was a completely different shape, and his eyes were wrong, and -
But as Barry watched, he paused to read a text and broke into a smile. It spread over his face, lighting his eyes, rounding his cheeks, as if every feature had to move aside to make room for it.
"Wally?" Barry said.
He looked up, the smile already fading.
That smile, though. Barry knew he was right.
"You're Barry."
"I'm Barry. Did Iris text you?"
"Yeah, with like a million apologies."
"You don't mind, do you?"
Wally shrugged. "It's okay. Better than hanging around at her apartment." He leaned down and grabbed the bag of books. As he straightened up, his elbow brushed his phone, knocking it off the table.
Without thinking, Barry grabbed for it, at Flash speed. But Wally already had it.
They looked at each other in the endless space between heartbeats, the world still around them, the edges crackling faintly with red lightning.
Barry stepped back, and the world snapped into regular time. Wally looked pale.
"So," he said. "Something Iris didn't tell me."
"Me neither," Barry said.
He thought for a moment of the Reverse Flash … no, Wells … no, Thawne.
But Wally was nothing like him. He couldn't be. Not with that smile. Goodness was encoded in his genes, alongside Iris's smile, because they couldn't be separated.
Was this why Iris had gone through all these machinations to get them to meet? Because if she'd told him - Barry, he's like you, he has speed like you - Barry knew he wouldn't have been able to see anything but the Reverse Flash when he looked at this kid, smile or no smile.
"Come on," he said. "Let's get out of here. So we can talk."
Wally followed him out and around the corner. "So, uh. We going to the station?"
"No," Barry said. "We're going somewhere else." He grinned, and let the challenge show in his eyes. "Can you keep up?"
Wally slung the bag over his shoulder. "I don't know. Can you?"
FINIS