Barry gets sick.
Not high-grade fever sick, or even a sick Cisco can put a name to, but sick, nonetheless. He shows up at Cisco's door looking like hell and only gets worse. Cisco steps back to let him inside and in a feverish delirium Barry tells him.
I called it off with Iris.It's not permanent, I still love her, but I – I can't, I can't, I can't be with her, I can't look at her knowing that I proposed out of fear, that-I-did-all-of-this, I can't be with her knowing that Savitar is going to hold her in front of me and by Speed Force alone I will have to stop him from killing her, and the Speed Force hates me, the Speed Force isn't on my side, I was so fucking wrong, Cisco, I –
Cisco has no words, just pulls out a chair and sits at the table and listens to Barry ramble himself into a frenzy and back down again, exhaustion finally dragging him to stillness and silence. "Can I stay with you?" he asks at last, slow and husky, and Cisco dips his head in a concessionary nod. Barry takes a seat on the couch, tips onto his side after a long, hesitating moment, and takes a deep, final breath. It's a little too coffin-like for Cisco's taste, the way he goes still, so he distracts himself by texting Caitlin.
Barry came over.
He okay?
Cisco doesn't even hesitate. No.
A beat. How bad is it?
Cisco looks over and stares down at his phone for a while. At last, he taps out, It won't kill him.
. o .
It's two in the morning and someone is screaming.
Cisco lunges out of bed, heart pounding, an animal within him shrieking in its cage, pounding the bars, where's-the-fire-where's-the-fire, and his sleepy brain catches up to him and that's barry.
He stumbles out into the living room and finds Barry on the floor, twisting and whining, letting out another heart-shattering scream. Cisco crouches next to him, hand on his shoulder, shaking aggressively. "Hey man, wake up," he says, no gentleness, and Barry whimpers and doesn't resurface. "Barry. Barry."
Barry thrashes, all but seizes, and Cisco pins down his shoulders and shouts BARRY in his face and his eyes fly open, gold and fixed on Cisco with undisguised panic.
Blink and they're gone, and oh, fuck, Barry, it's the middle of the night and the middle of the street and neither of them are dressed for this cold, but Cisco keeps a tight grip on his arm because he knows he won't be able to follow if Barry bolts without him. "Easy," he cautions, and the cold seems to agitate Barry's delirium, his hushed, shaking breaths coalescing in front of him as he turns in slow circles.
"None of this is real," he mutters, over and over, faster and faster, and Cisco reaches for him and he looks at Cisco with a pain so deep it aches. "You're not real, you're not real, this is just a dream, it's just a dream—"
Cisco aches to call Caitlin for help, aches to go back to sleep, and hates himself a little for agreeing to take on the neurotic speedster.
Then he hates himself a little more because whatever Barry and he are, Cisco isn't that kind of person.
An idea hits with stupid impulsivity and he does it, immediate, unthinking, a hand over the place where he knows Savitar's claw was and then a pulse that shakes loose bone.
Barry stops shaking, all at once, his eyes dull with pain, and Cisco sees the gold burn out as tears form instead.
Barry Flashes them back inside and lets him go, staggering off. He's holding his right shoulder, and he roots with wordless agitation until he finds Cisco's stash, ibuprofen, Tylenol, aspirin, anything he can get his hands on, and he downs them all.
Somewhat delirious himself – it is two in the fucking morning – Cisco rasps, "Barry."
Barry staggers to the couch and collapses, deadweight, and Cisco thinks for a moment he's dead, and then he hears him groaning into a pillow, loudly.
Cisco tries to think of something, anything, and falls short.
He swallows hard, and gingerly backs off, literally backing away, not daring to take his eyes off Barry.
When he reaches his room, he hesitates.
Then he quietly shuts the door and pretends not to hear the sobbing.
. o .
It's three in the morning, and he refuses to wake up, but he feels a big heavy presence nearby, pushing him, and he grunts in something approximating affirmation and scoots over. The bed dips with Barry's lanky frame and he cuddles, hugging Cisco until there's no space where he isn't, and it's suffocating, being surrounded, but he doesn't want to wake up.
Let me sleep, he tells the restless speedster. Let me be.
He drops off before he's determined if the words ever left his mouth.
. o .
It's four in the fucking morning, and he's relentlessly, headachy tired, and overheating. He tries to ignore it, to push it down until a respectable hour, and can't, already starting to sweat.
"Barry," he grunts.
He's expecting a fight; he's caught off-guard when Barry Flashes off.
He wasn't asleep, then.
Cisco should do something, but he punches a pillow and stuffs it under his head and sleeps.
. o .
At eight in the morning, he finds Barry.
His heart stops for a moment, because he looks dead, collapsed in a chair with his head on the table, unmoving and pale. Then he twitches, and turns to look at Cisco, and without hope he straightens. He has no greeting; Cisco doesn't offer one, either.
He thinks, and considers, and rocks on his heels.
And then he says fuck it and grabs Barry by the sleeve and pulls him back to bed.
They sleep till three.
. o .
When Cisco rises, Barry does not.
A memory of a speedster from a lifetime ago arises, and basic equations, seven-hundred-and-fifty, and he fishes throughout his apartment, hooking his bait and bringing it back with him. He has a no crumbs in bed rule that evaporates when he puts the unwrapped protein bar on the pillow next to Barry's head. For thirty seconds, Barry doesn't respond. Then he slides an arm over sluggishly to take it, and holds it between his teeth.
He doesn't bite it, and Cisco thinks most of the medications he took aren't meant to be taken on an empty stomach, and the nausea must be killer.
And then, Flash, it's gone, and Cisco won't ever slow the way his heart speeds up with such proximity to such power.
Barry keeps his eyes closed, I'm not gonna hurt you, and Cisco slows down.
Cisco gives him room, locking the door behind him and hoping Barry's too weak to phase because he doesn't want to have to hunt Barry across universes.
If he wants to run, let him go, he tries to tell himself, hugging his jacket closer in the wind, plowing ahead. The drug store is sedate, midafternoon quiet, and the world seems thunderously still. He moves mechanically, repeating it like a mantra. If he wants to run, let him go.
He stocks up and returns just before the first drops of rain.
He doesn't tell Caitlin. Barry and he made a promise years ago when they said I'm-the-eyes-and-ears-and-he's-the-feet. They have each other's backs. It's what they agreed to.
He restocks the med cabinet in silence.
Returning to his bedroom, he finds that Barry hasn't moved, lying catatonic against his sheets. The pain radiating from him is so intense Cisco has to pause, to take a breath. Then he commands, "Barry."
Golden eyes flick towards him. Barry sits up slowly and exhales. "Hey," he says. He sounds dead inside.
Cisco approaches and sits on the bed cross-legged across from him. "I'd say now you know," he begins, Barry's eyes on him the entire time, unblinking, "but you don't. You never will." He works his jaw, shoving down the burning, magmatic pain that attempts to overtake him. God, he thought he'd moved past anger.
The average period of intense grieving for a close family member is two years—
Barry, one leg hanging over the side of the bed, doesn't say anything. Of course he doesn't. He never—
Cisco takes a deep breath.
"You aren't him," he says bluntly, and it's strange to say it.
Barry frowns, looking lost. "What?"
"You're not…" Cisco waves vaguely. "The Barry I thought I knew."
Barry's jaw tenses. "What do you mean?" he asks, and his eyes dim, and Cisco can see him shouldering the thunder as it rumbles outside the window.
"The last time I saw Barry Allen," Cisco says, reaching out to smooth the sheets under his fingers, "he was walking away. And then you showed up." He inhales.
Let him go.
"You're not him," he exhales quietly. "We're not those people anymore. I'm tired of holding onto him. I'm tired of – this." Gesturing at the space between them, he finishes, "I'm tired of not knowing who you are."
Barry looks at him, assessing. He says in a voice that is twenty years older, "I'd like to be friends."
You asked me to be your best man, Cisco thinks.
At a wedding that is no longer happening, a sinister side of him qualifies.
Cisco reaches out and clasps his wrist, and for the moment they are there again, and he is telling Barry that he's going to let go.
Barry's fingers twitch, but he doesn't move his hand.
Please.
Cisco tightens his grip and holds on.
. o .
Because come hell or high water, it's what they do.
They swim when drowning is easier because easier does not mean worth it.
Easier does not mean pain-free.
Easier does not mean right.
Easier simply means less work.
And Cisco is willing, and Barry is able, to work for this.
By seven, they walk into STAR Labs together, and no one asks where they've been all day, or why Barry still looks so sick.
We've lived too long, Cisco thinks, or maybe we haven't lived long enough. He'd seen the golden era tarnish, and the revival was still deep on the horizon.
Keep going.
And so they soldier on.