Author's Notes:
Greetings! We're closing in on my "200 Flash fics by the end of the year" goal. I'm very excited and I hope you enjoy this piece! I had great fun writing it and I really love it.
Enjoy.
Also NOTE: Barry is eleven in the beginning of this fic and then twenty-nine later on. Just for clarity.
"Da—Joe?"
Joe turns onto his side and blinks at the shadow in the doorframe. "Barry?" he asks, voice deep with sleep. Barry shuffles on his feet, hugging McSnurtle to his chest. "What's wrong?"
"Can I come in?"
Joe sits up and flicks on the bedside lamp, grimacing against the light. "C'mere," he says, holding a hand to his eyes. Barry shuffles forward and clambers onto the space beside him, leaning his side against Joe's. Heart aching with relief – Barry has not permitted Joe to even carry his backpack, let alone hug him – Joe drapes his arm around the kid. Barry shuffles closer, sinking into his side, and sniffles. "What's wrong?" he repeats, rubbing Barry's back.
"I miss my dad," Barry says in a small voice, speaking to Joe's shirt. "Can I see him?"
The aching feeling returns. "It's late," he deflects.
"Can I see him?" Barry repeats, refusing to be daunted, but he doesn't move away from Joe, either. He doesn't stand up and take his ground on the opposite side of the room, adamant to the point of shouting. Joe hadn't thought the shy kid who followed his daughter around, doe-eyed and fawn-footed, could be capable of anger, but Barry had a lot of it. All of it, it seemed, was directed at Joe.
Until now. Sighing, he strokes a thumb across Barry's trembling shoulder. "I know you miss your pop," he says. "But you … can't see him, buddy."
Joe expects him to push him away, to lunge with sudden fury to his feet and tell him that it's not fair, but he isn't expecting Barry to start sobbing, big, noisy tears, the kind that make him want to hug Barry until it stops hurting so damn much. He does just that, turning a little so he can wrap both arms around the kid, Barry's face pressed against his chest as he sobs and sobs and sobs, forty-six days of stoicism shattering.
"It's okay," he tells him. "It's okay."
"I want my dad," Barry cries. "I wanna go home."
In the hall Joe hears sleepy feet shuffling as quietly as they can, and clears his throat. Iris' head pops around the frame, her sheepish smile replaced with a frown. "Did Barry have a nightmare again?" she asks, stepping fully into frame. "I let him borrow McSnurtle so he wouldn't, but—"
"I want my dad," Barry repeats, still sobbing, and Joe just cuddles him closer as Iris steps into the room.
"It's okay," she says, crawling onto the bed next to Barry, wrapping her arms around him from behind. "You can have my dad. We'll share."
Barry's breath hitches a little with a hiccup, and Iris carries on, still wrapped around Barry like a koala. "He's a good dad. He has good hugs, and we make good dinners, and sometimes we go to the park or the movies or the zoo. You can come to the zoo with us!" she effuses, and he starts sobbing again. "Or not," she adds. "We can go to the museum instead. It's full of dinosaurs."
Joe drapes his arm so it's over her, but Barry stays curled up beside him, not moving. "I like dinosaurs," he says, sniffing.
"We can go see dinosaurs," Joe allows, but Barry squirms upright suddenly, shuffling out of Iris' arms and scooting down the bed. Sliding off, he stands and walks back to the door. McSnurtle is still on the bed.
"Where are you going?" Iris asks, frowning.
Barry mumbles something and reaches up to brush his nose. "I'm going downstairs," he says.
But a dad instinct sets Joe on edge. "Barry," he warns.
"I'm going downstairs," he says with sudden firmness, and then he's gone.
Iris sighs. "He's sad," she tells Joe, leaning against him in the space warmed by Barry. "He misses his mom and dad a lot." Hesitating, she asks quietly, "You're not going anywhere, right?"
"No, baby girl," he promises, kissing the top of her head. "I'm here to stay."
"I wish he wasn't sad. He's hurting a lot."
"Me too," Joe agrees, and then he hears the door shut downstairs and squeezes Iris gently. "Stay here, baby," he tells her, sliding out of bed and pushing into a pair of shoes. He always keeps them close. He's had to, ever since the first night he took guardianship of Barry ("So does that mean he's my brother?" "No, he's just ours to look after."), because Barry likes to run away.
Striding down the sidewalk in forty-two-degree weather, he sweeps the streets, worried that the kid didn't grab a coat on the way out. He doesn't mind the evening walks – they live in a nice neighborhood, full of people who were astonished by the Allen murder and have become just as protective as Joe of the kid left stranded because of it – but he always worries about Barry getting chilled or attacked by a stray. Fifth graders shouldn't be wandering out on their own this late at night.
Barry tends to head to one of three places – the park, the police station, or his parents' old house – so Joe splits the difference in his search. He finds the kid sitting on his parents' porch, head buried in his arms, knees drawn up to his chest. He looks small, and very alone on the dark, empty porch. It's still a vacant property – turns out it's hard to sell a property where a very public murder took place – but the lock in place keeps Barry from going inside it. Joe is grateful for that much – he still remembers finding Barry kneeling next to the blue sheet, shock making his arm cold to the touch; ever since, he's been afraid Barry would find his way inside again and just sit in that spot until his heart gave out – but it still breaks his heart to see him in such a way.
No kid wants to feel like a stranger in their own home, and Barry can't even go inside his. He can't push open the door and greet his parents. He can't play in his own backyard or eat in his own kitchen. He can't even crawl into his own bed for the night.
Joe remembers that eerie day, gathering up all of Barry's stuff and bringing it over in one car ride to his bungalow. He remembers taking a picture of Barry's room and doing his best to recreate it back at Barry's new home. Barry just sat on the bed and watched him, hugging a pillow to his chest and resting his chin on top of it.
Sitting next to him, Joe puts an arm around him, drawing him into the fold of his coat. Barry shivers against him, but Joe knows it isn't because of the cold – cold can't touch this kind of sadness. This sort of raw, aching, hungry sadness that still returns to the same door almost every day hoping for a miracle. It is a hopefulness only the grieving can find, where despite unmoving evidence to the contrary, he persists in trying.
In silence, he sits next to Barry, even as his legs get cold and he starts to ache for bed again. It's well after midnight. Both his kiddos and he should be in bed by now, but he can't control everything about the arrangement. He didn't bring Barry into his home because he thought it would be a walk in the park; he did it because Barry had nowhere else to go and faced the next seven years in the foster care system.
A single father with more than enough on his hands as a full-time cop, he shouldn't have taken on the case. It was a permanent case. For Joe, it would have been dangerous to adopt a pet, and pets had much more finite lifespans. Bringing on a kid meant welcoming someone into his life for the rest of it – no takebacks, no exceptions.
Joe ached to tell everybody who asked him why, who told him to think it over, who tried to steer him towards letting the system handle it that he didn't know if he could handle this. He wasn't even sure if it was the right idea. It certainly hadn't felt like it those few first days, when Barry was silent and skittish and unhappy.
But holding onto the kid now, warm and quiet and human, so achingly human, he thinks, There was no other choice. If Henry and Nora Allen couldn't raise Barry, then Joe would simply have to. There was nobody else stepping forward to take on a traumatized eleven-year-old, and Joe at least knew something from the line of work, knew where he could find books and even email colleagues to ask for help.
He wasn't above asking for help, not with something this serious, this important.
"I wanna go home," Barry says in a thin voice.
Joe doesn't have to ask what he means; he knows. "I'm sorry," he says. Barry presses himself hard against Joe's side, like he's trying to hide in it, disappear in it. Joe squeezes his shoulders. "I'm sorry, Barry."
Eventually, Barry sniffs and tugs on his shirt. Joe stands, and Barry follows, and Barry takes his hand and holds onto it the entire walk back. It doesn't occur to him why at first, especially since Barry has been so standoffish, but the almost desperate way he holds on gives it away. He's afraid Joe will leave him, abandon him, left behind by his mom and pop, cold and alone on the street, and for as terrible as Barry must feel when he runs away, Joe can't imagine how much worse he must feel in those long minutes that it takes for Joe to find him, wondering if Joe is coming at all.
At their house, Joe finds Iris waiting on the couch, and her relief is palpable, and he thinks about how sad she would be if he didn't bring Barry home – if he had to explain to her that Barry was going away to a new family, forever, and he didn't know if they'd be able to meet again. It makes something tighten in his chest, makes him grateful for the hand in his, and Barry lets him go only once they're over the threshold. He's still shaking, and Joe gets them both upstairs and tucked into bed.
Iris went right to sleep, but Barry grabs his sleeve and holds onto it for a moment. "Want me to stay until you fall asleep?" Joe asks, catching on. Barry nods tiredly, letting him go and turning onto his side, hugging McSnurtle ("You should take him, he'll keep the nightmares away"). "Okay. I can stay." Sitting on the floor, Joe leans his back against the bed, listening to Barry's breathing slowly even out, not bothering to stand even once he's sure Barry is out.
Because as much as it scares him, as overwhelming as it is to bring another human being into the mix of his life, to know that if he messes up the stakes are high, there's a peacefulness, a rightness to it all as he sits beside Barry. Listening to the soft sound of his house, his wonderful little bungalow sheltering his family, he closes his eyes and exhales deeply, and somehow he dozes off right there, satisfied with his choices.
When he opens his eyes, there's a much older Barry snoring next to him, not loudly but enough to know at once he's not alone. He's sitting on the couch and Barry's lying next to him, head pillowed on Joe's chest, radiating warmth. He seems extra toasty in the winter, like his lightning has to compensate for it, and while Joe might grab a blanket on his own, he feels perfectly comfortable with Barry as his improvised blanket.
The house is quiet and dark – eighteen years since those quiet days and the wood still creaks softly, the door still keeps them shut in and safe from the world beyond. A world which aches to tear The Flash apart, to kill him no matter how many suits Cisco designs for him, to take him away from Joe. Arm around Barry's shoulders, Joe feels the same swelling tenderness rise in his chest, a gratitude so profound it is almost anguish.
I almost didn't save you, he thinks, and it's extraordinary, now. Because no matter how many fights they had or how exasperated or tired or furious Joe was, it never mattered. He wouldn't have traded in Barry for his own life. He would happily have given his life for Barry's, if need be.
Sitting alongside him, amazed that this same kid is just days away from marrying his daughter, Joe squeezes his shoulder and feels Barry stir, sniffing once before sitting up slowly. "Mm, you still make a nice pillow," he muses, brushing a hair through his hair. He looks even more childlike with it spiked up, and Joe half-expects Iris to come trampling downstairs with McSnurtle in hand, still an inch taller than Barry.
But the long, lanky kid next to him isn't eleven anymore, and Iris is still out with the girls having a nice dining experience, he suspects.
"Best bachelor party ever," Barry yawns, snuggling down next to him again. "Can we do it again tomorrow? We can watch Iris' baby videos."
"She was the cutest baby," Joe muses, warmed by the thought. "But you do realize she's in every video of you, right? There's a lot of crossover."
Barry sighs. It's one of the happiest sounds Joe has ever heard. "I love her so much," he says, hugging Joe. "I can't wait to marry her."
Joe has to kiss the top of his head or he'll make an emotional statement, start crying, and then they'll both be teary when Iris comes back. "Here, chubby Ewok," he says, fishing for the remote and rewinding the tape. It's three hours long – Cisco really takes Bachelor Party Collage Videos serious. "Round two."
Humming – purring, really; that's what happens when you hum at superspeed, a nice little rumble – Barry asks sleepily, "Can we get more steak?"
"Shush," Joe says, and Barry shushes, huffing softly in amusement as they watch little baby Barry smile at somebody off camera.
Sometime later, Iris opens the door. Before Joe even opens his eyes, Barry is up, zipping over and hugging her with big warm speedster affection that Joe can feel from here. He rubs his eyes before looking over at them, a smile curling his lips at the sight. Cecile steps around them, and Barry apologizes for being in the way but Cecile just squeezes his shoulder fondly, and Joe loves that his family is Cecile's family, that it is just that simple, and he stands to greet her.
The kids stick around long enough to hug and thank them for financing the parties – "You really didn't have to," Barry says, but Iris tucks her arm through his and tugs lightly and he gives up on being polite to Flash off with her – before leaving them be in their big, warm bungalow.
"I love our kids," Joe tells Cecile, who smiles and leans up to kiss him.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah," Joe agrees, resting a hand on her waist, the curve on her belly still too subtle to notice. "I can't believe we're having another."
"I know." Cecile steps into his embrace, and they sway on the floor together for a moment, reveling. "A beautiful baby," she muses.
"We'll have to put time limits on the kids, or they're never gonna let us see it," Joe warns. "Iris has already blocked off babysitting duties for the next three years."
"Assuming they don't start their own family first," Cecile reminds a little jauntily.
Joe thinks about it – pictures Barry and Iris with kids, at least two, one for each to hold – and smiles. He can see Wally laughing, too, with a little one on his shoulders, and almost aches for the day when it's real, and he can simply ask to hold their kids. His kid's kids. It's a wild, heartwarming thought.
I raised them right, he thinks, and knows it's true.
"Yeah," he says aloud, and Cecile smiles and rests a hand over his on her hip, affection radiating from her.
"I have the perfect family," he tells her, and she steps into his arms, her tears against his shoulder. "The perfect family."
And someday he will hold Barry and Iris' kids, one in the crook of each arm, sitting on the couch and silently fretting that he will drop them but knowing in his heart he'd take a bullet first, while Cecile and Barry cook dinner and Iris sits on the floor in front of him, smiling radiantly. "They're so quiet," Joe muses, as the twins sleep, tears threatening to spill over. "And beautiful."
"I know," Iris says, hands behind her. She glances over when she hears a crash in the kitchen, assured by two voices that it's fine, before looking back at him, and adding, "I thought it would be scarier. Knowing they depend on me. But it's not." Closing her eyes for a moment, she says simply, "It's exhausting, but it's perfect."
Stepping around the corner in the Star Wars' apron Cisco got him for Christmas, Barry holds Joe's own little one in one arm, bouncing him lightly, and asks, "So, we doing four batches of Christmas cookies or three?"
"Six," Joe and Iris say, and Barry grins even as Joe's kiddo tries to park a toy car in his mouth.
"You got it," he says, bouncing back into the kitchen. "Hear that, Cecile?"
"This is why we got the double-oven," Cecile replies around the corner, and Joe smiles to himself. "Wally says he should be here soon. Got caught up."
Joe smiles, and holds the sleeping twins in his arms, and loves his perfect, growing family.