Surely I'm not the only one who thinks that Harrison Wells and Tess Morgan from Earth 1, circa Tricksters, are the cutest thing on the face of any Earth. So I wrote a thing. One-shot. If I did my job right, overwhelmingly fluffy and adorable. Enjoy.

Start at the end.

There's a car flipped upside down on an abandoned country road.

There's a man in a solid black pair of boots walking around it. Around and around.

There's a strip of spikes that is the reason for the wreck.

There's a man and a woman inside the car.

One is alive. For now.

The other is dead.

This is the story of Harrison Wells. This is how it ends. On this country road. With this black-booted man.

Endings are always sad.

So let us return to a beginning.

Harrison Wells is a man of science. He's always loved discovering the way the universe works. He is a man of progress and a man of dreams.

The romance was an accident. He never meant to fall in love. There was no time for that in his plans. He was going to build this laboratory, hopefully a particle accelerator, maybe someday a time machine.

It was at a conference when he first ran into Tess Morgan. She was sitting in the audience next to Stephen Hawking.

It was a prestigious conference, at the MGG Science Center, and Harrison had never before seen or even heard of this woman. Tess Morgan was her name. She was beautiful. That was his first thought upon seeing her.

This was followed very shortly by his second thought, which came immediately and glowingly when he heard her speak.

"If you redo the calculations on the voltron specs, and make sure that it has enough energy to power the Tesla device, then maybe that'll overcome the issue with the tachyon density."

His second thought was that she was brilliant.

Somehow, he mysteriously ended up next to her in the lobby after the speech, given by Dr. Tyson. He happened to be involved in conversation with the person next to him, a Tina McGee from Central City.

"You know, I think the possibilities that the future holds are endless. I actually am planning to build a particle accelerator. Imagine what we could learn about the universe with that kind of technology!"

Though he initially started the conversation to get the girl interested in him, he genuinely forgot, caught up in how fascinating the science was.

Sometimes it was difficult for Harrison Wells to focus on anything but science.

But then she joined the conversation.

"You're going to build a particle accelerator?" She smiled winningly. "The cost of that will be astronomical. If you can get the government to fund it, however, then you might even be able to build it before the end of the next decade."

"Well, there's a lot of work that will have to be done," Harrison said. He held out his hand to her. "I'm Harrison Wells, by the way."

"Tess Morgan."

They became friends. All three of them, really, though Harrison was always closer with Tess than with Tina. It was the one thing he could never account for, in any of his predictions of the future—love was never in his plans.

But, regardless, he and Tess grew close.

Very close.

Finally, one night, when they were working on a way to potentially create a miniature, contained black hole, Tess said, "Are you ever going to ask me out, Harrison?"

Harrison glanced up at her and blinked. "Um…"

She smiled at him.

He couldn't resist returning it. "Okay." He'd never really asked anyone out before—he didn't even attend his high school prom. So he went over-the-top, trying to hide his nerves. He got down on one knee, grabbed one of the rubber rings they were using to bind the separate components together, and asked, "Tess Morgan, will you go to dinner with me?"

She laughed—Tess had a beautiful laugh—and took the ring, sliding it on to her finger. "Of course."

"Okay. Okay, good." Harrison realized, of course, that he was a total cliché. But with Tess, it didn't seem to matter.

He only worried about what Tina might think. After all, she had been close to both of them, and alienating her was the last thing he wanted. She had been a good friend these past eighteen months, and he wanted to keep that relationship.

So he called her, and she let him fumble all the way through an explanation before finally taking mercy on him.

"…And, um, well, I'm going to dinner with Tess, and…"

"Harrison, I told Tess to ask you out."

Oh.

"You did?"

"Yes. It's obvious that the two of you are perfect for each other. I've known it ever since the convention." She laughed. "Harrison, with all of your scientific knowledge, it's a miracle that you're so bad at relationships."

He smiled. "Thanks, Tina."

"Of course. I expect a wedding invitation within the year."

The wedding invitations only took six months to arrive.

But first, their date.

Harrison got a reservation at Russo's, a very upscale Italian restaurant in the heart of Starling. He was terrified. He wore a nice suit and slightly rumpled tie.

When Tess walked in, his heart about stopped.

She was wearing a stunning blue strapless dress, and her hair was out of its usual pragmatic ponytail. Harrison couldn't remember ever seeing her hair down before.

He rose to greet her, bumping against the table and making the wineglasses and silverware jingle.

"Hi," he managed. "You look amazing."

Tess looked away for a moment and laughed, biting her lip. She seemed nervous too. "I could say the same about you," she managed after a moment.

Harrison quickly shook his head as they sat down. "I don't know that you quite get it. You outshine the stars, Tess Morgan."

She smiled, and her eyes sparkled, and Harrison completely lost the ability to talk for a moment.

How was it that he always knew what to say when they were working on a project, and yet when it came to Tess he couldn't think of the words?

The waiter hurried over, saving both Harrison and Tess from having to continue the conversation. Neither seemed to feel quite up to the task.

When the waiter left, there was a long moment of silence that Harrison finally broke.

"So, Tess, what's your opinion on time travel?"

She laughed outright. Harrison considered that a success, even if she turned out to be laughing at him.

"That's not something a girl is usually asked on a first date," she said.

Harrison shrugged and looked down, a little abashed. "I've never really been on a first date before. What does one usually ask of a girl?"

Tess thought about it. "Typically, you would start with 'What do you like to do for fun?' and 'What sort of music do you like?'"

"Hmm. Well, let me submit a hypothesis: you like to design microprocessors and nanotechnology, and in your spare time you volunteer at an animal shelter. You love country music, however, which is, sadly, your only flaw."

Tess frowned, her expression so intense that Harrison was instantly worried. "Harrison, you have never been so wrong about anything." She sounded serious.

"What… did I say?" He felt like he was back in high school again, terrified of saying the wrong thing. She was never going to want to talk to him again, he would never find true love, everything would be a failure…

She smirked. "Country music is amazing."

He let out a laugh, tension gone. How could she be so perfect?

"Well, I'm sorry, Miss Morgan, but on that matter you, in fact, are the wrong one."

The night went beautifully.

At the end of it, Harrison walked her to her front door. Again, he berated himself for being such a cliché, but he couldn't seem to stop when it came to Tess. She didn't seem immune to it, either, as she lingered at the door.

"Well, good night," he said. He'd planned—but his hands were shaking and he didn't think he could handle—

"Oh, Harrison Wells, come here." Tess pulled him to her and pressed her lips to his.

Harrison Wells always liked data. Numbers and graphs and charts, all neatly aligned and organized.

He wasn't sure how to either quantify or qualify this new development between him and Tess. There weren't really ways to measure what he felt.

But despite the clear lack of quantifiable data, he figured he could probably label the evening a complete success.

They advanced quickly through the stages of their relationship. They upgraded from 'just dating' to 'boyfriend and girlfriend' rapidly, and then, after a few months, when Harrison finally got over the unreasonable terror he felt whenever he thought about it, 'fiancés.'

Harrison went to Tina when he first started considering a proposal. She laughed and told him not to be silly.

"I can't help you find a ring," she told him. "You'll locate the perfect one by yourself, I know it."

Harrison went home and paced. All night.

He and Tess had only been together for four months. They'd known each other for over a year, of course, but what if she thought it was too soon? He couldn't imagine what he would do if she said no.

And he still couldn't figure out what sort of ring to get her.

He called Tina the moment it was late enough that it was socially acceptable to do so. She answered sleepily.

"It's not even eight, Harrison."

"I know, I know, but do you think she'll say yes?"

"Harrison, I have never seen two people so in love. She'd move to Antarctica if you asked her to."

"She'd move to Antarctica anyway," Harrison said, still pacing—as much as was possible with the phone cord. He twirled it around his finger and absentmindedly considered a design for a cordless phone. "She'd love the chance to test out some of her space insulation designs in a similar climate."

Tina yawned. "See, you know her, Harrison. Don't wait for her to prompt you to propose."

"Okay, okay." Harrison hung up, sketched out a primary idea for the cordless phone idea, and then went back to pacing.

He didn't leave the house all day.

Finally, at nine at night, he went to the jeweler's with a picture of what he wanted, drawn and redrawn until every line was exactly where he envisioned it. The jeweler promised to have it ready in a week.

Thus followed the most difficult week of Harrison's life.

He'd never kept anything from Tess. He was a terrible liar. So having this secret swirling inside him was impossible. Especially because he couldn't tell whether she knew about it or not. She seemed to be smiling an awful lot at him, and laughing whenever he lost track of what he was saying, which was often, but did she do that anyway?

They were in watching a movie at his place one night, some sci-fi film that she said he absolutely had to see. Harrison normally would have loved analyzing the science behind everything—that was one of their favorite things to do: watch sci-fi and laugh at the 'sci' part of the label—but he was distracted by the romantic subplot that night.

The lead characters were, obviously, destined to be together by the Gods of Hollywood. Harrison broke down every moment between them, trying to figure out what made the girl say yes when the guy proposed.

"You all right, Harrison?" Tess asked as the credits rolled. "I would think you'd bring up the whole 'that's not how genetics work' spiel immediately." Her eyes sparkled in the dim light from the scrolling words. "What do you think?"

Harrison couldn't figure it out. "No, I'm sure that splicing a human brainstem into a monkey would definitely result in a hyperintelligent, telepathic ape."

Tess laughed, and then sobered. "Really, Harry, are you okay?"

"Absolutely." Harrison leaned across the couch to kiss her. "Of course, I could always be better…"

"Well, Mr. Wells, I suppose I might be able to help you with that."

"Hello."

Okay. Maybe parts of the week were very statistically significant outliers.

Two days later, the jeweler called, and Harrison picked up the ring.

"It's perfect."

He'd come up with a plan. It was, admittedly, foolishly romantic, and Tess would laugh at him.

Tess was always laughing at him.

Not that he minded.

She had a beautiful laugh.

April 10th, 1999. A beautiful Saturday night in Starling City. Harrison took Tess to dinner at Russo's, a fairly usual date for the two of them. The food was always delicious.

That night, the food's quality was entirely wasted on Harrison Wells.

He probably talked to Tess. He genuinely couldn't remember afterwards. The ring was all he could think about. Suddenly his brilliant custom idea didn't seem all that brilliant.

Finally, finally, dinner was over, and they left the restaurant. Tess was wearing a gorgeous red dress that Harrison couldn't even find the words to compliment it; how one person could be such a genius with both science and fashion was beyond him.

Much that Tess did was beyond him.

His hands were shaking. Why would she ever say yes to someone like him? She deserved so much better.

"Let's not go home yet," he blurted, and suddenly it was started and he couldn't go back now.

Being scientifically minded, Harrison Wells had never really believed in a higher power, but now he offered up prayers to every god he could think of.

"Oh? Where are we going?" Tess pushed her hair behind her ear and raised her eyebrows at him.

He fell more in love with her every moment.

Harrison shrugged slightly. "I don't know. Let's take a walk." He took her hand, and she smiled at him, and so they went.

And, coincidentally, somehow, they ended up wandering right down a familiar street.

The doors are usually locked, but Harrison Wells is not above bribes.

So the MGG Science Center just so happened to be open when they just so happened to walk by.

"This was where we met," Harrison said. He tried the door, and, surprise, found it unlocked.

"Are you breaking and entering, Harrison Wells?" Tess asked, acting scandalized. At least, he hoped it was an act.

"Not breaking. Just entering." He held the door. "After you."

"Ah, so you're making me do the illegal trespassing first." Tess entered anyway.

Harrison followed her. The MGGSC was a little creepier than he anticipated with the only lighting provided by the emergency fluorescents lighting the halls.

"Nice place to take a girl, Harrison," Tess said.

"Tess, I…" Why are his hands still shaking? "When I first saw you, here, at that convention, I thought you were the most beautiful and most brilliant woman I had ever seen. The first time you smiled at me, you changed my whole world." She's realized by now, she has to have realized, but she says nothing, she just watches him, half a smile on her face, and her eyes still sparkle. "Tess—Tess, I know it hasn't been that long since we've known each other, but there are a billion billion galaxies out there, each one with a billion billion stars, and yet every moment in the history of the universe seems to be designed just to bring me to you." He fumbled for the ring, palms sweating, nearly tripped down to one knee. "Tess Morgan, will you marry me?"

She knelt too and took his hands in hers, the ring the center of their tangled fingers, and she whispered, "Harrison Wells, it would be an honor."

And suddenly his hands weren't shaking at all as he took the ring and slid it on her finger.

Tess examined it, fascinated. "You got me a ring in binary? What does it say?"

He clasped her hands again and tapped out the binary rhythm against the back of her hand. 01101100 01101111 01110110 01100101. "It says love."

"Harrison Wells, you have to be careful when you give a girl something like that," Tess whispered. "You might just get kissed."

"I think I can live with that," he murmured.

And there, in the Merlyn Global Group Science Center, on their knees, in near-darkness, Tess Morgan and Harrison Wells kissed.

When they all met for work the following day, Tina wasted no time in noticing the ring.

"So he finally asked you?"

Harrison buried his face in his hands. "Please, Tina, I thought you cared about me."

Tess looked back and forth between them, the beginnings of a laugh on her face. "Did he do the Harrison thing again?"

"I'm sorry, what precisely is the 'Harrison thing'?" the eponymous scientist questioned, looking up from his hands.

Tina nodded sagely at Tess. "He did the Harrison thing again."

Harrison waited for one of the two to acknowledge his question.

They let him wait a moment longer, then finally Tess took pity.

"Tina's told me about the phone calls."

He dropped his head back in his hands. "Oh, no, you didn't, Tina. Tess, I think I need to take the ring back, I'm going to die of embarrassment and leave you a widow before we're even married."

"You used to call me before every single date the two of you went on," Tina said. "Harrison, I respect you as a genius and a scientist, but you really have no confidence when it comes to women."

"So you knew he was going to propose?" Tess asked.

"Please, Tina, if you ever cared about me at all…"

"I'm sorry, Harrison, but I have a duty as the maid of honor—you have to let me be your maid of honor, Tess—"

"Of course you are," Tess said.

"—I have a duty to tell her about your proposal meltdown."

"Meltdown? That's how you describe a nuclear catastrophe, and this was not on the same level as a nuclear meltdown."

"Again, Harrison, I respect you, but this absolutely was a meltdown. Tess, he asked me to help him find a ring, and I told him he had to do it himself. Then he calls me the next morning at seven a.m.—"

"It was more like seven thirty," Harrison input moodily.

"I don't think he slept at all. He asked me if he thought you would say yes, as though you would ever say anything else."

Harrison sighed heavily. "I trusted you, Tina."

Maybe, he admitted to himself, he did have a Harrison thing. But he stood by the misuse of the word meltdown.

His wedding to Tess Morgan is not the reason the name Harrison Wells appears in history books.

That didn't make it any less the best day of his life.

And the honeymoon, well, the honeymoon was exceptional.

The laboratory had been both of their dreams for so long. They talked about it all the time—what it would look like, what it would be, over the year that they were married.

For the first eleven months, it was always in passing, just a quick suggestion from one to the other, at odd times.

Tess would be taking a bath and Harrison would knock on the bathroom door. "Tess, we should build it around a particle accelerator."

The next day, she would roll over in bed and whisper, "It needs a central mainframe of computers, the most powerful ones in the world."

A month might pass, and then, from Harrison to Tess, "We have to come up with an acronym for the name."

Two weeks later, from Tess to Harrison, "In Central City."

Most couples dreamt about having kids.

Harrison and Tess Wells dreamt about their laboratory.

They'd been married just over eleven months when Harrison decided to get serious about the planning. It was a vacation in Coast City, and they sat on the beach, and Harrison sketched it out, and he just talked.

"So we go to Central and get the permits figured out. And then we build right downtown in the heart of the city. We become the heart of the nation. We change the way you think about the sciences, and then… what?"

"You are truly amazing, Harrison."

He went on as though he hadn't heard her. "And we need a name, of course. I'm thinking… the Technological Engineering Scientific Studies Laboratories." He paused and finally looked away from his sketch. "T.E.S.S. Labs, for short."

She smiles, and the way the light reflects off her eyes is as stunning as the day he met her.

"That's very sweet. But… how about the Science and Technology Advanced Research Laboratories? S.T.A.R. Labs, for short."

He looked at her, a question on his lips.

"Because, in the vast night sky, you, Harrison Wells, are the only star I see."

Harrison threw the sketches aside. "That's gonna get you kissed."

The mystery of the multiverse: it is possible that in nine hundred ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine universes, a young married couple will achieve everything they've ever dreamed of and live long and fulfilled lives.

Yet that still leaves a one-in-a-million chance that, for that same couple, something will go terribly, terribly wrong.

And Harrison Wells happened to live in that one singular nuclear meltdown of a universe.

Tess yawned on the way back to Starling. She had been doing that a lot lately—sleeping oddly, tired and hungry all the time. Harrison occasionally allowed himself to hope for what it could mean.

"You all right?" he asked.

"Sorry, I am so tired. I think I'm just gonna put on my pajamas, go straight to bed when we get home."

"Really?"

"No. Definitely not wearing pajamas."

Harrison looked away from the road, at his beautiful wife. "…Hello."

The universes split.

In most, Tess Wells doesn't wear pajamas that night.

In this, she never gets the chance.

Harrison didn't see the spike strip. All he knew was that suddenly his world was upside down, and his wife—

Tess wasn't responding to him.

"No, no, no. Tess…"

There's a car flipped upside down on an abandoned country road.

There's a man in a solid black pair of boots walking around it. Around and around.

"Please," Harrison Wells calls to the man in the boots. "Call someone—please, help me! My wife is…"

He cannot finish the sentence.

When finally he drags himself out of the car, the black boots stop near him.

"This woman has been dead for centuries."

Tess.

It's been only minutes.

But this man might as well be right.

Because now he understands time travel—at least, one version of it.

Every moment without her is an eternity.

Every second that she remains dead is another epoch.

Every breath he takes that she cannot is enough time to start a universe from scratch, evolve it until intelligent life forms, and destroy it, all twice over, an infinity of time tangled into every heartbeat, none of this forever worth anything without her.

So, yes, five minutes have passed.

And Tess has been dead for centuries.

He doesn't fight. He can't fight. Because a lifetime's worth of research and science and technology can mean nothing without his wife by his side.

Harrison Wells dies.

But, in reality, he died when Tess did.

Centuries ago.