Summary: Barry can occasionally get away with skipping lunch as long as he remembers to keep his speedster power bar stash well stocked. Unfortunately, things have been a little busy lately and when Barry works through lunch for the fourth day this week, well...
His power bar stash is looking a little empty today.
Notes: Season 3 AU that ignores Flashpoint/Savitar
Just Your Average (Medical) Emergency
Barry was, usually, good about not skipping lunch. If only because he lived in fear of Caitlin's lectures about eating well and that 'I'm your mom-friend and very disappointed in you' stare that came with it.
Getting yelled at, Barry could live with. But causing quiet disappointment was worse. (Everyone knew that was worse, right?)
But Barry also knew that he had a tendency to hyperfocus on difficult cases, especially now that he couldn't medicate his ADHD anymore. So while he set reminders to eat on his phone, Barry also kept a stash of power bars at his desk for days when his 'five more minutes' accidentally turned into one or two (or three) hours later.
It was a fairly decent system. Joe had only needed to come through with his own stash of backup speedster power bars twice in as many years. Barry was very proud of himself for that.
Unfortunately, this week was not a good week for either work or Barry's ADHD. He's slightly later than usual on arriving to work which has gotten him extra powerful glares from Julian, never mind that Barry's stayed far later than necessary every day. He's attached to a missing kid case that the Flash has yet to find, though he's enlisted Hartley's help in that search.
Eventually Hartley's little army of rats will find her. Barry hopes. But meanwhile he's tearing into every piece of evidence he can find to report back to both the detectives on the case as well as to Hartley and his rats.
And while that's going on, Barry's also been assigned two robberies and a murder. And he's not the only one swamped with too many crime scenes. Something about Halloween is just... it drives the crime rate up every year. This year just happens to be worse than normal.
So Barry misses lunch on Monday, digs into his stash of power bars, and vows to remember lunch on Tuesday. Only that doesn't happen, so his power bar stash dips a little lower. Wednesday is no better and Barry's so distracted by finally getting the call from Hartley that he's found the missing girl that Barry doesn't notice that he snags the last power bar before running out on a fifteen minute break.
(Fifteen minutes are all he needs to run in and grab the scared little girl. He drops her off with the officers who've been searching for her and returns to the SCPD with Jitters coffee and snacks to get him through the rest of the afternoon just fine.)
Thursday doesn't break what's now turning into a streak of bad eating behavior. But Barry doesn't realize just how bad his week has been until he's reaching for a power bar and finds nothing but air and the drawer bottom.
Right, okay, so he needs to bring more from STAR Labs tomorrow. But first, time to go - sheepishly - visit Joe's desk for the back up power bars.
Barry stood up and almost immediately dropped dizzily back into his chair. The room is spinning and Barry buries his face in his hands, taking shaky, shallow breaths.
"Allen... you okay over there?" Julian asks, sounding oddly concerned.
"Yeah. Just... a little dizzy. Stood up too fast." Barry doesn't even want to think about the stairs right now. Surely there's something closer at hand to nom on.
Only his brain feels sluggish.
He just needed to very carefully go down the stairs and into the bullpen to Joe's desk. It'll be fine.
Standing up very slowly this time, everything seemed fine. So Barry took a step and...
And he was on the floor with Julian hovering over him. "Shit, Allen. Are you alright? How many fingers am I holding up?"
Barry's field of vision swam for a bit and then steadied. Mostly. He still felt dizzy but was perfectly happy to stay sitting on the floor. Then he frowned at the hand Julian was holding up. "Three. And I'm assuming that's 'cause two would've been rude?"
Julian snorted in amusement, then shook his head lightly. "What just happened? Do you need to visit the hospital?"
"No, no, that's... that'd be a waste of time and money. I just forgot to eat lunch and I'm out of power bars. But, uh, Joe keeps a back up stash for exactly this situation. I'm hypoglycemic." Barry sighed and leaned his head back, since Julian had apparently propped him up against his desk. "It's been two years; you'd think I'd be doing a better job of staying on top of this by now..."
"Where does Detective West keep the power bars? In case he's not there once I reach his desk?" Julian sounded slightly less worried now, since Barry was being calm about this. But he was still pretty clearly freaked out.
"Bottom right drawer of his desk," Barry replied. As Julian stood back up, he added, "thank you."
"No problem. Just... stay there, alright? I'll be right back."
Barry did indeed stay right there, though he brought his knees up so that he could lean his forehead against them. This was a little embarrassing but it could have been worse. He was so getting a lecture from Caitlin later, though.
"I got some weird looks rifling through Detective West's desk, but once the power bars came out apparently no one cared anymore," Julian said, walking back into the lab and crouching down beside Barry again. "Here."
Gratefully, Barry accepted the power bar Julian handed him and tore the wrapper open. He couldn't eat it at super speeds, but it still disappeared fast enough. Almost instantaneously, Barry started feeling better as the dizzy feeling faded entirely. "Thanks, Julian," he repeated.
"I guess this explains why you have permission to keep food at your desk in the lab," Julian replied. "I admit, I've been curious. But I did figure it was a medical condition and not my business, so..."
"It's not exactly a secret, but I don't really go around advertising it either." Barry hesitated and then figured, why not. He'd come up with a cover story for obfuscating what kind of meta he was exactly for this kind of situation. "When the STAR Labs accelerator exploded, I was trying to get the leaky skylight to seal better. Lightning hit the skylight at exactly the wrong time and I wake up nine months later to find out that I didn't suffer any of the normal complications for a coma, but I did now practically have the metabolism of a hummingbird. I've got enhanced healing, which is probably the only reason I woke up at all. But it's not a 'concentrate and it works' kind of ability. It's just always on. So if I work through lunch..."
"You're pretty much guaranteed a drop in glucose levels," Julian filled in.
"Yeah. But that was around the same time that a lot of other meta humans started popping out of the woodwork and none of them were getting good reputations at the time. Even the Flash." Barry wadded up the wrapper and tossed it into his trash can. "It's not as bad now as it was last year, despite that mess with Zoom and the riots, since the Flash has a better reputation now and more non-criminal metas have started showing up. And that one guy successfully sued for discrimination when he got fired for fluorescing blue in the dark. But a lot of people still hate metas for no reason other than that we're different. So I just... don't usually talk about it."
A vaguely guilty look flickered across Julian's face.
Carefully, Barry started standing up.
"Allen, wait..." Julian scrambled to his feet, clearly intending to stabilize Barry if he got dizzy again.
"I'm fine now, really," Barry told him. "I should probably get something else to snack on too, but I recover pretty quickly once I've had something to eat."
"Still, just... take it easy." Julian hesitated, then said, "I missed lunch too. How about we take a... very late lunch break?"
Barry smiled. "Sure. Sounds good." If Julian wanted to hover and be sure that Barry didn't have another drop in glucose levels, well... it was an improvement from the vaguely hostile disapproval the man had been radiating for the last few weeks. Barry'd take the cease fire for as long as it lasted.
(Friday at lunch time, it's not just Barry's phone that chimes with a reminder. Julian's phone goes off and he won't let Barry 'five more minutes' himself into another two hours of work, much to Barry's amusement. They end up walking to a nearby Italian place and it's quite possible that lunch with Julian is going to be a regular thing on busy days now. Which... actually isn't that bad of a prospect.)
