Summary: Barry's stalling, but Harrison can be patient. For a while, anyway.
Author's Note: The last two chapters are likely to be the angstiest ones I do for this series. I think. I'm like ninety percent sure. Eighty. You know what? A solid seventy five. Yeah, we'll go with that.
You're in pretty good shape for the shape you are in.
-Past (Two Months After the Tidal Wave)-
Barry wasn't sure what he expected Harrison to do when he arrived at his house and he didn't want to find out.
He worked a double shift, blaming it on backed up paperwork. He met with Captain Singh and spent fifteen minutes assuring him that he was okay to work and getting his appointment set for his evaluation and an appointment for the mandatory grief counseling. He wouldn't have to start until next week, so he had until then to get himself together.
Several detectives stopped by to make sure he was holding up okay and he did his best to smile through it. He'd never had a lot of friends in the department, not that they'd disliked him, but he'd been seen as a little strange and a lot obsessed with proving his father's innocence. It had never bothered Barry before. He'd gotten used to it long before coming to the CCPD. Now it seemed the tidal wave had washed all that away and everyone in the precinct – or what was left of everyone – was determined to welcome him back.
He hated it. They meant well, but every time someone asked how he was doing, he found himself thinking about what that person had lost – Detective Carter's wife and daughter, Officer Grant's mother. There wasn't anyone in the department that hadn't lost someone or something important to them. Worse, was the end of the day when he thought about the people who hadn't stopped by – people who had always been nice to him, even if only because he was Joe's son – and remembered that they were among the dead and missing.
He'd known, logically, that half the department was gone, but the rescue and clean up efforts in the first month had made it difficult for him to get a good grasp of what that really meant. They were all out in the city, different areas, different shifts on an around the clock schedule. It had been so much easier to put it in the back of his mind and keep moving.
Now they were back in the station, empty desks everywhere, or new faces sitting where someone else was supposed to be and it was… too much, he tried not to look, tried not to do the math or put names to the growing list of people he had failed. It didn't work.
And the new guy, CSI Jones? Barry thought maybe he might have likes Jones in another life, one that sucked maybe a little less, because Jones was nice. Jones tried so hard. In just the first day, he brought Barry the left over donuts when he forgot to eat lunch, offered to get him a coffee, and asked his opinion on a few things he'd been struggling with. He was older than Barry, but he didn't treat Barry with anything other than respect.
It would have been great, except all Barry really wanted was to be left alone and between Jones and the other officers, he felt suffocated. Jones finally left at six, which was a relief, but another shift started and a new wave of well wishers made their way up to the forensic lab. At least they were only coming one at a time, whether it was by design or coincidence.
Barry considered leaving after the fourth one popped up and asked him how it was going, but leaving meant going home and he wasn't ready for that. He wasn't ready to give Harrison that yet, despite what he'd said. He would, eventually, because he couldn't go back to S.T.A.R. Labs again. Too many memories, too much regret. Everywhere he looked, he could see Cisco and Caitlin, Iris and Joe, milling around, talking and laughing and working, but they weren't really there and they never would be again.
Nothing was ever going to be like it was.
He poured himself into work, fell asleep at his desk at around three and woke up to light coming in at seven. His whole body hurt, his head was fuzzy, his stomach ached. It took him a few minutes to get up, stretch, and then he went to the bathroom to wash his face and rinse out his mouth. There were a few surprised looks as he stumbled to the elevators and made his way to the street, attacking the vendors for as many breakfast tacos and pastries as he could without looking suspicious.
By the time the morning shift arrived, he was recharged and working. If anyone noticed he was wearing the same clothes, they didn't say anything, but it wasn't like he had a vast wardrobe, anyway. The dress code at the CCPD was the least of their priorities and Barry was good in jeans and a faded grey t-shirt. His S.T.A.R. Labs sweatshirt was hanging on the chair in the corner in case he got cold.
He didn't have much left in the way of clothes. There had been a few outfits he'd left at S.T.A.R. Labs, just in case. He'd have to look through Cisco's things. The pants wouldn't fit, but there were bound to be some t-shirts he could wear. He frowned to himself as he realized that meant going back to S.T.A.R. Labs and, actually, he'd be fine. If anyone complained about the smell, there had to be some febreeze or air freshener somewhere around the precinct.
Jones bothered him a little less, although that could be due to the fact that Barry could feel his patience thinning with every person that walked through the door. Or didn't. By noon, his head felt thick and his body was weighty. He was just about to take a break, maybe curl up under one of the tables in the back that wasn't visible from the door, when Eddie walked in, carrying with him the smell of fatty meats and greasy fries.
"Oh, my god, lunch. I forgot to eat lunch."
Eddie chuckled and sat down, handing Barry three bags while he opened his one. "I thought you might."
They ate in silence for ten minutes, Barry tearing through the five burgers Eddie had brought him and sucking the fruit flavored slushy greedily. He was going to need to put snacks in his office.
"So, uh, Barry, there's a rumor going around that you…" Eddie stopped to sip his own soda, probably gearing himself for whatever he wanted to say. "Some of the guys think you slept here last night."
Barry shrugged. "There's a lot to catch up on."
"Yeah, I guess." That didn't sound good. "Or maybe you don't want to go home?"
And just like that, he wasn't hungry anymore.
"Not to pry, it's just, you didn't look that happy about it yesterday."
Barry swallowed what was in his mouth and put the burger down. "Of course I'm not happy, Eddie. Are you?"
Eddie closed his eyes for a second and shook his head. "No."
"Right, and neither am I, but it's not about Harrison, okay? It's about… everything else and I didn't go home because there's a lot to do."
Eddie sat there for a long moment, silent and Barry was just about to start eating again when he spoke. "I notice you're calling him Harrison, now."
Shit. "Yeah, well." Except there wasn't anything he could say to that.
"Barry, are you… I mean, just so we're clear. Are you in a relationship with Dr. Wells?"
Barry cringed at the word relationship. It wasn't a relationship. What he had with Harrison was a sick, twisted thing that had curled up inside him and made him want to claw his own skin off, but it wasn't a relationship. Not that he could tell Eddie that.
"That, um… it's hard to explain."
"Not really. Barry, either you're sleeping with him, or you're not."
Well, that was straight forward enough. "Okay, yes, I'm… have. I have slept with him."
He chanced a look up and there it was, the look of disappointment. He thought he'd dodged that bullet with Joe's death. It was the one good thing to come out of all the death and carnage – he was never going to have to see that look on Joe's face when he found out Barry'd had sex with the man who killed his mother, both before and after he found out about it. Not that Eddie knew that, specifically, but apparently, there was enough to be disappointed in without all the minor details.
"Are you going to continue sleeping with him?"
"No. I don't know. It's hard to explain." Eddie started to talk, but Barry held his hand up. "I don't want to explain it. I don't need to. He… he's the only thing I have left, Eddie."
"He's not…"
"You should go. I have work to do." Barry took the bag of uneaten food and shoved it in his desk drawer for later.
Eddie hesitated for a moment, then picked up his own bag and stood. "Okay, but, if you want to talk, I'm here."
Barry didn't bother to respond, because he didn't have words. The idea of talking to Eddie, really talking to him, made Barry want to throw his burger up. What would he say?
Sorry your girlfriend is dead because I failed to protect her?
Sorry I left Iris on a beach alone when there was a tidal wave heading for the city?
Sorry I kissed her? Sorry she kissed me? Sorry I'm not sorry that happened, because it was the best feeling in a long time and I'd do it over again if I could? If I could, she'd be with me and not you, but you can't ever know that, because I won't ruin your memory of her.
No, he wasn't saying any of that, because Iris didn't deserve it and neither did Eddie. Eddie deserved to keep his memories of Iris as they were and Barry would keep his. There wasn't anything to talk about.
[]
Felicity had started calling again, then texting. She'd been doing that every few days. Barry ignored the calls and answered the texts with abbreviated responses.
How are you? -Good.
How's being back at work. -Fine.
Have you found a place? -I'm busy. Call you later.
He wouldn't, but it bought him a few days of silence. Not that he didn't want to talk to her, he did, he desperately did, but if Harrison was telling truth and he really had said all those things and couldn't remember… that was scary. He'd had no intentions of telling Harrison anything about Nanda Parbat, let alone Oliver. The idea that he'd unknowingly put them at risk like that, was terrifying.
If he kept brushing her off, eventually, she'd stop trying. Or, probably not. Felicity had the tenacity of a honey badger.
He chuckled to himself and tried not to imagine Oliver as the helpless snake, climbing a tree to escape the relentless pursuits of the honey badger in heels, Felicity Smoak. She'd catch him, too. Then he started picturing what Badger Felicity would do to Snake Oliver and nope. So not going there.
Somewhere in there, he ate the left over burger and fries. Eddie didn't venture back up to the lab, but other Detectives and Officers did. Jones did. Frequently. Barry was going to have to find a way to set some boundaries.
"Is that your fourth or fifth burger?"
A lot of boundaries. The Berlin Wall of boundaries. "I have a fast metabolism. Did you need something?"
"Right." A folder was set down next to him. "You forgot the initial the third page."
Barry flipped open the folder and scrawled his initial over the blank line at the bottom, then slid it back over. "That it?"
"Yeah, it's almost five."
Barry nodded his understanding and Jones hesitated, but finally left. He should leave, too, go to Harrison's, try and get some sleep, except the longer he sat there, the less he felt like leaving.
He raided to vending machine, ate all the chocolate cookies, animal crackers, and Funions, poured himself into his work, consciously choosing not to use his speed, because if he finished everything, he wouldn't have an excuse to stay. Sometime around four, he put his head down and lifted it again at eight, when Jones came in and woke him up.
Fumbled through apologies, he dodged Jones questions and went to take a shower in the locker room. There wasn't anything he could do about his clothes, but he snuck deodorant from a random locker, trying really hard not to think about how gross that actually was.
Being later in the morning, it was a little harder to stock up from street vendors. They only had so much stock and there were enough people around that he got a few weird looks ordering eight breakfast tacos.
His phone buzzed on the way up the steps, just once and he waited until he was safely tucked away in his lab to check the message. Harrison.
He set it down, tried to ignore it, but couldn't stop himself from looking after the first taco was finished.
I'll assume you aren't dead as I haven't received notice from the department of your unfortunate demise.
Barry rolled his eyes and had started to set the phone back down when it buzzed again.
Are you coming home tonight? He typed no, stopped himself and erased it, replacing it with the much more ambiguous: I don't know.
Halfway through his third taco, he got his response. People will get suspicious.
It wasn't a threat. Not really, but it still felt like one. He sent back: I'll think about it.
Harrison didn't reply. That was good. That's what Barry wanted, to be left alone. So why wasn't he happy about it? Why did it suddenly feel like something was missing?
[]
By the end of his third day back, he had a pretty good grasp on which officers had made it through the disaster and which ones… hadn't. Some of the detectives who came by had given him specific names – people who died, people who left the city, people who left the force entirely. He considered asking after the ones he didn't know about, but it didn't matter, really. If they were dead, they were dead; if they'd sustained a permanent disability as a result of injuries and been forced to quit, that was almost as bad; if they'd lost everything and simply couldn't continue working there, that was worse.
He tried to focus on his work instead, but even that was becoming difficult. The clock was ticking closer to ten and he kept losing focus. He wasn't tired, that wasn't it, but his head felt light and the words and numbers kept blurring. Getting up and moving around the room helped some. Or not really, but it was better than sitting at the desk, waiting to see if he was going to faint.
Oh. He'd forgotten to eat lunch again. That was a problem. The street vendors had closed down by now, he'd have to run if he wanted to eat and he needed calories if he wanted to run. There was still food in the vending machine downstairs. He could probably eat enough to make a trip to the nearest open Big Belly Burger, except he wasn't sure he had anymore change.
He'd just started digging through a rarely used drawer when Eddie came in holding a plastic bag and the smell was… it was heavenly. "Please say those are for me?"
Eddie held the bag out and Barry didn't hesitate to grab it, pulling out the first thing he touched. Wraps, looked like six of them and they smelled divine.
He bit into it and sat down heavily in his chair, sighing happily. It was cold, some kind of Philly cheese steak, but it was the best thing he'd had in days. "This is so good. Thank you."
"You're welcome." Eddie smiled hesitantly, not moving from the doorway. "Look, I'm sorry about the other day. We're all coping with this the best way we can and if Harrison Wells helps you cope, then… I get it. It's disturbing, but I get it."
Barry grinned through the mouth full and shoved another fourth of the wrap in his mouth while Eddie looked outside to make sure the hallway was clear. "I'm just worried about you. I mean, you may be the Flash, but you still need sleep. You're still human."
Swallowing, Barry held up a finger. "Meta-human and I don't actually need as much sleep as I used to, not as long as I eat. Except… except I forgot to eat. I forgot, because I'm busy. I'm busy because Jones is… he's unorganized."
Eddie's cautious smile turned into a concerned frown. "I'm sorry, what?"
"No, because Jones needs a better filing system. I've been wading through this crap for three days, Eddie." He held up three fingers, just in case it wasn't clear. "Three days and I'm not even halfway through it. I'm like a quarter in and I'd do it faster, but people keep coming up to check on me and I don't want to risk them seeing anything. Do you want to see something?"
Eddie looked out the door again, into the empty hallway and then shrugged. "Uh, sure?"
Barry quickly finished the wrap he'd starts and grabbed a vial of blood that had been sitting next to the centrifuge, waiting for its turn. "Watch this."
He spun his hand at super speed, separating the blood in seconds. "See?"
Eddie quickly pulled the door to the lab shut. "Barry, you can't do that here."
"Whatever. S'cool, though, right?" He set the blood down and went back to the wraps.
"That… isn't the point. You have to be more careful. What if someone saw?" Barry rolled his eyes and kept eating. Eddie was being paranoid. No one was there. It was late. "Barry, are you feeling okay?"
He shrugged again, happily eating. Eddie paused, then locked the door to the lab and came over to Barry, laying a hand on his forehead. Barry grinned as he realized what Eddie was thinking. "I'm not sick. I don't get sick. Perks of being the Flash. I heal super fast, too. Wanna see?"
He started to reach for a pen, but Eddie stopped his hand. "No, no I don't need to see that, Barry, I trust you. Is there… where's your phone?"
Barry pulled open his drawer and handed his phone over while he ate. Watching intently as Eddie scrolled through his contacts and shot Barry another concerned glance before putting the phone to his ear.
"No, sorry, Barry's not… good. This is Detective Thawne at the precinct, is this Harrison Wells?"
Oh, he'd called Harrison. Bastard. Barry would have grabbed the phone away, but the damage was already done.
"I don't really know how to… Barry said you know about his… condition." Condition? What condition? "About him being the, uh, the…" The Flash. He was referring to Barry's meta-human capabilities. Barry couldn't decide if he was offended by that or amused. Might as well go with amused.
Eddie's shoulders sagged in relief. "Yes, that. I'm sorry to call so late, but Barry's acting a little… off. No, no, he hasn't done anything wrong, just… it's hard to explain. Oh, you are? Okay, no, that's good. We'll be in Barry's lab. Do you know where that is? See you soon."
He hung up the phone and set it down, eyeing Barry, who had sped through the bag of food and was finishing the last wrap. Barry chewed slowly, going over the conversation in his head. Harrison was coming. Could be here in seconds, could be minutes, could be now. He looked at the door, then back at Eddie when no one knocked. Hm, it sounded like he'd said he was on his way, but he'd have to make the wait time believable. Five minutes minimum.
Eddie was looking around the room. He glanced at the chair, then Barry, then the door, clearly trying to decide if he should sit. Poor Eddie. Barry really shouldn't have brought him in on this, but he'd been desperate and half starved and exhausted and even if just looking at Eddie ate him up with guilt, he still trusted Joe's partner more than anyone else on the force. Well, barring Singh, but he hadn't been there, because Barry had let him get hurt. Somehow, finding out the Captain was better didn't help. He still couldn't shake seeing Singh on the hospital gurney, emergency staff hovering over his unconscious body, or the look on Rob's face as they waited for an update.
"Barry?" He looked up, not realizing he'd looked down in the first place. Eddie was watching him with brows drawn together, clearly concerned. "You, um, you look sad."
He was sad. He was sad a lot, but that was okay. Everyone was sad.
"Barry?"
"Do you miss them?"
Eddie nodded. "Of course. Every day."
"I miss them too." Barry sighed. "I keep waiting for it to get better, but it doesn't. Being sad doesn't help."
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Eddie staring at him, studying his expression, his body language, being the good detective, before he offered, "Are you saying that being here helps? Is that why you won't go home, because it's easier if you keep yourself busy?"
No, that wasn't what he was saying. Although, good for Eddie, because that was a far better excuse for staying than Barry would have been able to come up with on his own. Lying and subterfuge were never his strong suit.
A knock on the door interrupted whatever he might have said in response and Eddie hesitated for a moment before moving to answer it. It was Harrison, of course, in his wheelchair, looking both concerned and disappointed. "Barry, Eddie tells me you aren't feeling well."
Barry nodded, trying for serious, but ended up chuckling. "I forgot to eat lunch."
Harrison frowned and turned to Eddie. "I apologize, Detective Thawne. Barry's abilities as the Flash don't come without a cost. He needs to consume roughly ten thousand calories a day or he becomes hypoglycemic."
"I have a cousin who's diabetic. That doesn't look like hypoglycemia."
"You'll understand, of course, that the circumstances surrounding Barry's physiology are somewhat unique. As much I would like to explain it to you, now is not the time. I need to get Barry home before he does something to expose himself." Barry chuckled at the choice of words and Harrison shook his head. "Not like that, Mr. Allen."
Barry grinned and sat back in his chair, considering all the ways he could annoy Harrison by 'exposing himself.' Not that he would. Maybe.
Harrison ignored him, instead, eyeing the empty plastic bag on the desk. "How much has he eaten?"
Eddie looked between them, confused and uncomfortable. "Six wraps."
"Then I should get him home before he crashes."
"Crashes?"
"Detective Thawne, I promise we will have this discussion, at length, on a later date. Barry, the van is downstairs."
It might be. It probably was. Harrison had to keep up appearances with the wheelchair. Barry followed Harrison into the elevator, doing his best to appear subdued, normal. He wasn't really sure what counted as normal, anyway. He stood on the sidewalk, rocking on his heels while he waited for Harrison go through the arduous process of getting his wheelchair into the driver's side of the van and securing it into place.
As soon as Barry slid into the passenger seat, something fell in his lap. He scowled at the protein bar, but when he turned the ire on Harrison, intending to tell him where he could stick it, Harrison's glower was enough to quell his own minor rebellion. He did, however, take a moment to ask, "So, exactly how much trouble am I in?"
Harrison continued to glower and he probably should have shut up, but to be fair, he was well past the point where making good decisions was an option. "Are we talking grounded? The silent treatment? …Spanking?"
He said the last one with wagged eyebrows, but Harrison didn't seem the slightest bit amused. "Eat."
"Just trying to make polite conversation."
"Allow me to elaborate. Shut up and eat."
"You're in a mood." But he bit into the bar before Harrison could chastise, shuddered when the taste hit his tongue, chewed for a long time, until he was able to force himself to swallow.
It took the entire trip back to the house to eat it. The closer they got, the harder it was to swallow. Part of it was lethargy. Part of it was… something else. The wraps, the bar, were lead in his stomach.
They sat in the driveway for several minutes, Barry feeling more and more like a child. Like when his dad had first gone to prison and he used to sneak off to try and visit him, only to have Joe drag him back home.
Finally, Harrison took off his unnecessary glasses and set them on the dashboard, turning to look at Barry with something less than utter contempt. "Was I not clear when I laid out the ground rules for your freedom? I did expressly tell you to monitor your blood sugar."
"I know." He slumped a little further down in the seat.
"What were you thinking?"
"I had it under control."
"Amazing as it may seem, I find that I lack faith in your ability to control anything at the moment."
Barry flushed in embarrassment and a little anger, but mostly embarrassment. Harrison wasn't wrong. "Eddie was watching out, no one was gonna see."
Harrison grabbed Barry's chin, not hard, but firmly. "I'm not concerned about what someone might have seen, Barry. I'm more worried about what you might have said. To Eddie." The hand softened, thumb stroking along his jaw. "You are barely coping with your loses as they stand. What if you'd let something slip and I'd had to take care of him? How would you cope with that?"
Barry paled, remembering that he had, actually, let something slip. He didn't think it was important but…
Harrison sighed, "What did you say?"
"I just… Eddie knows we're sleeping together. Have. He knows we have slept together. I didn't tell him, he figured it out."
"How, exactly, did he figure it out?"
"He's a good detective?"
A smile tugged at Harrison's mouth. "I very much doubt that. Luckily for you, I'm not concerned about Detective Thawne knowing we're sleeping together."
"Have been. Past tense."
"Of course." The hand patted his cheek condescendingly then opened the door to the car. "What I am concerned about, is you spending so much time at work. Would you care to explain why you haven't been here in the past three days, since you agreed to move in?"
Barry waited until Harrison had opened his door to roll his head to the side, staring at the person he'd once trusted. A fellow scientist. Part of Team Flash. Family, in a way. Lover at the end, before Barry figured out the truth. "My mouth tastes like mismatched colors look."
"That's fascinating." He let Harrison pull him out of the car and, oh, his legs were not working right. "There's chocolate milk in the fridge if you could at least attempt to support yourself."
"For chocolate milk, I would do a lot of things." Barry winked and shot off, phasing through the door only to crash into a pillar he'd forgotten was there with jarring force, stumbled back up and kept moving, into the kitchen where, as promised, a half gallon of premixed chocolate milk sat in the fridge, untouched.
He was already a third of the way through by the time Harrison made it there, the house lighting up in his wake. He came to a stop in the kitchen, leaning against counter to tower over Barry, who had sat on the floor to drink the milk, because his legs were about to give out anyway.
"Better?"
Barry set the carton down on the ground between his knees and took long heavy breathes. That was better. That was good. That was… he blinked, looking up at Harrison and then around and, oh, he was in Harrison's kitchen. He was in his house. It looked exactly like he'd remembered. Stark, modern, clean. Nothing personal, nothing to say who the person was that lived there. It might as well be vacant, staged for show.
He looked down at the jug on the floor. "I thought, if I came here it was admitting it."
"Admitting what?"
"I kept telling myself, I should go home and then I'd realize what I was really saying was that I should come here. That this is home and I don't… I don't want this to be home. I want my home back. I want my family and my friends back." He broke off when he couldn't stop the tears from falling and pulled his legs up to bury his face in his knees.
Harrison sighed and moved to sit beside him. He cupped a hand on the back of Barry's neck to pull him in and Barry hated himself for giving into it, but his chest was tight and he was exhausted and aching and he let himself be pulled until his face was pressed into Harrison's shoulder and he let himself cry there, because at least with Harrison's fingers carding through his hair and Harrison's breath on his cheek and Harrison's smell suffocating him, he wasn't alone.
[]
Later. It was later. Much later. Minutes. Hours. It was impossible to tell, but Barry had stopped crying. He'd wrapped himself up in Harrison's arms and smell and let himself sink into it until he couldn't feel anything else.
It was okay. Harrison said so. He stroked Barry's hair like he had at the lab on that tiny cot that wasn't really big enough for both of them and told Barry that it was okay. He was there. He wasn't going anywhere. It would take more than a tidal wave to get rid of him. It was okay. And Barry held Harrison tighter, breathed him in until his chest hurt and he had to breathe out again.
It was okay.
