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“Of course it had to rain that day…”
Bart Allen looked through the window outside of his classroom. A new school year had just started and the rainy weather outside seemed to be a glum premonition of what was yet to come. Not that Bart cared, his career was basically set in stone.
“Well, at least I should be thankful for grandma to make me bring an umbrella,” Bart thought to himself, as he walked through the main corridor, opening his umbrella outside of the building. Under different circumstances he would have simply super-sped across town, but … having super-powers wasn’t anything desirable in this time period, he was told. He did not quite get why, but he has made efforts to blend in a bit more with his surroundings.
Though sitting still in a chair for six hours a day was the hardest yet and not a day of school passed by where someone didn’t give him an evil eye for his restless legs.
He walked down the stairs in front of the main entrance in a quick pace, the driblets of rain on his umbrella calming him down.
And then it happened.
A strong gust of wind made its way through the school grounds, ripping the umbrella from Bart’s right hand.
“Shit,” he exclaimed, stumbling after it, trying to catch it, keeping in mind not to use his powers in front of others. In those following moments though he wished, he hadn’t given a shit about the rules.
The umbrella scooted across the campus directly to a hooded figure that leaned against a tree.
“Watch out!” Bart shouted only to immediately regret it.
The boy in the hoodie turned around and the flying umbrella hit him square in the face. The boy started glowing and disappeared into particles of light.
“Shit!”
The breeze calmed down and Bart caught the umbrella.
“Shit, shit, shit, did I just kill him?!” He started panicking looking around hoping to find the boy, only to find a few blood stains coloring the grass beneath the tree, slowly being washed away by the rain.
“Oh no.” Bart went pale the moment he made his discovery and almost proceeded to run around uncontrollably, when dripping onto his umbrella from above.
It was more blood.
First Bart let out an extraordinarily high-pitched scream only to look up into the tree and find the source of the blood.
The boy was sitting on the lowest branch of the tree, holding onto the trunk with one hand, and covering his bleeding nose with the other. He was clearly blushing, but Bart didn’t notice, as the rain clouds made it to dark for him to see.
Bart fell down onto his knees letting out a relieved squeak from somewhere deep with.
“Ohhoho, you’re alive, thank goodness.” He stood up and asked: “Dude, how did you get up here? Did you like make a super jump, or did you teleport?”
“… Teleport,” the other mumbled still covering his nose.
“Dude, for real? That’s so cool! Are you a meta?” Bart asked to which the other simply nodded, sheepishly avoiding his gaze.
It just took one blink, and suddenly Bart disappeared from under the tree, and appeared next to the boy on the branch.
“Hi I’m Bart nice to meet you do you need a tissue for the blood or an umbrella maybe?”
“Whoa!”
This made the other boy jump, loosing his balance and falling of the tree backwards.
The prospect of making a new friend accidentally made Bart switch into hyperactivity mode.
Bart could not hear an impact, instead there was a flash of light next to him and the boy reappeared.
“I’m- I’m Eduardo- Ed,” he answered as if nothing had happened. Bart noticed a similar accent to that of his friend Jaime, so he figured Ed must be Latinx as well.
“Nice to meet you,” Bart said, handing Ed a tissue that he pulled out of his bag in super-speed (Thank you, Grandma!) and holding the umbrella over both of their heads.
“Thanks,” Ed accepted the tissue and covered his bleeding nose.
“How come, you’re so open with being a meta?” Bart asked him curiously. “I mean, you didn’t even try to hide it.”
“It took a long time for me to accept it, and it was really painful. So I decided that maybe being open about it could help other people come to terms with who they are. What about you?”
“I’ve really never had a problem with my powers. But my grand- aunt! (Phew, that was a close one.) My aunt doesn’t like the idea of me going around announcing to the world, who or what I am, so I’m rather cautious.”
“Yeah, our world at the moment is not the safest place to be. Honestly, sometimes I think my dad is right and maybe I should just stop.
The rain slowly died down and the tapping on the umbrella slowly grew more quiet until it was only the occasional drop from a leaf that dared to make a noise.
Bart closed the umbrella and let it loosely hang off his arm.
“Well, you know what they say. If you’re chasing rainbows, you always need to wait for the rain first.” He let himself slide off the branch. “And as long as there will be rainbows it will always be worth trying to find one.”
Ed took the tissue from his nose and tensed the muscles in an attempt not to smile like crazy. He didn’t notice the faint blush, that would give away his feelings anyway.
“But for now, I gotta scoot. People to go, places to see, you know?” Bart said, grinning up to his new friend who was still sitting on the branch and laughing about how he messed that sentence up.
“I guess we’ll see each other?” Ed said, trying not to sound to hopeful.
“You can count on that.”
And with that Bart started walking, started jogging, started running, started speeding, not caring what other people might think about him.