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“Hey, Barry, can I get a copy of that work-up Joe asked for?”
Eddie stepped into the wide-open room Barry used as his lab, excepting a flurry of movement and possibly papers drifting through the air as Barry stopped abusing his superspeed. Instead, he was greeted with silence and stillness.
“Barr? Are you in here?” he called, peering around the numerous racks of chemicals and equipment. There was no sign of Barry.
Wait, there he was. Eddie let out a small sigh of relief as he finally spotted Barry, slumped over his desk. He would have felt silly if it turned out Barry wasn’t even in his lab.
Eddie stepped over and shook Barry’s shoulder.
“God knows I don’t want to wake you up, but I need that file so I can finish my report,” he said. “Joe’s already gone home, and you know he’ll kill me if I go through his desk again. Barry?”
The lanky brunet didn’t wake up, though Eddie’s experience was that Barry generally snapped awake when someone shook him. He didn’t even twitch.
Eddie frowned. He was relatively new to Barry’s world of superspeed and science, but he was pretty sure something wasn’t right. He checked Barry for obvious injuries, without taking much care to avoid waking him. Nothing jumped out at him, which suggested he was dealing with Barry’s speedster biology again.
“Great. Did you pass out again because you didn’t eat enough?”
Barry did his best to keep his desk free of food containers, but there was an empty donut box. Eddie chose to take that as a good sign. Still, something was up, and he wasn’t going to solve it on his own.
It was time to recruit some help.
“Caitlin Snow,” answered a crisp voice on Eddie’s phone.
“Hey, Caitlin, something’s up with Barry,” he replied, trying to keep his voice from showing his worry. “I can’t really tell, but he’s asleep and I can’t wake him. It looks like he had a box of donuts today, so it shouldn’t be from hunger, I guess.”
“Not entirely,” Caitlin mused in his ear. “It takes more than one box of donuts to keep him going. Get him over here and I’ll see what I can find out.”
Eddie thanked her and hung up, a knot of worry growing in his gut. Joe was going to flip if something was happening to Barry. It wouldn’t do any favors for Eddie’s fledgling relationship with Barry for something to go wrong on his watch.
“Okay, Barr, please have something simple,” he said, guiding the limp speedster’s arms into his coat and lifting him from the chair. Nobody raised any eyebrows as Eddie carried him out of CCPD, so at least he didn’t have to answer questions he wasn’t prepared for. Though it did make him wonder if Joe had done the same thing before he’d transferred in.
It was perfectly within Barry’s character to fall asleep at work after staying in the lab for too long.
After way too much traffic, Eddie finally reached STAR Labs and carried Barry up to the Cortex. Caitlin rose from the desk as soon as he came in.
“This way,” she ordered, leading him to a hospital bed set up in an alcove. Eddie settled Barry on it, his worry growing as Barry failed to move in the slightest. Apart from his regular breathing, he could have been newly dead.
Caitlin bustled around, hooking Barry up to a collection of machines Eddie couldn’t identify and muttering to herself.
“Do I need to call Joe?” Eddie asked, dreading the answer.
“Not yet. His vitals are good, and I can’t see anything really worrisome in my prelims. His metabolism is strangely slow, but there’s no sign of early starvation. Let me run a few more tests.”
Eddie stuck by Barry’s side, wishing Caitlin’s assurances were more reassuring. Cisco joined Caitlin in pouring over the computer screens, still cracking the occasional joke. That was a good sign, in its own way. When things got really bad, Cisco didn’t crack jokes at all.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Cisco finally said.
“Not much about Barry does, the more I look into it. The bigger concern is that he’s going to be furious when he wakes up,” Caitlin replied, typing rapidly.
“What? Did you find something out?” Eddie asked. They had been working so long he’d settled on the edge of Barry’s bed, rubbing his thumb over Barry’s knuckles to help him block out the slow beat of his heart on the monitor.
“Yes. Barry overdosed on sugar. Apparently, it acts as a depressant rather than a stimulant in his system. He’ll be sleeping it off for a day or two,” Caitlin replied without looking up.
“We never knew this before,” Cisco added. “Otherwise, we would totally have warned him. Heh! He’s in a sugar coma!”
Cisco grinned at Caitlin, who ignored him.
Eddie shook his head.
“So, lay it out for me. A little is okay, but a lot will do this?” he asked, hoping to understand a bit better.
“As nearly as I can tell. Given the different sugar content of various food items, some things are going to hit Barry harder than others. If the trend holds, we may want to steer him away from caffeine, as well,” Caitlin said, sparing Barry a compassionate glance over the desk.
“Great. Well, let me know if he wakes up. I have to go tell Joe about this.”
Eddie rubbed his face, already not looking forward to telling his partner about the entire situation. He kissed Barry’s forehead, said his good-byes to Caitlin and Cisco, and got back in his car.
Joe, predictably, wasn’t happy. For a change, though, he simply left all the explaining to Eddie rather than turning icy. Eddie breathed a quiet sigh of relief and got on with the business of lying to his boss and co-workers. Fortunately, after the first day, the questions stopped, and people left him alone.
Things went back to normal, except that Eddie’s job got a little harder without Barry to speed in and solve everything. He and Joe broke up a tense hostage situation, arrested a bank robber who managed to smash Eddie across the face with a briefcase before they subdued him, and landed a metahuman case that promised to give Eddie even more of a headache than he already had.
He leafed through files at his desk, slowly turning the papers over without taking in what they said. The coffee he’d inhaled twenty minutes ago still wasn’t kicking in and his scalded tongue only contributed to his overall lack of focus.
“Thawne!”
He jumped and turned a startled gaze on Joe.
“Get out of here,” his partner said, bestowing him with the dad look he frequently used on Barry and his daughter Iris. “Go see Barry. You’re no good to me right now, so go recharge. We’ll still have work tomorrow.”
“I’m in the middle of trying to identify the suspect,” Eddie replied, quickly checking his computer screen to make sure that’s what he was doing.
“I will throw you out of here myself,” Joe said, rounding the desk and rolling Eddie’s chair back.
“Fine, I give up,” Eddie mumbled. He would have put up more of a fight, but his head ached, and he really wanted to leave anyway. He collected his coat and ambled out of the precinct. The cool air outside woke him up enough to feel safe driving, though he kept the window down just to be safe.
In the Cortex, music was playing. Eddie paused in the doorway, unable to help a grin. Caitlin was teaching Cisco something that looked like a cross between a waltz and a tango, with the expected amount of success. They were both laughing, at least.
Eddie slipped past them without interrupting. After the explosion and everything that happened with Harrison Wells / Eddie’s evil grandson, laughter wasn’t common in STAR Labs.
Barry had moved, which was a good sign. Rather than lying on his back, he’d contorted until he was somehow on his side with both arms trapped under his body. As Eddie walked up, Barry shifted again, dragging one arm out and tucking it under his head.
“Wow, Barr. That’s almost as cute as watching Iris try to justify watching those cartoons,” Eddie told him, settling on the edge of the bed again. “She says the sharks offer good life lessons, but I think she’s giggling too loud for them to sink in. I bet you love the sharks too. And now I’m pretty sure I don’t have a choice but to agree.”
Lucky for Eddie, Iris didn’t hate him for breaking off their engagement and falling for the guy who was essentially her brother. She’d been invaluable in convincing Joe not to shoot him. In fact, she would hover around whenever Barry invited him over, giggling like the sharks were on and claiming the two of them were adorable.
Eddie smoothed Barry’s hair back, not that it was really long enough to get in his face. Barry mumbled and finally squinted his eyes open.
“Where am I?” he asked, pulling his hand out from under his body to rub his eyes. That was absolutely cuter than Iris.
Not that Eddie could ever tell her, because Joe would shoot him.
“STAR Labs. You’ve been sleeping since yesterday.” Someone had thoughtfully left a bottle of water on the bedside table and Eddie opened it before he handed it to Barry.
“That’s weird. Did I get hit by something?” Barry slowly dragged himself up and slumped forward on Eddie’s shoulder rather than sitting up properly.
“Not exactly. Caitlin says you had a bad reaction to sugar. In the future, it’s not a good idea to eat a whole box of donuts by yourself. The sugar is a depressant rather than a stimulant, that’s what she told me.”
“I’ll get you to help me next time,” Barry mumbled. “I feel really weird.”
“I can get Caitlin,” Eddie said, worry surging back to the front of his mind. He started to stand, but Barry wrapped around him.
“I’ll get better in a minute. Just stay.”
Eddie hugged him, happy to comply. Still, he couldn’t help wishing that speedsters came with an instruction manual.