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Bart Allen had been experiencing a lot of firsts lately.
First time meeting his Grandpa Barry and Grandma Iris.
First time seeing Wally not looking bone-deep exhausted (sure, he looked a little tired, but Bart was informed that’s just because he was in something called a University, and that’s just how People Attending Universities looked. Bart wasn’t sure why you’d intentionally do something that looked so mode, but then he found out a University was somewhere you could go to get Knowledge, and he made Wally promise to let him come and see and visit; after all, he was supposed to be a tourist).
First time eating a bag of Chicken Whizees (so crash).
First time ‘Just Hangin’ Out’ with people his own age (possibly even more crash than the Chicken Whizzies. Possibly.).
First time getting to run, really run as fast and as free as he wanted to (without having to worry about the Reach picking up his energy signature and tracking him down and slapping him into a collar and putting him on mode and never ever ever letting him go) until he was ready to stop (on his own!!!)
First time making the decision to slow down, not for safety or for caution, but just because he wanted to. Because he wanted to stop and smell a flower, and he didn’t care if anyone (how about you clam up, La’gaan, how’s that for a stupid fish pun) called him a cliché.
First time hiding the fact that he didn’t know how to read or write (that had never been a weird thing before, in the FuturePast. No one, except the crusty old geezers knew how to do that, and it was never safe enough for long enough to sit down and be taught) and then making a clandestine effort in learning to read, and write, and taking full advantage of his speedster abilities to attempt to teach himself before anyone could even realize he hadn’t known how before. He was pretty certain he’d gotten away with that one. Even if his handwriting was still a little (a lot) messy. Whatever, it was almost getting better than Gar’s.
First time eating a home cooked meal, something Joan had called “pancakes,” and Bart hadn’t cared what they were called, they were probably even more crash than any of the other First Things combined. First time being given a second (and third, and fourth, and fifth and sixth) helping of food, looking (warily, but no one else had to know that) to Jay first for approval. First time not feeling guilty for eating more than his fair share of the meal. First time eating until he was no longer hungry (not just enough to take the edge off, but enough to be well and truly full).
First time sleeping off his food coma in a warm, safe bed (actually in it, not crawling into the cramped space between the frame and the floor with a fluffy pillow and blanket, and fighting sleep until he lost). First time waking up and not feeling the need to check the entire perimeter immediately to make sure no one had broken in and collared his entire family while he was out.
First time getting (multiple!) new clothes, that weren’t even foraged, in the PastFuture you could just go to a store and get them. First time learning from Joan how to use the washing machine, and breathing in the clean, fresh scent of laundered clothing.
First time having a family movie night with Grandpa Barry and Grandma Iris and Wally and Artemis and Jay and Joan, and even though he was the only one who wasn’t paired up with someone, he didn’t even care, it was just so nice to be able to hang out with his family. Who were all alive and safe and right where he could see them.
First time taking a bubble bath (with way more bubbles than was necessary, but Artemis had told him that was the whole point of taking a bubble bath instead of a regular bath or a shower, and how crash was it that in the PastFuture you had so many different ways of getting clean whenever you wanted!).
First time really, truly, completely letting his guard down.
But the last (ha) in his long list of firsts was possibly the most daunting.
It was the first time he was going to meet his dad.
Not that he would really be his dad, yet. He wasn’t even born, yet. But Bart knew that once he was, he was going to be the most crash dad ever. Even if he was just a baby.
And how weird was that? Bart himself was ...twelve? Thirteen? He wasn’t really sure (“No, calendars aren’t a thing in the future, guys, they’re so retro, don’t you think? In the future every day is so crash you don’t even have to keep track, doi!”) but even he knew that this was a weird sitch. In a way, he was probably the first to ever even experience it.
Bart absolutely ruled at doing firsts. He was the King of Firsts, he was so good at them.
And he wasn’t even scared. There was no way he could mess this up, right? He was practically guaranteed it would be fine, cause otherwise he wouldn’t be here, right?
He was going to have to use all his practice in hiding behind a smile at the hospital, so no one caught on to how freaked he was(n’t). Which was fine. Because here in the PastFuture, hospitals were fine. They were perfectly safe and no one was going to come out in a lab coat and grab him and stick him with needles to see how his speedster cells would react to Compound XYZ, or shock his suppression collar for no reason, or make him hold so so so so still until his body felt like it was holding back more energy than the Sun that he’d never actually seen—
Bart needed to take a deep breath, or someone was going to notice he was(n’t) hyperventilating in the stupid moding plastic chair under the stupid moding flashing flourescent tube lighting in the stupid moding hospital.
“Hey,” came a voice, tight with the same kind of restrained energy that he himself was also currently holding back. Bart looked up, meeting eyes with Grandpa Barry, who had finally stopped running laps around the hospital to burn off his excess energy. “You nervous too?”
“Nope!” Bart (lied) proclaimed, popping the P cheekily. His voice definitely didn’t crack a bit. “Totally crash, Gramps. Super whelmed.” Barry visibly fought the urge to roll his eyes at Bart’s use of Dick Grayson’s butchered words.
“Are you sure, kiddo?” Barry’s voice took on a hushed tone. “It’s totally okay to be a little uncomfortable in hospitals, even if you’re there for a good thing. They freak a lot of people out. It’s something about the lighting, I think, or the smell?” Barry caught himself before he went off on a tangent. “In any case, I’m not too hot on them either.”
Bart cracked a crooked grin, and allowed himself to let a little of his real concern bleed through, since Grandpa Barry had said it was normal. “Ohhh-kay, Gramps. You caught me. This place is totally making me feel the mode.”
“We could take a quick lap, if you want? Might make you feel better,” Barry quirked a smile, raising one eyebrow. “I’m sure we could be back before anything even happens—“
At that exact moment, a commotion sounded from one of the rooms. From Grandma Iris’ room.
A lot of things happened very quickly then, and even Bart’s speedster mind didn’t feel like it could keep up with all the emotions and rushing and craziness that comes with childbirth. Bart decided it would be the safest course of action to stay out of the way.
After what seemed like a century, and also no time at all, a very tired but very happy looking Barry popped his head out into the hallway where Bart was carefully not wearing a hole in the ground where he was (definitely not) pacing.
“Bart, do you want to meet them?”
Bart felt himself freeze, an odd experience for him. He’d known the time was coming, obviously, doi, but it had still seemed so far off, even as it was literally occuring in the room he was waiting outside.
He managed to nod his head, and his feet carried him into the room of their own accord. Inside the softly lit room, Grandma Iris was propped up in the hospital bed, looking even more sapped than Grandpa Barry, but she had an air of satisfaction about her at the same time. A very sweaty kind of satisfaction, but satisfaction all the same. She was holding two(!!) bundles, and humming to them gently.
“Bart,” she said, quietly, and smiled at him in that soft way she sometimes did. “Meet your… father, I guess.” She got a weird look on her face for a moment, before wiping it away with a thin kind of laugh. “That’s… definitely going to take some getting used to. And your aunt!” Iris laughed again, somehow stronger and more gently at the same time. “They’re finally here!”
Bart could only stare, feeling oddly separated from his body. Not in a bad way, but in a way that felt on the heavier side of whelmed. He took a step forward, haltingly. “That’s… that’s really him,” he murmured, eyes full of stars. “That’s my dad!” He took a few more steps closer, until he could look more clearly at the bundles. “Hi, dad. I’m Bart.”
“That’s Dawn, actually.”
“Oh. They kind of both look the same. Like… weird little aliens—not in a bad way! They’re just kind of… red, and squishy. Sorry, that was probably not a very crash thing to say, like, you made those, and I’m calling them weird, but like, do all babies look like that?” Bart felt himself rambling, but was unable to stop, until Iris cut him off with another huff of laughter.
“It’s okay, Bart, I’m not offended. And yes, all babies do look like that, for at least a while.” She paused for a moment, looked at him with a question in her eyes. “Do you want to hold him?”
“What?” Bart shook his head, and all of a sudden brought himself back to his body. “You’d… you’d let me? You’d trust me with that?!”
“I don’t see why not. You’re going to have to help take care of them, sometimes. Are you okay with holding him?”
“Yeah,” Bart breathed, a smile melting its way across his face. “Yeah, I think I could do that.”
They had him sit in the (much comfier than the hall) chair next to the hospital bed, and Iris instructed him to hold his arms in a certain way, and Barry gently arranged the Bundle That Was His Dad into his hold.
This was the first time Bart had ever held a baby. It was surreal, the feeling of holding something so breakable, that would someday be a person. That would someday be The Person who would meet another Person and decide to create him. Bart couldn’t decide how to feel about that. So he decided not to think about it, not for now. Instead he took in the little details, like the tiny wrinkles on his Infant Dad’s face, or the warmth that radiated from his tiny body, or the tiny, tiny breaths and heartbeat he could feel coming from the bundle.
Bart Allen had been experiencing a lot of firsts lately.
He was pretty sure out of all of them, meeting his dad (even as a weird, red, squishy baby) was the most crash of them all.