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It’s Iris who makes Joe aware of the existence of Linda Park. She calls him one afternoon and without preamble asks, “Dad, did Barry tell you about his new girlfriend?”
Joe’s at his desk at work, combing through files that might give them some lead on where Clay Parker—their teleporting metahuman’s no-good boyfriend—might have fled. But he almost spits out his coffee at the question. He hadn’t thought he’d be hearing the words ‘Barry’ and ‘girlfriend’ in the same sentence for some time, and not just because Barry hasn’t dated since college.
It’s been a conversation they’ve long avoided, not even mentioning the other individual it involves ever since that fateful night Barry got the news: the late Oliver Queen. Caitlin made her own call to Felicity shortly after Barry’s to get the details, half of which required even further explaining for Joe to understand, but around Central’s favorite meta everyone’s kept quiet.
Joe, for more reasons than anyone else on their little team, is struggling with what to say. How does someone discuss the feelings their foster son may or may not still have for another man who is now dead? That is, if he was ever even right that those feelings ran deeper than friendship.
But this Linda, she changes things, makes him question what he thought he’d been seeing all this time. Iris is happy to tell him everything she knows about the sports journalist for Picture News and how she caught the pair heading out for a lunch date. He thinks, maybe, he was wrong after all. Maybe he was reading too much into Barry’s close connection with the other vigilante, or if he wasn’t then Barry is doing his best to move on. It might just end up being a conversation they can avoid altogether.
But he’s more than willing to start one at the dinner table that night with the opening, “So, Linda Park.”
Barry blinks, swallows down a ridiculously huge mouthful of potatoes, and just asks in a resigned sort of way, “Iris?”
Joe nods, a smile forming at the antics of his kids. “She says this Linda’s your girlfriend.”
Barry doesn’t squirm in embarrassment, but he does look uncomfortable, rubbing at the back of his neck as a frown tugs at his lips. “She’s—I don’t know. I mean we met at this bar Caitlin and I were scoping out looking for Shawna and Parker, and she gave me her number. So I asked her to lunch. It was alright. Linda’s nice, fun. I guess we’re going out again.”
It’s hardly the kind of enthusiastic response he was hoping for, and he echoes, “You guess?”
Barry shrugs. “She wants to. There’s some spicy taco restaurant she mentioned.”
Joe’s unable to help the somewhat incredulous, “Barry, you can’t even handle my chili.”
“I know. But Linda seemed excited about it,” is the reply. Linda was excited, Linda wanted this—when was Barry ever going to mention what he felt or wanted? Did the poor kid even know anymore?
Come date night, though, Barry’s just as nervous as any young man getting ready to take a pretty girl out for the evening. Joe places himself in an armchair, dutifully offering input every time his kid zips down the steps in a different outfit, though he seems to function as an opposite-gauge than anything. It’s the first time in a while that Barry’s been able to go out and be normal for once; with his and Iris’ friendship adjusting and only Joe and his STAR labs friends for support, Joe’s been worried Barry will get too caught up in training and racing between his two jobs. But he swears the next time that kid comes down the steps in different clothes he might threaten to shoot if only in jest.
But that doesn’t happen. Instead five, ten minutes go by and there’s nothing. He thinks, for a moment, that Barry must have simply zipped out the door in order to not be late, but then there would have been the telltale breeze and the open and slam of their front door. So he heaves himself up out of the chair and makes his way upstairs.
Joe finds Barry in his room sitting on the end of his bed, the rest of his clothes scattered all around the floor, head in his hands. He looks up at Joe’s approach and says, “I cancelled.”
He takes that in for a moment, rocks back once on his heels before striding fully into the room and taking a seat next to Barry. “Ok. Why?”
“I don’t know,” is the glum reply. “I mean, Linda’s great. She’s nice, funny, really pretty, she actually likes me. I’d be insane to cancel, right?”
Joe merely inclines his head, considering. “But you did.”
Barry pulls a face, head dropping back into his hands and ruffling his hair with a groan of, “I know!”
“You said lunch went alright.”
“Yeah,” his kid replies, eyes darting to Joe’s face before sitting back up. “But it’s just alright, isn’t it? I mean, that’s all it’s ever going to be, right? She likes me, but she doesn’t even know me. My abilities, being the Flash—I can’t tell her any of it. And I just…” His eyes take on something of a far-away look, sadness seeping into the set of his shoulders and the lines of his face. “He told me once, he said guys like us don’t get the girl.” There’s no question in Joe’s mind who that ‘he’ is. “He meant about Iris, but it’s the same with Linda, isn’t it? Or anybody I might date.
“I mean, God, Joe,” Barry grows too agitated to sit and starts pacing the room. “I told Iris I loved her because I didn’t want to lie to her about it anymore—but I’m still lying to her! And I’d keep lying to her, even if she dumped Eddie tomorrow and said she loved me back. Because I want to protect her, like you do. But that’s not the kind of love that you can build a relationship on, is it?”
“Then why’d you tell her you loved her?” Joe asks calmly.
“I don’t know,” seems to be Barry’s new favorite when it comes to his feelings, though he’s hearing it less as a truth and more as a shield, an illusion his son is trying to hold up. But there are always chinks in a wall, and the cracks are starting to show. “It wasn’t like I was expecting anything from it. She was moving in with Eddie and she hated the Flash, then. And I told you, I felt stuck.”
“In Central?” He rechecks.
“Yeah, but even just with Iris. Caitlin had been telling me for weeks to just leave it, and then he said—and he was right! It was never going to end well, it was never going well to begin with and I just wanted it over. So I wasn’t- so I- so I could—”
“Move on,” Joe supplies, quiet in the face of Barry’s frenzied outpouring of words. “With someone else.” He rises from the bed as well, takes deliberate, careful steps. “And not with Linda, or any other person you might meet on a night out. With somebody who knows and understands just what it is you do every day. Someone you don’t have to lie to, someone you can trust and know has your back just like you have theirs. An equal.” Barry is frozen in place though there’s a barely there tremble to him and his eyes are wide and fixed on Joe’s. “And you’d already found that person.”
Barry looks, for a single moment, like he might deny it. But then his eyes close, his shoulders sag, and his head turns slightly away, pointed down. On a shaky breath and some point of no return, he answers, “Oliver.”
His kid is not made happier by this realization. In fact he looks more miserable than Joe’s ever seen him. Joe can’t blame him, but he can fix one of the reasons for it; how Barry’s almost shrunken away from him, his eyes screwed shut and his cheeks burning with shame.
Joe pulls him forward. He hears Barry’s breath catch, but the young man relaxes when all Joe does is embrace him the same as usual and murmur, “I’m sorry, son.”
“How do you always know first?” It’s muffled by his shoulder somewhat, but he can still make it out well enough.
“I think this badge and nearly fifteen years’ experience has earned me that right.” And he smiles warm and broad when there’s the huff of a laugh against his shoulder.