Work Text:
“Flash!”
Barry hears Hal before he sees him, turning just as he touches down beside him with all his green, glowing gracefulness.
Hal slings an arm over Barry’s shoulders, a casual grin on his face. His hair is windswept, his uniform is torn in some areas and he has a few scrapes and bruises, but otherwise, he appears no worse for the wear. The same, of course, can’t be said for the Coast City streets Sonar and the gang of meta-enhanced goons spent the last hour wreaking havoc on. The perpetrators have been apprehended and are now in police custody, but the area that took collateral damage will likely bear the scars of today’s battle for a while longer, even with Green Lantern’s sincere promise to do all he can to aid with repairs.
The Flash would offer to pitch in too, but, unfortunately, Barry Allen is soon expected back at work.
“Thanks for the assist, buddy,” Hal says, squeezing Barry’s shoulders. Barry can't help but lean into the touch.
“Always happy to help, GL.” Barry returns Hal's grin with a soft smile of his own. He watches as, further down the torn-up street, the last of the Coast City authorities begin climbing into their cruisers. The crowds, which gathered on the outskirts of the area to watch the fight, have mostly dispersed.
“Still, I know you’re a busy guy… and also that you were going on your lunch break when I called you.” Hal’s expression turns sheepish as if he’s just remembering Barry skipped out on lunch to come lend him a hand. “You’ll have enough time to get something to eat, right?”
Barry glances down at his watch and finds his lunch break officially ended four minutes ago.
“I’ll… just eat some of the backup protein bars I keep at my desk,” he decides without much enthusiasm. The protein bars get the job done, but despite his best efforts he hasn’t managed to engineer a recipe that doesn’t taste like dirt.
“Ah, okay,” Hal says, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand. “Sorry ‘bout that, man.”
“Yeah, well,” Barry folds his arms across his chest, sort of distracted thinking about the caseload he’ll be met with once he returns to the lab, “you’re lucky I love you.”
At first, Barry doesn’t think much of the few beats of silence that pass between them. It’s only when Hal lets out an awkward laugh and draws back to look at him funny that Barry realizes what exactly he’s just said.
Oh.
Oh no.
It’s here, really, when Barry makes his fatal mistake. He reacts, not by chuckling and playing off the words as typical friendly banter, but by freezing up, face heating up and breath catching in his throat. A dreadful cocktail of embarrassment and panic pours over him, and all he can do is stand there, slack-jawed, staring while Hal seems to search his face for signs the words were said in jest. He won’t find any, because Barry wasn’t exactly intending to be humorous.
“Sorry, what was that?” Hal’s eyebrows raise to his hairline.
Barry’s heart pounds in his ears, his mouth having gone dry, and Hal’s arm, still draped across his shoulders, now feels like it’s suffocating him. Eye contact becomes unbearable, and Barry drops his eyes to stare past Hal at a random point in the distance. Words are failing him when he desperately needs to say something, anything, but his mind is somehow racing with a billion thoughts per second and painfully blank at the same time.
“Uh—um… what?” Barry stammers, high-pitched and pathetic to his own ears. Hal’s awkward grin has faded, and now he’s looking at Barry closely. It’s obvious that, in the wake of Barry’s damning reaction, he’s taken to puzzling the pieces together himself. Feeling his face burn, Barry wishes nothing more than for the ground underneath his feet to open up and swallow him whole.
“You just said—”
“I need to get back to work,” Barry blurts out, cutting Hal off before he can repeat those three words Barry should not have so carelessly said in the first place. He makes a show of checking his watch again, even though his mind is too scrambled to take in any of the numbers. Ducking out from under Hal’s arm and putting a respectable distance between them, Barry’s still unable to look him in the eye. “Seeyoulatergoodluckwithcleanup!”
“Hey, wait—!” Hal calls after him, but Barry’s already taken off running.
Barry knows it’s the coward’s way out. The shame follows him all the way back to Central City.
Barry spends the rest of his day at work lost in a fog. He tries to focus on his cases, but his mind keeps returning to the incident with Hal over and over again like a broken record. The protein bars he was supposed to eat in place of an actual lunch are still in his desk drawer—he’s been nauseous and hasn’t had much of an appetite. His heart is still racing even hours later.
He knows he couldn’t have handled the situation worse than he did. There were so many ways Barry could have smoothed things over after his accidental confession, so many routes he could have taken that didn’t involve clamming up and then proceeding to run away. He can’t stop cringing at the memory of himself stammering like an idiot.
Every time he closes his eyes, he sees that odd, almost disbelieving look Hal had been giving him while Barry floundered for something to say and failed miserably.
God. Why is he like this? Hunched over his desk, Barry has the sudden urge to beat his head against his laptop keyboard. Repeatedly. But that would undoubtedly draw attention from his coworkers, so instead he settles for squeezing the pencil in his grip so hard it’s likely going to leave the serial number imprinted into the skin of his palm.
Now all that’s left for him to do is dwell and ruminate on what his friendship with Hal might look like in the aftermath of Barry’s slip-up. The best case scenario Barry can hope for is that the next time he and Hal see each other, they both somehow pretend nothing happened at all. Neither of them mentions it ever again, and maybe, maybe Barry might even be able to one day look Hal in the eyes again. In this scenario, the whole situation is water under the bridge.
The worst-case scenario? Hal is so weirded out by Barry’s proclamation of love that he never speaks to him again. Their friendship fades into non-existence and they avoid each other for the rest of their lives.
Barry drops his face into his hands, letting the pencil clatter onto the desk. He faintly hears it roll off the desk and fall to the floor, but he doesn’t bother to pick it back up. He’s too preoccupied by the looming reality that Barry might’ve just wrecked the best friendship he’s ever had.
Needless to say, Barry doesn’t get much done with the remaining hours he spends at work. He does stay a little after hours, but that’s more due to paralysis brought on by the unrelenting memory of that look on Hal’s face that’s haunting him even as the hours pass. Eventually, he gathers the will to pack up his bookbag and head out to the parking lot. The sun is setting behind the skyline, casting a golden glow that if Barry were feeling less glum, he might have been able to see the beauty in it all.
Halfway through the parking lot, Barry sets sight on his car. He slows down his pace when he notices a person is leaning on his car, and then he stops completely when he realizes the person is Hal .
Barry’s heart plummets to his stomach. When he’d been running through worst-case scenarios in his head, he hadn’t even considered the possibility that Hal would go out of his way to find him and confront him about the whole thing head-on—Hal takes that approach to fighting but rarely interpersonal conflict. Apparently, Barry had somehow been too optimistic.
Hal’s come to demand answers, no doubt. Honestly, Barry can hardly blame him. If the situation were reversed and Hal had dropped a bomb on him like that only to take off running, Barry probably wouldn’t just let the issue rest either. In any case, Hal deserves an explanation, even if giving said explanation involves Barry having to lay his heart and soul bare.
Barry takes a shaky breath, steels himself for what’s about to come, and approaches the car.
“Took you long enough,” Hal says when he spots Barry. He flashes a lopsided smile. “I’ve been waiting here for, like, an hour. For a minute there I was second guessing if I had the wrong car or not.”
His voice is light and airy, like Barry hadn’t totally blown their friendship dynamic to smithereens earlier in the day. It’s putting Barry on edge.
“Is there a reason you’re here, Hal?” Barry asks, carefully avoiding making eye contact as he busies himself with unlocking his car and depositing his work bag in the back seat.
Heart pounding against his ribcage, Barry is bracing himself for a difficult conversation followed by an awkward rejection. He knows why Hal’s here, but Barry can’t bring himself to bring it up first.
“You sure left in a hurry, earlier today,” Hal comments instead of answering Barry’s question. Leaning back casually against Barry’s car with one arm resting on the roof of Barry's car, his other hand slipped into his jacket pocket, Hal almost appears like everything’s normal. Keyword there being almost, because Hal’s expression is carefully blank, his eyes watching Barry closely.
“I had to get back to work. I was already running late.”
"You're literally always running late," Hal says, giving Barry a look that reads unimpressed. There's a short pause, and then something in Hal's face shifts. “C’mon Barry. We both know that wasn’t the reason why you ran off like that.”
Barry shuts the door to the backseat, and for a moment he just stands there, feeling Hal’s gaze bore into the side of his head.
“I—” Barry swallows hard. “I don’t know what you mean.”
For an excruciating stretch of time, Hal doesn’t respond to Barry’s obvious lie, leaving them standing there in silence. Barry can only imagine what’s going through his head right now. Most likely nothing favorable.
“Bar, I just need you to tell me one thing.” Hal’s voice is low when he breaks the silence, taking a more contemplative tone than usual. “When you said, uh. Those words. Did you… actually mean them?”
Barry closes his eyes, crossing his arms tight against his chest and leaning forward against the side of his car, unable to find within himself the ability to care that the front of his shirt is going to get dirty. This is it. He has no choice but to answer honestly. There’s a good chance Hal is already privy to the truth, but he deserves to hear it directly from Barry.
Time to face the music.
“Yes,” Barry confesses, and it’s only one word but it’s the hardest thing he’s ever had to say. From there, though, the rest falls from his mouth like vomit. “I said them by accident, but I meant them. I never intended for you to find out because I didn’t want to burden you with my feelings, or ruin our friendship, but truth is I think… well, I think I’ve loved you for a long time.”
Barry tips his head forward to rest his forehead on the backseat window of the car. He doesn’t dare look at Hal. He doesn’t think he can stomach seeing that weird look on his face again.
“I’m sorry,” Barry says when Hal doesn’t say anything right away. The backs of his eyes are burning.
“What are you sorry for?” Hal’s words are careful. Measured. Not what Barry’s expecting him to sound like, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything in the grand scheme of things.
“For everything, really,” Barry chews at his bottom lip. “For having feelings for you when I’m supposed to be your friend. For letting you find out and making you uncomfortable. For running away.”
What Barry says next is the hardest thing he’s ever had to say in his life.
“And I understand if you need space… or if you think maybe we shouldn’t be friends anymore.”
There’s a pause that lasts so long Barry starts to think Hal powered up and flew off without saying goodbye. He reopens his eyes to glance at the space beside him and finds Hal is, in fact, still here—and staring at Barry like he’s gone insane.
“You know,” Hal starts to say, slowly, “for a guy as smart as you, you can be a real idiot, sometimes.”
Barry blinks, caught off guard. “What?”
“Barry, you’re one of the best things in my life,” Hal exclaims, gesturing towards him with his hand for emphasis. “Why would you telling me you love me make me not want to be around you anymore?”
“I… I don’t know,” Barry says. Now he’s just confused. “I just kind of thought you’d get weirded out, having your best friend like you in… that way.”
“Well, then,” Hal smirks, leaning in so close to Barry’s face that he can feel his hot breath on his skin, “I guess you’re lucky I love you, too.”
And then Hal closes the gap, pressing his lips to Barry’s without warning. Barry gasps. Hal is kissing him.
Hal is kissing him.
Lucky indeed.