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1.
Hal said two weeks.
Hal said two weeks, and he's already a day late.
Barry probably shouldn't be as worried as he feels right now, but he cannot help it when the two week mark passes and he starts feeling anxious all over. He tells Batman he'll take the next monitor shift if that's okay with him, and then proceeds to spend the whole day sitting in front of the Watchtower's monitors with vibrating hands and his foot tapping at super speed against the metal floor. Some of his teammates have passed him several times, coming in and out of small missions or simply checking up on him when they catch a whiff on everything that's going on.
Clark actually brings him food, which the Flash is eternally grateful for.
It's 3:54 am when the Watchtower sonar--which Barry has been staring at and listening to dutifully since the last morning--starts beeping as something aproaches the perimeter.
Barry doesn't have to be told what's out there. He's out of his chair and speeding towards the nearest Zeta tube, expectantly tapping his foot against the metal flooring one more time as the computer drones on Green Lantern's name over the speakers.
Hal doesn't even get a word in before he has an armful of vibrating speedster, and he smiles against Barry's hair, arms coming up to wrap around the Flash's form.
(Later that same day, when Hal is out of his costume, bathed and fully rested, Barry punches him without saying a single word, but Green Lantern thinks he probably deserved it.)
2.
This time it's a three-day mission.
An entire week has passed since Hal left his and Barry's dingy little apartment in Central, and no one comments anything when Barry offers to take monitor duty one more time while his boyfriend is off-world.
Clark brings him food again on those four days that he's sitting in front of the monitors, and Diana somehow manages to coerce him into a little run around earth when the second day rolls around and Barry doesn't see to have moved from his position.
(Bruce tries, in that subtle way of his, to get him to go home, but Barry brushes him off as if he weren't the Batman and Flash's muscles weren't sore from disuse.)
When Hal finally comes home on the next day after a week has passed, Barry practically tackles him to the floor and tells him never to go missing like that again because one day was one thing, but being missing for almost fives days was too much for him to take.
(Hal wants to tell Barry everything will be okay, but he's too busy thinking about how adorable it is that his boyfriend is waiting for him every time he misses his coming back dead-line by even an hour.)
3.
Missing Hal for a month was torture on the speedster.
This time he was supposed to be gone for a month, but Barry still goes up to Watchtower the second to last day to do his usual routine of staying in front of the monitors and waiting for his boyfriend. He's brought a little gift with him--Hal had to miss his own birthday for this, so Barry has had it sitting in his drawers this whole time--and there's no anxiety in his movements, because Hal already called before hand anyways.
Hal's right on time, as the clock strikes 3:30 pm, and Barry just lazily opens his arms over from the monitors and waits for Green Lantern to walk over to him.
He's burried in Hal's scent--a little like hot metal, a lot like how the breeze smells like when you're closest to the ocean --when it occurs to him that he really shouldn't worry anymore about this whole thing. Barry trusts Hal with his life, and so he trusts that his boyfriend will always come back from whatever corner of the universe the guardians have sent him too.
He always comes back to me, Barry thinks that night, smiling against the crook of Hal's neck, and promptly falls asleep.
(If Barry's a little clingy that day and the rest of the week, Hal really, really doesn't complain.)
+ 1
It's a one day mission.
Barry kisses Hal goodbye at the door, and says something stupidly cheesy that has Hal pulling a disgusted face at him. The Flash laughs good naturedly, and leans back in to kiss Green Lantern one last time.
The blond just watches him fly off until he can no longer see any green in the distance, and then ducks back into his house to finish checking the last case that was dropped on his desk.
Hal said he should be back by dawn the next day, so Barry works himself until it's late at night and he can no longer see straight, words blurring in front of him as he tries to read the next line, and he pushes the palm of his hand against them to try and get them back into focus.
It doesn't seem to work, though, and Barry takes one look at the clock, bright red numbers spelling out 4:47 am, and he decides its just about time to go to sleep.
He goes upstairs in silence, going step after step as he rubs his eyes tiredly and turns off the lights that are in his path. Barry is slow to change, slow to slide unto the matress and under the sheets, but he's asleep before he can think about anything else that isn't his boyfriend. Hal will be home when he wakes up the next day, he knows, and they'll have coffee together while Hal tells him Green Lantern's new adventures.
Except the next morning, he wakes up to a cold empty bed and not even a single hint of coffee in the air. He palms at the space next to him groggily, frown quickly taking over his features as he groans out something that sounds a lot like a curse. Barry rolls over to the other side, and buries his head in Hal's pillow, taking in the calming aroma--Hal's shampoo and the underlying scent of rain--before rolling out of bed entirely.
He goes through his routine trying to ignore the terrible feeling in the bottom of his stomach, taking a shower and choosing to take his sweet time with it. It was a one day mission, so Jordan was probably running a little bit late--Barry didn't have anything to worry about and so he will not give in to the urges of getting himself to the Watchtower and plop down in front of the monitors.
He gets a message halfway through the day when he's at the lab, but doesn't realize until he's back at home, dropping bags of groceries in the kitchen counter and calling out Hal's name to check if his boyfriend was back yet.
When he's met with nothing but silence, Barry deflates a little, but does a better effort at ignoring the nagging feeling that was becoming all too familiar to him every time Hal went off-world on a mission. He does not have to worry; it was just a one day mission so it had to be something simple.
Barry continues to repeat that to himself as he checks his phone, typing back a reply to his captain about the case, and moving to check Clark's message after. He doesn't really get a lot of texts from the big red and blue, so he's oddly curious, but he doesn't quite get to open it when the apartment's doorbell sounds.
He huffs, a little annoyed, dropping his phone by the coffee table, and flashing over to the door, peeking through the hole to check who it is. His land lord stares back at him almost as if he knows Barry's on the other side of the door, and he grimaces--please don't let this be another noise complaint, Barry's had enough embarrassing encounters with this man for him to be actually afraid of getting kicked out.
It turns out to be a noise complaint, in fact, and Barry has to seem as pleasing and compliant as possible so that Hal and him don't get tossed out to the streets while his boyfriend was still off-world. He promises the land lord that yes, this will be the last time, and no, we won't be making any more disturbances, we're very sorry, before he remembers their anniversary is coming up and he probably will be breaking that promise.
He closes the door, leaning back on it with a sigh, and forgets all about his phone when he trudges back to the kitchen and thinks about dinner.
The next couple of hours are spent cooking something up for when Hal comes back--and thinking about the anniversary present sitting at the bottom of his work drawer--and the Flash actually feels like he can relax. He has confidence Hal will come back soon, the pesky feeling almost completely vanished from the pit of his stomach, and he throws himself fully into the kitchen.
Barry doesn't know where the time goes when he stares up at the microwave's clock and finds it's already midnight by now. He scrunches up his nose and shakes his head, looking down at the food he's finally finished cooking up, and decides to wait for his boyfriend a little while longer before putting the food away for the night.
(Hal always comes back, he's not going to get worried anymore, he's not going to act paranoid, he's going to sit right here and wait for his boyfriend to come back.)
It feels like an eternity later when the doorbell rings again, and Barry perks up almost instantly. It's stupid to think that it might be Hal, considering Hal has his own key, but it wasn't unheard of that Jordan lost his keys, and Barry is nothing is not terribly hopeful. He flashes all the way to the door for the second time since he got home, and opens up without checking beforehand.
Bruce stands there instead of who Barry had been expecting, and the Flash really, really hopes that the 'oh' that falls from his lips doesn't sound disappointed enough to offend the bat.
"Hey, Bruce!" he corrects himself, stepping aside to let him in "It's unusual to see you here."
(Barry should've known. Bruce never visits.)
The Gothamite doesn't say much to Barry's statement, stepping into the small apartment with tense shoulders and what Allen hopes isn't a disapproving look at his and Hal's living quarters. It's small, yeah, but not all of them are filthy rich like Bruce.
(Bad thoughts, Barry. Bruce is your friend. God, Hal must be rubbing off of on him.)
Because Bruce doesn't say anything, Barry feels its necessary to fill up the space between them with chatter, and he starts talking Batman's ear off, starting off by asking him to sit down and offering him some instant coffee that he has for emergencies like this, when actual coffee is possibly too slow to calm the guests. If Flash's talking is beginning to annoy him--or if he's unconsciously speed talking again--Bruce doesn't really say anything, choosing to stare at Hal's forgotten coffe mug like it has done something terribly offending to him.
Barry is going on about his anniversary with Hal coming up--and wow, Bar, oversharing much?--that he doesn't really notice when Bruce is standing up and walking towards the general direction of the kitchen. The Flash isn't even looking at him, and Batman makes it a habit of not giving out his location, even in the sanctity of Barry's apartment.
"Barry," he almost jumps a foot in the air when Bruce speaks right behind him and he tries his hardest not to squeak. "There's something--something I need to tell you."
The Flash regards his friend and teammate with a raised eyebrow, head cocking to one side like a confused puppy who doesn't quite understand the concept falling out of his owner's mouth just yet. Something flashes in Bruce's face, but it's gone just as quickly as it came, and Barry doesn't quite manage to catch it before his teammate is talking again.
"Jordan--" he stops himself right on tracks, thinks twice maybe, like something inside his head clicks then, and he sighs "Hal," Barry has never heard Bruce call Hal by his actual name before, and something churns in his stomach, that remaining sense of dread still hanging around "Hal isn't coming back from his mission, Barry."
There's an eerie silence, blue eyes blinking up at another pair of blue eyes while Barry takes in the information. He blinks--once, twice--and then an easy smile falls on his face. It catches Batman slightly off guard, and he takes a step back without meaning to.
"He's taking longer, eh?" and the way he says it, is kind of sad, but horribly hopeful "It's fine--he's probably going to miss our anniversary, then; but its okay, I guess I kind of understand, things must've--"
"No, Barry," Bruce has never interrupted him before, and that Barry finds a little odd "I don't mean--that's not what I meant." He takes in a deep breath and--why does Batman of all people looks so stressed? "Barry I don't know how to tell you this."
And then it sinks.
It hits Barry like a ton of bricks, and he feels the whole thing a little bit too literally because he stumbles a couple of steps back, grasping blindly for the kitchen counter as he tries to find his footing again. His hands are already vibrating against the granite, Bruce's voice becoming distant and too slow. He doesn't care about the rest of what his teammate is about to say, and he sinks to the floor, the world around him going to slow for him to even pay attention to anymore.
His brain is working faster than it ever had, his grip on reality slowly turning weaker and weaker. Over him, Bruce's standing form is ever so slowly--painfully slowly--kneeling down to sit next to him, but Barry doesn't care for his sympathy today.
He thinks about that morning, when he kissed Hal goodbye twice for good measure, and Hal's disgusted face at his stupid joke. He thinks about two nights ago and their discusion over moving out of that dingy apartment that's much too small for two but that had been home for the longest time. He thinks about his anniversary gift for Hal, sitting at the very bottom of his work desk and hidden underneath a bunch of stuff so nobody found it. He thinks about this proposal, his thoughts frantic and uncoordinated, and how he and Hal had talked really talked about marriage and if Hal was ready for it.
"he was supposed to come back he was supposed to be here why isn't he here" he hangs on to Bruce for dear life, words falling out of his mouth at a velocity that no one without speed powers could understand, and Bruce doesn't know what to do, doesn't know how to react. He's sure Barry's stuck in speedster time now, and it worries him--it really does--because he cannot keep up and he's sure he's not the right person to pull him back.
"i was proposing to him oh my god we were going to get married and move out of this stupid flimsy appartment where the neighbors are always complaining about the noise and i oh my god bruce this can't be happening please tell me this isn't--Hal always comes back he never leaves me alone for more than a week he comes back for me he comes back to our home he should be--here HE NEVER WOULD'VE LEFT ME LIKE THIS."