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“Guys, guys look.”
“She's coming to.”
“Well stand back, don't crowd her.”
You hear the buzzing voices of strangers before you are able to register their awfully blurry faces.
“Can you tell us your name?” says a pretty boy with a sweet voice. “It's okay, we're here to help.”
“Uh, yeah.” You tell them your name. Your head feels like it's splitting in half, causing you to cringe hard. “Ow, Jesus.”
“What's wrong?” asks a wavy haired woman. “You can tell me, I'm a doctor. Doctor Snow.”
“My head. It feels like it's going to explode.”
“Where is the pain in your head, specifically? Are you able to pinpoint it for me?”
You think about it for a moment, but that only makes the pain worse. “Ahh, it's- it actually feels like it's right behind my eyeballs.” Doctor Snow jots down the information on her clipboard.
“Cisco, grab that vial from the cart for me, please?” The shorter guy in the graphic tee, now known to you as Cisco, retrieves a vial of blue liquid and hands it to the doctor. “Here, drink this.”
You eye it reluctantly in your hand, then take a swig of the most tart substance you've ever tasted.
“Ugh, gross.”
Doctor Snow takes the vial back. “Do you happen to remember how you got here?” she asks. Everyone is looking at you expectantly.
“I- no, I'm sorry,” you shake your head downward. “I don't.”
“That's... okay.”
Lifting your head back up slightly, you spot a tall, dark haired man with glasses listening in over by the entranceway across the room. He looks vaguely familiar.
“Um, who is that?” you whisper to the pretty boy.
“Who do you mean? That's Cisco there, Caitlin, and I'm Barry.” You shake your head.
“No, who's that?” now nodding your head in a forward direction. The three seem confused as they look around for your mystery eavesdropper.
“There's no one else in here,” says Caitlin cautiously. How...?
You get up from the medical bed despite the insistence to lie down and rest from these three. The sound of your bare feet padding across the floor is the only noise to be heard in the room. As you grow closer to the man, still intently trying to listen in, you wonder why he can't see you approaching. You wave your hand at him and yet he still doesn't move. Then, when you're close enough, you reach out to touch him, only to have your hand come in contact with a solid surface in the way. Something about your vision changes unexpectedly and the man disappears. In his place, clear as day, is a door. You press your ear against it. Footsteps retreat on the other side.
What is going on?
After a good night's rest in the S.T.A.R. Labs med bay, you feel good as new. Whatever the unexplainable blue liquid Caitlin had given you had successfully purged the pain inside your head. You felt like a brand new person.
But the med bay area was far too quiet. Getting up and out of bed, you threw on a conveniently placed navy blue S.T.A.R. Labs sweatshirt and started to wander the hallways of the building. Though it wasn't too hard to tell where everyone was due to the loud conversation taking place in the room further down the hall.
“Dude, I dunno,” you hear Barry say carefully.
“Um, hello! Han did shoot first, are you kiddin' me?” Cisco's voice raised.
“Ugh, not this again,” Caitlin resigns, annoyed. This is when you make your appearance.
“You know, some claim Han and Greedo shot at the same time.” Four heads turn in your direction.
“Hey! She's up and moving!” Cisco calls out. “Also, we'll definitely be talking about this later.”
“How are you doing, (Y/N)?” asks pretty boy Barry.
“Much, much better, thanks to Doctor Snow's disgusting blue cocktail.”
“Call me Caitlin,” she says. “We're all so glad you're feeling well.” Your eyes scan those of your heroes... and one other. Off to the side, stands the mysterious man you had seen across the room yesterday. He stands tall, possibly six feet, very poised. Dark wispy hair. His black long sleeve shirt not keeping his muscles a secret. But it's not just his shocking attractiveness that you notice. It's his awkward stance and seemingly strong will to avoid looking at you. Of course, this only makes you want to confront him more.
“You,” you address the brooding stranger. “I saw you listening in at the door to the med bay yesterday.” Everyone exchanges curious glances with each other. “What's your name?”
The man looks at you, startled.
“I'm sorry, I don't know where to begin,” he says. “You mean you don't know who I am?”
Wow, that was one of the most arrogant things I've ever heard. “No, I don't. Should I?”
“Doctor Harrison Wells.”
“Well, Harrison, I wanted to-”
“Doctor Wells.”
Double wow. Your jaw drops out of sheer bafflement. You scoff. “Oh excuse me, Doctor Wells,” the sarcasm heavy in your voice. “But would you care to enlighten me on why you were eavesdropping on us at the door?”
Harrison's arms cross. “Even if this were true, how could you possibly know that?”
“I... I don't know exactly. What I do know is that one minute I see you snooping in the shadows and the next...” You can't even fully wrap your head around it yourself. “The door is blocking you from sight.”
“As doors tend to do.”
God, this man is irritating.
“Very curious,” Caitlin jumps in. “So you're saying you were able to see through the door?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Whoa. Like X-ray vision...” Cisco says to himself.
“Or maybe I'm just seeing things? I could have been hit over the head for all I know, seeing as I have no clue how I got here in the first place.” Harrison turns away slightly, his face out of view.
“You know what this means, don't you Harry?” Cisco sounds excited for some reason. And why does Cisco get to call him Harry?
“Yes, Ramon, I believe I do,” Harrison agrees, his attitude turning around. He rubs his hands together and heads for the door. “Ms. (Y/L/N), will you follow me this way, please?”
“Why? Where are we going?”
Harrison Wells turns back to face you and winks. “It's time to run some tests.”
The giant-ass treadmill in the test room generated a couple questions for you, but you let them go. So long as you didn't have to run on it, you didn't really care. But these “tests” that they were going to perform on you? This was currently in the forefront of your mind. Will the tests hurt? Will the result be I've gone totally insane?
“Now, Ms. (Y/L/N),” Harrison says, while Cisco trails behind him. “You claim to have had the ability to see me through a door, correct?”
“Yes...”
“In order to prove if Ramon's hypothesis is indeed accurate, it would be my honor to poke and prod you.”
Your eyebrows shoot up at Harrison's choice of words. If you weren't mistaken, the tips of his ears were growing red. Cisco makes a fist near his mouth to cover his snickering.
“What? No. Not-”
“Smooth,” Cisco mutters.
“Um, poor choice of words, excuse me. Ms. (Y/L/N), please have a seat here.” You do so, shaking off the scene which had passed. “Cisco, I'll need you to grab the appropriate materials from the equipment room.”
“Roger that, Bosco.”
Harrison gives him an odd look.
“Sorry, thought I'd try a new nickname. I'm on it.” Cisco doesn't make it far, however. He pats himself over and spins around like a dog chasing its tail. “Damn it. Where'd I put my key card?”
You're staring at Cisco in the midst of a frenzy when something weird happens. Your vision alters itself, allowing you to zone in on a small rectangular object in the area where his top shirt pocket would be.
“What's this here...?” You walk up to him and fish out, lo and behold, his security key card.
“You- I knew it! X-ray vision! You'll be needing a name...” Cisco runs off to fetch the equipment leaving you with the sometimes arrogant, sometimes awkward Wells.
“Fascinating. When looking at Cisco's shirt, would you say your vision differed from normal in any way?”
“Kind of. The key card was glowing in his pocket, except I saw right through his pocket like it wasn't even there. His shirt was sort of brightly outlined- highlighted. Translucent. I'm sorry if that doesn't make any sense.”
“On the contrary. It's very helpful. Are you able to 'turn on' your power, so to speak?”
“I don't know. It just kind of happened these last two times.”
“Why don't you give it a try?” Harrison suggests. Having no idea how to begin, you squint while looking around the room, trying to focus on something.
“I'm not quite sure...” When your eyes glide back to Harrison, his clothes... well... your vision only shows their outlines.
Oh my god, what-
“Ahhhh!” You try to look literally anywhere else, head jerking around like a robot on the fritz.
“Everything all right, Ms. (Y/L/N)?” Your lips flatten in embarrassment. Cisco races back in the room with a silver briefcase of materials in hand.
“What'd I miss?”
“If I'm not mistaken, I'd say Ms. (Y/L/N) has just seen me sans clothing.”
“I suddenly have to go to the bathroom,” you attempt an excuse.
“Side effect?”
“No, Cisco,” you tell him. “Not a side effect.” Taking one last glimpse at Harrison, clothes back intact, he looks entertained at your sudden hastiness. You suppose you're not the only one who can get uber awkward. If not, more so. You got to get the hell out of there.
Due to further analysis of your powers, the lovely people at S.T.A.R. Labs asked if you could stay with them a little while longer. It was passed on to your workplace that you had been hospitalized for an indefinite amount of time, so you had nowhere else to be, really. Caitlin wanted to monitor your headaches and eye pains (which, with her help, have been happening less and less). Cisco wanted to engineer a device that lets the rest of them see what you were seeing when your X-ray vision was “turned on.” Barry only showed up every so often to check in on things. He seemed like a busy guy.
And Harrison?
These past couple days have been interesting around him. At first, you would use your newly harnessed power to scope out rooms before entering them to make sure Harrison wasn't in them. You didn't want to relive your accidental peep show. But most of the time, avoiding him couldn’t be helped. As a fellow scientist, he works alongside his younger colleagues to study you. Which is funny, because you're quietly trying your best to study him.
Like how you've noticed when he talks he likes to put emphasis on certain words to get his point across.
Or when his brow furrows when working out a problem.
Or when he removes his glasses in a swift motion and habitually bites the arm of them.
Not that you like him or anything. No. That would be ridiculous. This was just you taking an interest in science and the power of observation.
At the moment, you were taking a well-deserved rest in your beloved med bay bed. The bed where you had woken up from. It had been bothering you for days now. You needed to figure out how you had gotten to S.T.A.R. Labs in the first place. What was my first memory before waking up? Let's see...
It was raining, evening. The sun was setting behind the mountains.
You were walking home from work. A different route, in fact. You had thought it might be nice to change things up a bit.
There was a noise. The noise of a whimpering animal. It was coming from the direction of S.T.A.R. Laboratories. You decided to investigate.
A golden retriever cowered behind a hedge. You kneeled down to get closer but in an instant, it bolted. There was something else there.
Someone else. A hooded man towered over you. On his wrist, a tattoo of a strange symbol you've seen somewhere before.
There was a blinding light, alternating moments of vision loss, stumbling, and finally... heartbreaking blue eyes staring down at you. The rest was blackness.
Wait. You know those eyes. Didn't they belong to-
“Harry is acting weird.” Caitlin lingers in the doorway. “I've never seen him like this.”
“How do you mean?” shaken from your reverie.
“Where do I begin? Harry is normally a very prickly, all-business kind of guy. But now? He's a little playful, distracted in his work. He stumbles over his words when you're in the room. Not to mention the heartfelt stolen looks in your direction,” Caitlin lists off on her fingers. “Plus it was him who thought it would be safer for you to remain at S.T.A.R. Labs while discovering your potential. He definitely has a crush on you and I almost thought that kind of thing was impossible for him...”
“What? No! Caitlin, that's completely absurd!”
“You don't know the man like we do. It's all there, plain as day on his face! This is a phenomenon, actually."
“And what do you expect me to do with all this information?”
“Do with it what you will.” The room falls silent.
“On a different note,” you try to change the embarrassing subject. “Has there been any record of a metahuman with a tattoo on his wrist?”
“What's the tattoo?”
“A symbol of, well, here.” You grab Caitlin's clipboard on the desk and a pencil and draw the tattoo from memory.
“That's the symbol for a radiation hazard. Does this have anything to do with that night?”
“It does, yes.”
“(Y/N), the metahuman with this tattoo has been taken into custody. Team Arrow took him down last night.”
“You're kidding?" She shakes her head. A weight feels like it has been lifted off your shoulders. You breathe a sigh of relief.
"This is the best news, thank you for that."
Over the intercom, the room fills with Cisco's loud voice: “Caitlin, we need you in the Cortex, and quick!" Caitlin turns and bolts, heels clacking like mad. In your mind, chasing after her was the only thing to do. Rounding the corner in the room they call the Cortex, you see a man in a red suit lying on the floor writhing in pain. Wait. Is that...?
“Arrgh! There's something lodged in my leg. You have to get it out!” the masked man yells. You rush closer to him and see the emblem on his chest. A lightning bolt.
The Flash.
The Flash is squirming on the floor crying out in agony. Caitlin kneels down beside him. “What happened? What hit you?”
“I don't know,” says the Flash through his gritted teeth. “One minute I was scoping out the shipyard and,” an intake of breath, “the next I'm getting shot in the leg from behind.”
“So you didn't see where the object was shot from?” comes the voice Harrison.
“No, gah!”
“I can't see anything,” Caitlin says examining through the hole she had to cut in the Flash's suit (much to Cisco's dismay). “It's like there's nothing there. The opening of the wound is obvious, but it appears there's nothing lodged in your leg. Whatever it is, it's invisible.” At that, you have a brainwave and kneel down beside Caitlin.
“Cisco, are the 'X-specs' ready?” you ask him.
“Oh, I like where this is going.” He brings you the never before tested x-ray glasses he had been working on.
You place the spectacles on your face, command yourself remain calm and concentrate hard on what you're about to do. A man's life is at stake. And not just any man, but the man who saves Central City on a daily basis. Now it was your turn to repay the favour.
You zone in on the leg wound and, as it happened previously, your eyes adjust to an altered vision.
“It's working! The tablet's showing what you're seeing!” Now you (and Cisco) are able to see the Flash's bare leg through his suit. All of his suit really. Gaze traveling upward, you can't deny that pretty boy face.
“Barry?!”
Silence.
“Secret's out, I guess,” mutters Cisco. Barry, The Flash, lets out another groan but does not address the proverbial cat out of the bag. Back on task, you focus on the entry point of the- hold on. That's an oddly shaped bullet.
“It's definitely a bullet, guys. But it's jagged along the sides. It looks like it'll hurt like a bitch if you try to remove it.”
“We have to get him to the med bay,” Caitlin insists.
“There's no time,” you say. “Caitlin, if I adjust my vision to see the insides of his leg, would you be able to surgically remove it by looking at the tablet?”
She pauses for a second.
“Let's do it.” She grabs her medical instruments to perform the extraction. Cisco brings the tablet over to her.
“Ready?”
Caitlin nods. “Barry, this is going to hurt. A lot,” she says, not trying to sugar coat it. “One... two...”
“AAARRRHHHHH!”
Barry was rushed to your home-away-from-home (the med bay bed) after the procedure. But that's okay. He needs it more right now. Which leaves you to your thoughts, pacing the Cortex in silence.
“Just a heads up, Ramon wants to call you 'Ms. X.'” Harrison leans in the entryway, arms folded.
“Does he give everyone with powers a name?”
“Essentially, yes.”
“I kinda like it.” There's a lull in the conversation, but then he speaks.
“That was quite heroic of you earlier.”
“I did what I could.”
Harrison walks over to you and puts a hand on your shoulder, voice turning soft. “It made all the difference.” God, his eyes are the purest blue I've ever seen. That thought sparks another.
“You were there that night.”
He nods. “I heard yelling from the security monitor in the Cortex,” he recounts grimly, not meeting your eyes at this moment. “You were being pursued by a man with a black hood, heading in the direction of the building's entrance. I saw you were stumbling and not running straight. So I snatched one of the energy weapons from the armory and ran like hell. By the time I reached the entrance, you were banging on the doors calling for help. Your attacker was close behind and I- I took a shot at him, sent the guy flying back with the gun's energy blast. He staggered up and fled before I could see his face.” Harrison's words paint the part of the picture that had been missing in your own memory. The scenes start to come together.
“But then... you collapsed in my arms. You were losing consciousness.” Harrison stops looking down at the floor and finally meets your gaze. He was undoubtedly the last image you saw before waking up in this foreign place and that makes you feel comfortable and warm inside.
“I understand you are a stranger to me and vice versa, but I thought I was losing you. I thought I was losing you as I held you in my arms and couldn't do anything about it. And I couldn't have that happen to me. Not again...” His words dripping with past experience trail off, and you aren't certain you want to press on the matter. “You wanted to know why I was eavesdropping outside that door?”
Harrison takes your hands and holds them between you both. “Because I didn't have the courage to step inside the room in case you were lying there dead. I was listening for a sign.”
“How can you possibly feel so much for me? You've only known me a few days.” You cannot deny the way you've been feeling around Harrison any longer; how you feel for this man who is pouring his heart out to you, something you wouldn't expect a man like him to do.
“(Y/N), it only takes one incredible circumstance to become a catalyst for a person's feelings on a matter. The events of that night were the catalyst. The rest is history.”
“You are truly an amazing man, Doctor Wells.”
“Thank you, I know.”
Ahaha! I knew the arrogance would resurface sometime soon!
“But you see, it takes an amazing person to know another.”
“I suppose that's true,” you say with a grin, slowly moving closer to him.
“And (Y/N)?”
“Yes?”
“You can call me Harrison. If you like. Everyone else calls me Harry due to, well, it's a long story."
“Really? What's with the change of heart?”
“I merely thought that if we were to get to know one another better, it might help to be a little more casual with the names. Besides, I'm not terribly fond of the nickname.”
“Great observation, Harrison.”
“And seeing as you've already seen me without my clothes... I think we've reached that level.”
“Oh my god.”
“Like what you saw?”
“You're the worst, you know that?” You playfully push him back but he reels you back in.
“Ah, but you haven't compiled sufficient evidence that I am, quote, 'the worst.' Maybe I'm actually the best.”
“Mind if I conduct an experiment?”
He says nothing, but you can see the red spreading to his ears as you move in closer to him, so close, lips not quite touching, and stay there for a second. The energy between you is sparking. You close the gap and kiss him softly. Harrison's hand finds your cheek while your arms lock around his neck. You break the kiss, feeling light as a feather.
"What did you learn?" he asks, clearing his throat. You give a thoughtful look.
"The results were inconclusive. More tests need to be taken."
"You know I love tests."
You laugh. "Yes, I'm aware of that. Now let's go check on Barry."
Harrison leads you out of the Cortex. "And don't even think about sneaking an x-ray glimpse from behind.."
"It was one time! And no promises."
^ the radiation hazard tattoo