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It’s after all the head-splitting and colourful celebrations of Barry’s return from death — because he had died, strangely enough — and Wally having pressed a palm to Barry’s back, soft and taller than him now (The first time Barry saw him, he didn’t even think it could be Wally — he was so much bigger, now, than the child he left behind. He’s a father.) and asking Do you wanna go home?: To Wally’s and Linda’s and the twin’s home, because he’s married now and has children and Barry missed it all — and he has to, because his apartment was cleared out a month after he was gone.
Barry tells him Yes, tendons coiled so tight it's painful from everyone just — staring at him, like he’ll disappear with the next gust of the wind, even though he’s right there and can feel how he’s matter again; that matter pumps his blood around his body, oxidizing it with each inhale and heart beating a steady 70PBM. He can feel the shift of his muscle, the pull of his skin and the pulse in his tongue and his input-output senses, but it —
That doesn’t matter: Barry finds himself in Wally and Linda’s home with Hal, because Hal hasn’t left the moment Barry stepped from the nothingness existence of the Speedforce into the now and it’s — Barry doesn’t want him to go, feverishly biting down on his knuckles in a stupid hope that he just stays even though it’s god-awfully selfish, but. But.
So much has happened, so much has changed and everyone is now a decade older than what Barry ever got to be — he’s closer in age to Wally and Dick now than he is with Iris. Iris — and they’ve all got pressure dripping off their shoulders, squaring them down and there’s so much Barry’s missed: Clark died, Bruce’s son, Jason, died. Max, dead. Ralph and Sue are gone (God, god.) — and so much he doesn’t know that they do, things they don’t want to talk about but Hal — Hal is not much older than Barry is now, because he…
I died, Hal told him when Barry was still acclimating to being matter instead of motion; Hal died, was strangled by fear itself — Parallax, John called him — and destroyed the Corps, killed and then nothing was left to bury because he imploded with reigniting the sun. It was him, but it wasn’t — It’s complicated, John told him and the new Green Lantern, Kyle, about Wally’s age, then said Parallax does things to you, your body, your mind. Entrapment in your own fears and it…Kyle purses his mouth, it never really goes away.
Time ticked on, Hal came back, was the Spectre for a while (Barry nearly can’t believe it, still; the overwhelming urge to just lay down and click out of reality nearly won out instead.) and then was a Corpsemen again and this is him now: a little older, not by much, but still looking at Barry like he always did with that stupid lilt to his mouth that made him look so impeccably smug. He still laughs the same, smoothing out the stress at the edges of his eyes, his jaw, and hasn’t stopped looking in Barry’s direction ever since he’s come back.
Barry wants him to stay, he always has, even when Hal didn’t particularly want to be stationed onto the ground because he tasted the freedom of the galaxy, but he’s older now and weary of the world that just kept rolling on when he didn’t and it’s just so —
He just missed Hal. So much.
It’s after all that, the ride to Wally’s with Hal, settling down in the living room with him while Wally puts the twins to bed (Irey and Jai: they’re so sweet. The baby pictures Wally showed him made his throat ache.) that Hal reaches into a pocket of his flight jacket — because he still has that old damn thing — and reveals a small cotton drawbag.
Barry blinks, setting down his beer and and very carefully notes the tiny tremor that begins in Hal’s hand; Hal never does, not in the time that Barry’s known him, not unless it was about the things that plague him (Coast City; that was hard to swallow when Hal explained it. He looked distant. Barry’s heart shattered) and so, Barry keeps quiet to give Hal a moment.
”It’s a present, for you,” Hal begins, jaw nervously grinding — trying to smooth it away by giving an ever so slightly strained smile that makes Barry’s gut twist because Hal is never like this with him. Maybe that’s just how this version of Hal is; broken seams. It becomes more obvious as Barry acclimates to this world. “You don’t have to keep it, Bar, but I wanted you to have a little something of mine to show you that I'm happy you're back — more than happy, actually. Got my best friend back and all that.”
Barry's heart kicks up and oh, oh he's missed Hal so fucking much, how sentimental he could be. Gently, Barry takes the drawbag from Hal’s hands, who follows the motion with his eyes and then, Barry rests a palm on Hal’s shoulder, close. “Hal,” He says and Hal straightens in response. “I’ll love whatever your gift is because it’s from you. You didn’t have to, being back with everyone is a gift for me,“ Being aware and not aware was a muddied existence, but the one thing he knew during it all, was that he missed everyone. “But thank you.”
Hal stares for a skip of Barry’s heartbeat, then nods and smiles bright-white — laxer, more himself and not anxious in the way that Barry hates. Barry tries hard to not stare at how adoringly crooked it is, not the star smile Hal trained into himself when he was younger. “You’re such a sap, Barry. Just open the damn bag.”
Barry does accordingly, reaching in to pinch a metal chain between his fingers, pulling it out and — Barry blinks, wide, turning the chain and metal that reflects in the light of the warm bulbs above them and Oh, Hal, Barry thinks, throat thick.
It’s Hal’s airforce dogtags, still in pristine condition besides a few scratches, but polished to a shine. Barry sets them into his palm, swiping his thumb across the raised SGT Harold Jordan, across his identification number, O Neg and stopping at religious affiliation; Jewish, his mother: Jessica Jordan. Barry presses his finger lightly into the metal, feeling how the metal begins to slightly warm as blood begins to rush through his head — loud.
He’s holding Hal’s dogtags; the ones he’s seen endlessly looped around Hal’s neck for years, seen him sleep with. It —
Hal shifts slightly next to him, fingers drumming on the muscle of his thigh in a tic he’s had ever since Barry’s known him and it breaks whatever frozen moment Barry was stuck in. Quickly, he drapes the chain over his neck and tucks the tags beneath his shirt, smoothing it down and feeling how they rest against his diaphragm, a little to the left of where his heart sits beneath his ribs. Barry’s ears warm, hand twitching over his chest and he can near taste his pulse in his tongue.
When he looks to Hal next, Hal has this — look to him, lighter, eyes softened in a manner that Barry hasn’t seen since he’s come back. He looks more himself, and his mouth ticks up when Barry gives him an awkward smile, smoothing out all that heaviness. The softness persists until Hal has to turn in for the night.
Barry doesn’t want him to go, but he lets Hal leave; it makes something in his gut turn that he stomps down instantly.
The first time Barry picks up on something strange, it goes like this; a month and a half month after Barry’s began to acclimate, two weeks after he’s taken to regularly wearing Hal’s dogtags because — because he does, for reasons that even escape him (He’s always been like this, not attuned in his own emotions; it’s working so far.) and that he doesn’t devolve to entertaining — he meets up with Clark for their first lunch together since he died, even though the last one he had with Clark felt like just three months ago.
It was near ten for Clark; Barry doesn’t know how to feel about that. He prefers to not think about it at all nowadays.
Clark looks the same from when Barry saw him just a little while ago — older, because he’s so much older than Barry now compared to their original few years, crows feet at the edges of his eyes and hands stronger and far more marred. He’s bigger than Barry remembers, stockier, but still wearing those ill-fitting suits because he never grew out of that, Barry supposes, but he’s let his hair grow out a little more than he did back then.
He looks healthy, not as shadowed as everyone is (God, Bruce; Barry can’t believe how different he is now, so much sadder), and when he sees Barry, he lights up and strongholds Barry into a burly hug, feverishly warm even to a Speedster and — Barry bites down a laugh — he still doesn’t press his clothes right after all these years. It’s so achingly familiar to what used to be and Barry goes to return the hug, squeezing Clark.
Turns out Clark still hasn't got a hold of his strength when excited, because he tightens his embrace and cuts off some of Barry’s airflow — Barry quickly patting at Clark’s back with a wheezing; “Clark, Clark, I need to breathe—“
Not a second later and Barry is back on his feet, Clark’s hands flitting and patting at Barry’s shoulders, chest and spine for anything he might’ve damaged. “Sorry,” Clark says, cringing before his smile tips into an awkward one, palm cupping the curve of his nape “Just got excited to see you again — it’s been so long.”
Barry’s heart seizes, throat burning before he swallows it down and sometimes, sometimes, he forgets that everyone mourned him. That they loved him the same way he did — enough to give up his life for them to just give them a chance (Give Wally a chance to grow up.). He can tell how they’re not used to him being back, the way he sticks out like a sore thumb and how the younger heroes just stare because the Flash that the older generation knew is back from the dead. The way they all speak to him, sometimes, makes it sound like they’re preparing to see him vanish into oblivion again.
He did, sort of; he didn’t leave much to bury.
”I missed you too, Clark,” Barry agrees, lightly pushing away the hand that tries to press on his lower ribs to check for cracks or bruises. “I’m glad to see that you haven’t changed after all this time — with the whole still not pressing your clothes. Has Lois not beaten your head in about that yet? I remember she used to all the time, despite how endearing she thought it was at the start.”
Clark’s face softens, rounding out so much that he looks just how Barry remembers him a decade ago — more than; when he was just Barry’s senior by a few years and hadn’t quite found his footing in heroism yet and was so youthfully sincere. He still is, but he’s older now and carries much more; it makes Barry’s heart pinch with nostalgia. “She stopped a few years ago because she realised she was fighting a losing battle; the wonders of us being both stubborn. Are you sure you’re okay, though —? That I didn’t fracture anything or—“
”Clark,” Barry interrupts, barely biting down another laugh and God, he’s missed Clark, “I’m fine. I’m a Speedster — not exactly porcelain material. But, if it makes you feel better you’re free to use your X-ray vision to check.”
Clark goes a little pink in the ears, endearing despite his age and he really, really hasn't changed since Barry last saw him when he was alive. A little older, more lines in his face and a much more confident gait to himself than the twenty-five year old Barry first met, but he still has the same gentleness to him. A gentle giant, Hal used to call him before Clark grew more into himself.
Barry can pinpoint the picosecond Clark's X-ray vision activates; it's in the way his pupils shrink to pinpricks, eyes wider and iris going just the slightest bit transparent to look near foggy or hollow. It used to freak Diana out when she was still getting used to their world and wasn’t as advanced in the world of gore or aliens as the rest of them were, but she did get the hang of it after a while — laughing about it now, saying How I used to be so unknowing.
Diana hasn’t lost her spark, but she seems more…rigid, now, a tautness to her; Bruce told him about what happened with Maxwell, and he can see how it weighs physically on her, occasionally.
Clark’s eyes track over the cage of his ribs and the bend of his clavicle — down the curve of his spine and the fold of his scapula on his back, landing squarely on his diaphragm for a moment and giving a wide, singular blink, holding his gaze there before — Barry blinks when Clark abruptly cracks an embarrassed smile, his finger going to scratch at the notch of his jaw, a Nervous tic he’s had since he was a baby, Ma and Pa told him the first time Barry met them. “You’re all good, just wanted to double check since you know how I can get when I’m excited.”
The brief confusion lingers, then dissipates when Barry shrugs it off — Clark said he was fine, so no worry there — and instead stretches a grin, faintly amused in a way that makes his heart squeeze when Clark returns it with open teeth. “You worry too much over us speedsters, Clark — too much to be doing this now, anyway. Remember when we used to do that—“ A swirl of his pointer in the air. “—tornado move?”
A laugh that nearly knocks Clark’s glasses right off his nose. “Oh, Rao.”
Hal’s taken to being stationed on earth now, permanently. John, Guy and Kyle are the Earth Lanterns now assigned to deal with the wider cosmic issues of space, and only sometimes will they send a distress signal for his assistance because he’s Hal, and Hal is good at what he does. Apparently, this was a new development — Hal’s been in space so much, since he came back, Clark said one night when he and Barry went out for a late night race together, both restless and sleepless because they’re far too alike than different. Pursing his lips, knuckles against his mouth, I don’t think earth really had a proper Lantern for a while because they were all away in the galaxy. Not…here. It feels good having him back, again.
Barry doesn’t know how to feel about that, about anything, really, but he knows Hal and knows that Hal avoids the things that hurt him — he’s like Barry in that way. It’s good that he’s down on the ground again, apparently even taking his job at Ferris Air up again (Him and Carol don’t work anymore, Hal tells him, they haven’t for a long time, but they’re good together where they are now; the friends they used to be.) and beginning to renew his relationships with his brothers.
Hal tells him all this over the takeout that he brings to Barry’s door, because he now makes it a mission of his to visit Barry as much as he can while Barry waits for his legal identity to be legally resurrected (The lease is technically under Bruce’s. Barry loves Wally, but seeing how much he changed all time made him — it was hard; he needed his own place to adjust. Wally says he understands; Barry could see how it hurt him. The guilt eats at him. Iris tried to bargain, but Barry was always just as stubborn as hell.) so he can go back to work. They spend most of that time pressed shoulder to shoulder on his couch and on the peak of skyscrapers when Barry begins to miss their post mission hang outs; when they were younger and would sit atop the highest buildings they could find in Central and Coast and just talk.
They still do, now, about the little things that Barry missed — Bruce’s new kids, Tim and Cass and Damian, about Roy’s little Lian, all the new Titans, the new Wondergirl, Cassie, and Kon, Clark’s clone and whatever they are. Bart, who doesn’t like Barry and that — it hurts, knowing his own grandchild doesn’t want him, but Wally tells him that The kid needs time to adjust, he’s never met you, and Barry tries to; he hopes its working. There’s Booster Gold, who Barry thinks is a little bit of a shill and when he sees a picture of him, instantly recognises him as someone Barry and Wally ran into the timestream with years ago.
Hal howls with laughter when Barry tells him that he called Booster an alcoholic to his face. Barry debates if he should offer an apology if he ever does see the guy.
Barry’s not taken the suit up again yet, there’s still too much and he — he needs time to get used to all of the new, to be who he used to be. Wally waits patiently, because he was always too good for Barry, and Hal is content to just be the hero of their relationship until Barry gets back on his feet; Barry does want to be a hero again — he couldn’t ever not — but he just wants to…wait.
A speedster, waiting. Iris is laughing at him.
Barry doesn’t hide that he wears the dogtags whenever he’s with Hal — it’d be rude to, it was a gift from Hal and to hide it from him makes Barry’s stomach roll uncomfortably. He likes it better when Hal spots the dogtags on his person and he — he lights up, softening him from the person that drips with guilt and the things that Barry doesn’t know yet.
One day he will, because Hal trusts him, so he’ll just wait.
The second time goes a little something like this: two months after Barry had returned, he was finally able to resurrect his legal identity through the assistance of Bruce and Ollie’s legal teams and the Lucy Lee Revival Law (Turns out that there had been an influx of supernatural events post Barry’s death where the dead would come alive or something similar; enough that law had to begin to account for them. Strange) and had all his assets returned to him. Through that, he finally was able to transfer the lease from Bruce’s name into his own, and now he fully owns his new place instead of hanging off of his generosity — because that made Barry feel sick.
Going back to work was…Barry tries to not think on how much has changed in his old precinct, how much older and exhausted Singh is, how Patty transferred departments, and how everyone looks at him like a walking corpse. Barry feels like roadkill, but he deals.
Wally, though, like Hal and Iris, makes it a habit to visit him as much as he can to see how he’s adjusting to the present (Okay, not great, but Barry will never tell him; he thinks Wally can tell anyway.) and to just see him, because Wally didn’t hide how much he missed Barry in the near decade he was gone and —
Some deep seated part of Barry was always, deeply, terrified that once Wally became an adult and spread his wings to explore life, he’d start to — separate, pull away from him and Iris, become exhausted of them — because they were Wally’s parents, for so long and God, it hurts to see him so much bigger now when Barry remembers him barely making it to his clavicle, now a head taller and Barry has to look up at him now —
Wally’s always here, now, more than Barry ever thought he’d be and it — Iris tells him that Barry’s death changed him permanently, became the thing Wally could never move past and that it made him do everything to protect the vestiges of what was left of Barry and his legacy as the Flash. I hoped the Flash was Barry Allen, Wally told him when he came back, so sincere in every syllable and all it did was make guilt eat at Barry’s stomach at how much Wally loved him and how much his death devastated him.
Barry never wanted to leave Wally, but it was either Barry or lose the chance to save everyone — to save Wally, give him a future to look forward to. Barry would do it a thousand times over to ensure his kid got to grow up, even if it — if it hurt Wally, made Barry miss out on so much of his child’s life (Because Wally is his child, will forever be, damned Rudy.).
So, Barry takes what he has now with Wally, because he missed Wally so damn much that it hurt when he was almost nothing.
The second time ends up happening when the suns almost ducked below the horizon, Friday, six-PM sharp and Barry opens his door to find Wally with a plastic bag heavy with icecream tubs, lifting it teasingly with a grin that makes him look so much younger — a phantom of how he looked when Barry last saw him, barely an adult; it makes his heart twinge with nostalgia fo what used to be. It reminds him of their Ice cream Fridays; the post-patrol tradition Barry began where he would buy Wally whatever ice cream he wanted (Caramel to Barry’s mint) and they’d do whatever after, because Barry loved seeing him so happy.
Barry’s heart aches further at the reminder of what he lost, but steps aside to let Wally in anyway as Wally chatters his head off about something he forgets now.
But this time around Barry wears Hal's dogtags freely around his neck, open to the air because it’s what he has begun to do in his own space because he wants to and — Barry is still a speedster, so no matter how much faster Wally is than him now, how much more connected to the Speedforce he is, he catches the way Wally’s eyes flash to the dogtags and feels his heart slam into his throat — but Wally’s smile just grows wider and he skips by Barry, going on about Beginning ice cream Fridays again or another, disappearing down the hall.
Barry flexes his fingers, heart squirrely and closes the door.
(Ice cream Fridays begin up again; sometimes Irey and Jai join them, and once Bart. It’s progress.)
Jay invites Barry to a barbecue; still the same as ever. It’s a good day, that day; Barry gets to see Alan again for the first time in so long, and he speaks with Joan for nearly an hour, a little with Jesse. Bart’s there as well, taut when he sees Barry, but offers a few words before he skips away to Iris and hogs her for the rest of it.
Kyle is there as well, because he’s the Green Lantern Wally picked up this time around, and he’s a good kid; he matches Wally’s snark well. Hal is there, because he’s been invited to these things for so long that sometimes Barry forgets he isn’t a Flash, and argues about nonsense at the grill with Alan and has Alan threaten him over something with the steaks.
For the first time in a long while, Barry begins to think that he’ll be able to settle into everything.
The third time, it’s after Iris has begun breaking into his apartment to laze about like she always used to when Barry was still alive and was still neighboured next to her — because that’s how they met, two separate times; first on the field, and then realising they were neighbours. It didn’t take long for Barry to give up a key to her, she was always there anyway, and he enjoyed the bustle of having her at home when he returned from work.
Sometimes, he’d walk in to find Wally there as well, pouting and rolling his eyes at having to meet the Loser that Aunt Iris had as a best friend, but Barry didn’t mind it; it made his apartment feel livelier, and eventually the coparenting deal they started (Because they did; Barry even signed his permission slips and became his emergency contact) had them over constantly. Finding Iris in his new apartment a decade down the line again when everything is so — different, makes him…
It feels good to have that routine again; his apartment is too quiet now, even though he was used to that silence for years. Barry just thinks he missed the little family they built.
Iris greets him from the coach when he walks in, a book in hand and feet kicked up on his coffee table as she greets him, promptly waving him off to get changed from his work clothes that Smell like antiseptic, Bar — awful. Dutifully, Barry listens and moves down to his bedroom, only pausing to mess her hair up just the slightest, then straightening it with his fingers when she slaps at his hip.
”Just get changed, Allen. I’ve been waiting for you for too long,” Iris snorts, palm at his back to shove him further down. “I’ve got some testimonies I think you’d be very interested in — it’s for that Smith case you’re on. But,” She lifts a finger, wagging. “You’re not getting an inch of it until you change — so scoot.”
And Barry does, coming back to her as he stretches his back — vertebrae popping in a cacophony of cracks that makes Iris screw her face up just the slightest. The exact way Wally does; nose scrunching, a little shiver and Barry can barely hold back a laugh at how little that part of her has changed after all these years. He’d thought dealing with the anatomy of Speedsters after all this time would have her used to quirks of the human body. But.
It’s nice to see Iris is still the same as she was when Barry last saw her; still hasn’t let up on his fashion sense, too. Though he doesn’t think that’s anything anyone will ever let go.
Barry patters into his kitchen, moving around the isle and opening up the cabinets to fish out two mugs; one cracked with a stupid leopard print that Wally apparently kept, and one with a poorly painted sunflower on it from when Iris dragged him to a pottery class a two months ago to Get you out the house, Bar.
“Still take it with sugar and milk?” Barry asks, dumping the kettle of stale water out to fill it with fresh tap water.
“I'm an old woman, Barry," Iris says, shifting on the couch until she crosses her arms across the back of it and rests her chin on them, mouth twisting. Barry’s organs knot up at the reminder of her being older than him now, the beginnings of lines at the edges of her eyes; he has less time with her. “Of course I do.”
Barry flicks the kettle on. “One teaspoon.”
Iris hums, eyes following him as he works around the kitchen; she does that a lot now, the staring. So does Wally and Hal, and most of everyone else and sometimes, it makes Barry's skin itch because he knows why they do it — him being dead for almost a decade will do that, but it makes him think that maybe they’re trying to parse past his skin and muscle to check if his heart is still working the way it should be.
Clark does it; Barry knows that the watch Bruce gifted him as a welcome back gift has a heart monitor installed to check his pulse.
Barry can't fault them for doing it; there's a lot he won't fault them for behaving like they do because he was dead for so long, and Hal once told him, a few weeks after he came back, that Your death was just the beginning of everything getting worse. There was a faint look in his eyes when he did, hollow, and Barry —
He bares it all, because he can't do much else.
Iris is still tracking him, Barry can feel it and at some point, he turns around because she squints at his diaphragm — and she bursts out laughing, startling Barry and making him whip his head around to her.
It’s so loud, her entire face lined in utter amusement and almost joyful. When she takes another look at him, his features tugging down in confusion, she begins to giggle instead and there’s something he’s not picking up on. “Oh, Barry.”
Barry’s brows crease together. “Iris?”
"Just—" She presses her face into the couch for a moment, heaving a little before she sucks in a breath to actually formulate something substantial. "Never change, Bar."
"Okay?"
The first time Barry takes on the skin of the Flash again, it’s after he’s sat staring at the suit that Wally sewed up for him (because he makes his own suits now, and he made Barry a replica of the one he made himself all that time ago) and left in a box at his door, note attached: For when you’re ready, Uncle Barry.
It’s been collecting dust in his closet for a long time, now, and finally, he worked up his nerves enough to extract it from the corner he shoved it into to spread out across his bed, Barry slumping down in his desk chair, staring until he feels himself slip into relative time and it’s all molasses dripping minute by minute, then, blood slowing down. That happens more than he likes to admit.
Apparently, the only thing left of him after running into oblivion was the suit, every atom that built up the structure of his body fused into the Speedforce — not trace of anything, not even a speck of his DNA or RNA left on the suit; pristine, untouched and only caked in space dust. That suit is gone now, Wally having worn it (God, Wally) until it was only threadbare and it —
Barry wants to be the Flash again. So, so badly he wants it that he can taste the Speedforce in the saliva that pools in his mouth, but he sits in station, pulse barely beating against the skin that layers over it; epidermis, dermis, muscle and tissue, radial and ulnar arteries static in his wrists.
Barry can’t go back to being normal — he can’t, not after he lived so much of his life feeling every tendon and sinew and organ and tissue in his body pulsing with the Speedforce and the notion that he can’t be what he used to — do the same good he used to, the things he did to save people and the power that sits etched into his bones that would be rotting just because he can’t — it’s —
Barry stands up, hearing the sharp clang of the dogtags rattling, and picks up the suit.
Wally finds him first, crashing into him and then taking him sprinting across the planet until both their heels scorch and Barry can taste the ozone with his teeth and eyes. Clark’s the second one: he hears them both dashing around the planet and within a microsecond, he shadows above them, eclipsing the sun; when Barry looks up, he finds Clark grinning down at them and saying Good to see you in the suit again, Barry. And Barry just laughs — full and free and exhilaration lightening his everything until he can breathe for what feels like the first time in years.
Hal is the third; Barry lets muscle memory retrace the phantom footsteps he always took towards Coast City — The City Without Fear!: Read on the Welcome plate. That’s new — until he finds himself swallowed into the familiar roads, the curve of the rebuilt buildings — They used the old city maps archived to rebuild, Iris told him, it’s almost identical to what it used to be — and there, a bright-blip that zips past the angles of the city. Hal is patrolling.
Barry grins, digs his heel into the ground and — up up up he goes, launching up against the side of a building until he hits the roof and spins on the balls of his feet to follow the path Hal leaves.
When Hal spots him, his face freezes — whites of his mask cracking wide and mouth dropping and suddenly he’s so still, unmoving and Barry skids to a stop, suddenly feeling like he’s missing something, nerves twisting into an awkward mess and — and then Hal lights up, breaking open into pure, unadulterated joy that makes him laugh — truly free from that weight, like he used to be, white canine on display. It makes Barry’s blood burn.
I was always waiting for you, buddy, Hal will say, hand clapping onto Barry’s shoulder while the whites of his eyes track over his face. Barry will slap his hand away, smile and then challenge him to a race, like always.
(Later, Barry is reminded that Hal had to get used to seeing Wally wear his suit; the Flash with no eyes. It makes his food taste like ash.)
The fourth time goes a little like this; Barry, by virtue of being one of the most knowledgeable about the Speedforce, and one of the only people Bruce likes to work with on investigations (A loner, he says; the amount of new members of his family running around disputes that heavily, for Barry.) finds Barry on a Saturday night in the Batcave. Nine-thirty-PM, to be exact, right after Barry got off his shift (two car crashes, one a suspected hit and run, the other an unfortunate accident; five deaths, a lot of gore. He’s used to it.). Bruce directs Barry to sit down at a bench in one of his sterilised laboratory rooms, nylon gloves stretched tight over his hands because an alien-worm — lovingly cooed at by Dick when he swung by earlier, stationed now in Gotham now because Bludhaven is gone — is secreting some kind of liquid acidic to the touch and is pulsing with the energy of the Speedforce. Despite its size — five inches in length, barely two centimeters in diameter — it was causing enough of a ruckus in uptown Gotham for Bruce to catch wind of it.
Apparently, it was sparking with the Speedforce and it took quite a chase for him and Damian (his son, biological son, because Bruce had a son and no one knew but Talia.) to catch it.
They have no consensus on how the thing got into contact with the Speedforce with how naturally volatile it is; Bruce suspects it to be related to when Superboy-Prime punched reality (He still has so much to catch up on; Barry remembers when Clark told him about another version of himself from Prime Earth all those years ago; he never thought the kid could become like this, but grief will do that.) because it caused an influx of creatures across the planet to infuse with random forces of reality — it’s a whole thing, apparently. Barry doesn’t know much about all of that, Wally could tell him more, but that’s not here or now.
Barry shifts forward with a tong to poke at it — veering back when it violently struggles in the restraints pinning it down, pursing his lips as he hears the faint chime of the dogtags beneath his shirt. They’ve been studying it for an hour, but no change or anything new learned from extracted tissue. Just an utterly normal worm, nothing special, just fused with the Speedforce and actively sapping from it.
Bruce breathes out, lifts his head from the stereoscopic microscope and the Petri dish of the worm's blood beneath it. “Please do not take this the wrong way, Barry, but each time you’ve moved I can hear a metallic sound and it’s a…” Bruce cringes slightly, flexing his fingers on the table. “…slight irritation when I’m trying to focus.”
Barry’s face promptly flushes hotly. “I—“
”Barry,” Bruce says, lowering his tone as he catches onto Barry’s embarrassment. “I don’t care what it is, if it’s sentimental or something else — it doesn’t matter to me. I’m just asking what it is and that you prevent it from disrupting my focus on…” Bruce gestures vaguely at the worm. “…this. It would do you good as well, to not have your focus broken.”
The urge to vibrate straight through the floor right into the core of the Earth out of sheer mortification makes Barry give Bruce a ducked nod, quickly peeling the gloves off his hands and discarding them into a trashcan beneath the bench. “Right, sorry.”
Bruce nods in return, giving a low hum — as he always does, the man of no words, that hasn’t changed — and doesn’t say anything further as Barry wipes down his hand on his pant leg before he goes to fish out the dogtags, lifting them off his neck with a slight chime! sound. A single eye slides towards them and Barry hurriedly shoves them into his pockets, feeling how Bruce’s gaze follows them.
”Huh,” Bruce says into the empty air, and then turns back to the stereoscopic microscope.
Barry reaches for the glove box beneath the bench to retrieve a fresh pair, feeling his ears prickle with heat.
The thing is, Barry isn’t as stupid or oblivious as others think he might be. Well, they don’t think he’s particularly stupid, but sometimes just aloof with social cues and what others pick versus what he doesn’t; the consequences of a lonely childhood, he supposes. What he does know is that it’s a sort of open secret among those he’s close with that he owns Hal’s dogtags. It’s not like he — he exactly makes it a job to hide them, hard to when he picked up the habit of fiddling with them and wearing them beneath his clothing; hard to keep that under wraps when half of everyone he knows has X-ray or superhearing.
He knows that everyone can tell that there’s a heavy sentimentality behind them — so heavy that Barry feels his molars ache with it whenever he tangles his fingers through the decades old metal; feels the weight of what it means when he wears it around his neck and has it press just against where his heart is.
Hal is — Hal, Barry’s best friend and one of the dearest things most important to him and he — he won’t just leave the dogtags to rust in a box that he shoves into his bedside table. It’s Hal, Barry always thinks whenever he holds the dogtags in his palm, when he settles it around his neck before he tucks it beneath his clothing to keep safe and when he feels the metal warm up against his skin. He wants to wear it for him, for himself.
(Sometimes, when Barry sits in his apartment, everything too quiet and too consuming because the Speedforce swallowed him up to miss everything and now he has to relearn how to be in a new world, he presses the skin of his thumb against Hal’s name raised on the dogtags, leaving slight prints.)
Barry is easily susceptible to shame, sometimes. Easy to when he felt so much guilt through his entire life — near born with it the moment Thawne dedicated so much to ruining him just for existing, but Hal —
He wears the dogtags openly, around Hal, because the way Hal breaks open into a bright-smile that makes the melancholy dripping off his shoulders dissipate for just a moment makes Barry feel like he’s doing something right for him.
Barry would do anything to keep Hal like that.
The fifth and final time that Barry realises that something was distinctly different about him wearing the dogtags, is when he’s stationed on his first shift of monitor duty since he’s been back; he’s waiting for J’onn, who was running late because of a hang up with his civilian identity down in Japan, so Barry splits his attention between all the monitors until J’onn is able to join him.
Barry shifts in his seat, drums his fingers on the meat of his thigh, kicks up his feet onto the monitor bench — Six-point-o level earthquake in Vietnam, dispatch all available heroes suited for heavy lifting and rescue operations immediately — cracks his fingers until each knuckle has popped, calculates absentminded chemistry equations in his mind until finally, finally, he tugs Hal’s dogtags from beneath his suit because sometimes, he wears them because the Speedforce protects them and he’s —
He doesn’t know why, really, just that they’ve become a comfort. That thought makes his skin burn a little, and he loops the chain around his fingers and fidgets with them while he keeps an eye on the monitors, feeling time melt a little around him until — snap! Time bouncing back like a rubber band, elastic, and he perks up when he hears faint talking from down the hall — closing in until Barry leans back just enough to see Ollie and John walk by the open door, stop and pop their heads into the room.
Barry blinks. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen the two speak to one another, but there’s always time for firsts, he guesses. It doesn’t stop the instinctual sour of his mouth when he sees Ollie, who gives him a cheeky fingered wave; despite them getting along now after, well — everything, it doesn’t stop them from their routine of whatever this is. Ollie doesn’t seem to care really because he encourages it, so Barry won’t either.
”Barry,” John greets, on Earth for the first time in what feels like so long. His mouth stretches in a pleasant grin. “It’s good to see you again.”
It is. Just as Barry opens his mouth to greet him back, Ollie’s eyes track down to where his fingers play with the chain of the dogtags, pointer on the ridge of the metal plates, and he barks out a disbelieving; “Is Hal fucking serious?”
Barry’s face falls immediately. “A hello would be nice. A nod, even.”
Ollie waves him off with an irritating flap of the hand. “Yeah, yeah, hello to you too, Barry, good to see you and how’s the family —? Or whatever. Anyway—“ Ollie swivels his head towards John, quirking a high brow that nearly bursts through the constraints of his mask, jamming a thumb towards Barry. “Has no one seriously told him? Hal would’ve told me because he never shuts up and is a fat gossip, and no one else has certainly even let out a peep. So clearly, nothing happened and he—“ Barry, vehemently, tries to keep up with whatever the hell is coming out of Ollie’s gob. “—clearly doesn’t know, otherwise he would’ve done something or something at the very least would’ve happened and I would’ve heard. So?”
John’s mouth twitches ever so slightly, fighting down his amusement and Barry’s brows knot together, staring. “Ollie,” John says warningly instead of anything else, distinctly non serious.
"Oh, come off it, John. If no one's going to tell him then I will," Ollie twists towards Barry, straightens up his posture and begins with a mockingly saccharine tone. “Bar, I know you’re a little dense when comes to matters of the heart or love or sex or whatever—“ Barry hisses out between his teeth that I’m not; evidently, Ollie doesn’t care because he waves him off again, continuing with; “—but in military circles, à la Hal and this one behind me, someone giving you their dogtags is just a little more than a commemoration of friendship.”
It all stops there, sound pitching up to ring through Barry’s skull. His heart slams against his ribs. “What?”
Ollie drags a hand down his face, stretching skin and lands on squarely holding his jaw in vague irritation. "Okay, this isn’t working, so I’ll give it to you plain and simple; Barry, Hal is head over heels for you and instead of telling you like a functioning human being, pussied out and gave you his dogtags, which was probably his way of signalling to you that he wants to plow your fields—“ John presses his knuckles against his mouth to choke down a laugh. “— or date you or whatever. I’m sick of hearing about it at this point.”
It then all tilts ever so slightly, all air escaping him in the single, breathy, Oh.
”Yeah,” Ollie says. “Real classy of him.”
Barry begins to feel lightheaded from how every single thought crashes into each other — his amygdala, his hypothalamus and synapses firing until it all blurs and melds into the singular, gong-loud thought of Hal wants me. Hal, giving him the dogtags and maybe Ollie is fucking with him, but he wouldn’t because he cares so much for Hal and so does John, and the chance that Hal does — that Hal feels like that for him and that Barry —
Hastily, Barry pushes his seat from the monitor, each sinew of his ligaments trembling and his knees feel all the sudden so weak and he knows he’s clenching the desk so hard that his fingers are white. “I—“ Barry stutters, teeth clattering and he grinds down his jaw. “I need to—“
“Go on,” John says, expression far more gentle but heavily, heavily amused with a curve to his mouth that betrays anything he might’ve not known and God, was it that obvious to everyone but him? “Me and Ollie will take over your shift.”
Ollie snaps his head towards John, mouth preparing to open and rebuke before he snaps it closed with an audible clack! as something passes across his expression. It ends with him pursing his mouth and then making a shooing motion towards Barry, grumbling. “I’ll take your shift, but for the love of God just do something. I am sick of him.”
Crack! — seat slamming back into the wall and Barry barely wisping out a Thank you before he’s zipping down the halls — past Clark, who pauses to blink at the heat of his heels and Firestorm (who he later learns he nearly sent spinning into a wall) who barely pops into his vision before he crashes into a zetatube — world blurring into a galaxy of colour and his nerves twisting into the mantra of HalHalHal.
(Barry, though he'll never admit it, ignores his feelings until he can scuff them beneath his foot and kick it away into nothingness. Barry, though, will say that he just copes better than most; Iris will call him a liar, and so would everyone who loves him as fiercely as she does.)
(This has caused Barry to not feel want, because want means to have desire, and Barry doesn't want to indulge in desire that he knows will stay unfulfilled. It's better to not want than to yearn for something you will never have.)
(Barry Allen is also an idiot, sometimes.)
Barry’s feet lands him on the welcome mat of Hal’s apartment, shoes still steaming from when he hastily stopped at his apartment to change — probably a mess now — because Hal can’t have people seeing Flash on his doorstep, that would raise too many questions that would result in a disaster that Hal shouldn’t have to deal with. Barry quickly knocks on the door and his hand nearly vibrates straight through it and Oh God —
His throat thickens, heart jamming into his throat and choking him and then he hears the slow pitter patter of Hal walking towards the door, the door clicking and there — Hal in his fullness, blinking blearily, fitted in the dumbest Green Lantern shirt that Barry remembers Diana gifting Hal fifteen years back; he’s still in the clothes he must’ve went to sleep in. Hal shifts into focus, mused hair scuffed into a ridiculous sweep over his eyes that nearly obscures the raise of his brows. “Bar?”
The first thing Barry says is; “Hal, you’re an idiot.” And when Hal tilts his head, brows gaining an amused tilt because sometimes Barry does just say that Barry carefully takes hold of the dogtags in his pocket and raises them to dangle between them, the groove of SGT Harold Jordan catching in the light and Barry swallows — steeling all of his resolves into the muscles of his jaw. “Ollie told me what the dogtags mean — what you, um, meant.”
Hal’s face shatters into such sudden dread that Barry’s gut twists until he feels sick — heart breaking bit by bit — bad-dum, ba-dum — because Hal keeps breaking his heart over and over and over again. This version of him that has this invisible weight on him that he collected while Barry was dead and just a whisp of what he used to be. But it’s still Hal, the one he missed while he was just a phantom in the force and the one he fell in love with and refused to ever think about it.
Barry has been in love with Hal Jordan for a very, very long time; but Barry Allen didn’t get to have nice things, so he didn’t try. It was better to pretend he never did love Hal in the first place.
”He did?” Hal’s voice is strained, taught as a string about to snap. His fingers go white on the doorframe.
Barry nods, swallowing down the heartstrings that knot up his vocal cords, trying to gather his wits together but in the face of Hal — this Hal who used to love so deeply and freely that he even flirted with the women that Barry would bring to their double dates, who wouldn’t hide a thing or have shame about how he loved, has shrunk back into the shell of who he was.
In that second, the realisation that Hal is scared sinks in and Barry — Barry’s mouth goes dry, because Hal is scared what Barry will say to Hal wanting him and he’s —
Barry has not known Hal to be fearful for the near decade he’s known him; nervous, maybe, but a tenet to be a Lantern is to overcome your fear, and Hal was always the best at masking his — he’s cocky, he’s confident in in what he wants and Barry used to be so jealous on how easily Hal was able to just do things without a care in the world.
But the decade that Barry was gone changed him, it’s all he really thinks about, now — how Hal changed, what dragged him down from the man Barry knew into what now cowers in the face of what he wants, and it scares Barry — terrifies him, because the man he loves is scared of him. The only time he saw Hal scared was the moment Hal saw him alive again, breathing and heart beating and solid; he gripped Barry like he was trying to split his fingers into Barry’s body to hold on so he’d never go again.
Hal is scared to lose Barry; the thought of I have to be the one to do something rings in Barry’s mind.
"Bar," Hal starts, tight. "I…" He swallows thickly, fingers trembling on the door and flexing nervously at his side. “Just…tell me if I fucked up,” Hal pauses, chewing on his mouth; an age old nervous habit Barry hasn’t seen in years. “I’ll give you time or — or we can pretend it didn’t happen. I can take back the dogtags—“ A pain seizes Hal’s face, mouth tugging down and he quickly wipes it from his expression. “—or just whatever you want. Just. Don’t be so quiet, Bar; you know I hate it when you’re quiet. Please tell me.”
The notion that Barry would reject Hal has him let out an inane, slightly hysterical laugh that makes Hal recoil slightly. “Hal, you’re still dumb,” And Barry ducks the dogtags around his neck again, resting it openly over his shirt and reaches for Hal’s free hand — intertwining it with his own and soothing his thumb over Hal’s knuckles, feeling the tremor in them.
Hal’s mouth opens, closes; wordless.
Shyly, probably awkwardly, Barry gives Hal a small smile as he feels his heart slam against his chest, working his jaw to speak. Blood roars in his ears, hot hot hot. Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum. “I’m still happy to keep the dogtags, if you’ll let me,” Barry swallows, spit thick. “You as well, if your minds not changed yet.”
In a split second, Hal rips his hand from the hand to slide up the back of Barry’s nape — up up to the base of his skull to cup it ever so gently, stepping forward and he — Barry’s hearing fizzles out when Hal presses his mouth against his, fireworks popping in his nerves — oh, oh, Barry thinks as his hand goes to grip at Hal’s shoulder, feeling each knot of muscles under the fabric, this is what I missed. Him.
Hal’s pinky fingers at the chain at the bottom of Barry’s neck, playing a little with it and Barry laughs because he’s so silly — swallowed up in the next moment when Hal kisses him some more, then at the edge of his mouth to say; “Laughing at something, Bar?”
In the corner of Barry’s vision, he can see how flushed Hal’s ears are, trailing down his neck to hide beneath his shirt. “Nope,” He squeezes the hand in his own, because he can now because Hal wanted him back, then goes to nosy at that sharp cheek to feel Hal’s skin against his; he smiles against it when Hal presses another kiss to his mouth. “Nothing at all, Hal.”