( ic contact ) - ( sorry, guys, i got a little held up. you had to be there. )

[tardily]

 

Barry Allen
Hey! You've reached Barry Allen. I'm not available to take your call right now because of— a reason. Leave a message or just text me and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. BEEP.


The Flash
This is The Flash. Not Kid Flash or Impulse. The Flash. I can't text and run. I'll get back to you ASAP and you know that's pretty fast coming from me. BEEP.

Comments

[runningstart]

thanks for the offer but i dont really have time for it anyway

[tardily]

because despite my best efforts, i always manage to just shove my foot in my mouth during all conversations we have. seriously, i think the whole...eating thing we did with the chips was one of the few times i barely did it.

that's fine. i really am sorry about the league thing. even if you're not mad at me and are more mad with everyone else. i know how bad that can be and you should have been told at the beginning.

you focus on what you're doing too. what's keeping you busy.

[runningstart]

[Wally doesn't respond to this text. He almost does, so many times. He keeps it open on his phone and looks at it until his eyes burn, when he's trying to sleep, when he's trying to do homework and gets stuck. When he's staring at the notes he's made about "dimensional phase shifting" and "porter theory" and other science that's just plain beyond his ability to suss out.

He looks at it when he peeks into Bart's room to see his cousin lying on his side, quiet and unmoving but definitely, absolutely not asleep. He looks at this text when Robin doesn't meet his eyes across the kitchen counter, when a joke falls flat between them.

This is unfair.

This is so fucking unfair.

This isn't his Barry. He doesn't want to replace his uncle. But everything he does and says sounds like his uncle and Wally spends so much of his time scared that he's forgotten what it's like not to have a knife to your throat, not to work like a maniac trying to outrun a tsunami. He's forgotten what it's like to be Wally without faking it most of the time and Barry not snapping at him, not yelling at him for being a prick makes it worse because it's like Barry knows that's why he's like this. Wally's never been so sharply hateful toward anyone like he's been to this Barry, not even toward Artemis, and still Barry comes back with things like this time and time again.

Wally rereads the text when he tries to go to sleep on the 11th, like he's been doing every night.

because we're both flashes.

He turns his phone off, rolls over and tries, again, to sleep.]