Work Text:
“Take my hand.”
Nora gives him a what the fuck? look before registering his facial expression. If Hartley looks the way he feels, then this is a demeanor she’s never seen from him before. He keeps this version of himself under lock and key. The only people who get to see it are Mia and Roderick. And now, Baby Flash.
She holds his hand in hers. “I don’t understand what’s going on. Are you ok?”
No. A part of me never will be. And that’s ok. It has to be.
Out loud, he says, “We need proof. Something that says we are who we say we are, to the Hartley from this time period. ID’s can be faked.”
“Sure, so what—”
“We should be just on the edge of my hearing range now.” If Hartley focuses, strains, he can just barely hear one specific heartbeat. That speeds up. He walks down the street at a relaxed pace, pulling Nora with him. And he opens his mouth.
Make sure nobody sees you leave. Hood over your head, keep your eyes down. Tell your friends you’re out for a run—you’ll be flushed when you return.
Taylor Swift won’t write this song for another four years.
Take the road less travelled by, tell yourself you can always stop. What started in beautiful rooms ends with meetings in parking lots.
Ah, he has his attention now. Hartley feels sick, skin turned clammy and bile in his throat, so other Hartley must be feeling the same, with the added benefit of surprise. The lyrics keep tumbling out with his breath. He’s not sure he could stop if he wanted to.
With a sense of crippling vertigo, Hartley reaches for his powers.
And that’s the thing about illicit affairs and clandestine meetings and longing stares, it’s born from just one single glance but it dies—he puts venom in the word—and it dies and dies, a million little times.
It’s hard to describe what using his powers, at the apex of their potential, is like. The best he can say is that it’s like painting with sounds, using waveforms and harmonics to put pictures in someone’s head. Make them see, smell, touch what he wants them to see.
He calls up a pair of top-bar glasses. Like he could ever forget them.
Beside him, Nora says, “Uncle H? What’s happening?” He ignores her, keeps walking.
Leave the cologne on the shelf, that you picked out just for him. So you leave no trace behind, like you don’t even exist. Take the words for what they are, a dwindling mercurial high—the Swift of this era is just beginning the genre pivot of her career, singing about being 22 and dating Jake Gyllenhaal, she won’t use words like “mercurial” yet—a drug that only worked the first few hundred times.
Piano. Violins. Give him an orchestra.
And that’s the thing about illicit affairs and clandestine meetings and stolen stares, they show their truth one single time—you’re my guy, Hart, I could never build the accelerator without you, do you understand how rare and beautiful you are—but they lie and they lie and they lie—he’s crying, fuck—a million little times.
And you wanna scream, “don’t call me kid, don’t call me baby”—Harrison’s arms around him, the solid foundation he thought he could live without, the rock that he clung to in the storm of his life—look at this godforsaken mess that you made me—dinner and Aristotle at Harrison’s house, no one else at STAR labs even knew this place existed, he was cherished and special and understood—you showed me colors you know I can’t see with anyone else. Don’t call me kid, don’t call me baby, look at this idiotic fool that you made me—hands under his shirt, does he want this, like that’s even a question, he’s never wanted anything more in his entire damn life, to have and to hold, to worship and to breathe in, the gentlest of lips against his own, beside him Nora drops his hand and gasps—you taught me secret language I can’t speak with anyone else.
Harrison. Harrison fucking Wells. Sliding into him, taking him, making him his own. Those brilliant blue irises that will live behind his eyelids forever. And he wants this, he wants this, he wants this so much (he feels sick, he said yes, he said yes enthusiastically, time and time again, he’s not a victim, dammit.)
“And you know damn well that for you, I would ruin myself, a million little times.”
The violins scream. And fall silent.
Nora, unlike her father, has the good sense not to ask questions.
They walk the remaining half-mile with only ambient street noise for accompaniment. Nora takes his hand again, this time tightly, with a sense of grim shock. Smart girl, she’s put two hundred and two hundred together.
Eventually, they get to the safe house that Hartley remembers. And there’s his younger self, white as a sheet, the contents of his stomach emptied onto the pavement outside. He does genuinely feel bad for putting younger Hartley through that.
“I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that.” He means it.
They stand there for the fifteen longest minutes ever, both of them waiting for the world to stop spinning. Eventually, younger Hartley asks, “who the fuck is she?”
“Hartley Rathaway, meet Nora West-Allen. Doo wee ooo.”