Chapter Text
The first shovelful came up too easy, crumbling and wet in Barry’s hands like a desecrated secret. It landed in the pile with a soft plap, damp earth sloughing over his boots, and he stared down into the hole they were digging like it might bite him. He wasn’t built for this. His powers weren’t made for stillness, for manual labor, for grave-robbing alongside the cybernetic half of a football prodigy.
And yet—here he was. Grime on his cheeks. Sweat tickling down the slope of his back. Digging up Clark’s coffin in the middle of the night like a bad Scooby-Doo crossover with actual stakes.
“Cross this one off the bucket list—exhume Superman from the grave. Check.”
Victor was quiet. Efficient. Dark eyes glinting as he worked the shovel like it was an extension of himself. Every movement calculated, almost reverent.
Barry’s own rhythm, in stark contrast, was pure chaos – a flurry of too-fast scoops that sent dirt flying wildly, followed by hesitant prods, punctuated by pauses where he’d just... fidget. Shuffle his feet. Adjust his grip unnecessarily. Glance impatiently around like a startled rabbit caught in cosmic headlights.
“You know we could do this in a nanosecond, right?”
“We could.”
Nothing changed.
He kept stealing looks, quick, furtive darts of his eyes. At the sky. At the trees. At Victor’s impassive profile.
But mostly... helplessly, inevitably, at her.
♡Diana♡
Princess Diana of Themyscira. Wonder Woman. She sat in the open maw of the van like a queen in exile, poised even in the gloom, one heel on the ground, besides Arthur.
Her profile struck clean against the murk, sharp and faultless. With her dark hair drawn up, the graceful architecture of her face was laid bare: a high cheekbone catching the faintest glint of light, a jawline honed by centuries, lips unreadable when she talked with the half Atlantean.
She looked like something carved by war, like a temple left behind by gods who'd lost faith in men, but she stayed anyway. Every ragged breath Barry dragged into his lungs felt obscenely loud in the charged silence that surrounded her, like his mere existence was a clumsy intrusion on something sacred.
He cleared his throat. Loud. Then again. Even louder. Victor didn’t bite, ignoring the boyish grin on that little simp's face.
“Sooooo,” Barry finally blurted, the word unnaturally bright, horribly out of place in the solemn atmosphere. “Wonder Woman.”
Victor let out a sigh that sounded suspiciously like static interference, a quiet exhalation of long-suffering patience.
Barry, mistaking the lack of outright refusal for encouragement, plowed ahead anyway, words tumbling out in their usual rush, tripping over each other in their eagerness to escape his suddenly dry mouth. “What do you think, man? You think she'd ever go for a younger guy?”
Victor’s shovel movement actually stopped. Mid-swing. The metallic clink as the edge perhaps grazed the wood of the coffin below echoed with startling clarity in the sudden stillness.
Barry winced, hunching his shoulders.“I mean, not like, illegally younger, obviously! God, no. Just—chronologically challenged? Relatively speaking? Compared to, you know, immortality. Like me. I’m not a kid, you know,” he added, feeling the need to defend his adult credentials even while standing in a hole meant for a corpse. “I pay rent! Sometimes on time! I have... adult anxieties! About, like, the stability of the electrical grid, and... recursive paradoxes, and whether I left the stove on three days ago.”
Victor finally, finally, turned his head, his expression utterly, terrifyingly blank. One red eye glowed steadily. “Barry.” The single word was flat, devoid of inflection.
“Yeah?” Barry squeaked, bracing himself.
“She’s five thousand years old.” The statement hung in the air, simple, factual, and utterly devastating to his fragile hope.
“Right. Yep. Got it. Ancient. Hot ancient, though. But like, there’s a certain charm in that, right? A vintage appeal? A timeless thing going on.” He was rambling now, digging himself deeper than the actual grave. “She’s had literally centuries—millennia!—to develop sophisticated taste. Maybe her type is fast-talking, lovable goofs with trauma and a lightning bolt on their chest. Ever think of that?”
Victor just made a low grunting sound, somewhere between disbelief and weary resignation, and turned back to his task, scooping earth with renewed, almost pointed vigor. “Every guy's a younger guy.”
Barry paused, the shovel hanging limply in his grasp. That line... damn. It landed squarely in the center of his chest, heavy and resonant, dropping into the chaotic well of his thoughts like a stone, sending ripples of uncomfortable truth widening outwards. Every guy's a younger guy...
“...So,” Barry ventured, unable to stop himself, hope flickering stubbornly like faulty wiring, “you’re saying there’s a chance.”
“No,” Victor stated, without looking up. “I’m saying you’re a boy.”
“Okay but—like,” Barry pressed, desperate now, “a cute boy? A boy with potential? A boy she might want to... mentor?”
Victor didn’t respond. Probably on purpose.
Barry tried not to sigh too audibly. He turned his attention back to the coffin, which was now visible beneath the dirt. His fingers twitched erratically on the smooth handle of the shovel.
Behind them, Diana shifted her weight – just the subtle rustle of fabric – made him fumble it completely and drop the damn thing into the hole with a yelp.
Victor didn’t even look at him.
Later, the oppressive chill of the Batcave felt like a physical entity, seeping into Barry’s bones despite the advanced thermal regulation of his suit. It was a place carved from bedrock and billionaire angst, vast and echoing, full of low, dramatic lighting that cast long shadows and made everyone look like they’d stepped directly out of a gritty noir comic book. The air hummed with the low thrum of computers and the heavier weight of collective uncertainty.
Clark was gone. Resurrected, confused, and then just... gone. Snatched from their desperate grasp, soaring into the pre-dawn clouds with Lois Lane clutched in his arms like she was the only piece of solid ground in a world tilted violently off its axis.
And the rest of them... they’d gathered like pieces left behind on a forgotten chessboard.
Bruce stood apart, arms folded, jaw clenched in that way that screamed trauma with a side of strategic arrogance. Victor was already jacked into the holographic display array, crimson light flickering across his stoic features as lines of complex data scrolled past his augmented eye. Arthur looked thoroughly unimpressed by the terrestrial drama. Brooding, but in a distinctly oceanic, ‘I’d rather be punching sharks’ kind of way.
And Diana didn’t brood. She loomed. Positively radiated presence. She leaned over the central war table, one hand resting lightly on the cool surface displaying holographic projections of potential threats. Her hair, that impossible fall of midnight silk, cascaded over one bare shoulder, a startlingly soft contrast to the hard lines of the cave and the even harder lines etched around her eyes. She looked beautiful, even here.
Barry was seated near the back, perched on the edge of a sleek chair with his legs bouncing like tuning forks. He kept pressing his palms flat against his knees, a futile attempt to ground himself, to somehow anchor the frantic hummingbird tempo of his thoughts and pulse. It wasn’t working.
His eyes drifted. Again. And again. He tried to stop, he really did. His rational brain, the part not currently short-circuited by proximity to a literal goddess, knew it was inappropriate, unprofessional, dangerously horny. Focus, Allen! Apocalypse! Alien invasion! Existential threat!
But every time she moved – shifted her weight, gestured towards the map, tilted her head as Bruce spoke in low, urgent tones – his entire nervous system reacted like he’d just mainlined the Speed Force without a buffer. A jolt, a stutter, a full-body zing. Her voice carried through the vast space like a battle hymn softened to a strategic murmur. Her eyes, when they flicked over him, made his pulse stutter.
He couldn’t talk. Couldn’t even breathe right. Just from standing next to her. He was genuinely afraid he might spontaneously combust. Not from Steppenwolf, not from the Speed Force. No, his ignominious end would come from the sheer, overwhelming, erotic gravity exerted by Diana Prince existing in his immediate vicinity. The sheer ambient power and beauty of her were apparently his kryptonite.
And she hadn’t even touched him yet.