Chapter Text
Sometimes, Barry is convinced that he must have won the worst kind of lottery when it comes to just about every aspect of himself and his life.
Of course, there are good aspects - plenty of them, in fact. He’s got Joe and Iris, and he’s got Caitlin and Cisco, and he’s got a job he loves and a chance to make a difference and help people - as the Flash, too, and there’s countless other amazing things that surround him every day.
But he’s also got a dead mother and a dad in jail and a figure in yellow haunting his nightmares since he was eleven and he’s ridden a frankly impressive amount of childhood trauma right into adulthood because he doesn’t really know how to process any of it, particularly not as even more keeps getting piled on top like dirty laundry with each villain and death and failure he faces, and sometimes - in general - everything just sucks a lot more than he can handle, too much for him to be able to grin and bear it, and suddenly he’ll find himself sucking his thumb and crying and being altogether pretty pathetic, because the world couldn’t just saddle him with trauma.
It also had to saddle him with the dumbest way of dealing with it.
He can’t really remember when it had started - perhaps a year or so after his mother’s death, when his blind fury had finally started to flicker into the pain that it truly was. Up until that point, he’d done his best to push people away. He’d always refused Joe’s affection and attention as a whole, and things were difficult with Iris no matter how natural it felt like it should’ve been to just keep being as effortlessly close as they’d been since they first met.
It was still difficult - he still didn’t want to accept Joe as any sort of father figure, didn’t want to accept that his dad was a monster and had been trapped somewhere Barry couldn’t go and save him from, didn’t want to let Iris see him hurt - but it had definitely opened the door to the beginnings of things getting a little bit better. He’d just sometimes found himself feeling desperately clingy, desperately small , and he’d crawl into Joe’s lap to be held like he was far younger than his actual twelve or thirteen or fourteen years.
At the time, of course, he hadn’t really understood, but, looking back, he can take a guess at Joe’s assumptions - the clinginess and the childish behaviour just being a product of an awful cocktail of grief and trauma and puberty. Just something that would pass with time.
But it hadn’t.
When he’d gotten older, become aware of exactly how weird it was, Barry had simply learnt how to suppress it. It wasn’t until he’d left for college and found himself with freedom and privacy that he’d began to explore it, began to research around it, began to find his footing in what it is in general and what it is for him, but he’d packed it all away again when he’d moved back home.
No room for that if he was going to be poking around crime scenes and pulling back sheets to look at dead bodies, after all. And there would certainly be no unpacking of the deep-set trauma of him, age eleven, walking straight into the crime scene that his home’s living room had been turned into - the trauma of pulling back that plastic sheet to see his mother’s dead body, to stare straight at her cold, expressionless face.
Of course, such a decision - particular when made by Barry Allen - was bound to shatter rather spectacularly sooner or later. And shatter it had. But only a little - no pun intended.
There were just...a few cracks, in the months before the lightning strike. Joe started to realise things, and he started to try and get closer again, started the tentative process of taking care of Barry again, and then Barry had gotten struck by lightning and been in a coma for nine months and now he’s got superpowers and lives a double-life fighting crime in both of the ways he can.
And, of course, the tiny amount of progress that Joe had made in getting them both to any real, stable point in this almost-new, almost-not aspect of their relationship had been shattered. And, in the process, Barry had shattered too. Really this time - dramatically, messily, and suddenly slow and steady really didn’t win the race because Barry had lost the ability to take anything slow and it was also becoming more and more apparent that he was going to fly straight off the deep end if someone didn’t grab him by the collar and take care of him soon.
So Joe had done just that.
It’s not exactly the exclusive, private, only-behind-closed-doors deal, because Caitlin and Cisco know everything and so does Iris and it’s kind of important for them to know everything.
Really - sometimes - Barry is glad that they do. Because apparently it’s somehow visible - as he comes stumbling in from a city-spanning, almost-all-night chase with some meta duo who’d been causing plenty of problems for him and for everyone - that he’s dangling right on the edge of headspace.
He’s tired, and he’s ravenously hungry but also vaguely nauseous, and one of the metas had the power to scramble his sense of direction and make him all dizzy, so he’s been running round and round and round and then getting the stuffing beaten out of him, and — yeah, he wants Daddy. He doesn’t want anyone but Daddy, but Daddy’s not here, there’s just Caitlin who’s leading him over to sit on an examination table and prodding at all of the places that hurt and Cisco who’s doing something in the other room, not hovering around Barry to make him laugh and smile like he usually does.
It’s not a substitute he’s at all happy with.
Barry knows he’s being difficult, and he really doesn’t like being a brat, but he can’t help but whine and hiccup and wriggle feebly away from Caitlin’s hands as she keeps putting horrible sting-y stinky gel all over his cuts and scrapes and poking at his bruises. She’d helped him out of the uncomfy suit, at least, so he’s just in his undies, but it’s also cold and the labs aren’t nice at all, not cosy and comfy. Nothing about this is comfy, not like being curled up in Daddy’s lap, and Barry lets out a sob as Caitlin twists his throbbing ankle this way and that.
“Wan’ Daddy,” he announces, kicking out weakly, but she catches him easily by the shin and gives him a gently stern look.
“I know you do, Barry, but you don’t hit or kick anyone,” she reprimands softly, not really strict, but it’s enough to make Barry feel guilty and fidget.
“‘M’sorry, Caitlin,” he mumbles, looking down at his lap, and he feels her hand gently rub his shin as a silent reassurance. She didn’t actually mention whether or not Daddy is really coming, but Barry doesn’t want to ask again because he doesn’t want to get in trouble for whining, so he settles for chewing harshly on his lip until Caitlin notices.
She gives him another stern look, and then she gets up and walks away, and Barry’s heart jolts. He feels immediately guilty for whining so much and being so bad, because now she’s upset with him and she must be tired too and she must be really stressed and he’s only making it worse by being a terrible little boy and now she’s leaving him forever and ever.
He’s sobbing by the time she returns with a freshly-boiled pacifier and a bundle of what looks to be clean clothes.
“Oh, Barry, what’s wrong?” she asks, brows pulling down in a very genuine worry that only succeeds in making Barry cry harder. He’s always like this when he’s tired, about as quick to cry as he is to smile usually, but he’s also rather quick to settle when Caitlin gently pushes the pacifier between his lips and starts gently, almost gingerly, petting his hair with her other hand. His eyelids droop as he suckles on the paci, the last dregs of the tension of the battle draining slowly out of him in the form of more quiet tears, and he wants to cling to her but isn’t sure if she’d be okay with it, so he just sits in misery and tries very hard not to think.
He’s floating close to sleep by the time he hears a door open and close and then footsteps, but he quickly pushes through the haze inside his head to sit straight up and spit his paci out, eyes alert as they watch the doorway. He’s up and running over the moment he sees that it’s Joe, and apparently he must’ve gone really fast because Daddy grunts and stumbles backwards a bit when Barry collides with him.
It takes him a second to recover - enough for the tears to start building up again as Barry starts feeling horrible and guilty - but then there are strong arms wrapping securely around Barry’s waist and holding him close.
“Hey there, beautiful boy,” Joe greets affectionately, and Barry can hear the soft, gentle smile in his voice. “What’re you doing, all bruised up and runnin’ around in your underwear? Hm?”
Barry stammers for a moment, before he finds his tongue and starts babbling his way through some attempt at a retelling of the evening’s events. The details are kind of foggy now, though, and all he can really think about is how his ankle still hurts and he shouldn’t have ran on it just now, and he’s so so so tired, and Daddy’s arms feel as warm and safe as Barry knew they would, and Barry really really doesn’t wanna be here anymore, doesn’t wanna be stood in the cold lab, doesn’t wanna think about all the mean people out in the city right now who want to hurt nice, innocent people and hurt his friends and hurt him.
He doesn’t realise he’s panicking until he realises that his feet aren’t on the ground anymore. Daddy’s holding him, cradling him like he really is a baby and not six feet tall and in his twenties, but it’s hard to really think about being big when he’s being rocked and cooed at and Caitlin’s there too, giving him an almost timid little smile as she gives him another clean pacifier. He feels embarrassed - ashamed - for a single moment, before the comfort of the situation sets in and he lets himself relax, suckling on his paci as he buries his head against his Daddy’s shoulder. It’s still embarrassing, just a bit, but he doesn’t want to think about that right now.
“Home,” he mumbles hoarsely, garbled around his pacifier, and Joe presses a kiss to the crown of his head.
“You wanna go home, baby boy? Alright. How ‘bout we get you dressed, then me and you can go home?”
It’s not ideal, considering Barry would much rather he home right now, which he could technically accomplish, but he’s not supposed to use his speed when he’s little because he might hurt himself or damage things, as Joe and Iris and Caitlin and the others have said many times. It’s a rule he’s not all too happy about right now, but, thinking about it, even finding his way out of the building seems confusing and daunting, let alone if he’s running, so maybe it’s best for him to let Daddy take care of things.
“Fast,” he whispers, something between a question and a request, and Joe chuckles as he adjusts his grip on Barry and carries him over to the padded examination table he’d been sat on before.
“I’m not sure I can be quite as fast as you probably want me to be, baby,” he says, “But I’ll do my best.”
True to his word, he does make fairly quick work of getting Barry into his clothes, even if Barry is a little bit boneless and useless and also cries out when Joe holds his ankle to help him into his sweatpants. Joe startles and looks to Caitlin then, and she quickly explains that it’s just a sprain which should be healed good as new in an hour or so. Joe still doesn’t look happy, but he lets it go without reprimanding Barry for getting hurt, which Barry is grateful for. His head is throbbing, and his thoughts are just an endless, illogical stream of ‘home, home, home, Daddy, home’, which is infuriatingly more articulate than his mouth is at the moment. Joe is sort of trying to make conversation as he pulls the waistband of the sweatpants up Barry’s skinny hips and then sets about getting his arms through the correct holes of his t-shirt, prompting him with gentle questions, the way one might with a shy toddler, but Barry can’t manage more than the occasional mumble of gibberish in response.
Thankfully, Joe seems content with that, and even calls Barry a good boy when he manages to get out an answer of ‘uh-huh’ to the question ‘does anything still hurt?’
Joe leans over and talks to Caitlin for a bit, voices lowered so Barry can’t hear, and he’s too sleepy to protest this like he usually does. He kind of likes it, anyway - likes feeling little enough that he doesn’t have to worry about anything, doesn’t even have to listen to the grown-ups talk, even though he knows that they’re talking about him.
He’s content with it for a little while, until he starts nodding off and then startling awake because there’s nothing for him to lean against, and that’s when he reaches out to weakly tug at his Daddy’s jacket.
“Home,” he urges softly past his paci, thankfully no longer aware of exactly how pathetic he sounds.
“In a minute, Bear,” Joe promises, but that’s not good enough, and Barry whimpers to make that fact clear.
“Home, Daddy,” he whines, tears building up in his eyes, and Joe pauses before he sighs. Normally, he’d reprimand Barry for being bratty, tell him to be patient, but right now he just stands and then scoops Barry up into his arms again, holding him close and safe and secure and pressing a kiss to his hair.
“It’s alright,” he murmurs. “We’re going home now, okay? You can go straight to sleep, sunshine. I know you’re tired, and I know you’re a little banged up, and I know it doesn’t feel good. But Daddy’s here, hm? Daddy’s gonna take care of you. You don’t have to worry about a thing.”
He stops, and he talks to Caitlin some more and maybe Cisco appears at some point, but Joe’s cooing at Barry and rocking him through all of it, and suddenly it’s impossible to stay awake, so matter how miserable Barry feels for a million reasons he can’t quite wrap his head around right now. He just rests his head right in the crook of Joe’s neck and sucks on his paci, and he’s asleep long before they even leave the room.