Sweep Me Off My Feet(A Barry Allen/The Flash Fan-fiction)

Chapter Eighteen: Lonelier Than It Has To Be

Snart shot the freeze gun at Joe, but Barry pushed him aside, getting hit with the ice.

"You ok?" Joe asked.

"It burns."

"Time for a test run. See how fast you are." Barry got people out of the way before he shot them. He went to shoot again, but I turned my disc on, holding the blast in place. I struggled against it.

"Would you look at that?" Snart asked, walking closer to me. My feet started sliding against the carpet, pushing my backwards. Snart turned backwards, shooting a security guard. The blast hit before Barry could get there.

"No!"

~~~

We headed back to STAR Labs, checking out Barry's black mark on his side.

"It's still numb." he told Caitlin.

"It's presenting itself like third-degree frostbite."

"I thought he had hyper healing." Felicity said.

"It's been slowed. If your cells weren't regenerating at the rate they are. your blood vessels would've frozen solid and the nerve damage would've been permanent. You're lucky to be alive."

"Snart isn't another Metahuman. He had some kind of gun. It froze things. It slowed him down, and the blast was too strong for me to hold." I told them.

"Enough that I didn't even have time to save someone."

"Barry..."

"According to his records,, Snart didn't even finish high school."

"Stay in school kids, or become an ice-ray wielding sociopath." I said.

"So how did he build a handheld, high-tech snow machine."

"STAR Labs built the cold gun." Dr. Wells told us.

"Dr. Wells and Caitlin had nothing to do with this. I built the gun."

"You did? Why?" Barry asked.

"Because speed and cold are opposites. Temperature is measured by how quickly the atoms of something are oscillating. The faster they are, the hotter it is. When things are cold, they're slower on the atomic level. When there's no movement at all, it's called-"

"Absolute zero."

"Yeah. I designed a compact cryo-engine to achieve absolute zero. I built it to stop you."

"Why, Cisco?" I asked, stepping up beside Barry.

"I didn't know who you were then, Barry. I mean, what if you turned out to be some psycho, like Martin or Nimbus?"

"But I didn't! Did I?!"

"We built the entire structure you're  standing in to do good, and it blew up. You can understand why cisco would wanna be prepared for the worst."

"What about me?" I asked.

"Gravity gun...we still have that one."

"I can understand that, but what I can't understand is why you didn't tell me what you did. I mean, after all we've been through, I thought you trusted me. I thought we were friends."

"We are, Barry."

"If you had just told me, I could've been prepared. But instead, someone died tonight."

"And I have to live with that."

"No, Cisco. We all do."

~~~

I had been running on the treadmill for hours.

"Barry. Barry!" Felicity called. I slowed to a stop, putting my hands on my knees and panting.

"What are you doing?" I asked. "You should get back to your hotel. Get some sleep."

"You should to. Not go back to my hotel, I mean get some sleep." I sat down.

"I can't. Every time I close my eyes, I see that man's face. I watched him die. I have to go faster." I stood up on the treadmill again.

"Barry, It's not your fault. And it's not Cisco's either. Barry, I know you're upset, but you have to look at this from his point of view."

"No, I get it. he didn't trust me." I told her.

"Barry, when you met us...me, Oliver, and Dig, we were this well-oiled archery machine...but it didn't start out that way. And unlike you guys we weren't tossed together overnight, we came together one at a time. Believe me, it took much more than watching Oliver do the salmon ladder to make me trust him." She walked over to the door, stopping and turning back. "I've seen firsthand what this life can do to people. It's a lonely path. Don't make it any lonelier than it has to be...and I'm not just talking about Cisco."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"I know a certain blonde girl whose crazy about you...and I know you're crazy about her too. Maybe it's time you did something about it, don't you think?" She went around the corner, and I nodded. She's right...about all of it.

And I know just where to start."

~~~

I padded into my kitchen in my pajamas, my hair pulled up into a bun, and poured myself a glass of Dr. Pepper. I took a sip, turning to walk back to the couch when I saw Barry standing there. I screamed, dropping the glass and causing it to shatter. I leaned against the counter, a hand on my chest.

"For Pete Sake's Barry don't do that!" I scolded, trying to calm down.

"Sorry." I floated over the glass and grabbed the broom starting to sweep up the glass.

"What are you doing here anyway?"

"I'm uh...I'm following through on some advice from a friend." He grabbed the dust pan, holding it for me and throwing the glass away. I wet a paper towel and started wiping up the sticky brown soda.

"What advice would that be?" I asked, throwing the paper towel away. I turned around and Barry was right behind me. My eyes went wide, and almost crossed  at the proximity.

"I'm going to stop making this life lonelier than it has to be." And with that, he did something that I didn't think would happen, maybe ever.

Barry Allen kissed me.