elrhiarhodan

Title: a transparent house that you and I built
Author: elrhiarhodan
Fandom: The Flash (TV 2014)
Rating: NC-17
Characters/Pairings: Barry Allen, Harrison Wells (Earth-2); Barry/Harrison
Spoilers: Minor spoilers for S2.12, The Reverse Flash Returns.
Warnings/Enticements/Triggers: Allusion to mind rape, graphic nightmare deaths
Word Count: ~4200
Beta Credit: theatregirl7299 and Refugeefromtumblr.
Summary: Harry aches in the trap of his loneliness, his exile, and Barry can't run fast enough to escape his ghosts.

A/N: Mostly porn, with a healthy dollop of angst. Set about a week after the events of S2.12, The Reverse Flash Returns.

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Written for poetry_fiction's 2016 Pablo Neruda challenge:

there is only your glance against so much emptiness,
only your light against extinction,
only your love to shut out the shadows.

Love Sonnets XC


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1 - there is only your glance against so much emptiness,

Harry doesn't want this.

He doesn't want to feel, he can't afford to need. Those emotions are weaknesses and they will just widen the cracks in the paltry armor he's pieced together in the moments between rage and panic.

But he does feel, he does need. He is human and flawed and the more he tries to ignore these weaknesses, the more he realizes how hard the fall will ultimately be. He knows he can't give into the need, he can't fill the emptiness. Not when Jesse is in such peril.

But he also knows his armor is weak and the best way to keep these children (no, not children, they've not been that for a long time) away from him is to be as cruel and vicious as he can. He needs them too much and they are in too much danger already. It would be worse if he showed the least bit of affection. So he's a bastard to them, to these damaged geniuses who've learned to fear his face, to shudder at his name.

Tess would be appalled at his behavior, but she's gone to dust now. A memory, a smile, a caress of her hand against his face, nothing more. Jesse can barely remember her except from stories and pictures, little anecdotes that he shares when she's in need of comfort.

Harry wonders if she draws on those memories now.

He pushes that thought away as the computer pings. The simulation is finished and the results aren't promising. With a single dose of the new Velocity-8, Barry's speed will increase again by a third – not fast enough. Double the dose and Barry's heart will explode.

He resets the parameters and processes the model again. Rather than sit and watch the screensaver – a pair of red and yellow dots chasing each other through a maze – he gets up. It's late, but he's antsy and needs to move, to do something.

If he wasn't wearing the face of a presumed-dead megalomaniac and confessed murderer, he'd go out for a run, but he's not interested in getting shot again. Running through the halls of this deserted and almost derelict version of S.T.A.R. Labs will not bring him peace – it's too reminiscent of his nightmares about Zoom. But there's no reason why he couldn't do a session on the treadmill – "cosmic" or not – it can still be set for normal human speeds.

Harry ditches his sweater and swaps out his black pants for a pair of hopefully clean S.T.A.R. Labs running shorts, not bothering with shoes – he didn't bring sneakers with him and the thought of rummaging through Thawne's clothes makes him ill. Besides, he's run barefoot up mountains; the treadmill's mat will feel like carpet on his feet.

But all his grand plans for some exercise are for naught. The treadmill's in use, although he can only see a blur of yellow lightening floating above the whirring platform.

Harry realizes that he's never actually seen Barry run – not like this. He's seen The Flash flash – little zips around the Cortex, video feeds from the traffic cameras that Cisco's hacked into, the start of his race with Eobard around the particle accelerator tunnel, and footage from Barry's early days when the team was out on training runs (those are the most difficult to watch, because he sees his face in too many frames. There's such eager anticipation – almost lust – and it makes him uncomfortable in ways that are hard to name), but he's never seen Barry run like this.

It is awe-inspiring. Jay has boasted that he could run near the speed of light – a ridiculous and unprovable claim – and while Harry's never seen Jay in action, he can't be anything like this, surely.

Harry goes into the treadmill room without thinking; he wants to know what it's like to be this close to lightning and it's a revelation. The power rushes along his skin, every follicle, every cell responds. This is the Speed Force. It's intoxicating, and for a heartbeat he sympathizes with Jay, he understands Thawne, hell – he even gets what driving that monster, Zoom, if it’s the speed he truly wants and not something else.

He loses all track of time watching Barry run, luxuriating in the residue of the Speed Force. It could have been a minute or an hour, but too soon, the ball of lightning slows and resolves into the shape of a man.

Into Barry.

He doesn't come to a complete stop, just continues to jog at normal – okay, normal for an Olympian – speed for a few more minutes.

He's seen Barry in his suit and admired the form – he's human and Barry's beautiful – but he doesn't let that distract him. He's seen Barry in recovery mode, wearing the ubiquitous S.T.A.R. Labs sweatshirt and pants and looking like a refugee from his high school gym class. Barry in street clothes is certainly attractive, too. But he's never seen Barry quite like this – mostly naked, wearing nothing but his own pair of S.T.A.R. Labs running shorts – gleaming with sweat and looking like a model from an underwear or swimwear catalogue, something he might have masturbated to back in his long-ago pimply youth.

Maybe it's the deal he made with the devil, or the anguish he's lived with every day since Jesse was taken, but he feels … old. Old and wasted and used up. Unfit to be so close to human perfection.

And Harry has to laugh at that – Barry Allen is far from perfect.

Liar.

The treadmill slows and comes to a stop and Barry seems to notice him for the first time, but he doesn't say anything as gets down.

They stare at each other for a few heartbeats and Barry glances down and then meets his eyes again, a smirk twisting those pretty lips.

Pretty? What the hell is wrong with you, Harrison Wells?

"Is that for me?"

"Huh?"

Barry glances down again and Harrison does too. Oh. Oh. He swallows and looks back up, trying for his best "I am the world's most brilliant scientist/entrepreneur" look, the one he gives querulous shareholders and nervous investors, but Barry just stands there in his near-naked glory, sweaty and freckled and interested. "Yeah."

Something dark crosses behind those eyes, something too much like grief and guilt, but Barry licked his lips and Harry gets a little lightheaded as the rest of the blood in his body seems to pool in his groin.

He feels like he'll die if Barry walks away, and Harry knows that he should – that one of them should. That this is a disaster in the making. But he can't move and he can't do anything but hope.

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2 - only your light against extinction

Barry runs because he can't do anything else. He runs on the treadmill because it's the best place to get speed. If he's on the streets in the city, he's in his suit and there's always going to be a distraction – someone to save, someone to help. He can't get the speed he needs out there, in the world.

And he can't get out of his head if he's in the world. And tonight, he needs the emptiness.

Cisco's home and safe and well, tucked into his own bed with a bootleg copy of The Force Awakens. Caitlin's out with Jay, and while Barry's not sure he really trusts the Earth-2 version of The Flash, he's willing to do so for the sake of his friend.

That just leaves Harry at S.T.A.R. Labs tonight. Harry, who's been holed up in Cisco's workroom like a troll under a bridge for the last week. Barry feels guilty about that. Harry's supposed to be a part of Team Flash, but they've all let him withdraw deeper into his own misery in the wake of Thawne's reappearance and trip home.

Barry knows just how unsettling it is, to know that you're a key part of the events that will set the stage for your doppelganger's eventual murder and there's nothing you can do about it.

So he runs to escape his own head and the Speed Force builds as he goes faster and faster. The treadmill room is built to withstand the pressure waves as he crosses the sound barrier, and soon he's approaching Mach-3 – almost twenty-one hundred miles an hour. He's seen footage of himself on the treadmill and knows that he looks like lightning now – a yellow ball floating above the whirring track.

He pours more of himself into the Speed Force and he begins to feel the runner's high. That is what he is searching for, what he needs, an ironic Nirvana while in absolute motion. All the pain and the worry, all the fears about Zoom, about Thawne, about the future and the past, just fall away and he's at peace for the first time in a long time.

Barry has no idea how long he runs, but his body is still flesh and blood and muscle and bone. It still needs energy and he can feel his reserves start to drain. It's not like those early days, when he'd run and then crash. He's gotten so much better at keeping himself fueled, and managing how his body uses that fuel, he can run faster for longer periods, but he can't run forever and starts to slow down.

Running on the treadmill is not like running on the street. He can't just come to a stop, he has to slow down in gradual increments or he's going to hit the wall, literally. At least Cisco's finally installed some good padding. Last time he'd stopped short at a mere hundred miles an hour, he'd been flung into the wall and ended up breaking both shoulders and his collarbone.

He slowly dials back the speed, dropping by hundred mile-an-hour increments until he's at a relative crawl and realizes he's not alone in the room.

Harry's there and it looks like he had planned on a run, too. The black tank shows off arms and shoulders that are toned to perfection, and he's got on a pair of S.T.A.R. Labs running shorts, his legs are pale and just as perfectly toned. But Harry's feet are bare and they're downright ugly. Hairy toes, thick nails, calluses – they're Hobbit feet and oddly adorable. Barry's about to say something – to make a joke, but as his eyes travel back up, he sees something else.

Harry's aroused – so hard his shorts are tented and there's a visible damp patch darkening the gray knit fabric.

Barry sees and doesn't know what to feel.

This isn't like Eobard's barely concealed lust. In the early days, before the slow realization that the man they had all thought of as Harrison Wells was somehow involved with his mother's murder, he'd often felt the man's covetous eyes on him and ached to respond. How many times had Barry listened to Wells over the comms, practically making love to him as he urged him to ever-greater feats of speed and power? Alone, at night, he'd reveled in those looks, those words, taking his pleasure with his own hand as he'd imagined great and terrible intimacies with the man he'd admired for so long.

For almost a year, Barry's refused to think about that aspect of his relationship with the false Wells and his own unrealized physical infatuation. He knows now that if he'd made a move, given the imposter the least hint that his desire was reciprocated, he'd have been on his knees in, well, a flash.

Last week, seeing Eobard – without his masks – reminds him of how close he came to complicity in his own emotional destruction. Had he slept with the false Wells, had he surrendered his body and his heart to his mother's murderer, he thinks that he never would have recovered.

But Harry's desire is honest in its obviousness, and that appeals to Barry. He smirks, but his voice his harsh when he asks, "Is that for me?"

It's funny, but it seems that Harry doesn't even realize that he's aroused. And from the flags of color on the man's face, now that he knows, it's clear that he's embarrassed. But he makes no move to cover himself or to walk away.

Barry licks his lips, his own body thrumming, and Harry's eyes darken. He finally answers, "Yeah."

It would be the wise choice to walk away, to pretend this never happened, to go home and let Harry run or go back to his calculations. But he can't. There is so much need there, a desperate darkness, the wounds to his soul as visible as his desire, that Barry cannot help but respond.

He swallows and reaches out. He touches Harry for the first time - or at least it feels that way. This man is not Eobard Thawne, not the man he'd loved and then hated. The differences are written in his skin - the roughness of a late day beard, the chapped and bitten lips, the dark circles under his eyes - all testaments to the war he's been waging.

A question forms and he asks without thinking, "Tell me one truth. Did you kill Russell Glosson?"

At first, Harry doesn't answer, but he doesn't pull away and his desire doesn't flag. Finally, he says, "Yes." His voice is harsher than ever.

Barry finds that he doesn't care that Turtle's dead by this man's hand. Tomorrow he'll be curious as to the whys and wherefores, but now it's enough that he has an honest answer.

He leans in and kisses him, he's gentle and tentative - as if Harrison Wells, monster-creator, monster-slayer - is a shy virgin. And Harry responds as such, opening like a flower to him. It's a heady rush, to have such power over this powerful man. But it turns desperate as Barry lets his own hunger, and maybe even some if his still-residual anger bleed through, and he's not so gentle anymore. Harry sheds his passivity and his tongue is an invader as he tries to take control.

Barry laughs and pulls back. "So, that's how you think it's going to be?"

Harry doesn't laugh when he replies, "Of course. You thought it might go differently?"

Barry laughs again. He whispers in Harry's ear, "Oh, I know it will," and whisks them down to the empty storage room that Harry's commandeered for sleeping quarters.

He drops Harry on the mattress and follows him down. He's feeling light, playful, and right now, his desire is anything but desperate. In a heartbeat, he's got Harry mostly naked. The borrowed running shorts are tossed into a corner, but that black tank is rolled up, displaying a smooth chest and nipples, and the still-healing scar from Patty's bullet. There are a few stray curls between his pecs and Barry finds the strand or two of gray among them to be as endearing as the man's ugly feet.

His hands are all over Harry's body and he finds he wants to see Harry's joy, he wants to see this man shed his perpetual grimness – if for just an instant. So Barry lets the lightning out - teasing and tormenting all the obvious erogenous zones - his nipples, his navel, the deeply carved indentations between his hips, the lighter, less defined lines of his abs. Everyplace but Harry's sex, and it's clear that Harry wants the lightning there, too.

"Don't tease me, you bastard."

Barry swoops down and gives Harry a rough kiss - biting those lips until they're ruby red and Harry's panting and cursing and he keeps trying to take control. But Barry's not so quick to surrender, he wants Harry's honest smile, not the sardonic and often bitter grin he displays after some nasty exchange with Jay.

He finally touches Harry's cock without the lightning - a smooth stroke from base to tip and back. Harry moans and fucks into his hand. Then he lets the lightning loose - just a single spark - and Harry screams.

He takes his hand away, sliding it up Harry's body, a soft caress.

Harry growls, "Stop treating me like a damn girl. Fuck me, damn it."

Barry laughs, "So you're giving in?"

Harry stares at him and something changes. "For now."

Barry kisses him again, "Don't go anywhere." He whooshes into Caitlin's well-stocked medical bay, finds what he needs and rushes back – he's gone for just a few brief seconds. He holds out a small white tube, "Can't forget about lube."

Harry blinks, "We have K-Y Jelly here? Do I want to know why?"

Barry can barely keep his grin contained, "For when the aliens start arriving – all the anal probes we're going to have to do." He wonders if Harry will get the twist on the old joke.

He does. His eyes widen, at first not sure if Barry's serious or not, but then he laughs – it's real and unforced and the best sound Barry's heard in a long time. Harry's grinning, too, and Barry feels like he's won every prize at the carnival.

And he can afford to be magnanimous now that he's gotten what he wants – now that he finds the light within all that darkness. "We can do it your way, if you really prefer." He kisses Harry on the nose, enjoying just how adorable he looks.

Harry laughs again, just a little more than a huffing sigh. "No, let's continue as we started. But next time…"

"As long as there's going to be a next time, I have no complaints."

He kisses Harry again, lavishing him with affection – both playful and fierce, biting and licking his way down that beautiful body. And then he starts to prep Harry, with generous amounts of lube and vibrating fingers to drive the man to the brink of orgasm and back, over and over. Barry delights in seeing just how far he can push Harry, where the line between eager pleasure and frustrated pain exists. He hits the other man's joy button and turns the vibrations up.

Harry screams, "How the fuck did you learn to do this?"

"Lots of self-experimentation."

That gets him another laugh and a groan as Harry's eyes roll up and he's close – so close – that Barry stops the torment.

He slicks himself up and swings Harry's legs over his shoulders. Harry whimpers – an involuntary plea – as Barry teases his pucker with his cock, pushing in ever so slowly. Harry's well-stretched from all of Barry's fingering, but it's clear that this is not a regular sexual practice for him. Barry pants from the effort not to plunge in and take-take-take and Harry's clawing at him, begging with the most deliciously foul language to fuck him hard.

Barry still wants to play. He's not accustomed to feeling this much joy and in the back of his mind, he knows that he's unlikely to have this again anytime soon. His hands are hard on Harry's hips, holding him still as he sinks deeper and deeper. He's finally balls-deep and he doesn't move, doesn't vibrate. He just lies against Harry, moving his hips like an inexorable tide. They're joined by sweat and sex and something more that he's afraid to name.

Harry arches against him. He's silent now, but the hands on his body are pleading for more and Barry finally rocks his hips just that much harder. Slow and deep, as much a torment to him as it is to Harry, but he doesn't speed up, he doesn't let the lightning flow, he doesn't vibrate. He pulls out and sinks in deep and he wonders who is fucking who, and is this fucking or something else altogether?

Harry's no longer clawing at him, he's holding him close and cradling him into his leanness, one hand across his back, the other tangled in his hair. Barry's face is pressed into the other man's shoulder and he can hear him whispering, no longer obscenities but words of praise and desire, his name, over and over.

The need builds like speed, or like terminal velocity, and Barry doesn't – he can't – hold back. Involuntary lightning plays along his skin and he feels what Harry feels, they are joined – locked by the electricity – and when he comes, because he can't not come, Harry bites down hard on his shoulder and Barry screams.

The world glows – white and yellow – and he never wants this to end.

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3 - only your love to shut out the shadows.

Barry's stretched across the mattress like some sleeping lion, and Harry's sitting with his back against the wall – still wearing just the black tank and his own semen – knowing how well and truly fucked he is.

He didn't want this and he's terrified. He can see Zoom in the shadows, stalking him, taking him apart, piece by piece. If he could give himself to Zoom in exchange for his child's life, he would, and spare Barry. If he could take Barry's speed and leave him whole and healthy, give him the life he should have had before Thawne's interference, he would.

But he can't. He can't turn back time and he can't let his child die.

And he can't sacrifice this man, this reluctant and eager hero who still looks at the world and sees wonder, who looks at him and sees someone of worth.

Barry shifts and he goes from peaceful slumber to restlessness in a heartbeat. He doesn't wake, but he's twitching and shivering and Harry doesn't have to be a genius to figure out that he's caught in a nightmare.

He doesn't even have to imagine what terror is consuming Barry's rest. All he needs to do is reach out and touch the sleeping man and he'll see it in brilliant detail.

This is his gift, his curse – his darkest and most dangerous secret. If Cisco knew, he'd probably give him some silly name like "Dream Rider". He had been, after all, at Ground Zero when the accelerator blew, working feverishly to shut it down and had taken a full dose of dark matter. So bitterly ironic that he watched his dreams die and became a dream walker in the same instant.

He hates using his gift – it feels like rape, but Barry's caught in a hell that he can't wake from, after the joy he's just brought him, how can he let him suffer?

Harry touches Barry's temple, combs his hand through his sweaty hair and lets reality fall away.



Harry compartmentalizes his own fear, this terror is so similar to his own and he can't help Barry if he's caught up in the nightmare. too. He strokes Barry's head, replacing the horror with something else, a scene that brings him joy. Barry's on his Earth, at his S.T.A.R. Labs, he's valued and appreciated above all. Cisco and Caitlin are there too – they are his right and left hands, his confidants and his friends. They are happy and whole and everyone is thriving.

Harry extends the vision, adding in other people that Barry loves – Joe and Iris, his father, his co-workers at the CCPD, stray dogs and cats. He builds a world filled with sunshine and he believes it.

That is the only way this works. To shut out the shadows, he has to believe in the vision he's sharing.

Harry lies down and holds Barry, still shivering, close. The connection as intimate in its own way as the one they'd shared before. He presses his lips to Barry's temple and continues to feed him his dream of paradise.

Soon enough, Barry quiets and Harry can see his dream take hold and transfigure as Barry sleeps and takes over. Yes, all the people that Barry loves are safe and well and happy, but the dream changes focus. It's just him and Barry now, and they're running. Not a red and yellow streak forever chasing each other, but two lovers just running through some forest, an easy morning race that ends at a dock, a lake, and neither of them stop until they hit the

cool

sunlit

water.

FIN