Adventure Of A Lifetime

Chapter 14 - In His Young And Restless Heart

***BARRY***

I want to call Cisco before we arrive in Central City, but Kara talks me out of it. "It's hard enough for me to talk to Cat when I'm flying," she says. "I speak from experience."

"Yeah," I say. My words might as well be subvocalized to my ears, but of course my solar-powered lady love can do me one better, or twenty. "I'll just text him, then."

"Careful when you do that." She accelerates to counteract the opposing force of a headwind coming down from the Colorado Rockies. "I don't need too many more appendages digging into me from behind."

"Haha, what?" Then it dawns on me what she's really talking about. "Oh crap. Kara, are you telling me I-"

"No, no, don't worry about it!" She turns around a bit, but I imagine she can feel my burning face radiating against her so she wouldn't have to actually see it. "Your awkward boners were how I knew you were the right guy for me."

"I didn't even know!" Okay, maybe I did know once or twice or thrice... "But you gotta admit," I add, "I have so much fun flying with you."

"You don't need to see my license to thrill, do you, Officer?" I imagine Kara winking flirtatiously as she says that.

I bend my head down so I can talk directly into her ear. "Save it for the boudoir, okay?"

"Not yours?" she laughs. "I mean, you still live with your...with Joe, right?"

My lips really tickle her ear, and I can't resist biting her earlobe. "I trust you not to wake him up."

Conner floats over us long enough to say, "You know we can hear you guys talking sex, right?" He pauses before adding, "Well, me and Clark, anyway. I don't know about Diana-"

"I can hear it too!" Diana calls out.

I turn to see Clark shaking his head at all of us. "Di, come on. Zeus knows we've talked dirtier than that in public."

"Careful," Diana says in a singsong voice. "Zeus might just strike you down for that."

"It wouldn't be the first time he's tried," Clark laughs. "Hey, Zeus!" he yells at the sky. "Come at me, bro!"

I bend down to talk into Kara's ear again. "Someone sounds like he's been reading a little too much Percy Jackson lately."

"I talked him into it," Kara whispers. "Only 'cause Grayson and Olivia did the same to me."

Aww, and I was still hoping to swing by Gotham and see those two, maybe even have an impromptu double date...or triple date, if we could convince Clark and Diana to come with as well. But then that would leave Conner out, poor guy. That's for no.

Okay, so I guess we'll hit up Nightwing and his magical girlfriend later. (Note to self: ask if Olivia's picked a proper superhero name yet. She said at one point Bruce wanted to call her 'Batgirl,' but I think that was more of a joke than anything else.)

Soon, we land in Central City, where it's less than two hours after sunrise - not that there's much sun to speak of, though. Winter in the far north of California, while not as extreme as what might be typical in Metropolis, can be chilly as hell when it wants to be.

"There better not have been any paparazzi on the ground," Diana says to Clark with a tilted head and raised eyebrows. "That's all I'm saying."

"Hey," Clark laughs, "we did a pretty good job of avoiding population centers and staying outside the normal flight lines."

"If you say so," Conner remarks.

Glad to be the one with the home-court advantage this time, I lead the rest of this squad to STAR Labs. Cisco and Dr. Wells (who practically live here most nights) are the only ones in the building to greet us. Wells is somewhat surprised to see a different Clark from the one he's heard of on his Earth, and as for Diana, he's very surprised to hear her Themysciran accent - her counterpart has adopted an American one.

As for Cisco, he's seriously, incoherently fanboying for the first three to five minutes or so. "Ohmygodohmygodohmygod! I can't believe it - the real-deal Power Couple in the house? In our house?" He gazes up at me, wide-eyed with wonder. "Saint Barry, what did I do to deserve this?"

Behind Cisco's back, Conner skulks around a bit, looking content with not being the center of attention for once. Cisco's left his computer terminal open, and naturally, our Superboy's finding where he keeps his stash of choice lab music. Some of these tracks, Cisco claims are more effective stimulants than coffee. Which makes sense, because there's a lot of 80s songs on his playlist, many of which were probably conceived on crack. (Okay, make that "definitely.") The first song Conner chooses is one a little less cocaine-y and/or 80s synth-y, though no less fun to dance to.

"The boy lies in the grass with one blade stuck between his teeth," Geddy Lee sings on Rush's little-known 1982 song, "The Analog Kid." (I didn't even know Cisco knew this song - learn something new every day, huh?) "A vague sensation quickens in his young and restless heart..." I imagine if Conner's really paying attention to the lyrics (which he probably is - I bet he's tuning out all else from his ears while he quells his addiction for the moment), he must really relate to that "analog kid," whoever he may be.

While he listens, he opens Cisco's desk drawer, then jumps back with a short cry of...fear? Shock? Something not good, I know that much. "What's wrong?" I ask, coming up to his side.

He doesn't respond - not verbally. Instead, he opens the drawer again and pulls out, with shaking hands, a pair of shiny goggles that look like a blend of the opaque white lenses on Spider-Man's mask and those plastic louvered glasses you see people wear all the time at parties because some hip-hop star or other designed them too.

"Oh, is that what you guys wanted me to try?" Cisco asks, taking the goggles from Conner's hands. "I should warn you, they're prototypes-"

"I've seen these before," Conner says, pointing to one faintly blue-striped lens. "These are the same kind of eyewear that Reverb guy was wearing when he sent me over here."

"...Reverb?" Cisco asks.

"He looks like you, but a hell of a lot less handsome," Conner says. Wisely, he leaves out the part about the man bun - that would break Cisco's brain beyond repair, I bet.

Cisco turns his goggles on, lighting up the lenses. "Ready to start?" he asks.

"You barely even know what we wanna start on," Conner says. "...Right?"

"You'd be surprised," Cisco says, putting the goggles on. "Just like I'll be surprised if this thing actually works."

Kara, Diana, and Clark give me "Oh, that's reassuring" looks, as does Wells. Conner, however, is eager to see what happens next, if the grin he's giving Cisco is anything to go by.

And you know what? So am I.

Time to play, boys and girls. And everybody in between.