Chapter 5
Observation Notes from B. Allen:
Nor and I were in one of my physics electives, and he was playing with the ball that I had borrowed recently from one of the boys on...I'm not exactly sure which sports team. (I'm sure he won't miss it anytime soon.)
Nor went to go walk through one of the glass displays the professor kept older experiments and knick-knacks in, but instead of it working like a "door" he walked face first into it, making everything in it rattle and a wave of snickering broke out. I'm not ashamed to say that I was also laughing, and he didn't drop the ball, so he couldn't yell at me.
Our professor didn't miss a beat though, they simply said that whose ever familiar had walked into it shouldn't have had the toy in their mouth or hand when they did so, and if they are stuck then whomever is paired to them needs to get up and help them.
I have never been so glad that Nor doesn't have opposable thumbs, I can only imagine what would have happened if he'd made it part way through and then the ball impacted.
Naturally after class, and for the rest of that weekend, we tested on our own what Nor could and couldn't go through when he had a familiar specific toy to carry around, or when he had a mundane object to carry.
He couldn't go through anything with a human only object, and he could only go through wood with a familiar toy. Glass, plastic, and metal (and let me tell you how hard it was to find those things when no one else was around!) stopped him every time. We think it's because wood, even when treated, is still the most natural thing and everything else is too man made.
We /still/ haven't worked out the science behind the familiar toys and clothing that makes it vanish when humans let go and only familiars are touching them. Kind of frustrating, but Nor says either I'll figure it out, or I'll find another nerd to explain it to me. Why is my familiar such a pain in my ass sometimes?
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Barry had re-acclimated to being awake again pretty easily, especially now that he had his new found speed.
He would get up, now with Nor as his alarm clock, because the wolf refused to let Barry slip back into old habits of time mismanagement. Barry's new wake up call was the wolf leaping full body onto him a full hour before he had to be to work. Barry thought this was 1) rude, 2) hurt his ribs like breaking his wrist, 3) unfair because it took seconds for him to get ready and 4) sneaky as hell because all Nor was talking about was that forever damned toy store in Keystone!
Barry broke two and a half weeks into this new routine and slammed a sheet of paper with what looked like gibberish on it down in front of Nor. It wasn't technically gibberish, it was a code Nor had come up with when they had been 13 and Barry hadn't been able to speak out loud to him in class because he'd been written up too many times for it. His school notes had ended up covered in the code. They hadn't used the code since they had been in high school, so Barry bringing it back was a bit surprising.
"Will this work for you, or is there anything you want to change? Please tell me this is enough. I'm sick of hearing about this shop!" Barry whined as he looked down at his familiar.
Nor read over the plan, eyes scanning back and forth. Turns out that Barry had been listening to him these past few weeks as he rattled on and on every morning. Nor looked up at his pack mate to tell him as much when a tiny keg on a collar, of all things, was shoved rudely into his face.
"I'm not getting questioned about the code again, so you, my dear wolfie, are going to carry it," Barry said.
The smile on his face was no less than shit eating and Nor really wanted to be upset because he was /not/ a pack mule, he was a pack mate damn it, but the forethought in this was a good sign that Barry was actually going to follow through with getting him the ball, so he was willing to suffer the...wait a minute.
"Where, pray tell, did you get that ridiculous collar any way, pup?" The wolf asked warily.
"There's this fashion store in Keystone..." Barry started to say, shit eating grin still on his face, as he reached forward to put it on Nor, and the wolf, realizing what he'd walked into, snapped his jaws at just the right time.
---
"Mr. Allen," Barry heard Captain Singh sigh, "why is your hand bandaged and clearly bleeding through?"
Barry jerked his head down to look at his hand before replying to the Captain just as Nor jerked his head around to look at the same hand, and sure enough, several places were ruby red with blood from wounds that hadn't speed healed yet.
Barry gave a sour look to Nor before turning to the Captain.
"Funny story sir," Barry began.
"Did you get mugged?"
"What, no!"
"Was it an act of extreme clumsiness?"
"No..."
"Then what, Mr. Allen, did that do you?"
Barry didn't answer for a beat longer than what was probably acceptable and Singh quirked an eye brow.
"Did your soulmate do that to you, Mr. Allen," he asked softly.
Barry smiled sadly and said, "No sir, I still haven't found them. My familiar did this to me. I got him a gift that was admittedly very tactless, though I thought useful, and he bit me. Neither of us thought that this would happen, he'd nipped me before with nothing so drastic happening."
Singh pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed, "Your familiar who can make everyone else's familiars upset even when you aren't around so that no one goes near you lab, and this surprises you?"
Barry boggled at the man standing before him. "How do you know it was my familiar that was doing that? Last time we spoke, before the accelerator, you just thought it was an experiment or something that I had running."
Singh gave Barry a hard look, "I didn't make captain because I was pretty, Mr. Allen. While you were in your coma the same thing kept happening. You weren't around to run any tests which meant it could only be a handful of things. Though I'll admit the familiar theory wasn't that high on my list until now."
"Please don't tell anyone, sir? Joe doesn't like it when I tell people that my familiar can do more than a 'normal' familiar," Barry said, putting air quotes around normal.
Singh quirked a brow, "Normal?"
"My familiar has been doing stuff differently ever since that night," Barry said softly.
Singh didn't need the clarification to know that Barry meant the night his mother died and his father was blamed for it and not the night of the accelerator accident. He rolled his neck on his shoulders then nodded, he knew better than most that a lot of people could get...uppity for things that were different.
"Go home Allen. I don't need you bleeding on any of my evidence today. Get that taken care of and come back tomorrow."
"But sir!"
"Go. Home.”
Barry's shoulders slumped, but he nodded and turned around to go. They get all the way to the elevator, which is mercifully empty, before Barry says, "this is your fault. You just had to go and bite me."
"You went to Keystone without me."
There was a beat of silence as the elevator dinged, too soon to be the lobby and someone else got on, forcing an end to the conversation.
A smile tugged at Barry's lips though and he whispered, "worth it."
A visible shiver ran up the officer's back that had gotten into the elevator with them, and he looked at Barry in the reflection of the elevator doors with a strange look on his face. Barry smiled brightly back at him but did nothing else. When the elevator hit the lobby the officer couldn't get out of it fast enough.
"Did you have to growl the entire time after I said that?"
"Yes."
Barry rolled his eyes and walked out of the precinct. "When do you want to do this then?"
"Well, we suddenly have a free day to plan, why not tonight?" Nor said, looking up at him, ears turned forward, all attention on him human.
Barry sighed, "I have a bad feeling about this."
Nor howled his delight.
---
"I have to learn to say 'no' to you. Two and a half weeks is a terrible record for me," Barry said from where they sat crouched across the street from the toy store.
It had taken them no time at all to get there with Barry's speed, and he was now much stronger and had no problems carrying Nor in his arms, despite that fact that Nor was taller if he stood up on his hind legs. They'd had to run in bursts though so nothing burst into flames.
Barry had not been amused when Nor had started doing fire based puns after that. Not amused at all. Or the now ever popular 'keep your shirt on' once Nor realized that Barry had, in-fact, run around and burned all of his clothing off and lost his shirt because of it. A tick was forming at Barry's temple.
"It's a wonderful record for me," the wolf said, all of his teeth showing as he did a wolffish smile.
"I hate you."
"You love me."
Barry sighed. "Go see if the coast is clear and then let me know and I'll go to the back door."
"I know the plan, brat, I am still wearing your little toy keg aren't I?" Nor said coolly.
Barry grinned back and tapped the collars decoration. "You'll love me for it later on, the ball will fit inside it. I already checked."
There was a moment as the implications hit Nor and his jaw dropped.
"Not only did you go to that sham of a clothing store, you went into the toy store and didn't bring the ball home!" Nor's face was slack.
Barry smiled brightly, "Yes."
Nor tried to bite him again and Barry dodged at lightning speed.
Laughing he said, "I knew that you'd want to be here with me when I got it, so it's not like I could just bring it home, you would have been even more upset."
Nor folded his ear back and gave Barry a thoroughly unimpressed look.
Barry ruffled the fur on his head and turned back to the shop, "you might want to get going before the night gets any older. Didn't you say you met my soulmate around here? The one you're playing keep away from?" Barry cocked an eye brow at his familiar.
"If you want an apology for having made you the prize in my game, I'm still not sorry," Nor said as he ran across the street and into the shop.
He looked all around, noting that the security was still just as bad. Barry would just have to disable the alarm at the back door and then it would be easy. Or maybe they hadn't even noticed from when he was here before. Nor went to the back of the shop and sure enough, the alarm was still disabled, but set up in such a way to make it still look functional. Barry was a little too good at this, such a pity that he wanted to be a CSI, but Nor understood the need to prove that their father was innocent and that the man with red lightning in the yellow suit was to blame. Wherever it was he was now, if he was still alive at all.
Nor stuck his head through the door and gave a quick howl. Barry was there in seconds, yellow sparks following him as he appeared. A black ski mask was already pulled down over his face, hiding everything but his mouth and eyes and he was pulling on not one, but two pair of black rubber gloves.
"Don't look at me like that, no matter how unlikely, it's still a possibility for someone to get a skin sample from the outside of a pair of rubber gloves no matter how carefully I put them on," Barry hissed.
"OCD," was all Nor said for his reply as he pulled his head back through the door. Both the front door and back door to the shop where wooden and Nor had to wonder if the owners had tested the way he and Barry had. Or if they just liked the look of the wooden doors versus anything else.
There was a soft click and Nor turned to see Barry was quickly closing the door behind him and facing the alarm panel, hands pausing when he saw that nothing was changed from his previous visit.
"Well," he said, turning to look at his familiar, "that'll do it."
Nor snorted and said, "I told you it didn't have the best security around."
Barry shook his head and moved farther into the shop, Nor moving ahead of him to get to the ball he'd been eyeing for months now.
By the time Barry got to the display case and had kneeled down, Nor already had the ball in his mouth and was waiting to be let out of the all glass enclosure.
"You are so ridiculous," Barry laughed softly, as he found the key for the small bolt and started to undo it.
There was a noise from the back where they had come from that had them both freezing and crouching down as low as they could go, which wasn't that low for Nor, who was refusing to let go of the ball.
A pale gold/white light entered the room and Barry sped himself up, dilating time around him, and he saw a cheetah at the head of the lightning trail. His jaw dropped. He quickly opened the door, pulled the ball out of Nor's mouth, hid it in one of his own pockets, and closed the door again, clicking the little bolt back into place.
A low voice reached their ears once Barry dropped back to normal speed and the cheetah was out of the room again.
"What did you see?"
"They're here."
Nor came out of the case and glared daggers at Barry.
"Don't look at me like that, I have it," Barry nearly said above a whisper. "And how did they know we'd be here tonight?"
"Because this isn't my first rodeo," the first voice said, "now stand up and let me see Nor's counterpart."
Barry and Nor looked at each other as if to ask if this guy was for real. Barry did stand though because he was wearing a mask.
Leonard Snart laughed, "apparently not yours either if you knew enough to wear a mask." The man let his eyes travel down Barry's body, eyes pausing mid way down and a smirk forming on his face, "or gloves. Don't want anyone to know who you are? Got a secret to hide?"
Barry didn't say anything and he kept his eyes lock on Leonard's.
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