#everyone is damaged but the broken pieces fit together ifyouknowwhatImeanandIthinkyoudo

[careless-with-your-heart]

The Air She Feeds Me Is Damned - Chapter 5 (a Barry/HBO AU Fanfic)

It's been three years since Barry bolted, leaving LA after the breakup, disappearing before Moss started asking questions. Now, he's living on the East Coast, under a new name, working a string of shitty, under-the-radar jobs. Oh, he's still quietly falling apart, but at least his hands are clean. Barry Berkman's perfectly fine, thankyouverymuch, until he witnesses a murder - and he can't stop fantasizing about the woman who committed it.

If you haven't been here from the jump (and you wanna), the story starts here at AO3: Clickity Click Click

Otherwise, so-far readers, read on.

Chapter 5

He’s in her car when he passes out. Well, he isn’t quite sure it’s her car—there’s a stone-silent driver in the front seat of the white compact who is heavyset and bald and wearing sunglasses (at night…Barry sings in his addled head)—but Barry makes it about five minutes after being shoved into the cramped backseat before his adrenaline drops and he starts slurring. 

The streets outside his window swim past in a frantic, blurry haze, and he grips the empty passenger’s seat in front of him with his uninjured side, to steady himself.

“Where are we goin?”

His tongue feels thick, and his arm feels as though it’s been set on fire. He smiles stupidly, bitterly, thinking—you sleep in the anthill, Barry. You got the fire ants.

Blood runs from his now-soaked sleeve, down the center of his palm, dripping off of his index and pointer fingers and onto the seat beside him—the empty seat between them. He watches it collect from a single drop, to another, and another, until a small puddle forms. He can’t tear his eyes away from the spreading crimson, touches his finger to the pool every time a new drop trembles at the tip of his fingernail, releasing just a little more of what is left of him. Funny, funny, funny. What is there, really, that’s left of him? Barry watches as his blood spreads in minute degrees across the cheap vinyl, soaking down the fabric front of the upholstery. 

She hasn’t answered him, so he swivels his head toward her, swallowing against the dizziness that comes along with the movement. He wishes she hadn’t put the mask back up. He wants to see her here, up close. But she’s covered up, as always, and she’s staring out the window opposite him, her hand on a 9mm that’s holstered at her near hip.

“Ssssorry ’bout your sssseat,” he whispers. Darkness edges his vision as she turns toward him.

“No worries,” she says, as though he is apologizing for spilling soda, and not an alarmingly increasing amount of plasma that would be better kept inside of him. “This car’s seen more blood than just yours.”

He wants to laugh, but the pain in his shoulder is tightening his chest muscles, making it hard to draw even the shallow breaths he’s managing. “Not, um”—he winces—“exactly a mobster’s typical getaway car.”

Her eyes, the only thing that he can see, flash with something like anger, but the muted amber depths cool quickly. Oh, she has more than one mask, he croons in his head.

“Movies ruined the black SUV for bad guys,” she says with a shrug, her lashes fluttering as she drops her gaze to where her bullet had pierced him. She leans over, reaches across the seat and over him, and pulls the seatbelt across his chest, clicking it into place once she’s pulled it down diagonally to where the receptacle peeks from beside his own hip. “It’s a shame. Those things were like apartments on wheels. Now, you drive one, everyone thinks you’re The Family or The Feds.”

Barry stares at the seat belt buckle. “You can get in trouble for impersonating a Fed,” he deadpans.

“The Family was sick of getting mistaken for them,” she quips. “Plus, do you know the gas mileage on those giant motherfuckers? Astronomical. Costs a fucking fortune to park them, if you can find a decent spot in the city. The whole thing was a logistical nightmare. My father’s solution was this.” She waves a gloved hand at the compact.

Barry’s breath is getting quicker, shallower. His angel leans over again, whispers conspiratorially. “But, you see, he doesn’t exactly know that I borrow the cars. These little run-ins we’ve had are just because you have an uncanny way of being around for my extracurriculars.”

Her hand is flat on the seat, an inch from the puddle of his blood. As the seat cushion dips, the new incline makes a tiny rivulet of red run down, kissing the tip of her gloved ring finger. Barry’s mouth runs dry—but that could be the blood loss.

“Princess,” Barry says, realization dawning. “Not an angel. You’re a princess.”

He wishes he could see her smile, but all he gets is the suggestion of it in her eyes. “You could say,” she agrees. “And I’m taking you back to my tower. Dig that lead out of you. Talk about how you can be useful, since you’re too stubborn to keep to ground. Sound good?”

Three more lines of red streak down the vinyl to wet her fingers. Barry inches his own hand closer to hers, heedless of the blood, aching to lace his fingers with hers.

The compact hits a particularly egregious pothole. Barry snaps forward, and the seatbelt locks, catching him.

Pain lances through his shoulder like wildfire, and the same seatbelt keeps him from slumping sideways as the blackness that has been threatening makes good, and Barry succumbs.