Chapter Text
Barry groaned in frustration, banging his head on the kitchen table, groaning again louder when the action served to shift the pile of papers enough to go tumbling to the floor. He huffed to himself and bent over to gather them up before plopping them down and glaring at the offending documents.
“I swear, these things have GOT to be breeding somehow,” he grumbled. “That’s the ONLY explanation. As soon as I leave, the papers come to life and start making baby papers. I’m going to come home this week to find that papers have taken over the house.”
Running his hand through short brown locks, Barry took a deep breath to try to calm his frazzled nerves. He couldn’t believe that simply filling out forms would be more exhausting than fighting crime. But the amount of sheer bureaucracy he had to wade through was becoming overwhelming. Even filling them out at superspeed didn't seem to reduce the size of the pile. He’d almost rather face off against Zoom or the Reverse Flash again than continue cutting through the endless red tape. Almost.
“Barry? Are you in here?” a young voice cut through Barry’s musings and he looked up to see a pair of blue eyes peering around the door frame. His frustrations were instantly wiped away at seeing the reminder of just why he was going over paperwork at 3 AM and he smiled warmly.
“You should be in bed,” he said.
“I couldn’t sleep,” was the reply, the young boy shuffling into the kitchen, slightly-too-long pajama bottoms covering his feet. “What are you doing?”
“Filling out the applications. It’s a little aggravating at the moment. Why can’t you sleep?”
“I had a bad dream,” the boy said, sapphire colored eyes dropping to the floor. “I dreamt my dad found me.”
“Aw, kiddo,” Barry said, instinctively going over to scoop the 9-year-old into his arms. “It’s ok, it was just a nightmare. He can’t hurt you anymore, I promise. Everything’s going to be alright, you’re safe now.”
Barry hugged the boy close, rubbing soothing circles into his back when he heard the soft sobs. He hated seeing him like this, each tear like a stab in his heart. He hummed a lullaby that his mother had sung when he was young, listening for the telltale hiccups followed by a deep breath that signaled the end of the crying. He sat down and shifted the child into his lap, gently stroking soft black hair.
“Y-you promise it’ll be ok? Dad won’t find me and take me away?”
“I promise. Your father is gone forever.”
“Good,” came the firm statement. “I never want to see him again.”
“And you never will,” Barry assured him. He gave the boy a squeeze before standing up and setting him down. “Tell you what, how about I make us some hot chocolate and then we both go to bed?”
“And yes, I have mini-marshmallows,” he added, chuckling at the happy smile he got.
Moving at superspeed, Barry poured the milk into a pair of mugs, mixed in the cocoa packets, and placed the mugs in the microwave to heat before returning to his chair. He grinned at the awed look in sapphire eyes and couldn’t resist tousling the young boy’s hair.
“While we wait for the cocoa to finish, want to help me fill out some forms?”
The boy shrugged and climbed into the other chair. “Why do you have to fill out so many?” he asked. “This seems like it’s a lot more than it should be.”
“Well, it is a little hard to get a proper adoption in place when each and every file on the kid ended up erased,” Barry chuckled.
“Well, you shouldn’t have erased them then.”
“You’re the one that made me do it in the first place, Lenny.”