The Flash - The Scent of Speed

[elrhiarhodan]

Title: The Scent of Speed
Author: elrhiarhodan
Fandom: The Flash (TV – 2014)
Rating: NC-17
Characters/Pairings: Harrison Wells | Eobard Thawne, Barry Allen, Cisco Ramon, Caitlin Snow, Harrison Wells | Eobard Thawne/Barry Allen (Implied and Actual)
Spoilers: 2.17 – Flash Back
Warnings/Enticements/Triggers: Non-Consensual Sexual Contact, Interior dialogue on rape, murder. Reference to canon murder of canon character (Nora Allen).
Word Count: ~2500
Beta Credit: None
Summary: From the beginning, Eobard Thawne knows that this Barry Allen is not his Barry Allen. The question is, what to do with him?

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In the guise of the genial cripple, Harrison Wells, there are many things that Eobard Thawne teaches Barry Allen. He teaches him control, how to listen, how to obey. He teaches him how to accept nothing but the best from himself and to forgive sins in others. He is father and teacher and brother and lover to the man he loathes with all the fierceness of his being.

Eobard Thawne looks forward to the day when he says to Barry Allen's face, "I hate you". When he can pull off this mask and show his true colors, when he can demand the recompense due to him for all the sins that Barry Allen, centuries in the future, will commit against him.

But for now, Eobard Thawne is content to bask in this young man's adulation. To accept his sexual and emotional surrender, and in return, give him pleasure and guidance with a firm and loving hand.

As much as Eobard Thawne teaches Barry Allen about using his speed, there many are more things that he keeps from him. Some are things he's not ready to learn, but most are Eobard's hard won knowledge, strategic advantages that he will someday use to defeat the Flash for once and for all.

And then there are those secrets that he simply can't bring himself to share because sharing them would reveal far too much.

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Eobard is disappointed in Hartley Rathaway. Not that the prodigal son has decided to return home, but that he's stupid enough to announce his vengeance. Rathaway is a fool to call him before shattering the glass in his house – to speak and identify himself. But the boy is emotionally stunted and clearly craving the attention of the man he still idolizes, probably still wants.

Thawne wonders if this is something he can use, if he can play Hartley off against Barry Allen, but he quickly rejects that plan. Barry is his end game, Hartley is nothing more than a once-pleasing diversion who should have been permanently eliminated a year ago.

His death will come soon enough.

He lets Barry, Cisco and Caitlin take Hartley down to the Pipeline and listens in as they conduct what could laughably be called an interrogation, except that Barry does something that throws him for a loop. He suggests that Cisco scan their prisoner for e-bombs.

That level of strategic thinking is not something he's accustomed to seeing in Barry Allen. Barry listens, he takes direction, and he often ignores instructions if it means the difference between some innocent's life and death. But he never thinks a dozen moves ahead. Barry Allen is not a chess player. He's not a plotter, a conniver, a schemer, and he doesn't know how to think like one.

So, to suspect that Rathaway, a chess grand master in his own right, has built e-bombs into his hearing aids is a leap of logic that he finds almost incomprehensible.

So he interrupts the little tête-à-tête between Rathaway and the team. Spouts a bit of German to demonstrate intellectual superiority and remind the boy of the emotional hold he has over him (he'd once made Hartley Rathaway come in his dress pants just by quoting Rilke). That is followed up with a promise to deal with him later, which should be enough to make the boy think hard about the penalty he'll eventually pay for trying to foil his plans.

But then all thoughts of Hartley Rathaway, misunderstood genius and irritant, are quickly forgotten when he realizes the there is something wrong with Barry Allen.

It's not the way that Barry's body curves away from him as if he's repulsed, so unlike this morning – before he went to save Central City from Rathaway's depredations – when he was as needy and affectionate as a well-fed house cat.

It's not the poorly masked hostility that now glows from his eyes.

It's not the ridiculously advanced mathematics that Barry challenges him with. Barry is smart, but he's simply not capable of this leap of theoretical reasoning. Yet.

It's not even Barry's reluctance to go rescue his friends and co-workers at the police station, something so startlingly out of character that it puts all of the other anomalies in the shade.

No. It's none of those things.

It's this: Barry Allen smells wrong.

Or more accurately, it's the speed force which clings to Barry a jealous lover that smells wrong.

This morning, when Barry helps him settle into his hotel suite, when he sucks his cock so perfectly, when tiny bolts of lightning flare around them as Barry brings them both to ecstasy, Barry's speed force carries the scent of summer-warmed grass. It's young and fresh, untouched by time.

The speedster that captures Hartley Rathaway, the speedster that looks like his Barry, that sounds like his Barry, but who doesn't behave like his Barry, bears a subtly different fragrance. The scent of the speed force is still young, still green, but there is an underlying darkness to it, the aroma of an old-growth forest after a summer storm. The scent has a richness and maturity that only comes from time travel.

Whoever, whatever this speedster is, he isn't his Barry.

Eobard Thawne doesn't panic. Not yet. There's another crisis brewing. Cisco has the comms tuned into the CCPD and it seems that there's a ghostly, corpse-like monster drifting through the building, looking for something. The police empty their weapons into it, but the thing just leaves through a closed window.

He knows what that it. He knows it and fears it. And for a few painful moments he thinks that a Time Wraith is looking for him.

But he catches a lingering scent of crushed leaves and broken branches, the musk of a buck with new-grown antlers, and knows that this Time Wraith is not after him, it's after the speedster masquerading as Barry Allen.

At this moment, Eobard Thawne needs two things – he needs to know that Barry Allen, his Barry Allen, is safe and unharmed; and he needs to deal with the imposter in such a way that it doesn't send up any red flags with Cisco and Caitlin. As long as they think they're dealing with their friend, the easier it will be to keep the timeline intact.

While Barry's at the CCPD, and Caitlin and Cisco are scratching their heads over this latest monster to land in Central City, he takes a few precious minutes to confirm with Gideon that the timeline is safe, which means that his Barry Allen is somewhere safe.

It's time to neutralize this other speedster.

The imposter is ludicrously easy to distract, and in that he is like the real Barry Allen. Only the man seems to want knowledge about the speed force, not a way to get his father out of prison.

That is a puzzlement to Eobard. Why does this speedster – one who can time travel – to need to learn how to go faster? Why is he seeking out his expertise?

He doesn't believe it. This is a ruse, a dangerous one with a Time Wraith in the mix.

So he brings the imposter into his office and he's stunned by this dichotomy this creature presents. He's cunning enough to see Hartley Rathaway's endgame, but he doesn't perceive a threat from him? Hmmm, maybe he really does think he's dealing with Harrison Wells, genial cripple?

The punch to the neck is a calculated risk. If the angle is off by a degree, he could cause a fatal rupture in the brain stem, killing the imposter before his speedster metabolism kicks in. But he's done this before and he's got the angle just right. The fake Barry Allen collapses into a still breathing heap across Harrison Wells' desk.

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Eobard Thawne doesn't just watch the unconscious imposter. He explores him and what he learns both pleases and disturbs him.

This creature is not a shapeshifter. He is Barry Allen. A Barry Allen, though not his Barry Allen.

Which means one of two things. He's either a time traveler from another dimension or he's simply from the future.

And Eobard Thawne finds himself at a loss. He's not sure which is worse.

But even with this creature chained to the wheelchair in the Time Vault, Gideon confirms that the timeline is still intact. Which means he can deal with this Barry Allen with impunity.

His hands shake, his whole body shakes. It's like the moment before he plunges that knife into Nora Allen's heart, or the moment before he transformes himself into the Reverse-Flash, or the moment he sees Barry Allen – The Flash – for the first time.

He is all anticipation, like a racehorse ready at the gate, aroused by the idea of fucking this Barry Allen, by killing him. He can take him apart - first sexually and then physically - he could leaving him here to rot. In this secret chamber, he can be as brutal as he wants. There will be no secrets between them in the Time Vault.

Barry - or whoever he is - is cuffed to his wheelchair, a pleasing irony. To be on the safe side, he uses something very special - a pair of restraints he'd built a dozen years ago, in a fit of boredom. Restraints designed to hold speedsters. A speedster. The Flash, specifically. There's a clever mechanism built in that make the molecules vibrate at inconsistent intervals, disrupting the speed force within a tiny radius.

Whoever this creature is, he's trapped like a rat, and Eobard's going to enjoy exterminating him. He calculates that he'll be unconscious for at least another fifteen minutes. Not that it matters if he wakes up mid-violation, he can't go anywhere now, can he?

Eobard kneels over the unconscious man and breathes deeply, absorbing that scent, drinking it like the finest scotch and it's truly intoxicating. He's aroused and his cock feels like a weapon. He wants to push into this Barry Allen, he wants to brutalize him, he wants to hear him scream.

But he doesn't. That would be too simple, too base. He still needs to understand why this man is here, why he's risked tangling with a Time Wraith, to talk to him. Because he doesn't quite believe it's about the speed.

So he pulls back, gets up, and waits - drinking in the rich scent of time until his brain is almost completely fogged over. He wills his prick to stand down; he promises himself that there will be time to play, once he's wrung the truth from this imposter.

Knowledge, sex, and then death, everything in its proper order.

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If he didn't hate the Flash so much, he'd bow down to him in awe.

This boy - just a year older than the young man who still worships him - has played him like a grand master. Eobard doesn't know if he's lying but he can't risk it. There might be a singularity after he goes home. There might be a letter that he's hidden and will be mailed to his Barry if this Barry doesn't it stop it.

Or it might all be a bluff. It kills him, this uncertainty.

But for now, he does nothing and the timeline remains intact. The Flash will still disappear on April 25, 2024. He doesn't want to admit it, but that surprises him, even after his Barry returns to S.T.A.R. Labs, confused and angry - not at him, but at the mysterious doppelganger that attacked and drugged him. Of course Cisco and Caitlin are there and then Barry-from-the-future returns, and in a stunning display of stupidity, tells everyone everything.

Or maybe it's not stupidity, but a cunning trap to force his hand. To give this future Barry Allen what he says he needs, the key to getting faster.

But he's not going to give him that without getting something in return. They go back to the Time Vault and it's almost worth everything that this son of a bitch has put him through to see the look of horrified disgust when he lays eyes on the yellow suit. Eobard has to admit that there's something revolting about it. Inanimate and on the mannequin, the yellow polymer looks like human flesh.

He programs Gideon to write the speed data onto a drive, and this Barry is pissed. That amuses him, too. Barry wants - despite their enmity - to have one last moment as student and mentor.

Eobard's not even tempted. He will, of course, have his own moments with his Barry. Student and teacher, friend, father-figure, and lover, best of all. He'll send this Barry Allen back to his own time still wanting, still hungering for something he'll never have again.

And yet, ironically, but before he hands over the drive, before he gives this Barry what he needs, Eobard Thawne takes what he wants. He pushes Barry against the wall, grinding against him, whispering, "You want this too, don't you."

Barry doesn't answer, but the rising scent of lust - not so different from the speed force - is answer enough.

"There's won't be time enough to fuck you, Flash - " That appellation is bittersweet on his lips, "but there is time enough for this." He pushes Barry Allen against the wall. he kisses him, face to face, with strength and power and need – having the right to stand tall against him for the one horrible, beautiful moment. Barry kisses him back, his tongue licking into his mouth - alien and familiar - his cock hard against his own and Eobard could rut against it for days.

He breaks the kiss and leans back, so he can memorize this Barry Allen, his face clouded with desire, his eyes filled with lust and contempt and hatred. He'll keep this image in his head until he dies. And then he wants one more thing and pulls Barry close, as if to whisper something in his ear.

Instead, he bites down hard and as he tastes the Flash's blood, he comes in joyous, painful release.

He breaks away and is disappointed to see that Barry didn't share in the pleasure.

Over the comms, Cisco's panicked voice tells them that the Time Wraith has been spotted and it's on its way. He pops the drive out of Gideon's podium and holds it out to Barry.

"Time to go home, Flash."

Barry Allen glares at him, the hate undiluted by lust, but he takes the drive.

Five long minutes later, with the help of his Barry Allen, this monster from the future is gone.

There will be much to clean up; the messy detritus of too many questions that will need to be answered in this time line. Eobard Thawne will deal with that. He's a master at obfuscation, misdirection.

And his Barry Allen, his precious speedster, trusts him, loves him, looks to him for all the answers. He will believe what Harrison Wells tells him, because he has no reason not to.

And that is how it should be.

FIN

Comments

[daria234.livejournal.com]

Oh love it. Can totally see this as Eobard's thought process. He really does know Barry well.

[pipilj.livejournal.com]

You captured Eobard beautifully it was a great episode