Puppet/Steff | 23 | Female | Aussie
Artist | Graduate | Games DesignAywas ID #6177
Life Ruined By:
Persona 5, Tokyo Ghoul, The Flash, Cow Chop, Monster Hunter, One Piece, Attack on Titan, Jurassic Park.

wordswehavesaidworld:

Ok, so this is a birthday fic nearly two whole weeks late for my dear friend Steff aka the awesome @empty-puppet! Happy birthday, and sorry for the lateness!

“Hey Joe?” Barry pokes his head into the living room late one evening after Iris has retired to her room for the night and he’s taken up his customary chair with a beer and the television playing softly in the background.

“Yeah, Bear?” He responds without really looking up.

“Do we…own a football?”

That gets him to raise his head, fixing the kid with a bemused stare. “Why? You need it for a project or something?”

“No,” Barry says, pulling a face as he shakes his head. He comes down off the steps to stand in the main room. “I wanted to practice. You know, for tryouts.”

He thinks his eyebrows might just disappear into his receding hairline. “You wanna try out. For football?” A laugh - just a giggle, really - slips out of him and soon he’s shaking in the chair trying to contain his laughter.

“I’m serious!” Barry says with all the righteous indignation of a sixteen year-old.

“Ok, ok,” Joe says, calming himself down. He knows it’s not right to laugh at his kid over this. Still, he has to ask, “Why do you want to try out for football Barry? You like science more than you like sports.”

“I still like sports,” Barry defends. “I watch games with you.” Those games are usually baseball, his personal favorite, but Joe still nods giving him the point. “And you always say we should get involved in as many different activities as we can so we have a lot of interests,” the teenager continues. “Iris likes football.”

“Yeah, well Iris only likes football so much cause that Dylan Johnson kid’s center-fielder,” he remarks, and watches how Barry’s face falls. He sighs heavily. “You really serious about trying out, Bear?”

Barry nods, determined.

“Alright. Think I’ve got a ball in the garage,” he says, then pushes himself up from the chair. “Let’s go.”

“You’re gonna help me practice?” Barry looks surprised, and a little pleased, by the idea, some pink rising to his cheeks. He’s like this most every time he feels that Joe is going out of his way for him - and he wishes the kid would understand nothing is ever going to be out of Joe’s way for him, not for his son.

Still now, he looks Barry up and down. Growth spurts have put Barry close to his height, but he’s no where near as broad. A good gust of wind could blow him away, Grandma Esther’s taken to saying each time she visits.

“Trust me, you’re gonna need my help.” And a good miracle, he can’t stop himself from thinking.

—

(I will probably expand on this for you later, but I wanted to get this out to you now since it’s nearly two weeks late. Apologies and lots of love!)

21
3 years ago