[END OTW RACISM] Dancing With Myself
by jadedofmara

[END OTW RACISM] Dancing With Myself

jadedofmara

Summary

In a world with timers, counting down to when you meet your soulmate, a lot of different things can happen. Some people choose not to get timers. Some people have gotten more than one, or more than one kind. But Cisco's never heard of one person's going off, while no one else's does. // updates yearly!

Notes

Imported from Archive of Our Own. Original work id: 12699111.

Well I wait so long for my love vibration

“Come on, Caitlin, today’s the day that I meet my soulmate, can’t I please leave early?” Cisco begged. The cortex was empty save for the two of them.

“Cisco, I’m sorry, but you have to stay. Dr. Wells says he has an ‘important package’ he wants us to take care of.”

“I’ll meet them in half an hour, come on! Let me leave!”

“Who knows? Maybe it’s one of the people bringing the guy in. When I first met Ronnie, I thought I would miss meeting my soulmate because of work. Maybe you’re just meant to meet them here.”

“Come on. No one comes to STAR Labs these days.”

“Well, I just got a text from Dr. Wells, says he and the ‘transport crew’ are going to be here any minute.”

“So is my soulmate! Caitlin, come on!”

“Too late, he says they’re pulling up now. I need you to prepare the med bay.”

He began working on that, as Dr. Wells wheeled in leading a group of paramedics into the main lab area. The people in the back were pushing a gurney, but he couldn't see what or who was on it. As he maneuvered his way to get a better look at whoever it was, Cisco’s timer went off. No one else’s did.

“Well… this is awkward,” he joked, trying to lighten the mood. He laughed nervously. Everyone else stayed silent.

A few months passed, and the patient showed no signs of waking up. His family visited almost every day, and that’s how Cisco learned his name was Barry. Barry was a CSI working for the CCPD. He didn't have much of an online presence, but when Cisco looked him up his Facebook said he liked Star Wars and Lady Gaga. Nice.

Cisco also did some research into the phenomenon of soulmates, and learned that timers were only a recent invention, only since the 50's. Some people chose to have just the one, but others chose to get as many as they wanted! Not everyone had a timer, but most did. Dr. Wells didn’t. Through all his research, though, he never found an example of one timer going off, and no one else’s. There were also timers for platonic soulmates, and Barry had one of those that was zeroed out. His other timer had been fluctuating like crazy, ever since they'd brought him in. Any time his heart rate or blood pressure rose, the amount left on his timer decreased. After his vitals re-stabilized, his timer went back up. They probably wouldn't have even noticed the correlation, but Cisco was a little nosy. With the only thing occupying them for the past 9 months being this guy, what else was he supposed to do? So he checked out the trends, and found that the higher Barry's vitals spiked, the more the time on his timer decreased.

So when Cisco was playing on his phone, blasting Gaga, taking some chill time, he was understandably a little shocked when all of Barry's various alarms went off at once.

"Caitlin! You better get in here!" he yelled.

Caitlin rushed in from her break, and began checking all of Barry's monitors for any irregularities. Of which there were a lot.

"Cisco, write this down. Blood pressure, 310 over 118. Unable to record PulseOx. The ECG is... broken? Cisco, when did you check the machine last?"

"Yesterday! It worked fine then!"

"That's not good." She began checking other equipment. "He drained his IV bag."

"So? That should be good. It means he's getting nutrients. Electrolytes."

"I just put it in 15 minutes ago. Did you mess with this? It should only have been enough to keep the vein open."

"I swear I didn't. This is bad. What if this guy dies? What if we killed him? This is very bad!" he yelled, almost on the verge of panicking.

"Please calm down! I'm calling Dr. Wells. He should know about this. I can't really do anything for him if I don't know what's wrong. After that, I'm calling his sister. And his dad."

While she was on the phone, he began taking a closer look at the equipment. Maybe Caitlin had missed something. And... bingo. She had skipped his timer. So, he turned Barry's wrist over. He had less than a minute left.

In the crowded lonely night

Summary

How did Iris meet her soulmate? How has Barry been since waking up?

"Barry!" Iris groaned. "I can't believe you're making me meet my soulmate at this dumb science thing!"

Barry rolled his eyes. "Come on, think of it this way: they could be a jock creep at a bar, but instead they're a nerdy creep at a STAR Labs press conference. Much less to worry about here."

"Stop that," she snorted. She gave Barry a playful shove. "My soulmate is not a creep!"

Her purse slid from her shoulder to her elbow.

"Whoa, whoa, hey!" Barry overacted getting shoved, knocking into the crowds behind him, earning more than a few dirty looks. "I don't know what any self-respecting non-creep would be doing here tonight anyway."

"The key word there is self-respecting, Barry. I'm here because I need to get a certain number of articles in the Vindicator if I want to get credit for it. You're here because something something science something Wills-"

"Wells," Barry corrected.

"-something nerdy. My point is," she said as she began digging through her purse, "is, um, I don't have a point. Want gum?" she asked as she popped a piece in her mouth.

"No thanks. I'm not the one who has to prepare for a hot date tonight." He smirked, holding up his wrist, with a clearly visible 9 months printed on his timer.

Iris rolled her eyes, and tried to stick the gum back in her purse, holding it open with her hand and elbow.

"Want help with that?"

"No, I-" she was cut off as someone rushed between them, snatching the bag out of her hand. "God dammit!"

"I got it," Barry said, starting after the thief.

"Two minutes, Barry! You got two minutes!" She yelled after him. He didn't hear her. She huffed, and started following at a slower pace.

Barry followed the figure through the crowd, shoving into people and stepping on toes. As the thief ran out into the facility, the crowd started thinning out and the architecture looked less modern and more industrial. The thief ran out a service exit and into a loading dock. Good. Barry could use the open space to catch up to them.

There was a narrow space between two shipping containers. The thief spotted it at the same time Barry did. Barry was gaining on them, but if the thief got out it was game over. The darkness in between the containers was more pronounced. Barry didn't see the thief tripping until he had tripped too.

Or, well, been tripped, it seems.

"CCPD. What exactly is going on here?" asked a figure silhouetted by a floodlight.

Apparently, the thief had the wind knocked out of them when they hit the cold January pavement. Barry was better able to get up, but he still had some trouble breathing too.

He coughed. "I'm also... also CCPD. This person stole my friends purse. I was trying to get it back for her.

The guy laughed. "Oh, you're CCPD too? What precinct? I'm sure I would have remembered a cop as... scrappy as you. I'm Detective-"

He paused as they heard clicking footsteps coming down between the containers.

"Barry! Did you get him?" Iris yelled.

He answered, "Yeah, well, sort of, I mean-"

He was cut off by a loud beeping. Barry had only heard Timer Beeping once before, when he'd met Iris, but its sound was unmistakable. Iris and the detective both looked at their wrists.

"Aww," said the thief, still laying on the ground.

"Um, should we-" Barry began to ask.

"Why don't you book him. I... have other plans," the detective said distractedly. Iris tried to suppress a smile.

"Yeah, sure, yeah, I totally have the authority to do that, okay, let me just-"

Barry was cut off by the ground starting to rumble. Iris and the detective looked confused, but Barry knew enough about particle accelerators to know that something bad was going down.

"Shit. We need to run, you guys." They started off around the side of the building, and were about halfway to Iris's car, when a loud siren started going off. People were streaming out of the building and into the parking lot.

"Is that a tornado siren? It's January," Iris wondered.

"No time! We gotta go!" Barry yelled. Iris was starting to look panicked as she unlocked her car and got in the drivers seat. Barry slid into the back seat behind her, and the detective hopped into shotgun.

"Do you think we'll be able to get through this traffic?" the detective asked.

Iris rolled her eyes. "My dad made me do stunt driving courses when I first learned to drive, and I got this car at the police auction. We'll be fine."

"Yeah. It's got cop tires, cop suspension, cop shocks," Barry joked.

"Shut up and let me drive," Iris said as she drove up over the curb and around the gate, and onto the road past the rest of the cars.

Once they got onto the open highway, they were fine. They managed to beat the rest of the cars and speed ahead towards town. Iris turned on the radio, but no stations were saying anything about STAR Labs.

"So, I never got your name. Um, he's Barry, and I'm Eddie, but, um..."

"I'm Iris. Nice meeting you, sorry about the whole particle accelerator thing. It's probably safe, right, Barry?"

He laughed nervously. "Um, maybe," He checked his watch. "I need to get to work. Can you drop me off?"

"Yeah, sure."

He got out of the car. He went up to his lab. He began setting it up. He opened the skylight. And that's where his memories for the night ended.

5 hours after waking up, and Barry was already tired of waiting. He'd met back up with Iris, and gone back to the house, and was making himself another sandwich when he looked down. It had been about 9 months since he'd last checked his time.

He took a breath. Flipped over his wrist. It was zeroed out. He must be looking at the wrong wrist, the one that had Iris's timer. He checked both timers. Both were at zero. And it looked like both had been at zero for a while.

He had no idea when his timer could have gone off. He knew he didn't hear it when it did. He also knew that it would be almost impossible to find out whoever had set it off, and more so as more time passed.

If his face was wet when he ate his sandwich, well, every witness would be eaten by the time he was done.

End Notes

lmao im not dead.

I said i wasn't planning on continuing this. you all commented that you wanted more. so i made you wait a year.

anyways if it wasnt clear, barry and iris are platonic bffs for life.

identify the reference and ill tell you a fun fact about this verse i have planned

worldbuilding dump

Summary

worldbuilding!

now that i have your attention: please keep yourself informed about the current situation with the OTW.

it starts in an american cold war research lab, because its it’s 1953 and the marginal tax rate is 92% so science has government funding out the wazoo

theres a scientist, lets call him jon, if you give a shit about continuity you can pretend hes any jon you want. hes working with clocks and what he is describing as “soul energy.” he wants to determine when the user will die, to gain an edge on the reds

he’s the first to test the device out. he sticks his finger in the little port. he has five minutes left.

he does not die. instead, a lovely young lab assistant walks into the room for the first time. because this is the 50s, there is no HR telling him he shouldnt ask her to dinner. the thing is, theyre both really compatible. theyre married within a year. the device is patented in two.

soul energy does not give a shit about the differences between platonic and romantic and familial and professional love. jon’s formula, though he doesnt know it, takes a few things into account. different markers in common will increase a compatibility “score.” a shared language does more than you would expect. the average person will meet 80,000 people in their lifetime. that narrows down the timer count from 7 billion to something more likely.

different companies race to develop their own permutations of this device. skin contact is always required. some are kitschy heart-shaped pendants. one is an incredibly tacky bakelite hair clip. the most enduring version is implanted in the skin of the inner wrist, pissing off parents and grossing out little brothers everywhere.

there is no limit to how many timers you can put on your body. theres a dude in the guinness book of world records with 157. several are in his armpits, because he’s running out of room. he will meet all of them, and all of them will be just enough like him to have some absolute baller times.

as soulmates begin to be more normalized, so are other things. laws against homosexuality and interracial marriage are quietly repealed. hospital visitation rights are granted. some churches refuse to marry anyone who isnt marrying their match. other places refuse service to anyone openly wearing a timer.

then the 80s hit. woof. before, timers were a sign of teenage rebellion, the freedom of young adulthood. now those teens are parents of their own. timers are ingrained in the culture. it becomes popular to get timers for younger and younger children. mattel has their own lines of pink and blue timers. platonic timers start being marketed, even though there is no fundamental difference in the soul energy. compatibility is compatibility, no matter what. 

fast forward to the now times. people dont think its very cash money to permanently force destiny on young children. different types of timers start becoming more popular. you walk down the street and see a guy with gauges that are like tiny little egg timers. ding! some are like mood rings that turn redder the sooner you meet them. 

the technology is cool. it is also a mark of privilege. people get shit for getting their timers at claires. the rest of the world thinks america is full of fucking weirdos for believing in destiny so hard (theyre kind of right).

in a world of constant alienation, the idea of soulmates is appealing. it’s a promise of love without any mortifying ordeals. it is saying that there is someone for everyone, that no one has to be alone for no good reason. you will meet someone, and you will be known.

End Notes

find my fics on dreamwidth, my effortposts on pillowfort and my shitposts on tumblr.

Hi, this is just to test whether an IFTTT recipe is working.

I haven't watched the show since this time last year, so I'm posting this cause I've had it written for a while, and I want to get content out there. This was originally meant for Barrisco Month 2015 (Ha! Didn't get that done!), but here.

If you're interested in more, though, leave a comment!