Previous Fic in Series: Ten Minutes Ago
Series ToC-----
Dinner Conversation“
Baseball!” the sandy-haired man next to Bruce sputtered when everyone around the table stared at him. “I caught him playing baseball with himself!” The man—Barry; that was his name: Barry—turned bright scarlet and looked down at his already empty plate.
“A solo baseball game, huh?” Lois smiled at Clark, though he could see her searching his eyes for anything resembling recognition of such an incident. He shook his head. Her smile dimmed, though she gave his hand a squeeze.
“Oh, yeah!” Barry replied, recovering from his earlier mortification and apparently unaware of the silent exchange between his hosts. “It was back in…hmm, must have been ’93, since me and Iris were engaged and I was still getting the hang of…” He paused, glancing at the faces around the table, and visibly forced himself to relax. “Well, of being the Flash.”
He set his fork down and leaned back with his soda. “See, I had told Iris that I knew the flash, but I didn’t say how, and I’d volunteered his help for an event she was putting together for underprivileged children. At the time, it made sense: kids were going nuts for both Superman and the Flash, and since the Flash was local, so much the better!” He grinned sheepishly. “Of course, what I didn’t think about was having an act: just showing up and waving wouldn’t fill the time allotment, and it wasn’t like I could just have a criminal rob a bank onstage then foil him in front of them. So, I was kind of at a loss.
“Well,” he continued, “I ended up having to go to Metropolis for a case—I work in forensics, you see—and while I was there, I did the whole ‘tourist’ thing, and I stopped by this stadium; it was pretty deserted, and I probably would have gone for a run, myself, if I didn’t notice at the last minute that there was still one guy there.”
“Clark,” Lois filled in, smiling.
Barry nodded and took a sip of his drink. “Of course, he didn’t see me, and before I could come any closer, he suddenly threw the ball, outran it to the home plate, grabbed a bat, and hit it! Well, of course, I was stunned: here was a perfect show I could do for Iris's kids!”
Bruce set his own drink down and stared at Barry. “What?”
“Well, yeah,” said Barry. “Kids love sports; a one-man game was the perfect way for the Flash to entertain them!”
“And that was your first thought after
stumbling upon Superman in his civilian identity?” Bruce asked.
“Well, no,” Barry admitted with a shrug. “My first thought was that it was a nice hit; the idea didn’t finish percolating until he ran to the outfield with a glove, flew up into the air, and caught the very ball he'd pitched!” He raised his arms, catching an invisible fly ball. “’And it’s caught by Kent, this ballgame is over!’” he mimicked. “It was absolutely fun to watch! Of course, with Iris's kids, I ended up doing tennis…”
“Hold on…” Bruce raised a hand and turned a steely gaze on Barry. “You found Superman in civilian clothes and heard him shout out his real name like an overconfident Rumplestiltskin, and you didn’t do anything with that information?”
All eyes turned to Barry.
He shrugged again. “It wasn’t really my business,” he said mildly. “And besides, even if it was, what was I going to do: scour the phone books in Metropolis for every guy whose first or last name is Kent?”
Bruce snorted and returned his attention to the remains of his dinner. “You people. Both of you,” he added, and shot a glare at Clark.
“Anyway,” Barry looked up at Clark and smiled kindly. “I know you don’t really remember much about me or the League, but I always wished we could have played a one-on-one game together; ‘Team' Flash vs ‘Team' Superman or something like that.” His smile faded. “I often thought about asking you, but there was just never any time.”
Clark stared down at the ice in his otherwise-empty glass, one finger tapping along the side of it as he thought. “What about now?” He wondered.
“Huh?” Barry blinked.
“We’ve got nowhere else to be right now,” Clark explained, “and I have an old football upstairs…”
“Clark, it’s night,” Lois explained.
The corners of his mouth twitched. “Not in Australia.”
At once, Barry was on his feet. “I will absolutely race you there!”
“You’re on!” Clark said, likewise rising from the table.
“Please be—" Lois began, but her words were lost in a slammed door and rushing wind as he strove to overtake the speedster. Recovering old memories would be nice, but making new ones was sure to be much more fun!
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