Dealing With a Lot

[run_barry]

The day starts out awesome, with a fire.

Not that fires are awesome, fires are awful. The awesome part comes when Barry and Cisco take it upon themselves to tackle the fire. With Cisco on the headset, Barry speeds through the streets of Central City in his red costume with the new, very cool, stylized lightning bolt emblem Cisco added after their epic encounter with Clyde Mardon and his tornado.

The world is in slow motion as Barry blurs past, zig zagging through gridlock and whipping around obstacles without losing a step. It's effortless, and that leads to a small hiccup.

"Barry? Barry!" Cisco calls out into Barry's ear and Barry comes to a halt.

"What? Did I miss it?" he asks, touching the earpiece inside his cowl.

"You overshot by about six blocks," Cisco informs him with a laugh.

Well that's embarrassing. Shaking his head at himself Barry turns around and backtracks.

The rest of the rescue goes a lot smoother once Barry gets over the 'everything's on fire!' aspect of it. He pulls three people out of the apartment building blaze; one of them is a little girl that he's happy to see reunited with her mom as he speeds away.

"Everybody's out, what else you got for me, Cisco?" Barry asks, leaning cool and casual in an alleyway a few blocks away from the fire. This superhero thing is cake.

Instead of Cisco a very annoyed female voice comes on, "Barry? It's Caitlin."

And… there goes all the wind out of his sail. Floundering for a moment Barry puts on a grin even though she can't see it and tries to act completely casual.

"Heyyy, Caitlin. How's your day?"

She's having none of it and orders Barry back to S.T.A.R. Labs. When Barry arrives she gives both him and Cisco a tongue lashing about reckless behavior. Barry tries to argue his side of it and even tries to gain support from Dr. Wells, who disappoints by being reasonable instead.

"Know your limits," Wells cautions Barry, which feels a lot like being told 'you should know better.'

The rest of the day is a slow slide into the lousy.

*****

Joe calls, he's on scene of a robbery homicide and guess who's late?

"I'll be right there," Barry promises, speeding off to his day job so fast he forgets to take his street clothes.

He ducks into a clothing store across the street from the crime scene, and there goes a cash drop on a wardrobe he didn't really have the money for.

After that he manages to backhandedly accuse his boss of robbing a gun shop, something Joe calls him out on later at the precinct.

"Your ability to multitask is truly remarkable," Joe says while Barry stands before him, feeling like a kid being dressed down by a parent. "The way you can embarrass me, the captain, and yourself all at the same time."

"Joe, I'm sorry."

"I'm starting to think 'Joe I'm Sorry' is my actual name considering how often you say it to me," Joe replies, continuing with the chastising.

The fact that Barry is going through a lot doesn't seem to matter until the point when Joe turns suspicion on Barry.

"You haven't said anything to Iris about all this, have you?"

"No, I made you a promise, I keep my promises," Barry replies, hurt because out of everything, not telling Iris has got to be the hardest part.

"Keep on lying like that you're liable to get struck by lightning again," Joe scoffs, dismissing Barry and sending him upstairs to his lab just like he used to send him to his room.

Barry takes it about as well as he did then, stewing in irritation as he tops the stairs and pulls open the sliding door leading to his lab.

When he sees Milliways on the other side he pauses, glancing around and then back over his shoulder. Thinking about the work he has to get done and about Joe, Barry steps on through into the bar and shuts the door behind himself.

[dialogue taken from episode 1.2]