DCTV moodboards: Hartmon - Hartley joins Team Flash AU
Created for the @flarrowverse-shipyard Rarepair week 2019 Day 2.
The crisis is over. Finished by a neat 5 pm for once. He could actually go home and have an evening curled up with a good book or a new video game. It sounds nice.
He looks up to see Cisco hesitating to say something, which isn’t very Cisco-like. Briefly, he worries, but Cisco comes out with it soon after, nothing bad.
“What precisely would we be celebrating?”
“Success. My Hail Mary technological development -”
“Fine, our genius. Plus, there’s always celebrating the miracle of finishing early,” Cisco pauses again, growing more serious when he continues. “Or the not dying.”
That’s when Hartley realizes this is the first mission he’s been on since properly joining Team Flash where he hasn’t been injured in some way. He’s managed to not think about it for the most part but there have been quite a few near misses for him as he adjusts to working with the others. Too many. Contemplating that, he avoids looking at Cisco, trying to dismiss the notion rapidly in order to retain the cheer they’d had moments earlier.
“How do we celebrate?” he asks.
“Oh that one’s easy. Team tradition: karaoke.”
As Cisco goes to round up the rest of the team - presuming anyone else is free to come along - Hartley sits and waits in one of the desk-chairs in the Cortex. The room is empty except for him but he feels content there. He’s made amends and he’s helping people and… Somehow being here, this time, it feels so much more like he belongs than he ever considered himself to before the explosion happened.
It’s probably foolish but he gets to hoping Cisco and him could sing a duet tonight.
When Cisco returns alone, telling him of the apparent tragedy that the others will miss out on his talents, Hartley isn’t exactly heartbroken at it being just the two of them. They work well together. He enjoys it. He’d even hazard a guess Cisco does as well these days, though he wouldn’t bet on it being as much as he does. On that particular point, he wouldn’t mind being wrong. Only time will tell, he supposes. What they have now is good too though, and he intends to make the most of his second chance, in whatever form it takes.
