“I mistook you for my best friend and jumped on your back in public and now I’m embarrassed” au/ college au
Oliver was, once again, in one of his moods. One that said, “Leave me alone or I’ll bite your head off.” Or, “I really don’t want to have this talk right now and would really not have it ever even though I need to.”
So, once again, it was Barry’s job to talk to Oliver and see what the mood was about. And if he couldn’t achieve that, at least try to make the man smile and lighten him up a bit.
“Oliver!”
Barry spotted the blonde walking across Campus on his way to the Chemistry class that Oliver despised. The other man didn’t stop at Barry’s call though, just kept stalking through the crowd of students like he didn’t even hear him.
Well Oliver wasn’t going to be able to ignore him today.
Barry ran to catch up to the older man and at the last second to jump on Oliver’s back, wrapping his limbs tightly around him so he wouldn’t fall off if Oliver decided to just drop him.
He’s thankful for the hands that land on his thighs to hold him up anyway, “Look, Oliver I know you’re upset, and I know you won’t tell me about it but just hear me out, okay?”
Oliver’s tense beneath him, “Uh-”
“I know stuff’s going on with your family and that I can’t exactly help with that. But what I can help you with is your classes. Felicity and I don’t mind helping you study and work things out, it’s not a bother to us. You’re not a bother to us, Oliver.”
“I-”
Barry squeezes around Oliver’s shoulders, “One day you’re going to have to learn that you can’t do everything on your own, no matter how much you want to-”
Fingers dig into his thighs and Barry pauses, listens as the other man says “I think you got the wrong guy.”
That voice had a certain rumble under the words that Oliver’s voice didn’t.
Still Barry tries to look at the side of the man’s face, vainly asking, “You’re not Oliver?”
The man shakes his head, “No.”
“Oh my God,” Barry scrambles off of the stranger after the man, mercifully, lets go of his thighs.
The man faces him and he’s definitely not Oliver. Blonde hair, blue eyes and stubble are about all the man has in common with his best friend.
“I’m so sorry. I-I thought you were my friend Oliver from the back. You both have blonde hair and are kinda the same height and stalk- walk, I mean walk, the say way. And I thought that he was just ignoring me when you didn’t turn around when I called his name and-” Barry stops, biting his lip, “I’m so sorry.”
The man’s mouth and eyebrows have steadily risen up while Barry was talking, raising his hands up a pacifying gesture to calm the taller man down, “Don’t worry about it. No harm done.”
“Are you sure?”
The man’s smile just brightens, “I’m sure, I might be late to class now but that’s alright. From what I gather you’re just worried for your friend. I’m sure he would have appreciated what you said if he’d heard it.”
Barry blinks, finds himself smiling back at the man, “I don’t know, Oliver’s a tough nut to crack sometimes. Thank you, though. For saying that.”
“It’s no problem. Good friends are hard to find these days.” A hand, one that had just held Barry’s thigh in it five minutes ago, is extended to him, “I’m Eddie.”
Barry takes the man’s- Eddie’s- hand in his own, shaking it, “Barry.”
“Barry,” Eddie echoes, giving him a once over before nodding, “It fits you.”
Barry grins, feels his cheeks heat up under the man’s blue eyed gaze, “Thank you.”
Eddie squeezes his hand one more time, before letting go, “You’re welcome. See you later then?”
His hand’s unexpectedly tingly and warm in Eddie’s absence, “Later?”
Eddie chuckles and claps a hand on Barry’s shoulder, the same one that held his thigh and shook his hand, gives him one of the most dazzling smiles Barry’s ever seen, “Yes, later. Next time you’ll know who you’re jumping onto.”
