Kicking a piece of scrap on the floor Alan growled at nothing, angry, and then sat down on a bench on the side of the road, for as long as the light above were willing to shield him. He hid his face on his hands with frustration, a knot on his throat rising like bile the more he tried to bite it down. The maze-like bizarro version of the town bleeding into his mind and into itself started to take its toll on him, each and every version that became more corrupted the more he traversed it, and the more he died on it, and he was simply too tired to go on.
"You look like you need a hug, buddy."
Alan tensed, taking a sharp breath before looking at the man, the apparition next to him. His ghostly silhouette was a mercy among all the monsters, but in that moment it also felt like a bad joke at his expense.
"I don't need a hug, Barry." He barked back, the image of Alice holding him through a pretty bad migraine flashing before his eyes.
Barry sneered, the sympathy on his voice straining a bit.
"Oh, right, I forgot you were a superhuman who didn't need all those little things like human contact." Alan grimaced.
"God, you're annoying." He told to the ghost without meaning it. Barry (the imaginary construct with the face of Barry) just laughed. It sounded wrong. It sounded almost cruel, almost like him.
"Best you can get, Al."
Alan looked at him, past him, and then looked at the floor again. He sighed, eventually, feeling his life draining in that exhalation, before he saw the colors change out of the corner of his eyes. Barry had sat down next to him on the bench, the faint Christmas lights weakly reflecting on his own muddled jacket.
“I’m just saying, I don’t understand why you’d even pretend you don’t want to, Al.” He tapped himself on the temple. "I'm right here with you, remember?"
Alan dug his fingernails on his skin, momentarily feeling more alone than he's ever been on his life, before focusing on his face. There was something wrong with Barry's eyes, the colors were off, but the crease on his forehead felt like him.
"Guess I can't stop you." He admitted, more to himself than anything, without acknowledging what he meant.
"Yeah, that’s right…” Barry's smile, however, fell a bit. “Wish I actually could, though…"
"Great. Back to square fucking one, then." He expected Barry to mock him, mock his anger and his emotional outbursts, not because the real Barry would, but because he could hardly cope with anything less. Instead, he heard him shift at his side, and suddenly he saw himself surrounded by bright red fabric and faint color lights. "What're you doing?"
"What's it look like I'm doing, genius?" He asked, with less bite than he expected.
Barry’s translucent arms enveloped him, wrapping awkwardly around his shoulders without quite touching him and blending into Alan’s solid frame if he did, and for a moment he couldn’t breath. Alan couldn’t feel any pressure from them, nor warmth.
If he thought about it hard enough, maybe he could remember how his hugs actually felt like. He knew he had a lifetime of material from the time they were kids onward, but the way he soothingly traced circles with his thumb across his arm reminded him of someone else, and Alan quickly shut his own thoughts down.
"Barry."
"Yeah?"
"…" He couldn't speak, gripping the fabric of his own jacket and then letting it go, again and again. His eyes hurt, but he refused to blink or do anything that wasn’t stare at his friend, his wrapped arms and head fitting nicely on the hollow of his own neck. It was the closest thing he could get to feeling like he was really there, the weight of his body against his. Barry looked at his face for a second, flashing a small, sad smile.
"Yeah, I wish it too."
