Once upon a time, a writer decided it would be a great idea to get a little drunk and write a story where Team Flash does the same.

That writer may or may not have been me, and that may or may not be the story of how this fic came about.

Believe me, editing the next morning was the best part.

(Takes place theoretically during season two, but no spoilers. Vague reference to a Justice League Unlimited episode.)

Enjoy!

For having a body that didn't allow him to get drunk, Barry sure found himself in bars a lot. The heat, the darkness, the low sour smell of wheat and sick was not unfamiliar, but also not unwelcome. He sat down gratefully at a table with Caitlin and Cisco, shrugging back sore shoulders as Caitlin scurried to the bar.

"Long day," he said.

Cisco nodded. "I thought we could all use a break."

Barry looked out at the bobbing heads of the other people at the bar. The place was practically empty—that's what they got for being too tired to go out any later than 8:00, Barry mused.

"Whatever happened to Netflix and chill?" Barry asked, only half-joking.

"I do not think that word means what you think it means," Cisco said, frowning.

"I'm pretty sure that movie is on Netflix."

"Come on, man," Cisco whined. "We're in our twenties. We've got to live a little."

"You know me," Barry said. "Even Caitlin's magic formula for getting me buzzed only works for, what, ten seconds? Tops?"

"Ye of little faith." Caitlin reappeared at the table, balancing three beers. She deposited them on the table and one sloshed down the glass to the table. "I've made some adjustments to the formula."

Barry groaned. "Please tell me it's not, like 1000 proof. I've had enough pain for one day."

"No, no," Caitlin said. "I just enhanced the existing formula. I was thinking about it all wrong; instead of adding more alcohol, what I really needed to focus on was slowing down your metabolism itself." She paused. "Still, you might want to mix it with something—I'm not sure the taste has much improved."

"Don't you have hobbies?" Cisco teased.

"Hey, don't knock it," Caitlin says. "It's not like I went to school to learn how to manufacture perfect alcohol."

"A lot of people do," Barry said.

Caitlin cracked a smile. "Just try it, okay? I feel bad always making you the responsible one at bars."

"Thank God it's not karaoke night," Barry said. Caitlin flushed bright red and shot him a look that read both I will kill you, Barry Allen and Too bad it isn't. Cisco choked on his own drink, and Caitlin took Barry's discreetly under the table.

"Way to not be shady, Cait," Cisco said when he had recovered.

"Shut up," she said, and she lifted the glass up to the table again. A small bottle, still half-full with a clear liquid, disappeared back into her purse. "Try it."

Barry accepted the glass of beer suspiciously. At Caitlin's enthusiastic nodding, he cautiously tried a sip.

As soon as he'd swallowed, he screwed up his face.

"Jeez, you weren't kidding about the taste. Mixing it with beer probably wasn't the smartest option."

"But do you feel anything?" Caitlin asked. Barry couldn't help but smile. Her face was lit up like a kid's, giddy with the prospect of a scientific breakthrough. He considered.

"Yeah," he said at last. It was just a slight tingle, an almost imperceptible weightlessness in the back of his brain, but it was there. He waited a few more seconds, waiting for the feeling to disappear, but it remained. "Yeah, I feel it. And it's not going away this time."

Cisco and Caitlin high-fived. "We can get Barry drunk!" Cisco said a bit too loudly, attracting dozens of stares from nearby tables. Barry ducked his head, but, like overenthusiastic schoolchildren, Caitlin and Cisco kept celebrating.

An hour and several drinks later, they had acclimatized to the new noise level of the bar, Caitlin's cheeks a shade pinker and Cisco in a near-constant grin. Caitlin stopped periodically to add a few more drops of her new serum to Barry's drink. The lightness had overtaken his whole body, and laughter came easily.

"I mean, what was that about?" Barry said. "What would compel you to believe that mirrors are your best weapon?"

"Maybe he's so ugly he figured they would have the same debilitating effect on you," Cisco offered, and Barry howled.

"Wait, and describe his trap again," Caitlin urged.

Barry wiped a tear out of the corner of his eye. "I'm not even exaggerating this. It was literally a disco ball. A disco ball that shot lasers."

Caitlin squeezed her eyes shut as she laughed.

"There was 80s music playing, too," Barry added.

"A disco ball," Caitlin repeated. "How lame is that?"

"Is it?" Cisco asked, ducking behind his drink.

Someone behind Barry cleared their throat. He turned and was confronted by a stern-looking young woman with bright red lipstick.

"Excuse me," she said. "Sorry to interrupt, but I thought you should know that your friend just slipped something into your drink."

"Oh," said Barry, completely at a loss. He looked at his beer glass, nearly empty, and felt a swell of hilarity begin in his stomach. He cleared his throat. "Thanks."

"No problem," said the woman. She shot Caitlin a nasty glance before striding away.

Barry's shoulders shook, and Caitlin slapped his arm across the table. "Hey, it's not funny."

"No," Barry said, steadying himself. "Sorry."

"I've been thinking about this guy," Cisco continued, as if nothing had happened. "Lame or not, I think he deserves a nickname for all of that trouble he went through." He snapped his fingers. "Disco Master."

Barry snorted. "As awesome as that makes him sound, I'm not sure disco is his signature. Based on that gun of his, I'd say his main preoccupation is with mirrors."

"Well, we'll work on it," Cisco said pointedly.

"I'm not sure there's a need," Caitlin said. "You don't think he's going to be a problem in the future, do you?"

"He wasn't a problem today," Barry scoffed.

"Oh, please," Caitlin said. "Admit it, you wouldn't have made it out if we hadn't cut the power in that place."

"Hey, maybe you helped with the laser disco ball," he said, "but I dealt with that mirror gun all on my own."

"You were getting your ass kicked," Cisco said knowingly.

Barry took another sip of his drink. "To be fair, that's not really an isolated experience."

"Admit it, you need us," Cisco said, punching him in the arm. Barry winced.

"Yeah, you're really helping the healing process of this gash made by a laser disco ball." He shook out the injured arm, but Cisco, to the side, had begun snickering again.

"Disco Master..."

"Wait, Barry," Caitlin said, frowning. "You have something in your hair."

Before he could move away, she had reached forward.

"Is this wood?" she asked, plucking out the fragment from his hair.

"Certainly looks like it," Barry said, glancing at Cisco and hurriedly downing the last of his beer. "You want anything else? I'm going to go—"

"Funny, I wouldn't have thought there'd be charred wood at a discotheque," Caitlin said. She placed the small blackened chunk in the center of the table and raised her eyebrow. "Care to explain?"

"Not particularly," Barry said. "Really, if you want anything else—"

"Sit. Down." He sat. "Have you been going off on an extra missions?"

Barry considered. Cisco was buried in his beer, eyes cast down at the amber liquid, looking as though he too wanted to finish it as soon as possible.

Barry would never be very good in an interrogation.

"Cisco made me!" he burst.

Cisco spluttered. "Whoah, man! Watch where you point that finger!"

"Is this why you were so late back to the lab?" Caitlin said, aghast. "Because you made a stop in a burning building fist?"

"What's the harm?" Barry said as Caitlin tugged at his hair again, retrieving a dusting of ash in return. "What am I supposed to do when Cisco tells me there's an apartment complex on fire ten blocks away?"

Cisco held up a hand to stop him, but it was too late.

"You two have a private channel?" Caitlin sputtered.

"Nothing so dramatic," Cisco interjected. "Just texting. Occasionally."

This, unsurprisingly, did not sway her, and her jaw dropped dramatically. "What about our group chat?"

"We figured," Barry said, looking nervously at Cisco, "maybe rightfully so, that you wouldn't want to know about all of the burning buildings."

"This happens often?"

"It's a hobby," Cisco quipped.

Caitlin buried her face in her hands. "You're right," she said. "I don't want to know. You boys are going to be the death of me. I need another drink."

She made a move to rise, but in that instant a commotion at the bar escalated. Familiar shouts, noises of outrage, the thud of thick glass hitting wood. When Barry turned to look, it was just in time to see a man in a black leather jacket get shoved backward—and then an invisible explosion that sent chairs and tables flying in all directions.

Barry reacted instantly, grabbing Caitlin and Cisco by their jackets and pulling them bodily to the ground. The crash of heavy oak hitting brick walls mingled with the terrified screams of the other drinkers.

"Telekinesis," Caitlin said, surprisingly fast. How had she processed that information so quickly? "It's got to be. He can move objects with his mind."

"That's literally the definition of telekinesis," Cisco said shortly, covering his head.

"What do we do?" Barry yelled.

"Can you do anything?" Cisco said, motioning up and down Barry's body.

Barry stared at his hand, willing it to vibrate. It didn't.

"I've got nothing," he said. "Well, nothing but a very woozy sense of direction."

"Why did you get him drunk?" Cisco yelled at Caitlin.

"Why would I assume there would be an angry metahuman in our bar?"

"Why wouldn't you?"

"Congratulations on the success of your power-dampening drink," Barry said. "No super-speed. What are our other options?"

"You're usually our option," Cisco said.

Another crash. Barry ducked instinctively, and more screams sounded across the room.

"We have to stop him," Barry reiterated, blinking rapidly to try and clear his head. Wasn't adrenaline supposed to sober up a person? "Or else I'm fairly certain we're all going to die here in this bar."

"Are you aware of what you're saying right now?" Cisco said. "You're wavering pretty heavily between the 'pretty heroic' and 'I'm resigned to my fate.'"

"I have an idea," Caitlin said. "Barry, we need a distraction."

"I can be a distraction," he said, beginning to rise. Caitlin put a hand on his arm.

"Be careful. You're not exactly in the right state to be making these kind of decisions."

"I'm never in a state to be making these kind of decisions." Barry wasn't sure what came over him, but he winked. God. There was a reason he never used to drink.

He rose without another word, vaulting over the table with all of the confidence The Flash was supposed to have. He didn't have that confidence, necessarily, but whatever Caitlin had given him made him feel full of it.

"Hey, metalhead!" he shouted, moving forward a few paces to distance himself from Cisco and Caitlin. No need to catch them in the crossfire. "Think you're so cool, coming in here and showing off for the people without powers? What do you think you're doing?"

The man turned on him. Barry wasn't sure why he'd been compelled to call him metalhead—the man was devoid of any significant metahuman features and was simply dressed in a leather jacket and torn black sneakers, looking just as normal as anyone else in the bar. There wasn't any way to tell metahumans apart from normal people, Barry reasoned. Take him, standing there in his collared shirt and sweater and red Converse. He blended in as well as anybody, and now, standing before a superpowered citizen without the full use of his own powers, Barry knew quite poignantly the difference between a visible hero and an invisible one.

"You want a fight, or what?" Barry said. "A bar fight without your powers not enough?"

The effect was instantaneous. The metahuman made eye contact with Barry, lifted a hand, and sent him flying backward.

The sensation was different than normal. Everything usually happened in slow-motion, like scenes in action movies. This time, Barry had barely considered the fact that he was in the air before he was colliding with a table, his head cracking against the polished, sticky wood. He blinked, vision swirling.

What had happened, exactly? It was unclear if it was the likely concussion or Caitlin's formula which produced the dizzying effect. After a few moments of disorientation, Barry crawled up from the floor. The tiles of the bar floor were cool against his arms.

Though he wasn't entirely sure what more he could do against a metahuman who could literally move things by looking at them, Barry picked himself up to a standing position. The room lurched sideways, but he steadied himself. A spot behind his left eye throbbed rhythmically, keeping time to his accelerated heartbeat.

"Is that the best you've got?"

Barry could practically hear Cisco's lament: his comebacks were too cliché, his approach too direct. However, in that moment, Barry was fixated on the actual Cisco, creeping around the bar with Caitlin, quiet behind the obviously-enraged metahuman. Distraction. That's what he would be.

Barry charged again, favoring the right a bit too much. Straight lines were impossible, and, as he learned, unnecessary. Before he'd made it even five feet, the metahuman reached out once more. Instead of flying backward, Barry found himself suspended, his feet leaving the floor and his throat crushed inward.

Force choke, he heard Cisco say in his mind. That's so awesome.

Not awesome, his conscious mind responded. The definition of not awesome.

He struggled for air, clutching against an invisible force crushing his windpipe, his legs kicking at nothing. He writhed, spasming in midair as he watched two figures scurry behind the bar counter.

They were going to be too late. His vision was blackening.

Then they leapt, and he crashed.

The second he dropped to the floor, gasping in breath, he looked up to see Caitlin and Cisco physically wrestling the metahuman to the ground. Barry was reminded of old shows where men would wrestle crocodiles into the mud, arms wrapped around the deadly jaws. Caitlin had one arm securely around the metahuman's neck, while Cisco clawed desperately at his middle.

With one shake, Cisco went flying, but Caitlin remained, holding on to the metahuman for dear life. She stayed there as he bucked, rammed backward into the bar counter in attempt to rid himself of her. She stayed, her hands white against the metahuman's leather jacket.

"Caitlin!"

Barry stumbled forward, but he had no breath, no stability, so he fell. In his line of sight, Cisco collected himself and returned to the fight, jumping over the bar counter and leaping straight into the metahuman. The metahuman collapsed sideways with the momentum, topping to the floor with Cisco and Caitlin still attached. With a flash of silver, Caitlin produced a small object and rammed it into the metahuman's neck. He flexed, and Caitlin and Cisco went flying outward.

For a moment, Barry and the metahuman simply stared at each other, Barry struggling to get to his knees and the other man stock-still in front of the bar counter. What a stupid way to die, Barry thought. Killed because you got too drunk to use your own superpower. It might have been funny if it wasn't so damn pathetic.

Then, without any warning, the meta collapsed. He crumpled against the counter, landing in a heap on the floor with head slumped forward, eyes glazed. Five whisky glasses, which had been suspended in the air for some time as potential projectiles, plummeted to earth and shattered.

As the other occupants of the bar tittered and bolted for the exits, Caitlin and Cisco crept out from behind the bar counter, Cisco bracing his wrist and Caitlin massaging her back and sporting a bloody lip. Barry collapsed back into a sitting position on the floor, resigned to the fact that he was incapable of any real balance.

"You guys okay?" he asked hoarsely.

"Feeling less awesome than I would have expected from such a badass feat," Cisco said, wincing. He extended his good hand down to grasp one of Barry's arms, and Caitlin grabbed the other. Together, they heaved him to his feet.

"I feel like I'm a tilt-a-whirl," he said. Between the crushed windpipe and slurred words, it was amazing Caitlin and Cisco could understand him at all.

"Probably the concussion," Caitlin said.

"Or the fact that you're still drunk," Cisco said with a pat on the back. "Dude, how great a story is this?"

They all looked around. Around the bar, the civilians who hadn't fled were groaning on the floor, rubbing their heads or other body parts—though, thankfully, it didn't appear as if anyone was severely hurt. Still, the bar itself was in disarray, walls battered, dusty picture frames now shattered on the floor, table and chair legs separated from the bodies they'd come from. Casualties of war.

"Yeah, what a great time," Barry deadpanned. He nodded at the meta. "What about him? What did you do?"

Caitlin opened her fist, displaying a small, empty syringe. "Cisco's fast thinking," she said, "plus my new formula. We still had some of your serum left."

Barry looked back and forth between them. "You injected him with it?"

Cisco shrugged. "Just a little bit of it."

Barry raised his eyebrows. "And that was enough?"

"Barry," Caitlin said with a simpering smile, "along with the power-dampening effects, there's enough alcohol in a few drops of that stuff to knock out an MMA fighter."

Barry winced sympathetically, looking the unresponsive meta up and down. "That's gonna be one hell of a hangover."

"Yeah, he won't be the only one," Cisco said, grimacing. "I mean, really—we can't even go into a bar to have some fun without finding trouble."

"Finding trouble?" Barry said. "I think trouble hunts us down and pounds down our doors."

Outside, police sirens grew louder, and the blue flashing lights appeared at the far end of the street. The three of them looked around once more at the destruction of the bar, each nursing their hurts, then looked back at each other.

"Netflix and chill?"

"You…what?"

"Got Barry drunk," Caitlin explained again. "It…um…worked better than expected."

Joe's jaw hung open as he tried to formulate some kind of response. When he couldn't, Caitlin stepped in again.

"You know, we obviously weren't expecting a meta attack, or we might have been a bit more…prudent."

"I thought he couldn't get drunk," Joe said.

"Caitlin worked on something a little special," Cisco said, striding back into the cortex with a mug of coffee. "Debilitating effect on the super-speed, but an effective way to get Barry to recite the entire script of Monty Python and the Holy Grail."

Joe opened his mouth, registered this, paused, waved it off. "Hey, Cisco. Thanks for texting me. I got there as quickly as I could, helped get our meta to Iron Heights. Sorry it took me so long to get back here—I've been dealing with the situation all night. Surprising how much extra processing and paperwork is needed for someone with a few extra abilities."

"No worries," Caitlin said. "We weren't up for much after that anyway."

"Wait," Joe said, glancing around at both of them, and at Barry, lying with his arm over his face in one of the examination beds. "Did you all sleep here last night?"

"Crashed here, is a more appropriate word," Cisco said bitterly. "These two were aggressively asleep before we'd even made it halfway through A New Hope."

"We needed to come back anyway," Caitlin explained. "Just for a few medical supplies."

"Medical supplies?" Joe said. "Are you all okay?"

"Sprained wrist," Caitlin said, motioning to Cisco, "a few nasty bruises, bumped heads…nothing too bad."

In his corner, Barry groaned. Joe gave Caitlin an alarmed look. "You said he hit his head pretty hard. He okay?"

"I'm dying," Barry moaned.

Caitlin smiled thinly at Joe, then turned to Barry. "It's called a hangover, Barry," she shouted across the room.

Music suddenly blared from one of the computers. Cisco leaned back in his chair with his coffee and blinked intently at the Star Wars crawl. Barry rolled over, his cursing muffled by the oversized sweatshirt he'd thrown on over his bar clothes. On one of the other monitors, a news feed scrolled silently like it always did, and Caitlin surreptitiously shut it off.

Joe, bewildered, stood there.

Gathering her disheveled hair into a ponytail, Caitlin again flashed him a smirk. "I'll get him some water."

Thanks for reading! It's doubtful that you had as much fun with this as I did, but I hope you enjoyed it all the same. Please leave a comment to let me know your thoughts. Or your greatest bar story. Either one works.

Please drink responsibly.

Cheers,

Penn