your basement can technically be a laundromat

So the universe is rebooted and Iris is now married to Eddie. Which is fine because she was married to Eddie pre-reboot too. Barry, however, was dating Hartley. Barry had an engagement ring he was planning to give Hartley if they survived crisis since, well, he didn't want to pull a Xander Harris and make Hartley think he was only proposing because he thought they were all gonna die.

But the universe reboots and... Hartley's just gone. No Hartley. No hidden ring. Barry lives somewhere else entirely. It's hell. And then in trying to find Hartley - because of course he does, immediately, hello? That's his boyfriend/love of his life, of course Barry's looking for him to fix things... only...

Barry learns about Roderick and how when his lightning combined with Hartley's sonic tech, it sent Roderick into an out of phase state that was incredibly painful and was 'solved' by putting him into stasis like sleeping beauty. Hartley is still in love with this guy and, understandably, loathes Barry over it.

And Barry's heartbroken, resolves to just... stay away from Hartley. Of course then the Godspeed problem happens and the only person who can help??? is Hartley.

Things play out similar to canon, but weirder because of course Barry is making it weirder. Hartley is like 'is the Flash a little homophobic or...' and Cisco is just like 'no he's bi but he lost his boyfriend recently just back the fuck off' like a good bestie. And naturally Hartley uses his super-eavesdropping powers and learns that he! is the boyfriend! the Flash just lost.

He is reeling from the revelation and still winds up saving Barry's life while trying to figure out what the actual fuck is he supposed to do about what he knows. Pretend he doesn't? Does he go back to his life with his newly woken up boyfriend that he's spent five years pining for and just... pretend not to know the Flash is in love with him?

Like, of course he's not ditching Roderick. He's spent five years waiting for Roderick and he'd have spent his whole life waiting for Roderick if he had to, but... he cannot pretend that he didn't hear that.

So he tells Roderick, figuring they'll just... steer clear of the Flash from now on, it won't be weird right???

Roderick - I mean we could avoid him for forever, it'd probably be pretty easy to do so. Or, and I am being serious, we could just... seduce him and have a polyamorous relationship with him?

Hartley - I've spent five years hating him over what happened to you.

Roderick - Yeah, but it was really all three of our faults and you don't hate you or me over it, right?

Hartley - ... I don't hate you over it.

Roderick - Okay so self loathing issues to work on helping you get over. Alrighty, good to know. So do we want another hot guy in this relationship or what?

And thus operation Seduce the Flash is go.

Wait, no on-screen reunion kiss?