Chapter Text
“Mom, I told you I don’t want pizza.”
Iris’s voice sounded almost… defeated. It made things worse. It made it all hurt even more.
“Not your mom,” Barry told her through her closed bedroom door.
It had been a while since he had last been there. They were probably 12. All the other times he had been to the Wests since then, he had never gone upstairs again.
They used to spend hours in Iris’s bedroom. Lying on her fluffy rug, playing feet war and board games. Clue was Iris’s favourite, and the summer when they were 11 and it rained everyday in the afternoon for two months straight, they spent all of their evenings playing Clue and listening to terrible songs. Every time it rained on summers’ afternoons, Barry was always reminded of that. If he concentrated enough, he could smell those days. Damped grass and cookies Iris had just learned to bake.
Seeing her bedroom door made him miss her, miss them, miss who he was with her, even more than he had been.
“Barry, go away,” she said.
The slices of pizza he brought over to her looked sad. It wasn’t like he was feeling much like eating them, so he couldn't exactly blame her if she didn’t want them either.
“I’m sorry, Iris,” he said, because he was.
He was sorry about how out of hand everything had gotten. About how unfair it was that the entire school was suddenly talking about her, all they seemed able to talk about was she. Calling her all those names that made Barry sick just to think about.
It also hadn’t escaped him how no one seemed to think those things of him. People had asked him all kinds of invasive questions, questions Barry had avoided answering, questions that made him deeply uncomfortable, but it was like all of a sudden Barry was cool, without having to do anything, and it had cost all the respect they once had for Iris, like a trade. But Barry had no interest for this trade, he wanted things back the way they were before anyone knew about it.
“Sorry because you opened your damn mouth? Twice?” she asked him, and his suspicions that his mom had told Francine everything were confirmed at once; “Sorry because now the whole school is calling me a whore?”
“Iris, please, let me in?” he begged.
“No! I still don’t wanna see you.”
“All right,” he said, he figured that was her prerogative anyway.
“Look,” he tried again, sitting against her door, placing the plate of pizza by his side; “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry because it’s not fair to you how this whole thing blew up. You don’t deserve it, any of it —”
“No one deserves it, Barry,” she interrupted him; “not even if it were true.”
“I know. I know.”
They grew quiet for a while and Barry tried to think of what to say, tried to figure out if she wanted to know how this whole thing started, until Iris asked;
“Are you gonna tell me who did you tell after all? I think I do deserve to know that.”
“Julie Brown,” Barry told her.
Julie had come up to Barry after the lunch-happening, she had tears in her eyes and kept going this is all my fault, this is all my fault, until Barry managed to calm her down and then she told him how she noticed how Iris and him seemed to be together, by piecing the conversations Barry and Cisco always had about Iris with the fact that she saw Barry putting notes in Iris’s locker.
“She came to talk to me yesterday, after lunch,” Barry said; “she said she’s sorry.”
“You told her?” Iris asked, incredulously.
“No, it wasn’t like that. She overheard Cisco and I —”
“So you told Cisco?”
“I didn’t,” Barry said. He was doing such a poor job in explaining it. If only he could see her.
“Please, open the door?” he asked again.
“No,” Iris responded simply.
“Ok, look, she just — Cisco likes to grill me about you,” he told her, because she didn’t know, and sometimes it blew his mind how there were things about his life Iris didn’t know, it felt like she knew everything.
“I didn’t tell him about us,” he continued; “I wouldn’t, but Julie overheard Cisco going on about how I had to do something, take action, and she said she saw how I put notes in your locker every day and she told Tony because apparently she likes him —”
“What does that mean?” Iris interrupted him.
“Yeah, I know,” Barry agreed, happy they could talk again; “I was surprised too, I mean, who knew someone could like Tony Woodward?”
“No, what does that mean, Cisco likes to grill you about me?” she asked.
“Well, yeah, because he knows I’m in love with you.”
Barry only noticed what exactly he had said when Iris opened the door and his back was suddenly left without support.
He got up gracelessly, fighting his own awkwardness, almost stepping on the plate of pizza, to see Iris, eyes big on him, questioning;
“You’re in love with me?”
“Shit! I wasn’t supposed to tell you like this,” he said, because, great move, Barry! So romantic! So the way everyone wants to hear those words, through a closed door.
“You’re in love with me?” Iris asked again.
“Yeah, Iris,” and now he might as well just tell her; “I loved you since we were kids. Since always. I realised it when I was 12 but I — I think I always did.”
He watched as Iris’s eyes filled with tears, and he desperately tried to figure out what that meant.
“Then why did you — why did you do that?” she asked, her pretty face in a confused expression; “why did you stop talking to me?”
“I was scared,” Barry said, and he knew it really didn’t justify, but it was the truth anyway.
“Scared of me?”
“No, I — of people noticing.”
“Emma?” Iris asked, confirming that she also noticed that, he wasn’t imagining it all along like he suspected, doubting himself, sometimes.
“And my mom and your mom too,” Barry said, because; “I heard them talking one day. I was ashamed, I don’t know, embarrassed that it was so obvious. Scared that you would notice too, that you wouldn’t want me, that you wouldn’t want to be my friend anymore.”
Iris shook her head like he was telling her the most senseless thing, and he long since knew that it had been very stupid, but he had spent the last four years trying to find a way to fix what his 12 year old self had done and coming up empty every time.
“You hurt me,” Iris told him, and the confirmation of it hit him like a punch, leaving him breathless in the most unpleasant way.
“I think I hurt myself too,” he said, and he knew it didn’t make anything better, and it was his own damn fault, but it was true, and maybe a little comforting to know she wasn’t hurting alone after all.
“You were my best friend, Barry. And then one day you wouldn’t sit with me at lunch.”
Barry reached for her hands, taking them in his, interlacing their fingers, and Iris allowed it, so he told her;
“You were my best friend too,” and then he thought about the last weeks, when they spent every afternoon together, and how easy everything was when he was with her, so he added; “you still are, if you would like that.”
Iris looked down at their hands and then up into his eyes, from under her eyelashes, and asked;
“Does that mean you wanna sit with me at lunch?” and there was playfulness in the question, and Barry was washed with a relief at that.
“Yes, I wanna sit with you always. Anytime you’ll have me.”
“Are you sure? I mean, haven’t you heard? I’m damaged goods.”
And even though he knew she was joking, it still made his heart ache at all the mess made of it, and all the unfairness, and at how he couldn’t help but feel that was somehow his fault.
“And ironically I’m not,” he said.
“Why would you be? I was the one sucking your dick.”
Which reminded him of how he still didn’t understand why exactly she would say that, why add fuel to it.
“Why did you say that to Tony?” Barry finally asked.
“Because I was damned either way,” Iris said, raising her shoulders at him; “if I denied it, people would still think I did it.”
“Well, that was hot,” he said, because out of all the stuff coursing through his brain at that moment, part of it was definitely how hot she looked and sounded.
“Was it?” she asked him with a smile and Barry brushed her hair behind her ears and confirmed, placing a little kiss on her bottom lip;
“Yeah.”
“And you won’t hurt me anymore?” Iris asked, pulling away.
“I promise.”
“Hey, babe, how has been your day so far?” Iris asked Barry as he placed his tray next to hers, sitting by her side on the bench, on her table, at lunch. For the first time. Well, first time since they were kids anyway.
She meant the babe and the question as a whole as an ironic one, but it may have sounded less ironic than intended. Or at least that was what Linda’s expression seemed to be telling her.
Barry apparently understood it though; he answered her on the same tone she had questioned him;
“Great! Haven’t you heard? I’m the school’s hero because I got my dick sucked. Yours?”
“Great!” she said, stealing one of his fries; “I’m the school’s whore because I sucked your dick.”
Barry wrapped his arms around her, bringing Iris closer to him, and he placed a little kiss on her temple and murmured in her ear;
“How are you really?”
She looked up at him from under her eyelashes and he had his eyes on her, the same earnest expression they would assume sometimes, kissing times mostly, impressed on them now, green and bright. Iris had noticed how the expression usually seemed somehow mismatched to what they were doing, but she liked his eyes like that anyway. She liked how soft they would turn when he was looking at her. Like he was looking at something precious and delicate.
“I’m fine,” she assured him.
“Yeah?”
“It will blow over,” she said. “Eventually. I hope.”
Barry was watching her carefully and Iris couldn’t help but smile at it, which in turn, got a smile out of him, a bashful one, and he turned pink before burying his nose in the crook of her neck.
It was weird going back to touching Barry. When they weren’t alone that was. They used to hold hands and touch each other all the time when they were kids, but it somehow didn’t feel much like a statement. Not even the one time they were ten and decided on playing a game that meant walking around the whole day with their arms linked. It didn’t last much anyway that day, just until one of them — her, if Iris remembered correctly — had to pee.
Now she felt watched. And not just by Linda, who seemed to analyse every single glance to the last detail (Iris knew there was a talk coming there), but by everyone. By the whole school.
“You changed tables,” Cisco pointed out, sliding by Linda’s side, interrupting Iris’s thought process before she could actually decide if the scandal was worth a kiss.
“Yeah,” Barry said, like it was nothing.
“Dude, tell me stuff like that beforehand, please! I don’t want to have lunch with Nick and those guys,” Cisco said, but he was already digging into his food, not really looking much bothered by the change.
“Sorry,” Barry said, but it was one of his you-wanna-hear-it-so-I’ll-tell-you sorries, Iris could tell. And apparently so could Cisco; he rolled his eyes at Barry and then turned to face Linda, saying;
“I’m Cisco.”
“Linda.”
“Iris,” Iris said because officially she hadn’t met Cisco as of yet.
“Barry,” Barry said, mimicking her little wave, which she was already regretting, so she punched him in the shoulder for good measure, to let him know she did not appreciate the public teasing, and Barry moved disproportionately to it, grabbing her offending hand and telling her; “ow! That hurt.”
And even with all the gossip and the people watching them like they were in a zoo, Iris could tell he was happy; Barry got silly whenever he was happy. And then, without really thinking through what she was about to do, she pulled Barry to her and placed a kiss on his bottom lip.
Barry instantly opened his mouth to it, darting the tip of his tongue into her mouth and Iris figured that despite having not discussed just how exactly they were publicly behaving, he didn’t mind much being watched. She allowed her eyes to close into it and figured she didn’t mind much being watched either.
“Oh no, you guys can’t PDA at lunch!” Cisco interrupted; “I’m eating here,” he pointed out as if they were ruining his appetite.
“Sorry,” Iris said, placing another little kiss, now on the corner of Barry’s mouth; “but I got no reputation left to uphold.”
“Oh, yeah,” Barry agreed, sliding his fingers down her arms; “I hadn’t thought about it like that.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty freeing,” Iris pointed out.
But they didn’t kiss again, not until Iris pulled Barry into a girls’ bathroom on their way to biology, and after a surprised yelp, Barry caught up pretty fast, pressing her between himself and the door, giving her a wet kiss and Iris had to pull him back by the hair so she could catch her breath.
There was this weird desperation in kissing and Iris never expected that, it was like doing what she wanted didn’t completely satisfy her, but made her want more instead.
After Barry brought her pizza on Saturday night, they ended up spending a good while kissing, to make up for the lack of it the day before, and then they had fallen asleep on her bed. Much to Iris’s surprise, her mom had somehow allowed that, she hadn’t woken them up after undoubtedly seeing it, she had actually close Iris’s bedroom door, but on Sunday morning had been all ready, waiting for them with pancakes and a speech ready to go. About how before anything could happen, Iris would have to go to the doctor and they would have to talk about it, and not take rash decisions, and listening to it with Barry by her side felt somehow extra humiliating, but nothing compared to listening to Nora’s speech on the same topic about an hour later.
Besides that, they had spent the rest of the day surrounded by their families and it wasn’t the same as being surrounded by people at school that thought she was already sucking Barry anyway. Iris couldn’t bring herself to touch him in front of her parents and his parents, and she noticed Barry refrained from it as well, so she missed him. He missed her too, he was making that plenty clear now.
“So…” Iris started, but Barry’s lips muffled what she was about to tell him.
“So?” he asked, pulling away.
“My mom texted me that she scheduled an appointment for me on Friday.”
“An appointment?” he asked, and Iris could tell he wasn’t concentrating. Apparently there was something very interesting about her collarbones today.
“A doctor’s appointment,” she said. That got him to stop.
“Oh, right. Right,” he mumbled, turning pink all over again. And after a deep breath, he asked her; “do you want me to come with you?”
“No, I really don’t,” she said. He had the most absurd thoughts sometimes. “I’m just saying, I think we should probably wait till then anyway and maybe I should go on the pill or something…” she added, pondering about it herself as well.
Barry’s eyes turned big on her and he took a step back, asking;
“Oh, oh! You — does that mean — you wanna, have sex?”
And he uttered the words slowly, like he was surprised about it, like they hadn’t talk to her mom and his mom about it. Like they had never taken each other’s clothes off.
“Yeah,” Iris answered him, and because now she considered she might have been reading him wrong all along and she asked; “don’t you?”
His hands jumped to the nape of his neck and he said it like it was taking a huge effort to get the words out;
“Yeah, I do, I mean, if you want that too — yeah, and we can wait Friday — we should wait, and like, condoms, I should buy condoms as well — I mean besides the pill — if you think you should take it that is.”
Iris smiled as she pulled him to her again, giving him another kiss because sometimes he could be so cute that he deserved it, and then she said;
“All right, anything else to add?”
He seemed to ponder on it for a few seconds and then, after a kiss, with his lips traveling down her neck, he told her;
“I think I’m gonna enjoy this kissing at school thing.”
“I already am,” Iris said. There wasn’t much need to add anything to that.