Work Text:
“You started this!” Iris points out, exasperation finally boiling into real anger, “you were the one who told me you were in love with me, you were the one who ran around in a mask flirting with me – making me feel like – do you think I don’t remember the way you used to talk to me before I knew it was you?”
Barry at least has the grace to look sheepish, abruptly, glancing down.
“And then – and then Linda, and then Patty,” Iris holds up two fingers, accusingly, “but always where I could see it, always like you were waiting for me to – to – say something! Like you were trying to prove a point! And there’s some future alternative timeline where we were married – and now some whole other world where we’re also married and – and you have to tell me about that because – why? What good does it do either of us?”
“Oh, so you think I somehow manufactured Zoom so I could – what – go to another dimension just to discover some married version of us?” Barry demands, galvanised, “You think I wanted that complication on top of literally everything else right now?! You think it was fun for me over there?!”
“Don’t be ridiculous!”
“But you’re implying I created this!” Barry waves a hand frantically between them, “and all that stuff on Earth 2, and everything else, and I can’t help any of it, Iris! I can’t help that some maniac from the future went back in time, murdered my mother and stole the life we were meant to have together! I can’t help that on some alternative world some version of that life ended up happening anyway! I can’t help any of it and I don’t know why you’re angry!”
“That – there!” Iris jabs a hand at him, “the life we were ‘meant’ to have – as if you’re entitled to it! To us! To – to – me!”
“That’s not what I’m saying – ”
“Well that’s what it sounds like!”
“Well maybe you could try actually listening to me so we could communicate instead of – ”
“Oh that’s rich coming from the guy who spent a year lying to me about his fucking super powers!” Iris’s jaw locks as she rounds on him.
She never curses at him – she barely curses at all, neither of them do, Joe West was the sort of parent who never let that kind of talk under his roof so it still feels taboo with each other, especially – well. In this house.
The kitchen feels dark and leaden with horrible silence, all of a sudden.
“You think I want us to be some – manifest destiny?” Barry asks, chest aching with pent up anger and hurt at the look in her eyes, “you think I want us to be together because we have no choice? I don’t believe in destiny, Iris!”
“Yeah, neither do I!” Iris throws up her hands.
“Great!” Barry’s voice is louder than he wants to be, harsher than he intends, raw and hasty, “great, then we’re done here! No destiny, no nothing, no us! You can stay safe exactly the way you want to and I’ll just – ” he screws up his face like he tastes something bitter. “I’m gonna go.”
His voice has gotten loud enough to take up the whole kitchen and just for a second he sees Iris flinch back, away from him, but he’s too angry now to admit to the horrible hole that opens up in his stomach.
“Good,” she’s shaking, her voice low, tight like a wound up rubber band. “Go. Run. Go do something you’re good at.”
His shoulders stiffen, and he casts her a look she almost never, ever gets directed at her, and then he storms out – properly – slamming the front door so hard the whole house rattles.
And Iris isn’t sure why she’s crying but she is, and the sobs hurt coming up, hard as rocks in her throat, and her head pounds and her vision blurs and she cries because Barry is never angry with her, and they never argue, not like this – not raised voices and doors slamming and –
Manifest destiny. God.
She doesn’t want destiny. She just wants him. And realising that hurts even worse because he’s being so stupid –
And she’s crying over a boy and that’s awful, she’s so not that girl, god she needs to stop. She needs to stop right now – but she can’t, and the more she tries to stop, the harder she sobs.
And outside Barry is half a block away before he runs out of steam and has to stop, his legs shaking, wondering where the actual fuck he thinks he’s going when Iris is back there.
Crying. He’s left her crying. He yelled and made her cry and he stormed out like a jackass. Like someone who isn’t meant to be her best friend.
Jesus Christ.
He grabs a lamppost for a second, trying to sure himself up, adrift, suddenly – torn – the night quiet around him, his only company his own shaky inhalations. Because anyone with any pride would keep walking, because that’s what you do when you’re hurt and angry and the other person is saying hurt, angry things to you and… if he goes back it could escalate and that would also be terrible and –
But she’s Iris, and he’s Barry, and Barry always comes running when Iris is in pain. Even when he’s the source of it.
And Iris is still desperately trying to stop crying in the darkened, empty kitchen of her father’s house, when there’s a tap on the door.
She sits up – because if that’s Wally – or maybe dad’s forgotten his keys or – she needs to clean herself up, she’s gonna look awful –
She works the faucet with trembling fingers, splashing cold water on her face. The little tap-tap on the door comes again –
“Just – just a sec!” She can’t keep the shake out of her voice either, Jesus, she needs to calm down.
“Iris?” Barry’s voice. Not what she was expecting – Iris goes still, biting her lip. “You don’t have to let me in. I just wanted to check if you were okay.”
Iris stays where she is, at the sink – she watches the water running from the facet, watches it swirl and drain, and breathes out, slow and soft.
“Um…” his voice is muffled through the door – she imagines him stood out there, probably leaning on the wood, probably rubbing the back of his neck the way he does when he’s anxious. “Okay. I’m gonna go now.”
Iris swallows something hard in her throat – and then she runs for the door.
“Barry!”
He’s stood on the top porch step and he stops so abruptly at the sound of the door clicking open – at her voice – that he almost falls down them. He swings round to look up at her, uncertainly.
Iris clings to the doorway.
For a moment there’s nothing, whilst they take each other in – Iris’s red-rimmed eyes and Barry’s trembling hands, the crease in his brow; the real, genuine concern.
“Uh,” Barry takes a deep breath, “are you okay?”
Iris nods, wills him to come back closer because she’s not sure she’ll survive the steps toward him. She inhales, sharply, keeps one steadying hand on the doorframe. “C’mere, Bear.”
He’s back across the distance between them in two strides and has swept her up into the kind of bone-crushing embrace she hasn’t had from him since he walked into Jitters the day he woke up from his coma.
God, it feels good.
He smells painfully familiar, and she could swear she can hear his heart thudding in his chest. She wraps her arms around him, tight, and lets herself cling and feel small and pathetic and vulnerable and everything she doesn’t want to feel, not where anyone else can see it.
“I’m sorry,” he’s mumbling into her hair, rubbing circles in her back, “I’m sorry I yelled, I’m an asshole, don’t cry.”
“S’okay.”
“S’not.”
Iris bites a small smile back, face pressed to his shoulder. “You said snot.”
“Oh, that’s real mature.” He gives her a little squeeze, and Iris gasps a muffled hiccup of laughter.
She glances up at him, and he looks back down at her – and then he’s framing her face with his long, gentle fingers, and using his thumbs to dry her tears.
“Iris,” he begins, quietly, “what the hell are we fighting about?”
“I don’t know,” she shrugs, helplessly. “Everything. Nothing. Maybe. It’s just a lot, you know? We’re – a lot.”
He nods.
Iris knots her hands in his jacket, not wanting him to go just yet – and he’s still cupping her jaw with his hands, and – and then they kiss, like it’s inevitable.
Barry’s mouth meets hers and it’s soft and full of force at the same time – the force of a lifetime of waiting and yearning and hoping and – all the softness and someone who loves her, deeply, trustingly, unconditionally.
Iris is up on her tiptoes to meet him automatically, gasping in a breath around his lips, pressing back, hard, giving up – giving in to this – and pulling insistently on his jacket to get him close. She has to bring his face down to her, to let her claim him, choose him and this and them and – screw destiny – destiny’s got nothing on her ability to choose Barry Allen, over and over –
He’s lapping at her bottom lip, and it feels so good she wants to let him keep going but she also has to open her mouth, has to taste him, has to deepen the kiss, like she’s saying yes – yes – this, here, now – over and over –
Somehow she’s being pressed up against the open door, Barry crushing himself to her and her to the door. His lips are bruising now and she doesn’t care.
Iris drags her hands through his hair and he groans into her mouth, low and desperate, not like any noise she’s ever heard him make before; his hands quest up her sides, his breath catches in his chest.
Something about that sound he’s making sends something heated through Iris, shivering and bright.
She nips at his bottom lip and his response is a guttural sound of approval and she thinks about his hands grasping at her sides and how if they feel this good through the fabric of her blouse they’re going to feel even better on her bare skin and –
He breaks the kiss with a strangled sound, and Iris lets herself stay leaning against the door, gasping for breath, Barry’s forehead close against her own.
“Iris,” he sounds raw, aching.
“Barry.” Iris focuses on his collar, compulsively straightening where she’s got it all bent the wrong way – she watches his throat work as he swallows, tries to catch his breath.
She can feel his gaze on her face, though, and when she looks up he looks… just so like himself, like her own Barry, because he’s been looking at her like he loves her his whole damn life.
So Iris kisses him, softly, once, again, to prove to herself that she can. It makes him smile so big and dumb she could pinch him – and she has to laugh and look away because it’s a lot, the way he looks at her. God she must be covered in mascara.
“I’m a mess.”
“No,” Barry shakes his head, softly, “no, you’re perfect.”
Iris takes his hand, and leads him back inside, closing the door behind them.