Chapter Text
Iris snuggled into her grey wool overcoat, jumping into the street, away from what looked like a puke puddle on the side walk, making sure her extremely expensive black leather boots remained in its pristine condition. It was exceptionally cold for a September day, and the wind blowing like it did before a summer storm, turning the skies completely grey in a matter of minutes were the icing on the cake of bizarro weather, specially after a sunny warm forecast the previous day.
To make matters worse Iris hadn’t had her coffee yet, which alongside the oxidised smell of blood in the crime scene, was giving her a migraine. And to top it all off she was having trouble to get to Eddie without transposing into the scene, something she was refraining from because it would definitively not make him very happy. She circulated the marked area one more time till she got close enough to make it impossible for him to ignore her shouting;
“Hi, detective Thawne, I was hoping I could ask you some questions.”
Eddie looked at her, taking one deep breath before rolling his eyes and approached her, answering;
“We are not allowed to give any information about ongoing investigations, Miss West, I’m sure I have told such in the past. You’ll have to wait for the PR announcement like the other reporters.”
Iris studied the crew accompanying Eddie. His partner, Patty Spivot, who had time and again made sure that how she felt about Iris was crystal clear, was very probably out of ear shot, but Iris dropped her voice to almost a whisper anyway as she probed Eddie;
“Yes, I know that, I was thinking maybe you could let me know, off the record of course, if these deaths have some relation with the murder that happened on the subway last week.”
It was a long shot. He probably hadn’t thought about that, Iris couldn’t explain why she was getting the feeling they were related herself, other than the proximity to the station there was nothing substantial to cause such conclusions, so as expected Eddie offered her a quizzical face before saying;
“What? How—? Iris, that was a suicide.”
She knew he wasn’t the detective designated for the subway case, but just the day before she got the dead girl’s girlfriend, Gabrielle Treccani, at her desk at CCPN, on the Uncovered room, crying about how the police wouldn’t listen to her that Casey’s death’s couldn’t have been suicide and showing her the text Casey had send her minutes before she supposedly jumped on the subway line. A text saying how excited she was about flying with Gabrielle to Atlantis for their weekend off.
Scott had told Gabrielle the Uncovered would look into it but they were after a corruption story at the moment and one dead girl wasn’t enough of a case for them. The thing kept on nagging Iris though, so when she turned her TV this morning to the news of two deaths close to the same subway station Casey Darren had been killed Iris texted Linda she would be late and headed for the scene, praying Eddie was the detective there and thanking her lucky stars at the sight of him. Not that he was actually being much help right about now.
The Uncovered was a department at Picture News that dealt with investigative cases. That was the reason Iris had gotten into journalism in the first place. They were a team of four reporters, her, Linda Park, Scott Evans and Mason Bridge, who would usually work on one or two stories together, always investigative stories (organised crime, public corruption and stuff like that were Mason’s favourites and they were mostly a democracy but he was the one with the last word whenever necessary). They worked on them for months, sometimes a whole year and in the end of the investigation, once they had the full story, they would do an expose piece that would always get the Sunday cover, (which made the rest of the reporters weary, saying between whispers how unjust it was that they would write so little and always end up with the spotlights on them), and that piece would usually get a couple of months of followups after published, at the end of which they could move on to the next story.
Scott was the reason Iris got the job. They went to college together at CCU, and they’d dated for a few years back then, after meeting each other at the journalism course Iris had picked as her sociology requirement on her freshman year. They somehow managed to remain good friends after the break up and Scott, who was the journalism major out of the two of them, graduated and got a job at the CCPN. He had fallen into Mason’s graces pretty quickly, and after Iris helped the two of them and Linda, unofficially, with the first Uncovered investigation (they had needed a psychologist for that particular case), Mason offered her the job, which she took gladly. It was infinitely better than waitering tables at the Jitters to pay for her post grad tuition, even when considered all the free coffee she could possibly drink.
Right at this moment persuade Eddie to help her was proving to be a much more difficult task than it had been in the past. But who knew, maybe the crazy feeling she was getting that this crime and Casey’s murder were related somehow would be proven right. She had had more unbelievable hunches in the past so she had learn to trust her intuition even when it seemed just wishful thinking;
“Eddie, I’ve got some information —”
“Information you’re willing to submit as evidence?”, he interrupted her. Like he didn’t know how she rolled by now;
“No, because CCPD has a habit of accepting what I have to give without granting me the same courtesy. Not very nice if you ask me”. He didn’t need to know Gabrielle had tried the police first. Not right at this very moment anyway.
“Then I don’t wanna know.”
He turned around, leaving her cursing the policemen as a species. She decided to change strategies, trying in the nicest tone she could convey;
“Eddie! Please!”
He walked back to her, standing uncomfortably close, only separated by the “do not cross” crime scene sign and said in a lower tone;
“Look, after last time, after you guys published that story I had already gotten the promotion but I got into serious trouble for giving you information, classified information that was made very public by you and the uncovers. The captain threatened to take my badge, Iris, it wasn’t fun, ok? I can’t help you anymore.”
Eddie was usually nice but as most guys he was always taking credit for things he didn’t exactly do and she was not in the mood to be tested. Not with the migraine she had waiting on her way;
“I helped you! Are you seriously telling me you would have solved that case without the Uncovered?”
“I’m on probation, Iris. I can’t work with you anymore or they’ll very likely fire me —”
But Iris had stopped listening. As she swept the scene one more time her eyes focused on the guy kneeling beside one of the covered corpses.
She felt all the air being knocked out of her lungs and she couldn’t pin point what in the sight of him gave her goosebumps. Even kneeling she could tell he was really tall and his glasses, sliding down to the tip of his nose, gave him an awkward charm. He was… pretty. She could tell he had long eyelashes even through the frame of his glasses, and there was something about the way he tried pushing them up with the back of his gloved hands. She actually caught herself smiling at it.
Eddie seemed to noticed Iris’ lack of attention, stopping in the middle of a sentence she hadn’t heard and questioning her; “What?”
“Who is that?”
“Barry Allen. He’s our new CSI, why?”
She broke her gaze away to look back at Eddie and gave herself another question. Just one more.
“How new?”
“A week or so. Why?”
He looked suspicious. She really didn’t feel like sharing the next piece of information with anyone but it was out of her lips before she could think it through;
“I thought I knew him from somewhere.”
Thankfully Eddie wasn’t someone to dwell over her cues too much, he seemed glad to be able to change the subject and have a more pleasant conversation, over a safe topic, with her, so he fed her information without her needing to probe it out of him;
“Unless you spend some time in Coast City, not very likely. He’s a transfer.”
“Coast City?”
She looked back at the new CSI. Allen. There was nothing unexpected about him, it was like she could have predicted him somehow. It wasn’t exactly like she had seen him before, it was an indescribable familiarity. Rationally she knew they haven’t met but somehow…
“Yeah, Coast City. What’s with you?”
She scold her face the best she could and diverged her eyes from Barry before answering Eddie;
“I don’t know, I’ve got the weirdest feeling”, she shook herself out of it and looking Eddie in the eye she tried one last time; “Please, change your mind and call me.”
She needed something to convince the rest of her team to go for this investigation. She needed them to go for it. The corruption piece was too slow and it was boring her out of her mind lately and the second Gabrielle had shown her that text she tingled. Eddie reached for her arm but she didn’t notice till he was already touching her. The CSI was looking directly at her, bright green eyes and she was right, those were some really long eyelashes, and Iris was suddenly frozen in place, by his gaze rather than Eddie’s hand.
“Iris, I’m very grateful, you know I am, but I can’t do another investigation the same way or there won’t be an investigation for me anymore.”
“Fine.” She answered him, perhaps more rude than strictly necessary, and turned her back at him.
Maybe she would get lucky at the subway administration and she would be able to flirt her way into the security cameras recording of the scene.
“You should get some coffee.” Eddie shouted at her leaving. She hated he could tell she wasn’t caffeinated yet, so that caused her to turn around and offer him both of her middle fingers, which he laughed at. She wasn’t beneath flirting him into this either, if that was what it would take.
If any one wants to read it on my tumblr: here it is