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Iris opens her front door to a half-naked Barry Allen.
To say she’s surprised by it is an understatement; the tiniest wind could have knocked her over.
His hair is wet and he has a towel wrapped around his waist and his hands full of shampoo and soap bottles and other various grooming stuff and a bunch of clothes, and there are beads of water all over his chest and torso and Iris finally gets to satisfy her curiosity of whether or not the freckles of his face extend to other parts of his body: they do.
“Iris, hi, sorry, my shower, it kind of caught fire, I know it sounds like a lie, I mean — it sounds like a lie but it’s not, it actually happened, one of the cables, I think it was the yellow one, a curt-circuit probably — I was in the middle of my shower —”
It was really becoming a problem how every time he rambled about something to her Iris would find him increasingly cute. It really was a problem, and today that she found out that there was some chest muscles and abs hiding under his usual plaid button-down it was double the problem.
“Come in, Barry”, she tells him with a smile, making him smile big at her in return, telling her;
“Thanks, thank you! Seriously, I own you, big!”
And once she hears her shower running Iris tries to occupy herself, do something, but ends up alternating between sitting on her couch, her armchair and the stools on her kitchen counter with her book in hand and without actually absorbing one word from it.
She knew Barry for a while now, she had heard about him for the first time when he started working on CCPD and Iris’ dad couldn’t stop complaining about the new CSI kid who was always late and he would talk about Barry with the same frustration he reserved for her and Wally so she figured her dad actually really liked “the kid”.
So when Joe had asked her if there were any apartments on rent on her building cause Barry Allen needed a new place since the one he was sub-renting was a dump she gladly helped, not really expecting she would get this… attached… to him herself.
That was six months now. Six months in which he pretty much kept for himself, making Iris wonder if that was just his way or if she made him uncomfortable somehow.
“Oh, wow! You look sharp”, she tells him when he leaves her bathroom in a button down, white for a change, a red tie, a jacket and tight dark jeans (and a towel draped over his shoulder). Clothes that actually fitted him for a change and made him look even taller.
“Thanks — thank you. I sort of gotta a date”, he explains and Iris’ stomach lowers about three feet.
Maybe he had a girlfriend then, maybe he had picked up on her crush and was avoiding her cause he wasn’t available. The thought of him walking around, fingers interlocked with a tall blond faceless stranger made Iris cold all over.
“Oh! Oh, that’s great, really, really great!”, she tells him, hoping to be successfully scolding her face.
“With this girl from work”, he adds.
So she wasn’t a girlfriend. At least it didn’t sound like it. But from work suggested at least some level of intention of turning her into it.
“Oh, from work, is she a CSI too?”, Iris asks, praying her face doesn’t show she’s kinda dying inside right about now.
“Yeah, yeah, I mean, she’s new, newer than me. Patty, her name is Patty.”
Iris hadn’t heard anything about a new CSI! How could her dad leave her so completely blindsided?
Not that her dad knew about her crush. God, she hoped he didn’t know about her crush.
“Right, Patty. Lots in common then.”
“Yeah, I mean, I guess we’ll find out”, Barry shrugs.
And all of the sudden Iris wants for him to leave. She wants for it to be over. Doesn’t want to look at him, making an effort to look nice to this other girl, and Iris notices she is being completely irrational but she can’t face him any longer.
God if he would start bringing this girl over his place Iris would probably have to move. Avoid Barry Allen all together and at all costs.
“Thank you, so much!”, he says, pointing to her bathroom, almost dropping some of the bottles on his hands.
“Oh, yeah, of course!” she tells him honestly; “I mean, anytime.”
“I might take you up on that. I mean, tomorrow morning, if you don’t mind.”
“If your date doesn’t end well, you mean”, Iris tries to joke despite the fact that the thought of it is actually making her sick.
“What?”, he asks, apparently completely lost as to what she could be implying, and then he turns into a deep shade of red with an; “Oh. No, yeah, I don’t think so, no.”
And she’s not sure why he needs to tell her that so insistently, so she closes her eyes for an instant, feeling herself grow warmer and decides to drop it all together, telling him;
“I leave for work at 8:30, but know that cause we leave at the same time so — you can use my shower.”
And Barry decides to leave his stuff on her bathroom after her offer before telling her he’s already late so he should leave and Iris convinces herself that his seemingly reluctance is just her imagination as she wishes, without really wishing;
“Have a nice date.”
It’s 8:30 and Iris is ready to leave and Barry hasn’t come over for a shower yet and all she can think of is how he must have spend the night on Paaatty’s place and how Paaatty must be perfect for him and understand all the stuff Barry’s always talking about like how yesterday he was telling Iris that someone found out the sun has energy flares that could create DNA or RNA or some equivalent of it, and Paaatty would probably be excited because she would know exactly what that meant on some deeper level because they’re probably destined to get married and have perfectly blond and blue-eyed science-babies.
She allows herself 5 more minutes of self pity, drowning on the cold uncomfortable feeling of this insane jealousy, and then puts on a red lipstick and opens her front door (and she’s not gonna let some guy who is not interested on her get her down, the lipstick is there to make sure of it), only to encounter Barry Allen about to knock on her door.
“Hey”, he says, lowering his arm.
“Hi”, and she can’t help the smile as this relief briefly washes over her.
“I’m sorry, I know it’s late…”, and he smiles back, and god, why does he have to be this cute?
“No, no, it’s fine, really. I just — I have to go”, she says, searching her brain for a solution; “can you lock up afterwards?”
“Yeah, yeah, absolutely”, he assures her.
“Oh, shoot! I don’t have an extra key”, her mom and her dad have one, but Iris is usually pretty good on not loosing her keys so she never made an extra one for herself.
“I could bring it to you at CCPN”, he offers unsurely, surprising Iris.
“Oh, ok, that works.”
“At your lunch break?”, he asks.
“Yeah, that’s perfect, I usually have lunch at one”, she tells him.
“It’s a date”, he says, and then seems to realise the words he uttered a bit too late, blushing furiously and trying to fix it little desperately; “Not that kind of date, but, you know… you get that.”
“I’ll see you then”, Iris laughs at him.
But it turns out one o’clock comes and goes and Barry Allen doesn’t show up at CCPN.
Iris is fairly mad at him when at 1:30 she decides to go to the precinct herself after her key, and he better have a great excuse. One that does not involve making out with his co-worker and loosing track of time.
She might throw up if she opens the door of his lab and has to face that image in really life. Imagination is already bad enough.
But as it turns out it’s just Barry looking into his microscope.
“Hi”, she tries as she approaches him and Barry knocks his face into the lens before facing her.
“Oh, shit! What time is it?”, and he checks his phone by his side and says once again; “Oh, shit! I’m so sorry, Iris.”
“You lost track of time, it’s all right”, and Iris hates a little bit that is so easy for him to get her to forgive him, basically just not letting her find him making out with someone else and she’s all good, but he sounds genuine and she can’t help it.
Barry looks deeply guilty though as he tells her;
“No, it’s not, fuck! I’m so sorry.”
“It’s ok, Barry”, she assures him; “I got to see my dad, so, you know, it wasn’t a waste of time.”
“I even set up my alarm to 12:45 so I wouldn’t —”, before he finishes the sentence the alarm on his phone goes off letting both of them know that he set it for one hour too late and Barry finishes the thought with an; “Oh. Fuck!”
Iris laughs at his flustered state and tells him;
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you swear so much.”
“Sorry —”
“It’s ok, I don’t mind.”
“Bad couple of days”, he justifies and that gets Iris wondering why he would say that, if it’s just the shower thing or if his date went bad too.
And in her defense she does feel a little bad for wishing so much for the thing with Patty to have already flopped.
“Is the shower fixed though?”
He sighs loudly before letting her know that some guy went to take a look at it and that Barry was right about the curt-circuit thing;
“… now I have to, you know, buy another shower and install it, but at least it wasn’t like, this bit thing with the electricity of the house…”
“Well, it seems like you’ll be using my shower again then.”
“I feel terrible, really.”
“It’s ok”, she assures him, but Barry still looks like a pouty lost puppy so she jokes (ok, maybe that’s like half joking); “I’m just thinking that maybe I should give you a copy of my keys so you don’t make me late.”
“Oh, that’s —” he cuts himself, growing silent while studying her face, probably trying to figure out if she was kidding or not and Iris almost tell him he won’t be able to cause she doesn’t have the answer to that herself. He shakes his head and asks;
“Do you have to go back to work now or you have a little time?”
And she should go back, really, but instead of telling him that she asks;
“Why?”
“Can I at least take you to lunch? Make it up to you.”
And she can’t help the smile. She can’t help but agreeing to it either.
“Yeah, ok. Lunch sounds good.”
And she has barely finished the sentence when a tall blonde girl walks into Barry’s lab saying;
“Hey, Barry, I was wondering if —”, she cuts herself when she notices Iris standing there and then adds; “oh, hi, I didn’t know you had company.”
“This is Iris”, Barry says; “She’s my… friend.”
Friend. Sure. Or more like the owner of the closest shower. And the fact that Iris is fairly certain that the pretty and blue-eyed blonde standing there in front of them is Patty seems like proof somehow, that they are actually destined to have those blond science babies after all.
“Oh, hi”, and Patty waves awkwardly at Iris who can’t bring herself to wave back.
“This is Patty Spivot”, Barry confirms.
“Of course, nice to meet you”, Iris says, finally managing to move and offering her hand to Patty Spivot.
“Iris is detective West’s daughter”, he tells Patty and Iris turns to look at him, wondering why he would feel the need to add that. He blushes when he notices her questioningly eyes, his hand jumping to the nape of his neck and it’s just her luck that he’ll choose now to be cute and make her insides twist.
“Oh, you are Joe’s daughter”, Patty says, shaking Iris out of the Barry-staring with the weirdness of calling her dad Joe when Barry still called him detective West, “I knew I recognised you — I mean, he has your picture on his desk.”
“Yeah, he does”, Iris says cause she can’t think of another response. Maybe it’s only because she knows Barry is into her but Iris can’t make herself like Patty.
Patty looks at Iris with this strange expression on her face and then steps towards Barry, her hands ready to reach for him saying a soft voice;
“I was wondering if I could get you to take me to lunch, Barry.”
But Barry takes a step back, hand at the nape of his neck once again and fumbles around his words;
“Oh, sorry, I — Iris and I, we’ll, I’ve — you know, already promised her. Lunch, I’ve promised her lunch.”
And Iris looks at the floor hoping to hide her smile. Maybe the date didn’t go so well after all, maybe the universe thought it had enough blue-eyed science babies already then…
“All right, maybe another time,” Patty says.
“Yeah, maybe,” Barry agrees, and maybe it’s just Iris but that doesn’t sound like a maybe to her. At all.
It’s only when they already have their lunch in front of them, and Barry has finished nerding out about some species of fungi that apparently turns ants into zombies and Iris finally can’t hold her curiosity any longer that she asks him;
“What was with the squirming?”
“What? What squirming?”
“With Patty”, she explains cause Barry looks honestly lost at her question.
“Oh” he drops his fork, looking down at his plate and then back up at Iris again and asks; “that — was that obvious?”
“Barry, you took a step back when she reached for your hand.”
“Oh, did I? Shit”, and it warms her that he had no idea; “That doesn’t sound good.”
But he doesn’t offer anything else, no explanations as to why there was a step back or why that isn’t good, so Iris tries again;
“The date didn’t go well?”
“It went fine”, he says, turning his head a little in a way that makes Iris smile.
“So what’s the matter? You don’t like her?”
Please say you don’t like her, please say you don’t like her, please say you don’t like her, Iris prays.
“I mean, she’s nice and all, but no, I don’t think so, not really.”
“Then why did you go on a date with her?”, she questions, not really able to explain why when it’s only gonna hurt her hear him say cause she’s really pretty or something to the effect.
Instead, after a pause in which he seems to be considering it himself, Barry tells her;
“Well, she’s very insistent”, and Iris laughs at his response, a little of relief and a little of amusement, if she would have said yes to every insistent guy that has asked her out she would have got herself into some weird shit, but she figures it must be different when it’s a pretty girl doing the insisting.
“Sorry I used you as excuse”, Barry says and she can’t very well tell him she’s happy he did.
“That was not an excuse, you are taking me to lunch.”
“Yeah, yeah, I am”, he seemingly realises with a pretty smile on his lips.
Barry found that one good thing came from the whole shower debacle: Iris and him became way closer than they were before.
She had always been a nice neighbour, she lend him stuff when he needed, said good morning and good night when they bumped into each other in the stairs or the hallway, let him into the building whenever he would forget his keys, and if Barry was being completely honest those six months they were neighbours before the shower-debacle he kept his distance because she was too pretty, too kind, too sweet, too funny and too smart and he was planning on not falling for Detective West’s daughter.
But almost a week showering at her place and seeing her every morning and every evening for longer than just how are you?, and good, thanks, you?, had shown him just how easy it was for Iris and him to get along and his resolute to keep his distance was quickly dissolving as she pretty much became his best friend.
Tonight he was cooking for her.
He told her the day before that his mom had taught him how to make pesto sauce when he was a teenager and that was what he always did whenever he wanted to impress someone because it sounded just fancy enough to trick people into believing he could cook and Iris had said; Well, it’s decided then, tomorrow night you are impressing me.
And now, even though they had been hanging out pretty much every night for the past three weeks, he was nervous, like he did have to impress her all the sudden, as if the easiness that they had together wouldn’t sustained itself.
But of course that went away the second she stepped into his place, holding two bottles of wine, one for them to drink and one as a thanks-for-having-me gift (which settles a brief panic on Barry as he realises he should have given her a thank-you-for-letting-me-shower-in-your-place gift), and brownies she baked for desert and a can of tomato sauce just in case.
“You hurt me, West! Have I ever steered you wrong?”, he asks as she dumps everything in his arms, stepping out of her shoes.
“We’ll see about that, Allen”, she tells him with a wink and it’s too dorky and too cute for her own good.
Maybe the second bottle of wine had been a mistake, Barry concludes when a loud and annoying sound wakes him up, making him realise that his head is hurting.
“Oh my god! Make it stop!”, Iris says by his side.
She slept over. On his bed.
Barry searches his memory but he can’t remember anything happening except for a whole bunch of wine and then Iris finding his tequila.
Yep, there was tequila involved.
One shot if he recalls it right, or maybe it was two, but it was enough. Enough to get a sleep over on his bed, which now smells like Iris, bright and warm and a little sweet like free sunny Sunday morning, and her hair looks a bit weird and even without his glasses he can see pillow marks on the skin of her cheeks.
He fumbles for his glasses, and thank god he somehow managed to take his contacts off before bed, and once he has them on he decides Iris still looks unfairly beautiful, it’s impossible, really.
Iris opens her eyes slowly, takes a look at him, an amused grin forming on her lips and she asks;
“How did I not know that you are full on nerd with the big glasses and everything?”
“I like to avoid the glasses”, he tells her.
“Why? You look cute”, she tells him with a giggle; “Very, very, cute.”
And then the loud annoying sound repeats itself and he realises that it’s the doorbell. Probably a neighbour who forgot their keys to the building so he drags himself out of bed while Iris lets out a complaining moan and slides back down under the covers.
“Hello?”, he mumbles into the speakerphone only to find out that it wasn’t a neighbour without keys at all, it was actually Patty Spivot, and a little hangover on a Saturday morning with Iris on his bed is the worse possible time to deal with Patty, who by the way apparently hadn’t noticed that all the excuses he kept giving her to avoid a second date weren’t genuine reasons and was still insisting. And now she was knocking on his door before he had time to drink enough water to feel human again.
“Hi”, she offers him with a bright smile that only makes Barry feel terrible, “sorry to just drop by…”
“It’s ok”, he says, afraid his intended smile is coming through as a wince.
He invites her in but his aching head stops him from being more polite than that as Patty closes the door behind her, her eyes on him as he fumbles around his apartment trying to set a plan to make all that he’s feeling in his head and his eyeballs and his stomach to go away.
And Patty is really pretty and she’s nice and he’s not acting very nicely in return, he’s fully aware, but he has never had to dump anyone before, Becky dumped him and with Felicity it was mutual, they both decided the long distance thing was not worth a shot, and now he’s figuring out he’s pretty bad at dumping people.
Not that he should have to dump Patty, it wasn’t like there was ever really a relationship at all…
“Did I wake you up?”, she asks.
“Yeah, a little”, he tells her, and he was sure there was a bottle of Advil on the first drawer of his TV chest of drawers, where is the damn thing?
“Are you ok?”, Patty questions and there’s no reason for a lie so he says;
“Yeah, just a bit hangover”, he explains, hoping that excuses his behaviour; “I should have learned to not mix my liquors by now.”
“Big party?” she asks, reclining against the front door like she’s unsure she can actually come in, and it takes Barry a few long dragged seconds before he realises that was a question. But then the water hits his empty stomach and that was really a mistake cause it’s making all the nausea worse.
He never gets a chance to answer Patty though, cause Iris walks out of his room, and it’s only now that he notices she hasn’t slept in her jeans: she’s wearing sweatpants. His sweatpants, way too big for her so they hang low, the waistband and the cuffs rolled up to fit her, and he can tell she’s not wearing a bra underneath her t-shirt and the full impact of it, all of it, hits him, warming him up, curling his insides and he even forgets all the pain for a moment.
Her hair is up in a bun now and her eyes only open halfway as she rubs her temples, telling him;
“I need water, and a painkiller, you know what, make that plural, painkillers, but first brownies cause otherwise I’m gonna puke”, (and yes! Iris is a genius, brownies were a great idea), and Iris continues, approaching him in the kitchen area, never turning and registering Patty there by his front door; “Why, oh why, did you let me drink the tequila after all that wine?”
“The tequila was your idea”, he tells her indignantly. Like he could have convinced her otherwise.
“Well, you were the one who said I’m a genius and that tequila was a great idea.”
“I had the same amount of wine as you, how do you expect me to make better decisions than you?”
“Because”, she tells him, hitting her shoulder on his arm as if that’s explanation and then she reaches for the rest of the brownies with the opposite hand.
She hands him some of it and the first bite Barry takes seems like a terrible mistake but once the thing actually hits his stomach he feels relived.
“Well, you are a genius”, he lets her know, raising the brownie slightly so she knows what he’s referring to, and she manages a small smile while swallowing the painkiller he gives her and god, how can she be that pretty?
Barry almost forgets Patty standing there, watching them, until she makes a weird noise, between a cough and a mumble and Iris turns to face her startled;
“Oh, Patty, hi! I hadn’t seen you there”, she says, her arms jumping around her body, hugging herself protectively.
“I — I didn’t know — I mean — I — you guys are…?”, Patty mumbles and Barry firstly registers how that must look like. Iris, stepping out of his room, wearing his clothes, them obviously getting drunk together, she obviously spending the night even though she lives next door, and it’s only when he considers someone else concluding they are together that Barry realises just how much he wants to be together.
He doesn’t answer Patty though, too lost marvelling on his own stupidity. How did it take him that long to notice he’s already in love with Iris West? How did he actually think he was succeeding in not falling for her?
“Ok, I’m gonna leave cause clearly I’m the one in the way here”, and she closes the door loudly and Barry will have to deal with that on Monday.
“She must really like you”, Iris says after a few moments of things too quiet between them, and it seems like it’s a way of running from what really matters out of what Patty implied, so he tries to be brave instead and says;
“Well, I like someone else.”
And he realises once he said it that it doesn’t really make things clear, but hopefully Iris would be able to figure it out, she seems generally really good in figuring him out.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Who?”
And he can’t say it, he can’t tell her like this, with his head hurting and his stomach twisting in all these different ways now, cause to add to the nausea now there’s this warm twisting of expectation.
“Iris”, he asks her. He thinks he’s asking her. Something. What exactly he doesn’t know, but it must have worked cause she opens this great bright smile at him, and good god, she’s pretty.
She goes into the tip of her toes, her hand steadily bringing him down by the nape of his neck and he feels his own toes curling against his kitchen floor as she places a little kiss on his lips, but then she’s pulling away and proposing;
“We can kiss when I’m not feeling like I’m gonna puke.”
And it’s his turn to smile as he agrees;
“Ok.”