Chapter Text
Thank god, she thought as she walked into her first official college class, someone she knew!
She would never admit, and she would never allow for it to show, but she was nervous about it, about college, and Barry Allen’s familiar face was somewhat a relief.
Barry Allen was someone Iris West knew. Granted, she didn’t know him know him, she knew him the kind of way you know someone that you went to school with (he had transferred to Central City High in their sophomore year), someone that apparently went to the same college as you. Someone you didn’t even pay much attention to.
All Iris knew was that Barry would always get good grades, especially in science subjects, she knew that he lived with both of his parents throughout school (she wasn’t really sure of his living arrangements were now), and that he hated physical education (apparently even more than she did), but instead of picking a sport and sticking with it like she had done with boxing he would always vanish (or he did in their senior year when they had PE in the same period) but somehow passed the class anyway.
She knew he had to be a little obsessed with his hair, always combed the same exact way, and that he was probably the only student that in high school buttoned his uniform shirt up to the last button. He would even wear the school tie sometimes.
Iris wasn’t even sure if she ever owned an uniform tie, she never ever found it on the days usage was mandatory, so probably not.
Nonetheless she walked into that first class of the first semester of college, and she had picked as many English subjects as she could and Shakespeare: Literary Analysis was one of them, and for her surprise Barry Allen was there too and there was free sit beside him so it didn’t matter that Iris didn’t really know Barry Allen.
In high school she wouldn’t have picked that place: Lizzie, one of her friends, had once mocked Iris, in the middle of a dressing room full of girls from their year and the year above, for having a crush on Barry Allen.
Now, Iris would admit that she found him cute while Lizzie, or any of their other friends really, apparently didn’t.
So she noticed him a little more than the average person? That did not qualify a crush and she had been determinate to prove it. She couldn’t understand what she was scared of exactly, just that if the unsettling feeling on the pit of her stomach whenever she saw him was anything to go by she was scared.
As it turned out college was scarier than apparently harmless Barry Allen so she sat by his side. Barry didn’t turn to look at her, or gave any signs he had somehow recognised her, but he had to, right?
And yet Iris looked at him. She watched as Barry aligned all his pens perfectly on the table, and noticed that he had a clear handwriting (see? She didn’t know that about him before), and that he would always change colours on the important parts while taking notes.
It was only by the end of the period, when Professor Cooper required for them to pair up and for each pair to pick a play and do a presentation about it, and Barry kept frozen by her side, looking at everywhere but her, that Iris had a chance to talk to him;
“Barry?”
He knocked his perfectly aligned pens down the floor and then crashed his head on the desk in his hurry to pick them from the ground and then proceeded to stare at her like he had imagined things, like she couldn’t possibly know his name. He was so impossibly cute, his glasses askew sort of matching the inclination of his bow tie as he rubbed his forehead.
Iris scolded her face, because she was certainly not smiling at him, and questioned;
“Would you like to do the project with me?”
“What?” he asked her, fluttering his eyelashes at her, his eyes never leaving hers.
“The assignment,” she tried explaining; “we have to pick a play and do the analyses and then present it. We have to pair up for it.”
“Right.”
“Do you want to do it with me?”
It was only when Iris saw him blushing from his neck to the roots of his hair and focusing his eyes above her head that she noticed the, well, dirty, connotation the phrase could assume and she divert her eyes as well.
That was about when professor Cooper approached their shared desk and asked;
“All right, do we have a pair here?”
And before Barry could protest Iris answered firmly;
“Yes.”
“And you have a play in mind? Romeo and Juliet is already, predictably, taken, so is Midsummer Night Dreams, anything else you can choose from.”
“Macbeth?” Iris suggested, her eyes on Barry, who raised his eyebrows in a weird unreadable way but agreed to it with a nod to the professor’s delight.
After class Iris lingered on the classroom, waiting for Barry to gather his things in silence, and she watched him meticulously and delicately placing everything in his bag when she decided she should have a reason to the lingering, asking;
“Do you have a copy?”
“I — I’m sorry?”
He looked at her surprised again. Maybe he thought she couldn’t speak when they were in high school; that was the only explanation to the way he reacted to her whenever she tried talking to him.
“Do you have a copy of Macbeth? Cause I have two and I thought I could lend you one. If you would like that.”
“Oh, yeah, I mean no, I — I mean, that would be great, if you don’t mind.”
He stood up and Iris wondered when he got so tall. She had never noticed that before so maybe over the summer.
Barry was wearing a white button down, a grey vest that matched the colour of his trousers, a plaid blue and yellow bow tie and a pair of camel wingtips. She wondered if he got his socks, hidden under the pants, to match his bow tie. He looked like someone who would.
Iris observed him standing in front of her a little awkwardly, like he had no idea as to what to do with his limbs or his hands and she got an overwhelming need to mess him up in some way. Anyway. Maybe even multiple ways.
His eyes, behind the golden trims of his glasses, never left her and when she noticed he seemed to be aiming his gaze to her lips she got a warm shiver spreading through her.
“You left a pen on the floor,” she pointed out, mainly because she needed to move and was apparently incapable of doing so with Barry Allen staring at her.
“Oh, thanks.”
He didn’t move though, his body close enough to be towering over hers, exuding this warmth and Iris found she had no desire to move either, and couldn’t understand what was that about.
Iris bended to grab his pen since apparently he wouldn’t and there was a relief in focusing on something other than Barry Allen for two-seconds, and after she handed the pen back to him she found she could finally step away.
“Bye, Barry.”
At that he offered her the softest smile, one that shone on his eyes and breathed;
“Bye.”