Chapter Text
I lost count so long ago
Barry is prickly and fretful, worried about Central City and its precipitously rising crime. Iris’s dad is worried too, but he’d seen crime waves come and go, and his worry is more for Barry. Caitlin is worried about Barry pushing himself too hard, and Cisco is worried about not pushing Barry hard enough. Wells would be on Cisco’s side, but Wells is, well, not there anymore.
Iris is relieved that they aren’t paying attention to her today. She’s gotten used to being watched. By her dad, of course, by Barry, when he is able to. And the team. Only Dr. Stein largely ignores her, which is a relief.
Today, Iris tells Team Flash (and—when did she start referring to it like that?) she’s going to her actual job and shoots them a bright smile that, combined with a twist of her torso, says goodbye more than a wave can. Barry’s at work on the treadmill, but her dad’s eyes are warm, and Caitlin and Cisco chirp farewells.
She slows at the elevators, listening, then bypasses them and continues on to a small, out-of-the-way garden walled in by glass. She’d found it once when she’d gotten lost in the vast expanse that is STAR Labs, and had to get lost a couple more times to remember the pathway to it. But it was worth it, because it’s overgrown and quiet. It has a bench and simple fountain that drips into a tiny pool, and lots of vined plants — pothos and philodendron, fed by occasional rain and abundant sunshine — that cover the walls with now enormous glossy and velvety leaves. Surely there’d been a scientific purpose for this at some point, but now she just sweeps her hand over the stone bench to make sure it's not wet (her skirt is silk, and Iris is good to her clothes) and then eases her shoes off and breathes.
Her hair lifts before she even registers the shift in air, and Barry’s beside her, in a black STAR Laboratories sweatshirt that is just starting to fray at the hems and sleeves like a flag that’s been hanging outside too long. If it doesn't catch fire, he can usually make one sweatshirt last a week or two. Barry doesn’t speak, but he scoots close enough that she can feel almost like she did when they would sit on the couch, home from college during Thanksgiving break. Close but cautious, getting to know the newest contours of each other, laid over bone deep grooves they both know how to navigate with their eyes closed. She can almost taste the ozonic scent that drifts off his skin after he’s been running. It’s chemical and clean like a summer storm.
“Hey,” he’s tilting his head toward her with that guilty and gently worried look that’s been pinned to his face ever since Eddie died. And he shifts closer, lifting a long, long arm behind her and gripping the edge of bench on her other side, not quite holding her, but close. His voice is lower than normal, and she can tell he’s being careful when he says, “I didn’t know you came here too.”
“It’s quiet,” and that’s a warning.
They sit there together until Barry gets a text demanding that he go deal with a fire. He’s torn as he leaves her, but she waves him on, and he backs out of the garden and then disappears. Iris sits there alone until she’s sure that her dad has gone home.
---
Maybe my heart’s numb
Missing Eddie is like remembering that she was wounded. Most of the time — okay, not most of the time, but some of the time — Iris feels fine. Limbs intact, eyes open, sense of smell working okay. But then she looks too long at a dress hanging in her closet or a certain mug or even her keys, and she’s slammed in the chest with a reminder: Eddie is gone and she’s alone.
She’d moved back in with her dad after he died, haunting the three-story Victorian she’d grown up in. A huge Boston fern in this corner, a small stained-glass window sending warm glowing light down that stairwell. And Barry—down the hall, two doors down, a bathroom between them, like it’s always been.
Iris lies on top of her neatly made bed, flat on her back, looking at the sky-blue ceiling she’d made Barry and her dad paint when she was in the seventh grade. They were supposed to sponge white clouds onto it, but she decided it was pretty as-is. Now, she looks at her phone, reading texts she’s saved from Eddie.
You look so sexy today
Oh?
Yeah--Blue is your color. But what isn’t
I was worried it was too short...
It was pleasantly so
Were people looking at me?
People are always looking at my girl
Is that what I am
Investigative journalist, then: my girl
I’ll take that :heart eyes:
See you tonight.
Today she turns, on her right side, and slides her right hand beneath the pillow under her head and tucks her left hand under her rib cage, and tries to squeeze her chest closed so that the hole inside doesn’t overtake her breath. She’d loved Eddie, maybe not enough, but more than anyone else loved him. And in a few hours, after trying to remember the exercises from the meditation class she’d taken in grad school, she won’t hurt as much.
Imagine your breath coursing through your lungs, down into your abdomen, through your hips, shins, ankles. What does the skin between your toes feel like, Iris?
She had laughed this off in the flickering fluorescent light of a yellow-beige Midwestern U classroom, this question about the skin between her toes. It was just...there. It didn’t feel anything. But after Eddie died, after she knew about Barry, after her father stopped lying to her, she’d cling to it. She screws her eyes shut and asks herself intently: What does the skin between your toes feel like, Iris West?
Hours later, she’s groggily awakened as the moonlight floods her room, nearly bright enough to read by. She closes her eyes because she knows that when the extra pillow in her bed brushes her face just right, she can imagine she’s kissing Eddie. She presses her mouth to it, but before she can really begin to pretend, there’s a tap on her door.
“Iris?” The voice is soft, a bit raspy, and unmistakably Barry.
She swings her legs out of bed and creeps to the door, cracking it open. He’s there, in grey sweats and a red CCHS t-shirt, leaning against the doorframe, scrubbing a forefinger against the wood. His eyes are dark and warm and there’s an unhappy twist to his mouth. “You were sad today.”
“I’m okay,” she’s opening her door before she can think and lets him in. It’s silent, too silent, so she turns on her bluetooth speaker, wincing at the loud beep, and taps her phone until it finds a 90s station that approximates what she and Barry used to listen to when they were kids. Rock guitars softly fill through the room, and Barry nods along to the alt band playing.
She sits on the bed, then eases up so her back is against the pillow she’d been kissing. Barry sits beside her, turned so that his knees point, like arrows, to her. She feels his eyes on the side of her face, as her own eyes adjust.
“How’s therapy going?” his brow is furrowed.
“It’s going,” she sighs and looks up at him. “It does make a difference, it does. But it doesn’t do much for the times when I feel like someone is sitting on my chest. I try to meditate, but...”
His hand reaches for her hand and she brings her knees up and rests them against his, so that they’re tucked in a heart shape, oriented toward each other. His arm slide around her back, and he rests his hand on the smallest part of her waist, while his lips touch her temple, and he whispers, “I’m sorry.”
She could turn her face up, just slightly, to kiss his soft, open mouth, like the two other times he came to her in the middle of the night. Maybe this time he’d kiss her back instead of simply providing a moment of warm counterpressure before moving his face away and pulling her closer into him. But no, she just tilts her face down and presses it to his shoulder. His hand tightens on her waist, and his other hand slides up her arm, over her shoulder, fingertips stuttering over her neck, and resting below her ear. It exerts the slightest force, encouraging her to look up at him.
“I’m sorry,” Barry murmurs again, smelling like mint and baking soda and summer storms.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she says for the first time, suddenly, meeting his darkened eyes, pressing closer to him. His smile is confused but happy and she feels the muscles in his long thighs shift as he slides his feet over her bedspread.
“Me too,” he says as her hand reaches for his, clutching his fingers tightly.
He breaks her hold, winding his fingers through hers. She closes her eyes, and hears him whisper, “love you.” He doesn’t say anything else, but she can feel his chest rise and fall against her. She feels herself start to drift off, and when she wakes some time later, he’s gone.