Happy New Year! Taking a break from the angst with some wholesome Westallen fluff. I don't write a lot of romance, but this has been on my mind for quite some time. I actually wrote a first draft of it last spring, but have never been quite satisfied with it. This version got written just before the mid-season finale, so consequently it is very light on Savitar stuff; in my mind, it takes place a year or so after season three.
Inspiration and title from one of my favorite songs, "Run Away with Me," which, incidentally, Grant Gustin covered (not incidentally: this entire fic was born from me listening to him sing it, oops).
Enjoy!
The truck waited outside of Picture News when Iris stepped out of work, a poor imitation of a parallel park with one wheel half-over the curb. The side of the car was dented so badly it was a miracle the passenger door could still close, and one headlight was suspiciously cracked. Below a layer of dust, the paint was crimson.
Leaning against it like some 50s greaser—with argyle in lieu of leather—was Barry.
"Ta-da," he said lamely.
Iris shoved her hands in her pockets. The fall wind sent a chill through her. "Care to tell me what this is?"
"A car, silly."
People were staring. Iris wasn't sure if it was the color or the condition of the car that drew more attention or the fact that this looked embarrassingly like a scene from a John Hughes movie. Still, she reasoned, it was a notch down from the heart-shaped wreath of flowers he had surprised her with on their first date.
"Okay, call me crazy for asking, but…what does the Flash need with a car?"
"Uh. Secret identity?" Barry extended his hands placatingly, though he had that goofy half-smile on his face that he always got when he was up to something. "You like it?"
Iris crossed her arms and took in the state of the car, in all of its banged-up glory. Between the dusty red paint, bronze trim, and conspicuous scrapes, it was so distinctly Barry that Iris couldn't help but respond, "I'm surprised it doesn't have big letters painted on the side reading 'Flash-mobile.'"
"Be nice," said Barry, mimicking the arm-cross. "Secret identities are no joke. You want a ride or not?"
Iris let out a disbelieving laugh, still shrinking under the curious eyes of strangers. "Um, sure. Yeah, let's get out of here."
Barry, ever the gentleman, opened the passenger-side door, and Iris ducked in. The car didn't smell like Barry yet, not that distinctive coppery whiff that sometimes rose up through his cologne, something like heat. It smelled like someone else; which, really shouldn't have been surprising, considering it looked like the car had been well-loved by someone else for about thirty years.
Like a high schooler fresh out of a drivers' ed and picking up his prom date, Barry hopped into the car and drummed his fingers against the steering wheel. "Cool, right?"
"You haven't driven a car in, what, three years?" Iris said. "Are you sure you can drive this thing?"
"Psh, yeah."
In response to this point, the car sputtered and jerked when he hit the gas. He swerved into the street, narrowly avoiding another parked car, and then accelerated with a lurch. A horn barked behind them. The car stuttered a few more feet before smoothing out.
"The clutch is sticky," Barry said. "Your knuckles are white."
Iris pried her own fingers from their death grip on the leather seat. "I wonder why."
They pulled through green light after green light, driving steady through the city streets, headlights flicking on gradually around them.
"How was work?" Barry asked casually, conversationally. Iris wanted to laugh. It was so ridiculous, him driving this car, her sitting in this car with him, driving through the city at thirty miles an hour. Still, she decided to play along.
"Fine," she said. "I'm working on a pretty important story right now, actually. My boss is letting me cover a piece about the Flash."
"Oh?" Barry raised an eyebrow. He loved hearing about all of her articles, but pieces about the Flash were always of special interest to him. No matter what he told the team, he was concerned about how his image was shaped and reflected by the public. It was an important part of the Flash, in his eyes, especially because the identity was separate from his own.
"Yeah," Iris continued, folding her hands in her lap. "An article about one of the Flash's latest exploits. A top-notch piece of investigative journalism. I've been having some trouble with it. I would really benefit from an interview. You know, ask some questions of the Flash himself."
"Uh huh," Barry said, now in a full-on grin. "Well. It's your lucky day, Ms. West." The tenor of his voice lowered with the vibration of his vocal chords, just as he had done so many times back when he had worn a mask in front of her.
Okay, that wasn't fair. He knew what that voice trick could do to her.
"Wonderful," she said stubbornly. "I hope you can give me some answers, Flash. I'm doing a story about your recent acquisition of a vehicle. I'm hoping, Mr. Flash, sir, that you can tell me what the hell you're doing with it."
Barry's smile faded into a pout. "You don't like it?"
"I don't understand it." They turned a corner, gliding smoothly onto the highway. "Want to tell me where we're going?"
"Mm. How about Texas?" Iris opened her mouth to question further, but Barry reached over to the radio and turned up the volume to stop her. "I just love this song, don't you?"
It was a heavy metal song that Iris was certain had never voluntarily listened to in his life. Iris rolled her eyes and switched over to a pop station but honored his clear desire not to speak.
The city lights grew dimmer and dimmer in the rearview mirror, shrinking and sputtering like dying candles. In contrast, the horizon they were heading toward screamed a tune of pink and orange, a sky dipped in spilled paint. With the highway stretched out endlessly in front of them, it was easy to imagine being swallowed up by the enormity of it all. Death by sunset didn't seem so bad.
After what could have been fifteen minutes, or twenty, or sixty, Iris finally chanced a look Barry's way once again. The whole experience made her feel like a teenager again, too, somehow, and the glance felt private. A fleeting look at an old crush. Barry, for what it was worth, didn't notice, just kept his eyes on the road and his thumbs tapping lightly at the wheel. It was hard to tell what he was thinking, even though he had always been like an open book.
Emboldened by the first glance, she angled her head toward him again, this time holding her stare. She rarely took the time to really, deeply look at him, since his face and his mannerisms were so familiar, so it was with mild curiosity that she studied him. The arch of his eyebrow, the slant of his jaw. The way his eyes seemed to move and flicker ceaselessly, like he was constantly searching for something beyond perception.
It was when those eyes met hers that she realized how long she'd been staring at him, watching the sunset's light and shadows create brushstrokes across his skin. "What?"
She composed herself. Faced forward. "Nothing."
"You were thinking about something."
"If you get to have your secrets, I get to have mine."
He chuckled low. They kept driving.
The pop songs cycled one after another, and even with the distant light in at their windshield, the dark was closing in around them. Iris settled back in her seat and dared to kick her feet up on the dash. Barry didn't object. The warmth of the heater, the drone of the radio, and the mundanity of the scenery lulled her into a kind of half-dream.
Finally, after what felt like hours, they turned off of the highway. The road they continued on was darker, the pavement less even. Barry slowed to accommodate the pot holes, the roughness. They continued this way another few minutes, and then Iris realized where they were going. She saw the plunge of the cliff in the distance, and, beyond, a view that stretched for miles.
They pulled up to the edge, and finally Barry killed the engine. The rumbling of the car died down, leaving only sounds of the radio. Even that was reduced to a mumble as Barry thumbed the volume.
Without the headlights, the view outside their window was spectacular. From this outcrop, the world seemed bigger than it had even on the empty highway. To the right, the sunset continued its spectacular explosion of color. To the left, far in the distance, the city lights twinkled, and a yellow streak of highway sliced outward across the dark fields.
"I've always thought this was the best place to watch a sunset," Barry said, the first words he had spoken in quite some time.
Iris raised her eyebrows. "Oh, yeah? You come here often?"
Barry shrugged. "It's easy to get to when you can run here in ten seconds. I may have miscalculated tonight. Sunset's almost over."
"There will be more sunsets," Iris said. Barry grunted and pushed open his door. In a blink, he had flashed around to the passenger side. He held the door open for her as she emerged, then took her hand and helped her up onto the hood of the car.
"You probably misjudged the time because you haven't driven a car in three years," Iris said as they got settled, lying back against the windshield. "Which, by the way, you still haven't explained."
For the first time, a nervous twitch ran through Barry's jaw. She waited for him to gather himself, recognizing the signs that he needed a moment to decide what to say.
"This thing between us," he said. "It's going pretty well, isn't it? Don't you think?"
"I would say so," Iris said, snaking her hand over to his. "Why, did you drive me all the way out here just to tell me that it's not working? Need to butter me up before proposing that we go on a break?" Barry exhaled, a silent laugh. "That's your favorite Friends episode, isn't it?"
"We never finished the series, did we?"
Iris remembered the summer they'd sat down with the box sets of each season, spending hours and hours on the couch when they probably should have been out taking advantage of the sun. Now that she thought about it, they'd gone their separate ways, back to school, halfway through the eighth season.
"We should pick it back up sometime," Iris said. "You know, I think we still have those DVDs at my dad's house. We could stop by tonight on the way home, after whatever this is—"
"Run away with me."
The phrase caught Iris off guard. She stiffened, unsure she had heard him correctly, her heart stuttering. "What did you say"
Barry swallowed, got his strength back. He rolled to his side, onto his elbow, so he could face her. "Run away with me." Before she could question him again he continued, "I just—think about it, Iris. We have this car. We can take it anywhere, you know? We can just hit the highway and drive for ages. We never have to stop."
"We can already go wherever we want," Iris teased. "You have superspeed, you know."
"This isn't about speed," Barry said, still so earnest that Iris' smile faded. "This is about…the road, you know?"
"I still don't understand," Iris said, though she was trying very hard. Perhaps it wasn't that she didn't understand, but that she didn't know how to process it. "Are you being serious?"
"Doesn't it sound amazing?" Barry said. "The open highway. No obligations, no destinations, no schedules. Just the two of us."
"The two of us against the world?"
"Not against it," Barry said. "In it. For once in our lives, in it."
He squeezed her hand, but she rolled to her back, full attention toward the sunset. The proposition made her head whirl. This was the stuff of fiction—these gestures weren't supposed to exist in reality. But then, Barry had always been impulsive, and he'd never been anything short of extraordinary. Even now, as she toyed idly with one of the rings on her pointer finger and said nothing, he allowed her to think without interruption.
"What are you running away from?" she asked at last. "Don't try to say nothing. I know you better than that, Barry Allen."
It was his turn to think. "It's just…it's hard not to think about…us. Don't get me wrong, I love being the Flash. And I love having you by the Flash's side. But I can't help but think about…"
He swallowed. It clicked. "Is this about the other week? With Blacksmith?"
"She almost killed you, Iris. She used you to get to me."
It was true, of course. Iris had taken such a beating that Caitlin forced her to stay in recovery for a full twenty-four hours. Barry, who had taken quite the punishment himself in the fight with the meta, refused treatment, food, and sleep until Iris was cognizant enough to berate him for doing so.
"It's not the first time I've been kidnapped by a psychopath," Iris said. "It comes with the territory. And look at us. We made it through. We always make it through."
"Not always," Barry said, and there was a drop in his voice, a terrified drop. "There's more. Because I know—I've seen the newspaper headline from the future, and I know that—we don't have a fairy-tale ending."
Flash Missing: Vanishes in Crisis.
The newspaper had been from 2024. Now that he brought it up, it really wasn't that far away. The Iris West-Allen who had written it was burgeoning inside of the Iris West sitting in this car. The grieving widow was just past that horizon they were now staring at.
"The future isn't set in stone," she said. "We saw that with Savitar. Look at me—I'm here, aren't I?"
"This is different," Barry mumbled. "The by-line keeps changing but the fact…the fact never changes. What if this is different than Savitar? What if this is a future we can't change?"
"Then it's still the future," Iris said firmly, even though the thought terrified her. "We still have the present. You think running away from everything will make it better?"
"Not better," Barry said. "Nonexistent. Maybe running away is the key to changing it. If I give up the Flash, if we get away from it all, we can be happy. We can be happy for a long time. Cisco and Caitlin and Wally all have powers. They can manage the city on their own. I trust them."
"I trust them too; that isn't what this is about." Iris mirrored his pose, meeting his gaze. "This is about wanting to give up what you love."
"What I want is you," Barry said. His voice broke. Iris knew defeat when she saw it, and she'd seen it enough to break her heart. "What I love is you."
"Believe me, I know that," Iris said, softening. "And I am so lucky that I do know that."
She leaned forward to kiss him, and there it was, that smoky, heat scent she had been missing. When she pulled away from the kiss, they were still so close that she could feel his breath hot on her face.
"We don't have to have a car and some wild escape plan to run away together. We don't even have to leave the city limits to do that," Iris breathed. "My world is already so wide with you in it."
Barry was always hungry for more contact; he was the one who bridged the gap between them again to press his lips against hers. This kiss was longer, deeper. His hand found hers again, and their fingers wound together when they broke away.
"You're so beautiful, Iris West," he said. "I'm the lucky one."
"I'd settle for thinking we're equally lucky," Iris said with a smile. "And, for the record, running away with you would be an honor and a privilege."
Barry beamed, always bare-faced with his emotions. Iris appreciated that about him. She always had.
"We should get going," he said.
Iris looked back out the front window, shook her head. "No, look. There's still some sunset left."
A soft chuckle. "Well, I'll return the car, at least. It was probably not my best plan. Like you said, the Flash doesn't really have need of a vehicle."
Again, Iris shook her head. While she kept her fingers intertwined with Barry's, she swiveled so she was facing forward. She lay back and stroked Barry's knuckles with her thumb.
"Nah," she said. "I think you're right about taking it slow every once in a while. Even though I don't want to run away permanently, it might be nice to run away every once in a while. Just to this cliff. To see the sunset." She leaned over, planted a kiss on Barry's cheek. "If I have any say in it, you'll keep the car."
The pink and orange were fading into grayness around Barry's face, but his eyes still sparkled. "Well, if you insist. I got it for a good price."
He pulled her toward him and she relented. She shimmied sideways until their bodies were flush, sharing warmth. They both looked out, quiet, at the landscape beyond. The city on one side, the sunset on the other. They didn't move for a long while. Just looked. And wondered. And dreamed.
And when the colors finally disappeared, Iris leaned over once more and kissed Barry before guiding him off the hood and into the car. Then, when there was nothing more to see in the gathering dark, he revved the engine and slowly, deliberately, backed away from the cliff's edge.
Thanks so much for reading! I hope you'll take a little time to leave a comment below. I really appreciate it!
Till next time,
Penn