A/N: Dedicated to the lovely cbsnforeverandalways on tumblr who requested a fluff piece of Barry & Iris. This fic takes place some point after Barry comes out of the SF and is back to his good old self. I hope y'all enjoy. This was a fun, cute one to write. :)
*Many thanks to sendtherain for continuing to be a fantastic beta. :D
*I own nothing. No copyright infringement intended.
...
Barry Allen did not used to be an early riser. Before gaining superspeed, Barry slept in even when he wasn't supposed to. It was usually accidental, but that didn't change the fact that it was a miracle he kept a job for as long as he had.
Superspeed wasn't magic, though. While sleep had made him late for work before, stopping to save people made him late instead now. Eventually he found a system though, and unless he was depressed, or Iris sensed him leaving the bed before she wanted him to, he was up bright and early by 6:30am, sometimes earlier.
Today was one of those days.
Usually when he got up this early, he was halfway through the giant breakfast he enjoyed making for himself and Iris before she so much as woke from her slumber, let alone got ready or even came downstairs.
But today, mere seconds after he'd finished cooking all possible breakfast items he could think up, he heard a frustrated whine coming from upstairs and frowned. He walked slowly towards the bottom of the staircase and waited in silence, wondering if he'd heard wrong.
"Ugh," came a moment later, followed by the unmistakable sound of Iris's barefoot hitting the tile in their bathroom.
Barry zipped upstairs to just outside their bathroom and suddenly stopped.
"Hey, Iris, what's—"
Puffing the short locks off her face and holding the rest of her hair up, Iris stood in aggravation. She held it tight, but even Barry could tell it wasn't staying. It was slipping through her fingers even as they stood in tense silence.
"Iris…" he hedged again, sliding his hand over hers and gently urging her to relinquish the hold she had on her hair. "What's wrong?"
"Look." His brows furrowed. Agitated, she gestured towards the mirror. "Look."
Confused, but not wanting to anger her further, Barry looked into the mirror. He was Iris and part of himself. There was some stubby scruff lining his chin that he realized he'd have to shave before he left for work, but otherwise he couldn't see anything wrong.
"What am I looking at?"
Iris spun around and looked up at him.
"My hair," she said, the very embodiment of pissed off.
"What about it?" he asked, threading his fingers through some of it. "It's cute."
"It is not cute," she growled.
He told himself it would be very bad if he commented that she was acting cute, too. The phrase 'you're cute when you're mad' flitted through his mind, but he figured it had negative connotations for a reason.
"It's not?"
Iris sighed, reigning in her anger, since Barry obviously wasn't the problem. She plucked about twenty bobby pins from her hair that had proved completely useless in the face of her thick, short hair.
It's not as if your hair is that short, she heard the reasoning voice in the back of her head. Short enough, she barked back. The reassuring voice in her head did not retort.
She shook off the inner monologue to look back at Barry who was staring in awe at the heap of pins in her hand. She wondered how he couldn't have noticed them before, but they were the exact shade of her hair – and purposely so. She supposed she couldn't blame him.
"Sorry," she muttered, dropping the pins back into the container she'd plucked them out of on the counter. "I'm just getting kind of sick of this hair."
Barry frowned again. "Why? I like it."
"I thought you liked my long hair better," she said, looking up at him speculatively.
He shrugged. "You've only ever had hair past your shoulder, Iris. I think you're beautiful and so by default long hair on you is beautiful because it's all I've ever seen."
"Oh." Her shoulders slumped.
His brows furrowed together worriedly.
"I sense that was the wrong answer."
"No." She shook her head. "It's just…I cut it because you were gone. Because I thought you liked my long hair and cutting it was a way to detach from my memory of you, which is what I was trying to do in order to…you know."
"I know," he said softly, and she hoped she hadn't royally screwed up his entire day. But then she felt his hand rubbing soothing circles on her back and gently urging her toward him. She nearly melted into his chest when she finally made contact.
"I think it's cute, too," she admitted.
"It is." He pressed his lips to the top of her head.
"I just want to be able to do stuff with it too. I used to be able to do a whole bunch of different things. Now I can't do much at all, unless I plan on using a ton of hair spray and not moving around very much, which, as you know, is not very likely in the lives we lead."
He chuckled, "Nope."
She groaned and snuggled closer, wrapping her arms around his waist entirely.
"Thanks, Barry," she said, inhaling his scent imbedded into the soft gray fabric of his t-shirt.
"For?" He continued rubbing soothing, slow circles on her back.
Iris lifted her head up to look at him, and his hands stilled.
"For coming up here."
He smiled. "I have breakfast downstairs."
Her eyes lit up. "Breakfast, huh?" He nodded. "What kind of breakfast?"
"All kinds," he said, then leaned down so their noses brushed. "Any kind you want."
She sighed contently. "That's my favorite kind."
He pressed a kiss to her cheek, then pulled back.
"C'mon." He released her and took one of her hands in his own. "Eat now. Stress over hair later."
She laughed but followed him anyway.
"Okay, Barry Allen, whatever you say."
Ten minutes later, finished with her breakfast and still watching Barry devour his, all thought of short hair that was condemned to one hairstyle was forgotten.
Barry's hair was messy, partially falling over his face just like hers, but he was undeterred. He just continued to eat as if he wasn't getting syrup on the tips of his locks and butter left unwiped at the corner of his lips. If it had been anyone else, Iris might've found it absolutely necessary to grab a napkin and clean them up for them.
But this was Barry, her soon-to-be husband, who was the hottest mess there ever was.
"What?" he asked when he caught her staring.
She shook her head, fighting the smile as she crawled over to where he sat on the couch and straddled him.
"Iris?"
She could already feel him hardening beneath her. God, she loved that.
She licked off the butter on his lips, the droplet of syrup sticking to his hair and the tiniest piece of pancake there ever was that had somehow managed to stay stuck to his chin. More syrup underneath probably, she reasoned.
He licked his lips and shifted slightly when she finished cleansing his face of all breakfast matter. His hands clenched around her waist once, wondering how much time they had.
"You, uh, going to put that tongue anywhere else…by any chance?"
Iris's eyes widened. She pulled back enough to look into his face, which was blushing fiercely. Normally when Barry got suggestive, he was not bashful about it one bit.
She snapped her mouth shut, brushed past the remark and leaned forward enough to kiss the sweetly sensitive spot where his jaw and neck meet. He shivered beneath her.
"Iriiiis."
The literal vibrations in his voice made her smile against his skin. She kissed the spot again.
"Barry," she returned.
She felt his adam's apple bob beside her and grabbed his hand on her back, lowering it deliberately to her ass and squeezing the cheek with both their hands.
He shuddered.
"Barry?"
"Yeah?" he rasped.
She lifted her head to look at him and placed one finger on his chin.
"You know what would make me feel reeeeally good about not being able to do much about my hair?"
He blinked, as if he'd completely forgotten that was an issue that had come up relatively recently.
"What?" he asked instead.
"Morning sexxx."
His cheeks flushed again, but then the color faded back to normal and his eyes darkened. Iris got chills.
"I love you."
She was about to respond with a cheeky remark, but in the next instant they were upstairs on their bed, their clothes off and Barry's tongue doing incredible things to every inch of her.
"Oh, Barry."