disclaimer: disclaimed.
dedication: to MaCall.
notes: i love barry/iris but man i am still thinkin about barry/felicity so
title: all our demons bright and beautiful
summary: Roads not taken. Or, what we might have been. — Barry/Felicity.
—
.
.
.
.
.
"Bye, Barry," she says, smiling like the sun.
Her hands look strange in the train's fluorescent, too white and warped out like a Dali painting, all melting clocks and crooked trees. There's something that itches inside him to reach for her, touch her to make sure she's still real.
Felicity isn't like Iris. Iris is a solid thing, grounded in the world, coloured bright and beautiful, and he knows that if he looks away she won't disappear.
There's no guarantee, with Felicity.
So he sits there, and watches her smile, and thinks: maybe.
"What if we did?"
"Huh?" she asks, pushes her glasses up her nose. She blinks at him, and there's something so happy and off-beat about her that Barry nearly does a double-take. Her hair is a golden cloud loose around her face, and he has to wonder how often she allows herself the freedom to do that, to be someone who isn't on all the time.
(It can't be often. He thinks of Kaitlyn, thinks of the curls in her hair, and wonders.)
"I mean. Look, I know—Oliver. I get that. But—"
Barry reflects, for a fraction of a second, that he is really terrible at feelings. He can run faster than the speed of sound, but he still can't quite figure out how to talk to pretty girls. Fuck his whole life.
"But?" Felicity says, pulls the word out and holds it softly like a flower in her mouth because there's something here, and they both know it. "But what, Barry?"
"But maybe we could be good, too," he says.
The train is empty around them, metal and fabric and glass over the hum of wheels against tracks. He stares somewhere left of her nose while he gathers the courage to look her in the eye, but when he finally raises his head, she's already there. Her mouth has curved up soft and sweet, gaze warm like fire, and she shakes her head almost not at all.
"Do you really think that?" she asks. "Do you really think we could be… good?"
"Yeah," Barry says. "I do."
She takes this breath, a weird inhale through her nose like she's made a decision. It's not something he really has context for, because despite that he's known her for a year, Felicity is still a mystery. He doesn't know what she eats at three in the morning, or even what kind of ice cream she likes, and he doesn't know her nightmares, the dark sticky parts of a soul that every person has. He doesn't know what she looks like when she wakes up but he—wants to. Maybe.
They could be good.
And Iris, well, Iris has Eddie. Iris has Eddie and they're probably going to get married and Barry knows he can't expect them not to be together, can't expect them not to be in love with each other when he never made a move and Iris didn't know. He's not an asshole, he can handle that this failure is on him.
(Has always been on him. Will always be on him. Always, always, always.)
"I'm not her," Felicity says, very quietly, looks him in the eye. "I can't be. Ollie acts like I'm Laurel, sometimes—she's his ex, it's super weird—but I can't be, and I won't be Iris, either. I'm just me. Just Felicity. You know that, right?"
"Yeah," Barry says. "I know. You kinda read my mind."
"Your face is an open book," she says, and the smile comes back as the corners of her eyes crinkle up. "You don't hide things often, do you?"
"I'm a pretty bad liar," he agrees, because it's true.
They go silent, then, for a moment, and they just watch each other. There's something honest in it, this quiet regard: they have no expectations of each other. Maybe that's what they need—maybe that's what they always needed. Maybe they could be something new and something different and something clean.
The horizon is cranberry and indigo with the last reaching flares of the sunset.
Barry touches her wrist. The bones here are fine, strong but brittle. Her nails are round and unpainted, probably the least girly thing about her. "Felicity, can I—?"
"Yeah," she says, and tucks flyaway blonde hair behind her ear. Smiling, still. "Of course. Go for it."
"Go for it? Who says that when someone's gonna kiss them?"
"Me, I guess," she giggles.
It's stupidly cute. Barry leans forwards to kiss her. They've got an empty carriage and four hours until they're back in Starling City. This might be the best idea he's had since he woke up, because they could be good. They could. He kisses her and kisses her. He kisses her until neither of them can breathe.
(He finds out that the bend of her elbow is ticklish. These are the things he needs to learn.)
Quietly, sweetly, the night passes away.
fin.