When Barry Allen walked into the apartment that he shared with one of his closest friends after returning from a week-long criminstalistics conference, the last thing he expected was to be attacked by said friend. He had just walked in and had dropped his suitcase hard on the floor when Bette San Souci, his old college girlfriend, and current roommate, came from seemingly nowhere and threw herself at him, pushing him back against the door. Her eyes were wide as she clamped her hand over his mouth and pressed him harder against the door while holding a finger over her lips, signaling for him to be quiet. Barry furrowed his brows in confusion, thinking that someone dangerous was in the apartment, but Bette's smile that crossed her lips swiftlu punted that thought out of his head.
"Hi, Barry," she greeted him with a whisper, though she had yet to remove her hand from his mouth. "Welcome back."
Barry shook his head to remove his mouth from under her hand and frowned at her disapprovingly. "What's going on, B? Why did you just att-"
Bette's hand slapped over his mouth once more, effectively silencing him, as she turned her head and stared worriedly at the door of the room that had once belonged to their other roommate, Mark Mardon, before he had moved out three weeks before. Barry's eyes followed hers as he found himself more and more confused by her actions.
"Shhhh," she shushed him sternly. "You're going to disturb Iris, and she gets really angry and frustrated when people disrupt her while she's writing."
"Who's Iris? And what in the hell is going on, B?" Barry demanded once he had pulled his mouth from her hand again. He had learned his lesson this time and had lowered his voice to a whisper.
Bette let go of him and started walking away. She looked over her shoulder and beckoned him to follow but put another finger over her lips to tell him to remain quiet. Rolling his eyes at the whole thing, Barry followed reluctantly.
"Iris is our new roommate," Bette expounded at her normal volume once they were both seated at the kitchen table. "She's my best friend, who I've known since I was little. She needed a place to stay after her brother got married and decided to move to Coast City with his wife, so I told her that she should come and stay here."
"B, I thought we agreed that we were going to find our next roommate together. I can't believe that you would just move someone in while I was away and not even tell me about it!"
"I'm sorry about not telling you, Barry, but Iris's situation called for haste, and that's why I made a lot of the calls that I made." Bette actually looked slightly remorseful for her actions, but that lasted for less than a second before she was grinning again. "I'm not going to apologize for moving Iris in, though. She's a little stand-offish and something of a recluse, but she's one of the most amazing people I know, and she'll be a perfect addition to the apartment."
Barry scoffed but shrugged his shoulders. "Whatever, I guess this just saves me from having to run people's credit and call references," he relented. "She checks out, right?"
Bette nodded her head frantically. "Her credit is perfect! She could be living in a lot nicer digs if she wanted, but like I said before, she's a recluse and likes to be surrounded by familiar people, which is why she agreed to move in when I offered her Mark's old room."
"What's with us having to be quiet around her room?" he asked, needing more clarification.
"She's a writer, and she gets really focused when she's working," Bette answered. "She's in the middle of writing her newest book, and I know she's been stressed about it for a while, so I thought it best that we give her a nice, quiet atmosphere for her to write."
"What kinds of books does she write?" Barry inquired, hoping to glean more information about their newest roommate.
"I don't know – something about heroes and villains, or something like that," Bette remarked with An elusive shrug of her shoulders. "All I know is that she gets really focused and intense when she's in the middle of writing, so we just need to be quiet."
"For real, Bette?" Barry groaned as he ran his hands tiredly over his face. He did not feel like dealing with this, especially after a four-hour flight. "We're suppose to be quiet in our own home because of her?"
"We don't have to be quiet everywhere, just when we're by her room," she reasoned, but then a smirk crossed her lips. "That means that since you're in the room next to hers, you have tone down your porn film theatrics with all of the ladies you parade through here, especially that Patty-girl who has the most annoying voice ever. Maybe you can take your playboy moves to your girlfriends' houses instead of bringing it here, especially now that you're outnumbered."
Barry narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "You did this on purpose, didn't you?" he snapped at her accusingly. "You brought her here so that you could get your own agendas voted in for the apartment, didn't you? You are one sly dog, San Souci."
"I have to admit that that was part of it," Bette responded, showing no remorse for her actions. "But I also love Iris, and I'm happy to have her next door to me instead of a whole city away."
Rolling his eyes, Barry rose from his seat. "Whatever, B, I'm too tired to argue. I just wanna unpack my suitcase and go to sleep. We'll talk more about this in the morning."
"Welcome back, Barry," Bette called out to his retreating form, but Barry just looked over his shoulder and sent her a nod before heading to his room.
He was about to walk into his door after picking up his suitcase from the entryway, when he found himself pausing in front of the door next to his. He was curious about the new person who lay behind it, and was almost tempted to knock and introduce himself, just to get a rile out of them, but he thought better of it. He would introduce himself later when he was fully rested.
The first time Barry meets Iris, he gets a door slammed in his face.
He had just gotten home from a long day at work that had felt a lot longer because Patty Spivot – his self-proclaimed girlfriend – had refused to let him work on the mountain of paperwork on his desk until he had agreed to have dinner with her that coming Friday. He was loosening his tie and making his way to his room, when he noticed the door next to his slightly ajar.
Even though Iris had been there a whole week, Barry had yet to get so much as a peek at her. He heard her typing whenever he walked past her door, but she had never once come out when he was home or awake. He knew that she came out of her room because sometimes when he went into the kitchen, he would see two plates in the sink from her and Bette sharing a meal, which Bette was all too happy to confirm to him, and when he went into the bathroom, there was a new toothbrush next to his, but her face still remained a mystery to him. She was like a ghost that could be heard but never seen, not that he had minded too much. She was quiet and she paid rent. That was all that was suppose to matter.
He did not realize just how curious he was to actually catch a glimpse of her until he saw the door of her room open and found himself standing directly in front of it, trying to peep through the crack. The fact that he was acting like a total creeper was not lost to him, but he felt that it was worth it when he caught sight of her profile where she was seated at her desk, typing frantically while her eyes were fixated on her computer screen.
Iris was far from what he expected, at least from what he could see through the crack. She was dressed in comfortable clothes - a plain white t-shirt that hung off her dark brown shoulder, dark gray sweatpants that looked a little big on her, and large black socks that seemed to swallow her feet. Her hair was a dark mass of curls that was pulled up into a messy bun with a stray curl hanging down here and there, framing her face. A pair of dark-framed glasses sat on the bridge of a perfect nose with the lenses reflecting the images on her computer screen, hiding her eyes from his view. Her lips were full and red, especially her bottom lip that she had just released from the hold of her perfectly straight, white teeth. She was pretty enough, and completely normal-looking, unlike the image he had conjured of her in his head.
When Bette had said that Iris was something of a recluse, he had automatically pictured her as one of the frumpier looking people he saw on the hoarder documentaries he sometimes watched when there was nothing else on. He had pictured a woman with crooked yellow teeth, crazed eyes and bad skin. His imagination had run away with that throughout the week the more he heard her walking about only for her to just disappear into her room as soon as he would open his door. The fact that she never made an attempt to introduce herself to him at all made him think she was purposely avoiding him, which in turn only added to the suspicion that she was somehow scared to show her face to him. Staring at her through the crack in the door, however, he found that he could not have been more wrong.
"Hey, what are you doing?"
Barry jumped at Bette's voice suddenly sounding off directly into his ear, and he stepped back to see his other roommate looking at him with her arms folded with her foot tapping on the ground. Her lips were pressed into a thin line and her eyes were narrowed, making him aware that he had been caught in a pretty compromising position, even though it was completely innocent-ish.
"Were you seriously spying on Iris?" she hissed out through gritted teeth.
"I-I-I..." he stammered guiltily, not knowing what he could say that could get him out of it since he really had been spying on their newest roommate. He flicked his eyes back at the door, which still remained slightly ajar, though he swore he heard the clacking of the keyboard stop.
Bette rolled her eyes and walked past him before she opened the door wider and stepped inside Iris's room. She turned around to face him while holding the door open. She then beckoned him to come forward.
"Iris, Barry wants to meet you," she said loudly to the woman behind her, the tone of her voice dour, like she was bored of the whole situation already.
Barry reluctantly walked forward and stood in the doorway where he nervously waved at Iris, who was still seated in front of her computer, though now her eyes were fixed on him. He could actually see her eyes now and noticed that they were dark brown almost black, though they took on a more honey-like color when she looked into the light.
"H-Hi, I'm Barry," he greeted her awkwardly, his tongue tripping over the words. "It's finally nice to actually meet you."
She looked at him solemnly, her eyes raking over his entire body before flicking back to his face. Her demeanor remained impassive as she took him in before she simply returned her gaze back to her computer screen. "Hello, Barry, I'm Iris," she offered simply and then started typing again like he wasn't there.
Barry felt the dismissal and found himself frowning as he turned to Bette who was grinning wide as she looke between him and Iris thoughtully, like she now found the whole situation suddenly vert entertaining. "I knew it," she said as she grabbed the doorknob. "This is perfect," she added before slamming the door in Barry's face.
It was nearly a week-and-half later before Barry saw Iris again. It was a little past one in the morning, and he had gotten up, needing to pee. When he had walked out of the bathroom, he had noticed a light in kitchen and slowly made his way over, thinking that Bette had left the light on, which she had done countless times before. He was still half asleep when he walked into the kitchen, but the sight he walked in on woke him up like a glass of cold water being thrown in his face.
The refrigerator door, which could be seen once he walked into the kitchen, was open and Iris was standing in front of it, her body silhouetted by the light coming from inside. From what he could see, she was wearing a lot more form-fitting clothes than their first encounter because he swore that he was seeing every single curve of her slender body. His throat went dry when he saw her bend over to reach for something in the back of the fridge, giving him an even better view of her backside. He almost expected Bette to suddenly pop up and berate him for ogling her friend, but no one came. He shook his head and silently berated himself on her behalf before clearing his throat of the lump that had begun to build inside it.
Barry immediately knew he had made a huge mistake when he saw Iris visibly start at the sound of him clearing his throat, which led to her hitting her head on the bottom of the freezer door with a loud thud. He ran to her side, silently spouting off a litany of swear words inside his head when he saw the tears in her eyes and saw her glasses become askew on her nose as she placed her hand where her head had collided with the door. The accusing look she shot at him only made him want to just back up and leave before he embarrassed himself even more than he had, but he weathered through it to crouch down to her level. Even in the midst of his horror, he could not help but secretly delight in the new bit of information he had just gotten: she was tiny!
"God, I am so sorry!" he cried out as he stood beside her, placing his hands on her shoulders and pulling up a chair for her to sit on. "I didn't mean to scare you!"
She continued to rub at the smarting wound on her head and glared at him while fixing her glasses. "So what were you meaning to do when you cleared your throat after sneaking up behind me?" she deadpanned back at him.
Barry awkwardly rubbed at the back of his neck, feeling his face warm as he realized that she had a point. He avoided answering and escaped from her glaring eyes by going to the freezer and retrieving an ice pack. When he wrapped the pack in a towel and handed it to her, he was pleased to see that she seemed a lot less hostile as she focused on placing the pack gently on what was most likely going to be a large lump on the top of her head.
"I know I must seem like such a creep to you," he said, placing himself in the chair across the table from her, thinking it best to keep some space between them. "I know our initial meeting and this encounter have probably painted me in a bad light, but I swear that I'm not a pervert or anything like that."
The disbelieving look that crossed her face just confirmed how poorly he had handled their first interactions. He sighed heavily and gazed at her pleadingly. "I'd really appreciate it if we could possibly just.. start over?"
Iris did not say anything for a long moment, her eyes merely looking at Barry searchingly from behind her dark frames. The silence was so long and tense that Barry was almost tempted to just give it up and return to his room with the thought of avoiding Iris for the rest of his life, but before he could follow through with that urge, she nodded her had in reluctant acceptance.
"Hello, Barry, my name is Iris," she said, extending her free hand to him.
Barry smiled gratefully as he grasped the hand firmly in his own. "It's nice to meet you, Iris, I'm Barry," he replied eagerly, hoping his smile would give off how appreciative he was of her giving him a second chance without creeping her out even more. "Welcome to the apartment."
Iris pulled back her hand after a quick shake, and nodded her head. "Thanks," she mumbled back. She abruptly rose from her seat immediately after, taking the icepack with her, leaving Barry to stare after her with a small victorious smirk on his face.
Following that night, Barry saw Iris a lot more often than he had before. Even though he couldn't say that he saw her everyday due to her usually being busy writing her book and he being busy with his own life, there were usually no more than two days between sightings. She came out of her room more often, but it was still mostly during the times that he wasn't home, and even when she did come out while he was there, she only really talked with Bette – her interactions with him mostly consisted of a simple 'hello', 'hi', or just a nod in passing.
He had initially assumed that it was her shyness that made her act so aloof around him, but when Bette had invited people over for a small party welcoming Iris to Central City, Iris had interacted with everyone with relative ease. Sure, she still stayed close to Bette through most of the evening, and she was still a little withdrawn, but she never evaded people who tried to talk to her, and she never gave off the impression that she was uncomfortable when people tried to pull her into deeper conversation even though Barry could see in her eyes that she was. People actually seemed to be drawn to her, seeking her opinions on different things and events, and she never shied away from any of it; in fact, she was pretty damn commanding of it all. The only one she shied away from was him.
Every time he would attempt to draw her into conversation, she would avoid looking at him or would just give him single-word responses before escaping to the other side of the room or back to Bette's side. He could barely talk to her for more than five minutes before she ended up bolting, and Barry could not wrap his head around why.
He got the strong sense that despite their re-introduction in the kitchen, Iris still did not like him. In addition to her not really speaking to him, he swore that whenever he walked into a room, she would shut down and make herself as small as possible, which was fairly easy given how tiny she was already. She would look everywhere around the room except to where he was, avoiding him at all costs. The only time she ever seemed to actually look at him was when she thought that he wasn't paying attention to her. The moment he gazed back, her eyes would themselves away from him like a mouse being chased by a cat. No matter what he did or how hard he tried, she would always keep her distance from him, which made him frustrated.
It wasn't like Barry was lacking in the female attention department. Before Patty, he practically had a different girl in his bed every other night, which actually drove Bette crazy, but she had learned to live with it because both he and Mark had voted against her proposal that he be forbidden from bringing his romps home. Women obviously had a thing for smart scientists who still liked to have a good time and were confident in themselves because he never really had to look hard for companionship, and he almost never had to try hard to get anyone to like him. Even Bette, whom he dated in college but broke up with, remained good friends with him and had even agreed to move in with him in a platonic way after they had graduated from college. Everyone liked him, which was why he supposed he found it so hard to understand the fact that his new roommate seemed to despise him.
With Iris, everything had started off rough, but then he had gotten a chance to rectify it. He had hoped that meant that she and he would get to be close, like he was with Bette, but she had built up a wall around herself that he couldn't get through. She was so hard to understand that he thought it best to enlist Bette to help him understand why she treated him the way that she did.
He regretted that decision almost immediately when Bette had snapped down on him like a steel trap before he could even get started. Apparently, she wasn't a fan of his sneaky tactics when it came to Iris, especially since she had witnessed him peeping on her in the beginning before he and Iris had started off on a better foot. The red-haired explosives expert automatically took his questions the wrong way, jumpting to the assumption that Barry's queries were being made for motivations that were less than honorable.
"Don't you dare even think about going in that direction with Iris, Bartholomew!" she had snarled at him as she placed a warning finger under his chin. She had pulled out the big guns by calling him by his dreaded full name, which let him know that she was serious. "Iris is not the kind of girl that you can toy around with.
Bette was always so calm and sweet, but she could be frightening when she was angry. Her temper was fiery and explosive, which was why Barry wanted to soothe her fury before she got to the point where she would deman his head. Before he could argue and explain his true reasoning for wanting to know Iris, however, the fiery-haired beauty had already continued her rant.
"She's not the girl for you."
"B, I'm not-"
"Leave Iris alone, Barry," Bette stated, cutting him off sternly. "Stay with Patty. Despite how much I abhor her, she can take your bullshit and still keep coming back. Dealing with you is the only thing that's likable about her."
She had then walked out of the room without letting him offer his piece, leaving Barry to stare at the place where she been standing, confused by what had happened.
Because he cherished his friendship with Bette, Barry decided that he would give up his endeavors to befriend Iris or even get to know her. If keeping his distance from her meant keeping his fiery-haired roommate from killing him, then he was resigned to letting things stay the way they were with his newest roommate.
Of course, that notion didn't last long at all. That very same evening, following Bette's blowout at him, Barry had walked into the kitchen and found Bette and Iris sitting at the table, eating mint chocolate-chip ice cream and talking about Bette's current boyfriend, Tony Woodward. They were so involved in their girl talk that they paid little attention to him as he appeared in the doorway. Barry chose to pay them the same courtesy as he made his way across the kitchen, giving them a wide berth, to grab a beer from the refrigerator. It was as he was holding his beer in one hand and contemplating what he could eat with it that the sound of her laughter reached his ears.
He had vaguely heard Bette telling Iris about something funny that Tony had done earlier that week, but he had forced himself to tune it out as he had eyed the leftover Chinese from two nights back. The sound of Iris's laughter, however, could not be easily ignored because Barry swore he could feel that laughter in the very center of his being. It was such a huge contrast from everything he had heard from her up to that point that it was like someone had just picked him up and threw him into the middle of a lake without a life preserver. Her laughter was musical.
Barry chanced a glance over his shoulder to where Iris and Bette were still giggling with one another at the table, and he immediately regretted it. What was meant to be a quick glance turned into an unwavering stare as his eyes became fixated on the smile he saw on Iris's lips. No matter how loudly his brain told him that he needed to look away, he could not force himself to listen. He was transfixed.
Even though she didn't flaunt it, Iris West was a very attractive girl. Most of her clothes were worn for comfort rather than style or appearance, and her glasses that she always wore covered a large area of her face, but she was still capable of garnering a second glance from most people she walked by. She was really pretty, even with the perpetual solemn look she always wore on her face. Seeing the smile on her face, however, decimated that image from his mind. It was like a light turning on after being in the dark for a long time. At first, it was almost too bright to look at as he tried to decipher the change in her face from what he was seeing to the memories of her sullen looks she shot him. The longer she smiled, however, the more his eyes were able to become more accustomed to that foreign expression and the better he was able to see what he could not see before. Iris was not just a pretty face, she was absolutely beautiful – the very epitome of beauty.
As if sensing that he was having this realization about her, Iris's eyes veered away from Bette's face and looked directly into his. Barry became a deer caught in headlights because he knew that he had just been caught gawking at her, and yet he lacked the ability to avert his eyes from hers. He was stuck in an awkward position both physically and mentally, and he was finding it difficult to gather his wits about him enough to rectify either.
To his horror the smile faded from her lips, and the happiness that had lit up her entire face faded with it. The usual cool look reappeared just as she averted her eyes away from his to stare at her hands that were folded in front of her on top of the table. Her sudden downturn in emotion did not go unnoticed because Barry felt Bette's cold glare burning into his back as he finally tore his eyes from Iris in order to finish his errand in the fridge. He rolled his eyes and groaned quietly, knowing that another lecture was coming his way.
Iris made her excuses a second later and retreated from the kitchen, leaving Bette and Barry behind. The latter frantically busied himself with fixing a sandwich, hoping that would deter the former from going in on him, but he wasn't so lucky.
"What in the hell are you doing, Barry?" Bette asked him, appearing at his side, her blue eyes glaring angrily at him.
"I'm trying to make a sandwich and catch the game, Bette," he responded evasively, purposely avoiding looking at her.
"Did I, somehow, make myself unclear earlier?"
"Well, considering how you completely missed my point entirely, earlier, I think we both were pretty unclear." He knew that the snark wasn't doing him any favors, but his own defenses were rising and he couldn't stop it. "You assumed that I was asking about Iris because I was interested in sleeping with her, but that's not the case."
"Really? You're going to pretend like you weren't just staring at her like she was a piece of prime rib less than a minute ago, or that you haven't spent the past three weeks that she's been here, staring after her with that dopey look you get when you want to make a move on a girl?"
Barry frowned. "Okay, I will admit to staring at her, just now, but I have not been staring at her at all these past three weeks! I'm not interested in her like that, B!"
"You could have fooled me, Barry. The way your eyes follow her everywhere she goes whenever she walks into a room must be all in my imagination, even though everyone else in the same room as you and her has seen it, too."
Furrowing his brow, Barry looked at Bette, confused. "What are you talking about? You're not making sense."
"Oh, please! You think that I haven't seen you always becoming alert whenever she walks into the room?" Bette fired back at him. "Other people have seen it, too, Barry. It's not just me."
Barry opened his mouth to refute, but once again, Bette kept going off.
"Lisa actually came up to me after the party last weekend, and she asked if Iris was your new girlfriend. When I told her that you guys barely even talked, she told me that she had tried talking to you multiple times throughout the night but that you were too fixed on what Iris was doing to even notice that she was trying to hit on you the whole night.
"Even Tony asked me what was up with you because he said that you barely talked to anyone the entire night because you were always hovering around Iris."
Barry was confused. He heard the words that were coming out of her mouth, but his head couldn't quite wrap around how badly everything had been misconstrued. Sure, his curiosity had been piqued by Iris, and sure, he had found her pretty, but he wasn't interested her romantically. How could he be when she was constantly evading and avoiding him at every turn? What they had seen was him trying to get to know his newest roommate. That was it.
"That's just not true! I don't know what you or anyone thinks they saw but they were all mistaken because I don't think of Iris like that," he declared firmly. "The only reason I was even asking questions about her earlier was because I wanted to know why she treats me the way that she does. I mean, she's always ducking out whenever I walk into a room that she's in, and she gets really shy when she's around me. I can barely get in a word before she usually just bolts, and it's driving me insane because I want to get to know her, but she just keeps shutting down my efforts."
Bette sighed as she pinched the bridge of her nose and shook her head in exasperation.
"Iris is not like all the other girls you like to play around with, Barry," she replied with another sigh, her voice gentle again as she seemed to have decided to try another approach to the situation. "She's been through a lot of shit growing up, and yet she still came out of all of it as this amazing person who feels a lot but is afraid of showing it."
Barry listened silently, refusing to speak just in case the sound of his voice broke the moment and stopped Bette from continuing.
"All I'm going to say," Bette continued on, "is that Iris is very strong but very sensitive. If you hurt her, she shatters, but she will still try and hide it because she always feels the need to keep up the strong facade that she's been putting up for years. The fact that she feels the need to keep that facade up around you means that either you are making her uncomfortable, or that she may feel more for you than she lets on. In either case, I need you to leave this alone – to leave her alone."
"B, I-"
"Just listen to me, Barry," Bette interjected pleadingly, the fire flaring up in her blue eyes. There was desperation in those eyes as well as something Barry could only read as fear. "You have Patty. You obviously seem to care about her, but you're letting your curiosity allow your eyes to wander. Frankly, I'm used to that, but if you let them wander, don't let them become fixated on Iris. She's not made for the drama that your life entails, and she will end up getting hurt, which she does not deserve. So just, please, leave her alone."
She stared at him earnestly after saying her piece, and Barry understood that she was looking for confirmation that he would do as she asked. It was the perfect time for him to put to rest her assumptions that he felt anything beyond curiosity for Iris – to let all of the misconceptions and mistaken thoughts be put to rest – and yet he found himself feeling reluctant to make a promise like that. Iris's smile kept flashing in his mind, and for some odd reason, the thought of letting that go felt almost unbearable. It seemed cruel and unfair for anyone to ask him to give that up.
"Barry?" Bette called out to him, tearing Barry away from a thought that was veering dangerously close to something resembling an epiphany.
"Huh?" he mumbled, shaking his head to rid himself of that thought.
The red-haired beauty smiled. "Can you promise that you will give this whole Iris-thing up?" she asked him pleadingly.
He fought back the nauseated feeling building up in his stomach as and nodded with a forced smile. "Of course, Bette." His tone was lifeless, the words feeling like sawdust on his tongue. "I just wanted to get to know her better, but I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea, so it's done. No big deal."
"You promise?" she pushed.
"I promise."
Barry ignored the happy smile that crossed Bette's lips as he picked up his plate and his beer and made his way out to the living room. His body felt like it was running on autopilot as he sat down in front of the TV that had the game playing. His eyes became fixed on the screen, but he failed to really take in anything that was taking place. One thought kept repeating over and over in his head, taking precedence over everything else.
I think I made a mistake.
AN: A submission for westallenhiatusweek: Day 9/Earth 11 – Roommates.