Sometime in the night, the door opened. Iris jerked awake, lying wide-eyed until she identified where she was. The Thawnes' house, on their couch, curled up under the ugliest and most snuggly crocheted blanket she'd ever seen in her life.

The rain had started freezing on the streets, and Henry wouldn't hear of Iris driving home, especially since she'd had a few glasses of her own wine. Joe ganged up on her, telling them about her awful car, until she gave in and agreed to sleep on the couch.

But who was coming in the door?

She peered over her shoulder and saw a tall, lanky figure in the shadows. Her fingers curled into the blanket, and she wished she were at home, because she kept a baseball bat under her bed, and -

"Barry, hey!" Wally whispered from the kitchen.

Iris's fingers relaxed, and she felt ridiculous.

Barry. Of course. The mysterious Barry. Who else would be strolling in the front door at three in the morning?

"Wally, hi, man!" Barry whispered back. "Sleeping over?" He didn't sound one bit surprised to find the younger boy in his aunt and uncle's house at three in the morning.

There was something familiar about his voice. She couldn't place it.

"Yeah, I fell asleep in the chair after presents and Dad abandoned me."

"More like you didn't feel like walking home in the freezing rain." There was a pleasant laugh in Barry's voice. "Midnight snack?"

"I'm a growing boy. Want some?"

"Like I'll say no to Cocoa Puffs." A bowl chimed with the musical sound of sugar in cereal form being poured into it, and then the glug of a milk jug. "So, is that the famous Iris on the couch?"

"Yeah! She's awesome, you're going to love her. Here, check these out - "

Iris guessed Wally was showing off some of the selfies he'd insisted on taking with her, adding ridiculous filters until her sides hurt from laughing.

Barry's voice, when he spoke, sounded strained. "Th-that's Iris?"

"Yeah."

"She's who Eddie's engaged to? Are you sure?"

"Uhhhh, yeah, I'm sure. What's up? You've got a funny look on your face."

"Nothing," Barry said. "Just hungry." Cereal crunched.

Iris swallowed hard.

She didn't relax until she heard them both go up the stairs. She managed to fall asleep again for another couple of hours, but when her alarm went off at six, she was awake immediately.

She'd just finished texting Nora a thank-you when a voice said, "Good morning."

She let out a strangled squawk and whipped around to see Barry leaning in the door of the kitchen, a giant turkey sandwich in one hand. He had a young, pleasant face, even with a mouth full of sandwich, and light brown hair falling over his forehead.

"Good morning," she said, eying the sandwich - how had he snuck around so quietly to make it?

"You're Iris," he said, reclaiming her attention.

"And you're Barry," she said.

"Yeah. That's me."

He had on flannel sleeping pants and a faded t-shirt that proclaimed him a member of the West Central High Mathlympics team, circa about ten years before. It stretched taut over his shoulders, as if he'd grown a lot since first acquiring it. His long-toed feet were bare, and for some reason, that minor detail made shyness well up in her, forcing babble out of her mouth.

"We missed you last night," she said, and immediately felt like an idiot. We? As if she really belonged here.

He looked down at his sandwich. "Yeah, I, uh, there was work stuff."

"That's what I heard."

"But I got a sandwich, which is the best part of Christmas turkey anyway, so."

"Did you get any mashed potatoes?"

"I gave them a miss."

"Wally made them, though."

"Wait, he did? Well, that's different." He glanced over his shoulder at the fridge. "Hey, you want some? Since I'm going to be fixing up a bowl anyway."

"Um, sorry, I can't. I - I hate to rush out of here, but I have to be at work at eight and I still have to shower and - yeah. All of that."

"Right," he said. "Sure."

She gave him a tight smile, wondering if this was the moment he was going to say, I know you're not Eddie's fiancee, get out of here, you fake faker.

He smiled back, and there was something funny about it, something tight around the corners of his mouth. She hitched her purse higher on her shoulder, mumbled, "So, bye," and started for the door.

"Hey," he said, and she jolted.

"Look, I - " she started to say.

But he kept talking. "Drive careful, okay? The ice is pretty wicked."

"Right," she said, and escaped.

Barry watched the door close behind her and thought, It figures.

He finished off his sandwich, vacuumed up some mashed potatoes, and climbed the stairs as quietly as possible. His ankle twinged, and he paused on the landing to roll it around a little. It had broken the night before, when he'd wiped out on a frozen street, and he might have taken the air cast off just a little too soon. It would be fine after some sleep.

He paused by his aunt and uncle's door, wondering if he should wake them up. But he'd see them for breakfast, not too long from now. And have to make up some good excuse for why he'd missed dinner and gifts and -

He'd never missed Christmas. Never. It made his chest go hollow. But there had been a rash of crimes last night, and everything had taken so much longer than it should have, and getting his ankle set certainly hadn't helped.

He thought grumpily at all the criminals, human and meta: Thanks for mostly taking actual Christmas Day off, fellas, but that didn't help me today, now did it?

His only save Christmas Day had been the one at the coffee shop. With that beautiful girl behind the counter. When her big, dark eyes had blinked open and looked into his, something in him had clicked - oh. There you are.

He'd never felt anything like it.

And then Eddie, unconscious on the floor, and he'd forgotten everything else (mostly everything else) in rushing him to the hospital, his head lolling in obscene slow-motion on Barry's shoulder. Barry's heart had stuttered don't-die-don't-die-don't-die in his chest until he was able to drop Eddie off in the ER. When the doctors hadn't immediately started yelling for crash carts, he'd allowed himself to breathe again.

He knew how doctors were, he knew their varying stages of alarm and motion and energy, and while they'd been concerned, they hadn't been life-or-death focused. So he could zip back out and slump against the side of the building and just breathe for a few moments, because Eddie was going to live.

Between Eddie and the girl, he'd nearly forgotten to retrieve the robbers and drop them off at the nearest precinct. He'd almost knocked himself out on the locked door (your hero, Central City!) and then phased through the glass to find two tied-up robbers trying to squirm free of their bonds. No Caitlin and no beautiful coffee girl.

For a favor, he'd returned a second time to put all the scattered money back in the register and close it up tight so hopefully the beautiful girl wouldn't get in trouble with her boss.

Then he'd returned twice in two days, ordering coffee like a regular person, looking around for her without success. He'd never expected to see her in Wally's phone, with a silly and adorable flower crown filter, and Wally telling him she was Eddie's mysterious fiancee, whose existence had been blowing up his phone for the past two days.

Iris.

And you're Barry, she'd said, as if she knew him too. But of course - some guy in his aunt's kitchen, after hearing about him for two days. It had been an obvious conclusion. There was no way his name had resonated on her tongue the way hers did on his. He was just another member of the family she was about to join.

He sat on his childhood bed and rolled his ankle around again. Despite the turkey sandwich and the mashed potatoes, he was still a little hungry. He ignored it and stretched out, pressing his hand to his heart.

Leave it to him to fall in love at first sight with the girl his cousin was going to marry.

Well, that was another secret he was going to have to keep.

Iris thought for sure she was going to get raked over the coals for leaving after the robbery, but instead everyone wanted to hear the story. "I barely saw the Flash for a second," she said over and over again. "He just asked if I was okay and rushed Eddie to the hospital. That's it. Not impressive."

"But he's the Flash!"

"Well - yeah. But it's not like we had a moment , or anything. He just - I'm sure he's like that with everyone."

Sometime in the mid-morning lull, Caitlin came in and stared her down from the other side of the counter, doing a fair imitation of Snoopy-as-vulture. Iris said, "Can I help you?"

"You didn't tell them." She looked awkward for a moment. "I mean, I think you didn't tell them, because I haven't heard about it yet and they were just at the hospital and they didn't look at me differently at all."

Iris reached over and grabbed her sleeve, hauling her to the end of the counter so it looked as if they were intensely debating cake pop flavors. Fair was fair. "No, I didn't."

"Then I'll tell them."

"No!" Iris yelped, and lowered her voice when Rachel looked over like, Chill, Iris, they're globs of frosting with a little cake in them, nothing to get that vehement about. "No. Please?"

"You want me to keep lying?"

"I'm not asking you to make up stories about my blissful engagement. Just do your job and don't mention what else you know."

"Oh my god," Caitlin groaned.

"I'll tell them in a couple of days. It doesn't feel right at the moment."

"Feel right? Do you remember how I could lose my license?"

Iris had done her research. "It's more likely you'll have to pay a fine."

"That's if they don't choose to sue me."

"Are they more likely to sue you today or in a couple of days? How much difference will it really make?"

"I don't know. Fine. Okay. What's one more lie?"

"Great. I'll make your usual, on the house."

Caitlin's eyes narrowed. "Are you bribing me?"

"I'm totally bribing you."

She nodded. "Okay. I'll need something with espresso, though. I was up way too late last night, setting some idiot's ankle."

"Great. I've got just the thing." Iris ran over and mixed up Jitters' new signature drink. "It's called the Flash."

Caitlin stared at it dubiously.

"It's in honor of his save. It's coffee with an espresso shot. It'll wake you up. Want me to double that shot?"

"No, thank you, I haven't scheduled a heart attack for today."

Iris watched her take a very, very tiny sip and said, "Okay, I really don't get something."

"What?" Caitlin blinked a few times and shook her head hard. "Wow, I should have had this in med school."

"You're a very methodical woman, right? Every outfit coordinates perfectly. I've never seen you with so much as a chipped nail. You've ordered the same drink for the past four months. You've taken up to five minutes to decide between two different flavors of scone. Which is a dick move when people are in line, by the way. Stop doing that."

Caitlin blinked.

"My point is, you're not impulsive by any stretch of the imagination. So how did we get into this mess?"

Caitlin set her drink down and twisted her ring again. "Do you remember the big lightning storm in August?"

Iris pulled out a rag and started wiping down the glass to make herself look productive. "Are we going to go with extremely belated lightning psychosis or something stupid like that?"

"No," Caitlin said. "Do you remember the lab that got struck by lightning and burned down?"

"Oh, right!" she said, scrubbing at a pair of particularly sticky handprints. "That was awful." And it had been after that when the city started to get seriously weird.

"My fiance worked there."

"Oh my god," Iris said. "Is he okay?"

Caitlin said flatly. "He's dead."

Iris's hand froze. She stared at her rag for a moment, her cheeks burning. "I'm so sorry."

"Thank you." Caitlin put her hands around the mug again, as if to warm them up. "I had so many fantasies that I could have saved him, if I'd been there. I could have pulled him out of the way, I could have administered first aid, I could have gotten him to a hospital." She rubbed her thumb over the rim of the cup, wiping away the smudge of her pink lipstick. Her voice was even, expressionless. "But I wasn't there for him. I was home. Asleep. I woke up and everything was different."

Iris nodded. "So there I was, just saved Eddie's life, and you heard me say that stupid thing and - "

"It was like something else took over my brain. All I could think of was making it different for you than it was for me. Making a different ending."

Iris let out a heavy sigh. "So here we are."

"Here we are." Caitlin looked at her drink and sipped again. "This is why I don't do things on impulse, by the way. They always seem to blow up spectacularly."

Barry was examining a strand of hair through the microscope when his desk phone rang. Without looking at the caller ID, he reached out and picked it up. "Forensics, Allen speaking."

"Allen? Barry Allen?"

He pulled away from the microscope and looked at the caller ID. 4th Precinct, it said. Eddie's precinct.

He'd gotten calls from them before. He would lunge for the phone, hoping to hear Eddie's voice on the other end, but it was always a matter of police procedure. So he said, "Sure is. What can I help you with?"

"This is Tom Patterson. I'm Eddie's partner. You're Eddie's cousin or whatever, right?"

"That's me," Barry said. "Were you calling for an update? He's still out, but they say he should come out of it soon. You can stop by if you want."

"I went already. Paid my respects to your parents and all," Patterson cut in. "But this Iris girl - "

"Iris," Barry said. "She's great, isn't she?"

"Yeah, I'm sure she is, except this is the first I'm hearing about her."

Barry sat down on his chair with a thud. "What?"

"I'm saying I've never heard of her. Never seen her picture, never heard her name, never got the dirty deets about how she is in the sack - "

"Okay," Barry said hastily, "I get it, okay. Uh - " He rubbed his hair, forgetting that he was wearing sterile gloves. With a grumble, he peeled them off. "Uh, I mean, Eddie's always been a gentleman that way. Even when we were in high school. He doesn't share a lot of details."

"Yeah, he is. I hardly ever get that info. And it makes sense if it was a new thing and he didn't want to show her off to all us nasty horndogs at the 4th. But, engaged? Guy like Eddie gets engaged, he's gonna tell everybody."

"Yeah, he would," Barry said slowly. "Uh - "

"Listen, the only thing stopping me from running her and seeing what pings is that I don't have her full name yet. Nobody does. See? That's my point. So, help me out?"

Barry fiddled with a new pair of gloves, thinking fast. "How about I run the check?"

"You?"

"Sure. I can get more info, more quietly. I'll run the check and if anything pings, I'll take care of it. Quietly."

"If she's some kind of scam artist - "

"Then you can arrest her, I promise, but let me handle it until then."

Patterson let out a sigh. "Fine. Whatever. Keep me in the loop. Last thing I want is for Eddie to wake up and find out he's been taken for everything he's got."