Title: Prom

Summary: Barry couldn't do suave; he knew this without even trying. One-sided Barry/Iris introspection

Set pre-series, senior year of high school. Barry POV

This year's prom theme was James Bond, as in double-0-seven, as in 2007. Barry predicted that it would be full of guys trying to be suave, and some of them might even succeed. Barry couldn't do suave; he knew this without even trying. On a good day, he might manage what Iris called 'adorkable,' but he didn't think that would be a big selling point so far as getting a date to prom was concerned. Especially not with everybody else doing suave.

He just couldn't get excited about senior prom the way he knew he should be, the way Iris was over being asked to the dance by Virgil Hawkins, and it wasn't just because he had two left feet on the dance floor. It wasn't even that it was less than two weeks away and he still didn't have a date. (He supposed could go stag with a group of friends, but that would require him to have, y'know, a group friends, and not just scattered, assorted lab partners.)

No, he knew perfectly well why he wasn't thrilled about prom, and it rhymed with "uninvited glove."

This was supposed to be his year!

After very nearly getting up the guts to ask Iris to junior prom, Barry had been so sure he'd be ready to ask her to senior prom. It had to be this year, because after this they graduated, and then they'd be off to different colleges. Barry had been going to do it. He'd been all set to ask Iris. It was going to change everything.

He'd been mentally preparing since January, and yet when the date was announced a little over two months ago, he'd promptly fallen into a completely dysfunctional state for the rest of the week. He'd been so caught up in trying to figure out how to ask Iris, he'd repeatedly walked into doorways (and, once, a wall), tried to put his shirts on backwards or inside out almost daily (and tripped several times trying to put on his pants), eaten cereal with a fork (and Joe had given him a Look at that one. In fact, he'd been giving Barry Looks for most of that week) - the list went on and on. By the weekend, he'd finally gotten his head on straight... which hadn't meant he'd been ready to ask Iris, just that he was no longer at risk of misspelling his name on homework assignments.

In hindsight, Barry wished wished wished he'd been able to bring himself to ask Iris then. Because it wasn't long after that that Iris had met him in the hallway, beaming, catching him off guard - (he'd still been trying to figure out how to convert the stored potential energy of all his bottled-up feelings into kinetic energy that would propel him to Iris and give him the words he needed) - and she said that Virgil Hawkins had asked her to prom! Virgil may have been captain of the debate team and senior class president, but Barry bet he could probably do suave. He could probably do suave really well.

In the present, Barry thumped his head against his locker, indulging in a brief bout of jealousy, before he had to shelve it away along with his Calc II textbook. He didn't want to be jealous; envy was such a petty emotion. He wanted to be better than that - but that didn't stop the tight, roiling feeling in his chest whenever he thought about them together. He felt a little bit sick, and a lot emotional (what emotions, exactly, he couldn't find names for). In fact, it felt a bit like being constantly on the verge of crying, but Barry also knew that if he sat down and let go and actually tried to cry, nothing would happen. Except maybe a stomach ache. (It was a really confusing feeling). If this was being in love, he didn't want it.

With his forehead pressed against the cold metal of his locker, Barry focused on letting go of all the feelings he'd just dredged up. Time to be the bigger man, time to put pettiness behind him, time – time to go to lunch. He opened his locker, dropped off the textbooks he didn't need anymore, and picked up his bagged lunch. And if he slammed his locker door with more force than strictly necessary, well, who could blame him?

Maybe he just wouldn't go to prom at all.

Once he was seated at their usual lunch table, however, Barry found that all the emotions threatening to explode out of him had reduced to a dull simmer (he'd had a lot of practice, and a lot of reason to get very, very good at it). Iris sat across from him, Virgil nowhere in sight, and asked him how he was doing. She was smiling at him as she unwrapped her sandwich, and he smiled back and responded, thankful that nothing had to change. The more he thought about it, considering it from all angles, the more he realized it was probably for the best that Virgil-Probably-Suave-Hawkins had beaten him to the punch. It meant that things didn't have to change. They could remain as they were, best friends, and for the time being things did not have to become awkward or uncomfortable between them. Because there were so, so many ways admitting his feelings could go horribly wrong, and he was having trouble envisioning what set of circumstances could allow it to go horribly right.

More than that, Barry was almost entirely sure Iris was The One. She was going to be It, and that put a level of finality, a weight of gravitas, to the prospect of asking her out, that made the task even more daunting. Because after – After – he wouldn't be a teenager with a crush anymore; he'd be dating the person he hoped to spend the rest of his life with. And he could barely wrap his head around the magnitude of what that would mean.

(Also, Joe would give him a shovel-speech to end all shovel-speeches, and then, because Joe was a man of his word who was also eminently practical and didn't believe in procrastinating, Joe would then enact said shoveling right there and then as being the most expedient. And because he was a cop, they would never find the body.)

So Barry kept quiet.

And it really wasn't so bad, since it gave him these moments, just the two of them. Telling jokes or offering a sympathetic ear; talking comfortably, looking out for each other, and never doubting that the other would always be there. It filled Barry with all the best, brightest bits of being in love, and, for now, he was content.