Prompt: "I beat you at Mario Kart and now I've been banished to the couch for the night AU"

xXx

"Come on…come on…yes!" Barry cheers as he drives through the shiny question-marked box and is instantly rewarded with three glorious spiky red shells, slowly circling his player–Mario, of course, it's always Mario. Iris teases him relentlessly about his trusty go-to choice, because 'God, could you be any more boring, Barry?, any yet she's always picking Luigi to match, so she guesses she's not much better, in the long run. "Perfect."

He grips his controller tight and goes in for the kill, one shell easily finding its target as he zooms past Peach and then the next hitting its mark and leaving Toad spinning sideways off the track. And then he's in third and she's still in first, with just a computer-player Yoshi between them, and he's close enough that it's mildly concerning but Iris is so close to the finish,and he wouldn't dare think about using that last red shell on her–would he? She huffs as she turns the corner to the final home-stretch, the finish line clearly in sight. He better fucking not.

"Whatever. I'm still gonna win," Iris says, feigning indifference and zeroing in on the finish.

"You sure about that?" Barry smirks, and Iris glances sideways at him, narrowing her eyes. When she sees the evil grin he's wearing and the determined look in his eye, her eyes widen in horror, and when she returns her attention back to the TV she can see him gaining on her on her side of the screen. And sure enough, he's just passed Yoshi and he's still got that one red shell left, circling ominously around his kart.

"No–no, Barry, you wouldn't," she pleads, and for a split second she thinks that maybe it's not going to matter after all, anyway, because she's about five feet from the finish line and she'll make it there in time, of course she will–when his last red shell hits her from behind. Suddenly Luigi is spinning off course and then skidding to a stop and Mario is zooming past her, crossing the line into first place, and by the time she recuperates to cross that last tiny stretch she's been surpassed by everyone including fucking Bowser, landing her in last place. She tosses her control to the side, springs to her feet to shut the TV off, and rounds on him, her face a barely contained mask of fury.

"Get out."

"What?"

"Leave. Immediately."

"And go where…?" he trails off when he catches sight of her expression, and figures it's best not to argue. He knows her. He knows that look. He's–well, he's in deep shit. "I–ah, okay then…"

Just as he makes to push himself up from the couch, resigning himself to his fate, Iris holds a hand up to stop him, putting a hand on his chest to push him back down.

"Wait–on second thought, stay here."

Before he can respond she's storming away, trudging up the stairs and stomping her feet with deliberate force, and he sinks back into the couch, waiting, completely bewildered.

When she gets upstairs, Iris angrily yanks the door to the closet next to the bathroom open and pulls out the fleece throw blanket adorned with little lightning bolts that she'd gotten Barry as a joke for his last birthday along with a spare pillow, and slams the door shut behind her. She slowly makes her way back down the stairs, taking her sweet time and purposely leaving him on edge. When she finally makes her way back over to the couch, he's looking at her in equal parts trepidation and bemusement, like a criminal awaiting their sentence. Which, in her opinion, really isn't too far off the mark, considering what she's holding him accountable for.

She shoves the blanket and pillow in his face just as he's about to open his mouth to ask, and taps her foot impatiently. He blinks, staring incredulously at the items in her hands and then back at her, comprehension dawning on his face. "Iris–Iris, you can't be serious."

She doesn't say anything, just scowls and shakes her arm a bit, letting some of the blanket slip out of grip and onto his lap, refusing to budge until he finally heaves a sigh and takes it from her outstretched hand.

"You did this to yourself, Barry," she says ruefully, casting him a final, bitter glare before spinning on her heel and heading back upstairs, to their bedroom and to the blissfully comfortable queen bed that she's kicking his ass out of for the night.

They'd meant to just play a round of Mario Kart before bed to de-stress from the day (ha. right. if anything it had only made her more stressed), so she's already ready to turn in for the night and clad in her pajamas, ready to crawl into bed and quietly seethe in her anger alone until exhaustion takes over and carries her off to sleep. Except it doesn't.

Seconds, minutes, hours trickle by (she's lost track) as she lays awake, rolling over this way and that–on her side, on her belly, on her back, in strange and not entirely comfortable positions where she's got her arms and legs bent and positioned at weird angles. The sad truth is that she never sleeps well when he's not there with her, when he's not holding her and when she doesn't have his presence to keep her relaxed, the steady, reassuring beat of his heart against her ear, and quite frankly the bed just feels empty. Empty and cold and she just doesn't feel whole–a feeling borne from all the times where he'd be out all night long risking his life in some way or another, all the times where he wouldn't come home and she'd have to lay awake wondering and hoping and praying that he was still out there and that he was okay and that he was alive, terrified of the prospect of losing him. And so she craves his touch, the warmth of his body pressed up against hers, and with good reason.

Finally, after what feels like forever of tossing and turning and shivering from the lack of Barry's familiar body heat–he runs warm, with his increased metabolism and all, and she's sort of grown accustomed to it–she groans and pulls the covers up over her head, resolving herself to the fact that she's just not going to get any sleep like this, no matter how much she doesn't want to admit it. With another dejected sigh she throws the covers off of her and swings her legs over the side of the bed, rubbing her eyes before standing on tired, wobbly legs to make her way out of the room. She creeps down the stairs as quietly as possible, nearly tripping over a stray pair of shoes–hers, probably–and banging her shins against the coffee table as she attempts to feel her way through the dark and towards the couch where she can just barely make out the faint outline of Barry's sleeping form.

Barry is either a super-light sleeper or he sleeps like a rock, there's really no in between, and it's completely depending on the day. She hopes for his sake and for hers that tonight it's the latter, because he looks so peaceful and she really doesn't want to wake him up, and she also really doesn't want to give him the satisfaction. So she clambers up next to him on the couch as stealthily as she can, careful not to jar him, lifting the blanket up a bit and crawling underneath it so that it's covering the both of them.

The second she lays down next to him, the moment he registers her presence, he drapes an arm across her waist and pulls her close. His eyes remain firmly shut all the while, like it's the most natural thing in the world, like even in sleep his brain and his body are hard-wired to respond to hers. She twists around in his arms and wraps her own around his middle, tucking her head underneath his chin and scooting even closer, pressing right up against him so that she won't be in danger of falling off the edge of the couch. She sighs contentedly, and she can already feel herself on the brink of sleep when he starts to speak, startling her back awake. Even though his voice is thick with sleep she can practically hear him grinning.

"Changed your mind then, huh?"

"Shut up," she mumbles tiredly into his chest, letting her eyelids flutter shut and relaxing back into his arms. "I was cold."

"Mhm-hm."

She feels his laughter, a gentle, comforting rumble against her ear, the sound travelling all the way from her head down to her toes and filling her up with both warmth and irritation.

"…I hate you."

He doesn't rise to the bait, just kisses her forehead, his lips curling into a smile against her skin, and tightens his hold on her. She's trying so hard to stay annoyed with him, but she's tired and she's so comfortable here and she loves this stupid, first-place-stealing boy so goddamn much, and her irritation is already fading fast. In the morning, she'll make sure she gives him hell for it, but for now she just lets herself be lulled to sleep by the beating of his heart, the warmth radiating off his skin, the tenderness in his voice when he laughs and says "Love you, too."