Iris pushed Barry away from her and hopped off of the bathroom sink, but the reason he was stumbling backward wasn't from the force of her push. Rather, because his entire existence had been knocked off kilter. Brushing his fingers over his lips, he tried to process what had just occurred– the softness of Iris' lips, her intoxicating scent, her tear-filled admission about her failing marriage and her feelings for him.

His head was spinning in a thousand directions, emotions in conflict with his morals, his body in conflict with his heart. Even though it had not been planned, he knew that kissing Iris was wrong. Unhappy or not, Iris was married. And him, well, he wasn't exactly unhappy with Patty. Unfulfilled, maybe, but he did love her. Even when he took their infidelity into account, regret wasn't exactly what he was yet feeling. Guilt, yes. But if he could do it all over again, would he? Most importantly, would Iris?

"Iris. Wait." Barry reached out to her, barely making contact with the tips of her fingers but she soon slipped away, across the hall, into her room. He followed her into the hallway and made it just outside of her door, but the sound of Joe's's voice, ascending the stairs, stopped him in his tracks.

Taking a deep breath, he shoved down two decades worth of emotions into the pit of his stomach and turned towards his kinda-sorta father. "Huh?"

"Dinner's ready; the spread looks amazing."

"Oh yeah?" he asked, looking back between Joe and the closed door of the woman he'd loved for over two decades. "Great, I'm starved," he added, eventually pivoting his body so he was facing him.

Joe scrunched up his face. "You alright, Barry?"

"Ye-yeah, of course. Why?" He asked, willing his blood to not flood his cheeks.

"You seem a little flustered. Is Iris okay?"

"I guess. I mean, I think. W-why wouldn't she be," he asked raking a shaky hand through his hair.

"Well, confronting your feelings is never easy, you know."

"Feelings?" Barry asked voice pitched considerably higher than before. Suddenly, his arms felt weighted, and he couldn't find a comfortable position for them. "What kind of feelings? Why would she be feeling anything at all. Especially now. Of all times?"

Joe narrowed his gaze. "About her near-death experience."

"You know, being caught out in that freak blizzard," he added, a look of confusion on his face.

"Ohh yeah. Right. That," Barry said, clapping his hand together. "M-maybe you should talk to her about that."Barry rushed past Joe before he could respond.

Iris stopped the microwave with only three seconds left. At 3 am, she didn't want to wake the household, but after picking over her dinner the previous night, she was absolutely starving. Sitting across from Barry and Patty at the dinner table after what had transpired in the bathroom had been the last way she'd wanted to spend her evening. But there was absolutely no way to get out of Joe's birthday dinner, save for croaking. Nor did she want to miss it, after not having been home in over a year. She messed her old man, dearly. Not to mention, Cecile and J2, who was getting so big.

Because of this, Iris sat there, mainly soaking in the conversation from those around her, unable to form coherent thoughts or make eye contact with the boy she grew up with, and feeling an unhealthy amount of contempt for his wife, as she made every single possible effort to forge some kind of a bond with her.

Then there was the guilt she'd felt for kissing a married man. Patty, as high strung as she was, seemed like a lovely woman, who Barry seemed to genuinely love. There were also the 1000 butterflies that had taken flight inside of her stomach. They started off faintly flapping their wings, making their presence known the moment she recognized him in her car. Over the course of her evening, they grew stronger, their journey through her abdomen, growing more erratic. And they hadn't let up yet.

This plate of leftover chicken, mac and cheese and homemade rolls would surely quiet them, though. If nothing else, it would quiet the very loud gurgling of her empty stomach. Leaning over the kitchen counter, Iris rubbed her hands together then piled a heaping helping of Mac and cheese on her fork.

"Mmmm," she said as she savored the flavor of the 5 cheese blend. Yet, another reason she should really visit more often: Cecile's cooking.

Grabbing her plate, she turned, after having decided that this was a meal worthy sitting down at a kitchen table, only to be met with the sight of Barry, watching her from the entryway.

"Barr," she said, surprised. "Still freakishly light on your feet I see."

Barry chuckled gently. "And you still eat full meals at 3 am, apparently."

He walked over to her, an easy glide to his walk. Like they hadn't just kissed less than 10 hours ago. Like they hadn't both admitted that they, for a time at least, had been in love with each other.

Unsure how to respond to his nonchalance, she picked up her plate. "Yeah, well I was just heading back to my room. So. Kitchen's yours."

Even in the half-lit home, they grew up in, while wearing black, striped pajamas bottoms, a Grey T-shirt, and fuzzy, batman slippers, there was something weirdly brawny about Barry that made the hairs on her arm stand on end. Is this what years of being The Flash had done to the boy she grew up with, and the young man she'd left in Central City so many years ago? His once baby smooth face had filled out, and he had faint laugh lines where his once unmarked skin had been, which only intensified in the half-lit kitchen. Still, it didn't take away from his youthfulness. At 32, he'd aged beautifully. His lower half had finally filled out to match his broad shoulders and back, which used to have him looking like he'd tower over from the weight of it all. She could also see the outline of his muscles through his thin sleep shirt, and God, that was almost too much.

"Don't leave on my behalf," he said. "I just came to get some water." His words were chaste, but the way his eyes glided up and down her nightie-clad bod, was anything but.

He didn't mean to stare, of course, but it would have taken a man with a hell of a lot more willpower than him to look away. Maybe him of a day ago, the him that had not basically cheated on his wife, could have. But after kissing Iris, after loving her for an entire lifetime, it wasn't easy. Especially since she'd not spoken more than two words to him since.

Suddenly, Iris felt exposed, not because she didn't welcome his eyes on her body, but because this had gone way too far already. And she didn't know if she was emotionally healthy enough to deny his further advances. Assuming he might have even wanted to make any.

Even though it had been her that broke their kiss, she didn't know what this meant for them. How it would affect their nearly non-existent friendship; she hadn't the capacity to even wonder past that. What would this mean for their marriages? She hastily pulled both sides of her robe together–anything to make her feel less seen.

"Oh, I'm sorry," he said, curtly. "I just. God." Elbows on the table, he ran hands through his hair. "We have to talk about this, Iris.."

Iris, who was then halfway out of the kitchen, took a few steps back towards the table where Barry was now seated. When their eyes met, she saw that his was filled with pain. Whether that was for him, or Patty, or herself, she didn't know. But they pulled her in like a fisherman to a siren. Looking back over her shoulder, making sure that no one was lingering by the stairs – or, perhaps, hoping they were so she could avoid the inevitable– she took a seat at the table. When she didn't speak, instead opting to stuff more mac and cheese into her mouth, Barry sighed.

"So I have to do all of the emotional heavy lifting, huh?"

"Nope," she said, breaking a chunk of chicken from the bone. "It's just that, I already made the life-changing admission about my marriage. Your turn to speak."

"Just your marriage, huh?" He asked, trying to gently pry more information out of her.

"Yeah," she said, refusing to oblige his plea to address their kiss, or her deciding to run away from him. Because of the look in his eyes, and the knot in her throat, she was not ready for this right now.

Barry shook his head. "Iris. I-."

"So. Where's Patty?" She asked, hoping that bringing up his wife's name would force him to leave this be for now.

Barry relented, allowing his back to hit the kitchen chair. "Asleep."

"Wrong."

"Wrong?"

"Upstairs, Barry. Your wife," she said, lowering her voice, "is upstairs. Which means this is not the time or the place for this conversation."

"That's no problem. Patty sleeps like a log after we've," he said, eyes increasing in size when he realized what he was about to say. "I mean, you know."

"O-oh," Iris said, pushing her hair behind her ears, not all prepared for such an intimate admission. "I see." Heat rose to her cheeks, and in that moment sh was thankful that her deep brown skin would camouflage any blushing.

"No, I didn't mean like that. I," he said, shaking his head. Fuck,

man. Finding the right words would be so much easier if she would just be frank with him. Because every single decision he made after today would be dependent on how Iris felt, what she wanted.

Iris sighed. "But you should be able to mean it like that. That's what husband's do. They have sex with their wives. What they don't do is kiss their childhood crush on a whim in the house they grew up in," she said, her words coated in aggression. She shot him a vicious look, then grabbed her plate and attempted to retreat.

A breathy laugh later, Barry crossed his arms. "I'm sorry. Are you angry with me?" He asked, dumbfounded.

"No. I'm not angry, Barry," Iris said, whipping back around. "I'm just not ready for this heavy emotional shit."

Again, she tried to walk away from him, but he rose in haste, grabbed her arm, and pull her into him.

"What are you doing?" She said, surprised at his display of forwardness, but absolutely loving how good his arms felt around his body.

"You dropped the biggest bomb on me," he spit back in a hushed yell. "And you have the nerve to be angry?"

"I know, and I'm sorry, Barry. It was a mistake. The kiss was a mistake," she said, her eyes welling up with tears. Her life was complicated enough without the added weight of her relationship with Barry. It had never been her intention for them to grow distant, but she had been lowkey relieved when they did. Thinking about him just made her situation with Scott seem even bleaker. And she needed to retain a shred of her blissful ignorance if she was going to get through her lonely existence in Keystone.

Knowing how she got lost in a kiss with him, well, it was going to take a great deal of denial for her to get past it. And she couldn't do that, pressed up against him, inhaling the scent of his freshly washed body, gazing into his eyes. She forced herself to look away from him, but he brought her face back to his with his forefinger.

"You're sorry? That-that's it?"

"What do you want me to say," she asked, voice croaking. "This situation is fucked."

"Iris," he said, shaking his head from side to side. He didn't know what was causing him more pain, his guilt from cheating on Patty, or the fact that Iris had called the one greatest moment in his life a mistake. "I was 100 percent prepared to get through this week knowing that the woman I love more than anything was going to be two bedrooms down from me with her husband, the man who took everything from me. I was prepared to pretend like I haven't thought about you every day for the better part of four years, and that you weren't the most breathtaking woman I've ever seen in my entire fucking life. I was prepared to do it all–even after nearly worrying myself into an early grave because I thought you were out there in that blizzard, cold and alone. But you-you told me that you loved me and you let me kiss you, and now I don't know anything about anything anymore. So if you want to be mad at someone for making you feel, be mad at yourself."

Releasing her, he lingered on her face for a moment longer, then calmly walked over to the sink and caught himself a glass of water. It was eery how drastic his moods changed, and the way he'd handled her, but she couldn't decide if she felt guilty or was turned on, watching as he walked back across the living room, and to the staircase. She was almost hoping that he'd look back at her, but he never did.

Left alone with an empty kitchen, and a full plate of food, Iris took a seat at the dinner table once more. Because there was absolutely no guarantee that she'd be able to not follow in behind Barry, push back into the bathroom, and let him have his way with her–just one time.