A/N (duplicate, kind of): Thanks for all the feedback on my last two chapters, it was great! Sorry for the bit of a delay- once I put out my preferred ending, I'll admit that I was less motivated to finish than I expected. So this is the last installment. I wrote two endings because truthfully I like both guys, so it would have been too hard for me to choose (could you tell?), but also because it's a fun challenge to write a story that can go both ways. But Barry was my favorite prospect of Lindsay's- I loved how smart he seemed, the chemistry between them in 'Noshing and Moshing' was pretty undeniable, and of course I wanted to explore a 'what-if' scenario between him and Lindsay (see also my other F&G fic, 'Make a Right at the Cow'). Shout-out to GoatEatingToilet for making up fun chapter titles so I didn't have to :). Also, I used spoilery titles for a reason- if you're a Barry lover/Nick hater, read this chapter only (this is basically a request to not troll the Nick-centric ending, because it wasn't meant for you). Thanks for reading!
Ending 3- A Barry happy one
Once Lindsay saw the picture in the locket, and the guy that she knew she wanted to be with finally clicked in her brain, suddenly Lindsay couldn't WAIT to see him.
Thankfully, she wouldn't have to- at least not for very long. Lindsay had her epiphany late enough on Friday afternoon that even though it might have felt like an eternity, she knew on some level it wasn't one before she saw Barry again. Lindsay checked her watch: 5:30 p.m. Her mom would be fixing dinner soon. And Barry would be there in approximately T minus five-and-a-half hours.
Lindsay ate dinner with her family (spaghetti and meatballs), watched a little TV with her parents, and finished her book. This would have been a great evening to call Kim, or even catch up with Millie, but she hadn't heard anything regarding her final calculus grade yet, so she didn't press things. Eventually, her parents started getting ready for bed, so Lindsay went into her bedroom, trying to find ways to pass the time until Barry stopped by. She showered, changed into cute pajama pants and a tank top (she figured they weren't going anywhere, not with Barry leaving for school the next morning), and finally untangled her lockets from one another, double-checking three times to make sure she put the right one on. She painted and filed her toenails, organized her records, and straightened her already-clean room. She was just about to open up another book, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, when she heard the soft tap on her window.
Instantly, her heart started palpitating uncontrollably and she felt her mouth go bone-dry. Now that the moment was finally here, Lindsay found herself nervous as hell. When she glanced up, Barry was standing there, grinning. He looked like he was carrying a lot, though Lindsay couldn't tell precisely what until she made her way across the room towards her opened window.
"Hi, Lindsay," Barry said softly. In his arms were a huge bouquet of pink roses (it looked like a dozen), a small square box of chocolates, and a heavy-looking package wrapped in brown paper and tied with a silver bow (to Lindsay it looked like a book). "Here, do you mind taking all of this so I can get in the window?" he asked, extending his hands out to her.
Lindsay accepted the gifts through the window, and held them with slightly shaky hands as Barry climbed inside. Lindsay found that a few quiet tears had started to accumulate under her lids and she had to blink them away. Standing there, practically weighed down by how much Barry had thought to give her, if she had any doubt before this about him being the person she should be with, she didn't now.
"Barry," Lindsay said, a little hoarsely. "You didn't have to do all this. You just got me this beautiful locket the last time I saw you." She couldn't even touch it, her hands were so full, so she just gestured to it with her chin instead.
"Well, it's a special night," he replied softly, inside her room now, leaning in to kiss her on the cheek, and taking the bouquet back to free one of her hands. "It might be the last time I get to see you for a little while. And I'm hoping it's the night that you tell me that you want to be my girlfriend," he said, grinning again. Winking at her, he added, "Not that I'm trying to bribe you or anything, of course." He reached over and gently pulled the packages from Lindsay's other hand (the chocolates were most definitely resting on a book, and a heavy one at that), setting them on the bed. He then re-presented the flowers to her.
"I realize that pink might not be your favorite color, you don't strike me as a pink girl," he began. "I wanted to get you red ones, but I know you said you had to think about us some more, and I didn't want to presume to know what you decided." His voice dropped a little as he added, "Red roses represent love and romance, and while pink roses still represent love, they actually also mean gratitude and appreciation." Barry explained, then coughed. "I- um, had a fantastic summer with you, Lindsay," he said sincerely, looking her straight in the eye. "I thought I would be miserable, losing my internship at the last minute, having to come home from school, doing manual labor for my dad's practice. But hanging out with you made it- so great. Worth it. So regardless of what you've decided, I'm grateful to you for the last seven weeks. I just wanted you to know that."
Lindsay took the flowers, looking at them in awe. Barry was right, pink had never been her favorite color- but somehow, in the context of Barry's explanation, they were just perfect. She felt her eyes water. "Thank you," she managed to get out. She still had Barry's pretty crystal-looking vase sitting empty on her dresser, so she quickly took the few steps required to place her roses in it- she would get water for them later. Lindsay turned back to him, heart still pounding. She took a deep breath. She had to tell him now, before he was any sweeter to her.
"Barry, you can stop right there," she said. She must have sounded harsher than she intended because Barry's face suddenly fell.
"No, wait," she quickly corrected herself. "I mean, you can stop because I don't want to you have to wait another second for me to say this. I- I- um, I want to be with you. I- um, want to be your girlfriend. I'm – I'm all in," she said nervously, twisting her fingers together. It didn't matter that Barry had expressed his feelings to her first- opening up to him like this was terrifying. And who's to say that Barry couldn't have changed his mind, decided she wasn't worth all the trouble? After what she'd put him through, Lindsay wouldn't have blamed him if he had.
But Barry just smiled harder. "Really?" He asked her, taking her hands in his, eyes shining.
Lindsay nodded. "Really," she replied.
Barry laughed. "Awesome," he said, gently letting go of her hands, kicking off his shoes, and taking a comfortable seat on Lindsay's bed. He patted the space beside him. "Now sit down and let me give you your other present. It's kind of lame, I'm telling you." He gestured next to him to the brown paper package.
Lindsay obliged, having a seat, a few inches from him. She picked up the heavy gift and began to undo the silver bow. After a minute, she removed the paper to reveal-
"A calculus book?" she asked him.
"Yeah, my old calculus book. I think I'm finally finished with that Godforsaken class," he said, smiling. "I suppose I could have tried to sell it back, but for some reason I held onto it, and as soon as we had our first phone conversation and you said you were taking calculus this summer, I figured I would give it to you. I'm not sure how far you got in your summer course, but I left off at polar coordinates and complex numbers after my first semester, so it took two semesters to cover most of this book- I think we ended at Stokes' theorem. I was wondering if your calculus class covered approximately the same information- if it did, than this might save you from having to get another book. Or at least, it will be another resource when you do take calculus again."
Lindsay absentmindedly flipped through the book, pretending to take note of what she covered in class this summer, whether Barry's book gave her a leg up on Calculus II vs. the much smaller text that she had already purchased. But really, all she could think about was how incredibly sexy Barry sounded, how very rare it was for someone that Lindsay thought was cute to talk calculus to her. Barry was looking over her shoulder at the text, and his breath was hot on her neck, distracting her. After a moment Lindsay set the textbook on her nightstand, out of the way. "Thank you, Barry," she said.
That left only the chocolate. Barry picked up the small square box and smiled. "You're welcome. And finally, the chocolate- I made sure to get you a box that wasn't heart-shaped, in case you decided you just wanted to be friends, so that it wouldn't seem too weird, " He seemed to take a second to comprehend what he just said, before grinning wider. "But now I guess I don't have to worry about that. Anyway, I just- chocolate makes me think of you now- you know, from the ice-cream sandwich cake. I would have brought you ice-cream sandwiches if I thought you could keep them in here," he said, looking around Lindsay's room, smiling. He added, "But I didn't want you to have to share them with anyone. Except for maybe me."
Barry opened up the box, selecting a particularly delicious-looking piece, and reclosed it, setting the box aside, on top of the book on her nightstand. "I'm hoping that this is something that I'm allowed to do now that I'm your boyfriend," he whispered. He slowly brought the truffle to Lindsay's lips with one hand, tenderly touching her jaw with the other. She obliged, opening her mouth as Barry very gently fed it to her. She closed her mouth and let the chocolate and what tasted like hazelnut melt across her tongue, licking her lips, and her tongue softly brushed one of Barry's fingers before he pulled it away. No one had ever fed her anything before. It was sensual as hell.
It was then that they exchanged another one of their crazy-intense looks, like the one towards the end of their first date. Barry's eyes were glazed over. If Lindsay could see her own, she knew hers would be, too. She realized she couldn't stay away from him any longer, and dove across the remaining distance between them, kissing him.
Barry's arms went around her and his mouth opened and his tongue entered her mouth and swirled around her own tongue which still had chocolate and hazelnut on it and Lindsay didn't know if it was the chocolate or whether this was just the first completely uninhibited kiss they'd had for a little while but Barry started groaning softly in her mouth and it was such a turn-on. This was a little reminiscent of their ice-cream sandwich kiss- maybe the truffle had a lot to do with it but Barry tasted so good- yet this kiss was wholly new and unexpected. Particularly because as they were kissing Barry's hands didn't stay still- at all- they went from touching her face to gently tugging on her hair to cradling her scalp, to supporting the back of her neck, to working their way down her back, over her hips, across her butt, down her thighs. Their bodies didn't stay still, either- they went from sitting up to reclining to laying side-by-side to lying flat, with her on top.
It occurred to Lindsay at that moment that now that she had made her decision, now that she had made up her mind that she wanted to be with Barry and Barry alone, she was free to break her own self-imposed rule about kissing and PG-rated touching. And now that she had officially committed to him, suddenly breaking the rules was all she wanted to do. Barry was about to move over six hours away from her, and they hadn't even talked yet about when they would see each other next. Thanksgiving? She couldn't wait that long. She was so curious to go at least a little further. And she might not have been so confident except that for the first time ever, she knew she could feel exactly how excited Barry was, too. In all their previous times making out, their bodies had never been close enough for long enough or aligned well enough for her to know for certain he was turned on against her, but tonight it was perfectly clear- and now she couldn't get it out of her mind. Emboldened by the effect that she knew she must have had on him, Lindsay found herself sitting up, straddling his hips, and tentatively reaching for the button on his shorts.
But Barry stopped her almost immediately.
"Oh, no you don't, Weir," he said authoritatively, though his voice sounded a little strained. It sounded like he was having trouble speaking.
"Why not?" was Lindsay's instant reaction. She couldn't keep the hurt out of her voice. The rejection stung.
Barry coughed, seemingly trying to regain his composure. "Well, first of all," he began, "I'm correct in assuming you haven't told Nick about us yet, right?"
Lindsay shook her head, and the guilt suddenly consumed her. Of course, just because she knew what she wanted didn't mean that Nick did. It wouldn't be fair to Nick- or Barry- for this to happen before Lindsay was straightforward to Nick about the fact that it was over between them.
But apparently Barry wasn't finished. "Well, and second- I- I want to take this slow. I mean- I've wanted this forever but you're only sixteen and we have so much time and-"
"No, we don't," Lindsay protested, interrupting him with a little bit of a whine in her voice. "You're leaving for school tomorrow."
Barry gave her the half-smile of someone older, wiser, more experienced. "I know," he said quietly. "But this isn't the right time or place. Your parents are sleeping a room away and your mom almost busted us in here a few days ago. And I had to wait until 11 p.m. to come here, I didn't get to pick you up and take you out on a romantic date or anything."
Lindsay reluctantly nodded -Barry had a point- yet she couldn't quite hide her disappointment. She dropped her head. But Barry, sensing her frustration, gently reached out to pull her chin up just enough so that she could see him.
"Lindsay, trust me, more than anything, I want to get closer to you. In, um, more than one way," he said, blushing. "But I also want to give you a lot to look forward to. Like not being grounded anymore. And having a really good reason to come out and visit me at school. I can take you out, I'll have my own room at the apartment, my roommates are really great- we'll have such a good time when you come and see me, I promise."
Lindsay nodded again- at this point she knew there wasn't anything she could say that could change his mind. But before she could get too down about it, Barry spoke up again.
"There is something I really want to do with you tonight, though," he began hesitantly.
"What is it?" Lindsay immediately asked, insanely curious.
"I- um- was hoping I could- stay here. And just hold you. Fall asleep next to you. We can set your alarm so I can get up early, before your parents are awake." He gently lifted Lindsay off of him and rolled over a bit, repositioning her so that they were laying side-by-side, spooning. Barry then leaned over and switched off her bedside lamp.
"I'd like that," Lindsay whispered into the darkness. And Barry was true to his word, he held her all night, and it was the first time she ever slept in bed with a boy, and it felt so good Lindsay wanted to cry. When he slipped out early the next morning, she did- out of sadness that he was gone, but also out of joy over everything she and Barry went through to finally get together, and out of how much more was yet to come.