When Iris had won the cruise for two in a raffle at work, she'd honestly toyed with the idea of giving the tickets away. But everyone else had different ideas.

"No, no, go! You need it!" Caitlin had said. "And you know what else we think?"

"Barry should go on the cruise with you!" Cisco had finished for her. "It'll be fun for you guys!"

"He needs some downtime, honey," her dad had said. "And so do you."

"I can cover things now that Zoom is dead," Wally had promised. "G'wan, you guys!"

So she'd agreed, and Barry had agreed, and when she got back to the States, Iris thought darkly, she was going to kill them all.

Another passenger came out of his room and started to smile at her. When he was able to tear his eyes away from her legs, exposed by the swirl of her sarong, and the little yellow bikini top under her net cover-up, he saw the look on her face and decided he'd forgotten something in his room.

Ignoring him, she stomped down the hall. As much as she could stomp on the plush carpet. Enough. Was. Enough.

She knocked.

More accurately, she hammered.

"Who is it?" Barry called out.

"Room service," she growled through clenched teeth.

A pause, and then the door opened. "Somehow I don't believe you."

"Funny," she said, marching forward until he either had to step back to let her in or get run over.

"Come right in," he said. "Don't be shy."

She kicked the door closed behind her.

His eyes widened. "Iris," he said carefully. "Everything okay?"

"That depends. Are you going to bolt?" She leaned back against the door, fixing him with a beady-eyed stare.

"Nuh - I - what? Ha. Haaaaha. Why would you - ?"

"Think that?" she finished. "Because every time we've both settled down in the same place in the last three days, whether it's the dinner table or the clubs or god, I don't know, the ship's library, you can't stay there for two minutes without bolting." She hooked her thumb over her shoulder, vaguely indicating the pool deck he'd exited at speed ten minutes ago, and that she'd stormed away from five minutes ago. "That? Was ridiculous. I didn't even get two minutes with you."

He sighed. "Okay, look. It's this ship. It's so tiny."

"It's huge," she said.

"Not at six hundred miles an hour, it's not. Whose bright idea was this, anyway?"

"You run laps and laps and laps every night on the Lido deck. Yes. I've heard all the comments about how weirdly gusty it is on this voyage, and I'm not actually stupid. And both times we've put into port you've gone off running for hours. I know you're feeling a little stir crazy, but really? You can't sit next to me for two minutes?" Against her will, her voice cracked and shook.

She'd hoped that this cruise, away from Central City, away from their complicated tangle of secrets and confessions, emotions, lies, truths, might be a new starting point for them. But how could anything get started when he clearly didn't want to be around her?

He couldn't even meet her eyes.

She pressed her lips together so they wouldn't tremble. No, no, no. She was not going to cry. She was going to remember that she was angry. She was -

She turned to fumble at the doorknob.

His hand slapped against the door and he said in her ear, "You want to know why I can't be around you?"

"Yes," she said without turning. "Yes. Tell me." His body was long and warm behind her. Without touching, she soaked in the heat of him, every pore of her skin opening up.

One long finger traced the strap of her bikini through the cover-up. "It - it's these."

"My clothes?"

"You walk around in stuff like this, and the dress last night with all the - " His breath hitched. "All the lacy, like, cutouts and things, and - and the shorts from yesterday, and - I - I can't, Iris, I can't, I have to - to not be around you because. I'm. Going. Crazy."

She pressed her hand to her mouth, then turned.

"These?" she asked, tugging at the cover-up. Which did not cover anything up, that was the point. Just how dumb could one man be? "These clothes? That I bought specifically for this trip? Specifically so you would rip them off me?"

His eyes went wide.

"Bear, we are on a Caribbean cruise. It's one of the oldest sexy cliches there is. Yet we are three days out at sea and you still haven't so much as kissed me and I'm done waiting. You need to stop thinking and start doing."

He gave her a look like a puppy that had just been asked to launch the Space Shuttle.

"Me," she clarified. "You need to start doing me."

When his mouth fell open, she reached up and grabbed his shirt, yanking him down to her level so she could kiss him hard. His mouth was slack and stunned against hers for a moment, and then he answered the kiss, pressing his hands to her face, gulping her like a man in a desert.

"Iris," he gasped against her mouth. "Is this real?"

"Yes," she whimpered. "Yes. Very, very, very real, Barry, please -"

He shoved her back against the door, pressing the whole length of his body against her, and dove into the kiss. She wrapped her arms around his neck, arching up, catching her breath when she felt his growing erection press into her stomach. "Oh."

"That's what you do to me," he told her, sliding his hands down her body. "When I saw you walking down the pool deck - " His fingers hooked into the net over the small of her back, brushing across the desperately ticklish spot at the base of her spine, and she quivered. " - all the blood in my body went right to my lap."

She rested her head back against the door, grinning triumphantly up at him. Nice to know that her big guns hadn't failed her. "What did you think about?"

"As much as I was thinking at all?" He toyed with the knot of her sarong. "I thought, I really, really want her to come over here. To my chair." He kissed her, long and lingering. "To straddle me and - " The knot came undone and the silky material slid down her legs. "And sit on my chest and - "

"And?" she whimpered as he trailed his fingers along the edge of her bikini bottoms, trailing lightning behind them.

He rested his forehead on hers. "And let me bury my face between her legs."

Her knees nearly gave out. She almost slid right down the door. But that was not what she wanted to happen, at least not yet, so she locked her knees and kissed him and said against his mouth, "Show me."

He smiled, and for a hero, that was a very, very wicked smile.

Then he slid down, slow as molasses, trailing kisses down her body as he went. Chin, throat, chest, stomach, belly button, then.

He breathed hot air over the cloth covering her pussy, and she shuddered. His fingers traced the edge of the cloth again, and she whined, "Bar-ry - "

"I might be the Flash, but I can actually take things slow," he said against her skin.

"Speed up!"

He laughed, and the vibrations went right to her clit and she scrabbled for a grip on the wall, because he was going to kill her.

He slid his hands inside the bottoms, cupping her ass, squeezing, mmm-ing in pleasure. She whimpered.

He pushed the cloth down.

They slid down her legs, fell at her feet. She stepped out of them, spreading her legs wide to grant him access. He kissed the tender skin of her inner thighs, ran his thumbs up the delicate furrows between her legs and her hips, and gave the tiniest, most delicate of licks to the seam of her labia.

She moaned.

Then he parted her seam, spread her wide, and licked her all the way up.

She let out a cry that they probably heard in the crew quarters, but she didn't care, because he was finally right where he needed to be. With a little direction - "Down - a little more - therrrreeeooohhhhhh" - he found her clit and worked it mercilessly, using his fingers on her whenever he had to pause to catch his breath

She wove her fingers through his hair to hold him where he was - "don't stop, don't stop" - and with the other hand, pulled her bikini top aside so she could squeeze and fondle her own breast, plucking at her nipple as he worked her over.

Her hips thrust madly. She whimpered his name in a string of breath so long that all the consonants fell to mush and only vowels were left to her and then even that dissolved in a wail as her orgasm cracked through her like lightning.

Her knees finally gave out, and she slid down the door to sit on her sarong, trembling like a leaf. She rested her head back against the door for a single panted breath, then opened her eyes to see what he was doing.

He'd unzipped his shorts and pushed them aside just enough to let out his swollen cock, and his hand moved in a blur, up and down the shaft. His eyes had slid half-closed. his cheeks and chin shone with her slickness, his mouth wet with it, hanging open as he panted and groaned through his own climax.

She almost cried in disappointment. Yes, she'd just gotten off, but it had barely taken the edge off. She wanted to wrap herself around the love of her life and feel him shudder and moan against her, to kiss him as his hands wandered her body and his cock filled her up.

Slow, she told herself. We have lots of time. When he opened his eyes, she gave him a bright smile. "Honey. It's okay. We can cuddle and kiss and in a little while - what?"

He wiped his mouth. "Uh," he said. "I - that's not - we don't have to -"

She shook her head, puzzled. "What are you trying to say?"

He looked down at his hands, both of them a mess, and wiped them on his shorts. (Ew. She was going to have to break him of that habit.) "So you know how I have that accelerated healing?"

"The one that meant you were running again a month after Zoom broke your spine? Uh, yes, it rings a distant bell." What did that have to do with anything?

"So, there's this thing? That's kind of related? To, uh, recovery?"

All of a sudden she got it, and her mouth fell open. "How long?" She'd never had a boyfriend who took less than half an hour to be ready to go again.

"I'd say about thirty seconds from now." He ran his eyes up her body, her damp pussy, the bikini top pulled aside to expose one breast, the nipple tight with arousal, and his eyes went dark. "Maybe fifteen," he said in a strangled voice.

"Oh my god," she breathed.

"Is that okay? I mean, just because I can doesn't mean you have to - I can take care of myself, or you know, think about nuns or baseball or nuns playing baseball - "

"That's incredible," she said.

His smile bloomed. "Yeah?"

She reached out and grabbed his shirt again. "Come to bed, superhero."

A long time, and several orgasms, later, she stirred. "What I'd like to know," she murmured, "was how you explained that stamina to Linda and Patty."

He hummed into her hair. "Well, I never actually went all the way with Linda."

Iris turned her face into the pillow to muffle her giggles. All the way? Honestly, Barry was like a high schooler sometimes.

"Although I did kind of surprise her when I, um, possibly vibrated a little bit."

She sat up, interested, remembering how he used to blur his face so she couldn't make out his features. Only Barry, seriously. "Okay," she said. "You'll need to show me that."

"I will," he promised. "Oh, I will."

"And Patty? How did you explain it to her?"

He smirked. "All I really had to say was, 'you're just so incredibly sexy.'"

She raised her eyebrows.

"Which, uh, she was … so I wasn't lying … "

She narrowed her eyes.

"But … you're … more …" He stuttered to a stop, bit his lip, and inquired humbly, "Would you like me to eat you out again?"

She giggled and cuddled back up against him. "I may take you up on that after I eat about seventeen cheeseburgers, and yes, I know that's a midmorning snack to you, Mr. Metabolism."

"Cheeseburgers? Ketchup? Mustard?"

"You have to ask?"

"Be right back," he promised, and was gone in a rush of wind.

She stretched out in the sheets, sighing. At some point, they would have to have serious conversations, about love, about lies, about the complexities of his life, about how she was going to live hers, about not shutting her out. About Patty. About Eddie.

She pressed her hand to her heart for a moment.

But that was for later. For right now, he was back, arms piled high with styrofoam containers that wafted the scent of cheeseburgers. He handed her one and took another, eating it in two bites. She ate hers more slowly but no less greedily, watching and giggling as he plowed through three more.

He grinned at her with a smear of mustard on his lower lip. "Look what else I found," he told her, and dug around, opening boxes until he found one that was filled with brownies.

She reached for them, and for him. "Mmm," she said, shoving one in her mouth. "This is why I love you."

"Brownies? Is all it took?"

She licked a crumb off her lips and watched his eyes follow the motion of her tongue. "Among other things."

FINIS