Don't worry about how you look, Iris, she mocked herself. Go ahead and wear your rattiest sweats with JUICY peeling off your ass and a hole in the thigh to do laundry, Iris. Who's going to see you, Iris?

Her hot new neighbor, that's who.

Her hot new neighbor in the dark green shirt that emphasized the length of his arms and the breadth of his shoulders, and jeans that hugged his ass so perfectly that she wanted to squeeze it like a cantaloupe. If she had clothes that looked that good on her … well, she wouldn't need to be doing laundry, that was for sure.

She kept her head down, humming to herself just loud enough, hopefully, to indicate that she was daydreaming and not paying attention to the hot guy two machines over, no sir, not her.

Of course, she'd been meaning to talk to this particular hot guy ever since he'd moved in a few weeks ago. But not like this. In her scrubbies, with no makeup or earrings or even any lip gloss, with her hands full of her own dirty underwear.

Sexy, Iris.

She stuffed her clothes into the machine, not pausing to make sure they were right-side out or apply stain remover. She tossed a little pod of detergent in, dropped the lid, and stuffed quarters into the slot. Almost home free, almost -

"Hey, uh - "

Her fingers froze.

"Hi," he said. "Sorry. Hi."

"Hi," she said cautiously.

"Look, sorry to bother you, but - could I borrow one of those?" He pointed.

"What, you mean the detergent?"

He rubbed his hand over the back of his neck. "I mean, not borrow, I'm not giving it back …"

The laugh surprised her, and she held out the container. "Go for it."

He laughed too. "Thanks." He tossed it into the machine and started digging in his pocket. His face fell. "I, uh, also might need to borrow a quarter. I'm one short."

"No problem." She passed the coin over, and he beamed at her.

She beamed back, incapable of being rude. Especially since he'd looked right at her and hadn't run screaming, leaving a comically person-shaped hole in the wall. And he was so bashful. How did a guy that hot get that bashful? It was like Kryptonite for her libido.

Also, it helped that her dirty underwear was swishing around safely in the washing machine.

"I guess you can tell I wasn't really planning on doing laundry tonight."

She leaned her hip against it. "What were you planning instead?"

He grimaced at the machine, feeding it quarters. "Date."

Which explained why he looked so good. And - oh damn. And smelled so nice.

"Oh," she said. "Um. Bad? Or cancelled?"

"Both? Sort of?"

"How?"

"Well, she stood me up, and then texted me that she'd decided to get back together with her boyfriend."

Iris held up her hand. "Wait. She told you that over text?"

"Yep."

"Wow. That … that sucks."

"Yeah, I thought so, too. I had to leave my phone upstairs so I wouldn't be tempted to write something really, really mean back." He scrunched up his face. "Does that make me sound like an asshole?"

"You'd only be an asshole if you sent it," she said.

He smiled at her. She locked her knees so she wouldn't fall over. "I'm Barry, by the way," he said. "Just so you know who it is that's dumping all this in your lap."

"I'm Iris. And don't worry about it. My lap is open."

Oh no. Oh no. Had that really come out of her mouth?

He blinked at her.

"Anyway!" she said in a high pitched voice. "Okay! I hope your night improves! Bye!" She grabbed her basket and almost ran for the door.

She skidded to a halt. "Um, Barry?"

"Yeah?"

"Did you close the door?"

"Yeah. There was a draft."

"Oh, no," she breathed.

"What?"

"The knob's been broken for six months. It won't open from this side."

His mouth fell open. "Oh shit. I'm so sorry. Is that what that big rock was for?"

"Uh-huh. You moved it?"

"I was afraid someone would trip. I'm sorry!"

"Okay," she said, ordering herself not to melt. His chivalry was proving very inconvenient. "It's okay. You didn't know. It's all right. I've got my phone." She sent out a group text. Help I'm locked in the laundry room

It beeped almost immediately. Iris's heart leapt until she saw what Caitlin had written. Hospital until 4 am, sorry. I can try to come home during break midnite

"Shit." Her across-the-hall neighbor was a first-year resident. She might not even get her break. Her schedule went beyond crazy and into the Cliffs of Insanity.

"No go?"

"Not on my neighbor, but maybe her roommate or my roommate will come through," she said. Felicity and Linda had gone clubbing, but they'd just left while she was sorting her laundry upstairs, after multiple failed attempts to make her to come with them.

"Hey, I don't know anybody else here yet, but I could send my roommate a Facebook message."

"Oh! Good idea." She logged out of the app and passed him her phone. He tapped for a minute, logging himself in and writing the message, then handed it back.

"You think he'll get it?" she said hopefully.

He shrugged. "He went out too. But maybe he'll check."

"Oh."

He stuck his hands in his back pockets and rocked back on his heels. "So. Uh. Since we're going to be here awhile, probably - what should we do?"

She pressed down all the dirty thoughts that arose. He'd just gotten stood up. Jeez, Iris. "Well!" she said cheerfully, hoisting herself up to sit on the washing machine with her clothes in it. "How do you like the building so far?"

"Rent's cheap." He grinned. "Neighbors are nice."

She grinned back.

They talked about his move from Starling City in order to take his brand-new internship at the CCPD CSI division, and her barely-better-than-internship at CCPN. He said, "I probably shouldn't tell you this but I'm very bribeable to journalists."

"Oh yeah? With what?"

Was it her imagination or had his eyes flickered to her lips? He said lightly, "Coffee, mostly."

"Good thing I still pick up hours at Jitters."

"What! I love Jitters. Best coffee place I found so far. Did you ever serve me?"

"I don't think so, I probably would have remembered." Oh yeah, she would have remembered.

They chatted about roommates and neighbors. He didn't know anybody except his roommate yet and proved very open to the idea of hanging out with her and Linda.

"How is that? Working with her and then living with her?"

"Pretty good, honestly. We're in different departments so we don't see that much of each other at work unless we want to, and when we bitch about work at home, we don't have to explain to each other."

"That's awesome. I don't see much of Cisco. He's a master's student at the university and his hours are nuts. But I really like hanging with him."

"So he's pretty cool?"

"Yeah, we geek out over science together. Plus, he can fix anything. Like, if he were here, he could probably have fixed the doorknob with a paper clip by now."

"Well, in that case, I'm kind of glad he isn't."

He raised his brows at her. "You want to be trapped in a laundry room?"

She found herself fluttering her lashes - actually fluttering her lashes, like, what? "It's all about the company."

The way he blushed and smiled made arousal buzz along her skin. Oh, wow, where was this coming from? Sure, she'd been single for a while now, but -

"Hunh," Barry said. "I think this machine's a little off-balance."

"Huh," she said. "I think you're right."

He was totally right. Under her butt, the washing machine buzzed in the spin cycle, the uneven load making it thud lightly and rhythmically. She pressed her knees together, hoping he couldn't see the blood rushing to her face at the realization that she was basically sitting on top of a giant makeshift vibrator.

She didn't get down though.

She shifted oh-so-casually. "It's all right, they all do this every now and then." Although she'd never known about the vibrator effect. She cast around for another topic.

Before she could find one, he said, "So, I know why I'm doing laundry on Saturday night. What about you?"

"What? Oh." Now the blood rushed to her cheeks for a different reason. "Uh. You know. I like going out and everything but sometimes you really just want a night in."

"Doing laundry."

"Yeah."

He raised his brows at her.

"Okay. Okay." She sighed. "It's my three-month anniversary."

He jerked back, yanking his hand away from where it rested next to her leg.

" - of being dumped," she finished.

"Oh," he said, high-pitched. "Oh, wow, I'm sorry. Obviously it's still rough, if you're keeping track."

She shrugged, watching his hand, thinking, Put it back. "You know how people say you should mourn a relationship for half the length of time it lasted? We were together for six months. And then - " She scrunched up her nose. "Then he said, 'I met someone else' and poofed."

"He sounds like a jerk."

"Yeah, but for some reason, I've mourned the jerk."

"And you didn't want to go out tonight?"

"I thought about it. Felicity and Linda tried to talk me into it. But I sort of wanted to stay home and think about things and figure out whether I really am totally over him like they say."

"And what do you think?"

She met his eyes. "I'm leaning toward yes."

He really did have the biggest, brightest smile.

"Well," he said lightly. "It's nice to know I don't have the actual worst dumping story in this room."

"Well, but text though," she said indignantly. "At least Jake told me in person."

"Mmmyeah, but it's not like me and Patty were really together either."

Eager to get off the subject of her own love life, she asked, "Had you guys gone out before?"

"A couple of times."

Oh. So. Third date. And he got stood up. "Did you really like her?" she asked.

He tipped his flattened hand back and forth in the air, so-so. "It was more like I really wanted to like her. Like, I was starting to feel like I was too picky, you know? That nobody's perfect, and I should just try to be happy with someone and not expect … "

"Lightning," she murmured.

He turned to look at her. "Yeah."

Electricity flickered through her veins. Thud thud thud, went the machine, harder under her, and she squeezed her knees together.

He shook his head. "Wow. Sorry. I got - uh - distracted there. For a minute." He stared at her, lips slightly parted. "You - " He swallowed. "Something smells really good. Like, uh, key lime pie."

"My lotion," she said inanely.

"Nice. It's nice."

She thought Kiss me, you fool. Then she thought, Kiss HIM, you fool!

He was already lifting his hand when she grabbed his shoulders and pressed her mouth to his. He froze for a moment, but then kissed her back, putting his hands at her waist to steady them both.

He stepped into the thudding, rattling machine, pressing close to get close to her, and said, "Whoa!"

"Yep," she said into his mouth.

"Wow." He slid his hands to her hips, and then curled them around her ass and said, "Wow, oh my god - "

She scooted forward to wrap her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck, kissing him deeper until he stopped talking.

It was a sloppy, breathless, dirty, tonguey kiss, with her hands sliding under his shirt, his fingers kneading her ass. Between her knees, he pushed his hips into the buzzing, thudding machine, groaning. The machine thumped harder. She began panting into his mouth, wondering if she was actually going to come, here, like this, just from kissing and groping and the best washing machine ever. And then -

BZZZZZ.

She let out a wordless wail as the buzzing, the thumping, all of it stopped, leaving her quivering too close to the edge.

"Wha- wha - "

"It's done," she gasped. "The machine. My clothes. Done."

They panted on each other, hot humid breath. "We're not," he said.

Truer words. She kissed him again, hard, so hard their teeth clicked together. Oh god. Oh Christ. She was not going to be satisfied with some fingering and groping here, she knew that. But -

She pulled away momentarily. "What," she whimpered. "What's your last name?"

His eyes had dilated so far they looked pitch black. "Allen. Barry Allen."

"I'm Iris West," she said. "Okay. Good."

"Why?"

She undid his pants and pulled down his zipper. "Because I have to at least know a guy's last name before I fuck him."

His eyes crossed when she took his cock in her hand. "Fair - enough," he gasped.

They had to work together to peel her disreputable sweatpants off, Iris boosting herself up so he could shove the cloth over her hips, groping her ass along the way. Not that she was complaining.

He went down on one knee briefly to pull them all the way off. She looked at their relative positions and wondered how he was with his tongue.

Then he stood up, his hard cock bouncing in the air, red and shiny at the tip, and she decided they could do that some other time.

"You've got something, right? I mean, third date, and you strike me as a Boy Scout, so you - "

"Yeah, yeah - " He scrabbled in his pocket and pulled out a square packet. "How'd you know I was a Boy Scout?"

"You actually were?" Maybe it was the arousal screaming through her veins like the Blue Angels, but she found that adorable. "Never mind, just - "

He got the condom on while she licked his neck, sucked on his earlobe, and generally did her best to be counterproductive.

"Okay, wait, this - mmm." He kissed her for a moment. "This isn't going to work, like, geometrically. Anatomically. This machine. Too tall."

She looked over his shoulder. "The table?" It was about six inches shorter, a heavy solid table shoved up against the wall for people to use while folding their clothes or, more realistically, to sit on while they played with their phones and waited for their laundry.

"Worth a try. Yes." He kissed her again. "Yes. Okay, hang on." He started to pull her ass toward him. She resisted, clutching his shoulders, and he said, "Shhh, s'okay, I got you, I won't let you fall."

She let him pull her off the machine, swing around, and set her on the table. Perfect. Holy shit.

"Perfect," he moaned, and pushed into her.

Her head fell back against the wall, and she curled her arm around his neck as he filled her. "Oh my god. Oh god."

"Good?"

"So - mm. God." She braced her other hand on the table for the leverage to thrust her hips against his.

He cursed a few times, luscious filthy words that no Boy Scout should know, and it stripped away all sense of anything but the thickness of his cock and the thrust of his hips and the gasp of his breath on her cheek, in her hair, against her breast.

She felt her orgasm coming on, gathering steam, and she hitched her knee higher on his side. He moaned in her ear. "Iris - I'm - soon, are you - ?"

"Almost," she gasped. "Almost - there!" She clamped her legs tight around him and arched into the jolts of pleasure that rattled her from toes to teeth.

His fingers dug into her ass almost painfully as he went rigid in her arms, hips jerking against hers.

She sagged like a rag doll. He rested his forehead on her shoulder, arms trembling where he braced them on the table. The laundry room was silent except for the uneven huff of their breath, slowing down.

"Oh, my god," she breathed. "Oh my god, this is the craziest thing I've ever done."

"You calling me crazy?" he mumbled against her neck.

"Well, you did just fuck a girl in a laundry room."

He lifted his head and grinned at her, his face crinkling up, eyes dancing. "Look who's talking. You fucked a guy in a laundry room."

They laughed so hard they had to hang onto each other or fall over.

When they'd fallen quiet, grinning into each others' skin, he let out his breath in a "Whew!" and pulled away to attend to the condom. Someone had left a half-full purse pack of Kleenex on the table, and they split it between themselves to clean up as best they could.

"Shit, it's cold," he gasped, pulling his pants up and picking hers up off the floor. "Where's that draft coming from?"

Instead of taking them, she grabbed his arm. "Barry," she said. "Bear. The door."

It stood open, with the rock propped in it.

His mouth fell open. Red spread up his neck. "Oh, shit," he said. "Who did that? How'd we miss that?"

She gave him a look like, Really? and he blushed all the way up.

"I just - what if it was the landlord? Do you think he'd evict us for having sex in the laundry room?"

"That's got to be illegal," she said uncertainly. "Eviction, I mean. Not sex in a laundry room."

Against the floor, her sweatshirt pocket buzzed. She squeaked, "My phone!" and jumped off the table to get it.

Several messages blinked at her, all from Linda. On my way, this club sux anyway, to the group text she'd sent out. Then, about ten minutes later U still down there? Then Stand down ladies she's free barely five minutes ago.

Then the last message, to her only, said, u dirty girl

Iris squeezed her eyes shut, giggling. "It's okay," she managed. "It's okay. It was my roommate. She won't complain." She might require every last detail, but she wouldn't breathe a single one to anybody else.

"Whew," he said. "I mean. I like it here."

"Me too."

She pulled her clothes on, feeling awfully shy for a girl who'd just come her brains out. She snuck a look at him, and found him sneaking a look at her, and the laughter bubbled up.

He grinned at her, rubbing his hand over his hair.

"I've honestly never done anything like that," she said.

"Me neither. But I'm glad I did."

She blushed, but couldn't stop herself from smiling like an idiot.

Her laundry still sat damp in the washing machine that had started all this. His clothes had finished while they were otherwise occupied. They worked side-by-side to transfer them from washing machine to dryer, smiling shyly at each other whenever their eyes met. It was all far less awkward than it should have been.

He had to borrow more quarters from her to set his dryer running. "I'll pay you back."

"Consider it a welcome-to-the-building."

"You mean that - " He nodded at the table. "Wasn't?"

She smirked at him. "I think we both got something out of that."

He blushed and laughed.

She picked up her basket. "For the record," she told him, "I can definitely tell you I'm all the way over Jake."

"Yeah? Well." He rubbed his hand over his hair, messing it up further. "I'm in 2-C, if you ever want to, uh, come get under me."

She leaned over and took his bottom lip between hers, sucking on it until he moaned. "Count on it."

FINIS