The sun begins to rise, tinging the clouds with a faint pink hue that makes the ache in Barry's chest lessen somewhat. He watches through the gap in the curtains, leaning against the pillows, not noticing Iris until she's climbing back into bed with him.

He turns towards her instinctively, feeling the tug of a smile on his lips despite himself. She's wearing a dark blue gown wrapped around her middle, and when their eyes meet she smiles back. They kiss, and it's slow and sweet and long and Barry doesn't want to break away from her when he does. He wants to say "I love you" but the words get stuck in his throat and don't quite come out.

"You okay?" she asks.

"Getting there," Barry manages to say half-truthfully. She doesn't say anything, just tilts her head a bit to one side and watches him silently, until at last Barry starts to feel nervous. "What?"

Iris shakes her head slightly. "Nothing, it's just… this isn't exactly how I pictured our first time."

"How do you mean?" he asks softly, and his heartbeat slows a little when she presses her face into his bare chest, drops a kiss right over his heart, then looks up at him with her rich brown eyes.

"Just – I don't know. I just thought it might have been under… happier circumstances."

"I'm sorry it wasn't," Barry says. Then he chuckles lightly to himself, thinking about their first kiss on the waterfront just before Mark Mardon destroyed the city with a tsunami.

Maybe they had a theme going, or something.

"What's so funny?"

"There's one thing I never told you," Barry says. "About the first time I travelled back in time."

"You mean when I apparently told you that I was thinking about you?" she says, and her tone is lightly teasing, but Barry can sense something else – less familiar – in her voice too.

"Your exact words were 'I have not been able to stop thinking about you'," Barry supplies, and Iris's eyes widen a little in surprise.

"You never said."

"You never asked."

"Only because I got the feeling you didn't want to talk about it," Iris counters. "I… what did you say to me?"

"I said I'd never stopped thinking about you," Barry says softly. "And then…"

He reaches up so his hand is on the back of her neck while with his other he cradles her cheek.

"Then what?"

"I'm trying to show you," he tells her, and when he kisses her it's like he's back on that waterfront, the wind blowing through his hair, the taste of Iris sweet on his tongue. He kisses her for dear life, and she kisses him back, just like she did in that timeline Barry erased from existence.

Only it doesn't matter because they're here, right now, recreating that moment, and Barry remembers, which is enough for the both of them, really.

Then Iris pulls away, rests her forehead against Barry's. "You're saying you kissed me well over a year ago and you never told me about it?"

"I wanted to. So many times. Just like… all the times I wanted to tell you I loved you. There just never seemed like a right time. That, and I didn't want to betray Eddie's memory, either."

"I get that," Iris says quietly. Then, after a moment: "And now?"

"Now… I'm done waiting, Iris."

She kisses him again, gently, tongue ever so slightly darting out to lick his bottom lip. "Good," she whispers. "And, listen, about before –"

"You mean when I went back in time and almost saved my mother?" He tries not to sound bitter, he really does, but it doesn't quite work.

"Bear… you know what that would have done to the timeline."

"I know. We might not have stayed best friends. We wouldn't have grown up together."

"I don't want to imagine life without you, Barry."

"I would have found you," he insists stubbornly.

For some reason though this makes Iris smile as she leans on her elbow against the pillows. "How can you be so sure?"

"Because wherever I go," Barry says, "no matter what universe or timeline I'm in – you'll always be my Iris. And I know I'll find you. One way or another."

Iris considers. "That's… romantic."

"I mean it."

"I know you do. But what about the Joe West on earth-2? You said yourself that he didn't exactly love you. What about Wally, Cisco, Caitlin? You might not even have met them in this other timeline you would have created."

"But my parents would have been alive," Barry reasons.

"And I'm sure if I could turn back time I would be tempted too," Iris says. "God, Barry, I would do anything to go back and fix things with my mom. For her to be a part of my life. But that's not how life works. You can't just do over every time something bad happens. Even," Iris adds, stroking his cheek, "when you lose someone as horribly as you did, Bear."

Barry sighs, leans into her touch. "I know," he says eventually. "I guess my older self knew that more than I did."

"It's okay," she tells him. "It's going to be okay, Barry. I don't know how or when but it will be. And I'll be there for you. Every step of the way."

"I know," he repeats simply.

"I love you," she says, "no matter what."

"I love you too," Barry whispers back, and he buries his face in her neck, says the words again into soft skin, over and over like a prayer. And he wonders, as his lips meet hers once more in a searing kiss, if maybe Iris kisses him hard enough, the ache in his chest will disappear altogether.