#alicebarry

Sex. It happened so infrequently that Alice didn't connect the little oddities Barry showed around her, not at first. Too focused on the grief neither of them would rather be feeling, or the rare celebration instead.

Uneasy fingers locking around hers as their bodies melted together. Toying with her wedding band.

Absentmindedly looping around the thin necklace where she eventually started wearing her ring, as they came down from it.

The change happened in an instant, one minute they were at the table eating a handful of whatever it was that Barry brought that day to try to cheer her up and the next they were surrounded by solid, inky, drowning darkness with only the sound of the pouring rain as a warning. A shriek was heard, and Alice wasn't entirely sure whether it was hers or not.

 The void felt oppressive against her skin, her mind conjuring endless possibilities, endless horrors that could or could not happen, visions that couldn't be avoided by closing her eyes for the darkness felt the same either way. Some part of her felt stupid, as stupid as she always felt in these situations, how could she react the same way after all these years? "Relax, honey" She could hear Alan say, "it's just a power outbreak.", but it had been three years since he died, and his voice was faint on her memory.

 In that darkness she couldn't know what was real and what was a cruel figment of her imagination, feeling hands around her arms dragging her down (down, down a place half forgotten) no matter how much she fought them, when a voice pierced through the drumming on her ears.

 "Hey, hey, hey, relax! Damn it, it's me!" 

 Suddenly, the many hands of her nightmares melted to just two, warmer than the memory, but nightmarish in nature nonetheless. Her fear got diluted with a familiar irritation, now humiliated at the thought of Barry of all people seeing her like that. His calming hand on her arm feeling like an insult.

 She struggled with his grasp more forcefully now, everything that was wrong in her world having found physical manifestation in him, her fear, her anger, her guilt, trying to pull away despite his protests and despite her very own yearning for contact, for warmth, when a flash of light stopped her.

 A lighting strike cut through the black canvas like a knife, and Alice saw all the terror she felt painted in Barry's face.

 For one single, terrible second, she felt understood.

 And then they were shrouded in darkness again.

When she felt the grip of a hand on her arm again, she reluctantly recognized it for what it was. The desperate flailing of a drowning man trying to stay afloat, trying to find an buoy. Trying to be the buoy too, maybe, although she still had her doubts. Either way this time the cold sound of the rain and the slick feeling of darkness on her skin, like a thin coat, weighed heavier on her mind than the trembling touch, so she took a deep, shaky breath, and allowed it.

 Closing her eyes for the fleeting sense of control she reached for him, and Barry lost no time in wrapping her with an arm when thunder finally struck.

 "E-easy there, Alice, it's okay, I'm here. I got you." She sneered, but buried herself in the contact nonetheless. She really, really hated to admit it, but his awkward babbling and unavoidable presence felt like a mercy in that moment, his person, impossible to ignore even if she tried (and tried, she had), drowned her anxiety for a few seconds, and the white-knuckle grip on his shirt relaxed a bit.

Taking a deep breath she couldn't help the though that the way his hands drew circles on her back felt fearful, like she would just going to disappear out of thin air. Some other time Alice would've found it annoying, repulsive at the very worst. Now that she shared that exact fear, it felt more grounding than anything else. At least until she was calm enough that his running mouth looped back into ticking her the wrong way.

"…Look, I know how phobias work, I know you're not gonna relax just cuz I tell you there's nothing to worry about, but believe me—"

 "Barry."

"Yeah?"

 "You can shut up now."

Alice couldn't have seen anything even if she opened her eyes, fact that she was trying really hard not to think about, but even then she could hear the way he snorted.

"Alright, alright. Just trying to lighten the mood." And with that the sound of the rain became a mantle, with the occasional humming bleeding through.

Another thing she didn't want to think about, another bit of trivia Alan had told her about his best friend a long, long time ago, was the fact that his body was practically a furnace (in his own words, but then again, the man always wore many layers of cloth for a reason), and in that moment Alice had to agree.

The embarrassment she was feeling paled against the dread still acutely present on her body, so she only hesitated for a second before wrapping her arms around him in return. In an instant, the goosebumps on her skin faded with the encompassing warmth, and she couldn't help but spread her fingers to try to capture as much surface available, burying her face on the fabric in the process.

To say it had been a while would be putting it lightly, yet Barry, surprisingly, thankfully, did not comment in any of it.

Only when Alice finally felt herself grow a bit less agitated she felt him detach a hand from her back followed by the sound of fabric rustling, and it wasn't until she suddenly saw colors dancing behind her eyelids that she opened them again. The hand that wasn't wrapped around her shoulders held his cellphone in it, brightness at maximum as the screen painted the entire living room with a slowly shifting rainbow. 

"What…?"

"Always keep a light close-by. Barry Wheeler is nothing if not prepared." He said, smile smug and self indulgent, and Alice rolled her eyes for his use of third person, admittedly less tense than before.

Now that she didn't feel like she was going to die, though, she quickly untangled her hands from his back and wrapped them around herself, before thinking it over for a few seconds. Quietly allowing the contact again, she leaned slightly against his side without a word.

"What's with, um…" She cleared her throat, ignoring the surprised look on his face. Another feeling they shared as of late. "What's with the rainbow?"

"Hm?" He blinked, then looked over to the now pink-ish ceiling. "Oh, I dunno. Just feels safer, I guess, I mean, nothing that bad can happen when you're under all this color, y'know?" He laughed, albeit it sounded a bit off to her ears.

"…I guess..." She simply replied, not wanting to pry. Not this time. And eventually, they continued eating dinner despite their predicament, lest the food grew cold (God forbid).