#westwave

(I can’t remember what this was for, I think it was a mini fic)

“Get down!” Iris shouted suddenly.

The four all ducked under their table as something exploded. Glass rained down on the table and floor as the window shattered. Mick scooted closer to Iris as Barry lifted his head up to see what was happening.

“Robbers,” he said as he ducked back down. “A lot of them. Len, did you bring your gun?”

“Of course I did,” his boyfriend replied. “Mick?”

“I got it,” Iris held up the heat gun before handing it over to him.

“Take it this time,” Mick said, pulling out another futuristic gun.”

Iris gaped at it. “Did you get that off the Waverider?”

“Time dweeb left it behind visiting Trenchcoat. He’ll never know.”

“So how about we stop yakking and get back to date night,” Leonard hissed. “Scarlet, ready?”

“Ready,” Barry grinned. “Three.”

“Two.”

“One.”

“Go.”

Barry sped out. Iris, Mick, and Leonard rose up and fired their respective guns at the thieves. 

Mick barely hears her footsteps over the sound of potatoes sizzling in the cast-iron frypan on the stove. Her feet must he bare, the way they shuffle and drag across the linoleum like a faint, whispered hiss.  

“Good morning,” Iris says, tentative and unsure, from somewhere about ten paces back.

Mick sets his spatula down and turns, ready to offer a greeting of his own, but the words die on his lips.

Iris has one of Mick’s Henleys on and nothing else. It’s so oversized, one shoulder and the jut of her collarbones stick out, even with the neckline fully buttoned. The hem falls to the top of her thighs, strong and smooth, and the contrast of her dark skin against the pale grey of the fabric is like sin. A possessive fire curls in Mick’s stomach that he stomps down at once.

“Hope you don’t mind me borrowing your shirt,” Iris continues. “The blood won’t come out of my dress.”

Swallowing thickly, Mick turns back to the potatoes and flips them in the pan, then glances back at Iris once he’s feeling more composed. “Pretty sure there’s some stuff of Lisa’s laying around,” he grunts. “Find you somethin’ to go home in.”

Iris offers him a small, timid smile. “Thanks,” she says. The way she tucks her hair behind her ear – nervous habit, if Mick has to guess – shows off the broken skin and deep, purple bruises on the left side of her face. Mick tries to keep his expression neutral, but Iris catches the subtle way his lips tighten in a grimace.

“It’s fine,” she tries, shaking her head.

Mick isn’t convinced. “C’mere,” he says, gesturing Iris over with a nod. As she pads over, he turns off the gas and moves the potatoes to a cool burner. Iris looks to Mick expectantly once she’s at his side, and he crowds her forward until the small of her back hits the counter.

“Up,” Mick says. When Iris hesitates, Mick raises an eyebrow. Her hands fall the the counter’s edge, and she leverages herself up to sit.

Iris waits patiently, quietly, as Mick fishes the first aid kit from under the sink, then turns on the faucet, hard stream splashing noisily into the stainless steel basin. The water is hot enough to make Mick’s skin itch, and he still washes his hands twice over to be sure they’re clean.

“Turn,” he says when he’s satisfied, shaking his hands to dry rather than rub them on the grimy dishtowel on the oven door.

Iris angles her face right to give Mick a better look at her wounds. It gives her a clear line of sight to the living room where a throw pillow and a blanket sit, rumpled, on the sofa.

“Sorry I kicked you out of your bed last night,” she says.

Mick shrugs. “Worse places I’ve slept.” He takes Iris’ chin in his hand, firm yet gentle, to maneuver her head just right so the light catches the top of her cheekbone where the worst of the damage is. Her eye is swollen half shut, but after a thorough – and painful – check the night before, Mick’s comfortable saying the zygomatic isn’t broken. The skin covering it is a different story.

Iris’ lip is split, too, the result of a separate blow that scuffed up her chin in the process. Her nose remains untouched, though Mick imagines it was next on the list.

Mick pushes against the bruised skin near her lip and Iris sucks in a pained breath between her teeth. He doesn’t apologize, and she doesn’t posture.

“You got a headache?” He asks instead.

“It’s fine,” Iris replies.

Not a no.

“Been pistol whipped a time or two in my day, doll,” Mick says as he pushes a blob of ointment from a tube in the first aid kit onto his fingers, then begins smoothing it over the open abrasions on Iris’ skin. “You ain’t gotta sugar coat it.”

“Oh, well, in that case, I feel like I’m dying,” Iris jokes, a little too loud for the close confines they’re pressed in. It seems to startle her, and she flinches, but Mick stays unshaken as he goes back in for more ointment.

“Woulda died for real if I hadn’t found you when I did,” he reminds her.

Iris shivers. “Thanks for coming,” she whispers.

Mick shrugs again, noncommittal. She explained it to him last night, once the blood and the tears finally dried up. It wasn’t the first time she chased a lead headfirst into danger, but after her phone caught a bullet and panic drove Barry’s number from her mind, her saving grace was Mick’s number, scrawled on a motel napkin and forgotten in her jacket pocket for almost six weeks.

Since the first and only time Mick and Iris slept together.

“Mick,” Iris says, quiet and hoarse, like his name tries desperately to cling to her throat as she pushes it past her lips.

Mick doesn’t reply, keeps his eyes downcast, staring avoidantly at the potatoes going cold on the stove, until Iris’ small, gentle hand falls to his cheek and pulls him in to connect their mouths. It’s little more than a brush of lips, both mindful of the open split that’s still tender and sore, but it makes Mick’s toes curl nonetheless. He drops his hands to Iris’ thighs and slides them up and down, thumbs tracing idle patterns against the skin he remembers so vividly touching and suddenly gets to touch again.

Iris shivers and leans in close, burying her face in the curve of Mick’s neck and soaking up the heat from his body. “Sorry I didn’t call,” she whispers.

Mick drops a kiss to the top of her head and tries not to think too hard about what he almost lost.

9. “Don’t call me that!”

They get along a lot better than Iris would have ever expected, out of either of them. She knows she can hold a grudge sometimes, and even though it was Caitlin and Cisco that he had kidnapped all those years ago she had had a real hate-on for him, and for his smarmy partner too.

But things were different now. Apparently Heatwave and Captain Cold were heroes extraordinaire now. They had given their lives, both figuratively and literally, to save the world, and apparently the very concept of free will. That’s a pretty big deal. They help out, Team Flash and Team Arrow both (it’s sort of an open secret that they still do ‘bad guy’ stuff too). Iris has gotten used to them being around, and she knows she’d probably miss them if they were gone.

Iris figured she was getting along pretty great with the semi-ex rogues. She and Mick even had this routine where anytime Barry or Snart came out with some ridiculous guilt-ridden circular logic, they would give each other a Look across the room to rival Jim Halpert, and the more Looks the shared the closer they seemed to sit together in the cortex until their understood spots were right next to each other. She had thought she was getting along with them the best out of everyone, if she did say so herself, until Barry nervously asked her if she would be okay with it if they could see other people too.

Or just one specific person, in his case.

It took a lot of talking about it, and Iris is big enough to admit that her feelings were hurt at first, and she even thought that she and Barry might break up. But Barry assured her, just as she assured him, that they were the loves of each others lives.

Barry had gone on his first date with Snart tonight. Iris is hanging out at Jitters for now, because it just feels a little be weird to be at their apartment alone when she knows that Barry is on a date, and because Kendra is working there again now and it’s been too long. In between customers, they chat a little and catch up. Some things about her time on the Waverider, Kendra can’t tell her about, but the really good stuff - the stuff about her teammates - that’s all fair game.

It’s well past closing time, and Carter had swung by to walk Kendra home long minutes ago. Iris is standing out front, just finishing up her last latte (she’ll be up all night) and enjoying the fresh night air, when Mick walks up like she’s expecting him.

I’m so sorry it took me 80 million years to answer this!

Mick’s so nervous about just asking Iris out that he ends up accidentally setting fire, not only to his clothes, but also Barry’s, Ray’s and Nate’s clothes as well. 

He explained it away as being angry that Lisa and Len messed up his kitchen while he’d been away with the Legends. 

He resolves to try again, after getting drunk and writing the next three chapters of his next novel. 

The next time he tries to ask, he gets interrupted by the meta of the week, which pisses him off so much he ends up bellowing out the question, not only in front of Iris, but also Team Flash and the West family (who’d been in the cortex trying to squeeze in a family dinner when the meta had shown up).

He’s so embarrassed that he melts the meta’s shoes to the street and hide’s away in a safe house, altering between trying to drink himself into oblivion and focus on writing more of his novel. 

Iris lets him get away with a week of this, before she gets Barry to get Len to tell him where Mick’s hiding at, so that Barry can tell her, so she can hunt her idiot down herself. 

Iris shows up when Mick’s passed out, so she decides to leave him an ACTUAL LETTER, which basically boiled down to her saying yes and that she’s set up reservations for the following Saturday if he’d still like to go out, and leaves it on his typewriter before slipping back out of the safe house. She also mentions a dress code, because Lisa booked them at a semi fancy restaurant, one she knows Mick loves because the food is so good. 

Iris is a little worried Mick will decide not to show, so she spends the week diving Barry, Len and their friends/family nuts. 

Mick spends the week freaking out but putting that energy into his book and letting Lisa take him around town to find an outfit that will be good for his first date with Iris. 

Mick shows up at Iris’s place to pick her up, dressed in brand new dark jeans, a dark grey henley and a leather jacket that’s tailored to his drame.

They don’t make it off her stoop for nearly twenty minutes.

They end up ordering in Thai, because they don’t leave her apartment at all.

Lisa bitches at them because she called in a favor to get them a private table. 

Mick pays her back. 

They do eventually end up going to the restaurant for their one year anniversary. 

Iris ends up proposing half way through their meal.

Mick says yes.

He’d been planning to ask during dessert.

Westwave, Easter. 

Nixie’s MF Month: Day Four, Iris x Mick - Sleepy Hollow AU. 

Also for @dctvbingo​, Prompt: Mick Rory x Iris West. 

Mick pauses, head tilting to the side as he stares at the affronted building across the street. “That building there, it use to be a livery stable.”

Blinking in confusion, Iris tilts her head to stare up at the man beside her before flicking her eyes to the building in question. “Yeah? Well now it’s a Starbucks. They make and sell coffee there.”

“But that building there is a Starbucks.”

“Yep,” Iris nods as she reaches out, snagging his coat to get him to follow after her.

Frowning in confusion, Mick stumbles along for a moment. “Well, how many of this establishments are there?”

“Per block?”

“Hey,” Iris calls out loudly, lips stretching into a playfulgrin as she waddles closer to her husband. “Wait right there, mister,” shetacks on, moving her hand towards her belly, she rubs it as she slides her handdown, cupping underneath the bump as if she could hold up the extra weight withit.

“And don’t you dare move,” she adds on as she stops justnext to him, moving her free hand up, she curls it around Mick’s jacket andtugs twice getting him to lean his head down, meeting her in a soft gentle kiss. 

Lifting his hands up, one to cup her jaw gently, while he moves the other to wrap softly around where her’s is resting beneath her baby bump.