Chapter Thirty
Breathing was one of those things Barrett always thought she knew how to do right up until the moment her system couldn’t fathom it. And that was exactly how looking into Iris’ eyes as she said she wanted to date her felt. She’d asked to be chosen and Iris had said yes.
Replying in kind came easily—much easier than breathing, that was for sure. When she was looking into Iris’ eyes, the rest of the world faded into nothingness. Everything felt possible and infinite, Iris especially.
Iris wanted to go on a date with her. All those years of calling her princess with some private, badly buried part of her heart aching for this woman, and there she was, over cheese on toast, asking Barrett out.
And that was the truth of it. When the walls and barriers fell away, the truth was that she’d always wanted Iris and never thought she deserved her, because what did she have to offer her other than a broken woman who wasn’t sure she could hold someone that close?
But holding Iris close wasn’t actually difficult.
Terrifying, yes, but not hard. It wasn’t even something she had to think about, it just was.
“I’d like that,” she said, watching closely as Iris moved from relieved and excited into nervous as Barrett hesitated. “But there’s something I should tell you first.”
Iris sucked in a deep breath, something shuttering in her expression. “Okay.”
Barrett hated being the cause of that feeling, but she owed Iris the truth. “I mentioned that guy I dated in high school.”
“Your one attempted dalliance with being straight. Yes.”
Barrett attempted to smile. “That’s the one. And you obviously know several of the reasons I didn’t want him around, but it wasn’t just him.”
The way Iris just understood things was one of Barrett’s favorite parts of her. She was smart, insightful. She put the pieces together and got what was going on. And that was never more unexpected or amazing than when she was doing it with exactly what Barrett was trying to say.
They’d both been through enough shit with the things that went unsaid. It was part of the reason she knew she needed to tell Iris what she’d been feeling, but there was something incredible in being known so well that another person understood her.
Iris nodded, leaning in encouragingly. She might understand a lot of what Barrett was getting at but she still wanted to hear it in Barrett’s own words.
Barrett sipped her rapidly cooling drink, realizing just how dry her throat had gotten. “It’s been everyone,” she said eventually. “I don’t date, don’t let them in, not properly, because, if I do, then I worry where that leads.”
“People start requiring things from you?” She asked without judgment, no fear of the answer. And that lack of condemnation was freeing.
“Yeah. My only real experience of being close to people was my family. Well, there’s Ruby, too, but that’s different and it took us a while to get to this point and I don’t actually fully understand how we did—”
“Barrett,” Iris breathed. “It’s okay. People are complicated. You can have exceptions to the rules without needing to explain them.”
Barrett’s heart was racing, making it hard to swallow, and the entire world seemed to hinge on Iris’ existence.
“I think you’re an exception, but I’ve been so scared of what that means.
And it’s nothing you’ve done or said or anything about you as a person, but my system doesn’t know how to want you without worrying that I’m going to lose myself again.
It’s the only kind of love I’ve ever known. ”
Barrett cringed at having said that word. It was too much for someone she was talking about going on a first real date with, but it was the crux of the matter, the thing she really needed Iris to understand.
Iris simply nodded, her eyes running over Barrett’s face. She was entirely unafraid of Barrett, of the monster Barrett worried lay inside her, ruining everything.
“I get it,” Iris said. “Your family conditioned you to believe love was going to look a certain way, that the cost of it was everything you are.”
“Yeah.” The word was more a gasp than anything else, shocking Barrett as she realized how close to tears she was—tears at worrying she was already destroying her chances with Iris, tears at being so selfish and unkind, tears at someone other than a therapist understanding what she’d been through and just… verbalizing it.
As a solo tear escaped, Iris reached over, brushing the backs of her fingers over Barrett’s cheek to wipe it away.
And Barrett was angry at the world that had hurt both of them.
Iris touching her was everything. She was tender and careful and compassionate—a million things that Barrett had needed for so very long.
Things she’d fought to be for herself. And she’d made it, mostly, but, now, she got to be with the most brilliant woman she’d ever met and get all those things too, and people had hurt them both? It wasn’t right or fair.
The teenage version of her that had sobbed in her college counselor’s office and alone in the corner of their tiny kitchen at night, trying hard to stifle her cries, could never have believed this moment possible.
She could barely believe it herself and, as she now knew, she’d been slowly working her way here from the moment Iris had walked into Burrow and into her life.
“I told you,” Iris said softly, “you were enough. I meant it then, I mean it now, and I’ll mean it in the future, no matter what happens with us.
I don’t want you to make yourself small, I don’t want to know only the palatable version of you.
I want you. Exactly as you are. When you’re laughing, and when crying; when the world makes sense, and when it doesn’t. ”
“You are too good for this world, Iris Dean.”
“I don’t think that’s true.” A shadow crossed her face, reminding Barrett that the things that hurt didn’t make Iris less worthy, no matter what her brain told her. Perhaps it was the same for Barrett.
“It is.” She scrubbed at her own eyes. “I think, on some level, I’ve always wanted you, and that’s only become more insistent as we’ve spent time together.
I tried to fight it, though, because I didn’t want to…
ruin it? I figured I would by being selfish and wanting the life I’d built, the person I am now. ”
“That’s not selfish.” She sucked in a slow breath, clearly chewing something over and deciding whether to share.
“When I was with Natasha, she needed me to be a very specific version of what she wanted. A trophy, really, more than anything. She liked me in public, liked to brag about how hot I was or what I was accomplishing, but it was to make her look good. I was a checkbox she’d achieved rather than a real person.
And she didn’t like those things in private, not really.
She’d complain about everything I wasn’t and try to force me into a mold that was never going to fit, one that was always changing. It made me feel lost and worthless.
“The other day, you told me I didn’t like bright yellow.
I had no idea. Most of the time, I feel like I don’t know what I like or dislike because I couldn’t have strong opinions of my own in the past. I had to fit with what she wanted and it was still never enough.
I could tell her a fact and she wouldn’t believe it until she’d heard it from someone she liked better.
But she’d still tell me she loved me. That’s not love, but it sure does fuck you up.
Just like with your family. And you are not selfish because they couldn’t love you for who you are. ”
Barrett nodded. Two different paths to a very similar outcome.
She felt the cavernous ache that had been a daily constant around her family, the carved-out space they filled with the person they wanted her to be, the things they expected of her.
She and Iris had both been shells to those who claimed to love them.
It was a strange kind of grief when you realized other people had to tell you what you liked or disliked.
Disorienting because there was the wonder of having someone pay so much attention to who you actually were that they could point that out, but it existed alongside the pain of not knowing yourself because who you were wasn’t good enough for the people who came before.
She reached out to take Iris’ hand and something warm bloomed in her chest. They could exist as themselves, holding both their pain. Iris really didn’t expect Barrett to put herself away. They could just understand and support each other in who they actually were.
“I’m sorry for the yellow thing,” she told Iris.
“No, you don’t need to be. It was good. And I’m not saying all this to take away from what you’re going through—”
“I know.” She really did. She could feel the certainty in the pit of her stomach, in her chest, and firmly situated in her mind. In all the places the panic usually lived.
“I’m saying that I want to know every little thing about you. I don’t care if you hate my favorite color, or you love… neon yellow and want everything you own to be impossibly reflective. I can hold all of the things you are, and, more than that, I want to.”
Barrett smiled, fighting tears again. Iris really was far, far too special for this world. “My favorite color is black, princess, and I don’t care about everyone who argues it’s not really a color.”
“I know.” She smiled too, like she was never going to fight Barrett on a single thing she loved.
“What’s yours?” She had one in mind but she wondered whether Iris did, if she’d noticed the one she gravitated to more than any other, or if that was another thing she’d been expected to give up.
Her face puckered like it had been the latter. “It was supposed to be red.”
“But it’s not,” Barrett replied, determined and annoyed with Natasha again.
Iris shook her head almost like she was afraid. “It’s purple.”
The exact color Barrett had in mind.
She smiled. “It’s a good color. Goes really well with black.”
Iris laughed in both amusement and relief. “Very witchy.”
“Yeah, well, watch me get into the occult so I can curse that horrific ex of yours off the face of the Earth.”
“You don’t need to do that.”
“Maybe I just want to.”
“Well, far be it from me to hold you back…”
Barrett sighed. Iris wouldn’t hold her back.
She was perfectly capable of calling Barrett on her shit, but she cared about what mattered—she cared about Barrett.
Maybe that really was a good starting point for a relationship.
“I just need to go slow, to… I don’t know, prove to my mind that I’m not losing myself again. ”
Iris nodded emphatically. “I do too. There’s a lot of shit I’m sure is going to come up, and I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have to deal with the effects of that—”
“I want to. With you.”
The pair of them were emotional wrecks together. Iris was tearing up too.
“I want to talk it all through. With you.” She shook her head like she was annoyed with herself. “Jemma’s with Natasha because I didn’t know how to talk about everything, because I can’t expect people to read my mind, and it’s destroying everything. I don’t want to do that with you.”
Barrett scowled. “You aren’t required to disclose every aspect of your trauma to your friends. They should have known you well enough to understand the bits you did share. And, anyway, who the fuck gets with their friend’s ex without at least mentioning it?”
“I should have been clearer. And, once it’s over, they’re free to do whatever they want.”
“Princess, one of my friends is dating my ex—which is a fairly loose term since I don’t usually properly date—but, even then, they had the courtesy to mention it before it became anything real.
And, if Jemma didn’t know she was doing something wrong, she wouldn't have sprung Natasha on you at a party.”
“Yeah, maybe…” Iris didn’t seem fully convinced, but Barrett wasn’t concerned. She was convinced, and she’d help Iris get there.
Her other hand found Iris’ wrist, cradling her.
Finally touching her like this was perfection.
Sure, they’d only agreed to a single date, but everything else they’d put on the table made it clear they wanted each other, and, with the way Iris relaxed into the touch, she’d clearly been waiting for that just as anxiously as Barrett had.
Iris huffed. “I just don’t want to ruin this by being too afraid or embarrassed to tell you things.”
“Yeah, same.”
“So, you can tell me any time you feel like you’re losing yourself, okay?”
Barrett scrunched her nose. She knew that was important. It was the whole point of this conversation, and it wasn’t going to be easy, but she wanted to figure it out with Iris. She nodded. “I promise. Even when it feels hard.”
Iris nodded too, her face so unbelievably soft and admiring. “If something was going to stop me falling for you, it would have happened long ago, you know? Back when you were just some annoying colleague who liked to wind me up.”
Barrett laughed. “Was I annoying you, princess?”
“Not nearly as much as you probably should have been.” She blushed and looked down. “I think there’s a reason I always liked you calling me that.”
“Yeah. I’m newly aware of why I always liked it so much myself.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes.”
“So… we’re really going to give this a go?”
Barrett beamed. “We really are. Two broken people building something beautiful.”
“Like kintsugi.”
A surprised laugh bubbled up out of her. “Yeah, exactly like that.” She hoped they’d build something that lovely together.
“I took a class on it once.”
“Did you really?” Barrett wasn’t actually surprised. It fit Iris too well to be shocking. She simply wanted to hear Iris talk about it.
Iris honored the request, talking animatedly about the practice and what she’d learned, and Barrett listened to every single word, thinking at the same time just how much she wanted to kiss Iris.
They were taking it slow, and this wasn’t even their first real date.
She could be patient, but, the more Iris spoke—overflowing with knowledge and passion—the more the urge to lean in pounded in Barrett’s mind and body.
It felt like wanting to kiss Iris was a part of her genetic code, something intrinsic and unmoving, a part of who she was and always would be.
It was still a little terrifying, but, looking at her across the table, the glowing lights shining in her blonde hair, it felt unbelievably right too.