Sweep Me Off My Feet(A Barry Allen/The Flash Fan-fiction)

Chapter Twelve: Good Cover

~~~Barry~~~

I got back in the car, to meet Iris, giving me a pointed look.

"What?" I asked.

"Why didn't you kiss her? She clearly wanted you to."

"Did she?" A feeling arose in my stomach that I couldn't quite identify

"Oh my gosh, you're so clueless.  She's your girlfriend, B. It's ok to kiss her." I nodded.

"Good to know." She didn't know the real reason though. The real reason was that I didn't want to kiss her, unless it was real, which it wasn't.

"You know, it's surprising that you two have lasted this long."

"Two weeks? Thanks for having so much faith in me." I retorted. She smiled.

"Oh...she didn't tell you."

"Tell me what?"

"Nothing. If she hasn't told you yet, then maybe she either isn't ready or doesn't want you to know."

"Know what?"

"She's going to hate me for telling you this." I raised my eyebrows. "She had such a crush on you were eighteen."

"Had?" I asked.

"Still does, as far as I know." I smiled. Does she now?

~~~

I flew into Barry's apartment the next morning.

"Allen! Allen!" I yelled. I walked into his bedroom, where he remained fast asleep.  I grabbed my phone, finding the most annoying alarm sound I could, turning the volume up as high as it would go, and put the phone next to Barry's face. I blared it and he bolted up, falling out of bed. I doubled over, laughing so hard tears leaked from my eyes.

'Ha ha, hilarious. Really, you are so funny, Karen." I nodded.

"I know right? Glad you agree. I came to wake you up, so you wouldn't be late for work again. You are treading on very thin ice in the Captain Singh department. Come on, get up-" Before I could finish my sentence, he stood before me, dressed and ready to go. "Show off."

"You're just jealous." He reasoned, following me down the stairs.

"Me? Jealous? Of you? Are you sure you're awake, because I'm pretty sure you're dreaming."

"About you? Always." He said, winking. I rolled my eyes. Flirting? While we're alone? What is going on here? Well...not that I'm complaining.

"You're disgusting." He grabbed my hand, clicking my regulator on and scooping me into his arms and taking off. Then we were there. "One of these days, I'm gonna fly you over the city just dangling, and you're going to understand how much it sucks being carried by you." I turned and walked into the building. We walked by as a couple of cops bragged about their legendary arrest. Joe walked up.

"Paulson, congratulations on that arrest last night."

"Come on by, Joe, I'll give you driving lessons." He fell into step next to us.

"It wasn't even him last night, it was me." Barry muttered.

"I figured. I just didn't realize you were helping people for the glory...or that you two were dating."

"Ah...yeah...Bar?" I asked, wondering if we wanted to tell him or not.

"Yup. For a while now." He replied. Joe looked skeptical.

"I hate to break this to you both, but I wasn't born yesterday. Nice cover though."

"Thanks."

"We can talk about that later. You and me got work to do."

"What kind of work?" Joe looked at Barry, who nodded.

"We're looking into my Mom's murder." Barry told me. I raised my eyebrows. "I would appreciate your help. You have an eye for things."

"Ok...why not?" He smiled his adorable smile. We walked into the lab and Joe plopped an evidence box onto the table.

"The evidence from my mom's case."

"I had it brought up from storage."

"I've been through this a thousand times." Barry reasoned.

"Before, your story about what really happened that night, the lightning storm, the man in the middle of it, I thought that was I kid trying to protect his father from prison, but now that I know it's true, we're gonna go through every scrap of evidence until we find something that helps. And like you said, Karen here has an eye for things."

"It took the jury fifty two minutes to come back with a verdict of guilty."

"Which is two fast. So, we have to take our time." I said, going to take the lid off of the box.

"Barry, Karen, Joe, we got multiple homicides." Eddie said, coming in. "Do you know the Darbinyan crime family?"

~~~

"All of them?" I asked Barry as we reached yet another cause of death on the last body.

"Looks like it."

"Barry? Karen?" Joe approached us. "Oh. Anything?"

"Signs of histoxic hypoxia." We said together.

"Which means, the cells in their bodies weren't able to utilize oxygen." I explained.

"It's consistent with exposure to poison gas."

"What kind of poison?" He questioned.

"We can't tell without taking a lung sample. We'll have to try and narrow it down." I said, standing up and brushing invisible dirt off of my pants. Eddie approached us.

"The only other exit was bolted from the inside. They were trapped. I was thinking someone pumped gas in from the outside, but witnesses say the street was empty."

"So it was from the inside? That means there should be a canister or a container left behind." Barry stood up, whispering in my ear.

"Metahuman?" I refrained from shivering as his breath made contact with my ear.

"Possibly."

"The gas just didn't come in by itself."

"Unless it had a mind of it's own." We said together. They looked at us and we both chuckled awkwardly.

"That's really creepy." Eddie told us. We shrugged.

"Eddie, would you mind canvasing again? Somebody had to have seen something suspicious." He nodded, walking away."Ok, explain."

"The boss collapsed by the table. This guy made it ten feet away. That guy had a chance to move off and fire three shots into the window, trying to break the glass. But they all started in the same spot."

"So shouldn't they all have been affected by the gas at the same time?" I asked.

"Exactly. But instead it's as if-"

"They were attacked one by one." Joe caught on. "My gut feeling, if we're gonna solve this one, the three of us are gonna need  backup."

"Yeah."