Subtle Chapter 4 Excerpt
I just got another comment on AO3, asking to know when I’ll update, and I got that guilty feeling again since it’s been literal years since I’ve updated. Oddly enough, just before the comment, I had started working on Subtle again. So, for those of you on here who remember this fic, and are wondering about an update, I decided to give you a treat by providing big piece of the chapter that I’m working on. Your feedback would be greatly appreciated, and could possibly help me finish it up, which I’m really hoping to do by the end of this year, so I can officially close this particular chapter of my writing.
For those of you who don’t know what this fic is or need a refresher, you can read the first parts here or here.
Iris absolutely adored the smell of coffee. As a little girl, still years away from taking her first sip of the hot beverage, she gained an acute fondness for the scent of roasted coffee beans, mainly because it was a scent that always clung to her father no matter where he went. It was strong on his breath and on his clothes and always lingered behind him even after he left a room. After her mother from birth complications after delivering Wally, Joe West became best friends with coffee to keep their household together while keeping odd hours as a police detective. Though he could never guarantee his children that he would be there when they came home from school or activities, or even before they went to bed, he always made it a point to be up before they both went to school so that they could always share a meal and catch up with each other regardless of how late he was up the night before. As she grew up, Iris found the smell of coffee always reminded her of happiness, home, safety, and security – the things that her father had always represented in her life, and the things that were ripped away when he was taken out of it.
As she sat in the booth at CC Jitters, Iris wallowed in the pungent aroma of brewing Colombian coffee beans in the air as it mixed with the sweet scent of freshly baked goods. She picked up her full mug and closed her eyes, holding it close enough to her face for the steam to warm her skin and fog up her glasses. As soon as the warm scent filled her nose, a picture of her dad appeared in her mind and suddenly, she could almost hear his laughter and feel his warm kiss on her cheek. A wave of calm washed over her, smoothing out the worries and wrinkles that had built up from her morning.
Pointed throat clearing reached her ears, and upon opening her eyes, Iris peered through her fogged glasses to see Bette and Linda looking at her solemnly from across their booth. Having been a part of her life for years, they were both already aware of her coffee ritual, and neither of them judged her for it, but at the moment, her enjoyment appeared to be taking a bit too long for both women’s tastes. Impatience was reflected on both of their faces and the way Linda was slightly bouncing in her seat as though she was bursting with news. So, taking a quick, scalding sip of her coffee, Iris put the mug back on the table and then folded her hands in front of her to show them that she was ready to get things started with their planning session.
Ever since Tony had proposed to Bette a few weeks before, all anyone talked about in the apartment was the engagement and the eventual wedding. With the engagement dinner taking place tomorrow night, Iris had expected to be knee-deep in the final details for the party now that her hectic schedule of ironing out the final details of her book with her editor and publisher was finally complete and she was able to jump into her maid-of-honor duties. The meetings had prevented her from helping Bette out with the engagement party planning, which the red-head had been bogged down with since the proposal. With her schedule cleared up, she was eager to jump in.
“Okay, so I know that we’re spending today looking for the perfect dress that you’re going to wear to the party,” she began, smiling eagerly at Bette, “but I was thinking about the party favors for the dinner, and I thought that it would be perfect if you gave the guests-”
“Oh, you don’t need to worry about the party favors, Iris. Linda pointed me to the perfect place to get customized mints, chocolates, and champagne bottles with me and Tony’s names on them,” Bette cut in, waving off Iris’s suggestion nonchalantly and with a hurried tone that was meant to move things along. “And I, actually, already have a dress for tomorrow night. Linda pointed it out to me when we were leaving the precinct a few days ago while we were running some errands for the party. It was hanging in the window of the boutique across the street from the precinct, and so I tried it on, and it fit perfectly, so I bought it and I’m all set.”
Iris frowned, unable to hide her jealously as she shot her sister-in-law a quick glance with barely-restrained resentment. “You visited Bette at the precinct, Lin?” she questioned with a little more bite than she intended.
Linda and Wally had been back in town for a week. They had spent the majority of that time apartment-hunting since Wally had gotten the position at STAR Labs. For the past few days that she had been there, Linda had stepped in and taken up some of the slack for Iris in the maid-of-honor department, and despite how grateful Iris was that Bette was getting the help she needed, she couldn’t help but be feel the swirl of jealousy and bitterness at the fact that her sister-in-law was being more helpful to Bette than she had been.
“I know that you’ve been so busy with your book, Iris, and some of the shops that I went to for my own wedding were still in my phone, so I just thought I would give them to Bette to help her out because I know how stressed I was when I had to do all of that stuff,” Linda chirped in, almost as though she had been picking up on Iris’s dark thoughts. “And now that Bette’s all set, and you’re all finished with your book, I think that you can focus your mind on other things.”
Linda exchanged a quick, conspiratorial glance with Bette, as she stressed that particular word before the two of them returned their attention back to Iris. Realizing that both of them were looking at her with something else clearly on their minds, Iris’s previously brooding thoughts were replaced with confusion and wariness.
“Okay… so if we’re not going dress shopping for you, and we’re not going over the wedding plans, what did you guys want to do today?” she asked, trying to cling to her happy coffee high despite the sudden change in plans and a new niggling feeling that her best friend and her sister-in-law were up to something. “Is there anything else we need to do for the party?”
Bette and Linda exchanged another quick look between themselves and in that second look Iris felt a prickle of unease slither up the back of her neck. She had the strong suspicion that the two women were about to ambush her with something unpleasant. Unwittingly, her hands tightened around her coffee mug, but it was already beginning to lose its calming power.
Bette was the one who seemed to take the helm and spoke up first. “So… before you blow up, I want to remind you that I’ve been your best friend for most of our lives and I’m supposed to be getting married to the love of my life in a few months, and you are my maid-of-honor.” She spoke slowly and cautiously. “So, no matter what I say, you can’t kill me.”
Before Iris could comment on that, Linda was already speaking.
“You should also remember that even though I’m not blood related, I am still your sister and that I am married to your brother who would probably die of a broken heart if I didn’t come home to him,” Linda immediately added on in her own defense right after Bette.
Alarms started going off in Iris’s head, and suddenly, she just knew what the two women were about to thrust upon her, which made her want to get up right then and there and walk out of the coffee shop. Her hands squeezed her mug, almost to the point of breaking it, which would have been a disaster since her hands had only just healed from the cuts she had gotten from her nightmare incident two months before. The scars were still there, faint but still present as a reminder to keep calm.
“Please don’t tell me you two set me up with someone,” Iris cried out pleadingly, bypassing any further hemming or elusiveness. She leaned forward in her seat and glared threateningly at both of them. “I swear to God, if you did-”
“You have to give him a chance, Iris,” Linda immediately appealed desperately, not even bothering to deny the allegation. “I had my doubts when Bette told me what she had done-”
“Great solidarity, Lin,” Bette snapped angrily at what her cohort had unwittingly revealed, but Linda continued on as though she hadn’t heard her.
“-But when she actually introduced me to him, even I thought that I was going to fall in love with him despite being completely and utterly devoted to your brother. He was just so perfect, Iris, and that’s not even me being hyperbolic.”
Iris held her hand up, begging for them to stop in order for her to have a moment to process. Taking her glasses off her face, she pressed her heels of her hands against her eye sockets to battle the tension headache that was building behind her eyes.
“You seriously introduced Linda to the guy you were planning to set me up with to make her help you break it to me that you had set me up with someone, Bette?” she groaned out, the disappointment and irritation thick in her voice. “Really?”
“She did, but I really did think he was great, Iris – I mean heart pounding, palms sweating great. Right, Bette?” Linda answered in Bette’s stead, her voice really packing it in on the sugar, but it started to fade as soon as Iris opened her eyes and settled her glare on her.
Bette scoffed, seemingly still miffed that Linda had named her as the architect of the whole scheme, but she still came to her rescue.
“He is awesome, Iris, and I only introduced Linda to him because I needed someone who knew you well enough to help me judge whether or not this whole thing was going to be worth your anger, which we both knew would be inevitable,” she said, her eyes raking up and down Iris’s frazzled state for emphasis, “and she agreed with me that he was, which is why we’re bringing this up to you, now. We both felt that it was time that you get your chance to be happy with someone that could love you as much as we do, and I think that I found the perfect candidate to do that.”
After placing her glasses back on her face, Iris steepled her fingers in front of her and pressed the tips of her pointer fingers right above the bridge of her frames. She kept repeating how much she loved the two women over and over in her head as she tried to calm her breathing and the racing beating of her heart. It wouldn’t be helpful to allow herself to have a panic-attack or blow up in the middle of Jitters, which, she suspected, was the reason they had brought her out to a public place instead of thrusting this whole thing upon her back in the privacy of the apartment.
“Iris…” Linda called out to her hesitantly but with a pleading tone, “I know that you’re probably seething right now, but can you say something?”
Iris held a single finger up to Linda silently asking for another minute of contemplation again. Bette seemed to have already known that Iris wasn’t ready, which was why she remained silent.
“Just give me a second, you guys. I just… I just need a little time to process, okay?”
A whole minute of tension-filled silence filled their little booth. Iris closed her eyes again as she focused on breathing in and out while also battling the nerves that were screaming at her to lash out. As angry as she was, her deep affection for the two women kept warring with her fury, which ended up filling her with frustration and the odd desire to scream.
“I know that you’re probably freaking out a little bit, but can we, at least, finish telling you about this guy before you turn him down?”
“Seriously, Bette?” Iris huffed out, her anger veering dangerously toward full on rage.
“Please, Iris, just hear me out! You know I know you better than anyone else, and you know that I wouldn’t force you past your comfort zone unless I thought that it was in your very best interest,” Bette cried out desperately, sensing that she was reaching the edge of Iris’s patience. “I love you so much, more than anyone else in my life, including my family and maybe even Tony, too, and I would rather die than do anything that would cause you pain or harm.”
That was the exact right thing to say at exactly the right moment for Iris to hear it. Right before their eyes, she softened and relaxed, but with her rage swayed, the fear began to push to the forefront of her mind, making her eyes start to fill with tears as she looked at Bette almost pleadingly, her lips already beginning to tremble.
“I just don’t know about this, Bette… You know how I am… How I feel about-.”
“I do,” Bette affirmed with a frantic nod of her head as she reached a calming and soothing hand out to Iris, eager to comfort her. “But you know that I wouldn’t set you up with anyone, especially knowing how you feel about all of this, unless I felt that they were totally on the up-and-up and worthy of you.”
Iris could see the desperation on Bette’s face, and she could feel the love from her in those pleading words and in the gentle way she held her hand. Despite the voices in her head screaming at her to turn it down and walk away, she sighed and hesitantly nodded her head in reluctant acquiescence.
Bette pulled Iris’s hand to her so she could cradle it in both of her own. Linda, who had been silent through the tense part of the conversation up until then, soon followed and took Iris’s other hand and squeezed it reassuringly in her grasp. Iris felt oddly exposed with both of her hands in her friends’ possessions, but both of them had so much hope in their eyes that she felt a twinge of remorse that she still felt so reluctant to just give in to their good intentions. For the sake of how much she loved and appreciated both of them, however, she forced herself to smile and swore she would bite the bullet, bear the discomfort, and go through with the set-up, even if it was just to appease them. Besides, the only other person she could see herself actually being with in a romantic capacity was going to forever be out of her reach. Who’s to say that this wasn’t the opportunity she needed to move on in all regards?
“Fiiiiiine…” she caved, pulling her hands from Bette’s and Linda’s holds to pick up her cup of coffee. She forced a smile on her face and held her mug even tighter. She had a feeling she was going to be needing a refill of coffee after this, or better yet, a much bigger mug. “Tell me more about this perfect guy.”
Hope this was enticing enough for you! Please, let me know what you think!