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“Guess who’s coming to the rescue?” Cisco barrels into the lab with a huge grin on his face. Barry has no idea how he can be so cheerful after they just pulled their third all-nighter, trying to make sense of the clues on this particular clusterfuck of a case.
“Hartley?” Barry guesses; that would explain the bounce in Cisco’s step. The guy will swear up and down that he hates Rathaway’s spoiled, rich, brilliant guts, but Barry’s specialty is reading evidence, and Cisco’s always particularly vicious to Hartley when the consultant comes in with teeth-marks on his neck. Barry definitely wouldn’t put it past Hartley to make a point of getting thoroughly fucked right before he’s due at the lab, just because everyone can see how it gets to Cisco.
“No,” Cisco huffs – he’s probably still sore about Hartley’s last visit. Not as sore as Hartley was, if that pronounced limp was any evidence, though. “Captain Cold himself!”
Every drop of Barry’s blood freezes at the mention of that name.
“Leonard Snart?” he confirms, his breath stuck deep in his chest. Cisco beams at him.
“In the flesh! Oh my god, I’m so gonna ask him to sign… everything! I’ve been such a fan, he’s a total legend! Did you know he was the youngest tenured professor at Keystone University? Did you know they call him Captain Cold because he’s absolutely incredible with cold cases? Like, he’ll take reports from decades ago and he’ll just find something nobody even thought about before…”
Cisco rambles on, but Barry doesn’t even have to listen. He knows – he knows all of that and more. Leonard Snart is a name known to every forensic scientist this side of the Atlantic, and probably quite a few in Europe. It’s a name that graces the covers of a good half of Barry’s old university textbooks – or would, if Barry didn’t throw them all out years ago. Cisco’s not exaggerating (much) when he says the man is a legend… but Barry has exactly zero reasons to be excited about his impending visit.
He frowns up at Cisco and interrupts the Ode on Snart when Cisco stops to take a breath.
“Where did you hear that he’s coming? I thought the guy was in prison.”
“He was,” Cisco’s eyes basically twinkle, “six years – can you believe it? He just got released. Good behavior or something; and Singh basically jumped at the opportunity. Or maybe Singh pulled some strings, this serial killer’s been messing with his head lately-“
“Why wasn’t I consulted?” Barry interrupts again. Cisco looks at him as if he just grew a third eye in the middle of his forehead.
“Are you crazy? You saying that you’d actually refuse the opportunity to work with the greatest forensic scientist this country ever had?”
“He’s a criminal,” Barry grumbles: but he can hear how petty he sounds. His arguments don’t make sense to Cisco – to anyone except Barry, really. He curls his fingers into a tight fist until his blunt nails dig into his palm, and forces his voice to remain calm. “And I am the head of the forensic department, you know. Would’ve been nice to get the heads-up.”
Cisco’s still looking at him like he’s crazy, so Barry opts towards finding out as much as he can. He needs time, dammit – time to compose himself, so he doesn’t fucking break down into a huge pile of messy feelings when Snart shows his stupid (handsome) face.
“When’s he coming?”
“Tomorrow,” Cisco sighs dreamily. And fuck, that’s not enough time to get his act straight – though Barry suspects that if six years wasn’t enough, nothing ever will be.
“Okay,” he says, even though it’s so, so far from ‘okay’ that Barry can’t even see ‘okay’ as a tiny bright spot in the distance. He closes the file he’s been reading, to no avail, for the past two hours and stands up, stretching his shoulders. The tension coiled in his chest doesn’t go away, no matter how hard he pulls at his arms.
“I need to get some sleep. You should do that, too.”
Cisco, who looks like he’s hyped up on sugar and energy drinks, nods. “Yeah, yeah, sure… but dude. Can you imagine? Leonard Snart. Here. With us.”
Barry gives his colleague a tight smile and grabs his jacket. On his way home, he ponders the merits of shooting himself in the head.
……
The thing is, it’s not that Barry doesn’t appreciate Snart’s irrefutable genius when it comes to solving seemingly impossible cases in record time. And it’s not that Barry’s too proud to accept help when it is needed – it’s definitely needed this time, with the serial killer who’s been leading the CCPD on a merry (and bloody) chase for nearly three months.
It’s just that Leonard Snart is also an expert on tearing people’s hearts out of their chests and stomping on them until there’s nothing but an ugly puree of destroyed emotions staining his Italian loafers.
Plus, he is a criminal. Barry still can’t wrap his head around that, six years and three months later: how could someone who dedicated his life to solving crimes suddenly turn around and fucking rob a bank?! It makes exactly as much sense now as it did then – Barry remembers having breakfast when the announcement appeared in the news. Barry nearly choked on his cereal, then kept choking on air for weeks, for months… and now, Leonard Snart is free.
And Barry’s terrified.
……
Leonard Snart was already a legend by the time Barry decided to pursue forensics. He was Barry’s hero for longer: Barry never got over his mother’s murder and since the first day he learned the name ‘Leonard Snart’, he couldn’t help but hope that if that man got his hands on the evidence, he would be able to figure out what Barry couldn’t. Snart was one of the reasons (maybe even the reason) why Barry chose Keystone over CCU for his studies.
Barry was a senior by the time he managed to successfully sign up for one of Snart’s classes. They were graduate level, but Barry was eager to learn from the best. He knew that Snart was young, somewhere in his early thirties, but he still kind of expected a middle-aged guy in a corduroy jacket when he sat nervously in the front row of the lecture hall, his foot jiggling under the table with sheer impatience.
The man who swept into the room with frightful punctuality was nothing like Barry imagined.
At that point, he was still mostly in love with Iris, hopelessly, stupidly resigned to the thought of loving her until the day he died without her ever knowing how he felt. But when Leonard Snart first stalked his way into Barry’s line of vision, Barry’s insides clenched with the previously unknown, primal want.
Snart was young, tall, and perfect in a way only carefully edited tabloid models could be. His whole wardrobe seemed cut specifically for the purpose of making people imagine how great the man would look naked, and Barry did: there were rolled-up sleeves over toned forearms and slacks that hugged Snart’s ass when he turned to the whiteboard, and that one time when the air conditioning was broken and Snart undid two buttons on his shirt. Barry thought he would pass out from how hard he was trying not to stare.
Snart was offensive and caustic and brilliant; he drove students to tears in every other class and herded them towards knowledge with ruthless determination. When he wasn’t being a dick, he flirted and smirked and taunted, and Barry had a crush the size of Africa by the time the semester was over. He spent the whole break furiously jerking off to the memories of Snart’s lips curled up in a sneer, the faint caress of his cologne when the man had leaned over Barry’s shoulder to point something out.
He couldn’t believe his luck when he started grad school and was offered to be a part of Snart’s lab: it was impossible to get in there without being hand-picked as ‘promising’ by the professor himself. It took Barry a couple of weeks to stop his hands from shaking every time Snart passed by: but he wanted to learn, and Snart was the best teacher one could have if they were serious about forensics.
The flirting got worse. That first time Barry flirted back, clumsily and inelegantly, he wasn’t even consciously trying to – it just fell out of his mouth and he tried to laugh it off, mortified, but Snart’s eyes narrowed over a content smirk and Barry was lost. He kept it up, half-joking most of the time for fear of being told that he was taking it too far… but Snart never told him to stop.
And then, in May of Barry’s second year of grad school, Snart asked him to stay after everyone else left from the lab. Barry’s hands were sweaty when he clutched the strap of his bag and approached the professor’s desk; Snart was wearing his scandalously snug navy slacks with a cream button-down, no tie, no jacket, and Barry had been incapable of concentrating properly on the tasks at hand. He hadn’t screwed anything up, at least he didn’t think so – but with Snart, no one could just do well enough to pass. Either you gave it your absolute best, or you were calmly, coldly asked to stop wasting his time. And Snart didn’t hand out second chances.
“I don’t believe you have anything more to learn here, Mr. Allen,” Snart spoke, his back still turned to Barry whose world flew from under his feet. He staggered and stepped forward, nearly reaching for Snart, but he couldn’t- he didn’t understand-
“I do, I swear I do, please, Professor, I-“
“I won’t be asking you back to the lab next semester.”
Barry’s stomach turned into ice, and he bit his lip, trying not to feel like his whole life was ruined. But he had to ask, had to know…
“Why?” he muttered – did Snart finally notice that Barry had been staring? Did he think Barry was distracted… did he realize Barry did not have as much potential as he’d originally believed? Shit… Barry wasn’t sure what was gonna be worse: not seeing Snart, not being able to learn from him, or knowing that he’d disappointed a genius.
Snart turned to him, and there was something in his eyes, a glint, a spark: he stepped closer, not a complete invasion of Barry’s space but a breach of the borders at the very least.
“Because,” he spoke, in a voice that was velvet and gravel at the same time, “I would very much like to screw your brains out and it would be unethical to be your supervisor while doing so.”
Barry’s mouth went dry. And then Snart’s tongue was in it, and Barry didn’t give a damn how much Snart’s shirt had to cost when he wrinkled it in his hands.
Snart became Len after that. He had an apartment within walking distance of the campus and Barry spent all of his free time spread out on Len’s bed, writhing and screaming and laughing, learning the planes and curves of Len’s body, learning how it looked when the blind lust that had been twisting his stomach for nearly two years was reflected right back at him in Len’s eyes. He learned the soaring feeling of mouths pressed together, swallowing each other’s declarations and promises and pleas; he became used to mornings filled with the smell of coffee, Len’s sleepy smiles and soft touches. He continued to learn as much about forensics as he could, but between classes and papers and lab work, he learned all of Len’s habits and likes and dislikes, and for the first time, Barry knew with absolute certainty how it felt to sleep next to someone and wish that he could continue waking up right there for the rest of his life.
It was still risky – Len was a professor, and Barry, while not officially a part of his lab group anymore, was still a student, and while it was improbable that Len would get sacked, they still had to be careful. Barry didn’t mind at all. They spent their evenings cooking and laughing, talking about everything and nothing, and then driving each other crazy with creative and rowdy fucking or slow, slow love-making and Barry couldn’t imagine being happier if he tried.
And then, one evening, right after what felt like an earthquake and was probably just an orgasm (ha, as if anything with Len had ever been ‘just’), Len leaned over Barry, propped up on one elbow, and smoothed Barry’s sweat-soaked hair out of his forehead.
“There are some things I need to do,” he muttered. Barry, still blissed out, turned his head just barely and blinked up.
“Like what?”
Len shook his head and kissed him, deep and slow and good, and Barry regretted that he didn’t have it in him to go again. He scratched his blunt nails down Len’s back and chuckled, loopy on endorphins, when Len sighed.
“Whatever happens… remember that I love you,” Len said, and Barry didn’t understand – he said it back, like he’d said it a hundred times before, and fell asleep with Len’s arms around him.
In the morning, Len wasn’t there, and Barry understood when he turned on the TV and choked on his cereal.
…...
“Anybody here?” a familiar voice calls out and Barry freezes at his table. He’s hidden behind shelves and cabinets, his desk pushed into the far corner of the room, and he has this immature urge to duck down and pretend he’s not here.
But avoidance probably isn’t gonna work unless Barry hands in his resignation, and he’s worked his ass off to get where he is today. He refuses to give up on principle: this is his territory, and Len – Snart – is the one who’s trespassing.
“Yes,” he speaks up and pushes away from his desk: he can’t be sitting down when he sees Len for the first time. He’s the boss now, and he’s not above playing the dominance game in order to make the shift in dynamics clear.
Snart’s eyes go wide when Barry steps from behind his shelves – he could be surprised or a really good actor. Barry’s petty enough to go for the latter. After all, a guy who can say ‘I love you’ with clear conscience and then go rob a goddamned bank just a couple hours later has to be great at masking his intentions.
He’s older, visibly so. That’s the first thing Barry notices. There are lines around his eyes and mouth, almost invisible but screamingly obvious to Barry who once knew (and kissed) that face to the last square inch. His close-cropped hair is streaked with grey: he’ll be forty next week, and Barry hates that he still knows that.
He hates him, with blinding, searing finality. He can barely breathe through the wave of everything that rises to the surface like bile in his throat, disgust and betrayal and loathing, and he hates that underneath it all, there’s still that primitive, visceral need to reach out and touch, the intensity Barry’s never felt with anyone else, before or after Len.
It’s funny, really, how his life has been divided. Everything he knows, everything he remembers, everything he does is dated ‘before Len’ and ‘after’ – even now, Snart is such an integral part of who Barry is that it’s impossible to just shut him out.
“Barry,” Snart croaks, as if his throat has gone parched. Good, Barry thinks, and hopes Snart chokes on everything the way Barry is choking too.
“That would be Allen to you, Mr. Snart.”
Snart visibly winces. Barry wonders if it was prison that robbed him of his usual cool composure, or if it’s seeing the man he screwed over six years ago.
“Did you know I would be here?” Barry asks, jaw tight.
“Barry, I-“
“Did you know.”
“I- no, I swear. I was offered a consulting position, jobs don’t really fall out of the sky for ex-cons.”
He attempts a smirk, but it’s a far cry from the confident grins Barry remembers.
“Good,” he shrugs. “Then you’ll have no problem keeping things professional. You can start by going through what we already have.”
Barry feels sadistic joy when he waves towards the three huge boxes piled high with files and reports. Snart’s mouth falls open, just a little. It costs Barry all the willpower he has left to walk out past Snart without lunging at him.
The worst part is, he can’t trust himself to know if he would end up strangling the man or pushing him up against the wall to kiss him senseless.
…………….
It’s hell.
Barry’s so tense he can hardly focus on his work; he tries to bury himself in analyses and results and the pure, hard numbers of the job, but he ends up snapping at anyone who dares to disturb him. Caitlin and Cisco both give him a wide berth (and a wider variety of strange, wary looks), but he brushes off their attempts to find out what’s wrong.
He never told anyone about Len. Joe and Iris noticed that something was going on, of course, but he gave them secretive smiles and half-truths, said it was still new and fragile, despite the fact that he’d never been more certain of anything in his life; said he didn’t want to jinx it – he must’ve done just that, somehow, hoping for too much. He thought they had all the time in the world, that he was just a few months away from getting his degree, getting out of the university and then he could scream it from the rooftops, so the whole world could be fucking jealous of his brilliant, beautiful boyfriend.
He spent his last semester at Keystone in a depressed daze, days passing him by like minutes and hours dragging like years. He spent that last semester waiting for summons to court, waited for Len to claim him as an alibi – even though that was ridiculous, because the news reports said that they caught Len red-handed, standing in the bank with a gun in his hand. He wasn’t even hiding his identity… but then that didn’t make any sense. Not that anything else did… it was all nonsense and Barry could never truly move past it, not even when he left Keystone behind, with its treacherous little streets and well-hidden coffee shops that reminded Barry of the one guy he wanted to forget.
All of his relationships failed within the first month, in years After Len. He tried and tried, dated and laughed and touched… but no matter how nice the girl was, no matter how much he enjoyed spending time with Linda or Patty, he couldn’t help but long for that kind of life-changing pull towards someone that he had with Len. And after a while, they always realized his heart wasn’t in it. Couldn’t be, because he was still struggling to piece his heart together.
He only ever dated girls, After Len. He could never even look at another guy like that anymore – all of them were simply too much not Len. Fucking Leonard Snart ruined him for any other man, probably anyone else in the damn universe and Barry kept hoping that next year would be better… and the next… and the next. But when he was asleep and powerless against his subconscious, he still dreamed of the cuff-links he got Len for Christmas (snowflakes, because he was ‘Captain Cold’ – they laughed about it for months), about the way Len’s mouth always burned when Len dragged his lips down his stomach… about the future Barry had all planned out that never happened.
So it’s hell, deepest, hottest pits of hell to be no more than twenty feet from Leonard Snart at any given time during his work hours, to be forced to pretend he’s a fucking professional because that’s what he snarled at Len days ago. Keep it professional… do the work and get out. That’s what Barry was hoping for. He thought Len could swoop in and dazzle them with an answer he would just magically pull out of the heaps of half-relevant evidence; but Barry had a good team here, with Caitlin and Cisco and himself, and when they didn’t see anything there, it had to be difficult even for Snart, who spent six years locked away from his field of expertise and had to catch up on the scientific and technological advancement in forensics as well as the case itself.
Cisco orbited around Snart like a thirteen-year-old would around a superstar; by the third day, they were trading jokes and barbs and referencing old sci-fi shows.
It grates on Barry’s nerves, and he’s not even sure if he wants to yank Cisco away and snarl at Len that Cisco’s his, or pull Snart behind him and bare his teeth at the star-struck genius. Or maybe call Cisco aside and tell him not to get too accustomed to Snart, not to get too close, because Snart just might decide he loved prison life too fucking much and rob another bank.
He endures the torture for a whole week – he’s yelling at everyone at that point, trying to at least make it productive yelling about moving their asses and solving this damn case. That’s when Singh calls him to his office.
…………
Barry’s furious. He storms to the lab, deserted and nearly dark – it just adds to the frustration, because he’s told everyone to fucking stay and that means someone had to go behind his back and order them to leave (probably fucking Singh). He kicks the nearest table so hard he can hear a crack in the old abused piece.
“Fuck!” he growls and kicks the table again, then throws himself onto it, digging the heels of his palms into his eye sockets until it hurts.
If you can’t handle the workload, Singh said, I’ll have to ask you to take a couple days off.
Pull your shit together, Allen, Singh said, and Barry couldn’t very well explain that it isn’t the damned workload that’s driving him nuts. It’s Snart, and the way he’s charming and brilliant and so fucking much himself around everyone, and then he keeps walking on tiptoes around Barry, who doesn’t even know what he wants, he just knows it’s not this.
How the fuck did his life get here? He was doing just fine – well, finer. And now he’s a mess and who knows when the hell will Snart fuck off, when he’ll come back, for another case; maybe Singh’ll hire him permanently, what with the way he’s been eyeing Snart like a prize in a cereal box. Barry will have to resign, and probably move: he’s heard Alaska’s far enough.
“Are you okay?”
Barry wants to laugh and sob at the same time. Of fucking course Snart’s still here; always the obedient underling, all of a goddamn sudden, always doing exactly what Barry wants from him in the lab, always having his results on Barry’s table on time, giving Barry absolutely zero reason to vent at him, the only person in the whole lab who actually deserves Barry’s wrath.
“What do you fucking care,” he growls and pushes off from the table.
He doesn’t notice how close Snart is until fingers close around his wrist, stopping him from leaving. Barry glares at the fingers, then at the man himself. He yanks his hand away; he’s half-surprised that Snart lets him go.
“I care,” he says softly, and Barry’s rage rides the wave of nausea rising from his stomach.
“Are you kidding me?! After all these years, you have the guts to tell me-“
“I care,” Len repeats, solemn and determined and he takes a step closer. That’s all Barry can take. His body’s pitching him forward before he’s aware of any intent, his arm drawing back, fist curling-
Len catches his wrist again, before Barry can connect with his jaw. Barry tries to go for the left hook, but Snart blocks that as well and pushes. Barry’s back slams into the rough brick wall and he yells wordlessly in frustration.
“Calm down,” Snart huffs in his face.
Barry kicks him in the nuts.
It’s satisfying to watch his face crumple as he doubles over, releasing Barry’s wrists in lieu of grabbing his balls. Barry should leave now… but he’s really, really enjoying seeing Snart suffer, even if a tiny part of Barry’s mind is yelling ‘are you okay?’ at the traitor.
“Fu-uck,” Snart wheezes and crouches down, eyes squeezed shut. Barry hops up on the table and waits it out. Takes a few minutes for Snart to uncurl and start breathing a little easier, and it turns out it calms Barry a little bit, to watch him hurt.
“You know,” he shrugs, staring out the windows at the opposite end of the lab. They’re a little dirty, but Central City’s lights shine too bright to be concealed by a bit of dust. “I could never figure out why you did it. Why you didn’t warn me… why you never wrote, never called…”
“You could’ve… called too,” Len sighs and leans his back against the table. He’s sitting on the floor now, his shoulder just inches from Barry’s knee. Barry could kick him again, if he wanted.
The jury’s still out on whether or not he wants to.
“I could’ve,” Barry nods. “But what would I say? ‘Hey, this is the guy who wanted to marry you – before you robbed a goddamn bank’?!”
“You… wanted to marry me?”
Len twists his head around to look up at Barry. His eyes are still the same icy blue, even though they’re much more guarded now.
Barry snorts at him.
“You were the one who proposed first.”
“I said I could marry you for your mac-and-cheese… not that I would. That’s hardly proposal.”
“Liar,” Barry chuckles – and wipes the amusement off his face as soon as he realizes how normal, how good this feels. Snart has no right to make him smile anymore; Barry has no business feeling good with this man. Been there, done that, thank you very much, time to move on.
He coughs and moves to slide off the table. Len’s – Snart’s hand curls around his ankle and he nearly falls on his face.
“What are you doing?” he glares. Snart’s grip tightens for a split second, then falls away as the man shakes his head and stares at the floor.
“Nothing. Good night, B… Allen.”
A week of working together, and Snart still stumbles over Barry’s name, every damn time.
Barry sighs and rubs a hand down his face, then reaches the decision he should’ve made days ago.
“You know what? I actually wanna hear it.”
“What?” Snart lifts his eyes to him again, frowning, and Barry crouches down, balancing on his toes so they’re face to face. Snart’s probably not up to standing just yet. It was a good kick.
“Why did you do it?” he asks, and wonders how many nights he spent staring at the ceiling of his room, unable to sleep and swearing to himself that he was gonna call, he was gonna drive up to Iron Heights and ask Len face to face.
It took six years, but now the question’s out there, hanging in the space between him and Len, and he’s not going to let it pass unanswered.
“Irrelevant,” Len turns away. Barry’s hand shoots out to twist in the collar of the man’s shirt. It’s not as expensive, as impeccable as Barry remembers, but it still hugs the line of his shoulders, reveals his collarbone, and Barry’s reminded of the months he spent watching this man, in front of a class, in a lab… and then in his apartment, cooking and reading and laughing. Sleeping, curled up into Barry’s side, the puffs of his warm breath sliding over Barry’s skin.
His knuckles brush Len’s throat. Barry swallows and bites the inside of his cheek, reminds himself that he still hates the guts of this asshole. This is not the man Barry loves- loved. This guy is six years away, and Barry’s not the same naïve idiot he used to be, either.
“You don’t get to decide that,” he says quietly, and Snart’s gaze travels up his hand until their eyes connect. Barry lets go, unable to handle too many points of contact between them. “I spent six years trying to figure out the answer, so the least you can do is give it to me now.”
Snart pushes himself up from the ground. He’s shaking, a little, and Barry’s vindictively pleased with himself, until the infuriating dick speaks again.
“No.”
“No?” Barry echoes and stands up himself, scowling, his arms flying around in exasperation. “What the fuck do you mean, ‘no’? Don’t you think you owe me some sort of an explanation?”
“What good will it do?” Snart shakes his head and turns, away from Barry, away again with no reasons, no answers, and Barry’s done taking that bullshit. He’s been done for years, and he will have his answers if he has to kick Len in the balls until he knocks some sense into his stupid brain.
“Maybe it will finally let me move the fuck on?!” he screams at Snart’s shoulderblades. They shift under the thin material of his shirt, tense, shiver like he’s cold. He’s always been cold – the king of cold cases, the coldest sarcastic asshole of the faculty, the cold feet that pressed into Barry’s warm calves no matter how many times Barry yelped and pulled his legs away.
He turns; it’s like watching a stop-motion animation, jerky and artificial and just a little wrong around the edges.
“Thought you would’ve moved on ages ago.”
Barry can’t help the unhappy laugh that bubbles up. “Yeah, what a coincidence, I thought so too.”
“I don’t think I can help, Barry,” he says, and Barry wants to protest, against the use of his name as well as the refusal to answer, but then he really looks at Len and he sees something shift in his eyes.
It’s not so much that Len doesn’t want to tell him. It’s that he genuinely thinks it won’t help.
Barry’s stomach flips at the possibility, but he has to try. He’s tried everything else, after all – something has to stick.
“You owe me,” he repeats quietly and doesn’t let go of Len’s gaze. “This is the last thing I will ever ask of you. Just tell me.”
He can see the internal war going on in Len’s head, but in the end, the man leans against one of the tables and starts wringing his hands, rubbing his thumb into his palm in steady, circular motions. That’s never been a good sign, as far as Barry can remember. It makes Len look uncertain, vulnerable in a way he never let himself be in public. It feels like he still trusts Barry to show him this much, and the thought pierces Barry’s heart like a knife.
“You remember Lisa?” he asks – as if Barry could ever forget the woman who kept barging into Len’s apartment, usually with the worst possible timing. Barry had very nearly bitten Len’s dick off the first time that happened… she laughed and tossed her perfectly curled hair over her shoulder, and then sat at the kitchen table and got to know the guy who had her brother’s teeth-marks all over his neck. She’s probably the only one who knew about them, for real… Barry was equal parts scared of her and infatuated with how much energy she could put into everything.
He just nods, because he’s here for answers, not nostalgia.
“How is she?” he asks anyway, and wonders why he never called her. No, he knows why. He was trying to distance himself from anything Len-related, anything he could cut out of his life the way he couldn’t cut out his own heart and brain. He feels bad about it anyway – he used to like her, before.
“Recovering,” Len shrugs. He goes for nonchalant but misses by miles, and his voice trembles over the last syllable. He might break a bone or two in his hand if he continues with such viciousness, and Barry stares at his long fingers, wondering if he should reach out and stop him.
“From what?” he asks, and it chills him to the bone to think of things that could’ve happened, words Len could’ve said instead.
“Leukemia.”
“I’m sorry,” Barry says automatically. He means it: he can’t imagine beautiful, lively, cynical, sadistic Lisa being anything less than he remembers her, and he makes a mental note to call. He probably still has her number, somewhere. He would probably remember it, if he thought about it hard enough. He can’t help but wonder, though… “What does that have to do with anything?”
Len curls his hand into a fist. His knuckles crack when he presses them into his other palm.
“She needed bone marrow. Has a rare blood type or something – they couldn’t find a match-“
“I thought siblings were usually the best shot?”
“Usually. We had different mothers, Lis and I. Anyway, I wasn’t a match. But our father was.”
Barry stares as Snart’s words start to fall into place, forming a truly horrifying mosaic.
“Your father,” he repeats slowly, to make sure he heard right. “Who’s in prison.”
“Yes.”
Oh god. Could it be-
“Did you rob a bank for the sole purpose of landing yourself behind bars?"
Snart looks up, and he looks so miserable that Barry doesn’t know if he wants to laugh or cry. What the fuck? He’s been waiting six years to get some sort of a profound answer, something about family debts or mob threats. Who’s stupid enough to want to end up in prison?!
“They have this handy thing… it’s called visitation,” he sighs and lets himself collapse on the table right next to Len. Their hips are almost touching, almost, but not quite, and Barry has to suppress the sudden urge to push the asshole off. Is this why he spent six years moping around? Because Leonard Snart, the world’s most brilliant forensic scientist, was stupid enough to rob a bank so he could talk to his father?!
Snart shakes his head then, and Barry almost holds his breath for a part of this that would make sense.
“Old fuck wouldn’t agree. Went to see him seven times, always said no. Then, the last time, he asked ‘what’s in it for me?’”
What kind of a father had to ask what was in it for him when he was the only one who could save his own child? It’s ridiculous – but then, as it turns out, ‘ridiculous’ runs in the Snart bloodline, deep and strong.
Barry snorts. “So you agreed to, what, become his cellmate?”
“No. I agreed to break him out.”
“What?!” Leonard Snart was always good at surpassing expectations – Barry just never expected he would see the man leap over ‘ridiculous’ and land firmly in the territory of ‘idiotic’ to do it. “Break him out – of Iron Heights?!”
“Yes.” Snart says it like it makes perfect sense.
“You’re insane. That’s impossible.”
“It’s not,” Len turns to him and there’s a glint in his eyes that Barry knows means ‘challenge accepted.’ “I could’ve done it. I had a plan, and it would’ve worked.”
He looks so smug that Barry wants to kiss him and kill him at the same time, smug and arrogant and confident, just like he’s always been – he’s so much the old Len now, the Len that Barry fell hopelessly, impossibly in love with that it hurts Barry’s lungs to breathe because there’s not enough room in his chest for air and his rapidly expanding heart. He tries to push the feeling down, but it rises and rises until he’s laughing under his breath and nudging their knees together.
“I call bullshit. If you could’ve broken out, how come you didn’t?”
If breaking out of Iron Heights was at all a possibility, who would voluntarily choose to waste years of life behind bars… if they didn’t have to? Len’s still not making sense, but something’s lifting off Barry’s chest, something heavy that has been sitting right on top of his heart for years. And that’s stupid: it’s not like he got any real explanations, nothing that would justify the six years of anguish and betrayal and uncertainty – but Len has always been good at sucking Barry in to his brand of madness, and it seems Barry just got too close to the vortex again.
Len snorts, like he’s truly offended by Barry’s question, and his mouth tugs up in another smug grin.
“The deal was he’d agree to be Lisa’s donor first, since it would be impossible with us on the run. And then… I simply didn’t set the plan in motion.”
“Why?”
Len rolls his eyes. “Can you imagine a world in which I’d want my asshole father roaming free?”
Barry remembers the half-guessed stories of Len and Lisa’s childhood – he never learned the whole extent of it, but he saw scars that Len never wanted to explain, and he can only imagine how those wounds looked on a twelve-year-old.
Barry still gapes for good twenty seconds before he finds the words to reply.
“So… you’re telling me you landed yourself in prison and then spent six years just… rotting there, for the sole purpose of helping Lisa… and fucking your father over?”
“It’s glorious, isn’t it,” Len smirks. Barry punches him in the shoulder, hard.
“How did your father take it?”
“Not well,” Len sniggers, then grabs his shirt and pulls, until the pale fabric reveals his hip, his side – and a pink, ragged scar running along his ribs. Barry can’t stop himself from leaning forward, from touching; the edges are hard and uneven under his fingers. He only moves his hand away when he hears Len’s shaky inhale over him.
“He shanked his own son?”
“He had me shanked,” Len corrects and pulls his shirt down. “I had him in solitary confinement, more than once.”
Barry sits back and shakes his head.
“Is all of your family crazy?”
“Probably.”
They both chuckle, but the sound catches in Barry’s throat when their eyes meet, and he looks away. Peripherally, he can see Len staring at the windows too, at the city lights flickering and drowning out the stars.
“Did that help?” Len asks in the end, soft and warm and- he has no right to sound fond. Barry can’t just forgive him, for six years, six fucking years of wondering… all because Len’s an idiot.
All because Len would do anything to save his sister, including spending six years in close quarters with the man who abused him all through his childhood.
“No,” Barry answers in the end and sighs. “I’m still mad at you. You’re an idiot. And a jerk.”
“I lost my spleen,” Len shrugs. Barry blinks.
“How is that supposed to help your case?!”
“Well, now I learned I have a case, didn’t I?”
Barry groans. He’s forgotten how infuriating Len could be when he put his mind to it… infuriating and arrogant and so damn… brave.
He licks his lips. He feels like he’s on the precipice of something, like he’s about to take a leap of faith and probably break all the bones in his body but he’s unable to stop the momentum pushing him forward.
“Did you mean it, what you said back then?” he asks. The city lights make his eyes water, a little bit, when he stares at them long enough. “That no matter what happened…”
He can’t say the words; he’s six years out of practice, in saying it and in hearing it directed at him, but he knows that regardless of what he tries, it will never be the same. He will never be the same; but he always felt like he was better with Len, and if there’s even a slight chance that they might learn how to work now, different than they used to be but maybe, maybe, not at all worse… then he wants to take that chance.
Len was right – hearing his reasons didn’t help at all, because Barry was supposed to move on and let go instead of frantically grabbing at any chance of going back.
Len’s fingers slide between Barry’s, gripping the edge of the table. Their hands are the only distance between them now, and Barry can feel the hairs on the back of his neck rising as a shudder gathers at the base of his spine.
“I meant it,” Len says.
Barry smiles at the city lights. He’s always felt that stars were overrated, anyway.
“Len?”
“Yes?”
“Happy birthday… you asshole.”