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The sharp buzzing of his phone against the nightstand dragged Barry from sleep. He pulled his pillow over his head and took a moment to indulge the fantasy of ignoring it, then groaned and sat up. His pillow tumbled to the ground, and he gave it a baleful look as he leaned over and scooped up the still-ringing phone.
When he saw whose name was flashing on the screen, though, he regretted not ignoring it after all.
“What now?” he asked, voice rough with sleep. A prickly beat of silence followed, and Barry made an annoyed sound as he flopped back against the pillows, phone still held to his ear. “Talk or I hang up.”
"A little chillier reception than I was expecting, Barry,” came a familiar voice, rather tersely. Barry rubbed his eyes with his free hand and cast his exasperated gaze up at the ceiling.
“It’s four in the morning, Snart. Spare me the temperature puns.”
Another few seconds of silence. Barry furrowed his brow and pulled the phone away from his ear. The screen—painfully bright in the dark room, even at its dimmest setting—confirmed that the call hadn’t been dropped, call time still ticking up second by second. He brought it back to his ear.
“Seriously, if you didn’t—“
The realization hit him like a freight train (a metaphor that was rather more literal for him than he cared for; it had happened more than once). He sat up sharply, sending another pillow to the ground in his haste to look at the screen again. No matter how long he stared at it, the name remained the same, glowing back at him with the cool remove of technology.
“Snart?” he breathed. Hope bloomed in his chest, despite the rational part of his brain that was straggling back towards consciousness with an itemized list of all the ways this could be a trick.
It should’ve been impossible, but Barry could’ve sworn he heard Len smirk.
Barry threw off the blankets and cast around for the first pair of jeans he could get his hands on, phone held between his ear and shoulder.
“Where are you?” Barry demanded, nearly tripping as he yanked the jeans up his legs, limbs still heavy with sleep despite the adrenaline spiking through his system.
“No, you’re right,” Len said idly, and he was definitely grinning, the bastard. “It’s late. Why don’t you just call me in the morning? We'll get brunch.”
A sound like a cupboard clicking shut came over the line, and Barry looked sharply towards his bedroom door. There was no reason for him to recognize that sound, unless—
“Doesn’t look like you have much to eat here, anyway,” Len said.
Barry dropped his phone, and, with a rush of yellow lightning, was in the kitchen before it hit the ground.
Len was leaning against the counter, the smirk on his face maddening and achingly familiar at the same time. It was him; it had to be.
It couldn’t be.
It was.
Another blink of electricity and Barry was in his space. His hands fluttered indecisively over the shoulders of his dark jacket, the tinted goggles around his neck. Len made a face and tried to sidestep him, but Barry caught him with a hand against his chest.
Len’s heart beat steadily under his palm, and Barry stared in disbelief at the place his hand rested against the soft, black material of Len’s shirt. He’d spent months pressing at the bruise of Len’s death in his mind, imagining everything he would say to him if he ever got the chance, everything he would do . But now, with the man standing in front of him again, he didn’t even know where to start.
“How?” he asked. He looked up and found Len watching him carefully. Barry took a half-step back, not quite able to withdraw his hand. “I mean, you are—are you? You?”
“Eloquent as ever, Barry,” Len said, and Barry swayed forward helplessly at the sound of his name in that affected drawl.
“You’re dead,” Barry said, even as the heartbeat under his hand told him otherwise. If Len noticed his voice crack, he didn’t say so. “You died. Ray told me.”
Len lifted one shoulder with feigned nonchalance.
“What can I say? Details of my death were greatly exagger—“
Barry finally remembered what had been on the top of that Leonard Snart to-do list, and surged into Len's space again. He caught him in a desperate kiss, muffling the rest of Len’s sentence and the surprised noise he made against his mouth. He didn’t realize he’d brought his hands up to frame Len’s face until Len curled a hand loosely over one of his wrists, and delivered a sharp tap there with his index finger.
Barry pulled back with what was supposed to be a laugh, but he suspected sounded closer to a sob. Len was looking at him warily, and Barry grinned helplessly at the sharp, familiar blue of his eyes.
“That’s new,” Len said after a few moments. A flicker of doubt passed over his face, then he added, “Well. New for me, at least. If you’ve been playing Back to the Future again, I haven’t gotten to...” He trailed off, and made an aborted gesture towards Barry. “This.”
He sounded confused, but not exactly put out about the possibility. Barry laughed again, then pulled Len into a tight hug. Len tensed but didn’t push him away, and after a couple seconds, Barry felt him relax.
“No, we haven’t— It’s just—“ Barry drew back to look at him, hands on his shoulders again. “It’s good to see you.”
One of Len’s eyebrows rose sharply.
“Mick told me I missed some things," he said. "Don’t remember the part about a kiss like that meaning ‘nice to see you,’ nowadays.’”
Barry grinned, a little cheekily, and slid his hand up the side of Len’s neck. Len’s tone had been indifferent, but his heartbeat betrayed him, quick and interested against Barry’s palm.
"Are you saying this isn’t what you had in mind when you broke into my apartment in the middle of the night?”
The corner of Len’s mouth twitched, barely concealing a wry smile. Len wrapped his fingers around his wrist again, but this time he only stroked his thumb over his pulse point, and smirked at the rapid fluttering he found there.
“Not quite,” Len said slowly. “But...” He dropped his lashes in an appreciative once-over, and Barry tracked his gaze over his bare chest and still-unbuttoned jeans. “You’re getting warmer.”
Barry rolled his eyes but couldn’t stop his smile, deliriously happy just to have Len back in front of him again, cold puns and all. He pulled Len back in for another long kiss, only breaking away to huff a laugh when Len slipped his hand from his waist to cup his ass through the back of his jeans. Len nipped the corner of his jaw and nuzzled behind his ear, and Barry shivered at the feeling of his breath, hot and ticklish over the side of his throat.
“If I knew this was what a hero’s welcome looked like, I would've played the martyr card a lot sooner,” Len murmured against his neck. His hand slipped lower, and Barry’s answering laugh turned into a groan.
“No, you wouldn’t have,” Barry said, eyes fluttering shut as Len closed his lips over his pulse point and began sucking a bruise there. Len hummed in agreement, and Barry arched closer and urged Len on with an impatient scrape of nails over the back of his neck.
“We’re gonna talk about this. How you’re even doing—ah— that , right now” he said, but his voice sounded weak even to his own ears, and he felt Len’s mouth curl up into a smirk against his skin. Len caught him by the chin and kissed him again, hard and dirty, only to pull back when Barry tried to deepen the kiss. Barry chased his lips, but Len turned his head to the side.
“A very long, interesting story, actually,” he said, voice maddeningly calm, even as he trailed his hand down Barry’s throat, then chest. “Might take a couple hours to tell it right. In fact...” He dragged his thumb over one of his nipples, and Barry breathed a surprised curse and tried to press closer. But Len only withdrew his hands, and turned to pick his phone up off the counter. “Why don’t I call the rest of Team Flash, so I can get everyone all caught—“
Barry had Len’s phone out of his hands between heartbeats, and whisked Len into the bedroom before he could even finish the thought. He couldn’t help a dangerous grin at the flicker of surprise on Len’s face as he took in their abrupt relocation.
“I didn’t say we were gonna talk about it now,” Barry said, and he gave Len half a second to smirk before he tackled him to the bed.