Work Text:
Leo headed for the exit to the Waverider with a sense of relief. Not that he hadn’t enjoyed his time with the Legends, but they flew a little close to the wind for his liking. His Earth was no picnic, but in all his time there, he’d never once been threatened with a lobotomy.
No, his time with them had been enlightening, but he craved a new kind of adventure now. The domestic kind. Smiling, he reached for the door.
“Leo!”
He turned. Mick Rory was approaching. Apparently that distracted farewell hadn’t been enough for him – probably putting on a brave face in front of the Legends, Leo thought.
Unsure whether to expect a punch or a hug, he braced himself for one of each – and was caught by surprise when Mick stopped a short distance away.
“So you’re getting married,”
“Guess so.”
Mick grunted. “You got a ring?”
“Not yet,” Leo admitted. “Snap decision. Not my usual method of operation.”
There was a pause, in which Mick stood and scowled in silence. Leo waited. His Mick had always struggled to express himself, too. There was a time when he hadn’t needed to; Leo used to understand every expression that crossed that face… but that was a different time. A different Mick. This one was a stranger to him, and so he could do little but wait as Mick deliberated, face scrunched in thought.
So fascinated was he, cataloguing the differences between the two, that he didn’t immediately realise when Mick came to a decision. An impatient grumble brought him back to earth; startled, he looked down to find Mick offering Leo his fist, closed around something small that was buried in his gloved hand.
Leo held his hand out, and Mick dropped a metal circlet into his palm.
“It belonged to Snart,” said Mick. “The other one, I mean. Figured I’d pass it along.”
Leo examined the ring. It was a plain silver band, quite thick, winking in the light. Pretty small, for his hand – he figured it might fit nicely on his pinkie finger – but Ray’s fingers were thinner than his. Hard to tell without having him try it on, but he reckoned it would be a good fit.
“Are you sure you don’t wanna keep this?” he asked quietly.
Mick set his jaw. “I don’t need it any more. You take it. Call it a souvenir.”
A souvenir from another Earth. Another Snart, too. He rolled the ring around in his palm. Taking one last look, Leo analysed Mick’s expression, searching for the slightest hint that the man might change his mind. God knows he’d have given anything for a keepsake from his Mick Rory, once upon a time – but times changed. Memories mattered more than any physical thing, he knew that now. Perhaps it was better for Mick to hand the ring to someone else, rather than having it always rattling round, an ever-present reminder.
“Thank you,” he said, folding his fingers around it.
Mick grunted. “Don’t do anything stupid. And if a spaceship full of weirdos shows up at your door asking you to come time travel… don’t get on.”
“You can count on it.”
Leo hesitated – then, he reached out and clapped Mick on the arm.
“I’ll see you around.”
Mick gave a curt nod, before turning and disappearing back into the depths of the Waverider. Looking down, Leo took another glance at the ring gleaming in his palm. Then, he pocketed it.
~*~
He had to give Cisco kudos for his precision – somehow, he managed to open up a breach right down the street from the crappy Earth-X apartment Leo and Ray called home. As he stepped back onto familiar ground, he felt a strange mixture of disappointment and relief. There was a visible contrast between this earth and the one he’d left behind – home was deathly quiet, the streets empty, smoke still rising from ruined buildings. A cat skulked beneath a car, green eyes glaring out at him. The heroes of Earth One had eliminated the Black Arrow and his entourage, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a hell of a lot of cleaning up to do. Destabilising the regime was only the first step of many, and he didn’t intend to rest until every last Nazi was removed from the face of his Earth – and every other Earth, come to think of it.
Leo hoisted the cold gun over his shoulder and headed for home, already smiling.
“Honey, I’m home,” he called, entering the apartment.
Ray was on the couch, eating stir fry noodles out of a takeout box, but he leapt up and cast the food aside as Leo entered. His face lit up.
“It’s about time!” he said.
“Better late than never,” said Leo as he entered, hanging his gun by the door and pulling Ray into his arms. He kissed him, before pulling back to tease, “Miss me?”
“Stupid question. I never stopped worrying the entire time you were gone. I knew you’d be getting into all kinds of trouble.”
“Me? Never,” Leo said. “I was on my best behaviour.”
“Mm, I doubt that.”
They kissed again, and Leo felt himself relax. This was where he belonged, now and forever.
“So how was your trip?” Ray asked, straightening the fur hood of his jacket.
He hesitated, contemplated lying, and settled for “Eventful.”
“On second thoughts, maybe I don’t wanna know. You’ve got enough grey hairs for the both of us,” Ray said teasingly, rubbing Leo’s cropped hair.
“If you’re going to be an asshole, I can head back to Earth One right now,” Leo threatened.
Ray just laughed at him. He had a twinkle in his eye that Leo hadn’t seen in far too long. What with everything that had been going on, they’d had few enough reasons to smile over recent months. Leo intended to change that. With nerves beginning to stir in his stomach, he watched as Ray grabbed his food and returned to the couch, showing a remarkable aptitude for wielding chopsticks. Cheeks bulging, he looked like a cheerful, oversized hamster – and it was this that cemented Leo’s decision, as if it had ever been in any doubt from the second he’d made it.
“I have a question,” he said.
“Oh? And what’s that?” Ray asked, swallowing his mouthful.
Leo bit the bullet and sank gracefully onto one knee.
Ray’s mouth fell open.
“Oh, you’re kidding me.”
“Not even a little bit,” said Leo, and he produced Snart’s ring, his heart hammering.
For a long time, Ray gazed at the silver circlet. As the moments ticked by, it looked increasingly plain, and Leo began to worry that perhaps he should have opted for a fancier option. Picked something out himself. To him, the ring was the perfect symbol for their union; a reminder of the friendships they’d formed on Earth One and the banishment of the villains who’d made their lives a misery. Through Ray’s eyes, perhaps it just seemed like a cheap, boring ring. He gazed at it with the first stirrings of nausea.
Tearing his gaze away from the ring, Ray licked his lips. “Tell me you’re not screwing with me, Leo. Promise me. You… you’re sure about this?”
“I’m certain,” Leo said. “Certain things… came to light, while I was away. And I realised that I wanted to…” He swallowed.
There was no way to explain how he’d come to the realisation without giving Ray a heart attack – truth be told, it should have been blindingly obvious that marrying him was all he had ever wanted to do. But it had only occurred to him when he found himself strapped to a table with a needle hovering inches away from his eye, under imminent threat of a lobotomy, what a reckless decision he’d made by going off gallivanting with a bunch of relative strangers from another earth. If he’d died on that table, what would have happened to Ray? He would never have known the truth, only that Leo had never come back to him. Would he have accepted his death eventually, or begun to wonder if he had been abandoned intentionally? He might have spent the rest of his life waiting for Leo to come home.
If there was one thing Leo was certain of, it was that he never wanted to give Ray reason to doubt how much he loved him. What better way to prove it than this?
“You wanted to… what?” asked Ray.
“Be with you,” Leo said simply. “Forever.”
The look on Ray’s face was so tender that it took his breath away.
“Will you marry me, Raymond?” he asked. “Will you be mine?”
“Oh,” Ray said, and he slid off the couch, crawling over to where Leo knelt. He grabbed his hands, closing his fingers around the ring in Leo’s grasp. “I will.”
Leo’s heart hammered for an entirely different reason. An uncontrollable grin spreading across his face, he took Ray’s hand and slid the ring onto his finger. A perfect fit.
“I love you, Leo,” Ray said.
“I love you, too,” he answered. “And I’m never leaving you again.”
And with that, he drew the love of his life into his arms.