Work Text:
Mick’s fist hovers above the door of the safe house, frozen in a moment in time.
Doors never stood between him and Len before. Not since their shared room at juvie.
Thought I told you to knock. I might be doing something.
Can do it just as well with me around, can’t ya?
Squats with busted door locks. Shitty safe houses with nothing but rigged curtains between them, and they were in and out of each other’s beds most of the time anyway. Even on the Waverider, there was only a thin wall separating his room and Len’s.
(Len, lounging against the open door frame with a fond expression.
Next stop London, 1840s. Jump ship’s available. Care to steal a Hope Diamond with me?
Mick got up, grabbed him, and kissed him in the middle of the freaking corridor.
A few weeks later, he would stand rooted to the spot in the doorway. It had been the last time he had kissed Len. Would ever kiss him again.)
He still hasn’t knocked on the stupid door with the ridiculous wreath on it. He already knows this holiday thing was a mistake. Lisa called him last week on Len’s stolen Time Bureau device, something strained and a bit too cheerful behind her eyes. Len needed something, she said. He needed to do something different.
She didn’t say Len needed him.
It’s only been a couple of months since Mick watched the jump ship shimmer and fade, taking his old partner away. “All this damn time travel,” Len had said. “I stay here, I’m never gonna forget the Oculus.”
But Mick didn’t think it was that. He saw the way Len had been looking at him, skulking in dark corners of the ship like a memory. “You’ve changed,” he said, jealous eyes darkening.
“It’s been four years,” Mick shot back. “You think you were gonna come back and I’d still just be some layabout criminal with nothing better to do?”
Len looked at him with a blank face and said nothing.
Mick’s tried to call him, once or twice, since Len’s been back in Central City. But both times the silences were too awkward, the distances too vast between them. And not just the ones you can measure in miles or years.
Mick’s fist is still hanging in the air when Lisa shoves the door open, tilts her head in that painfully familiar Snart way, and asks him what he’s waiting for.
(He doesn’t know.)
Len waves an appalled hand at the tree. “What the fuck is this?”
Lisa doesn’t look up, crouched on the floor where she’s carefully hanging a gold bauble from a low branch. “Call it a Hanukkah bush, if you want,” she says, her tone distracted.
“A what?” He aims a distrustful glare at the thing. flashing red and green and blue in repeating patterns. It’s giving him another headache.
“Oh, hush, Lenny. You don’t really mind.”
He doesn’t really mind, but he’s not going to tell her that. He and Lisa have always fused their winter traditions. Ever since she moved in with him in her teens, when her ‘I only celebrate Christmas for shiny presents’ atheism started coinciding with Len’s quiet, personal Judaism.
Mick started joining them for Hanukkah not long after that. Eyes wide at candles. Quiet through the prayers. Slipping Lisa presents on each of the eight nights.
And now Mick’s not even looking at the tree she’s got him. He’s barely said three words since he got here, and they were all about beer. He doesn’t look like a guy who’s home for the holidays.
He doesn’t look like he’s home at all.
“Lenny,” Lisa says with a shut-your-mouth smile, “we’re celebrating all the relevant winter festivals. I got Mick one little tree. You’ll live.”
“I’m Pagan now,” Mick mutters into his journal. Wow, three more words. He’s scribbling in that damn notebook of his again. Len can’t get a good look at the cover, but he doesn’t think it’s the magical Brighid one. Mick stole that back from Constantine, but apparently he knows better than to use it too often. Word is, he puts it back in the warlock’s trunk now and then, to make him think he’s got the magical artifact safely locked away. Len’s never met the famous John Constantine, but he’d still like to see his face if he ever finds out.
Lisa pauses with a glittery bauble in her hand, blinking at Mick. “You’re what?”
Len’s too tired for this, but for some reason he just keeps trying anyway. “He got a gift from an Irish goddess, sis. Don’t question it. He’ll get pissed.” He makes a vague effort to smile at Mick. “We should light a Yule log. That’s Pagan, yeah?”
Mick barely even looks up. When he does, it’s to nod at Lisa. Fuck’s sake. Len shoots him a glare he doesn’t notice, buried in that book again. Then he gives up and heads for the kitchen to make sufganiyot.
A little while later, he passes Lisa as he comes back through with the tray of donuts, still warm from the fryer. She reaches up in a none-too-subtle attempt to nab one, and he grabs the tray back off her. When she pouts, he says, “Who exactly taught you how to steal?” He tuts, heading for the table. “Dinner first, then we’ll light the menorah, then donuts and latkes,” he calls back.
Mick grins at Lisa. “It’s already the sixth night of Hanukkah. What’s the point?” She snorts and throws a towel at him.
Raising an eyebrow before he can stop himself, Len rubs his still-aching head with one hand and checks his watch on the other. Mick’s been in the house for one hour and eight minutes, and he still hasn’t said much more than a curt ‘hi’ to Len. Leaning against the back of the couch, he takes his old partner in, writing silently away in the corner.
It didn’t use to be like this. Sure, he and Mick were always off-again-on-again, always drove each other crazy, but they used to understand each other. Then Len... went away, for what, four years? And now he doesn’t recognize the man sitting on the sofa, his fingers working delicately against leather-bound pages. Mick has always liked a good sci-fi potboiler, but a writer? Mick isn’t a brain work kind of guy. He’s the man in the middle of the action, not the one writing about it.
Isn’t he?
Mick’s face is screwed up in a kind of concentration that Len doesn’t recognise. It’s not how he looks at fire. It’s less desperate, less destructive. If Len didn’t know Mick better, he’d say he was happy.
Whatever this is, it’s nothing he needs Len for.
Lisa’s made roast beef with roasted root vegetables, and she’s pretty proud of it. She’s wondering if it should have been a bit more well-done, for Mick, but they’re both tucking in happily.
Okay, so maybe happy is the wrong word.
Mick’s staring at his food.
Len is only talking to Lisa.
Fucking children. She’s already done with this.
“I didn’t bother with dessert,” she says, to break up a stale silence. “Since there’s donuts still to come.” She grins up at Mick. “We can rely on you to eat it all, right?”
He shrugs. Then he glances up and smiles at her, almost shyly. “I missed your cooking.”
“You better have.” She grabs another spoonful of sweet potatoes. “Anyone cook for you on that ship, or is it only that—what did you call it? Fabricated food?”
He shakes his head. There’s a light back in his eyes. “Most of that crew wouldn’t know what a stove is if they had to crawl out of one. I do most of the real cooking.” He ducks his head, studying his plate again. “It’s a thing I can do.”
“Sounds like you do a lot,” she says through a mouthful of food.
And he smiles his first real smile of the evening. “I do my bit.” The fondness in his eyes is unfamiliar, but she likes it.
Len scowls at his beef and says nothing.
Lisa has no idea what that’s about, so she carries on to spite him. “Well, I hope that computer of yours makes decent food, if that’s what you’re living on.”
Reaching for the beans, Mick shrugs. “Gideon’s food is okay. A few of the others help sometimes. Haircut makes breakfast, but then it’s mostly healthy-healthy crap. He loves all that fruit and shit.” He lets out a fond chuckle. “I think he’s broken.”
Len puts his fork down.
Mick freezes.
Len picks his fork up again.
No one says much after that.
Lisa just keeps eating. Fuck them both. It’s the holidays - she’s going to enjoy herself. All she did was invited the guy who’s practically her brother home for the holidays. She didn’t sign up for this shit.
Mick’s seen a lot of time storms in the past few years, but he can’t say he’s missed the real thing. Freezing rain has been pummelling the windows for an hour.
This is the kind of cold he never feels on the Waverider.
An early winter dark is just taking hold when the lights go out. Well, just one more reason for the three lighters he’s always got on him. He grabs one of the Hanukkah candles from the pile in front of him and flicks the lighter open.
Lisa puts a hand on his arm. “I’ll find you some household candles.” She’s back a moment later with a couple of nice pillar candles, the kind that burn for hours. She passes him a plate to stick it on.
In the flickering light of a flame, Mick feels the old, easy calm settle over him. “Is your heating gas or electric?” he asks Lisa.
She frowns out at the winter storm. “Electric. It’s about to get chilly.”
“No reason to panic,” Len says, striding back into the room from the bathroom. The asshole starts running off his mouth, just like the old days. Like he thinks he’s still Mick’s boss. “We’ve got candles and the log fire. We’ll be fine. Mick, don’t burn all of those out at once. Lise, how are those latkes coming along?”
Her eyes widen. “Oh, shit, the stove…” She sprints off to check it.
Leaving Len alone with Mick.
Pushing down the sarcastic urge to ask him for more orders, Mick mutters, “I need a beer.”
“In the fridge,” Len says, as if it’s his house and not Lisa’s. “Might as well grab ‘em while they’re cold.”
Mick fetches six beers. When he comes back and lines them up on the coffee table in front of him, Len’s practically wringing his hands on the other side of the sofa. He’s never been happy with nothing to do.
Mick sighs and grabs his diary.
There’s a quiet but definite tut from the other end of the sofa.
He slams the book shut and stands up. “You got a problem with my writing, Snart, just fucking say so.” He wants to yell it, but it comes out quiet and sad, and he hates it.
“Oh, come and sit down, Mick,” Len says, in a tone Mick knows too well from hundreds of heists. But he doesn’t get to give Mick orders anymore. Mick meets his eye, silently daring him to make a fuss.
Len gives it up for a while after that. Mick shoves himself into the corner of the sofa, as far from the bastard as he can get.
“Hey,” Len says, obviously forcing a note of cheer into his voice. “We could light the Yule log…”
And the flicker of resentment bursts into flame. “SHUT UP ABOUT THE FUCKING YULE LOG!”
Len stands up. There’s ice in his glare. “What,” he drawls, “is your problem?”
“What’s yours, Snart?”
Len huffs a laugh. “No, really. Enlighten me, Mick.” He throws up a hand. A fake hand, Gideon special. Mick doesn’t know which hand it is—the one Len lost in the Wellspring explosion, or the one he froze off when Mick...
Mick looks away, his eyes catching on blinking Christmas tree lights. Oculus blue.
Len has slipped right into speechifying mode. Old habits, and all that. “Why did you even come? You could have stayed on the Waverider.” He nods disdainfully at Mick’s journal. “With your writing. And Raymond.”
He doesn’t know when he crossed the room, but Mick is suddenly nose to nose with him, not even backing off when Len flinches. He’s pretending he’s not afraid of Mick, just like in the old days. His face is a hard mask, but his eyes drop in a familiar tell that Mick, who knows him too fucking well, couldn’t miss. “Why the hell did you INVITE ME, then?” Mick yells.
Len’s sneering as he pulls back. “Lisa invited you.”
It’s just one more kick to the stomach. Mick’s should have seen it coming. “Fuck you,” he growls. Cursing at Len is yet another bad old habit gone stale. Writer or not, he still hasn’t learned to wield words like a weapon the way Len does. It was always Mick who lost those battles.
Lisa strides back into the room. “I have had it with you two,” she snaps. “I wanted one holiday, you assholes. Just one nice day with my brother who I’ve missed four years of holidays with. But you can’t even be bothered to try. Not even for your sister.” She turns her glare on Mick. “Either of you.”
Her stubborn asshole brother is looking at her like he’s about to start up with the usual rant about how wrong she is.
Lisa marches up to Mick, and he nearly takes a step back. He’s three times her size and she’s as terrifying as her brother. Fucking Snarts. “And as for you… You’ve hardly said two words to me since you told me this one was dead—” she jabs her finger behind her, in Len’s direction— “but now he’s back, I thought maybe you’d try. For family.”
Her tight smile doesn’t hide the pain in her eyes. Mick locks eyes with her for a second too long. Four years of shoulda woulda couldas are threatening to drown him.
Long before he can scramble for words to defend himself, the moment passes. She spins around, aiming a glower back at Len. “But apparently neither of you gives a rat’s ass what I want.” She draws a line under the rant with a flick of her dishcloth onto the floor. It’s so reminiscent of a much younger Lisa stomping a tiny foot, Mick almost smiles. But he looks back at her face, and he doesn’t dare. She’s gone a moment later, anyway, back to the kitchen, in protest.
The silence simmers for a minute.
Mick stares at Len.
Len’s eyes are fixed on an old stain on the rug. It might be blood. It’s probably just coffee.
“Fine,” Len says at last, and walks away.
The bedroom door punctuates the stalled fight with a final slam.
God, Mick misses when they just used to hit each other and get it all out at once.
“Talk to him,” Lisa insists, as she shoves sad little half-fried latkes into the fridge. Unfinished.
Mick lets his head fall back hard against the kitchen wall. “What’s the point, Lise?”
She moves heavily, weighed down by something. She has her own tells that Mick can read like a book he wrote himself. She stops opposite him and she can’t quite meet his eyes, her hands gripping the counter behind her. “It’s not been a barrel of laughs for me either. Your brother comes back from the dead... things get complicated.” She shakes her head. “It was awkward, at first. Like we didn’t know each other anymore.”
When she looks up at Mick, for a minute he thinks her eyes are red, but that can’t be right. This is Lisa.
“He’s changed,” he mutters.
Her smile is sad. “No, Mick. He hasn’t.”
It’s quiet with the power still out, and all he can hear is the words she doesn’t say.
By now it’s hardly colder outside than in the house, so he wanders out to stand under the porch, staring out into rain illuminated by the emergency light.
Oculus blue.
Len is leaning against the closed the back door, watching his… former partner through the glass. Mick’s been out there too long, gripping the porch rail with ruddy hands. His head and neck are damp, exposed, and Len gets a sudden urge to take him out a hat and scarf. He doesn’t, but he opens the door and steps onto the porch.
“You must be chilly.”
Mick doesn’t look around. “Freezing.”
Len slides in next to him, matching his stance, leaning on the porch railings in front of them. Mick flicks his eyes briefly to the right, but doesn’t seem to have much to say.
Illuminated by the porch light behind them, the falling rain is a ghostly shade of blue.
Len takes a breath. “Do you remember when we were—what, twenty and twenty-two? And we got snowed in, up in that cabin where we were squatting, after the Alexa job?”
The side of Mick’s mouth twitches up. “Upstate New York.” He snorts, and it feels like progress. “Five days we were stuck there. We had a loaf of bread and a block of cheese. We couldn’t even get the heating to work.”
Len’s huff of breath shows up in frosty patterns in front of him. “Seem to recall we had a crate of beer too.”
This time Mick laughs, brushing snow off the railing in front of him. “Weren’t ours. It’d been left in the cabin.”
Len echoes his low chuckle. “Kept us going.”
“Yup.”
Len’s feels his face fall, all the tight muscles dropping. His old mask is slipping more and more these days. He should hate it, but he’s too tired to care. “Do you remember what I told you?”
It’s you and me, Mick. Taking cover in the near-darkness, the two of them huddled around a single candle. Len was high on adrenaline and three beers, still coming down from the job. It only took barely escaping with their lives to get him close to sentimental. Even with Mick, who always deserved better. I’m not good at sticking around. But it’ll still always be you and me.
“I’m sorry,” Len says, after an achingly long silence. He can only get it out quietly. The quiet stretches on, and at first Len’s not sure Mick has heard him.
“For what?” Mick asks, finally.
Len’s hands clutch the railing tight in front of him. He manages to choke out, “Lots of things.”
If he didn’t know his old partner any better—and maybe he doesn’t—Len would be wondering if he wants an apology for more than just today.
Mick turns around, back to the railing, searching Len’s face for something. Len can guess what he must looks like right now, his frame more wiry than ever, the bags under his eyes making him a dead ringer for the ghost that’s all he ever feels like, these days. “How you holding up?” Mick asks.
Len looks sideways at him, narrows his eyes. That’s not a question the old Mick would ever have voiced. He turns back to the snow, fingers gripping the railing again. “Peachy.”
“Really?”
Len almost laughs out loud, wondering who he’s even talking to. “No,” he admits. “It fucking sucks.”
Mick takes a deep breath. “Been there,” is all he says.
But it’s a lot.
A little while later, Mick adds, “You should come back to the ship.”
Len’s grip tightens harder, as though he could stop the world from spinning away under him, and he almost shudders. “Nothing there for me anymore.”
Mick turns around again, leaning sideways against the railing. He catches Len’s eye. “You sure about that?”
“People change,” Len says. It’s an echo. But this time, he’s not talking about himself.
“Yeah,” Mick says. His hand moves hesitantly, settling on Len’s back. “That ain’t so bad, though.”
Len nods slowly, thinking of his hazy days, his weird meltdowns, his near-useless cloned hands. He’s not even fast enough to steal anymore. “You even need me anymore?” he asks, and he can’t meet Mick’s eye. Like this?
“‘Course I do, you freak,” comes that familiar rumble.
Len allows a single moment to think about it. He turns back to the darkness, where halos of light are still framing sheets of rain. “And how would Raymond feel about me coming back, hmm?”
Mich chuckles. Len makes a face in the dark. He must have flinched, because he feels Mick freeze against him. “I guess we’d figure that out.” His hand is on the back of Len’s neck.
A part of Len wants to pull away, but he doesn’t listen to it. He turns to look at Mick, a numb hand tracing the line of his partner’s jaw in the low light.
He remembers this. It feels like a long time ago.
“One step at a time,” Mick murmurs, leaning in to kiss him.
Len grabs at him, suddenly desperate, and kisses him back.
It’s like coming home. At last.
Mick reaches for Len’s shirt. “Not here,” Len protests, into his ear. “You’ll catch your death.”
Laughter rumbles against him. “But not you, huh?”
“Oh, I think I’m getting a pass for a while.” He doesn’t tell Mick about the strange visions. Time. Space. Immortality. That can come later, maybe. He sighs. “Think we can we sneak past Lisa?”
“We can try,” Mick says, and his wry grin reminds Len of the old days, when they snuck past everyone. Not always successfully.
Len breathes out slowly, cold hands still tangled under the folds of Mick’s shirt, pressed tight against his skin. He drops his forehead against Mick’s.
“I got you,” Mick murmurs.
“Yeah?” Layers of fear echo through the doubtful edge in his voice.
“Yeah, Lenny. It’s you and me.”
He nods against him and doesn’t let go. Just keeps his eyes on Mick, a silhouette framed in the blue porch light that illuminates his hope in the darkness.
Oculus blue.
“I see you two made up.” Lisa’s tone is triumphant. She’s smirking like a Snart as she watches them stumble in through the front door.
Mick grunts in reply.
“Yes, thank you, Lisa,” Len says. “We got power back yet?”
She raises sardonic eyebrows. “You see any lights?”
“Well then. We’ll just have to make our own,” he says, and goes to the windowsill. He knows what he’s looking for. He reaches for his mother’s hanukkiah, setting it on the table. It’s old cast iron and falling apart and Lisa kept it, and he’s trying not to get sentimental about that, but he’s losing the battle. He looks up at two embarassed faces. “Did you forget how to do this while I was gone?”
Lisa grins and gets up.
Mick is slower coming over, uncertain eyes trained on the siblings by the table. Len thinks he knows what he’s thinking. It was the same the first couple of years he came to their place to light candles.
But I ain’t Jewish.
Neither is Lisa. Doesn’t matter. This one’s for family.
“You gonna tell the story?” Mick asks, as he slides in between Len and Lisa.
Lisa rolls her eyes. “Are we twelve?” But she’s gazing at the old menorah with something oddly soft in her eyes.
Len snorts, setting six candles into the hanukkiah with a careful, respectful hand, just like his mother taught him, and a seventh in the raised space in the middle. “Oh, I think all of us could use a story about a tiny light that kept shining in the darkness, don’t you?”
“Your version has elephants,” Mick complains.
“The magic of storytelling,” Len tells the author, who chokes a laugh in reply.
Len lights the shamash candle, passing it to Lisa. “Do the honors, sis?”
She accepts it with a practiced hand. The first candle ignites as Len watches the light reflected in Mick’s eager eyes.
He says the first prayer, as quietly as he ever did. Old habit, from when he couldn’t sing them too loudly—when he had to wait for Lewis to pass out before he could crouch at the foot of his little bed and light the candles in near-silence. He thinks maybe he’s forgotten the tune for the prayers now anyway. Time passes… even for him.
He remembers, that first year after his mother passed, feeling much too close to those first people who observed Hanukkah, with the Temple in ruins around them, and their tiny bit of oil and nothing else but the hope in their hearts. And just for a moment, he’s right back there.
Nothing but hope.
Lisa’s passing the shamash to Mick. He glances at Len, maybe looking for permission. Still, after all these years. Len raises his eyebrows above an attempt at a smile - it’s all he can give him. Mick inspects the flame for a minute, an old spark alive in his eyes. Then he lights the next candle along, passing it to Len, who ignites the third. And it returns to Lisa, and Mick, and finally to Len again, lighting the final candle for the sixth night.
Then they stand in reverent silence, for just a moment.
Her protest forgotten, Lisa’s not even trying to hide the rough edge to her voice when she says, “Gotta love a miracle.” She reaches out under the table, grabs Len’s hand.
He squeezes it back, just a little. “Yup,” he agrees.
The power picks that exact moment to turn back on, flooding the room in light. The three of them look at each other and lose their shit.
It’s not particularly respectful, Len thinks as he wipes his eyes, but it is very them.
“Ooh!” Lisa says. “Latkes!” And she’s off faster than the Flash to finish cooking them.
Len’s just considering offering to help, when he notices Mick. He’s pulled out a chair and is gazing at the lights in the menorah.
Len goes to the wall switch and turns off the light again. “Ahh,” Mick says approvingly, as the tiny flames become the center of his world again. “Nice.”
Len slips in behind him, wrapping his arms around his partner and dropping his chin to the top of his head.
It’s a few hours, a plate of lakes and countless donuts later when Mick, with a few empty bottles at his feet, sits up and says, “Okay. Now Yule log.”
Len snorts. “You just wanna see another flame.”
“Just light the damn log, Snart.”
Turns out, that one’s about a light in the darkness, too.