Work Text:
Len receives an envelope in his mail a month after he completed his last job. As his apartment is in the middle of nowhere, he’s half surprised the postal service actually makes it out. He flicks cigarette ash off his button-up shirt as he surveys the date and address on the package.
It’s a job straight from headquarters.
He wakes Mick up on his way back inside the apartment, and the other man yawns extensively when Len informs him that there’s a job on the table.
“I think we’re doing just fine for ourselves hustling pool,” Mick mumbles. “Send the damn thing back.”
“You haven’t even seen the offer yet,” Len protests. He puts the package down on the coffee table between them.
“Neither have you,” Mick says. “Just read it aloud to me, like a bedtime story.”
“We’re not five anymore. Just sit up and consider the damn thing.”
Mick grabs the package off the table and tears the top off, sliding out the manila folder inside. The front cover doesn’t have a name printed on it, but TOP SECRET is stamped in red ink.
“Who do they want us to kill this time?” Mick growls and opens the page. Len watches his reactions as the man slowly blanches and makes eye contact with Len. “You may want to see this,” he says.
“A lot of money?” Len asks, taking the open folder.
On the front page, the attached photo to the report is of none other than Barry Allen, in camo and Kevlar, aiming a handgun at the photographer.
Len puts the folder down, jaw slack.
“Yeah, no shit,” Mick voices what he’s thinking. “Allen pissed off HQ.”
“Well, we can’t not take the job,” Len says in barely a whisper. “Someone wants him dead, Mick, I can’t--”
“So we take the job,” Mick finishes for him. “Text headquarters, before someone else does.”
“I haven’t seen him in years,” Len continues as he reaches with quaking fingers for his phone. “He’s in special ops gear, Mick, and I--” He cuts off abruptly, swallowing, focusing on the text to headquarters.
Barry’s a threat in special ops gear, and he’s targeting the Rogues. He’s trying to bring Len’s life down around him, again.
“Okay,” Len breathes, after a tense minute. “We got it.” He starts flipping through the file, murmuring, “What exactly has Allen done since he was young and scrawny?”
Apparently, Bartholomew Allen has done quite a lot. Ever since he and Len -- parted ways -- Barry’s walked in and out of the top mercenary groups in the country. He did a stint partnering with the FBI a year ago. That incident ended in significant bloodshed on both sides, like Barry is the fucking Angel of Death or something.
With every incident, pictures of Barry in official regalia are clipped to them, showcasing the way the boy Len knew lifetimes ago has grown. Barry had ungainly stubble for a few years of ops in Canada, and as soon as he made the New York circuit, he shaved.
Years are held in Len’s hands, calloused with the weight of bodies tipping the eternal scale, and as he flips through pages of police reports, eyewitness statements, court transcripts, field reports, and maps charting his progress, all the memories come to mind of who Barry Allen used to be.
***
On the first day of the third grade, Len enters a classroom unlike the one he came from, millions of miles and U Haul trucks behind him now. He sits in the back of the class, watching the good-spirited teacher introduce herself to them, and silently watching as the kids who have known themselves forever make easy, relaxed conversation.
The teacher mentions him by name. “We have two new kids in the class, Leonard Snart and Barry Allen,” she reads off the roster.
Len nods sheepishly at his peers, who glance from him to the spindly kid in the other corner with mild curiosity.
“Would you mind telling us where you are from?” the teacher asks.
Len shrugs. “I’ve been too many places to care,” he says truthfully, but apparently it’s too early in the school year to be brutally honest. The teacher’s face shutters closed, and she nods at Barry Allen.
“Central City,” the boy says, grinning. “My dad’s a cop, and he just transferred.”
“Thank you,” the teacher says pointedly at Barry Allen.
Later, when the lunch period reveals itself to be empty cafeteria tables and nowhere to sit, Barry Allen motions for Len to sit across from him. So he sits, the two new kids in the forest of experienced ones, and awkwardly waits for Barry to begin talking.
Soon, Barry can’t stop talking about science and mathematics and all the hobbies that he loves, robotics and beginning chemistry and cop shows, even though his dad assures him they’re nothing like real life. Barry talks about his family, his dad and sister, and how they were the most awesomest people in the world, and Len smiles with him.
Barry’s life does sound like the most awesomest in the world.
“Be my friend?” asks Barry.
Len shrugs. Why not.
***
Mick interrupts his thoughts. “Will you stop pacing, Snart?” he asks exasperatedly. “It can’t be that hard to not kill someone.”
“It is when he’s on our official hitlist, and there is good reason for him to be. And what if he shoots us first, before he can recognize us or hear the whole story? What if we are also on his hit list?”
“Then he’ll recognize you and have a minor breakdown, same as you did,” Mick says. “He’ll try to find some way to not have to kill you.”
“He’s not the one who’s still in love with me! That would be me, pining my sorry ass off while he moved on!” Len shouts. He doesn’t like to bring up those memories, but they are now of the utmost importance.
***
In seventh grade, Len and Barry’s sleepovers turned into study groups, and as the two lay entwined underneath the lifelike glow-in-the-dark model of the planets orbiting the sun, they bounced facts off each other, quizzing each other on Pre-Algebra and Spanish, Language Arts and History until they got so exhausted neither could keep their information straight in their heads. By two A.M., all of Barry’s terrible puns were so hilarious, Len couldn’t stop laughing and his gut ached.
“Hey,” Barry says as jokes and light-hearted subjects trickle down. “You ever thought about love?”
“No,” Len admits. His sister won’t stop talking about rom-coms and chick flicks, though, and she’s younger than he is, so he knows things. Weird things.
“Okay,” Barry nods, and doesn’t say anything else.
“Why?” Len asks. Why would Barry want to know his opinions on that particular subject?
“Nothing,” Barry mutters, turning away from him. In the living room below Barry’s bedroom, the TV blares a football game.
“No, really,” Len presses. “Why’d you ask?”
“I just thought maybe -- nevermind, okay?” Barry says, and then laughs. “It doesn’t really matter anyway.”
“If you say so,” Len frowns.
***
“Shit,” Len sighs, interrupting his pacing across the room. “There’s no way to meet Allen without a shootout. I’ll have to clean the handguns.”
“You do that,” Mick says, not taking his attention off of the Kardashians on TV.
***
In the first week of ninth grade, Len and Barry sneak off to the favored spot behind the bleachers to drink some of the moonshine Len lifted off of Mick Rory, the most popular jock in high school. Len had tried some of the alcohol his dad leaves around the house before, of course, but Barry hasn’t. His dad is a clean cop.
“You first,” Barry says, chewing on his lower lip. He’s gotten into the habit, and Len hasn’t said anything about it in fear of his massive crush on the other kid being revealed. Len istransfixed with Barry’s lips.
Len shrugs. “Sure,” he says, and downs half the bottle, letting the sharp tang of strong alcohol like cleaning fluid roll down his throat. It tastes like want, he thinks in ninth grade angsty poetry.
He hands the bottle to Barry, who is gaping. “How did you just drink that? Doesn’t it hurt?” The kid looks years younger than he actually is, wearing clothes too large in all the wrong places, his jacket engulfing his frail wrists like they were made of paper.
“You get used to it.” Like Len gets used to being around Barry, his friend, every second of the waking day. Like how he resolves not to tell Barry about the elephant in the room. The last time a bully had called them faggots, Len had beat the kid up and Barry had kept walking, face shuttered. There’s a story there, but Len’s not prying.
So Barry picks up the glass bottle and drinks it, Adam’s Apple working its way up and down in his throat, and Len doesn’t blink until Barry sets the glass bottle on the grass, clearing his throat with vigor.
Len grins. “Done experimenting yet?”
Barry keeps coughing violently, nodding vehemently. “Never going outside the law again,” he says. “The law is the best.”
“Of course,” Len rolls his eyes. The completely racist and homophobic law is the best thing Len could ever imagine to follow, second only to a dystopian government.
“Wow,” Barry blinks. “Guess I never thought of it that way.”
Len realizes belatedly he must have said that aloud, and starts to giggle. The moonshine tastes shifty underneath his skin, feels less like thrumming courage and more like a reason to be hysterical.
“It’s true, though,” Len continues. He can rant on the law all day if he has to, and maybe Barry will stay and listen to it all. “Everybody’s against us, and we have nobody but ourselves to take care of us.”
“And who is us?” Barry asks, softly, in line with his soft clothes and his soft demeanor.
Len wants to tell him. Len wants to confess to Barry the harsh secrets under the lines of his skin and be comforted, accepted, not rejected. But he didn’t come out here to wax slurred lines about his life, he came out here to do reckless things.
So Len shows him. He kisses Barry, mashing their lips together in a desperate attempt to show, not tell, to say sorry without ever forming a word.
Barry blinks. “Did you do that because you’re drunk, or did you really want to?” he asks, frowning slightly. With one pale finger he touches his lips, like he doesn’t quite believe it happened.
“I really wanted to,” Len says, mostly breathless. “You don’t know how much I wanted to.”
“And you finally had a chance to do it,” Barry says, face closed.
“Yeah.” Len stares at the ground and the empty bottle. “If you want me to leave, you can just tell me. I won’t mind. I know what I did.”
“I -- that’s not what I meant, Snart! Stay, please stay.” Barry looks at him pleadingly. He isn’t angry or outraged that Len kissed him. He looks calm.
“You’re okay with that?”
Barry giggles, finally. “I kind of want to do it again,” he admits.
***
“Tracked him down to NYC,” Len says, startling Mick out of his reverie. He had been sitting motionless in front of the computer for hours, watching CCTV footage and text chatting with Lisa.
“Did you do the actual tracking or did Glider?” Mick grins over the Panda Express in his arms.
Len flips him off. “He’s staying in a Hilton. Guess he’s on a job.”
“Did our job say anything about taking him out before he does his job?” Mick asks, mouthful of rice.
Len shakes his head. “No specifics to our job, which is the weird part. If Allen is a threat to the Rogues, then there would be more details, not just ‘bury him as soon as possible’. And if he’s not a threat to the Rogues, then why are they targeting him? Killing members of mercenary gangs for no reason is just asking for trouble.”
Mick shrugs. “You’re the brains of this operation, Lenny, so do your thing.”
“Right,” Len says, and resumes tapping on the keyboard like a madman.
A few seconds later he pipes up, “How would you like to go to New York tonight?”
“What about ‘comfortable in this life in the countryside’ don’t you understand?” grumbles Mick.
***
The graduation ceremony dawns, too early in Barry and Len’s lives for it to be actually happening. Len’s heard Pomp and Circumstance too many times and he can’t actually believe this day is real. He’s getting his high school diploma, after all these years of not being smart enough compared to Barry’s extensive knowledge, but it doesn’t matter, because he’sgraduating.
He’s running high and elated, his graduation gown a mark of outstanding achievement on his part. Len can’t stop smiling when he hugs Lisa in the audience, and waves at Iris West, who he’s come to know a lot better since he and Barry made it official a year ago.
Iris doesn’t smile at him.
Len frowns, his high dropping in a heartbeat. The graduating class around him, milling around post-ceremony, is a heartbeat away from uninteresting. Iris isn’t smiling. Barry was here, he had graduated with the rest of them, and Iris isn’t as excited as the rest of them.
Barry is going to university with the best, to become the best, and Iris isn’t happy.
Len detaches himself from the crowd of polite parents and makes his way over to Iris West, who flinches involuntarily when he walks up.
Len’s blood rushes to the defense, automatically calculating. What does Iris fear? Does she fear him?
“You okay?” he asks, falsely casual. Internally, panic rolls around his stomach.
Iris steels herself. “Barry told me to bring you a message,” she says.
“Where is he? What is it that he can’t tell me himself?” Len frowns. He’s done nothing. This is his night, and it’s Barry’s night, and he’s done absolutely nothing to ruin it. He cares about Barry too much.
“He told me to tell you that he finally figured out what you were up to last summer,” Iris says. “You know, when you went on three hit-and-runs to banks several states apart. He said your sister finally slipped and gave him the clue he needed to know that you never parted from your criminal ways at all. He wants me to ask you rhetorically whether you ever paid attention to him, to his values or his want to not endanger innocent people. He wants me to tell you that if you’re a criminal, Leonard Snart, then Barry can never talk to you. Even if the police don’t know what you’ve done, he does. And he will never forget it.”
Len doesn’t make a sound. He lets Iris’s cutting words roll over him, and feels the tassel by his ear sway, now melancholy.
“Right,” he says on autopilot. His brain is at another memory, one much more precious than this. “I’ll just be going, then, West.”
“You do that,” she says, fire in her eyes.
He never talks to her again.
***
Len cleans his handgun and reassembles it one last time in his room in the Hilton. The digital clock reads three in the morning, about the time that a hitman’s internal clock crashes. If Len is as good at his job as he thinks he is, Barry won’t notice him. Barry won’t notice anything until Len presses a gun to his forehead and wakes him up, explaining about the plan in a hushed voice.
It’s a good plan, Len thinks, and checks the magazine one last time. Empty. The barrel is also empty, since he just cleaned it. The gun is nothing more than a precaution, not a threat. Mick’s shotgun, .6 and lying motionless next to Mick, is the real firepower.
“Showtime,” he tells Mick gleefully.
Mick hums at him, immersed in sitting cross-legged on one of the twin beds and playing Dragon Age. “If you need any back up, just holler,” he reminds Len. “The open windows should catch the sound waves.”
“Right,” Len says, and fits his black ski mask on, fastening the rope to the door. “Showtime.”
***
Len and Barry sit on a hillside, sharing a pack of Marlboro’s, after the last of their last high school final exams. The weight of the world is off their shoulders, and they have to look forward to graduation and summer and then college.
“What do you want to do by this time next year?” Len asks. After a year of intentionally getting to know Barry as his boyfriend, Len should know the answer to this, but with Barry, it changes almost weekly, and this week has been more important than most.
Barry takes a drag of the cigarette. “I think I want to be a forensic scientist,” he says slowly, hoarse and excited. “I’ve been researching it, and my major’s currently undecided, so it could be an actual possibility.”
Len smiles lazily. “You go solve crimes, Barry Allen, if that’s what you want to do.”
“It is what I want to do.” Barry sounds more confident now, almost like the time when he described to Len a detailed tattoo he wanted from his pecs to his knees. Len had supported Barry on that, too, even though it turned out to be a failed endeavor. Honestly, Len would support Barry no matter what he chose to do.
Barry has a good heart, and Len’s trying to pick up the pieces of his rationale and become something better than a common criminal. He’s trying. He’s failed so much, but he’s honestlytrying.
“And you?” Barry asked.
Len scoffs. “I’m going to be a mechanic. It’s simpler.”
“Avoiding people all day for machines might be simpler, but machines don’t make you laugh. You sure you’re going to be okay at college?”
“I’ll be fine,” Len smiles. Working with metal tools on inanimate objects without life or feelings allows him to be sane around humans. Fixing things is peaceful for him.
“I love you, you know,” Barry says, curling his arm around Len’s waist.
Len relaxes into the touch. “Yeah, you’ve said it before,” he laughs. “Love you too.”
“Awesome,” Barry grins. “God, the future’s gonna be wonderful.”
***
Len shimmies down the rope from his balcony to Barry’s, directly beneath, trusting the cabinet the rope is tied around to hold his weight. He unlocks the sliding door, watching Barry asleep on the bed as he slides the glass door open.
Barry doesn’t stir. Even trained light sleepers sleep deeply occasionally, and Len takes the time to admire how Barry’s grown since high school, see the changes in person and not just from photos.
His handgun in his jeans, Len knows exactly how the plan is supposed to go. He can’t rely on Barry’s remaining affections for him from too many years ago to ensure his survival.
Len needs to point the gun at Barry’s brains while he tells Barry exactly how to fake his death in such a way that the Rogues have no doubt he’s still breathing and not bled out.
As Len watches Barry, head half-buried in soft hotel pillows, he can’t bring himself to do it. He can’t bring himself to point a gun at his former lover’s face.
So Len sits down in the cushioned chair next to Barry’s bed, and pokes him on the arm, hard.
Barry sniffles and rolls over on his stomach, muttering unintelligible words in his sleep.
A person on the Rogues’ hit list is a deep sleeper, completely unaware of any danger that may fall upon him while asleep.
Len pokes him again, harder. He’s reminded of the times in happier days when he woke Barry up with less harsh measures, or by poking Barry’s ribs, but he doesn’t want to be strangled now, so he doesn’t.
Barry opens his eyes blearily, staring at Len in incomprehension for a few seconds before he scrambles for his own gun under his pillow.
Len draws his handgun and levels it at Barry’s face, pure muscle memory, before he can reach it. “You’re a shit hitman,” he drawls. “And you’re in a room with sliding glass doors. I shouldn’t be the one to tell you that it’s going to get you killed someday.”
“And today’s not that day?” Barry asks, yawning despite himself.
He doesn’t recognize Len. It’s dark as tar outside, so that’s probably the reason. Len’s otherwise a recognizable person, and he would like to think he and Barry have enough history for facial recognition.
“Not if you listen to what I have to say, Allen. I’m assuming you don’t recognize me.”
Barry shrugs. “No? I haven’t worked with you, have I? Because I’ve left that life behind me. I don’t answer to gangs or the police any more.”
“Is that why the Rogues want you dead?” Len frowns. “Because you’re a potential tattletale?”
Barry shrugs again.
“Getting to business, though,” Len continues, “it’s my job to make sure you don’t die.”
“Why? I’m off the books,” Barry frowns.
“Well, if you still have no idea who I am,” Len drawls, “I guess it doesn’t matter. Now we have to go. There’s a motorcycle waiting for you in the parking lot.”
Barry grins widely, awkwardly, like he has something to hide. “I’m not exactly wearing anything,” he says by means of explanation, “so if you wouldn’t mind handing me something out of my suitcase, that would be much appreciated.”
“It’s nothing I haven’t seen before, Allen,” Len mutters as he tosses Barry some nondescript clothes, and Barry hurries to change under the sheets.
“Nothing you haven’t -- who are you? Why don’t I recognize you?”
Barry stands an arm’s width behind Len, and Len hears him tuck a gun in his waistband. Barry’s not going to shoot him. Barry has just enough of an inkling of who Len is to not kill him where he stands.
Len flips on the light switch and turns around.
Barry gapes at him. “Are you fucking kidding me,” he demands.
In quick succession, two shotgun rounds are fired in the room above them.
“Mick,” Len curses. “We have to go, now.”
Barry follows him as Len streaks to the rope hanging on Barry’s balcony. “You can climb, right?” Len asks, pulling himself up on the rope.
“Of course I can climb,” Barry shoots back, “Lenny.”
“You don’t get to call me that,” Len tells him, four feet in the air already. His arm muscles burn and feel ready to tear as he launches himself over his own hotel room balcony, watching as Mick fires another shot at the hallway, the door blown off its hinges.
“What’s happening?” Len asks as he ducks behind the mini fridge in the room.
“SWAT team,” Mick growls, a cigarette hanging out the corner of his mouth. “I realized they had a tracker on my laptop seconds before they busted my door in. And you said this would be an easy job.”
Barry vaults over the balcony, and Mick fires his last shot at the figures in black suits and shields in the doorway, and ducks behind the fridge. Len grabs a loaded magazine out of Mick’s duffel of ammo and starts firing at chinks in the SWAT armor. There are many.
“Hey, Mick,” Barry says easily as he joins them behind the fridge. Mick is reloading his shotgun from the duffel of shotgun rounds. “Are we defending the room, or are we retreating?”
“You just need to set the fake blood in place,” Mick grins. “Here.” He hands Barry a large plastic bag of blood.
“This is lovely,” Barry notes as Len ducks behind the fridge and Mick props up against it.
“We synthesized your blood,” Len explains over the noise. “This is more than you could lose and live, so just spread it on the floor with bits of your other DNA and we can escape out the way we came. If they think you’re dead somewhere in New York City, they won’t come looking for you.”
“Do you just have the motorcycle, or do you have an armored truck?” Barry asks as he unties the bag and dumps it on the ground. The blood splatters on his clothes, too dark to make noticeable stains, but his hands look like they’ve been dyed. Barry spits in the mess for good measure and scrapes his fingers on the ground, watching as the blood slowly rolls out from their hiding place.
“Do you think they think one of us is dead?” Barry asks.
“Who knows,” Mick shrugs. “When I say run, you run and vault over the balcony, you got that? We have to get out of sight before highly trained SWAT agents see us.”
Len shoots his last few rounds, and his handgun clicks. Bodies are piled up outside the door.
“Go!” Mick screams, and they jump off the balcony, loosely holding the rope in their hands. Len jumps to the ground floor from Barry’s balcony, the two floors jarring his knees and ankles, but his joints are still intact. Mick and Barry follow, both landing suitably.
Len runs all-out to the nondescript motorcycle idling in the parking lot, and waits for the weight of Mick and Barry to hit the seat, everyone holding onto each other for their lives, and guns the motor.
They speed out into the New York night, and don’t stop until the intersection of Fifth and Tenth, where Len ditches the motorcycle for a rental car.
No one says a word as Len merges them with the minimal traffic. In the backseat, Mick sets up his laptop and 4G router, and Barry scrubs the synthesized blood off his hands with little avail.
The police sirens a ways off, and Len sees no SWAT vans in his rearview. They’re safe. They got Barry out, and they’re safe.
“Where are we going?” Barry asks breathlessly. “You just upended my new life, you know. I mean, thank you for saving me, what do I do with my existence now?”
“Make a fake ID or seven and do whatever you want,” Mick says, distracted, as he types, fingers flying. “Oh, Lisa congratulates you for the ‘nice save’, Lenny. Says she’ll meet us at the rendezvous in Newark.”
“Got it,” Len says, and changes lanes. “Right now, Allen, you sit tight until Newark and keep your eyes out for large vans pulling up next to us.”
“Thanks,” Barry smirks. “I think I do know how to do my job.”
“Right,” Len says, and tapers off, watching the rain drop on his windshield for miles. Inside the stolen car covered with blood and due to be incinerated, peace returns to the atmosphere.
Len wants to ask Barry why he packed up and left him. He wants to ask why Barry thought himself better than a common criminal, and why he then became one himself. He wants Barry to owe him because he saved the man’s life.
More than ever, Len wants to get to know Barry again, find out what makes him laugh and how to correctly rouse him out of sleep. He wants to know what Barry eats in the mornings, and what he digs out of the fridge for midnight snacks.
“You can stay with us,” Len says suddenly, looking at Barry’s soft face in the rearview mirror. “We have an extra bed in the apartment.”
“No way,” Mick says immediately. “I’m not sleeping on the couch because you want to make up with your boyfriend. It’s not happening.”
Barry twitches a grin at the word ‘boyfriend’, so Len completes his thought.
“I didn’t mean for you to take Mick’s bed. I meant mine,” he shrugs, smiling.
Barry laughs, relaxing. “Sure,” he says as his giggles stop. “I would love that.”