Work Text:
Len’s body was well past ready to be asleep when the knock came at his door, and so he was less than thrilled to open it and find Cisco Ramon standing outside his tiny crash pad apartment, grinning maniacally, with Barry Allen draped heavily against him like a broken marionette.
“We did it!" Cisco exclaimed proudly, as if Len was somehow in on whatever ridiculous scheme Team Flash was up to today.
"You killed him?” Len asked dryly, tilting his head and squinting at Barry, curious against his better judgment. Barry must have sensed his gaze, because he cracked one eye open and beamed that enormous grin that he only used when he thought he was being cute. Mostly it was annoying.
“We got him drunk!” Cisco said. His smile flickered into a wince for a moment as Barry shifted against him, most likely because Barry was a lot heavier than he looked.
“Mm, Cait got me drunk,” Barry corrected him, speaking very slowly. “She did…science.”
Len was aware of Barry’s issues with alcohol but-–and call it the late hour–-he didn't quite share their enthusiasm for the accomplishment. “And instead of pacing him you decided to get him completely shitfaced.”
“Three years,” Barry said gravely. Len had no idea what that meant.
“He means that he hasn’t been drunk in 3 years,” Cisco said. Which explained why Barry was clearly handling his alcohol like a champ. “Anyway, I didn’t think he should be alone.”
“That sounds like your problem more than mine,” Len replied.
“I have a date,” Cisco said. Which probably explained how Cisco knew where Len lived. He was going to have to find a new place even Lisa didn’t know about, if she was going to start giving his address out whenever she wanted to get laid. “Besides, he’s your…whatever you two are calling it.”
Helpfully, Barry started giggling madly for no discernible reason. His eyes always crinkled up at the corners when he laughed so hard. Len sighed.
“Fine.” He stepped back, opening the door wider for Cisco to come through, but as Cisco started dragging Barry in, Barry started fighting against him.
“I got it, I’m fine, I’m good, I got it,” he was mumbling, before he dematerialized into a blur that rocketed across the room, knocking Len’s floor lamp over and coming to an abrupt stop at the opposite wall. Barry braced himself against it with one arm, breathing heavily, and then looked up at them with wide eyes. “Guys. Time isn’t real.”
Len glared at Cisco. “Fantastic.”
“So you’ve got this under control then?” Cisco asked in a way that wasn’t a question, inching towards the door.
“You owe me,” Len told him flatly.
“As long as it’s not a weapon, it’s yours,” Cisco agreed easily, because he had a night of not babysitting a drunken metahuman to look forward to. Len locked up behind him, then turned to look at Barry, who smiled brightly before superspeeding drunkenly towards the bedroom. Something clattered noisily to the floor.
Oh, he was going to make Cisco build him a jet plane.
He found Barry sprawled diagonally across the bed, hands resting on his belly and eyes clenched shut. He’d knocked over a small stack of DVDs and Len bent down to pick them up.
“’s so small,” Barry said, and when Len looked up Barry was looking around Len’s room critically. “And dark. I don’t like it.”
“Then go back to your place,” Len said, opening his dresser and tossing Barry a pair of sweatpants, because if they were going to share the bed Len didn’t want to have to deal with Barry’s denim leg slinging over him the way it inevitably would.
“We should,” Barry mumbled. His limbs went blurry for a second and then he tossed his jeans across the room, sweatpants on. “You should stay there. At my place. ’ve got room.”
The suggestion made Len pause, agitated and yet weirdly pleased. He quickly shook it off.
“Sure,” he replied lightly. It wasn’t going to happen, and sober Barry probably knew it too. He wasn’t as persistent a criminal as he used to be, but there were still warrants out for his arrest. And Captain Cold’s true identity wasn’t the closely guarded secret that the Flash’s identity was. He couldn’t afford to leave anything less anonymous than a toothbrush at Barry’s apartment without putting them both in unnecessary danger. Besides, it wasn’t like he even wanted to.
Barry rolled across the bed, landing face down on Len's usual side. He buried his head into Len’s pillow and sighed, then reached out blindly and managed to catch Len’s pinky with his own. He let go of it fairly quickly and started flapping his hand into Len’s repeatedly, like he needed something, and Len turned his hand into it and let Barry high five him. Then Barry curled his hand into a fist.
“Fistbump,” he muttered, and Len let him have that too, because acting like he had dignity at this moment would be rude to Barry, who clearly had none.
He crossed to the opposite side of the bed-–not his side-–and sat down, scrubbing a hand over his eyes.
“Love you,” Barry mumbled on the end of a sigh, muffled into the pillow, and Len froze.
Barry was drunk. That’s all it was, all they could afford it to be.
In the morning, he was going to make Cisco build him a goddamn time machine and he was going to take it back to make sure he never met Barry Allen.
And then probably kill Hitler. In that order.