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"The best part of being a super-villain is that you get to have a lair," Leonard told him, months and months ago. Jax remembers giving him a skeptical look, Mick adding in his unamused, deadpan tone, "And the money."
"The money is not even the best part of the job anymore. Did y'all see that we have action figures?" Lisa asks, grinning excitedly as they walk into their lair. She's not lying: along with the Flash figurines and Green Arrow dolls, a line advertised as the "Central City Rogues" has sprung up around the city. Jax quite likes the name.
Their hiding place fronts as a TV repair service: All the TVs in exhibition are at least ten years old, and they always tell the few customers that enter the tiny dirty shop that they are out of parts, out of time or that they should just get a new one. In the minuscule kitchen at the back of the shop, hidden behind a life-sized poster of The Rock Johnson in his wrestling days, there is a door to the actual (it's always Len's voice in Jax's head when he thinks of the word) lair.
"Also, have you seen the Flash's biceps?" she adds, raising her eyebrows in their direction. She isn't lying either (Jax knows, he has eyes).
"Didn't you have a crush on that sports journalist like, three minutes ago?" Len asks his sister, amused. Lisa throws her jacket on a couch and the stolen jewels onto a table, turns towards him and puts on her most dramatic pout.
"As beautiful as Miss Park is, I could never give my heart to someone who thinks grass hockey is superior to ice hockey," Lisa says, with a hand to her heart and almost-believable dismay on her face.
While the Snart siblings continue mock-arguing, Jax walks up towards the middle of the room, where a black circle has been repeatedly burned on the floor. He can feel Mick's impatience already and, as soon as they're away from any flammable furniture, a faint ache starts in his head. In a matter of seconds, his whole atomic structure re-arranges, splitting again into two different people.
"Jax thinks the Flash is cute too!" Lisa is saying, pointing in their direction. Mick by his side lets out a barking laughter, throws an arm over his shoulders.
"That's true!" he says, dragging Jax along with him to check today's prize. Lisa claps her hands in delight, looking at Len with a wide grin. Leonard rolls his eyes, turning to the bags on their table.
"Alright, alright, y'all think the Flash is cute. Wasting time flirting with her when the cops are on their way is still a dumbass move," Len says, just serious enough that Lisa actually stops grinning. "She might not consider us a real threat, but the cops do and she's not about to get in the police's way to keep us from getting arrested."
Len is right. They've had a lot of run-ins with the Flash before. They're sort of a staple of Central City by now, Jax knows. They don't hurt people, they steal from the rich and they always put on a good show (so much that they have actual action figures, and how cool is that?). And the Flash always shows up, puts up just enough of a fight for it to look like she really is trying to catch them and lets them go just before the cops arrive, but she is still not gonna break them out of jail.
"I wasn't flirting with her," he argues still, and Mick's arm around his shoulders tightens a little when Lisa insists, "You totally were!"
At first it was just Leonard, after Mick disappeared during the particle accelerator explosion and he woke up cold and angry and in possession of deadly powers that he could not quite control. He was unstoppable then, being one of the first active meta-humans and too powerful for the police to face. He was furious and reckless and alone and, when the Flash showed up, Leonard could as well have killed her and all of her friends.
How, exactly, did the Flash and her couple scientist friends manage to get out alive of their first big fight with Leonard is a mystery that Jax prefers to leave unsolved. There is a begrudging respect between them now, and Jax suspects that Len might know the Flash's real identity, but he's never asked.
Jax remembers finding Len back then, not really understanding how he came to this old shop full of dust and broken electronics in the middle of Chinatown. He had thought all of the weird dreams and what his psychologist called "fugue states" were completely related to the depressive episode that came after he fucked up his knee and couldn't play football anymore, but it wasn't quite so. With Captain Cold's deadly powers aimed at him and Jax frozen in place out of sheer terror, Jax's body seemed to realize on its own that it needed to defend itself and he suddenly went up in flames.
He likes to skip that part of the story in his head (not that he has a chance to tell it to anyone else). Jax was scared to death, the second conscience that had been dormant somewhere inside him was furious and Leonard Snart was angry and unbalanced and ruthless. Jax knows that he lost most of a couple days when Mick's conscience took over for a while, but he remembers just enough: Len kidnapped an old scientist named Martin Stein and, with his help, they managed to stabilize Jax's atomic structure and split it back into two, bringing Mick Rory (yes, the arsonist, Mick Rory) back to a tangible form.
Jax doesn't know if he'd be where he is right now if his continued existence and Mick's continued existence didn't depend on their respective atomic structures stabilizing each other, but he doesn't dwell on it too much. If he doesn't fuse with Mick at least once every couple of days his body starts going out of control and (Dr. Stein had warned then) it could cause an atomic reaction and destroy Central City. Being Firestorm is actually good for the city, or whatever.
"I've been living in your thoughts for months, kid," Mick had said, with that intensity of his. "You could have been famous and rich and successful and that fucking explosion took it all away from you. But you can still have that. With us." He'd looked at Snart, who didn't seem too happy with the idea. "Set a couple things on fire, steal some diamonds, fly off a fucking building. You could be legendary," Mick had continued, and Jax had felt his own excitement and Mick's excitement all together, each fueling the other with this weird new connection they had.
"And the best part of being a super-villain is that you get to have a lair," Leonard had added, sarcasm dripping from his voice, showing off the dirty dark room that was his hiding place back then. It didn't seem particularly enticing.
"And the money. Think of the things you could get your mom with super-villain money, kid," Mick had insisted. And well, Jax was twenty four and drowning in unpaid student loans and he could no longer do the one thing he was passionate about. Super-villain money sounded about right.
So he started skewing the numbers in the garage's books a little to justify his newfound income, started saving to buy his mom a nice big house so they never have to fight annoying landlords or worry about making rent again, became a super-villain. Stein swore not to say a word about who they really are, Jax sometimes drops a nice necklace for his wife or an expensive whiskey for him as a thank you, and his therapist was glad to hear that Jax had found his excitement for life again.
The Flash could hardly put up with Captain Cold and Firestorm's combined powers and, since Len and Mick made good on their promise to never hurt people, Jax's life was pretty damn good. Then Lisa Snart's dormant powers started acting up and she went all King Midas, turning half of her apartment into solid gold and almost turning a couple people too, and they had to kidnap more scientists.
They'd kidnapped Cisco Ramón, who worked at what was left of STAR Labs and, apparently, was friends with the Flash. When she showed up to rescue him, Leonard just deadpan told her that it was his sister's life or Cisco's. Jax knew it was a bluff, but it was just convincing enough that the Flash and Ramón agreed to help.
To return the favor, they later helped the Flash catch a couple of particularly powerful and particularly murderous meta-humans, and that, Jax thinks, is what finally changed their status from "villains" to "criminals who are sometimes allies". The action figures came later, but knowing that he wasn't exactly a "bad guy" was already a relief then.
He wishes he could talk about this with his mom, or at least with his therapist. He's half-terrified that one day something will happen to him and his mom will find out that he was a capital 's', Super-villain watching the local news, or lose control of his powers and disappear without a trace, or a million other fatalistic scenarios that he doesn't dare share with the Rogues.
(He thinks Mick might now, Mick has to know, but he's not the type to talk about feelings. Jax feels stupid enough having all these thoughts that he almost prefers it.)
He feels Mick pulling at him, his body turning and twisting just in time to avoid a blow from the huge metallic zombie they're helping the Flash take down. They push themselves off the ground, the flames around his body growing bigger with the rush of energy, and he hears (feels) Mick's countdown. Cisco is waiting for them, the machine they're going to use to take down the giant un-dead monster ready to go. "Three," Mick thinks as Len moves to their right. "Two," when Lisa gets ready to their left. "Now," as the Flash finally throws the lightning bolt towards the machine, powering it up. They fire at the same time, flames bursting from his hands as Lisa and Len throw gold and ice blocks that hit the meta-human on the chest, finally managing to push him back. He falls right at the center of the machine, half knocked-out, and Cisco pulls the lever.
Jax can feel the electric discharge down to his bones, and the zombie convulses and growls for a second before finally going completely still.
"Yes! Team Flash, one, Z-Nation, zero!" Cisco yells, high-fiving the Flash as she rushes to his side. Jax can feel Mick's exhilaration, a thrill that burns as hot as their nuclear core. Lisa rushes to create golden shackles around the meta's ankles and wrists, just in case.
"Team Flash?" Len drawls, but Jax can see his grin.
"Team Flash and the Central City Rogues is too damn long, pal," Cisco argues, and the Flash laughs.
"We do make a decent team," Lisa says, her smile and tone obviously flirty. Jax can't tell if she's making a move on Cisco or the Flash. Both of them, maybe. (Both seem to be equally interested.)
"Well, the Central City Rogues have a heist to pull off, if you'll excuse us."
Len drags Lisa along, ignoring the Flash's warning that she will absolutely not allow them to rob a bank just because they helped out with the zombie meta. Jax can hear Mick's raspy laughter inside his head.
Victor and Danica are two of the few friends from college Jax's stayed in contact with. He can talk about almost anything with them and, best of all, they don't hang around his job enough to know his coworkers, so they've always assumed Len, Mick and Lisa work at the garage.
To Victor and Dani he can tell most things, even if some are slightly edited to better fit the fiction that the Rogues are just normal people that he knows from work and not wanted criminals. To be fair, Jax is technically also a wanted criminal, though there is no record to his name and the warrants out for "the meta-human known as Firestorm" are only for robbery.
The best thing about having Vic and Dani, Jax thinks as he pushes through the crowded bar to reach their table, is that they don't judge. Sure, he's not about to tell them about the Criminal Life (with capital letters and all) he leads, but he can talk about the more mundane drama of his relationship with the Rogues with them, and it keeps him sane.
He suspects (knows) that Len is the reason Snart Senior is dead. He doesn't know if he was directly involved, if it was by his own hand, but he does know that Len and Lisa disappeared for a week after their father broke out of prison, and the evil old man turned up dead after. Jax knows enough about him to know that there is no reason to feel sorry about his death, but he worries about the Snarts. They came back changed --Len colder than before but somehow calmer, like he'd finally eased the simmering anger inside him; Lisa shaky and desolated but at the same time relieved, clinging to her brother with a renewed protectiveness. He worries about them, but he knows it'd hurt their pride to hear it.
"I love them. I really do. And I think it's mutual, but they're not used to having other people. Sometimes it feels like it's Len and Mick, and Len and Lisa, and I'm watching from the sidelines."
Victor sips at his beer, shakes his head. Danica hums softly, reaches across the tiny table to grab his hand.
"You know, I don't think anyone could not love you. People just show their care in different ways."
"And theirs is... apparently not talking about feelings."
Jax laughs at Victor's comment. No, they definitely are not the feelings type. It's been maybe a year since he's become a part of the Rogues' lives (or since they've become a part of his) and he doesn't think he's ever heard Mick and Len tell each other "I love you". And they obviously do (Jax at least knows for sure that Mick loves Len with a fierceness that could hardly be rivaled) but they simply don't seem to know how to word it. Jax's always been more vocal, maybe too much so, quick to voice his thoughts and feelings.
"I forgot, which one of the siblings are you scr--"
"God, Vic, don't be so damn crass," Danica interrupts, mock-serious. She quickly turns to Jax, "You were sleeping with the two dudes, right?"
Jax buries his face in his hands, allows Victor and Danica to laugh for a second. Dani clutches his hand as she lets out a barking laughter, Victor snorts into his beer.
"It's not irrational, though. You told us they've been together for like... a decade, right?" Victor finally asks, no mockery in his voice. Jax nods, takes a swig from his beer. And that is the one big problem, at the end of the day. They've got their whole world built around each other, a little family of three that only welcomed him in because they needed him.
"You're bound to feel like an intruder sometimes, like you're constantly catching up. Like when you join a group of friends who've already known each other for a while," Danica says, sympathetic. She tightens her fingers around Jax's.
"They probably feel similarly around you. You said you knew Mick for longer," Victor says, and Jax nods. It's a sensible way to explain a telepathic connection, after all. "This dude... Leonard, he probably feels like he's catching up with you and Mick too. And you probably have things with him that you don't share with Mick."
"Polygamy sure is awful complicated," Danica quips, grinning, and Victor snorts.
"I think polyamory is the modern term for it," he argues, but Jax is only half-listening. What Victor says makes sense, and he might have thought about it himself, but hearing it from somebody else is reassuring. He lets go of Danica's hand, finishes his beer with one last sip.
"I'm gonna get us another round. I love y'all, y'know?"
He takes Danica's shit-eating grin and Victor's fist-bump as the "We love you back," he knows they're meant to be, and on the way to the bar, he decides he should work on understanding the way the Rogues show their affection.
Jax guesses that Mick's list of priorities goes something like this: Fire, Leonard, money, not going back to jail, not dying. Jax himself might be somewhere in there, sure, probably under the same category as "not dying", just as Lisa matters by virtue of being Len's sister, but he doubts Mick considers him a capital p, Priority.
Jax's knee hurts more often than not. Sometimes he wishes he could use his powers by himself, fly everywhere and never need to put any weight on that stupid fucked up joint. Today he's limping a little as he walks out of the garage for his lunch break, dirty overalls tied around his waist and a cloud of frustration hanging over his head as he tries to put his weight on the other leg without showing it, without making it obvious that he's in pain.
Mick is waiting for him on the sidewalk, hands deep in his jacket's pockets and a scowl on his face. The scowl isn't surprising, but him showing up unannounced is. Not that Jax would actually expect him to text beforehand, though.
"You look like you need to burn shit up," Mick tells him as a manner of greeting. Jax rather prefers the flying to blowing up things, but he does feel like making something explode today. He knows that Mick should be able to sense it, guesses that his bad mood must have been slipping through their connection.
"I need to get lunch," Jax argues, still, because arguing with Mick is always fun, because he's not sure if he wants to be alone or not, because he doesn't quite know how to be around Mick without Leonard. A crumpled paper bag materializes itself from out of one of Mick's deep pockets.
"Meat sandwich."
"You... made it?" Jax accepts the bag, opens it warily. He feels more than hears Mick's snort.
"Bought it on the Cuban place near the shop," Mick clarifies. The food that the young couple two blocks from the TV repair shop makes is excellent, Jax knows. Mick isn't smiling, but the amusement radiates off him as Jax takes a bite off the sandwich. It is, indeed, amazing.
Mick wraps an arm around his shoulder, drags him along towards what will presumably be an empty parking lot or abandoned building where they can shift into Firestorm without being seen. Jax guesses it's not intentional, but the half-hug allows him to lean his weight around Mick just enough that he doesn't have to limp as he walks.
"Kiss for good luck?" Len jokes, smirking at him (at them) in that way that Jax finds equal parts attractive and annoying. He can tell that Mick shares the feeling, just like he can tell that the chill running down his spine with Len's cold lips press smoothly against his (theirs) is also mirrored by Mick.
"Stop being idiots!" Lisa calls as she fixes the goggles over her eyes, and Len turns away from them while he pulls on the hood of his parka.
They follow, feet hovering a few inches from the floor, flames licking at the walls as they make their way down the small hallway. Len freezes the electronic lock and quickly makes way for them, and Mick's voice in his head quickly informs Jax of where exactly he should aim the heat. The lock melts down in seconds under their flames, and Len pushes the burning-hot door open with a hand covered in ice. Lisa goes in first.
Breaking into Savage's vault is actually easy, almost ridiculously so. They find the cursed knife that the Flash had recruited them to steal on a glass case at the very center of the room, and Lisa happily pockets a bunch of diamonds and invaluable antiques. Jax can see Leonard picking up a bunch of big, rustic golden coins that look ancient.
"Look at that," he hears Mick's thought, his excitement reverberating down Jax's spine. Jax goes where Mick wants, towards a case with a small black sculpture that looks like a skull in flames. Jax lets Mick fully take over for a moment, pick up the amulet and run his fingers over the smooth black material in absolute awe. It's beautiful, and strangely intricate and heavy for something so small, but Jax doesn't share Mick's fascination.
"What is that?" Lisa asks, coming to their side with a golden tiara sitting on top of her curly hair, and Jax can feel Mick tightening their grip on the amulet. "Oh, pretty."
"We should be getting out of here," Len says before Lisa can reach and try to take the amulet from their hand. He's got the cursed knife safely tucked somewhere inside his parka, and a slight frown on his face. "I'm sure we tripped a bobby trap at some point, I just saw the motion sensors," he tells them, already moving towards the vault's door. Mick tucks the amulet in one of the pockets of the Firestorm suit.
They have to fight some (apparently immortal) guards on their way out, Len freezing the guns on their hands and Lisa anchoring them to the floor with chunks of melted gold as Mick and Jax keep them at bay with a steady stream of fire that they can't get around. Lisa drops the tiara, but Jax can feel the amulet against his chest as they finally burst out of the building.
He makes the first down-payment for a nice house on a nicer area, something he doesn't plan to tell his mom in a long while still. The house is for her, of course, though he's not sure he will ever be moving in with her. He's happy living with her, of course. He loves his mom more than anything and it's always been the two of them, together against even the worst things, together through the best; but he thinks his life is too complicated to keep sharing a space with her. It's a risk, and a shit-ton of lies; and even the coolest mother in the world would probably be wary of having her son come home with two strangers that are almost a decade older (without a good explanation of where they know each other from, at that!) and Jax wouldn't blame her for that.
So he makes the down-payment for a house for his mom, and he starts slowly looking for apartments that he could logically afford on a mechanic's salary. He knows Len has five different safe-houses around Central City (knows two of them) and that Mick either crashes with Len or sleeps at a weird-ass warehouse in the outskirts of the city where he keeps most of the cool things they've stolen through the years. Jax, personally, thinks of himself more of the studio-apartment with a nice kitchen kind of guy.
Lisa gives her opinions as he goes through different rentals on his phone, while Len and Mick go over the blueprints of a local mobster's house. She likes balconies, and big windows, and ridiculously high roofs; but those things are expensive.
"You literally have a half a million dollars diamond in your left pocket right now, what the fuck are you talking about?" she asks, actually indignant. She rides import motorcycles and lives in one of the nicest areas of Central City, in a huge loft full of stolen paintings where only people to who she doesn't owe any explanations ever go in. Jax though, Jax has a life outside of the Rogues, and Jax very much doesn't want to go to jail.
He explains this to Lisa, tells her he cannot tell his mom that a random stranger just barged into his life and gave him the keys to an apartment with a ten grands rent. He pointedly ignores her suggestion that he should just say Len is his sugar daddy.
"I can hear y'all," Len warns from the table, and Lisa laughs.
"Well, you techn--"
Before Lisa can finish that sentence, Jax very loudly offers to get everyone coffee and storms out of the lair.
He knows that they're protective of him, he's not blind. He knows Len and Mick still have their hands a lot dirtier than Lisa or Jax ever have gotten them. He knows Len would rather end up in jail again than have Lisa or Jax get caught. He knows they have never told his name to the Flash, even though she knows Mick and the Snarts' names and faces. He knows, in the vague way he registers a lot of the thoughts that cross Mick's mind, that they would kill for him. He knows they love him, but still he doesn't dare ask.
They're helping the Flash catch a meta-human, because apparently that's their Mondays now. Super-hero'ing from Mondays to Wednesdays, robbery and general villainy the rest of the week. Jax does like the idea of being a super-hero more than that of being a super-villain, though he guesses he's picked the better career path. The Flash, as far as he's guessed, keeps a nine to five job just like him and every other human being, and gets beat up twice as often.
They've just managed to lure the meta-human into the building where Team Flash has set a trap for them, and Jax and Mick are hovering in the air near the second floor, trying to catch a glimpse of the fight through the windows in case Len and the Flash need help.
The dizziness comes suddenly, the windows of the building suddenly becoming blurry and a strange heaviness weighing their head and their body, pulling them a few feet down in the air. Jax can feel Mick in his head, cursing in confusion and trying to steady their body in the air, but Jax can't move his limbs and he can't keep his eyes open and they are falling, fa--
When he opens his eyes again, Mick is gone.
He sits up quickly, only to find his head is throbbing as if he was going through the worst hangover of his life. He's still in the Firestorm suit, and seems to be overall untouched, save for the metallic band clasping his wrist.
He is, Jax finds, inside of a glass cage with the appropriate size for an average person to stay sitting on the floor, without much room for arm or leg movement. The space around the cage is dark.
He hits the glass, tries to get as much leg-room as possible to drop a good kick against it, but to no avail. His yells don't seem to even leave the cage. Then he feels something burning against his palm.
He flinches, startled, but there is nothing on his skin. After a second, the sensation comes again, and he can finally identify it. It's Mick, probably hovering his hand over the flame of a lighter. It was cause of multiple arguments back when they were just discovering how their connection worked, and Jax truly hasn't missed feeling the mirrored effects of Mick's unhealthy relationship with fire, but he's actually relieved to feel it now. It means Mick is alive, and that is what matters.
Hours pass (maybe he sleeps for a while, sometimes he runs his nails against the skin of his forearm a little too hard, hoping Mick will feel it, a couple times he starts yelling and hitting the glass again). The feeling of Mick's lighter burning his palm every once in a while is the only thing that keeps him from complete desperation.
He keeps hoping something will happen (that an alien will show up to inform him they've been abducted, or that one of the metas they've helped the Flash catch has decided to take revenge on them) but it's nothing but silence and darkness for what feels like hours, a terrifying loneliness. The cage is cold. The only warmth is the flame against his palm.
When someone finally does show up, Jax thinks it must be a joke. Cold hallogen lights come on, and an old white guy that looks like a caricature of a military general (but seems to be an actual military general) walks into the room.
The man makes his way across the less-than-impressive laboratory Jax's being held in, the medals on the chest of his uniform looking rather... stupid, if he's being honest.
He decides to be honest, and voices his thoughts even though he's not sure if his cage is sound-proofed or not. (He finds, at the angry scowl of the man, that it indeed isn't.)
"Where is Mick?" he asks, tries to come off as angry and scary as possible even though he knows it isn't really intimidating. The general shakes his head.
"Mr. Rory is being contained separately, as we guessed that having you two together would only be aiding your escape attempts. As it is, it'd be futile to try. Without your powers, there is no way you'd break out of here," the dude gloats, sounding as obnoxious and self-satisfied as humanly possible. Jax tries to keep his cool.
"And where is here?"
"A military research facility, Mister..." the general waits, as if cuing Jax to speak, but Jax catches his game. They don't know his name and, since he doesn't have a record, it must be taking them a while to match his fingerprints to his real identity. "In any case, a group of scientists will soon be with you to start trying to replicate the nuclear process that powers you."
Jax feels his stomach filling with dread at the nasty smirk that the old man gives him. They're gonna dissect him and Mick alive to recreate the Firestorm process, and the man is right. He can't escape his cage without Mick.
He has an awful span of forty minutes to panic by himself, to panic further because he can't feel the flame on his palm and to panic some more because they might have already started on Mick when the lights change from cold fluorescent white to a low dark red. He's gonna die here, he thinks, and his mom will never know what happened to him.
The door blasts open, a cloud of smoke filling the laboratory, just as Jax was in the middle of a very belated prayer to every deity he could think of. As the smoke starts clearing out, Len's face appears close to the glass cage, a blood-red grin and a black eye the best things Jax's ever seen.
"Move over, Cold," a vaguely familiar voice calls, and Cisco Ramón pushes in front of the glass to smile at him with a big cut on his cheekbone and what looks like a laser glass-cuter on his hand.
When he finally manages to step out of the cage and after he's quickly hugged Cisco as a thank-you, Len pulls him in for a kiss. A messy, desperate, cold-lipped kiss that leaves Jax panting, and a rushed "You should just move in with us," against his mouth that Jax can barely catch before there is another explosion and Mick is coming into the laboratory running, with Lisa by his side and a small battalion of armed soldiers behind them.
"Now it's not the time for sappy reunions, you idiots!" he calls at Len as he rushes towards Jax, and then there's Mick's lips on his for a quick second and the pull of an atomic reaction, and their body goes up in flames.
"Y'all are absolutely allowed to steal anything you can on our way out!" the Flash calls as she zips past them and disarms the guards, and Jax can feel Mick's laughter inside his head.