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It starts with a look.
Later on, Barry can’t describe it in words, but he remembers the feeling, the electric thrill starting in his stomach and spreading through his body, urging him to move. It’s not unlike the speed force, just… warmer, sweeter, like his blood has turned into thick, golden honey. Barry has never quite felt like this – or, at least, he has never felt like this when looking at someone so spectacularly wrong for him, for all the reasons in the world.
There’s just something about the way Snart smirks, cocky and sarcastic and mocking, that turns Barry’s knees into jelly and his brain into mush. Snart is a criminal, and way older, and a criminal, and Barry’s insides have no business melting and twisting and disappearing from the way the man stares at him, with intensity and focus no one has ever had in their eyes when seeing one Barry Allen. That first look feels like falling, plummeting into darkness without anything to show the way, and it’s only downhill from there.
The first kiss burns through Barry’s heart and only leaves ashes behind; he clings to Snart’s silly parka and sighs into his mouth, lets Snart’s tongue in and loses himself in the process. He expects the man’s hands to be cold, but they never really are – his knuckles are sharp and prominent, fingers long and almost delicate when they trace secret paths down Barry’s torso.
Snart becomes Len, a purely practical change because his first name is easier to groan when Barry’s half-mad with need, when he has to remind himself to breathe as he arches off the bed. It’s not a particularly great bed, a small motel at the outskirts of the city, but Barry becomes intimately acquainted with the scratch of the greying sheets and the feel of springs, whining and digging into his bones with every motion. He imagines that the room smells like them, after the fifth or sixth time, or maybe after the tenth – not that Barry’s senses can truly comprehend anything other than Len when they’re together.
At first, they don’t speak much: it’s hurried and furtive, like they’re both afraid of looking at each other for too long, for fear of the other figuring out what a mistake this is. But somewhere down the line, when they’re both breathless and sweaty and sated, Barry stops thinking and rolls over on the creaky mattress, flinging one arm over Len’s waist and pressing his face into Len’s warm, damp shoulder, still marked with the outline of Barry’s teeth. A strong arm (scarred, muscled, inked) curls around his back, strokes the sharp edge of his shoulder-blade, and Barry starts talking, everything and nothing, his day, his fears, his hopes.
He doesn’t know when exactly he starts looking forward to seeing Len – not only to the shape of his mouth, the way his tongue feels against Barry’s, or the feel of Len’s hands on his body. Barry knows he shouldn’t, but he can’t stop himself, and that’s maybe why it comes as a shock, in the end, when Len reaches the same conclusion.
It ends with a look, as well, and Barry doesn’t know how to deal with it. He wants to beg, but he knows it would be useless; he’s never let himself think too hard about how their life together would look like. The thought of a future with Len in it was a pleasant buzz at the back of Barry’s mind, a warm, hazy dream with no defined shapes and lines. Whenever he tried to grasp it, the edges that emerged from the mist were jagged and ugly, nobody would understand, Len is a criminal, what would Barry do if he were ever asked to choose between the man he came to care about and the rest of the world.
“You know we’re all wrong, Scarlet,” Len says, and the way he invokes Barry’s alter-ego puts a barrier between them, a wall that’s too tall to climb.
“We could be more than that,” Barry replies, quiet because his throat is too tight to manage anything louder. He knows he’s right – but they both are, that’s the tragedy of it, and Barry might feel like falling again, but this time it’s like someone’s twisting the earth from underneath his feet, pushing him off-balance.
“It was never supposed to be more.”
Len sneers, like the idea is preposterous, like Barry’s stupid and young and too damn naïve to think there ever could have been anything. But Barry remembers the way Len looked at him, last week, last month, the way he smiled, secretive and slow and almost-open, the way he brushed the pads of his fingers over Barry’s lips and whispered words that never quite made it into proper shape, words that were breath and warmth and a caress against Barry’s skin.
He lets Len leave, however hard that is; he sits in that motel room all by himself, inhaling the air that really does smell like the two of them, like all the nights they had together, secret and half-hidden in the shadows, nights that somehow turned into a lot more than just stress relief. Barry’s body remembers the mattress, his hands still feel the angles of Len’s body, and the blue of Len’s eyes is burned into Barry’s vision, like a blind spot that won’t disappear, no matter where he looks.
He can’t tell anyone, when they ask; he can’t drink himself into a stupor, and he wishes he could run back in time precisely enough that he could steal just a moment or two more in Len’s arms. Breathing gets harder, like someone has sucked out half the oxygen out of the air and left only thin atmosphere behind, enough to survive on, but not enough, never enough. Len disappears, or at least he stops taunting Barry with nonsensical, half-finished heists, and his absence is a gaping hole in the middle of Barry’s chest, one that doesn’t go away no matter how hard Barry pushes himself, how much he wants that feeling to be gone.
When he finally snaps, when he can’t bear everything that’s been slammed onto his back like a weight to carry, when he can’t find a way to cope without getting lost in Len’s arms, crying out his pain through his pleasure and biting his frustrations into his skin, he runs back in time to save his mother and wonders how different his life will be.
He tells himself that he doesn’t think of Len, but he’s never been a very good liar, and his subconscious sneers at him with Len’s mouth, that cocky no-bullshit smirk Barry has not seen in months, has not kissed off Len’s face for far too long.
Barry thinks it’s going to be alright, for a while. His parents are alive and the ‘new’ Central City looks almost peaceful. Barry keeps looking for a cold draft or an icicle out of season whenever he passes a bank or an auction house, but it never shows. He tries to force himself not to look anymore, even though his eyes still wander in seeking more than he would like.
And then, Eobard appears and everything goes to hell; or, maybe, the road to hell, clear before Barry and inviting like a gaping mouth, opens in all its glory and Barry doesn’t know how to stop the slow slide into an even worse mess than the one he has left behind, in a time that does not exist now. (He resolutely does not think about that motel room and how it looks, how it smells now, without the traces of the two of them imprinted in the mattress.)
Barry doesn’t know what to do, who to talk to – everyone’s different, everyone but him, stuck in the same old vicious circle no matter how hard he tries to run in the opposite direction. His lungs feel heavy again and the illusion of peace and quiet cracks more and more every day, no matter how much Barry tries to hold it together. People start disappearing, a dead body is found in an alley, and then in another, without any trace of violence. Barry wishes he had the means to do something, but even if he zooms through the streets until he can’t even walk, there’s nothing to do, nowhere to run, and he’s terrified and exhausted and helpless.
He leans against the nearby lamppost and runs a hand down his face, what little shows through his suit. He’s sweaty and cold and he’s gone through all his emergency rations, meaning he’s out of fuel, so hungry his vision darkens for a moment. And then, a bright light appears in the middle of the street and Barry instinctively steps to the side, away from the road in case it’s a car – but of course it isn’t, it looks like someone has cut a rectangle in the night air and let sunlight stream through. It warms Barry’s half-frozen toes where it hits him, and a silhouette appears in the middle of it.
When the light disappears, leaving the person standing in the street some twenty, thirty feet away, Barry can’t believe his eyes. He blinks, but the shape of that man is still seared into his brain; he could not forget even if he tried (even when he tried, so damn hard).
“Len?” he whispers, and the man finally sees him. Barry expects his eyes to go hard, unforgiving, like the last time he looked at Barry and said ‘no’ to all the half-formed hopes in Barry’s heart.
But Len, god, Len breathes a sigh that sounds like relief and more falls forward than moves, arms clasping Barry’s shoulders before Barry can react, lips curving in the shape of that smile that Barry has kissed so many times.
“Scarlet. Barry. What have you done?!”
It’s desperate and raw and fearful, and Barry has not known Len to look scared very often.
“What?” he mumbles, even though he wants to ask a million questions that are different (whys and hows and wheres, to start with).
“What did you do?” Len repeats – he’s close, so close Barry can see his lashes casting shadows on his face. He looks older; there’s no more lines around his eyes than when Barry last counted them from up close, but something about him just feels older, aged and weary and wrong. “Time’s been all messy for months now, took forever to track it to the source-“
“Wait, what’s wrong with time?” Barry frowns, and doesn’t add ‘how would you know’, but the question is inherent and Len reacts accordingly, raising an eyebrow in that cocky grimace of his that makes Barry’s heart ache for the world that used to be, back when Len was still a part of it. The thought sends a chill down Barry’s spine and he doesn’t know why until Len opens his mouth again.
“I am time, now, Barry. No news about my heroic exploits? That’s… disappointing, truly.”
Barry can only blink at that, but Len sounds serious, even though his lips are curved up, one corner more than the other, the familiar shape that makes Barry’s own mouth tingle with memories.
The story unfolds quickly, under the glare of the streetlamp, with cold wind swishing in frosty gusts around them. Time Masters and the future, Vandal Savage, soulmates and a mysterious place out of time, a device called the Oculus and Len, foolish, hard-headed Len in the middle of it. He doesn’t speak of it all, doesn’t embellish the story, but Barry can imagine it and his eyes sting at the thought.
“So why have you come back?” Barry asks in the end, when the story is over, when Len should be, as well, but he’s standing right here, in the flesh, warm hands still gripping Barry’s arms and eyes just as intense as Barry can remember.
“Came to tell you to mess with the timeline one more time,” Len smirks.
That is… not what Barry expected. He blinks again and his hand rises of its own volition, tangling in the soft fabric of Len’s shirt. It doesn’t get far – the shirt is tight, and Len looks oddly slim without his parka. The curve of his shoulders without the puffy fabric to conceal it reminds Barry of the moments they spent alone before, of undressing that used to be fast and hurried and then turned slow and languorous, a delicacy to be savored with care.
“What do you need?” he asks, voice raw and tight, and it shouldn’t be his question, he should want to know why, and he should be saying ‘no’ because he’s still afraid of messing with the timeline any more, afraid that Eobard might have been right and that time will snap back with a vicious sting, making things even worse.
Len’s words carry through the empty street and ring in Barry’s ears, and his fingers dig into Barry’s biceps as he leans closer.
“I need you to save me.”
Barry can’t count how many times he’s half-imagined those words hovering in the air between them, how many times he’s thought about how it would feel if Len ever decided he would not mind being saved by an over-eager hero. He blinks, and a hailstorm of questions swirls in his mind, but Len is faster – his hand comes to rest against Barry’s exposed cheek and the tender gesture squeezes Barry’s lungs with the power of all those half-forgotten dreams.
“When the Oculus exploded, it merged with me. I merged with it. Never just me again, Scarlet… thing is, time will never be not me either. In this bright new world you created here, Leonard Snart got shot, eleven days and five hours ago. Been trying to make it right since, piece myself back, but it’s becoming harder with every day. Time’s folding in on itself, Scarlet – you need to save me. Whatever was there of me to save here.”
Barry’s fingers tighten in Len’s shirt; the fabric fluctuates, fades for a moment, allowing Barry’s fingers to pass clean through, grasping at thin air. He draws a sharp breath as Len… flickers, then solidifies again, eyes sad and his smirk sardonic as ever.
“Save me, Scarlet. Maybe I won’t be as much of an idiot as I used to be in our time.”
He leans in and Barry freezes; Len’s lips barely connect with Barry’s before the air seems to shiver around them and it’s just Barry again, standing in the street alone, with the most curious tingle left on his lips. He curls his arms around himself, clasps the places over his arms that Len’s hands have warmed, and wonders how much he has to eat before his powers are fully restored.
…
This is not the room that Barry remembers.
First things first, it’s a hospital. Secondly, it smells of disinfectant; thirdly, it’s nighttime, but the sterile white color of everything around still makes the room a shade too bright.
But when Len opens his eyes, on a bed that’s nothing like the bed Barry has known, Barry can’t help the little jump of his heart. Len’s more blue and purple than anything else, one eye swollen and his lips cracked and scabbed over, but what is visible of his look is pale blue and inquisitive, hazy with medication and full of questions, and Barry wonders how come it all feels familiar and homely and right.
“Hey,” he says, and Len makes a sound that resembles ‘fuck’. Barry chuckles and offers some ice slush together with some answers.
“The doctor said you’re gonna be fine. The bullet didn’t hit anything vital – well, not much of the vital stuff, but they patched you up and now you just need to take it easy for a while.”
An eyebrow rises on the bruised face, and a hiss soon follows. Barry winces in sympathy.
“Hey, take it easy, okay?”
“Why,” Len croaks – he coughs for a while afterwards, and Barry holds some more ice chips to the chapped lips. All he can say to that is the truth, even though he has a feeling tales of timetravel and heroism need to be washed down with something else than droplets of melted ice.
“Because someone important asked me to,” he shrugs, in the end. Len falls asleep quickly after that. Barry doesn’t move from his chair.
…
The first time Len is awake when the nurse comes in to check on him, he listens to her speak and then casts Barry an affronted look that Barry can’t interpret until the good woman in gone and Len seethes like an annoyed cat.
“‘Len Allen’?! Seriously? The hell am I, a muppet?”
Barry rubs the back of his neck and offers a sheepish grin.
“Allen’s my last name, actually. I had… um. I had to be your husband, otherwise they wouldn’t let me stay here.”
“Couldn’t come up with a better name for us both, kid?”
Barry huffs at that:
“There’s nothing wrong with ‘Allen’. And as a matter of fact, I couldn’t – my dad used to work in this hospital before he opened a private practice, there are still people here who know me.”
Len seems to be processing that for a moment, but then he lets his head sink back into the pillow with a resigned eye-roll.
“What’s the first name, then?”
“Huh?” Barry blinks, and then he realizes that he might know who Len is, might remember the man’s smirks and kisses and… well, a lot of him, actually, but Len has no idea; the motel room half-hidden in the shadows never happened here, to him. “Barry.”
Len turns his head a little to look at him in question, and Barry feels his cheeks heat under the weight of that gaze. “Um. Bartholomew, actually.”
With a gracious quirk of an eyebrow intersected with a butterfly stitch, Len gives a quiet snort, the sound warm and familiar and stirring something deep within Barry’s heart.
“Leonard and Bartholomew. The wedding invites must’ve been a sight to behold,” he deadpans, and Barry can’t help chuckling, the odd weight lifting bit by bit from his chest.
…
It starts with a look, all over.
Barry knows it now, knows the heat and the softness and the unspeakable myriads of sparks underneath his skin when Len turns to him. His face is still more yellow and green than any healthy color, and his lips have barely healed: but Barry doesn’t mind the slight scratch of the tiny remaining scabs when Len surges forward and buries his fingers in Barry’s hair, buries himself in a kiss that makes them both turn into each other, push just a little bit closer, sink into it completely and without shame, without doubt.
Barry knows he should tell Len, about the past they had before Barry changed it, about the future Len would (hopefully) never have now, lost in time and space. He wonders, briefly, what the other Len, the first one, is doing, whether Barry has fixed the time for him or made things worse, whether the first Len ever intended Barry to keep the second, pull him in and hold him close, in memory of all the times he wished he could do just that.
He doesn’t think long, though – Len’s mouthing half-broken questions concealed behind a thin, ripped veil of irony into Barry’s neck, and Barry suddenly wants to laugh, the way he hasn’t… in forever, or so it feels.
He runs his hand over the close-cropped hair at the nape of Len’s neck, arching into the insistent mouth nibbling behind his ear, and smiles at the bright blue sky.
“I think I know just the place.”