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Cisco would like to believe that he’s become pretty good at dealing with the unexpected- what with speedsters and criminals and other metas like himself- but ever once in awhile something new really throws him.
Like, for example- a completely random example that has nothing to do with the fact that the scenario in question is playing out in front of him at this specific moment- when he is walking out of Target’s second pair of doors well-past midnight, having picked up a new controller (after one or more of the in-house speedsters had vibrated his spare into dust during an impromptu game night) and no one other than Leonard FREAKING Snart is sitting on a bench outside. With a giggling baby girl on his lap.
A baby. Sitting contentedly. In the lap of a criminal.
Some deep, dark, stupid corner of himself apparently wanted to investigate the situation further instead of calling Barry about the sight of the not-under-but-completely-gone-from-the-radar Rogue leader, so his equally stupid feet marched him straight from the sliding doors and towards the man in question.
“Cold. . ?” Cisco really wished that his tone had come out more accusingly.
Snart’s head turned to him, appraising, before nodding civilly and responding in a tone that matched.
“Ramon.”
Yep, totally just wanted polite recognition, not an explanation for the kid on your lap. Let’s try again, shall we?
“Is that a bab-”
Before he’s even finished, Cisco’s earned a sweeping, overstated eyeroll. Much more in character. Good, the world was still turning.
“No. It’s my latest ploy in white-hat distraction tactics. Robotic gurgling toddlers are the greatest disruptors amongst Missourians ages 24 to 55. Congrats, you're a statistic.”
Wow, okay. Someone’s out past their bedtime, and it's not the happily babbling kid.
“A, that’s rude. B, you totally made that up. And, C, why do you have a baby?”
“Hmm?”
Great, now Snart’s ignoring him in favor of coaxing what looks suspiciously like a throwing knife out of his benchmate's tiny clutches. Fine, repeat with enunciation.
“Why do you have a baby?”
“I don’t strike you as the paternal type, Cisco?” Glare. Big, resolve-crumpling glare. No. NO. Blaring neon sign saying ‘here lie more untold, heart-wrenching stories about Lewis Snart’s A+ Parenting TM . Cisco lets his hands fly up in a defensive plight, white-and-red plastic bag swinging in defiance from his elbow. He’s almost to the point of taking literal steps in the right (read: opposite) direction when Snart smirks.
“Don’t worry, she not mine and it’s all under control.”
Cool. No worries about the continued Snart legacy, yet.
Wait, then why- for the love of all that is science-
“ Please tell me you did not kidnap a baby girl!”
Massive, condescending eyeroll.
“Chill, Ramon. Her babysitter’s in the store, picking up some care items.”
Double cool. No need to spend the night roaming through Amber Alerts, but still. . .
“And this sitter trusted you with a baby. Someone needs to be fired.” Like, immediately.
Slight, good-natured chuckled.
What?
“Well, the babysitter’s her namesake and favorite, so that’s not likely.”
Okay, sure, getting kids to like someone can be tough, gotta keep the ones they do. But, Snart’s one of the most recognizable villains in Central, even without the Cold get-up.
“Pfft. And why does the sitter trust you to watch, um,-”
“Sara.”
Well, he knows her name. That’s a good sign, right?
Unless, he’s like one of those creeps on Criminal Minds that tries build their own family by kidnapping infants and brainwashing them into believing that their genetically related and has, like, predetermined names to fit the narrative that they want the kids to fill and Lisa’s really one of his oldest victims and-
This, Cisco’s avid-and-sleep-deprived-imagination, is why you should not be allowed out after dark.
Back to the matter at hand:
“Right, why are you trusted to watch Sar-” Wait, adorable, mixed baby girl. Two-ish years old. Any other time it would purely be a coincidence, but this is Leonard Snart.
Crap.
“ Do you have Sara Diggle sitting on your lap!?!”
Quired brow and narrowed eyes. Bigger crap- he was right!
“Yes. Like I said, her babysitter is in the store- buying unscented wipes because the ones she bought in the first place smelled like a college frat house had sex with an urban synagogue-”
Seriously, dude?
“What does that even mean? ”
That just got him a heavy sigh.
“Trust me, even you would know if you smelled it, Ramon. Anyway, there is some ridiculous crowd in there due to the midnight launch of something called ‘Witchcraft: Bloody Resurrection’, and neither myself nor Baby Sara here, felt any great desire to battle the masses for civil comforts.”
It had been more than a little hectic in there.
“So you sent the babysitter inside to fend for herself-”
“She can handle it.”
Well, confident much?
“Well, duh, I mean if the Diggles respect her enough to care for the secret-agent-vigilante in training, she got to be one . . . kickass . . .”
Wait.
“That’s right. Think about it.”
You know, almost a year without seeing this mothereffer’s smug face didn’t feel so sweet until he was back. But damn, he was right, all the hints were there-
“You said namesake- Sara Lance.” In that moment, Cisco refused to say that he was jealous after remembering that Snart, of all people, had gotten to go time traveling with the original Canary. But, damn, he really, really was.
“Okay, I guess I can get that, like, ‘the team that babysits together, wins together’ philosophy could probably work, but isn’t it a little, like, super weird? I mean, you, Captain Cold, sitting outside of a discount realtor with a toddler, while the trained assassin runs around the health section, dodging gamers. Not exactly standard team building.”
The smug smirk grew, but Snart was momentarily occupied by having to turn Sara in his lap so that she would stop trying to summersault off his knees.
“Our occupation as teammates had nothing to do with our weekend plans as civilians. Instead, I am assisting in a favor to her friends by watching the shrimp while Mommy and Daddy Diggle soldier their way across an undisclosed country to retrieve intel about some ill-gotten gains regard Lyla’s secret military organization that I’m not supposed to know she has anything to do with.”
Good to know that STAR labs wasn’t the only institution that seriously needed to Snart-proof their resources. And, great, it seemed that no amount of Baby Diggle-wrestling would decrease the pride in Snart’s body language.
“Is it a pastime, to find out everyone’s hidden secrets, or do you do it with intent?”
“I do everything with intent.” So effing smug. “Including look after a two-year-old so that my partner can get back out here as fast as possible so that I can go home and make breakfast.”
“Dude, it's not even 1 am. And I thought you said Sara was wading through the crowds on her own.”
That lead to a head cocked to the side and a questioning shake as he situated Sara’s back against his chest, locking an arm across her waist to prevent any more tumbling.
“Don’t play unaware, Snart, it's unbecoming of a professional asshole. Please, tell me Mick Rory is not about to rob my local Target.”
“I didn’t mean Mick- and he would much rather knock over a Publix.”
For some reason, that made sense. “In this context, ‘partner’ means Sara.”
More clarification needed.
“Huh. In the babysitting context?”
“In the relationship context.”
Error. Does not compute.
Snart treated him with an eyeroll so degrading that Cisco momentarily thought he had regressed into his eighth grade, chubby self.
“As in mutually exclusive romantic partners .”
Rewrite required. Unknown variable found.
“What, no!”
Rewrite flawed. Brain to mouth filter disengaged.
“Oh?”
Calm, questioning. Not a deep, threatening growl like Cisco expected.
Better or worse?
“I mean, she’s- like, a good guy-. You can’t -. But you’re so old!”
WORSE.
Again, almost no reaction from the guy that blew off people’s heads for tactlessness. Just a grown man once again squabbling with a baby that was trying to rifle through his pockets (Snart’s surprisingly normal utility jacket’s pockets. No parka in sight. Was Cisco having a stroke?).
“Cisco, you’re annoying the child; quit talking out of your ass.”
Deserved that. Totally. Wait-
“No, no, no. Veto!-”
-Nope, still no filter.
“You don’t get a vote, Ramon.”
Oh. There was the bile.
“- The White Canary and Captain Cold cannot knock boots! That has to be some sort of, like, mortal sin-”
Really wishing that the bile had reinstated common sense and/or default desire of self-preservation.
“Good thing I’m not Catholic.”
That was a joke. Or a pun? Unsure which would make Cisco less likely to be disemboweled in front of Target’s big red balls.
Return to the downward spiral of Snart-induced insanity.
“-Your sister cannot be okay with this! And Team Arrow!?”
“Actually, Lisa adores Sara and vice versa, they have plans to go to a drag show Thursday. And considering over half of ‘Team Arrow’ knows already- and of few members seem to have formed their own fanclub in our favor- I tend not to worry about their reactions.”
Quick intermission for a sampling of ‘Word Stumbling’ staring Cisco Ramon.
“No, Cisco. It’s not a torrid affair that we are keeping under wraps from anyone and everyone we know. We’ve simply been addressing the issue as necessary.”
“And,” started a voice behind Cisco, preventing Cold from continuing, “that seems to have been working pretty well so far.”
Cisco whipped around to see a blonde woman in jeans and a suede jacket standing directly behind him with a large, open smile- not even trying to hide her amusement.
The sound that left his mouth was somewhere between a sigh and a squawk. Then, “You’re Sara Lance!”
“ No!” Snart’s blissfully received few seconds of restraint were used up. The man huffed out a laugh from behind him, punctuated by a snarky “She hadn’t realized!”
“Yes, I am, and you’re Cisco Ramon,” Cisco noticed that Sara’s smile morphed into something a little more sincere as she said his name and shifted her bags to shake his hand, “Thanks for the suit, it fits like a glove.”
“ Yes, thanks for that.” He didn’t need to glance over his shoulder to know that the thief- who he guessed had stood from the bench he’d occupied- accented the statement with an inappropriate-for-toddlers-and-Ramons leer.
Oh, great. Now he just felt dirty.
“Gross.”
Sara laughed. Oh yeah, there was no doubt that this woman was a Lance sister, let alone a Canary. Only her sister had ever instilled that amount of endearment and power into something so simple. “Anyway, Len, are you done terrorizing the engineer? I got the goods.” She held up the bags as evidence, stepping to Snart’s side to run her free hand up his arm before pulling him down slightly to pressing a kiss to his cheek.
Gross.
Snart only smirked, obviously still enjoying Cisco’s discomfort at seeing one of his villains so cozy with not only the blonde assassin-turned-Legend, but also the vigilante's daughter who had finally found herself content in his arms. “Please, tell me that you managed to give at least one obnoxious gamer a black eye,” there was an almost unnoticeable shift in Sara’s eyes that apparently confirmed just that to Snart, if his smirk said anything, “because if so this whole trip will be worth it. Plus,” he paused, saddling Cisco with a look of cooly calculated instigation, “if anything, he was terrorizing me .”
“Well, forgive him and let's go make crepes; I bought fresh whipped cream and jam.” They all heard Snart huffed a sigh as she paused, disappointed that his partner had waved off a perfect opportunity to express where her loyalties lie. “I assuming you have now joined the ranks of acquaintances that know about me and Len?”
Do not tell the trained killer that you know her secret. That is bad. Very bad.
“It’s fine, Cisco, breath. Look, I’m not going to swear you to secrecy, but we are trying to tell people ourselves.”
Nevermind, Sara Lance is a goddess that must see only the best in people. Why else would she hang around Cold?
“Oh, okay.”
Baby Sara seemed to have reclaimed a fascination with pockets and was trying to reach across her host to pull at the zipper compartment spanning the upper right side of Sara’s chest. Snart rebalanced, blocking the young girl’s path with his shoulder smoothly before adding his own jaded specifications.
“So, don’t go blabbing to Scarlet, the good doctor Snow, or whichever rendition of Harrison Wells you're keeping company with nowadays and I won’t have my sister sneak into your house and gild you in your sleep. Fair?”
Cisco made a quick, if not scowling nod.
“Good.”
Sara beamed, unaffected by Leonard’s intimidations. “Now that that’s settled: do you want to join us for late-night crepes and a night cap?”
A snort left him before he could even begin to contemplate the realities of 1am crepes, but the moment it did, he saw Sara’s face fall [short intermission for internal screaming: NONONOSADWOMAN!STOP! ] and Snart’s face hardened into a look far too similar to an anthropomorphized sledgehammer.
“Uhh . . ?”
Sara remained silent, busying herself by tapping out a message on a phone that appeared out of nowhere, so Snart replied in her stead with eyes narrowed to slits and his mouth drawn tight.
“It’s a genuine offer, Ramon. It's not like you're going to get a better one at this time of night.” In other words: You will come with us and stuff your ungrateful face with a fruity, fried pancake or suffer the consequences of a disappointed Sara Lance.
Understood. At least he had kicked the STAR labs crew out before coming to the store, so no one was waiting for him back at work. Fine, brekky with Legends and a baby it is.
“Okay. Where exactly are these crepes going to be, because I’m really not interested in being tied to another mob bosses dinner table.”
Sara’s head popped up from her device, wide-eyed for a beat before she let out another, admittedly softer, round of laughter. “No, we have a place on Bridgton. Not far, and I promise the booze alone will be worth it.”
Cisco nodded and was about to prompt their departure- because, honestly, crepes sounded great and it looked Sara had strawberry jam in one of the bags- and then he saw it.
For half a second, as Sara adjusted the contents of one bag and then reached up to run her fingers through Baby Sara’s hair, he saw Leonard “Captain Cold” Snart let out the smallest, sweetest , little smile that he had seen since Cait announced her engagement to Ronnie years ago.
Damn.
Two hours later, Cisco is lounging in his chair in the cortex, full and oddly happy for just having spent the predawn hours with a supervillain, his deadly not-a-girlfriend girlfriend, and their toddler charge who apparently has no idea what a proper sleep schedule is.
Looks like Cisco just signed his life away to yet another the fanclub.
Now, for a relationship name. . .
Snara
Sarart
Lanart
Snance
Lenara
Hmm, maybe use their alter egos instead?