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“I’m going to be so late,” Barry groaned, looking at the time. He poked the sleeping form beside him, earning him a blurry glare. “You could sleep through a hurricane, you know.”
Len grunted and rolled over, and Barry smiled. Even though he couldn’t use his speed to get ready, the light feeling in his chest was worth it. He hadn’t been late since his coma, and Singh was starting to look at him a little, like maybe he was drawing a red suit over Barry in his spare time. Being late would actually be a good thing.
At least he had a very, very nice reason for being late. He kissed Len’s cheek, which got him another look – not a glare this time, still bleary-eyed though – and practically bounced off the bed. He sped through brushing his teeth, but he couldn’t actually change how fast the shower or the tap ran, so it wasn’t like it would make that much of a difference in the long run. Having to take his time with something was good for him, according to Wells. Gave him some sense of humility, apparently. Wells hadn’t elaborated when he’d been practically picking on him about it (and his attempt to make coffee in Jitters in less than a second, which had failed horribly).
When he got out of the shower, Len was at the kitchen table, his own coffee brewing in the pot. He raised an eyebrow at Barry’s dress choices, as per usual, and raised the newspaper up to his face pointedly.
“Say hi to Lisa for me when you get there,” Len said. Since Lisa didn’t know about them – no one really did, but especially not his foster sisters because then Joe would know – Barry hummed a question. A smirk appeared above the paper, and Barry thought Len could probably give supervillains tips on the smirking thing. “Accept that my sister knows everything and this will go much better for you. And thank her for stopping the betting pool last year.”
“There was a… they were betting about this?” Barry asked. His eyes were probably bugging out of his head. His voice had tried to bring back all the joys of puberty, which… ow, that hurt. “Oh my god, I can never show my face there again.” He kissed the smirk off of Len’s face, and that was nice, mint travelling between them.
Then he had to leave, because unlike some people, he couldn’t work from home. Or the new boyfriend’s apartment (he could never say that out loud though, because Len still had that hang-up about the age difference and he wasn’t in high school). Wherever Len brought his laptop, he could work.
Lisa was grinning like the Cheshire Cat when he got to the precinct, and Barry had a flashback to those times in high school when he’d brought someone home that she actually liked (both she and Iris had hated Becky Cooper, and she stopped smiling at him entirely while they were dating). Barry checked, and Joe was over by the coolers. He wouldn’t overhear and thus wouldn’t be able to judge Barry’s life choices. He loved Joe, but the man had a thing about his kids, and he had a serious problem about Len and Barry’s age difference and the once-unrequited crush.
He was only three years older than Len, to be fair. Barry got it, but they were both consenting adults, and that was what mattered (besides, Joe had been crazy young when he had Iris, even he agreed about that).
“Your brother says hi, and apparently thanks about the betting pool?”
The smile only got wider, and Barry wondered if he was about to be hugged. That hadn’t happened since Lisa graduated from the police academy, probably because of her scumbag dad, but if anything could get her to open up it was her brother’s happiness. Barry ran away before she got the chance, analyzing evidence at super speed because he really was that late.
She came up while she was on her lunch break, jacket off and detective badge shining on her chest. She had some of Cisco’s experimental energy bars and Chinese. Barry took the Chinese. She shoved the energy bars at him.
“You should tell Len about the Flash,” she said, sitting in a rolling chair and eating lo mein. Barry blinked at her – she’d been right there with Joe about keeping his secret a secret, after all. “Lenny’s smart, Barry, like, Felicity Smoak smart. Which, is she coming back? Because I have this idea I want to bounce off her about a way to help make Iron Heights metahuman-appropriate, and Cisco says we need a programmer. Which, if you remember, is also what Len is.”
“It’s not safe for people to know about the Flash. Look at Iris and Tony. If she hadn’t been writing about me, he wouldn’t have kidnapped her to bait me. And Len is worse than Iris about staying away from danger.”
Lisa rolled her eyes. Barry tried not to be reminded of Len, but it didn’t work. They just looked too much alike, acted like each other so much. When Lisa had found out about his powers she and Cisco had broken the laws of physics to make a gun for her that turned things into pyrite. It had saved their lives against Farooq Gibran, but it had still been a bad idea.
They called her Golden Glider, for god’s sake. If Len knew, he’d follow Barry into danger, and then he’d get himself killed. Or he’d kill someone else for Barry, and Barry didn’t know how to deal with that.
(Which, did he have a type? He thought about Oliver and that particular crush, and his love for Iris that had only turned into dedicated brotherhood last year, and he decided that yes, he had a type. Apparently that type was ‘would actually kill someone if they had to.’ Which was disconcerting, to say the least.)
“I never agreed about keeping Iris in the dark, and Tony was her stalker in high school. The pattern of violence? It pretty much only ends one way, and that way isn’t usually a sketchy prison.”
Barry scowled with Lisa. Even knowing that A.R.G.U.S. had named the pipeline part of its many secret facilities meant to protect the world, that was still a sore spot for both of them. Lisa was worse than Barry, if that was possible, because she hated the idea of complete solitary confinement for anyone. It was why she was pressing so hard to get Iron Heights to implement a system for detaining metahumans.
“I’ll get Felicity to talk to you. Something’s always going on in Starling, but you know she’d help us. No one there likes Amanda Waller anyway, not even Lyla.”
Well, she probably didn’t have a problem with Waller like Oliver did, but Barry was pretty sure there was some history there that no one talked about, so that made sense.
“Thanks, but you should still tell Len.” Lisa pointed at him with her chopsticks. “He’d help us.”
“He’d make Cisco make him a gun and pun at everything, probably based on said gun. Do you really want that?”
Lisa shook her head, but it looked more like she was sorry for Barry than anything else.
“He wouldn’t have to make Cisco make him a gun, Barry. I already had one in mind, that cold gun Cisco made when he still thought you might be a maniac in disguise. I’d trust him with it.”
Barry would too. That thought flashed across his mind, and the world slowed down. Lisa was practically a statue, and out the window the odd bird seemed like it was barely moving. Barry’s heart hammered in his chest, and he forced himself to think that particular thought again.
He would trust Len with the one thing they thought might be able to kill him. Len, who’d killed his father when Lisa was ten and had had a broken bottle to her neck at the time, who was only barely not an ex-con and therefore only barely not off-limits. Who had also begged Joe to let him see Lisa, because even though he couldn’t take her himself, he still loved her. Who’d gotten his GED at Joe’s request, then went to college for himself, and visited once a week for the eight years Lisa had lived at home, and then kept coming to family dinner night, even when Lisa and Joe weren’t talking because she was going to the police academy.
Barry wasn’t sure he’d trust anyone with the cold gun. Maybe Iris, or Joe.
And apparently Len.
“Uh oh, I know that look,” Lisa said, the world back in normal time. She didn’t seem fazed that he’d moved three feet at super speed. She was smiling, uncharacteristically soft. “Like I said, you should tell him.” She looked at her watch, then patted his arm before going back to work.
He had to tell Len.
First, though, he had to deal with Hartley Rathaway, who had taken to calling himself Pied Piper.
(Seeing himself and then getting knocked out by said self? Totally not part of the plan.)