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As a speedster, there were many things that Barry would label as an inconvenience. For one, there was the burden of having to maintain a secret identity, which – admittedly – he was not very good at. Obviously, the dietary requirements were a big drawback, too. And he’d lost count of the number of shoes he’d burnt through – literally.
But, if asked right at this moment, Barry would say that the number one inconvenience that he faced with his powers was the waiting.
When his anxiety was high, when he was stressed, the whole world around him slowed. Or, more accurately, he sped up. It worked great when he was fighting someone as the Flash, the adrenaline pumping through his body keeping him on his toes.
It was less great when he was staring at a computer screen in the cortex, waiting for Cisco’s programme to load for what felt like an hour, but – in reality – couldn’t have been more than a couple of seconds. Waiting to find the answer to a question that he’d never thought he’d get the chance to ask. He’d thought for sure that he’d never run this search again. Snart had been dead for years by now and, with him gone, there was no cold gun in Central City to track anymore.
Except… then the multiverse was destroyed, and out of it came Earth-Prime. Oliver had rewritten their histories to save their lives. And now, for the first time in years, there was a chance. A possibility.
Barry took a deep breath as the programme finally pinged out a result, a familiar location flashing on the screen that made a spark of hope ignite in his chest. He didn’t wait so much as another second before zipping away from STAR Labs, coming to a stop again across the street from Saints and Sinners.
The bar looked exactly the same as it always had as Barry pushed the door open and stepped inside: dark and uninviting, the floor sticky with stale beer under his shoes. But as his eyes skimmed the patrons gathered around their tables, Barry couldn’t name anywhere else he would rather be. Especially when his gaze finally settled on the man he was looking for.
He was sitting at one of the booths right in the back. It was darker back there, just far enough away from the overhead lights to cast his table in shadow. He wasn’t wearing his parka, nor the leather jacket he’d worn when they’d broken into ARGUS together, looking almost bare sitting there in just a black henley, the sleeves fitting snug around his arms.
Like he could feel he was being watched, Snart lifted his head, his eyes immediately finding Barry’s across the room.
It was him.
Barry didn’t know how he could tell, but he could. That was his Leonard Snart.
It was like something inside him – a white noise that had been playing in the back of his head ever since Ray had told him Snart was gone, a pit in his stomach, a chill in his lungs – finally settled.
Barry didn’t break eye contact for even a second as he made his way over, settling opposite him in his booth.
“Well, well,” Snart drawled, tilting his head forward as a grin spread across his lips. “Barry Allen, as I live and breathe.”
Barry couldn’t help but wince. Even if Snart didn’t know how cutting that remark actually was – he couldn’t know; no one but the Paragons remembered what had happened on Earth-1 – it felt pointed, sharp, digging at the guilt buried in his chest.
Before he could respond, Snart let out a darkly amused huff, picking up a shot glass from the table and downing the liquor inside without batting an eye. Barry watched, frowning, as he immediately refilled it again from the bottle of Jim Beam in front of him, each motion slow and deliberate, like he was putting careful effort into keeping his hands steady.
It almost worked, likely would have been convincing if not for the slight sway in his seat as he turned his head to put the bottle back down.
“You’re drunk,” Barry said, the words escaping him without permission. He didn’t know why he felt surprised; they were at a bar, and it was late enough in the evening now that no one would bat an eyelash at another drunk patron.
Maybe it was because he was so used to Snart always being in complete control that he never imagined him drinking enough to risk losing it. Or maybe it was because there was something stoic behind his eyes, something that made this feel less like he was letting loose, and more like he was drowning his sorrows.
“I’m celebrating,” Snart said, the sharp lilt to his voice telling Barry that he was doing anything but. “It’s not every day you come back from the dead.”
Oh. “So, you do remember.”
“Kinda hard to forget,” Snart drawled. His lips flickered into a dangerous smile as he held Barry’s gaze. “Always did think I’d go out with a bang.”
Barry didn’t know what to say to that. He wanted to apologise, to let Snart know just how badly he’d wished he could have been there, could have helped him, could have got them all out alive. It was all true. But, in the end, anything he had to say just felt like a meaningless platitude. No matter what, it didn’t change the fact that Leonard had died alone.
The sharpness of Snart’s gaze dulled as he shrugged, and Barry watched the fight drain right out of him as he stared down into the contents of his shot glass resting on the table between them.
“Didn’t think it would happen saving a bunch of do-gooders on a time ship, though,” he said, his voice now missing the sharp bite it had carried earlier.
He sounded almost… wistful.
Barry leant forward in his seat, resting his elbows on the table. “I seem to recall you being one of those do-gooders,” he said, aiming for playful, testing the waters to see how Leonard would react and feeling some of the stiffness ease out of his shoulders as Snart’s lips quirked up at the corners.
“Doesn’t sound like me. You sure you have the right guy.”
Barry smiled. “I’m sure.”
“Hmm,” Snart hummed, his gaze flickering over Barry like he was assessing him. But there was a warmth behind his eyes, an openness that Barry only saw from him when they were alone. “You can stop looking at me like that,” Snart continued, and Barry realised he was grinning. “I’m not suddenly gonna start running around catching bank robbers and pulling kittens out of trees. I am the bank robber. My stint with the Legends hasn’t changed that.”
“I didn’t say it did.”
Snart hummed again, dropping his gaze back to his hands as he picked up his shot glass again. “Then why’re you here?”
There were a million and one answers Barry could give to that, but they all came down to the same thing in the end: Barry just wanted to see him. “Can’t a guy have a drink with an old friend?”
Snart paused, the drink halfway to his lips. It was just for a second, a single moment of hesitation as he processed Barry’s words, but it seemed like an eternity before he finished the movement, downed the shot, and met Barry’s gaze again.
“Kinda hard to do that without a glass,” he pointed out, his words had a definite slur to them now, as he placed his own shot glass back on the table. He didn’t wait for Barry’s response before filling it with bourbon and sliding it over to him.
Barry tried to ignore the butterflies in his stomach as he picked it up, fighting back the memory of the same glass at Snart’s lips only seconds earlier. He could swear he could taste him there, the thought causing a chill to run down the back of his neck that not even the burn of the bourbon could chase away.
“Good?” Leonard asked, his eyes boring into Barry’s like he could read his mind.
Barry cleared his throat and nodded as he placed the glass back down between them. Truthfully, bourbon wasn’t his usual choice, but the thought of admitting that now barely even crossed his mind before he dismissed it again.
“So,” Snart said as he pulled the bottle back towards himself and poured out another shot. “You gonna explain it?”
“Explain…?” Barry asked slowly, though he thought he knew.
“How I’m alive.”
Barry frowned down at his own hands as he began picking at a beermat on the table. He would actually rather talk about just about anything else… but he supposed Snart deserved to know.
“There was a… a crisis,” he started, glancing over his shoulder at the other patrons in the bar, only to find several pairs of eyes looking their way.
He probably should have been expecting that: Captain Cold was a notable enough presence before he left with the Legends. If he was still a part of the Team on this Earth, then it only made sense that he would have become just as famous as the rest of them had.
There probably wasn’t a single place in Central he could go now without drawing attention. And here he was, sharing a bottle of Jim Beam with Barry, a perceived nobody who would have stuck out like a sore thumb in a place like this anyway.
It didn’t exactly make having this conversation any easier. The two of them were tucked away in the corner, presumably out of hearing range of the nearest table, but even still… there was too much to explain, and a seedy bar in downtown Central City was not the place for it.
“Long story short…” Barry continued, lowering his voice even further as he turned back towards Leonard. “The bad guys won. The Earth… all of the Earths were destroyed. Oliver…” He paused, cleared his throat as he felt his grief claw at it. “Oliver sacrificed himself to bring everyone back. But he – er – made a few changes.”
Snart sat silent for a moment, frowning at Barry before reaching for the glass again and drinking it down.
He pulled a face this time as he slammed the glass back on the table, refilling it again before pushing it back towards Barry with a: “My condolences.”
“Thanks,” Barry muttered, accepting the shot and downing it instantly. The bourbon stung at the back of his throat like a physical reminder that he was still here. He was supposed to have died in this crisis, too.
Maybe Snart had the right idea about getting drunk tonight…
Except the burn receded instantly, leaving Barry stone-cold sober. Another inconvenience of being a speedster.
Sighing, he slid the glass back over. “I have to warn you, if you’re trying to get me drunk, it’s not going to work.”
“I remember,” Snart shrugged, his voice low as he added: “Super healing comes with its downsides.”
“Do I want to know how you know that?” Barry asked. For a moment, he wondered if Snart had a run-in with another version of Barry when travelling on the Waverider, a Flash from an alternate timeline or another Earth…
He didn’t like the feeling of jealousy that sparked up at that thought, but he also couldn’t deny it for what it was. Especially since Barry had never met another version of himself that he’d actually liked, and the thought that Snart would have gotten on well enough with one to have shared a drink – maybe even the same way that the two of them were doing now – did not sit right with him.
Except, then Snart smirked and leant back in his seat. “Still tetchy about t’ whole stalking thing, huh?”
“Wha-” Barry stopped, blinked. “You stalked me?”
He could feel more eyes turning to look at them after his outburst – which, admittedly, had been a bit louder than he’d intended.
Snart huffed out another laugh, seeming to either not notice or not care about the added attention. Normally, Barry would assume the latter when it came to Captain Cold, but in his current state, either was possible.
“Tactical recon,” Leonard shrugged, his words a vivid reminder that they were not always as friendly as they were now. “How else was I gonna learn your weaknesses?”
“Jesus,” Barry swore.
“I’m Jewish,” Snart retorted, “and not the prayin’ type.” He reached for the bourbon again, pouring himself another shot. Between them, they’d drunk maybe a fifth of the bottle, and Snart was clearly feeling the effects as he swayed forward in his seat before smirking up at Barry. “You told me.”
“What?”
“That you can’t get drunk… you told me,” he clarified. “After the Dominators.”
Except… the Dominators attack happened after Snart had already died. Barry was sure of it. It had been the first time he’d teamed-up with the Legends as a group, the first time he’d looked for Snart, expecting to find him on his side, and had instead been met with an apology and a realisation that there was one more name to add to his list of people he couldn’t save.
But that was on a whole other Earth, which could only mean… “You remember both timelines?”
Snart shrugged again and downed his shot. “You don’t?”
No, Barry didn’t. He, and all the other Paragons, only remembered the original Earth-1 timeline. Whereas everyone else only remembered this new Earth-Prime one. As far as he could tell, Leonard was the only one who remembered both.
“I only remember Earth-1,” Barry admitted, accepting the drink that Snart poured for him.
It had to have something to do with how he’d died. Or, more importantly, where he’d died: a place sitting outside of time.
He couldn’t help but think how strange it must feel to remember two different lives. To remember dying in one but surviving in the other.
No wonder he’d wanted a drink tonight…
And, seemingly, he and Snart were closer in this timeline than they had been on Earth-1. Close enough that they had apparently celebrated defeating the Dominators together. And who knew what else? Even if everything before Leonard’s death – or near-death, in this case – had stayed the same, there were still nearly four years of memories that Barry was missing out on. Experiences that another Barry had had, and he would never get to remember.
The familiar pit of jealousy grew in Barry’s stomach as he tried – unsuccessfully – to squash that thought while he downed his shot.
Opposite him, Snart’s eyes tracked the movement of his hand, though he seemed unfocussed, deep in thought. It wasn’t until after Barry slid the glass back over to him that he seemed to snap out of it.
“On this… Earth…” Snart started, and Barry mentally prepared to hear himself get compared to… well, himself. But he was taken by surprise when Snart continued with: “You an’ Iris broke up.”
“Erm, yeah,” Barry nodded when Snart just continued to look at him expectantly, waiting for his response. “Yeah, we did on Earth-1, too.”
“Hmm.”
That didn’t look like it was all Snart wanted to say on the matter, but he also didn’t move to speak again, just continued staring down at the table, looking at Barry’s hand. His ring finger.
For a moment, Barry’s heart picked up, anticipation sparking in his veins as his mind raced to fit together the pieces of the puzzle in front of him: the looks, the comments, the interest in whether he was single. He couldn’t help but think that Snart was actually flirting with him.
But Barry had never been lucky when it came to love, and he didn’t expect that to change anytime soon. He had to just be projecting, reading too much into it and coming out with the answer that he wanted to find.
Especially when the only other answer he could think of for why Snart might want to know if he and Iris were still together… did not paint Barry in a good light.
The last time he’d seen Snart, he’d felt lost. So many of the people he loved – his friends and family, and even Snart himself – had died because of him, his actions, his enemies. He was already in a dark place even before Savitar showed up. But finding out that another, darker version of himself was going to kill Iris? Barry just couldn’t take it anymore. He couldn’t be the reason she died, too; he had been willing to do anything to prevent it.
And Snart had seen that, had watched Barry walking the edge of a line he couldn’t cross and pulled him back. He’d seen it because Barry had been selfish. He’d borrowed Snart from the past to help save Iris’ life and sent him back afterwards without so much as a warning about his fate.
At the time, Barry had convinced himself there was nothing he could do. Snart had already died; he couldn’t save his life without changing the past, without endangering the timeline and threatening the lives of everyone he loved.
That didn’t make it better, nor any easier. But he’d had to live with that choice, haunting him day in and day out, for years.
And now… Leonard was living with it, too. Living, knowing that Barry had a chance to save his life and chose not to.
“Snart…”
“Len,” Snart interrupted, his voice a lot softer than Barry had expected, considering the dark spiral that his mind had taken him in. “You call me Len now.” Another spike of jealousy, this one surrounded by something hotter, a warmth that crawled up into Barry’s chest and circled his heart.
“Len…” Barry said, watching a lazy, satisfied smirk spread across Len’s face before he nodded and waved Barry on to continue. “About…” Barry cast another look over his shoulder at the other people in the bar. Most seemed to have lost interest in them now, or were at least feigning disinterest. But, regardless of how busy the bar had become now that it was getting later, everyone was keeping a wide enough berth from their table that Barry wasn’t too concerned with being overheard. “About what happened… the ARGUS mission…”
Barry shook his head. He didn’t even know where to start.
“If this is you tryin’ to apologise, you suck at it,” Snart muttered, stumbling over his words just a little. But before Barry could speak up again, he was continuing with: “Way I see it, I’ve tried to kill you, you tried to kill me –”
“– I didn’t –” Barry tried to interrupt, but Len kept talking.
“– Let’s jus’ call it even and move on. You know…” Despite the slur to his voice, Snart’s blue eyes were still piercingly sharp, boring into Barry’s. “Live and let die.”
Barry winced but didn’t offer any further protest. It was true that he and Len hadn’t met under the best of circumstances, and he’d forgiven Len for a lot over the years. That didn’t make what Barry did – or didn’t do – any better, though.
“Now, we done talkin’ about death?” Len asked, pouring himself another shot of Jim Beam. “’cause, unless you haven’ noticed, we are both very much alive right now, an’ I’d rather focus on that, wouldn’t you?”
Some of the bourbon splashed over the rim of the glass, spilling over Len’s fingers, and Barry watched as he brought his hand to his mouth, licking them clean as Barry’s own mouth suddenly ran dry.
“Alright,” Barry agreed, momentarily distracted. It took a moment for his mind to catch up with his mouth, but afterwards he just sighed and nodded. He figured that could not be the end of it, he would have to apologise properly one day – if only because the guilt would probably eat him alive if he didn’t – but, for now, he would accept Len’s truce.
“Good,” Len nodded, holding his glass up as though to cheers. “Here’s to makin’ the most outa bein’ alive.” He quickly shotted the bourbon back and pushed the glass into Barry’s hand, their fingers brushing for a second before he let go.
Barry paused only for a moment before refilling the glass and lifting it in response. “To making the most out of life,” he agreed before shotting it back, grimacing more at the taste than the quickly fading burn at the back of his throat. “You got any plans for that?”
Len shrugged lazily. “Might do.”
Considering how cryptic that was, combined with what little he knew of Len’s hobbies, Barry figured he might just be better off not knowing.
“Don’t worry, I’m not plannin’ to rob, kidnap, or kill,” Snart listed off, leaning forward with a smirk as he seemingly read Barry’s mind. “Not currently, anyway.”
As the Flash, Barry knew that he shouldn’t find that funny, but there was something about Len’s specific taste of dry humour that always brought a smile to his lips.
He couldn’t help but respond in kind. “I would have thought that would be a dull evening for you.”
“I can think o’ a way to make it interesting,” Len drawled, surely sounding a lot more suggestive than he had intended, even as his deep blue eyes sparkled with a mischief that made Barry’s legs feel weak.
He nodded, refilling the shot glass and downing another drink just so he had something to do with his hands, a reason to look away from Snart for long enough to regain his – for lack of a better word – cool.
“It was my turn,” Len remarked as Barry lowered the glass back to the table again afterwards, but he looked more amused than anything else.
“The taste is growing on me,” Barry lied, ignoring the heat curling in his lower abdomen, which had nothing to do with the alcohol that had already burned out of his system.
Snart didn’t call him out on it, humming as he reached for the bottle again. “An’ you? Any big plans after surviving the crisis?”
“You knew about that, huh?” Barry said, idly wondering if this version of him had told Len about the headline claiming he would disappear in the crisis, or if Len had found out on his own at some point while travelling on the Waverider.
“It’s come up,” Len said casually as he finished refilling his glass. He didn’t take it yet, though, leaving it sitting between them as he looked back up, his gaze flickering over Barry’s face like he was searching for something.
“I hadn’t really thought that far ahead yet,” he admitted. So much had changed with the creation of Earth-Prime, he couldn’t imagine that all of it was for the good. He had a lot to catch up on.
Snart nodded. “Then we should celebrate.”
“Is that not what we’re doing now?” Barry asked, gesturing to the shot of bourbon still waiting on the table between them.
“Maybe I wan’ you for more than one night,” Len drawled. Despite his slurring, his eyes were still sharp, pinning Barry in place as his words crashed through any excuse he could form about how he was reading this wrong. “Think y’ can handle that?”
“I… Yeah,” Barry nodded, feeling breathless. He had admitted to himself years ago that he’d been harbouring feelings for Captain Cold. What started as ill-advised intrigue and a stifling tension that – even at the beginning – could never be entirely explained away as hatred and rivalry, had quickly moulded itself into the most complicated, often frustrating, wholly thrilling relationship Barry had ever had.
He’d known it was wrong. Especially in the beginning, before they’d come to their truce. And yet, as the years passed, Barry came to realise that the only part in it he had ever truly regretted was how it had ended.
When he’d thought back on it, he had realised that, maybe, there had been moments when something might have been possible, and yet he had never actually expected Len to feel the same way. And if he ever had, Barry was sure that whatever chance they might have had was long dead.
But Len was alive. They both were. And despite everything and the years it took to get them both here, it looked like maybe that second chance at happiness for the both of them wasn’t as far away as Barry might have thought.
“Yeah,” he nodded. “I think so.”
“Good.”
For a moment, Barry just sat there and watched the way Len’s smirk softened into a real smile, warm and inviting. He wondered how Len would take it if Barry reached for his hand right then…
But that thought was quickly stopped in his tracks only a second later as Len moved to pick up his shot glass only to knock it over completely, nearly sending it careening off the table. Barry had to use just a smidge of superspeed in order to catch it in time before it smashed to the ground, though he couldn’t prevent half the contents from spilling out over his fingers.
“I think maybe it’s time to go,” Barry said, placing the glass back on the opposite side of the table, further out of Len’s reach, as he fought back the anxiety swirling in his stomach. It felt like being hit with a bucket of cold water, realising how drunk Len really was and that he might not actually mean any of what he had been implying tonight. “Come on,” he said, offering up a tight smile, “if you promise not to throw up on me, I’ll give you a lift back home.”
Len responded with a low, slurred grumble that Barry thought said: “I know how to hold down my liquor.” But his protest was weak at best, and he didn’t actually seem to be turning Barry’s offer down.
“Is that a yes to the lift?”
Len didn’t respond, but he did move to stand up, immediately gripping the back of the booth, looking unsteady on his feet. Barry quickly stood up after him, wrapping an arm around his lower back to keep him stable. Part of him expected to be immediately shrugged off with a snarky quip, but if anything, Len leant more into Barry’s touch like he was indulging himself just as much as Barry was, absorbing the warmth from his body at every point of contact.
Barry couldn’t help the way his breath caught in his throat as he accepted more of Len’s weight, all too aware of the attention they were drawing as he towed Captain Cold towards the exit and then around back and out of sight.
“Where am I taking you?”
“Warehouse on Third.”
That pulled Barry up short for a moment as he realised that Len probably didn’t have a place of his own in Central. He’d known that the rogues used to squat in empty houses or abandoned warehouses back before they joined the Legends, but Barry had assumed Mick – and now Len – would have got their own places once their names were cleared.
Apparently not.
That meant that Barry was going to be dropping Len off at a random safe house tonight to sleep off the alcohol, which… just didn’t sit right.
“How about I take you back to mine instead?” he offered. This time, he was fully anticipating Len’s resulting smirk.
“If y’ insist.”
The fact that his drawl still managed to make Barry’s knees weak, even with his words slurred, only proved how gone Barry was.
And how much it would hurt if Len woke up tomorrow and, in the sobering light of day, took back everything he’d said tonight.
Putting that thought out of his mind for the time being, Barry took one last glance around to make sure they were alone before swooping Len up and running them both back to his own apartment.
“You really know how t’ sweep a man off his feet,” Snart mumbled after Barry brought them to a stop again in his bedroom.
“I’ve had practice,” Barry deadpanned, leading Len towards the bed as the other man smirked, his eyes wandering leisurely over Barry’s body.
“I’m sure you have.”
Barry ignored the heat rising in his cheeks as he sat Len on the bed and ran to get him a glass of water from the kitchen, placing it firmly in his hands, a silent command to drink up that made Len’s lips twitch in amusement. He listened, though, sipping on the water as Barry grabbed sleep clothes for them both, placing Snart’s next to him along with a spare toothbrush and leaving the room to let him get ready for bed.
He was setting the couch up for himself with sheets and a pillow a minute later when he felt Len hovering behind him. Barry looked over to see him leaning in the doorway, looking far too good dressed in Barry’s clothes. It felt so surreal. Not just that Len was really alive again, but that he was here, in Barry’s apartment, looking like he belonged here. Like this is how it was always supposed to end up.
“P’etty sure your bed’s big enough for two,” Len commented, and Barry had to shake his head clear again.
“The couch is fine,” he shrugged off, though they both surely knew that Barry was too tall to get anywhere close to a comfortable night’s sleep on it.
Snart rolled his eyes, the amusement slipping from them to be replaced with something a lot more genuine. “Come to bed.”
He didn’t wait for a response before turning to go back into the bedroom, leaving the door open behind him for Barry to follow.
Barry told himself that it wasn’t a good idea. But in the end, he was a weak man; he’d had a long, hard few days, and he didn’t want to be alone right then any more than Len seemed to. There was no harm in sleeping in the same bed. Barry wasn’t going to start anything tonight, and if Len tried then Barry would just go back to the couch.
Mind made up, he finished getting himself ready before cautiously making his way into the bedroom. Len blinked up at him from under the blanket, eyes already half-lidded as he fought off sleep long enough for Barry to close the door and slip into the bed beside him.
“Night,” Barry muttered awkwardly, feeling suddenly unsure of himself. Len just smiled, his eyes falling shut completely.
“G’night, Scarlet.”
Len woke up gradually, feeling the world around him spinning before he even tried to open his eyes, pain blooming inside his head, throbbing in time with the beat of his heart. He screwed his eyes shut against the light streaming into the room and tried to bury his head further into his pillow.
Except that was not a pillow.
He flung his eyes open, fighting the sudden spike of nausea as he forced his vision to come into focus, confirming that his head was, in fact, buried into the crook of another man’s shoulder.
Slowly, carefully enough not to wake the man beneath him – nor cause his head to spin any more than it already was – he pulled back, seeing none other than Barry Allen’s face smushed into the pillow next to him.
Len blinked and blinked again. There was no way…
Frowning, he thought back over what he could remember from the previous night. Remembered waking up with the memories of two different timelines warring in his head, of calling Lisa – who had no memory of him dying – and royally freaking her out, of deciding to drown his sorrows in a bottle. Then Barry showed up… He remembered talking, flirting.
But his thoughts felt tacky, slow like molasses dripping from a spoon, his memories coming through in bits and pieces. He could recall the warmth of Barry’s arm around his back, leading him from the bar… everything after that a blur.
But there was no way that he had been drunk enough to have sex with Barry last night and not remember it.
Len could feel the frown tugging deep at his lips as he desperately scoured his memory for what happened last night. He needed to know if he’d slept with Barry. And if he had done…
Christ, considering how often he’d thought about it, dreamt about it, if he actually did sleep with the Flash last night and couldn’t even remember any of it, he was going to be so pissed off at himself. He needed to remember, needed to know if he’d fucked this up before it had even begun. Except the more he dug, the more his head throbbed, pain lacing through his skull.
Grunting, he rolled onto his back, bringing a hand up to rub at his eyes. If he were the praying type, he’d probably be praying to God to put him out of his misery right about now. Whether that was by curing his hangover, giving him back his memories of last night, or just taking him out for good… that would be up for the big man to decide.
No luck on any front there, though.
Instead, Len became vividly aware of how still the room had become. Barry was awake. He could feel him holding his breath, like he was waiting for Len to react.
Len took an extra second to gather himself before dropping the hand from his face and turning back to his bed-partner.
“Erm… morning,” Barry said, offering up an awkward smile, waiting for barely a second before pulling himself out of bed. He was fully clothed.
And so was Len, now that he thought of it. So that was one mark in the probably didn’t have sex last night tally.
“I’m gonna start some breakfast,” Barry said in a rush while Len was still considering whether asking about it was a bad idea. He didn’t even wait for a response before running out of the room.
Except, he was only gone for a second before he was zipping back into the bedroom again, a glass of water in one hand and a bottle of ibuprofen in the other. He placed them both on the bedside table, glancing only briefly at Len before disappearing back out into the kitchen.
Len sighed. As much as he’d like to put on a tough face, stroll out there, and demand answers… he was pretty confident that any attempt to become vertical right then would not end well for him.
Admitting temporary defeat, he pushed himself up on his elbow just enough that he could take the pain killers and drain the glass of water, before dropping unceremoniously back into the bed.
He just needed a second for the room to stop spinning and then he’d be good. Just a second…
He didn’t mean to drift back to sleep, but it didn’t last for long anyway, his eyes flinging open again at the sound of a smoke alarm blasting through the apartment like a drill aimed directly at his head.
“Sorry!” Barry called from the other room before everything fell blissfully silent again.
Len groaned and finally hauled himself upright. It must have been long enough for the ibuprofen to have done its job as his head settled much sooner than he would have expected otherwise, and he was able to gather himself just enough that he wouldn’t look like actual shit as he got to his feet and made his way through the apartment.
As expected, he found Barry in the kitchen, scraping what appeared to be the charred remains of a pack of bacon into the bin.
“I’m beginning to have my doubts about letting you cook for us,” Len drawled, gaining both Barry’s attention and blush.
“I’m usually pretty good at breakfast foods, I swear,” Barry said, averting his gaze as he discarded the ruined pan into the sink.
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Len remarked, feeling rewarded as he watched Barry’s lips twitch into a smile, though he was still holding his shoulders stiff and uncertain.
Len was starting to weigh the pros and cons of offering to cook for them both and trying to fix whatever he had inevitably screwed up last night, versus ignoring it completely and making a quick escape, but he didn’t quite come to a decision before Barry nodded to himself, having seemingly come to one of his own.
“There are fresh towels in the bathroom,” he said, turning to face Len again now. “I promise not to set the smoke alarm off again if you want to take a shower?”
Len knew his best bet was probably just to call whatever this was quits and hope they could ignore it from here on out, but Barry’s doe eyes proved once again to be his weakness as he found himself nodding – gritting his teeth against the way the movement made his headache pulse violently – before slipping into the bathroom.
His clothes from last night were folded up on a chair in the corner – another point in the probably didn’t sleep with Barry category – and Len spared them a glance as he stepped into the shower and let the hot water work into his aching muscles. He probably stayed standing under the spray for a lot longer than he really needed to, but he felt a lot better for it as he pulled himself away and got dressed again, quickly brushing his teeth before finally exiting the bathroom to find Barry’s entire dining table covered in pastries.
“I – er – went to the bakery while you were in the shower,” Barry said, hovering awkwardly at the head of the table and looking wholly uncertain. “A couple of bakeries, actually, because the first one didn’t stock anything savoury and I wasn’t sure how you felt about sweets, so…” Barry rambled for a moment before stuffing an apple danish into his mouth as though he needed it to physically shut himself up.
It was as cute to watch as it was frustrating. He needed to know what happened last night to make Barry act like… this.
“Did we have sex?” he asked abruptly, and Barry all but choked on his pastry, turning a bright shade of red that Len had never seen on him before – and, if he could fix this between them, then he was determined to see that colour again.
“I-We-No!” Barry spluttered. “You were drunk. I wouldn’t- No.”
“I’m going to choose not to be offended by-” Len circled his finger in the air to gesture at Barry’s reaction “-that.”
“What? No, that’s not…” Barry shook his head, grimacing. “I just meant, you were drunk. I wouldn’t take advantage of you like that.”
“How chivalrous,” Len drawled, picking up a pastry as he took a seat at the table. He told himself to let it drop, that now was not the time for this. But, if not now, when? He’d already died once. And, at the same time, he’d also survived, spending the last three and a half years pining from the sidelines, having no idea how close he’d been to it all being over. “What if I wasn’t?”
Barry frowned. “But you were.”
“And if I wasn’t?” Len pushed, tearing a corner off the cheese pastry in his hand and popping it in his mouth as he sat back to watch Barry squirm.
“I…” Barry let out a short huff of a laugh, dropping his gaze as he seemed to find the view outside his kitchen window extremely interesting all of a sudden. “I don’t do one-night stands.”
That sparked a memory, an echo of a conversation from last night. Len, telling Barry that he wasn’t interested in a one-night stand, that he wanted something real.
‘Think you can handle that?’
‘I… Yeah. Yeah, I think so.’
“In that case,” Len said, spurred on by the memory of the soft smile that had wrapped around Barry’s lips when he’d told him yes. “Remind me to ask you out when I’m not so hungover anymore.”
Barry’s eyes finally found his again, his mouth dropping open in surprise before slowly twitching back into that same soft smile from last night.
“You mean that?”
“You thought I didn’t?” Len asked, dropping the pastry back onto the table as he stood, making his way over to where Barry was still hovering by the kitchen counters, watching Len closely like he was hanging off his every move.
“You were drunk,” Barry said, shaking his head. “I didn’t know if you’d change your mind.”
Len hummed thoughtfully, pushing his way into Barry’s space and feeling delighted as Barry let himself be caged up against the countertop, his eyes dropping to Len’s lips. “I meant it.”
And from the flash of lightning he saw flickering behind Barry’s eyes, he was pretty sure that Barry meant it, too.
“Are you gonna kiss me?” Barry asked, his voice barely a whisper, like he was worried that talking too loudly would break the bubble they were in.
“If you ask nicely,” Len purred. He could feel Barry’s breath ghosting against his lips as he huffed out a laugh.
And then Barry was leaning forward and kissing him instead. A quick brush of the lips, simple, sweet, pulling away for only a second before diving in again with a kiss much filthier. It stole his breath, like lightning in his lungs. Like six years of maybes, of almosts, of grief, and loss, and new beginnings.
Barry’s hands found their way to Len’s waist, his fingers dipping under the hem of his shirt and pressing against the skin of his lower back. His touch was like static electricity but warmer, intoxicating. Instead of making Len want to pull away, he just wanted to bury himself further down and never come up for air.
But, of course, he had to eventually. All too soon, he was pulling back to catch his breath, resting his forehead against Barry’s as his heart continued to pound inside his chest.
“Was that nice enough?” Barry asked, his voice sounding as breathless as Len felt.
Len could feel the smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “It’ll do.”
He hooked his fingers under Barry’s chin, feeling him melt as Len guided him back down for another kiss. And, maybe, with Barry’s lips against his own, with a table full of pastries beside them and the morning sun shining in through the window, with their second chance waiting for them, Len melted too.