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All of Len’s meager belongings are displayed on the deck of his final safehouse, a hastily red-painted sign states "SALE: EVERYTHING MUST GO" on an old sheet draped over the side of the porch railing, filling out like a pirate sail in the breeze. He’s got his feet kicked up over the flat of it on the ledge, helping the books that anchor it down, and next to him he sips from a glass of water on the table that’s priced at five dollars.
Everything of actual value has long been sold to those who will swiftly make themselves scarce if they haven’t already, though Len’s got a few cracked ribs and a poor patched graze of a bullet wound from a few dealers who wanted to get Len’s valuables without paying the money. They were taken care of, too.
No killing, because, this was still Central City, and he was a changed man even if he’d deny it to anyone who asked.
“What is this?”
The Flash, as ever, is not subtle. Len can feel the electric thrum under the pulse point of his wrists at his arrival, the gust that comes from the kid's super speed, and the smell of burnt rubber that always clings to Barry when he zooms around town without his suit. Looking down at the kid’s shoes now, he can see the poor converse with ashen, melted soles, just on this side of overheated. The cuffs of his jeans suffering a little as well.
It is only because he knows exactly what expression Barry wears that he won’t meet his eye. Nothing more.
“It’s a sale.” Len takes a drink of his water, suddenly wishing it was a hell of a lot stronger. Clears his throat. “Everything must go.”
“But these are your things.”
Len snorts. “Does the concept of a yard sale confuse you, Barry?”
“The concept of Captain Cold holding one does.”
He grimaces at the flippant nature of which Barry says his alias. An alias he wishes to bury, to sell, to be free of as well as all of the belongings.
“What’s your angle here, Snart?”
“No angle.” Len downs the water in one, two, three gulps. “Just selling some things for the move.”
“You don’t usually hold sales for switching safe houses,” Barry says. As if he’d know. Maybe he does. Maybe it’s just a good guess.
Either way, it’s the wrong assumption. “I’m not switching safe houses.”
A beat of silence. His neighbor opens the screen door of their complex as he does every morning at 9:08, cup of coffee in hand. He hikes an eyebrow at Len’s belongings strung out on the deck, gives a flick of the wrist in a wave with his newspaper, and turns around to go back inside.
Then, “You’re leaving Central?”
The quaver in Barry’s voice draws Len’s attention to Barry entire. In his hands he’s cradling Len’s old Cold Gun like a bouquet he’s about to lay down on a casket. Tucked between his fingers is the note he’d left with the gun that Len had scrawled almost as haphazardly as he did the pirate sail.
If that’s the way Barry’s been standing this whole time… Len almost laughs. His neighbor really is a creature of habit, seeing the bulk of the Cold Gun clutched to Scarlet’s chest and opting to just turn around and go back inside without a word. That’s a man Len can respect. That’s a routine he can admire.
But the humor of the situation is swept away quick. The look on Barry’s face warrants a study, warrants his full attention, even if he’s reluctant to give it. There’s a lot of expression on there, he could almost be a painting. A twinge of a frown, as subtle as the Mona Lisa smile. Tremor to his jaw that he tries to steel by clenching his teeth. There’s this little pinch to Barry’s nose, and the angle of his eyebrows is a sharp downturn like he’s angry, but his eyes. Barry’s eyes are nothing but sad, all cracked and blown pupils and bleary-red in the whites of them.
Where all this emotion is coming from, Len doesn’t know. Perhaps he’s had some sleepless nights, now that his old crush is getting married to someone other than him. Perhaps another meta has been keeping him up too late. Or it’s the old, never-to-be-healed ache of the death of his parents. The Scarlet Speedster has a long list of things that might make him cry at night. Not that that’s Len’s problem, anymore.
Not that it ever was, Len reminds himself.
He leans back on the stool he’s got propped up behind him, two dollars and fifty cents and that’s up for negotiation, keeping casual. Len’s gaze returns to the gun. “You brought that all the way here?” Len asks. “I already said my goodbyes.”
“Oh, did you?” Barry says, voice tight. He flicks Len’s note at him, it fluttering in the air and almost hitting Len in the face, until it flips back, the corner of it sticking into his now empty glass. Barry couldn’t do that twice if he tried.
Len can read the words back to him, even though the glass bloats the words a little:
Scarlet — Now when Cisco says it’s his gun, he’ll be right. — Snart.
“You were going to go with, what? Just that? That’s it? Break into my apartment again, and that — that’s all I get?”
Barry sounds indignant. He was always good at sounding indignant, righteous. Usually it came coupled with a lecture that “there’s good in you, Snart,” but that was a subject that was long dealt with. This time, Len’s not sure what’s got Barry Allen all hot and bothered.
Nevertheless, Len gives him a tilt to his lips, a small smile. “Maybe not all of them.”
“So you were going to tell me?”
“You’re here now,” he says. “So I suppose we’ll never know.”
Barry’s gaze scans all of Len’s stuff. He jams his hands into his pockets, and his attention is jerky, as though Len’s planted a bomb somewhere in the mess. His gaze lands on the corner with his microwave, coffee pot, and his mattress. None of it’s crap but none of it’s particularly nice either. They’ll serve some college student or junkie just fine at the price range of five-to-ten bucks each.
“You’re really leaving?”
Jesus, the kid sounds like a wounded animal. “Would’ve thought you’d be walking on air, Scarlet. You’ve gotten yourself busy these days, I’m one less problem to worry about, right?”
“Is that what this about?” Barry snaps. “Am I not giving you enough attention?”
At one point, that might have been the complaint. He always did like playing tit-for-tat with the Flash, heists becoming more about the thrill than the grab. A taste of that spark, that inexhaustible adrenaline like lightning in a bottle.
Now, Len’s got the permanent scarring of his own explosions sprayed across his chest, ruining old tattoos, his body an obliteration that was never supposed to string back together. So he doesn’t indulge Barry’s taunt. He only says, “Does that comment make you a narcissist or me?”
A stammer, a haughty huff of breath, Barry’s reactions are so predictable Len could put them on a timer. Admittedly it’s a comfort. At least the kid’s emotional range hasn’t changed since the Oculus blew Len up and put him back together in a life that had long left him behind.
“Then what is it?” Barry asks. “What do you want?”
But before Len can answer, a voice comes from below. “Hello there?” A young woman’s voice, or an older girl’s, Len’s not sure. “Is the sale still going on?”
“Yup, sale’s still going on.” Len eyes the Cold Gun, nodding to the left, telling Barry to find a place to tuck it away. He walks the gun behind Len, going around the table and leaning against the railing, blocking the gun from sight with his long legs.
Len swings his feet off the ledge and picks himself up from his seat, going to the railing to lean over it and greet his new customer. Below stands a young woman, wallet in her pocket jutting in a bulge at her hip, an easy pickpocket if she’s not more careful. The woman’s no older than Lisa was when she got to pick out the first ice skates that Len didn’t have to steal for her. Got the same gleeful grin on her face as then, too, but instead of a pair of skates she’s got her hands on a yellow homemade looking blanket that Len had folded up on the first step.
It, too, had been Lisa’s. He didn’t know where she got it, likely lifted it from a store or an ex, but she left it at one of his safe houses forever ago. It was one of the things Len in his last safe house before the Oculus blew that he discovered after it pieced him back together. He isn’t sure if the safe house went untouched because no one had the stomach to clear it out or if Mick still stays there during breaks from Legends missions, but he never intends to find out.
Either way, he took the blanket, and now, he’s selling it.
There’s a warmth at his back, a body he thought was keeping the Cold Gun out of sight. “What are you doing?” Barry whispers in his ear. Too close. Len can inhale the breath Barry used to ask the stupid question.
“Like I said. I’m hosting a sale.” He shakes Barry off, a little too hard for him to play it off as unemotional. He cools himself down. “So either buy something or stand pretty and still so I can sell you as a statue,” he says with a wink.
Just like old times, Barry blushes a good scarlet. He backs up, pressing his back along the railing, folding his arms and deigning to take the sculptural route.
“How much for the blanket?” the woman asks, clutching it to her chest. She’s already grown attached, clearly, in the way she folds it into an embrace, the way she holds back from pressing her face into the fabric.
Len hums. He knows all too well what it is to be taken quick by an object, by a place, by a person.
But for him it’s time to cut ties. “How much do you want to pay for it?” Len asks.
The girl looks down at the blanket, then reaches into her pocket where Len first noticed the bulge of her wallet. She fumbles with it, it’s pink and gaudy and has a cartoon character he doesn’t recognize plastered on the front, old and worn. She digs for money, slotting her fingers into the coin pouch, too, but she doesn’t seem to be finding much of anything.
In Len’s periphery, he sees Barry reaching for his own wallet, as if he’s going to pay for the blanket for her if she can’t come up with cash. He’d gladly take the speedster’s money, even though he would have given the girl the blanket for free if she produced nothing.
The Scarlet Speedster always had too soft a heart and it’s clearly rubbed off on him. A few years ago, someone couldn’t walk the same sidewalk Len stepped on without compensation. Though, often they didn’t know that, they’d just get home and find the contents of their wallets gone.
“I’ve only got 45 cents,” she says. She loosens her grip on the blanket, her lip quivering like she believes that she will not be able to leave with it in her arms.
But Len shrugs. “Then it’s worth 45 cents,” he says, taking a few steps down and stretching out his hand to take the coins.
A gasp. “Really?” She passes her hand over the weave of the fabric, her mouth open a little bit, before returning her attention to Len. “I thought it’d be worth more than that.”
“To you it can be. But to me, it’s worth exactly 45 cents.”
At that she grins, rushing up the steps with the coins ringing in her grip. With a cursory glance at Barry, she grimaces. “Is that price okay with you?” she asks.
Len looks over his shoulder at Barry, who is red and awkward — “Oh, this — I’m —” fumbling with his hands, blinking rapidly as he struggles for an answer.
Len can’t stop the smile that blooms on his face. “He’s okay with the price,” he says. “Never liked the blanket anyway.”
Why not indulge, even if for just a moment, that he and Barry Allen shared such a life together that they had dual ownership of an ugly yellow blanket? That they were hosting a lawn sale together? One scratch of an itch he’s had for far too long, and this small interaction is all the satisfaction he’ll need. Especially as he watches yet another blush paint Barry’s cheeks.
“Oh,” she looks to Barry as though distressed by the thought of him not liking her now beloved item. Clearly not too distressed to argue about it, though, because she squeaks an, “Okay,” and drops the coins into Len’s palm. The moment her hands are free of the money, she returns her hard grip to the blanket, pressing her face into its warmth now that she’s got full ownership. “Thank you!”
“Anytime. Tell your friends. Everything’s gotta go.”
“Of course!”
With that she turns and runs off, almost running into the wall she’s so blinded by the fabric pushed up to her eyes. Once she turns the corner, she’s out of sight.
Len turns away from the steps, flipping the quarter she gave him in the air. 50/50 chance, Leo, cable or belt? He hears in his Lewis’ voice and he catches the coin without looking at the way it landed, shoving the change into his pocket.
Don’t need to have those thoughts anymore. Lewis is long gone, and soon, Len will be on a one-way train out of Central City, far away from any mark that man ever made.
He straightens out the sheet and takes his position back at the table. Barry’s staring at him, taking his role as statue a little too seriously. Managed to set in stone his doe-eyed, lost look.
“You’re really leaving,” he says, toneless.
“I’m really leaving,” Len confirms, as though bored. Starts tapping his hand along the table, other belongings — he had a newspaper around here somewhere, and if Barry’s going to stay and just keep talking in circles, Len’s going to need something else to occupy his time — reaching for the newspaper he long abandoned.
“Why are you leaving?” Barry asks.
“Why did I ever stay?” Len asks. He means it to just be a purr, spinning Barry’s words, but they come out a bit too bitter. Too dark. Almost like a scoff.
Hurt flickers across Barry’s face, mouth open. Len’s reminded of an abused dog, and is annoyed by his own brain’s offering of such sympathetic imagery. The Flash is hardly so pathetic, hardly so helpless as a dog that yearns for belly rubs and gets kicked instead.
But boy does he argue like one, because next thing Len knows, Barry’s saying, “Mick comes back with the Legends —”
“Who don’t know I’m not dead.”
“You could tell them.”
“But I won’t. They’ve moved on.”
Barry stumbles at Len’s answer, but doesn’t fall. “There’s always things to steal.”
Len’s eyebrows rise at that, the Flash telling him there’s more things to steal. But he doesn’t indulge it, doesn’t even give him a tease. He merely says: “Don’t have a crew.”
“Well, then get Lisa! She needs you, she —”
“I know she misses me, but we both know she’s doing better now that I’m gone.”
“I won’t agree to that,” Barry says. Stern and indignant all over again. “I don’t believe that at all. She loves you. She goes to your grave we set up all the time,” — Len does not miss the we in that statement, but he refuses to acknowledge it — “and she’s angrier than hell at Mick for letting you die.”
“Mick didn’t let me do anything and she’ll realize that in due time.”
“No. No, you have to at least tell her. Tell her you’re alive.”
Len sighs. Gives up his search for the newspaper. “I’m not going to do that either. And since I kept your little secret about your identity, I think you can pay me back by not telling her about this.”
“That was part of a deal. You’ll need to strike a new one to get me to not tell her,” Barry says. It’s the first time he’s sounded cocky this whole conversation, clearly pleased with himself to come up with such a plan.
Len’s not so impressed. “You want the toaster?” he asks. “I’ll give you the toaster for free.”
He can tell by the grimace that Barry doesn’t want to laugh at Len’s joke, but he does. “I don’t want the toaster.”
“Then what do you want?”
“What do you?” Barry asks. “You never answered me before.”
There are a million things that Len wants. There’s nothing that Len wants. He thought he outlived his time when he reached his 26th birthday, but only now does he really know what it means to outdo yourself. To be surrounded by a world he doesn’t know how to fall in step with. It’s not like on the Waverider, where Gideon can give a spiel and Rip has all his rules and they’re in the wrong time for a blip. Here, he’s supposed to make a life. Here, he’s supposed to be dead. Here, he rips too much of foundation up if he exposes that he’s not.
“Trying to figure that out,” Len says. More honest than perhaps he should be but, what the hell, he’s leaving. “Can’t figure it out if I stay here.”
He expects another spitfire reaction. Another lecture from the good natured Scarlet who wants to tell him that there’s a place for him wherever Len wants, like a school teacher talking to the social outcast brat. But he doesn’t do any of those things. No, he looks over Len like he knows just how Len got patched up, all strange and broken even though he’s technically put together, like he knows exactly where the cuts and mars of time itself tore him apart.
“Won’t you at least tell your sister you’re alive?” Barry asks. “That way she doesn’t have to, you know, mourn you?”
Len sighs. Strums his fingers along the table, acting as though he’s considering but he’s come to terms with this decision a long time ago. It isn’t extreme self-flagellation, and it’s not that he loves the idea that his sister misses him and mourns him. It’s knowing that this is in both of their best interests. It’s knowing that if she knew, his leaving would be harder, and her life would end up a lot more burdened by the result.
If anyone on this planet is going to understand, it will probably be Barry Allen. That, or Rip Hunter, but they never quite got along.
“You and I both know that sometimes it takes losing everything you had to realize how much more you always wanted for yourself.” Len glances at the note, still stuck in his water glass, and pulls it up like he would a card on top of a deck. He runs his thumb along the ink. It doesn’t feel like it was only this morning when he broke into Barry Allen’s little apartment and left the gun, but lo and behold, it really was. “To rise out of the ashes you need ashes to begin with, need to have a hole in your life before you can fill it.”
There’s another argument there that his sister has risen out of too many damn ashes, but this is a different kind of loss, rather than a loss of childhood. He doesn’t want to be his sister’s motivation to strive for better, but if he revives himself and his identity and everything else, she will attempt to relinquish the Rogues to him out of respect or out of some seeded belief that he deserves it since he’s the one who put them together. She will walk on eggshells about dating Cisco. She will start taking steps that he doesn’t want her to take to make sure that he gets the life he wants, because she thinks he spent too much of his time giving her the life she deserves. He doesn’t want that for her. He wants better for her, and right now, with him out of her life, she’s taking it for herself. And he couldn’t be prouder. He’s not going to ruin that now.
“Lisa — she’s doing well without me. And like you once said…” he takes the note he’d left with Barry and tucks it into his jean pocket. “I’d do anything for her.”
“And that’s what you’re doing here?” Barry asks. “Filling a hole in your own life? Rising out of ashes?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
There are no strings on me. And yet where did he go back to? Central City, where all he’s ever been is caught in a fucking net. He became a thief because Lewis posed a threat to his sister if he didn’t. Became the best at what he did so he could have control of the gangs of Central City, make clear that any threat that was worth anything was his own, but that kind of influence meant keeping control of the reigns. On top of that, he was restricted in that power by the Flash and his’ deals. There were a million strings here, and whether Len was pulling them or being pulled by them, they were tied to him like leashes and he wanted to cut them off.
The Oculus pieced him back together in Central City but it didn’t anchor him there, yet there he was, despite having nothing left.
“It’s time for a change of scenery.”
“So you’re, what? Going on vacation? Gonna go, what… travel?” Barry spits at him. Len can see his face heat, warm enough he could boil an egg on his forehead.
Once upon a time, Len would have delighted in such a reaction. Now, if he’s honest with himself, he’s tired of being treated like the bad guy no matter what he does. Barry always touted “the good in him” — a laughable concept that made him want to roll his eyes — but he had to admit he was tired of everyone just acting on the “bad” in him. He wasn’t just some thief from Central City, but that’s why he was recruited to the Legends. And that’s all the Legends ever saw him and Mick for. He was a “bad guy”, the Legends only changing their minds at the cost what they thought was his life. At the cost of what Len thought was his life, too.
Now, here’s the Flash, all but yelling at him because he’s not sticking around to commit more crimes. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. It’s enough to bring Len to the edge of his fucking mind.
“Is that really so wrong, Barry?”
It’s too raw, too honest, too incredulous and exasperated and exhausted. He can see in the way all of Barry’s color cools off like he shot him with his cold gun, in the way that the sadness in Barry’s gaze reaches beyond, curling to the edges of his lips, tilting upwards his eyebrows. Almost pitying.
“I guess not.”
Len turns away, starts organizing the books that are holding his sheet down. They’re just placeholders for his safe house to make it looked lived-in, though Len has read them. Any books he actually cares about he’ll buy again somewhere else.
Beside him he can hear Barry moving, but for the first time in a while it’s quiet again. For a summer day it’s uncharacteristically cold, the wind blowing a chill that sends goosebumps all over Len’s skin, even with the long sleeve t-shirt. It smells like the coming of autumn despite it being July, and Len has to admit he’s going to miss seeing Central City change colors for the fall. But maybe he can see something better. He heard that Utah was beautiful. The north, up by the Great Lakes is supposed to be lovely. There are places far lovelier than Central City out there, probably.
He’s got money and time and no ties: the world is his oyster. And Len does his damndest to ignore just how fucking lonely that sounds in his own head.
Then he hears the hum of his Cold Gun, that high pitched whir that used to make his heart beat faster, used to inject in his veins and give him power unlike any other high he’d ever experienced. He looks over his shoulder to see Barry cradling the Cold Gun again, watching the glow of the core as he barely pulls the trigger. It’s a brilliant blue, lights up Barry’s face in a hue that makes him look like he’s walked out of a Christmas story. Barry Allen’s own winter’s tale.
Maybe once upon a time Len would have been the antagonist of said story, but not anymore. Still, he asks, “want me to shoot you again for old time’s sake?”
Barry just laughs. Lets go of the trigger, but continues tracing the frost around the core far too fondly for a man whose been hit by the brunt of the gun’s power several times.
He steps forward, more of a shuffle, until he stands beside Len. “Can I sit?”
Len gestures to the open seat, priced at three dollars, ten for the whole set of chairs, and Barry sits down. He doesn’t meet his gaze. Continues petting the gun like it’s a cat.
“Were you really going to leave without saying goodbye?”
Len considers this. He isn’t sure what he was going to do, but he doesn’t want to say that. And he doesn’t want to just tell Barry what he wants to hear. So he opts with what Barry likely expects Len to say, because it’s easier: “Probably.”
“With nothing but, but the note?”
“Didn’t think you’d be so broken up about it, Scarlet.”
“What… prompted this? I mean you got a second chance at your life, doesn’t that mean that your time here is worth living?”
Len shakes his head. If there’s one thing blowing up the Time Masters and the Oculus taught him, it’s that, “I think it means whatever I decide it means.” He taps the end of the Cold Gun, the barrel of it still chilly from Barry’s light pull of the trigger, but does not take the gun from Barry when he offers it.
“Are you going to keep stealing?” Barry asks. “Where you’re going? Or — are you going to continue what you were doing, with, ya know, the Waverider?”
“Saving time?” Len asks. “Think that’d be a little difficult without the equipment.”
“No, but, you know what I mean.” Barry tucks the Cold Gun between the chairs out of sight and out of his grip, then folds his hands in his lap. “Think you’ll go straight?”
Len shrugs. “Don’t know. But I won’t be here, and I think that’s a good start.”
Then Barry pulls the rug out from him. “It’s hard when all you want is for the world to stop turning for a minute. When no matter what you do, you can’t catch up.”
Of all the people in the world, he figured the Flash could go wherever he wanted to go. Despite Barry Allen always being late, the Flash should be perhaps the only person in the world who knows what it feels like to always be first in a race, even if no one else knows they’re running. Of all the people on this planet, the Flash should not know the feeling of being static.
But when he meets Barry’s gaze, he can see it in his eyes. That critical sharpness to them, the one that certainly told all of those college professors he impressed that he had a razor wit behind his impulsivity, behind his tendency to always be late. Barry knows exactly what Len’s feeling. Looks like he’s contemplated leaving himself.
“What keeps you here?” Len asks. “Why not… vacation? Travel?” Len parrots Barry’s earlier words, a lot less harshly than Barry had spewed them.
Barry’s shoulders droop, his long neck arches as he looks back at the Cold Gun. The air gets colder, somehow, just by Barry’s demeanor. It’s 10 in the morning and he looks exhausted. Looks exhausted in a way that’s irreversible, no matter how much shut-eye he gets.
He speaks slow, like he’s got to sound out the words as he speaks, make sure they sound right to his own ears. “People need me… here. Well, they need the Flash, even if they don’t need…”
Barry Allen, Len supplies, but he doesn’t say it out loud. Doesn’t need to. He saw the wedding announcement on the blog for Ms. West and the pretty cop. Lisa’s dating Cisco, and they’re keeping each other busy now that Cisco’s got powers too. Caitlin is about to take a job opening that may be the opportunity of a lifetime. Joe West has Wally to look after, a new speedster generation.
Len’s been keeping watch, even if he’s been hands off. Everyone Barry’s spent so long protecting, everyone who’s got Barry locked in place, able to live their lives because he does what he does and yet they’re still somehow moving on without him.
“Heroism really is just a different set of handcuffs, huh?”
There’s a twitch to Barry, but he doesn’t outright flinch. Len can see it anyway. He’s poking at something raw, and he knows he should stop, but… this may be the last time he gets the chance to dig a little too deep into Barry’s personal life. Wouldn’t be an exchange between them if he backed away now.
“When do you get your happy ending?”
Barry snorts, a smile a bit too genuine and big and teary for it to just be a sardonic chuckle. Like they’re sharing an inside joke, but Len doesn’t know the reference.
If anyone should get to run off into the sunset, it should be Barry.
There is a small piece of him, buried deep in a part of his heart that Len usually chooses to ignore, that wishes he could switch places with Barry to give the boy a break. Even for just five minutes.
“Will I know where you are?” Barry swerves the subject. His tone taking a more hopeful lilt, or pleading, Len’s not sure. “Where you’ll end up?”
“The hero of Central City still having tabs on my location?” Len asks with a huff. “Kind of seems counterintuitive to the whole plan, Scarlet.”
Barry deflates again. “Because I’m part of the problem.”
In some ways, Barry is the crux of what tore him apart. Of what threw him out of his own life. He was always screwing with his head, constantly badgering him and coaxing him and telling him all of the little hopes and dreams he had for Len. Putting a faith in him that no one ever expressed. Believing that he could be more than a life his father forced him into, more than a man who could never quite break free of all his chains. It was the speedster’s influence that got him on the Waverider. It was wondering what Barry would do, when he saw his oldest friend in front of the Oculus, that made him decide to take his place.
“A little,” Len admits.
He expects this to be the end of conversation. To be where Barry curls in on himself and runs away to go lick his wounds somewhere else. He hears the deep breath, and Len braces himself for the rush of wind and burnt rubber as Barry flees for the last time.
Instead, there’s a slam of hands to the table. Len watches the tendons shift in Barry’s forearm, in his hand as he grips the table. The next time Len meets his eye, there’s this determined glint and a smile on his face. As though brightened by Len’s admission.
Barry spins out of the chair and stands up, looking around the deck at Len’s belongings. Then, he begins picking things up and checking price tags, raising his eyebrow and setting things back down.
Len squints. “What are you doing?”
“It’s a yard sale,” Barry says. “I’m browsing.”
Len gets up after him, watching him carefully. Barry meets his gaze again. “I know you told me to stand pretty, but I don’t think selling me as a statue is gonna work.”
“Shame,” Len says, allowing the shift in the mood. “I think you’d sell for a pretty penny. Fifteen dollars, easy.”
Looking him up and down, Len takes in all that is Barry Allen, imagining him a statue. Maybe on day he’d have a museum to the Flash’s name, and there’d be a memorial in some likeness to the man before him. But nothing would compare quite to the real thing.
The extra attention makes Barry blush, God, it’s so easy Len could do it all day.
“Fifteen?” Barry asks. “That’s almost a steal.”
Len chuckles, all too fond, all too light, getting too attached to a person he’s supposed to be cutting out. “Almost,” he murmurs.
Barry winks, then turns back to Len’s belongings. “Want something to drink? Made lemonade,” Len asks.
“I think that sounds perfect.”
Len grabs his glass and steps inside, leaving Barry to pore over his belongings. Finally getting a moment to breathe since he showed up. Resolute in making this short walk from the deck to his kitchen a time in strengthening his resolve, since Barry has spent most of his time here trying to chip it away.
Len walks across the empty living room into his little kitchen. He reaches for a plastic cup and sets his water glass next to it, then goes to the fridge, empty of everything but the plastic pitcher filled with lemonade and some ice in the little freezer box. He cracks the ice out of the mold and drops it into the glasses, trying not to think of everything he’s done here. Everything he’s leaving behind.
He chides himself. Nothing. He’s leaving nothing behind. That’s why he’s leaving.
The only one who knows he isn’t dead is Barry, who found him and hasn’t known what to do with him since. And that’s okay. Barry’s got his own life to live. His own problems that seem to come as consistently as the tides of the ocean, judging by the newspapers detailing the Flash’s battles.
As Len pours the second cup, his attention keeps shifting to the cloudy window across the empty room. Where all he can do is watch Barry with far too much interest while he does the completely mundane. As Barry sorts through his things, snorting to himself while he pages through a textbook Len stole at some point.
In that moment, Len realizes he was never going to tell Barry straight that he was leaving. Saying goodbye to the speedster was always going to be harder than he wanted to admit. Barry, despite being impulsive and terrible at strategy, still manages to persuade people to do things his way. And though he’s playing nice, everything about how he carries himself around Len is screaming that he wants Len to stay.
But he can’t stay in Central. Not like this. This isn’t a life. And he’s not sure he wants to step into all the shit that made him Captain Cold. Maybe the Oculus really did kill him, because he can’t will himself to come back from that.
Len picks up the two cups and walks back outside, pressing his back to the door. Barry’s eyes alight at the drink and he reaches for the glass, Len pressing the cup into his hand. Their fingers brush for a moment. Barry flushes at just the touch.
Barry Allen has always been too warm and too soft. And Len has always been too susceptible. He shakes his hand out the moment Barry turns away.
He’s started on the clothes Len’s got on the opposite railing, laughing at a few pieces. Barry pulls out a button down with singes all over it, and Len winces. He didn’t mean to put that in there. “You think anyone’s going to want burnt clothing?”
Len won’t admit to the mistake, however. “Some people will pay good money to look homeless. Some people will pay little money and tell people they spent big money to look homeless.”
“Suppose I’ve seen worse things,” Barry relents.
He continues parsing through.
“I don’t think I’m your size, Barry.”
“I don’t know, some of these sweatshirts look comfortable. Nice MIT sweatshirt, who’d you steal this off of?” Barry asks. “Or did someone leave it here?” he hikes his eyebrow up suggestively and Len flicks him in the temple. “Ow!”
“If you must know, Lisa stole it for me, thank you very much.”
“In another life I bet you could have gotten in,” Barry says, taking a sip of his lemonade. Like that’s a casual thing to say. Like that’s not giving away far too much about how high and shining Barry’s opinion of him is.
Len doesn’t deign it with a response. Doesn’t have to, anyway, because Barry reaches for a coat that’s all too familiar by the fur of the collar.
“You’re selling the parka?”
Len had buried it, unsure if he wanted to, deciding he had to, willing himself let it be up to the fates of whether or not it’d be sold. He had not, however, expected Barry to come across it.
“Yup.”
The tone turns grim yet again. The playfulness, the surety of Barry’s demeanor, collapses like a baseball bat to the knee.
“I would have thought…” Barry pulls it out, shakes it loose and lets it fall straight. A little long, even for Barry, who holds it up like a wall between him and Len. “I would have thought you’d want to keep something.”
“I’ve got plenty of mementos, Barr.”
“I can’t even imagine you. Without it, I mean.”
Maybe that’s the problem, Len thinks, his own mind betraying him. It’s too sentimental a piece. It’s got too much baggage tied to it, it’s got too many memories. If Len’s really going to start fresh, he needs to be free of it.
Then again, there was a reason he’d buried it. Part of him unable to truly let it go. Childish.
Barry’s grip on the parka’s shoulder is so hard his hands are turning white, and he can hear the way the tempo of Barry’s breath increases, like he can’t quite find the air.
He clears his throat. “Like I said, I’m trying for a clean slate. Figured that might hold me back,” he says quietly, trying to placate, almost cooing. Trying to calm Barry down.
Then the parka comes down hard, balled up in Barry’s fists. There’s tears in Barry’s eyes, but he’s forcing a smile, a mask of the playful mood before.
“How much?” Barry asks. His voice is so shaky. Too shaky. A weakness Len could exploit right now and send Barry running at the speed of sound. If he were a smart man. A strong man.
But he’s not. “A million dollars,” he jokes.
Barry snorts, and it’s wet. He wipes away his nose quick, but begins smoothing out the mess he made of Len’s parka. Holding it in his arms like the girl who clutched the blanket. Too attached. Then again, this bond may have been forming for a while.
“Man, you’re expecting some Rockefellers to come to your yard sale,” Barry teases, and god, his voice wobbling so much, and is so quiet because he’s got a lump in his throat, and as much as Barry tries he can’t shake off the tears. Just looking at him makes Len’s heart cave in.
Then Barry’s reaching in his back pocket, to the wallet Len almost lifted for old time’s sake but left alone. “But, a million dollars from some shmuck can’t possibly beat my —” Barry breathes in, wheezy, sliding a few bills out from the fold of his wallet. “— my hard earned, solid offer of, um,” he wipes his eyes as he puts the wallet back in his pocket, splaying the bills like a hand of cards. “Three whole dollars,” he laughs.
Len’s stomach does a little fip at the whole pitiful display. Barry, arm outstretched with crunched cash in his shaky grip, his other harm hugging the parka to him like he’s trying to shield it from Len, all the while a big grin stretched across his broken hearted face.
Len swallows, unwilling to let his walls come down like Barry’s letting his. He steps forward and carefully touches Barry’s shaky outstretched hand, cupping it with his hands, and pushes the cash back toward Barry’s chest. The smile on the kid’s face falters, and he blinks rapidly to stop himself from crying.
Then Len reaches for the arm holding the parka, grabbing the back of the coat that’s so familiar. He almost puts it on just out of habit, but instead shakes it out of Barry’s balled up grip, and lets it fall straight again.
Then he drapes the parka around Barry’s shoulders.
Barry’s jaw drops, his breath stuttering. The tears overflow and fall down his cheeks, and fuck, Len can’t even look at him.
This really has to be the last indulgence. It’s already too much, he may as well be gorging himself on what should have been long abandoned fantasies. He grips the collar of the parka, tugging on it so it lays straight on Barry, brushing off the shoulders so that it lays flat. The coat is properly around his frame just in time for another gust of that cold wind to blow through, and Len takes the opening and shuts it with his hands, gripping all of his layers together to protect him from the wind. A couple of tears from Barry’s face drop like rain on the coat, and as far as Len’s concerned, it’s been baptized.
He wills himself to look at Barry’s eyes again, which have cleared now that he’s finally let himself cry a little. Len’s mouth quirks up, and Barry’s does too. The fur lining of the collar rubs against his cheeks, framing his face pretty, and Len finds that the parka suits him. Who would’ve thought?
Actually, Len used to think about it far too much. All the time. Used to fantasize about fisting all of Barry’s layers together in the grip of his hands just like this. Taking all those layers and using them to tug Barry forward with a hard pull and kiss him until he was out of air.
When he first started dreaming about it, it was always after a fight, and he’d wanted ferocious kisses. Feral, if he was being honest. Usually dreamt them up in the woods where Barry first sped him to talk. They’d end up on the ground, over branches and dirt, and they wouldn’t have given a damn. He thought about Barry’s electricity shocking him as he kissed his sternum, biting like a madman, wanting to feel the beat of Barry’s quick heart in his mouth, on his tongue. Barry’s hands would have tucked under his shirt, and he’d be too frantic to feel all the damage there, wouldn’t even notice the scars, too focused on his own pleasure, all cocksure and eager, and Len wouldn’t mind. Len wouldn’t mind at all. He would have let Barry have him any way he’d wanted, then. And he’d have taken Barry the same, if he’d have let him.
As time went on, though, and he softened up far too much, Len couldn’t stop his dreams from spooling beyond that lustful craving. They stopped being in the middle of the woods, no, the dreams were always somewhere quiet. A bedroom that was only lit up with lush warmth, if it was lit at all by anything but the spark of lightning in Barry’s eyes. He’d tip Barry back onto a bed covered in comforters and blankets, a nest of softness that was all Len’s imagination, all unreal like the rest of the fantasy was. All the adrenaline in their touch in those dreams was just from the anticipation of the other, not residual from a fight. He couldn’t ever picture Barry saying his name, but he could hear the reverence in his own voice when he said Barry’s. Sometimes it wouldn’t even be a dream about sex. Just touch, just admire, thumbs along his cheekbones, kisses along his long neck. Counting every freckle on his body until the light of the moon grayed and his skin was warmed to the glow of the sun, longer if need be. If it did delve into sex, he’d press the soft backs of Barry’s knees, push him into that sea of comfort, then kneel before him like he was in a church and take the time to worship him like a deity.
They always started with this, though. Gripping Barry in a clutch that’s too tight, like he’s about to run. And it’s that reminder that brings Len back.
This is not a fantasy. This is none of those things. This is a cold day in summer, on the porch of probably the ugliest safe house Len ever stayed in, and Barry knows none of this. He’s only wearing his parka because he is used to Len’s flirting, thinking it careless, maybe even a little callous, but willing to allow it one last time with just a raised eyebrow and a blush on his cheeks. The emotions are running high because Len is leaving and Barry is reeling from the loss of too many comforts. And Len only feels that guilt because he’s in this too deep.
And he has to fight to convince himself it’s not enough to change his mind.
Len leans in, close, inspecting. Barry’s eyelids flutter, but he’s watching, careful too. Their lips are brushing, not in a kiss, not quite, just feeling, just touching. They’re warm, electric, and soft, and Len can feel his hot breath coming out quick into Len’s mouth.
“It looks good,” he murmurs, every word, every quirk of his lips buzzing against Barry’s. Barry’s face is radiating heat, and his own heart feels like it’s about to make a transfer into Barry’s chest, and Len realizes he’s far too close.
This isn’t just indulging, not just scratching the itch. His breath hitches. Stops breathing entirely. Smooths his hands out flat on Barry’s shoulders, and he finally gains the wherewithal to push him away.
“Oh,” Barry sighs.
Barry’s got his fingers on Len’s wrists, Len didn’t even notice. Too caught up. Len pushes him back even more, till his spine is aligned with the wall of Len’s safehouse and Len may as well be pinning him. He pulls one hand away to reach into his pocket and grab the note he’d left for him that morning, haphazard and scrawled and meant to be the last remains of Captain Cold in Central City. He takes the note and tucks it into the inner lining of his parka, next to Barry’s heart. Too sentimental. The last time he can be.
Barry lets his warm fingertips drag against Len’s hammering pulse as he drops his other hand. The move startles something in Len, and he takes his hands off of him. Steps away.
“It’s yours,” he says.
Turns around and doesn’t look back. Won’t. Can’t. He’s leaving.
He’s leaving and Barry’s staying, their lives parallel from this point onward. And if Len’s going to follow through with it, if he’s going to stay the course —
Everything must go.