At last my road trip fic, a parody of the movie Planes, Trains, and Automobiles with ColdFlash.
The plan is to post a new chapter every week leading up to right before Thanksgiving Day. There are 5 chapters in total.
Thank you to ColdFlashTrash who first, long ago, requested a road trip - and several anons as well.
Len hated Metropolis. Just a poor imitation of his home town, Central City, but with a glitz and glam that seemed fake, forced, and far too…chipper. You'd think it had tried to adopt a small town charm or something, with all the charisma of a talented sociopath.
At least it wasn't Gotham.
But Len had business in Metropolis mere days before the holidays, and couldn't get out of it. He was head of marketing for Rogues Inc., not because he enjoyed the political bullshit of board meetings and getting some pompous CEO to buy into his ideas, but because he excelled at coming up with the plan—the point by point makeup of the perfect campaign to end campaigns to make a product sell. Most of which he could do from the safety of his own office, and let the grunts handle the presentations. Len excelled at presentations too, however, and often got called in to make the final sale.
He'd done his job today, leading in to a full fourteen-day vacation that he had more than earned, but he was late. He'd timed his departure from downtown Metropolis to the second, ensuring he would have ample time to catch his flight without rushing, something he despised, only for the CEO of the week, Lex Luthor, to pour over his mock-ups an extra thirty-eight minutes longer than predicted, ruining Len's entire plan for catching the 6 o'clock flight home.
He stood now on the street, in the middle of rush hour traffic, right before the biggest holiday travel weekend of the year, trying to hail a cab. He checked his watch for the seventh time since hitting the street and cursed his bad luck.
Lisa was going to be pissed. His sister had berated him already for agreeing to a last minute trip before the holidays. He'd been MIA for too long lately, and since he and his sister were the only family either had left, besides Lisa's still fairly new husband and the budding life inside her from her newly announced pregnancy, he didn't dare disappoint her.
He'd never considered children for himself. He wasn't openly gay at work—his line of business wasn't always kind to that sort of boldness—but he was hardly closeted. His coworkers knew him as happily single. His closest friends and family knew him as unlucky in love, and no, not very happy about that, but not looking to do much about it either. But he'd be lying if he said he wasn't ecstatic about becoming an uncle. His brother-in-law, Cisco, was a little young, a little yappy, a little too flailing around him as if afraid Len would pull a shotgun at some point, but he made Lisa happy, and that's all that mattered.
Len could not miss this flight.
He loosened his lucky navy tie with light blue polka dots, matched perfectly to his slate blue button down, and dark grey checkered blazer and black overcoat. He looked like a million bucks but felt like forty-nine cents—Lisa loved that line. Their grandfather had made a point to say it at least once a week when they were kids.
"You can look like a million bucks, but if you feel like forty-nine cents, something in your life needs fixing."
Something needed fixing all right. Len couldn't get a fucking cab.
Finally, he spotted one parked about half a block up, but just as he reached for his suitcase and messenger bag to make a break for it, he noticed another man across the street spot it at the same time. The man was tall, well dressed, with black thick-framed glasses and a trilby perched on his head. He cast Len a gentlemanly smile as he took off down the street ahead of him. Shit.
Len worked out regularly for a reason—to beat out the other 9-5 schlubs for the last cab.
He darted around men and women in suits, families, older people shuffling more slowly, all like an expert at weaving through crowds, because he was. Metropolis had nothing on downtown Central City.
The cab was on the other man's side of the street, but as they neared it, Glasses hit a wall of luggage coming out of a nearby hotel, and Len took the lead. He grinned in triumph, making to cross the street and claim his prize…only to trip on the curb like some impossible fool and fall flat on his face on the concrete.
Glasses made it around the luggage, but Len still had a chance. He launched back onto his feet, checked the street, dodged cars with the same grace and precision he'd dodged people, and made it to the cab at the exact same moment as Glasses.
Len sized the man up, realizing just how tall Mr. Perfectly Poised, Small Town Grin and Congenial Tip of His Hat, was, and spat out, "You're not getting this cab, Smallville," thinking only of the man's countenance, but wondering if he'd guessed correctly by the way Glasses pouted.
Glasses tipped his hat again. "Apologies. Seems you're not getting it either."
Len whipped back around toward the cab. He'd made it to the door just parallel with Glasses, or so he'd thought. But while the cab had paused to accept whichever patron caught it first, it didn't discriminate against who slipped inside to claim the offered seat.
A young man had snuck in around Len and Glasses and taken the cab for himself, smiling widely as he closed the door behind him and told the driver his destination.
As Len stood there and gaped at being ousted from his win for the last cab he was likely to get, the kid looked up just before the cab took off, and Len caught sight of gleaming hazel eyes, floofed brunette hair, and a dimpled grin that he wasn't sure was mocking him or just honestly oblivious at what had transpired.
Len stood for a solid forty-five seconds on the sidewalk, Glasses long gone, watching Dimples get away with his cab, before he realized he was not going to catch his flight.
As it turned out, no one was catching the 6 o'clock flight to Central City. The flight had been delayed, and Len catching a cab several minutes later made no difference other than to annoy him and set his already frazzled nerves on fire.
He sat with everyone else waiting for the flight to board, with time to kill. He sat…and five minutes after settling and talking to Lisa on his cell phone to let her know that he might be an hour or two late, slid his phone back into his pocket to see a young man take the seat across from him.
A young man with gleaming hazel eyes, floofed brunette hair, and a dimpled grin.
Len now noticed the slightly wrinkled button down, with a shapeless V-neck sweater over jeans, and a battered, seen-better-days dark grey overcoat that might have been black once.
The dimples deepened in the kid's cheeks as he focused on Len. "Sorry, but…do I know you? I'm usually good with faces. You look so familiar."
Len folded his hands in his lap, stared the kid down with his best supervillain smile, as Cisco called it, and said, "You stole my cab."
"I…" The kid's smile vanished. "Seriously? I've never stolen anything in my life! Wait…" There it was—the spark of recognition, if Len was to believe his naivety. "Oh my god, on the street! You were going for that cab too? I would have shared it! I had no idea!"
Considering Dimples sounded more genuine than even Smallville had looked, Len figured he could let his ire slough off. They were in the same boat, after all, and the kid had a very alluring curve to his jaw—an alluring everything. Just Len's type, Lisa would have pointed out if she were there, not that Len wanted to get distracted. He just wanted to get home.
Len waved a dismissive hand. "Think nothing of it, kid. Flight's delayed, so you're off the hook. You from Central too?"
"Yep!" Dimples instantly perked up. "Just going home for the holidays."
"Same here. Hate to miss time with family."
"Yeah… Wife and kids?"
"Sister and her husband. Baby on the way. Some close friends will be over too."
"Nice." Dimples had such an easy smile, it actually comforted Len, shaking loose the tension that had gripped his shoulders from being behind schedule.
"College kid?" he asked, relaxing into his seat.
"Oh no, not for a few years now. I just travel for my blog and freelancing."
"Travel writer?"
A bit of bashfulness entered Dimples's expression. "Umm…more like conspiracy theories? UFO sightings. Hauntings. Strange occurrences, things like that."
Interesting. Not Len's boat, but to each their own. "How'd you get into that line of work?"
"Oh, just…always been interested since I was a kid, explaining the unexplainable. What about you?"
"Marketing. Not nearly as exciting."
Dimples laughed. "I doubt that."
"Have to pick on you a bit though, coz you know what they say—Occam's razor. The more assumptions you have to make, the more unlikely an explanation is."
The kid smiled wider at that as if he'd fielded the same argument many times before. "And you know what they also say—if you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the solution." His eyes positively sparkled as he quoted Sherlock Holmes—or maybe Spock. Given what Len had learned of Dimples so far, probably Spock. "I'm Barry, by the way. Barry Allen." He leaned across the aisle to shake Len's hand.
Len accepted it, startled by the slight shock of static electricity that passed between them, but then it was getting colder and drier outside these days with the holidays looming. "Len Snart. Pleasure to meet you, Barry."
TBC...
The other chapters are all at least twice as long as this semi-prologue, FYI, but still a shorter fic.