It's been six years. They stopped looking for a way home nearly two years ago, tired and hungry as they were.
Starling City was, is so radically different in these days, and Barry knows that everything will begin to change again in just a few weeks... when Oliver is rescued from his island prison.
He's started preparing for him, they both have. It was Len's idea, when Barry admitted their secret home would be usurped by the future Green Arrow.
Build him up with that they knew was to come.
Barry makes a green leather suit that vaguely resembles Oliver's first one, but it's Len who wears it in those weeks before Oliver's return.
Len's the better shot, after all.
But they don't kill anyone, even though Barry is sorely tempted when they come across the man attacking his underage daughter.
He deliberately doesn't look the man up in the papers after that. He doesn't want to know if Len went back. Len doesn't bring it up.
Barry isn't the same person he was back before the accident, before he and Len woke up in 2005 with no one except each other.
He isn't the same optimistic kid he was when he first became the Flash, not even the same person he was after everything with Wells-Eobard-came to an end.
He doesn't think Len is the same person either.
But for what it matters, if Len fell back to parts of who he was before where that bastard who attacked his daughter is concerned, Barry wouldn't let it change who they are now. Together.
He won't let it.
It's been a long six years, and it's not over yet.
-x-
When it first happened, they'd been in the middle of a fight. Not against each other, which would have been the usual, but alongside each other.
It had been against a metahuman with a terrifying strength and a terrible desire to see Captain Cold and the Golden Glider dead.
He nearly succeeded in killing Lisa, which was why Len had come to Barry for help.
Beyond that, the details were vague. They both knew who the metahuman was, but taking him out before he attacked them wasn't something they could manage.
He was protected from within the bars of Iron Heights... and Barry was afraid of what might happen if they attempted to stop him before the accident.
And Len trusted him now.
Six years was a long time, after all.
-x-
Making the decision not to continue searching for a way back home had been a hard one, nearly as hard as the decision to hide away in Starling City instead of Central City. They'd argued about it for weeks, and for one long night Len had walked away.
It was the first night they'd been separated since the beginning. They'd tried to find their own ways at first, back then. But ultimately they didn't have anyone else anymore.
And with Len's developing powers and Barry's need for companionship, they'd come together in an only somewhat reluctant alliance.
They'd spent nearly four years together at that point, four years spent sleeping next to each other on a threadbare mattress because they couldn't afford to bring attention to themselves. Four years spent with the only person they could depend on.
When Len came back in the morning, Barry had kissed him. He apologized for not listening to him-because ultimately Len had been right. Four years they'd been trying to find a way home, but they couldn't keep living like that. That... wasn't really living.
So Barry had kissed him for the very first time and they'd agreed to stop trying to find a way home, and everything settled after that.
Except, now there was more kisses and their bedtime routine was radically different.
But it was different in a good way.
-x-
The night they introduce themselves to Oliver Queen happens on accident. They'd only lived in the new place for a few weeks (after several years living in the basement of the old factory) and Barry was tired after a long shift at the diner. Len was half asleep as they stumbled inside together and Oliver Queen was pointing a terrifying looking bow at them.
Barry blurted out that his name was Bart, because it wouldn't be long before his younger self would be introducing himself to Oliver and that was going to be a mess regardless.
Of course, they'd had to promise Oliver they wouldn't tell anyone what they saw. Barry was pretty sure this Oliver was one minute away from just killing them, which did little to calm his panic.
They left Starling City not long after that.
Barry had meant to come back just before the Undertaking, but he'd panicked when they ran across Lisa Snart in Coast City. He and Len went to ground in Central City, holed up in a safehouse Len promised no one had accessed in the time they'd have to stay there.
They spent their days holed up together for those last few months (was it really years?), only leaving at night to make enough money to live off. Barry had to go completely to ground when the particle accelerator blew, the risk of someone recognizing him while he was in a coma too high.
Barry never asked Len how he got money for them during those long nine months. And Len never said.
Eventually, they were approaching the time when they could step back into their lives as if they'd never left.
Len didn't say it, but Barry knew they were both afraid to. It had been nearly ten years since they'd woken up in the past. Nearly six since they started dating, nearly three since Barry said he'd marry him once they had their lives back.
But for everyone else? They'd be strangers, wouldn't they? Because Team Coldflash had always been a temporary thing, had only occurred one other time and Captain Cold had betrayed them then.
The idea that they would want to get married wouldn't make sense to anyone who knew them then, and how could they explain?
Was it even possible to?
But then Barry remembers every hard fought battle they'd had alongside each other over those ten long years, every fight they'd had to cover up over the years so their secrets wouldn't come out before they were ready.
He remembers how the fight against Len's father-suped up with meta-human abilities as he was-had been the catalyst for those years spent separated from everyone else they loved, and the catalyst for Len's spark of power as well.
If they couldn't tell by how much older they looked, how different they carried themselves, then surely they'd be able to tell by how much stronger their powers were, the fact that Len's existed at all.
So they storm the warehouse where Captain Cold and the Flash are fighting Len's father, minutes after Mick Rory calls Cisco and Caitlin for help when they disappear.
They fight with the ease of two people who spent a decade training together and bring Snart to his knees.
Mick, who Barry feels like he knows after a decade of stories, is the one who lands the final blow.
"What, no screaming because I killed him?" Mick asks him a few minutes later, and Barry can see it in the man's face when he realizes he's not seeing the same Flash who had been there minutes before.
The suit, for one, is a little worn down now. But it's the eyes, Barry knows, that tell the story.
"Don't make a habit of it." It's all Barry can manage then, because it hits him.
It hits him that this is real.
And he's no less scared than he was before.
Cisco and Caitlin come in just in time to see Barry throwing up on the broken concrete, Len's hand rubbing circles on his back. He can hear them talking, confused, with Mick.
But Barry can't talk, can't make himself explain.
"Everything's gonna be just fine, Bare. We're home now," Len says, and the sudden silence tells Barry that they can hear him too.
But maybe that's okay.
Author's Notes:
I didn't edit this at all. Also, it's been a long day so forgive me. I JUST REALLY WANTED SOMETHING POSTED FOR DAY ONE of Coldflash Week. (I posted it on AO3 last night!)
I may rewrite this in the future, get more out of it.
Also, my headcanon is that they accidentally introduce themselves to Oliver as Bart Snart and Len Allen. For no reason but the lolz.