Written for the coldflashweek2016 prompt 'Domestic life'. Assumes that there's quite a few years between when Len and Barry first meet and when Len joins the Waverider.
Warning for angst and depression.
"Lisa! Lisa Snart, get back here!"
Barry leaps the banister, landing squarely in front of her, but without hesitation, she turns on her heel, tossing her long, brown hair over her shoulder and making a beeline for the kitchen. Standing in the living room, watching the whole scene go down, Len laughs.
"That's it, Lisa," he says, of no help whatsoever. "Keep it up. You'll tire him out eventually."
Technically, Barry has never met anyone who could tire him out. Kind of a consequence of having super speed fused into your DNA. Even Len couldn't manage to make Barry sweat, and he tried. Oh God, did he try.
Their week long honeymoon in Vail didn't make a dent in Barry's stamina, even though Len came back with three pulled ligaments and a dislocated shoulder. Mick would say that that's what happens when you marry a man twenty years your junior, but in Len's defense, not single man or woman he's slept with before Barry could even make Len breathe heavy.
But if anyone could succeed where Len failed, it would definitely be Lisa.
"Lisa! LISA!" Barry races through the living room, trying to catch up to the little girl, who's completely naked and dripping wet from her bath. She's only three-years-old and, biologically, Len's (with the help of a surrogate), but somehow she's managing to outmaneuver the fastest man alive. "Lisa Nora Allen Snart! You get your tush back here right now!"
"Face it. You're never gonna catch her, Red." Len shakes his head when an elfish but maniacal giggle echoes from the kitchen. "She's too slippery … even for you."
Len doesn't follow the pair of them to see what happens next, but he hears another giggle, a manly yelp, a chair fall over, and the sound of a dish crashing to the floor, shattering to pieces. Len crosses his arms, tsking disapproval.
"Barry, Barry, Barry. You let the plate break? You're losing your touch."
Len watches Barry come back around the corner, carrying their precocious little girl in his arms, suspiciously calm considering the chase she just took her father on. Barry must think so, too, because he stops in front of Len and takes a look at their quiet girl.
But only quiet because she's munching on a tree-shaped Christmas cookie. Barry's eyes go so wide, they nearly explode.
"What the …? You stole a … how did you steal a cookie?" Barry groans. "Jesus Christ! You really are Len's daughter, aren't you? Well, you're my daughter, too, and you can't have cookies before dinner. If your grandmother were alive, she'd kill me. Give it here, Lisa. Give it …" Barry reaches for the cookie, trying to snatch it out of Lisa's hand before she can devour the rest of it, but with her face mostly covered in bright green frosting, he's sure his battle is already lost. He could just put on a burst of speed and grab it, but he makes it a point not to use the Speed Force when dealing with Lisa. After all of the collateral damage he's left behind in past years (busted windows, clothing on fire, even shredded asphalt), he doesn't want to accidentally hurt her … something Len's joshed him about dozens of times.
"Oh sure," Len would say. "You don't have a problem zipping me around town at Mach 10, the pressure doing God knows what to my body, but you can't snatch back a cookie?"
"That's right," Barry would answer.
"And why's that?"
"Because I only started loving you a few years ago. I've loved her all her life."
"Come on, Lisa," Barry mumbles as Lisa swivels left and right, keeping her prize away from her father's one-handed grasp. "Be a good girl and give Daddy a break."
"Oh, you're not going to be a scrooge about one little cookie, are you Bare? It's Christmas."
"Nu-uh. Nu-uh," Lisa whines around a mouthful of tree, curling herself over it and clutching it close to her chest while she continues to nibble in secret. Barry watches Lisa chew her cookie, sniffling to herself between swallows. Those sniffles - her little, sharp, heartbroken breaths - change Barry's tone, and the two of them, alone in the living room, stand somber and silent.
Barry takes a deep breath, and lets it go.
"I guess … your dad would let you have it. He'd find some way to sneak it to you while I wasn't looking, or … or bring it up to your bedroom after I tucked you in." Barry hugs Lisa, resting a cheek on her damp, honey-scented hair. "So, go ahead, sweetheart. That one's from your Dad."
Len watches Barry nuzzle the top of Lisa's head, kissing her hair as she whimpers against his chest. He reaches out a hand and puts a palm to Barry's cheek, carefully since moving a hair too far would cause Len's hand to move through Barry's skull.
Barry can't see Len, can't feel him, but for some reason, Len touching him usually unnerves him. He'll look around, call out, "Is anybody there?" even though he doesn't know who would be. He's even had Cisco over to the place, hoping that he might sense something using his Vibe powers, but he never has.
Barry and Lisa have been living alone for the past eight months, but Barry gets the feeling, no matter how implausible, that they're not actually alone. But with all of the meta-humans he's faced, the timelines he's jumped, he assumes it's residual paranoia from something he's already faced. More than anything, Barry fears it's a time wraith lying in wait.
He's never thought, not once, that it might be Len. As far as Barry's concerned, Len's dead and gone. According to the crew of the Waverider, there's no way they could see Len surviving that blast. Barry even confronted Gideon to confirm it, watched recordings of the explosion, which haunted him for weeks.
They still haunt him.
Eight months is a long time without your husband, your lover, your best friend in the world.
It's a long time spent mourning a man who's not dead.
With all of the technology Team Flash has holed up at S.T.A.R. Labs, Len would think one of them would figure this out. He doesn't know how for sure. Len can't figure out a way to communicate with Barry, so that sure as hell puts a damper on things. But his husband's a super hero, most of his friends are meta-humans, aliens, vigilantes, or just plain geniuses. Not a one of them got to thinking, "Hey, what if Len isn't dead?"
Or maybe they didn't think it because he didn't really mean anything to any of them - not his crew, not even his best friend Mick.
But that's the frustration talking. Len doesn't blame Barry, or any of them, for thinking he's dead. Len thought he was dead. He thought for sure he was dead. It didn't take too long for him to realize he isn't. Wherever he is, he's seen the dead, and he knows for a fact that he's not one of them.
The messed up part about that is Len's discovered the dead can make themselves visible to the living if they want to. But as they move on to their next spiritual plane, very few feel the need. That desire to be known disappears when they leave their bodies, and their fear of death, behind; their only concern after death, moving to the afterlife.
Len doesn't know how he got this way. The last memory he has is of exploding with the Oculus – the shock, the pain, the sensation, however short it lasted, of being torn apart molecule by molecule. Then he opened eyes that shouldn't exist, and he was here, back home. At first he thought it was a hallucination, the last few years of his life rewinding in the seconds before the end, showing him the things he would miss. But when he didn't dissolve or fade to black, he began to think, for a second, that maybe he didn't die, and this was a nightmare, his brain tormenting him while he was stuck in a coma, healing, but still alive.
He hasn't narrowed down anything yet, but whatever this is, however he got here, he's in hell.
Barry doesn't move from his spot, swaying back and forth with Lisa in his arms. Maybe he can't move forward because Len is there, that unnerving sensation of another entity somewhere in the house locking him in place. Or maybe he just doesn't want to.
"Merry Christmas, Len," he whispers underneath his breath so Lisa won't hear, a tear rolling down his face and landing in her drying hair. "We miss you … so much."
Len sighs. The worst part about this is seeing Barry this way. It's been eight months, but it doesn't seem to be getting any easier for him. Because the man has no coping mechanisms to speak of. After all of the death he's faced, after all the things that have been taken away, even with the most important thing in his life sitting right in his arms, he has no hope. And Len's right there. Right fucking there. He could touch Barry if he had a body. He could make Barry see him if he was dead. But he's somewhere in between, and in between is starting to suck.
If he doesn't find his way out of there, one way or the other, he has no hope of being reunited with his husband or his child ever again.