He's always been cold. Even when he was a baby, his mother used to have to bundle him up in warm, thick clothes. There were pictures, but most of them disappeared with time.
When he ran away, what little number of pictures he could scavenge he carried in an old ratty shoebox. He took them everywhere he went.
Most of those are of Lisa though, curled up with her mother instead of Len with his. He still has a few of them, ones he managed to save after an accidental fire and a wicked fight with Mick.
He remembers his old high school girlfriend Bridget, her long blonde hair knotted back in a messy braid. He remembers curling up with her in her bed, her startled yelps and smacks whenever he touched her with his cold feet and hands, the way she'd curl away from him because he was like ice.
He remembers that she was the first person to say he was cold when she saw the rash of bruises on his side and said his father did it. That's... You're so cold. God, Leo, blaming your dad because you got in some stupid fight?
She hadn't believed him. No one ever did.
He left home a week after that, carrying that box of pictures cradled in his left arm between his cast and his bruised ribs, a backpack on his shoulders.
Even now, he's always cold.
"You've got thin skin, kiddo," his aunt used to say, pinching his arm between her fingers. When he was a kid, he'd hated that. He missed it now.
Not the pinching, but the fact that someone cared enough to give his chilled skin a reasoning.
Thin skin.
His dad used to say that he was weak. That he was "no kid of mine" because he let the cold affect him so easily.
Len hated him.
Len could hardly remember liking him, let alone loving him.
He'd loved his mother though, until she left them. Until she walked out the door with blood on her face and never looked back.
Len had been safe when she was there. Sometimes he wonders if she left because she never expected Len would be hurt in her absence.
He wonders and remembers leaving Lisa behind, knowing she would take his place as he had taken his mother's.
He hates himself most days.
He hates the cold, too.
He's never been in love. He thinks he might have been close, once. With Bridget. But then she glared at him, said he was cold.
And it felt like a knife in his chest, a cold burn in his stomach.
He didn't really try to make anything last, after that.
The only relationship he cared to try and fix was between him and Lisa, and it had never been about that kind of love.
He wonders, over the years, if constantly being cold is what's kept him drawn to Mick. Mick, who likes fire and heat and burning.
His opposite, isn't it?
Cold and heat, ice and fire?
Len remembers a job he did in Minnesota, remembers having to sneak into someone's house at night to hide. He remembers a kid, probably nine or ten, watching her mom play a video game. He'd watched them for an hour, hidden just a few feet from them.
Later that week, after he parted ways from the crew he was with, he bought a copy of the game and played it for a week straight in one of his safe houses.
At the end of the game, he still wasn't sure why people liked being the hero, even after playing as one.
The heroes always lost more than they gained, didn't they?
Len likes the cold because no one looks at you strangely if you're in layers, if your skin is cold, if you bundle up.
He hates the cold because he's always cold. He's always cold.
If Len had a best friend, it would be Mick. Which isn't to say they are, because Len's not sure they're even friends at all sometimes. But they work well together, they almost always have.
Len doesn't date. Sometimes it's out of necessity-a job, a safe house, an overbearing sister.
But mostly it's because he's too cold.
Physically, emotionally.
Doesn't seem to matter.
No one stays with him in the end, no one ever comes back.
Except Lisa, except Mick.
But they're not that kind of relationship.
Neither of them ever could be.
Sometimes when he wants to stop thinking, when he wants to get warm and shut off the doubt and fear that creeps in with icy fingers, he finds a pretty girl, pretty guy and pays their presence in his bed. The sex is almost always fantastic and they never stay, but they never say he's cold.
Sometimes the rush of a job-the feeling of success and power and wealth-sometimes that's enough warmth to push away the cold.
Mostly, he's just cold all the time.
Thin skin.
Sometimes being cold is all he has.
The thing is, he's lived his life in the same patterns since the first time he stole something. Nothing ever changes. Lisa comes, Lisa goes. Mick comes, Mick goes. Others come, others go. Lisa and Mick always repeat the pattern of being his side and no one else does, and that's okay.
It's okay, because he's used to it. It makes sense.
And then the particle accelerator explodes, and things begin to change.
-x-
His entire world changes that night, though he doesn't know it then. At first, it doesn't directly affect him.
Why would it?
But then, months down the line, it does.
Because then there's the Flash.
There's the Flash, and fighting with him is like fighting with electricity, like crackling heat and the thrum of noise underneath.
Fighting with him is new and exciting, and different.
Even with the Cold Gun in his hands, Len's not sure he's ever felt warmer.
It's addicting.
It's addicting, the way the heat of it curls in his belly like a snake. The way his chest feels tight and heavy.
It's not that the physical cold that clings to him lessens, because it doesn't.
It's just, something about that lithe male body wrapped in skintight red-something about that voice and the way he speaks and yells, something about their give and take, about every punch and kick and shot-something about the Flash makes him feel alive.
Something about the Flash makes him forget that he's cold sometimes. Lets him forget.
The thrill of it doesn't lessen with time, only strengthens.
Learning the Flash's identity doesn't change that-if anything, Len thinks it makes it easier. He has a name and a face and he's real in a way that he wasn't before.
Len knows he's fucked up, a mess of issues and hang ups and even getting his record cleaned isn't going to change that.
And maybe he can play his choice to release the Flash's prisoners as a moral one, as incentive to have them on his side, can call it as if it's to be expected-he's a criminal, after all.
But he knows it's not all of it. It's not the whole truth of the matter, even though all of it is true.
A part of him is afraid, because when Barry Allen comes to him for help, puts that little bit of trust in him? Len finally recognizes that simmering heat for what it is.
Barry Allen, the scarlet speedster, the Flash? He's a hero.
And Len is a villain through and through, isn't he?
He's always been cold.
Heroes always lose more than they gain. The villain always knows that, uses it to his advantage.
Barry needs to know that Len can't be trusted.
Not with his enemies, and not... definitely not the kinds of things Len wants Barry to trust him with.
Len hates the cold, always has. Always will.
Author's Notes:
Most of this was written a few weeks ago, and had some beta-reading done by the ever lovely fandom-initiative over on tumblr.
And when I was thinking about what to do with the free day of Coldflash Week today, I thought I'd finish it up. I let the story lead me, and I hope you enjoyed it.
Please don't kill me for how it ends!
I feel like this piece hit its logical end. However! HOWEVER! It will definitely be continued, and Len will get his own version of a happy ending.
As will Barry, ;)