"Well, that was a bust." Sara sighs as she lets herself into the hotel room, kicking off her heels and crossing to drop her handbag on the desk. "Ray, tell me we're going to get another go at that."
"You'll get another go at that," the inventor confirms through her comm. "Well, you will if you stick around another day. There's another event in the lounge tomorrow, and it's probably even a better bet than tonight's was. McRae will be a little desperate to move those plans by then. He'll bite."
"Good." Sara flicks a glance at Leonard, who's followed her into the room, hands clasped behind his back and still looking too chill for words in his black tux. "Got that?"
There'd have been a day when she'd have thought getting stuck overnight at a swanky resort, in a honeymoon suite no less, with Leonard Snart just might have led to some interesting...extracurricular activities. But since they'd pulled him from the time stream, clued in by his Earth-X doppelgänger's odd reactions whenever they'd made a time jump, he's been...reserved. Almost...chilly.
And now she's making cold puns in her own head. Sara sighs internally as Leonard nods, turning to inspect the room again like he's casing the place. "Got it." He shrugs. "For what it's worth, I think Raymond's right. He knows we're his only option at this point. He just needs a little more time to resign himself to it."
"Humph." Sara starts to say something about indecisive men, then thinks better of it. "Well, I want room service and a good night's sleep. We'll take care of him tomorrow. One way or another." She'd rather not steal the plans—there's more potential to mess up the timeline that way-but if they have to, they have to.
That's why Leonard's here with her instead of one of the others. Not because she'd hoped it would lead to anything. Honest.
"OK." Ray sounds pensive. "I'm, uh, going to head back to the ship, see how Zari and Mick are doing with the other part of the plan, OK? Be in touch in the morning?"
"Right." Ray had been in Atom mode, waiting for them to pass the plans to him, but there's no need at the moment. Sighing, she shuts off the comm, then goes to the window, staring out at the shoreline. It's a gorgeous view. Very...romantic.
Sara closes her eyes. If it was any of the others she was stuck with here, she'd be completely unperturbed about this, even with the challenge of playing a couple out in public—and the added fillip of the hotel giving them the honeymoon suite. They're family, a collection of dysfunctional siblings (OK, so sometimes she feels like mom these days), and anything else is play-acting.
But it's Leonard she's here with, and that old attraction is still there, a constant electricity. And that desperate kiss at the Oculus and the whole "me and you" thing are still hanging over them.
Or, at least, they're hanging over her. Apparently he's thought better of it. She should, too.
Why can't she?
She can hear Leonard moving through the room, but stays where she is, trying to decide how best to keep this from getting unbelievably awkward. Just play it like he's...Ray...she decides. A friend as well as a teammate, but not someone she'd ever consider a romantic partner.
Not someone whose kiss she can still taste on her lips, whose voice haunted her dreams after he was gone, whose presence on the ship since his return has been a constant background buzz under her skin…
She can hear him walking up behind her, close enough to touch, close enough to smell his faint scent of mint and leather and feel his warmth raising the hairs on the back of her neck. She takes a deep breath, ready to turn and ask, businesslike, if he wants to get something to eat.
And then his hands settle on her hips, stroking briefly over the silk of her dress, warm and strong.
Sara sucks in a breath, a not-unpleasant shock running through her at his touch.
"There's trouble. Don't hit me," he says in a very low tone, voice playful in a way that belies the words he's saying. "Please. And no knives."
Sara takes another breath, wondering what the hell is happening. "OK…." she says slowly, closing her eyes. "No knives. What?"
Leonard leans forward, mouth at her left ear. She can't help leaning back into him as his lips brush the edge.
But his words put a chill into her.
"There's a camera up in the corner. Actually, I've counted about three of them. The light went green about 30 seconds ago." He pauses. "We're being recorded."
Sara tries, desperately, not to show any reaction. Including disappointment.
"The hell?" she breathes. "McRae?"
"Maybe. He's buddies with the manager; that's why the meeting was here." He steps just slightly closer, actually…nuzzling? Yeah, nuzzling… her ear and neck. "Or maybe someone's just a voyeur. They're pretty well hidden; I just know security systems."
She knows it's not real, but the contact is rather intoxicating. It may, perhaps, have been far too long since someone touched her like this. "Ah," she breathes. "That's why."
"Well." Leonard pauses. "Why what?"
But she's damned well not going to admit what.
Their personas are married. At the site for a long-awaited vacation after being apart for a while, or so they'd said. It's why the manager had decided to give them the suite…or why he'd said he was giving them the suite. Maybe he'd just wanted a show. Or maybe he'd suspected. Maybe that's why McRae hadn't sold them the plans tonight, despite their more-than-generous offer. He wants to make sure they're who they say they are, more or less.
Sara, trying to think fast and getting bogged down in the continuing feel of warm breath on her neck, shakes her head.
"I could decide…I need a shower," she whispers, tilting her head back. A cold one. A very cold one.
But she can feel the small shake of his head. No. She tilts her head back more, turning it and catching his eye.
Leonard's eyes are dark, considering. Sara licks her lips, watching him. Those are not the eyes of a man who's…unaffected by this situation. He gives her a very familiar smirk—one she's seriously missed-then leans forward again to brush his lips along her jawline, drawing a gasp she can't quite stifle.
"One in there too," he breathes into her ear. "Sorry."
"Of course there is," Sara mutters, trying to keep herself from moving against him. His hands tighten on her hips and, for just a moment, she decides she doesn't care about video cameras or missions or plans…
No. No. Down, girl.
She lifts a hand instead, pretending to brush her hair back, and taps her comm.
"Ray?" she whispers. "Are you there?"
There's a long moment, in which Leonard carefully, so carefully, starts to kiss the spot behind the hinge of her jaw. Sara closes her eyes, briefly lost in the feeling, and when Ray's voice finally echoes in her ear, it's like a splash of cold water.
"I'm here. Sara? Is something wrong?"
"Um." She curses the husky sound of her voice and lowers her tone until she's barely breathing the words. "Snart says there are cameras in here and they're recording. Might be someone wanting a peepshow, might be someone suspecting something. Can you…?"
"If I can get into the setup, I can try to disable it without anyone knowing. At the moment, anyway." Ray's voice is concerned. "It'll take me a while to get back there, even flying, and then I'll have to find their equipment. Will you…be OK?"
"We'll be fine," she says quickly, cutting him off. "Just get here." She might not mind the activities—although the fact that they're not real burns a little—and she doesn't even particularly mind being watched, but that doesn't mean Leonard feels the same way. Or that she wants whomever to get away with this.
"I will!"
Sara taps off the comm again, then gasps as Leonard moves his mouth down to her collarbone. His teeth scrape against it briefly, gently, and the jolt of desire is strong as she sways in his arms. (When had he put his arms around her?)
He's only doing this because of the act, she tells herself. He's had more than a month to steal a kiss, but he's been keeping his distance. Treating her with a distant respect. (Leonard! Respect!) And while she can't be angry that he's changed his mind, she is a little disappointed, and she'd think that at least he could say why…
She pulls herself out of his loose grasp, spinning away, smiling mischievously at him, and feeling just a little smug as he blinks at her, arms dropping back to his sides.
"Ah, now you want to get all frisky," she purrs, perching on the end of the bed and leaning back a little to watch him. "When you weren't interested at all before. I'm not sure how to feel about that."
Leonard doesn't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that this isn't fully about their current situation. And he's starting to realize that he just may have misplayed things badly…but, in his defense, it's been an extremely weird handful of weeks.
It felt like a few minutes to him, but it's been well over a year for the team. The professor, Hunter, and the kid are gone, all in different ways. Nate and Amaya openly distrust him. Zari has no earthly clue who he is.
Mick had been glad to see him (once he'd been satisfied it was the right one of him—and that's unnerving, too), but that dynamic has changed. Mick doesn't need his "Boss" anymore. He has a team and a captain.
And Sara…Sara is that captain. She's not the rebel he'd played cards with for hours, the assassin he'd talked down in Russia, the woman he'd broached the subject of "me and you" with. She's changed, the confidence he'd always admired even stronger, her place on this ship strong and assured.
He feels, in so many ways, like he's been left behind.
So, he did what he always does, when uncertain and unsure. He'd retreated to the ice, to the cold, confident persona Sara and the team had once managed to chip through. And everyone had let him. None of them had even seemed to notice anything different.
Not even Sara.
So, while he'd thought about stealing that kiss every damn day—the memory of the one at the Oculus still very fresh in his mind—he'd hung back. Just like in Russia, that's not her anymore. And if she has any interest at all, she'll let him know.
This mission has been a fresh kind of torture. Playing the happy couple all day, walking about arm in arm, then getting stuck here all night with that damned big bed right in front of them. But he's a grown-up, and he doesn't go where he's not invited—at least, not in this respect. Sara, for her part, had been completely professional, and a consummate actress. No more.
But he's pretty sure she hadn't been acting when he'd pulled her close to whisper his discovery of the cameras. She'd had no reason to be. And the way she'd reacted to that touch, the sounds she'd made…
It's possible, Leonard acknowledges, that he may have been a complete idiot.
"Well," he drawls, moving closer as he shrugs off his jacket, draping it across the back of a chair. "Seemed like you were…sorta busy." They'd both been distracted by the need to get ready to go to the fundraiser earlier when they'd first arrived at the room.
Sara tilts her head, studying him as he starts to take off his tie. "Mmm. Not that busy," she informs him, in a tone that makes it perfectly clear, to him anyway, that earlier in this day isn't all she's talking about. "I'd…missed you." A shadow crosses her face. "And you didn't seem like…you cared much. Not anymore."
Hey, now, that's a bit unfair. Stung, Leonard stares at her a moment, then drops his tie onto the jacket. "I never stopped…" he starts, then pauses, the need to set this straight warring with innate self-preservation. Is this what he thinks it is?
Sara watches him, her expression as noncommittal as ever his own "Cold" poker face was. After a moment, he can see her try to make it more sultry, more befitting a woman who's in a honeymoon suite with an adoring if long-absent lover. She reclines back onto the bed a little, watching him, the blue silk of her dress sliding over every curve as she stretches, then settles back onto the pillows.
Yeeaaahhh, that's not helping his chill much. Leonard licks his lips, watching her, then sits down to pull off his shoes. Sara notices the motion, and a smirk crosses her face.
"You never stopped what?" she whispers.
Leonard takes a deep breath, then reclines himself, stretching out besides her, close enough to touch. But he doesn't. Instead, he studies her expression, trying to read the look in her eyes.
There's something wounded, and he's starting to realize that maybe he'd done that, however unintentionally. But there's…yes. Desire there, an echo to his own, however well hidden it's been.
He takes another breath, then tries to let her see, in his own expression, some of his own feelings. That's not something he's good at. Frankly, he's rotten at it—too many years behind the ice. But this is too important to mess up again.
"Things are different now," he says, choosing his words carefully. "I wasn't sure. Didn't want to go where I wasn't wanted." Sara starts to protest, but he reaches out and lays a finger across her lips, moving just a little closer, shivering a little at the contact. She glares at him for his temerity, but her lips twitch, too. And then she reaches out and grabs the front of his shirt, pulling him closer, so close that their bodies are touching, just brushing in parts, but the electricity between them is undeniable.
"You're wanted," she whispers, voice rough, moving her hands to curve around his waist, resting on his hips as he pulls his hand back. "What gave you the idea that you weren't?"
Yeah, he has, apparently, misread everything.
Leonard's eyes are dark as he stares at her, and Sara, feeling just a little giddy, pulls his hips just a little closer to hers as they lie there together, molding her body to his, feeling just how affected he is by their closeness and the situation.
They're both perilously close to forgetting what else is going on here, and she's going to admit that she finds that just a little exciting. Leonard might have more qualms, but he's obviously a little caught up in the moment too, from the ragged way he's breathing and the way he's looking at her. And other…details. Smirking, she tugs him even closer, getting his dress shirt loose from his pants and running her hands up underneath it.
Leonard catches her wrists as she does that, and Sara pauses, coming back to herself and biting her lip.
"I'm sorry," she whispers. "Is this…OK?"
He nods, still holding her wrists and looking at her with that intense expression. And then, with only a brief tensing of muscles to warn her, he pulls her on top of him, shifting to sit a little more upright even as he does so.
Sara laughs, taken by surprise, and, pulling her wrists away, places her hands on his chest to right herself. The skirt of her dress is rucked up around her waist as she straddles him, making things very interesting indeed, but they're not showing the cameras anything overt in terms of skin.
And-she shifts a little, smirking again-and they can get rather a lot of mileage out of this situation before they would have to do so.
Leonard smirks back, but there's a shadow in his eyes, too. His hands move to her hips again, holding her steady, and he leans toward her.
"Oh, I don't know," he breathes into her ear. "Maybe because everyone seemed to like my…twin brother…better?"
She nearly laughs at his words—way to give any watcher some real soap-opera drama to focus on, if they can hear—but while his tone is light, she thinks there's some faint truth to the words. Leo had been—still is, he's just back on Earth-X with his Ray now—so very open and affable. He'd gotten along with everyone, from Barry to Oliver, and even approached his cynical Earth-1 original with understanding edged with a faint bemusement. The team…of whom there were so very few original members left…had little reason to prefer the guarded snarkiness of the man they'd pulled from the timestream to his doppelganger's helpful friendliness.
"Not everyone," she tells him, lifting her hands to put one along his jaw, the other on his shoulder, and leaning forward so she can keep her voice nearly inaudible. "He has his moments, but he's not you." She smiles a little. "He's been through a lot of shit, but he stayed…light, I guess…somehow. He has a cause. And he's madly in love with his boyfriend. I suppose that helps."
Leonard regards her a moment, eyes skeptical. "You know, that's not really a…convincing argument against my comment."
She supposes it doesn't seem to be. "He's not you," she repeats, looking into his eyes, running her fingers down the stubble on his jaw. "And he's not a hell of a thief."
Leonard hadn't meant to bring up his Earth-X double. Maybe it'd stung more than he'd thought, how they'd all given him up for dead but welcomed the other Snart into the fold. How so many of the members of the current team looked at him out of the corners of their eyes but spoke of "Leo" with fondness and respect.
Maybe it'd kept him from seeing that some of them—Sara and Mick, and Raymond, if he's being honest—still saw him, all along.
"Hell of a thief?" he asks cautiously, looking into her eyes, desire-darkened and still fixed on his, tightening his hands on her hips. "After all this time, is there still a chance for me…"
"…and you?" Sara whispers roughly, leaning forward. "God, I hope so."
It probably doesn't count as stealing a kiss, given that they're already in a very compromising position and she's leaning in even as he does. But it's amazing anyway, as Sara moves both her hands around the back of his neck and pulls him even closer, making a faint noise that sounds both encouraging and abandoned. He loses his head, a little, at that sound, pulling her against him even harder, moving his hips up against her in a way that makes them both gasp.
He's completely forgotten about the cameras.
So has Sara.
She pulls Leonard closer, trying to make up for all that lost time, trying to taste, to devour, to lose herself in him, his touch and the wonder of having him back, after all this time. Him, not that past travesty of him, not Leo, sweet as he can be. She doesn't want sweet. She wants her snarky, sarcastic, damaged, heroic crook.
And she has him. Finally, finally, she has him.
She feels a bit intoxicated, actually, even though she'd only had one glass of champagne at the fundraiser. Part of it's their activities. Part of it's that they've finally gotten there, finally addressed it, finally…
"Oh, hell."
"Huh?" Leonard, his pupils totally shot, pulls back a moment, blinking at her. "Problem?"
"Damnit," she just mutters, sagging against him, reaching for her comm, trying to conceal the gesture.
"…Sara. I'm really trying not to watch…or listen…but Sara? You there? I'm still here. Um. Really. I'm not watching…"
"Ray?"
There's the briefest pause. "Oh thank god," Ray mutters after a minute. "Uh, Sara. I'm in a room off the manager's office. McRae was in here watching a live feed, but you, ah, apparently convinced him you were what you said you were.
"He left, and he shut off the lights and locked the door, so I don't think he's coming back. And it still looks like the equipment is recording—for blackmail or, uh, other reasons-but I fixed it so it's just getting a blank screen and no sound. So you're good."
Good.
Sara peers up at Leonard, realizing that he's tapped his own comm and heard Ray's message. He gazes back at her, hands still steady at her waist, and oh boy, there's a decision she needs to make.
It's not difficult at all.
"OK," she says quietly, keeping her eyes on Leonard's. "Thanks, Ray. Go back to the ship now. We'll see you tomorrow."
There's a lengthy pause. "You ok?" Ray asks after a moment.
"We're fine. Go."
Another pause.
"OK," the inventor, one of the few remaining original Legends says, a relieved note in his voice. "And Sara? Snart? It's about time."
The comm clicks off. The Waverider's captain and her long-lost crook stare at each other for a long moment before Sara finally snickers.
"Well," she says, leaning forward to brush her lips against his again. "That's that. We could get that room service, get some rest…"
Leonard gives her a long look, not buying it for a moment. "That what you want?"
"Rest…" She moves her lips to his jaw, enjoying the sound he makes. "…is not precisely what I had in mind."
"Hmmmm." He moves his head, captures her lips with his before pulling back again. "Good. Me neither."
She can't resist. "So. If you're a hell of a thief, you think you can steal more than a kiss?"
"I don't think I'm going to need to steal anything."
"Yeah," Sara acknowledges as she lets her hands drift south, grinning at his reaction. "Me neither."
