Written for Day One of the Captain Canary Week! Prompt: Pre-dating.
I was torturing myself watching the CC kiss and started thinking about how much it must have tortured Leonard, controlled individual that he is, when he realized he'd never be sure what was the Time Bastards yanking his strings via the Oculus and what wasn't...unless they destroyed it.
Slight side order of ColdWave, which can be read platonic or not. Many thanks to LarielRomeniel for the beta!
"Get 'im out of here."
"No."
"Just do it."
"Get 'im out of here."
"No."
"Just do it."
"Get 'im out of here."
"No."
"No!" Sara's eyes fly open, her heart hammering, and she drags in a rough breath, struggling up onto an elbow. The room is darkened (and the afterimages of blue light on the inside of her eyelids make it seem darker still), but she looks to her side immediately, throwing out a hand...
But he's there. Still there
And for the first time since the Oculus, she realizes, he's awake.
Sara draws in a steadier breath, reaching for calm, settling back onto her side and staring at the conscious, mostly whole Leonard Snart who's staring back at her from the inside half of his own bed on the Waverider. His eyes are wide and baffled, and he looks as though he can't quite breathe—not in a medical way, but as if he's still getting his bearings, here in the land of the living, when the last time she'd seen him awake...
"Leonard," she whispers, reaching out a hand but stopping as he makes a movement almost like a flinch. He reaches up with his left hand to scrub at his face, and it's such an oddly childlike gesture that it goes right to her heart. Then he looks at her again.
There are no walls here; his ordeal has stripped them away. She's never seen Leonard completely without his ice and his snark; she's not sure that anyone alive has, not even Mick. But those blue eyes have no shutters on them, not right now, and they hadn't even been like that at...at the failsafe.
At the Vanishing Point, when she'd appeared at the Waverider, dragging Mick and yelling, babbling really, about Leonard and the Oculus, Jax and Stein had exchanged a startled look and joined hands, merging, as if they'd somehow known this was going to happen. Firestorm had rocketed toward the building where she'd...where she'd had to leave Leonard with his hand buried in the failsafe, even as Rip yelled at them all to get the hell back onto the ship, even as Mick had stirred and groaned, even as Sara, heart in her throat and trying not to hope, had dragged him onboard until Ray (groggy and semiconscious himself) could help her. She'd spun to head after Firestorm, but the hatch was closing in her face, even as she yelled at Rip and he stoically took her anger, something set and grieving in his own expression, and the ship was being buffeted by energy, and...
And then, red and golden flames against the waves of blue temporal energy, there was Firestorm, and his burden. Rip, disbelieving, had lowered the hatch just enough to let him onboard.
When the Oculus blew, Firestorm had managed to transmute and siphon off the explosive and temporal energy around himself and most of the energy buffeting his burden- but not all of it, and it'd been a messed-up, singed and utterly dead-to-the-world Leonard Snart, one nearly unrecognizable to his teammates, who'd been lowered carefully to the deck before Jax and Stein had separated, both of them exhausted from the effort to do so.
Somehow, they'd gotten Leonard to the medbay without hurting him more—at least, as far as Sara knows. She'd knelt on the deck in their wake, reaching out to touch the tattered, ashy remains of a very familiar black jacket, so damaged now that it'd fallen right off him. Part of the sleeve had flaked off in her hands.
She followed the others.
Gideon, with assistance, had gotten Leonard's dislocated shoulder ("He didn't realize what was happening, was bound and determined to hang on," Jax had said apologetically) in place and the burns on that arm started healing. Then, she'd run brain scans, paused, and suggested quietly that he'd probably be more comfortable in his own room, when (they all heard "if") he woke.
Sara and Mick had taken in her hesitant tone in varied expressions of numbness, and it'd been Ray and Stein, somehow, that pressed the AI and Rip until they admitted that they had no idea what that sort of blast of temporal energy would do to a human being. That it might have destroyed his mind, or set it adrift in time, or somehow reset it.
After a long moment, Mick, silent, had picked up his unconscious friend as if he were a child, Len's head lolling on his shoulder, and carried his motionless burden out of the medbay, Sara following in his wake.
Mick had made his way to Leonard's room, the door opening before them and remaining open long enough for Sara to step in too. There, he'd gently laid his friend on the bed, making an awkward and abortive attempt to drag a sheet over him before giving up. He'd stared at the other man for so long that Sara took a step back, feeling like an intruder.
Mick had spun, then, reaching out to grab her wrist, a movement that startled both of them. They'd stared at each other another long moment before Mick cleared his throat and spoke.
"You stay wit' him, Blondie," he said quietly, a plea. "I...I can't do this yet."
At Sara's questioning look, he'd shrugged. "Jerk tried to freakin' blow himself up to save my life," he rumbled. "I don't…he…we…we don't do feelings. Whadda I do with that?"
"You've saved each other's lives before," Sara noted, turning her wrist around in his loose grip to wrap her fingers around his.
"Yeah, but…he'd'a died. Shoulda died. Hell." Mick glanced at his friend, then gave her a helpless look. "Just…can you stay? Someone should."
"Of course I will."
Leonard had been sprawled across the bed so bonelessly that it seemed like it'd be easy to shift him a little farther. Instead, he'd been…Sara flinched away from the words…an utter dead weight. In the end, she'd just removed his boots and sort of slipped in besides him, reassured, a bit, by the faint (too faint, really) sound of steady breathing.
He hadn't stirred.
She'd lost track of time since that moment. She doesn't think much has passed…not enough for them to catch up to Savage and rescue Kendra and Carter, let alone Rip's family. (Someone, surely, would have told her that.) The team, undoubtedly, has had Gideon keeping tabs on Len's vital signs, but they'd left the pair alone. Sara had alternated dozing and staring at the ceiling, wondering, hoping…
And then, she'd been sleeping.
Until now.
Leonard's expression is so different from anything she's ever seen on him before that Sara has to wonder, for a moment, about Gideon's warning that his mind might be affected. But then he scrubs a hand over his face again, and mumbles: "Sara?"
He knows her. That has to be a good sign. "Yes."
"I...hell. I saw..." He blinks at her, then abruptly tries to get himself into a sitting position, grunting as his arm fails him but somehow managing it anyway. "Where's Mick?"
Impossible not to recognize the concern, almost panic, there. "He's fine," she reassures him. "He's OK. He's somewhere on the ship. He...he carried you here. From medbay." She takes a deep breath, shifting to settle against the bulkhead, as he's not showing any alarm at her closeness. "Do you remember anything?"
His eyes drop to her lips.
It's almost involuntary, and it doesn't come with the smirk or wiseass comment Sara knows a Leonard on his game would pair with it, but she's startled into a smile. He's in there. The Leonard she knows is in there. It's impossible to stifle the spark of hope, first ignited when she'd seen Firestorm outside the ship and now fanned into a cautious blaze.
Leonard doesn't seem to realize what he'd done. Instead, he frowns, thoughtfully, shifting a little but seemingly too distracted as of yet to be fully cognizant of his arm bundled to his side and swathed in bandages.
"The Time Bastards," he says slowly. "And then there was...there was light...I thought…"
His eyes fly to her face, then, and she can tell that memory is starting to settle in more. But his eyes stay open, and now they're pleading with her, to tell him, what had happened, what he'd done…
"Firestorm got you out," Sara tells him, trying to figure out what he's thinking. "But you're hurt, and...you'd taken such a dose of temporal energy that Gideon wasn't sure how it'd affect you. If you'd wake up the same or..." If you'd wake up at all.
Leonard cuts in, learning toward her, the pleading in his eyes even stronger. He looks down in puzzlement as if he finally realizes something's wrong with his arm. "The Oculus is gone?" he asks urgently. "Gone? You're sure?"
"Yes. You..." She swallows, her throat hurting again suddenly. "You blew it up."
"The Oculus is gone."
"Yes, Leonard."
The sigh that explodes out of him is unexpected in its force and he pulls back a tiny bit, regarding her. And then, with great surprise, she realizes, there in the darkened room, that he's…flushed a little. She leans forward a little in puzzlement, and catches a spark in his eyes even as he reaches up and lets the fingertips of his good hand brush her cheek.
A casual touch. From Leonard Snart. Just what is going on here?
Sara takes a deep breath and watches him watching her. There's an uncanny stillness to the room, and she suddenly thinks of a term she'd heard Ray use once. It's like, she decides, this is a liminal space, a gateway, a between created when the Oculus vanished in blue light.
Maybe this is a new Leonard. A new Sara. Perhaps, out there on the ship somewhere, it's a new Mick, too, struggling to come up with the words he needs, the ones that never come easy.
"I..." Leonard licks his lips, then, glancing away. "I wanted to be sure that it was gone."
"Oh, it's gone..."
But he's rushing onward, in an explosion of words just as uncharacteristic as the touch. "I don't do feelings, Sara. Not really, not in years. But then I got on this damned ship...and there was the team. And then there was...there was..."
He stops, but Sara picks up the thread, clued in by the way he's glancing away again.
"Me and you?" she asks carefully.
"Yeah." A furtive glance back at her. "I couldn't take not knowing. If it was real. Or not."
Oh.
He nods as he sees she understands, continuing. "Or if Mick decided to betray me...the crew...to off me on his own, to come back on his own. Or if they were just pulling his strings the whole time. If I made the decision to...to..." He winces. "...to be a...hero...on my own."
A deep breath. "I needed to know," he repeats. "I couldn't...move forward...if I didn't know."
Silence. A liminal space, Sara thinks.
"It's gone," she repeats, bringing her hand up to thread her fingers through his. "The Oculus. You know, now. What...what do you want to do?"
OK, that's definitely the flash of a smirk.
"I think I'd sorta like to steal that kiss," he says finally, an actual smile tugging at a corner of his mouth. "If it won't get me stabbed."
Sara feels an answering smile tugging at her month. She moves a little closer, noting that he does, too, awkwardly and with a grunt of pain, then leans over, slowly enough that he could pull away if he wanted (he doesn't) and kisses him.
Their second kiss is no romantic, grand gesture, no desperate goodbye, just two people tentatively trying to see how, if, this might work. They're both exhausted and a bit filthy, and Leonard's painkillers are going to run out soon, but their mouths fit together just as well as before, maybe better. Sara feels the rush, the spark of attraction, taking over as Leonard pulls his hand away and moves it to her jaw, adjusting the angle a little, and she's the one to deepen the kiss, then, humming, at his swift intake of breath.
When they break away, they're both smiling. Sara shakes her head, telling her libido to cool it, and reaches down to rest her hand over his heart, feeling it beat steadily beneath her fingertips.
"You can't steal," she tells him quietly, "what's freely given."
He starts to speak. Stops. Watches her there in the stillness. A liminal space.
Do they really need more words? Not, she decides, right now.
Unfortunately, Gideon doesn't agree. "Mr. Snart?" the AI asks tentatively. "May I let the others know that you are...awake and coherent? They are concerned, but I thought you might not wish me to transmit your, ah, vital signs when..." She pauses. "Well."
They've flustered the AI. Leonard lets out a strangled chuckle, and Sara smirks, then kisses him quickly again. It goes off base, lands sort of between his nose and the corner of his mouth, and he reaches for her again in a clear attempt to pull her closer even as she moves away, sitting up.
"You need rest, and now that I know you're OK, I need to go see what's going on." She pauses. "Want me to get Mick?"
Leonard's eyes are already at half-mast again. "Nah yet," he says, voice muffled as he runs a hand over his face again. "Still don' know what to say t'him."
Love comes in many forms. Sara knows this, even if he's not ready to acknowledge it. So, she just shakes her head, pulling a sheet up over him as he tries to get comfortable, resting a hand briefly on his shoulder.
"You two are messed up, you know that?" There's affection in her tone, and she knows he can hear it.
"You like us this way."
"Yeah, she says quietly, looking down at him, a sense of peace stealing over her for the first time since she'd realized what has going to happen, there at the Oculus failsafe. "I do."