Title: Gray's Anatomy
Rating: Mature
Warnings: discussions of child abuse, medical trauma, surgery, mind control powers
Pairings: Barry/Len, Barry/Felicity (past), Barry/Hartley (past), Cisco/Lisa, Iris/Eddie, Caitlin/Ronnie
Spoilers: none
Author's Note: Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoy the story. I don't have a beta-reader so all mistakes are my own. (I'm happy to correct if you point them out to me.) I'm thinking about making this part of a longer series because I like established relationships and playing with characters in AUs and the Grey's Anatomy-esque melodrama that will ensue. Let me know if you think that's a good idea? Some favorites or a comment would be lovely.
Gray's Anatomy
by arainymonday
Becoming a third year surgical resident at Central City General Hospital means the option of choosing a specialty. It's all the newly advanced third year residents have gossiped about for the last month – which specialty they'll choose, or if they'll choose yet at all, and if they'll be accepted by the department chief.
Cisco already has approval to specialize in neurosurgery, but he's beyond jealous Dr. Stein also accepted Hartley as a nuero resident. No surprise, Iris picks trauma as her specialty since that's where all the action is and Dr. Bridge has been grooming her for it. Caitlin thinks choosing this early in their residency is rash so she'll keep rotating departments. For now, she's working in the burn clinic with Dr. Rory. Barry has known his specialty since before he started medical school, and his resolve has never wavered.
Until right now.
He figures it's not a good sign that Lisa – he's allowed to call the Chief Resident by her first name because she's dating Cisco, crashes at his and Barry's place all the time, and Barry has accidentally seen her naked about twelve times – is looking at him like he's grown another head while shaking hers slowly in warning.
"We told him he was crazy," Iris says.
Cisco, Caitlin, and Iris had shadowed Barry all morning, claiming moral support but really he thinks they took bets on how fast Barry will get shot down. Considering that he's asking for a place on Dr. Leonard Snart's service, they're not wrong that it's likely. They call him Captain Cold for a reason. He doesn't work with interns and rarely works with residents. It's almost gotten him fired – this is a teaching hospital, after all – but he's too good for Chief Wells to actually follow through on the threat. He hasn't taken on a resident full-time in over three years.
Despite being all but impossible to work with, Dr. Snart is adored by his young patients. It's not uncommon to hear a child confined to a hospital bed shout his name in delight when he enters their room, and children who aren't confined to their beds will rush down hallways and across playrooms to throw their arms around his waist. And when he takes them into surgery, they almost always come out alive and, if not cured, then better than they went in.
That's the kind of pediatric surgeon Barry wants to be. The best.
"Why don't you talk to Dr. Palmer instead?" Lisa suggests.
Barry really loves working with Dr. Palmer. He's friendly, outgoing, and an excellent surgeon. But he doesn't believe in playing favorites and doesn't encourage competition. Everyone on his service rotates surgeries and cases. It was great for their intern year and the first few years of residency, but Barry doesn't want to work every third case or scrub in on every fifth surgery. He wants every case and every surgery.
"I've made up my mind," Barry says.
Lisa is a scary woman. She's an orthopedic surgeon and she gets a disturbing thrill from breaking bones to piece them back together. If she's worried for him, Barry should be worried for himself. And he is. But he's also resolved.
"On your own head then," Lisa says. "You better catch him before he starts rounds."
"Good luck," Caitlin whispers. Cisco flashes him two thumbs up.
Dr. Snart is standing by the nurses' station flipping through a patient file on his tablet. He wears dark blue scrubs that bring out his eyes under his white lab coat. He doesn't look up even when Barry stands two feet from him and waits.
"Dr. Snart?" Barry tries. "I was hoping I could talk to you about being on your service? I'm Barry. Dr. Allen. I'm a third year resident now, and I'd really like to specialize in peds."
Snart finishes inputting some notes into the patient file before he looks up. Barry has seen Snart around the hospital plenty, but he's sure they've never made eye contact. He would remember the slow assessment as those icy blue eyes travel from his Converse sneakers to his windswept hair and back down to his face.
"Why do you want to be a pediatric surgeon?"
Maybe he should have expected the question, but he doesn't. None of his friends had been asked to justify their choice, and he isn't prepared to share that story with Snart, who he's never said two words to before today.
"If you look at my record, you'll see that I spent a lot of time in surgery with Dr. Palmer. I even performed a solo –"
"So you want to be a pediatric surgeon because Dr. Palmer let you scrub in on surgeries?" The drawl in Snart's voice feels like mockery. "That's not exactly a ringing endorsement, kid. Raymond lets everyone scrub in with him. It's what makes him Raymond."
"I've always wanted to be a pediatric surgeon. I've focused on it my entire education and career. I even double majored in childhood psychology in undergrad."
"Why?"
Barry swallows around the lump in his throat. This isn't fair, asking him that question here in the middle of the floor with his friends, his chief resident, a dozen nurses, and who knows how many patients listening in. He doesn't answer for too long.
"Sorry, kid. No answer, no specialty."
"With you," Barry can't help himself from grumbling. He wants to work with Snart – although right now he's forgotten why a little bit – but he can keep working with Dr. Palmer instead.
"I'm sure you're aware I'm the peds chief or you wouldn't have come to me. If I say you can't work in my department, you can't work in my department. And don't even think about complaining to Wells. He knows better than to challenge me on this."
Snart collects his tablet and leaves to start rounds. Barry feels like rage. His blunt nails bite into the soft flesh of his palms to keep his fingers from vibrating. He doesn't want to do something regrettable like supersonic punch Snart. Well, he does. But he doesn't.
"My mother was murdered when I was a kid," Barry says.
The floor falls silent, the ringing phones and beeping machines louder now than he's ever heard them in the hospital before. Snart pauses halfway to a patient's room and looks to the side, giving Barry his attention without turning.
"My father is in prison for her murder, but he's innocent. I saw what really happened, and I never stopped believing what I know is true no matter how many times the police or psychiatrists told me it was impossible. These kids deserve doctors who will listen to them and believe them and believe in the impossible because, if we don't, neither will they, and without hope, a lot of them won't survive."
Barry doesn't look away from Snart's profile, but it reveals nothing. He hates Snart like he hasn't hated anyone since detectives dragged his father out of their house in handcuffs for making him relive that and confess in front of all these people.
Snart makes a fluid motion to beckon Barry to follow him. "I do rounds at nine o'clock and six o'clock every day. You'll pre-round before each. Screw up once, you'll be out of my surgeries for a week. Screw up twice, you'll be getting my dry cleaning and coffee for a month. Screw up three times and I will personally see that you're kicked out of this program. Understand?"
Barry nods and follows him to the first patient's room. He glances over at his friends, all of whom are in various states of shock. Lisa looks bowled over, Cisco cautiously happy for him, Caitlin plain cautious, and Iris might be thinking about clocking Snart with her tablet. It's almost enough to make Barry smile, but only almost.
He did it. He's Snart's resident, like he's always wanted to be. He's filled with dread.
o o o
Working with Leonard Snart is not the worst experience of Barry's life, but only because watching your mother's murder is damn near impossible to beat. Snart is all condescension and criticism without saying a word. Everything about Barry from his nervous rambling to his shoes to his resting smile seems to offend Snart, who has only two emotions – chilly and frigid. Except for lunch, Barry spends all his time with a man who clearly loathes him.
"Yesterday, I got just a tiny bit excited about a yo-yo one of our patients was playing with, and he just looked at me like it's his life's ambition to turn me into an ice sculpture," Barry complains.
"Tell the truth, Barry," Iris says around a smile, "were you playing with the yo-yo?"
Barry doesn't answer, just takes another bite of his turkey club. He has afternoon rounds in ten minutes, and Snart seems to consider being late for rounds – even by literally just seconds – a "screw up" worthy of punishment because he handed Barry a dry cleaning ticket this morning.
"You know what? It doesn't matter if I was playing with the yo-yo. Also yesterday, he gave me the same look when I showed him the clear results of an MRI. Our patient didn't have a hematoma after all, and he was like super angry that I was happy about that. The guy is a complete sociopath."
"I'm sure Dr. Snart doesn't hope kids have hematomas."
"I think he might."
"Barry, we're surgeons. We want to be in surgery. It's a little disappointing when we can't be, but that doesn't mean we hope kids have hematomas."
Barry's phone vibrates, reminding him that he has rounds. He shoves the last triangle of his turkey club into his mouth – Iris looks horrified, but Barry's metabolism works way faster than anyone else knows about – and makes a run for it, at normal speed, until he's out of the cafeteria, then he superspeeds to the fifth floor.
The crumbs on his scrubs earn him a DEFCON 1 level of frigidity from Snart. Only a literal nuclear winter could be colder. He brushes his shirt clean.
"Now that you're familiar with all of my cases, you'll start presenting during rounds."
"Thank you, Dr. Snart."
"It's not a favor."
"I didn't think it was."
"And you're in the habit of thanking people for giving you work?"
"I'm thanking you for teaching me."
Snart gives him that slow, cold stare that he's been on the receiving end of all week. Then Snart turns smoothly on his heel and struts – because he struts everywhere, the bastard – off down the hall. Barry rushes to follow, accidentally uses superspeed for a step, and trips over the toe of his shoe. He gets another cold glare where he lays sprawled on the floor.
o o o
Barry has never been happy that the S.T.A.R Labs particle accelerator blew up and gave him superspeed, but sometimes it does come in handy, like when Snart gives Barry his coffee order, dry cleaning stub, a mountain of charts, and requests every article written on cardiomyopathy in children since 2011 in a single breath and demands it all by the end of the day – but the coffee immediately, of course. It happens every day for almost three weeks, as promised on Barry's first day as Snart's resident.
"This is so intern work," Cisco complains on Barry's behalf. "No, it's not even intern work. It's work you give an intern who puked on your shoes in surgery, promised to clean them for you, lets their dog chew on them, and hands them back to you covered in puke and dog saliva."
He's half asleep on a gurney in a little used hallway in the hospital basement. Barry is the one slogging through a stack of medical journals hunting for a phrase Snart vaguely recalled reading recently, because that's the assignment for today, finding a half-remembered phrase amid thousands of pages of articles.
"Not helping."
"How long has it been since you've scrubbed in?"
Barry wants to say he hasn't been counting, but he has. It's been twenty-three days. This is not why he signed up to work with Snart. Worse, Chief Wells has noticed Barry hasn't logged any hours lately. He commented on it in the elevator this morning.
"Snart is evil. He won't let me anywhere near an OR."
"Have you asked if you can scrub in?"
Caitlin's voice of reason is not welcome at that moment. Barry wants to keep complaining about Snart, but she has an open bag of chips. He steals a few.
"No?"
"Dude, what?" Cisco asks, at the same time Caitlin says, "Well …"
"Since when do we wait for attendings to ask us to scrub in?" Cisco sits up, finally giving up on his nap. "I'm practically arm-wrestling Hartley for every one of Stein's surgeries. I'm up 9-7 right now. You don't even have any competition. You should be in every single surgery."
"You're keeping score?" Caitlin admonishes. Her phones goes off, and she has to run to an emergency surgery with Dr. West, chief of general surgery and Iris' father, so they don't get scolded any more than that.
"All right. I'll ask Snart if I can scrub in on his next surgery," Barry says. "If I don't come home tonight, promise you'll search the hospital and grounds for my body."
Cisco holds out his pinky finger and they shake on it.
o o o
Barry is early for morning rounds and the minor miracle of that happening has put him in a good mood. He's at the nurses' station talking to Patty – okay, flirting with Patty – and bouncing on the balls of his feet because he can't contain his natural energy when he's nervous. Snart stops dead in his tracks and narrows his eyes at Barry as if suspecting a trick, but then struts past him toward their first patient's room.
"See you, Dr. Allen," Patty calls, with a wave.
Barry spins around, waves back, and winks at her. Because why not? She's cute and nerdy, and since he has zero chance with Iris now that Dr. Prettyboy is doing his fellowship at CCGH, he might ask her out. When he comes around from his full spin, he almost collides with Snart. They're face to face. Barry backs up quickly.
"Whoa, sorry!" Barry cries. "I didn't realize you'd turned around."
"I wanted to tell you that I got a call from Devon's dad last night. They're thinking about hospice, something I think we should talk them out of for right now. But so sorry to interrupt your conversation with Nurse Spivot."
His tone sounds particularly acerbic today, and as usual, Barry has no idea what he's done to deserve that.
"Hospice?" Barry feels something cold trickling into his stomach and settling there like a weight. "But he got moved up the transplant list two days ago."
"Which is what we're going to remind them of. I just want to make sure we're on the same page. We haven't lost him yet."
Barry nods and they enter the room. Mr. and Mrs. Connors sit on either side of their son, petting his thin hair and unnaturally pale forehead. Despite his condition and the many tubes and wires connecting him to machines, Devon has an action figure in each hand. He pulls down the mask of the respirator when they enter.
"Dr. Snart!" Devon cries. "Look what my aunt bought me!"
Snart is a different person with his patients. The aloof, sardonic man transforms into a gentle, compassionate soul. It catches Barry off guard no matter how often he sees it happen. Snart perches on the end of Devon's bed, the patient forgotten for a moment as he focuses on the boy. The action figures are from a TV series Barry has never seen. Devon's favorite characters are Frostbite and Mercury.
"Are you a superhero, Devon? Your secret identity is safe with me if you are," Snart promises.
Devon shakes his head. "No, I'm just a kid. But I'm going to be a superhero when I'm big."
The Connors start to cry and Snart's transformation comes undone for Devon's sake, so at least one person in the room doesn't allow the little boy to believe he'll never grow up. It will always break Barry's heart, all these Peter Pans they see in peds, but he never wants to stop fighting for them.
"Dr. Allen," Snart says, all business now. "Please present."
Barry lists everything he knows about Devon from his age and diagnosis to his symptoms and the tests Snart has ordered since he's been re-admitted and their results. It all breaks down to the fact that his heart and lungs are failing and he needs new ones.
"What treatment would you recommend, Dr. Allen?"
"I would say that, for now, we keep Devon for observation. We need to run regular blood work and EKG to monitor his heart function. We should check breath sounds every hour. He's stable for now, and has been since yesterday morning, so the goal is to keep him that way until there's a match for him."
"What we talked about last night," Mr. Connors starts.
"We're not there yet," Barry says, because he's technically still presenting the case. "It might look like we are from Devon's outward symptoms, but the test results tell us something else."
"I agree," Snart says, taking back control of the case. "I'll be back this afternoon with an update."
"And I will be back much sooner than that," Barry says to Devon. "I'm going to take you for some tests, and you can tell me more about Frostbite and Mercury."
o o o
Barry doesn't get a chance to ask Snart about scrubbing in on a surgery until late that afternoon, and he doesn't really ask so much as just show up in the OR. They get a page calling them to the ER. A kid fell out of a treehouse onto a rake. It's horrific and traumatic. They're running to the elevator while paramedics call out the girl's vitals and what information about her they could glean from her distraught dad.
Snart is riding the gurney, packing and repacking the puncture wounds. The rake hit something major, that much is clear from the amount of blood. They don't have time to scrub. Nurses bring them gloves, gowns, and caps while they work on the girl. Finally, she's anesthetized.
"Nice to finally see you in my OR, Dr. Allen. I was starting to think you never wanted to operate again," Snart says. "Show me what you can do."
Barry wants to punch him again. Smug bastard. He hadn't said a word about an open invitation to his surgeries. Instead, Barry asks the scrub nurse for a scalpel so he can cut the skin between puncture wounds and get a good look at the damage inside. It's the spleen. Barry removes it, clamping off blood vessels and stopping bleeders as he goes, asking for suction and retraction as he needs. Snart lets him work without comment until Barry has the girl sewn up and they take her to recovery.
"What now?" Snart asks.
"I'll order a tetanus shot and an antibiotic cocktail since infection is a risk with the wound made by a garden tool and check on her hourly for the first six hours."
"What else?" Snart prompts. Barry considers the next step, but he knows better than to make up an answer to fill the silence Snart lets stretch. He shakes his head, unsure what else to do for the girl. "We find out how she fell out of a treehouse. Never assume a kid's injury is an accident."
Barry stands in the center of the empty OR in angry silence while Snart strips off his gloves and goes to scrub out. He's just cut open a little girl, removed her spleen, and has a plan to keep infection under control. He's saved her life. It feels amazing. And all Snart has to say is that her parents might have tried to kill her or neglected her?
"Holding out for a pat on the back?" Snart asks over the scrub sinks.
"I don't need a pat on the back," Barry grumbles.
"Liar."
"Asshole," he retorts. Then he freezes because – holy shit – he just called his attending, Dr. Leonard Snart, an asshole. To his face. He's going to die. Or worse, get fired.
Snart finishes drying his hands and forearms, tosses the towel into the bin by the door, and leaves without a word or look for Barry.
o o o
"So, basically, I'm going to be murdered. Probably within the next twenty-four hours."
Barry tosses back the shot Ronnie pushes in his direction even though he can't get drunk. He hasn't been able to since he got his superspeed. Caitlin stares at him, slack-jawed. She's never called Dr. West an asshole. But Dr. West isn't an asshole so. Ronnie looks amused. He's a fifth year resident. He's allowed to call other doctors assholes. No, he's actually not. But even if he was, he wouldn't.
"Snart isn't going to murder you," Ronnie says over the din of the bar.
Saints & Sinners is for shit. It's full of exhausted, too-tightly-wound doctors and grieving family members of patients. They're all on deck to become raging alcoholics. Bars should not be permitted this close to hospitals. And Barry shouldn't have agreed to come out with Caitlin and Ronnie after work.
"You'll apologize tomorrow and everything will be fine."
"Unless he murders me before tomorrow morning. I heard he has a criminal record."
Everyone has heard that about Captain Cold. No one has any proof, though. It's all rampant speculation. They say he graduated medical school debt free because he was - or is - a big time thief. What he's supposed to have stolen depends on who's telling the story - artwork, jewels, artifacts. Sometimes he has connections to the mob, sometimes he's a gang leader, Sharks and Jets style. But what Barry is thinking about right now is the rumor about him assaulting an incompetent intern and the one about him murdering a really incompetent intern.
"I should go back and find him tonight. He probably hasn't left yet. He always stays for a few hours after his last surgery to check on the patient."
"Do you really think you should talk to him while you're drunk?" Caitlin asks.
"I'm not drunk."
They eye the seven shot glasses in front of Barry dubiously, but he doesn't stumble when he jumps down from his barstool so they let him go. He runs back to the hospital – less than a block – at superspeed just because he can.
He finds Snart in his office. He's changed out of scrubs and is wearing nicely tailored black slacks and a gray longsleeve shirt that clings. He's probably about to head home then, but he's still holding X-Rays up to the light. He's missing his usual sneer. His face is relaxed, pensive, open as he observes the images.
Barry has noticed that Snart is attractive, but he hates Snart so he hasn't bothered to consider his masculine beauty too much until now (he's been down that road before, and it ended with Barry and Hartley still despising each other two years later) when he's observing from afar and not bracing himself for the next onslaught of scorn. It's too bad Snart is his boss. The hate sex would be great.
Barry hates that he's reduced to thinking about hate sex because meaningful sex is a distant memory at this point. Sometimes he misses Felicity more than he can stand. But she's doing her residency in Star City and they agreed long distance doesn't work for doctors. He misses her terrible puns and enthusiasm for medical mysteries and the way she was his partner in every sense of the word.
Barry hasn't come back to the hospital to find fuel for what is bound to be the saddest masturbatory session in the history of the world, though, which is exactly what's waiting for him when he gets home if he keeps thinking about Felicity and Snart because it's been so long and he's beyond caring about being pathetic. When Barry knocks, Snart lowers the X-Rays, glances at him, and raises them again.
"Dr. Snart ... I want to apologize for what I said today. It was rude and unprofessional. I'm sorry and it won't happen again."
Snart doesn't acknowledge him for almost a minute, then he motions Barry over with that casual flick of his wrist. "What do you see on this X-Ray?"
Barry studies the film. "Hairline fractures in three metacarpals. Simple fracture of the carpals. Are these Elsie Moore's films?"
Snart nods. "How did she get these fractures?"
"She fell out of a treehouse? I talked to the parents, Dr. Snart. A wooden plank gave way. The police talked to the family too and looked around the house. It was an accident."
"How would you treat?"
"The fingers should be iced for an hour then splinted. The wrist should be set and put in a cast. Normally I'd say a soft cast, but she's young and active and it's her primary hand, so to be safe, I'd do a plaster cast."
"That's exactly what I did three hours ago."
Cold dread rears up in Barry's chest. Oh, no. No, no, no. He screwed up. He screwed up so badly and an eight-year-old girl might have lost the use of her right hand because of him. Barry's eyes slip closed, brows knitting in distress.
"Why didn't you notice the fractures when you did her post-op exam? Why didn't you review her films before leaving for the day?"
"I ... I was preoccupied after scrubbing out because ..."
"Because you called me an asshole when I wouldn't congratulate you on your work in surgery."
"Dr. Snart, I'm so sorry. It won't happen again."
"No, it won't, Allen. Because this was your third screw up."
Barry's stomach drops. Snart had promised that if he screwed up three times, he'd be out of the program. He won't be able to find another residency in Central City or Keystone if he's fired like this, definitely not in peds, and he has to stay here if he wants to visit his dad regularly. His mouth stretches in horror, and he follows Snart to Chief Wells' office without making a sound. He has to plead his case to the Chief, but Snart is one of the best pediatric surgeons in the country. Barry is just a resident who made a stupid mistake.
"Dr. Wells," Snart says, at the same time he knocks on the door. Pushy bastard just can't wait to get him fired.
Dr. Wells swivels his wheelchair. First he looks pleased to see Snart, then wary when he spots Barry hovering by the door looking like he's about to be sick.
"How long did this one last?" Dr. Wells asks. "My money was on longer than a month."
"Then you'll be losing some money."
Wait. The attendings placed bets on how long Barry would last as Snart's resident?
Dr. Wells sighs. "Three strikes again?"
"He was late for rounds twice and missed multiple fractures in an eight-year-old. He's out."
"I say if he's out, Leonard. I am still the Chief, aren't I?"
Before the particle accelerator accident, Dr. Harrison Wells had been on the leading edge of medical research in spinal surgical techniques. The irony has to hurt. After the accident, he gave up surgery to focus entirely on researching a cure to paralysis. The Board let him stay on as Chief of Surgery anyway.
"We have an understanding."
"We do. And I trust your judgement, but I'm not going to expel our most promising resident from the program because he has a problem with punctuality. We're doctors, Leonard. Ask our patients how punctual we are as a profession."
Snart seeths in silence for a moment. "Fine, but he's out of peds."
"That is also part of our understanding. He doesn't have to be on your service, but ... No, he can continue working in peds with Dr. Palmer or one of our fellows if he chooses."
"I'm the peds chief."
"I'm well aware of that. I appointed you to the position. The fact remains, Dr. Allen comes to us with fifteen letters of recommendation, all of them glowing, he was the top of his class and holds multiple degrees, all of which he finished in record time. No, Leonard, we are not kicking him out of the program for one mistake. We are going to teach him to be better."
"I'm not," Snart insists. "Elsie Moore could have suffered permanent nerve damage, not to mention the pain of having her wrist and fingers rebroken to set them properly if I hadn't caught her injuries, all from his mistake."
"I'm sure the situation isn't that dire, Leonard."
Barry listens to all of this like a spectator at a tennis match, but he interjects now. He has to.
"No, Dr. Snart is right. I lost my cool after surgery and I overlooked something basic that could have cost my patient a lot of pain and permanent damage. Not to mention the lawsuit the hospital could have faced. I seriously messed up today, and I am so sorry for it. I swear, I will learn from this and never let it happen again."
Dr. Wells' eyes flick to Snart. Barry is caught in that assessing gaze again.
"Well, Leonard?" Snart nods once, and Dr. Wells smiles at Barry. "Integrity, it's a trait we can't teach you here. You have to come to us with it already ingrained. Well done, Dr. Allen. Not many of Leonard's residents pass the test. I think we can look forward to great things from you."
A test. Barry feels like rage again, every cell in his body trembles with the heat of it. But he swallows it down, stomps it out, releases it because the test isn't over until Snart says it's over. That's been the point of the last three weeks, after all.
"See you tomorrow morning, kid."
o o o
Barry doesn't need sleep the way other people do, but his friends don't know that. They think he's a thing to envy because he can work twenty hours without looking like a zombie at the end of it. Hartley thinks he's a cokehead. Hartley can go fuck himself, though. Barry hates him almost as much as he hates Snart. He doesn't know why the hell Hartley is here in his and Cisco's apartment drinking their wine with their friends.
Everyone never has the day off together. It's a fluke in the cosmic order that Barry, Cisco, Lisa, Caitlin, Ronnie, Iris, and Eddie all have the same day off. And Hartley, who is an intruder. They planned this get together to catch up, watch a movie, have a meal together. But it's not even 6pm and almost everyone is drunk, the wine is nearly gone, and they're bitching about the attendings. Still.
Barry wishes he could get drunk, then he could bitch about Snart in front of Lisa without feeling guilty. Hartley is drunk enough and bitchy enough to broach that subject, though.
"Hey, Barry," he starts, even more smarmy and fuckfacey than usual. "Caitlin said you have plans to hate fuck Snart. What's that all about?"
Lisa chokes on her wine, sits up too quickly to cough, and ends up tipping her cup - they're drinking wine out of plastic drinking cups because they're poor surgical residents and no one cares - onto the carpet. Fortunately, it's white. When she clears her airway, she starts laughing and doesn't ever really stop the rest of the night.
"Thanks for not repeating everything I say to him," Barry grumbles, staring pointedly at Caitlin who doesn't like anyone to feel left out. "And for the record, I don't have plans. I just ... mentioned it in passing once."
"Oh my God," Lisa cackles. "Oh my God. I have to tell Lenny. He'll die."
Barry buries his face in the arm of the couch and prays Lisa is drunk enough to forget this conversation completely.
"He would totally be down for fucking, Barry. He likes you. He never stops talking about you. 'Barry taught a patient how to play with a yo-yo today. It was stupid, in an endearing way.' 'Barry understands that getting surgeries isn't more important than our patients.' 'Barry is always smiling and has something nice to say. It's refreshing.' 'Barry has good surgical technique.' Blah blah blah. As if I don't get enough of that from Cisco."
By the end of her speech, Barry wonders if she's hallucinating all of this because it can't possibly be true. Iris and Cisco are beside themselves, both bouncing happily and waving their arms in the air and within ten minutes they're arranging a betting pool - first kiss, first fuck, and marriage date are the categories. They're all traitors, even Caitlin and Ronnie who probably wouldn't have placed a bet if they hadn't finished five bottles of wine between them.
"So, wait. We're all behind this plan for Allen to fuck Snart?" Hartley asks.
"Hell yes we are," Lisa answers, apparently for everyone. "It's been too long since Lenny had a toyboy. I didn't like his last girlfriend. She was bitchier than Rathaway. But Barry's nice."
"Nice," Hartley scoffs. "Just what everyone is looking from a hate fuck."
"Didn't stop you and Barry from -" Cisco cuts himself off abruptly, but not soon enough. "Sorry. I've been drinking," Cisco whispers to Barry, as if that's a surprise when the living room is littered with empty wine bottles.
Iris and Lisa start shouting variations on "I knew it!" and demand details that Barry doesn't want to give. Hartley, however, doesn't seem to mind telling all their friends about what he and goody-two-shoes Barry got up to after Barry and Felicity ended things for good. Barry kicks his knee as hard as he can, but Hartley is drunk and won't feel it until tomorrow.
"The attendings place bets on when we'll fail out," Barry says loudly, talking over Hartley.
That distracts them until the wine runs out. They fall asleep sprawled all over the living room, except Cisco and Lisa who go to his bedroom.
o o o
The next day, Barry finds his friends (and Hartley) in various secluded locations with IVs in their arms and banana bags soothing away their hangovers. They admire his inability to get hangovers, but since he had to deal with their drunken shenanigans without the benefit of even a buzz, he thinks he got the worst of it.
Unfortunately, Lisa remembers the entire conversation that happened last night. She finds Barry before rounds.
"So I told Lenny that you and Hartley fucked once." Barry makes a sound like a dying animal. "No, no. It's good. Now he knows you're into men and I think he was jealous so ... double win!"
"No, Lisa!" Barry shouts. "No win. There is no winning here. No. No."
Barry grabs his tablet from the nurses' station and rushes down the hallway to where he and Snart usually start rounds. On his way, he realizes Patty overheard everything Lisa said. So there goes that potential up in smoke probably. Goddamn Snarts.
Snart is late for rounds. There can only be one reason. Barry superspeeds down to the surgical wing. He arrives just before he gets the page. One of their patients - a teenager named Marla - is in surgery. The coppery tang of blood assaults Barry's nose as he bursts into OR 5 with a surgical mask held over his face.
"What happened?" Barry asks.
"Blood clot. Go scrub," Snart answers.
Marla had surgery yesterday to remove a benign mass on her lung that inhibited respiratory function. A blood clot near her heart and lungs means a risky surgery. Snart needs more hands than he has around the operating table. Eddie, their cardio consult on the case, is already scrubbing in.
There are a lot of things Barry can superspeed through - charts, research, getting supplies. He can even speed up things like stitches sometimes, if the patient is unconscious but stable. But he can't scrub in any faster than anyone else. He's a full minute behind Eddie into the OR and it feels like too long.
"Hang more blood," Eddie orders.
Marla has lost several pints judging by the amount of lap pads being taken away by the scrub nurses and the amount on the floor and on Snart and Eddie's surgical gowns. Barry joins them at the table.
"Why is she still losing blood?" Snart demands of Eddie. "The clot wasn't big enough for this amount of blood loss."
"I don't know. I need to get a better look."
"You want to open up a patient who had surgery yesterday?"
"We don't have a choice. Ten blade."
Barry is there for a third set of hands, to retract and pack the area, but this is Eddie's surgery now and not one he would ever turn over to a third year resident. Barry is fine with that. He hasn't done as many cardio cases as other residents because he's not as interested in it and because wrestling cases from residents who want to become cardio jocks is all but impossible.
"Hang more blood," Eddie says.
"We don't have any more," a nurse says. "They're bringing it."
Two minutes pass. Eddie and Snart are both getting nervous, their eyes darting between the chest cavity and the emptying bag of blood. The nurses call again. No one in the blood bank remembers getting the call, but they're sending blood now. Marla goes into v fib.
"We don't have two more minutes," Eddie says. "Paddles."
They're losing a fourteen-year-old girl because someone in the blood bank has a shitty memory. That can't happen.
"I'll get the blood," Barry says. He hands the retractor off to a nurse. "I'm fast. And way more motivated than anyone in the blood bank is today."
Barry pulls off his gloves and mask and rushes out of the OR. He has three liters of AB-positive in under two seconds and he's back at the door wearing fresh gloves and mask. Eddie is still trying to stabilize Marla's heartbeat when the nurses hang the blood. He doesn't notice Barry's too quick trip to the blood bank.
Snart is staring hard at Barry over the surgical table. Barry doesn't try to make up an excuse until after they repair the hole in Marla's artery, sew her up, and wheel her into recovery. Eddie finishes scrubbing out first and leaves to finally start his morning rounds even though it's well past lunch by now.
Barry stays in the scrub room even after he dries his arms. Snart will want to ask the question, and Barry will have to tell him some lie about meeting them halfway to get the blood. But Snart catches him off guard, as usual, and doesn't ask the question. He already knows the answer.
"The particle accelerator explosion gave you enhanced speed?"
They're doctors. Surgeons. They've seen the effects of the particle accelerator explosion first hand. It's just that not many doctors want to admit they've discovered the impossible until they've found a way to reverse it. (Barry doesn't think his speed needs to be 'cured' but the Burning Man probably wishes his head didn't catch on fire so he's not opposed to the idea of medical research.) Snart is a true scientist like Barry, though. Understanding is not a requirement for observation.
Barry nods. "Are you going to tell anyone?"
Snarts stays silent for a moment. "No. You're too good a surgeon for us to lose you to a lab."
Barry can't stop thinking about those words. He tries to find a loophole or trick in the compliment, but there isn't one. Snart doesn't care that Barry is a speedster because he doesn't think speed is Barry's greatest ability. Barry feels stupidly happy about that.
o o o
"So you like Snart now because he gave you one compliment? Jesus, Allen, I thought you had more self-worth than that."
Barry shoots a glare at Hartley. Chief Wells has arranged for a presentation by Dr. Christina McGee, and every doctor interested in therapeutic stem cell research (which is all of them) have gathered in the lecture hall before lunch.
"Do you mind? We're having a private conversation," Cisco snaps. Hartley stole a surgery out from under him this morning, and his anger is simmering.
"A private conversation in the middle of a lecture hall that holds four hundred. How novel."
Hartley takes the seat next to Barry so they'll have to continue this conversation at home later. Iris looks confused when she arrives and finds Hartley and Barry sitting next to each other. She gestures comically at Hartley's back, but Barry just shakes his head and rolls his eyes.
"I'm told my dad I'd sit with him. He hasn't stop complaining about our lack of quality time together since I started my internship," she says. "He'll probably drag me to lunch after to fuss because I worked eighty-five hours this week."
They're struck sitting with just Hartley because Caitlin arrived early and is sitting up front with Ronnie and Eddie. Lisa is nowhere to be seen. She's probably in surgery and having a great time with the bonesaw right now.
Cisco elbows Barry hard in the side and mutters something unintelligible because he refuses to move his lips. His eyes widen and dart to the side, so Barry figures he's suppose to look at something off to the left. He feels a jolt when he finds Snart staring at him from where he's sitting a few rows up. He wears the twisted expression of a man who has swallowed a lemon. Unsure what else to do, or why he's back to getting those looks, Barry grins and waves. Their eye contact is broken when Dr. Rory takes the seat next to Snart and starts complaining loudly about idiotic interns who don't know the difference between second and third degree burns.
"We have got to talk, man," Cisco says.
Barry agrees. Just not in front of Hartley.
o o o
It's all hands on deck in the ER because there's some sociopath with the ability to make people try to kill each other on the loose.
"Just another Tuesday in Central City," Iris says as she runs alongside a gurney carrying a woman with a butter knife protruding from her chest.
But then the cops start arriving with bullet wounds in droves. Barry swears half of CCPD must be on beds in their ER. He and Snart aren't here to help with the cops, though. Dr. Park, an intern on call in the ER, paged Snart for an emergency consult. Barry feels like someone has just plunged a butter knife into his chest. The boy is a mess - split lip, lacerations, bruises already blooming on his face.
"He came in with the others," Dr. Park said. "But ..." Her eyes dart to the next bed and a woman with several broken knuckles being examined by another intern. "That's his mom. She got hit with whatever all these other people did, but ..."
But she'd still beat the hell out of her kid.
"Curtain," Snart says. His voice sends a shiver down Barry's spine.
Barry feels frozen. He's able to treat the boy - clean and suture his wounds, take him for X-Rays and an MRI, keep him calm through it all - but he doesn't know how he should feel. The mom had been whammied by a guy with mind control powers. But the boy wouldn't ever forget his mom attacking him. In one moment, his life is different. His trust in the world is gone. Barry knows a thing or two about that.
He finds Snart in the attending lounge before he leaves for the day. He's sitting on a couch with his head in his hands. When Barry tells him the good news - the boy has no concussion, no broken bones - he only nods. His eyes are dull, weary.
"Come on, Allen. I think we both need a drink."
Barry does, but it won't have the desired effect. "It won't help me. The speed thing has increased my metabolism too much."
Snart drops a set of keys into Barry's palm. "Then I can get drunk and you can drive me home."
They go to Saints & Sinners and occupy a high bar table near the door, but in a shadowy corner. It feels like a good place to not get drunk. The shadows invite wallowing. Snart starts off with Jameson because it's been thatkind of a day and promises the waitress a tip to equal his bill if she doesn't let him run out. Barry decides not to waste his money and orders club soda.
"Sometimes I feel worse after saving a patient," Snart confesses. "Sometimes I wonder what the fuck I'm saving them for. Short lives full of pain?"
"He won't have a short life," Barry says.
"But it will be full of pain."
Barry doesn't deny it because he's been thinking it himself. He feels the guilt of leaving the boy with Child Protective Services. He'll never find out what happens after tonight probably. Doctors don't get updates on kids they send into the foster system. They're just ... gone. Like they died on the table. Only worse.
Snart knocks back another whiskey. The waitress replaces it immediately.
"I made you tell everyone why you wanted to be a pediatric surgeon." Snart's voice slurs. "Now you know why I'm one."
Some part of Barry already knows this, but it fills him with sadness to hear it said out loud. Len - Barry can't think of him as just Snart now, not when they're drinking and sharing their darkest secrets, so he calls him what the other attendings do - is so warm with his patients, so dedicated to them, so suspicious of their parents.
"My father is in Iron Heights too. They said he was a crooked cop, that he beat his kids, that he stole and killed people. He's not innocent." Another whiskey disappears and Len starts on the next. "I couldn't protect Lisa. The son of a bitch brought me on a job when I was fourteen and got us caught. I went to juvie. He went to prison. She went into the system."
"I grew up in the system too," Barry mumbles. God, he wishes he could get as drunk as Len. "After my mom died and they arrested my dad ... We didn't have any other family."
"You must have gotten placed with a nice family."
Barry snorts. "Sure. We'll call them nice."
Len pauses with the tumbler halfway to his lips. His eyes are slightly unfocused and Barry should cut him off soon. But he's waiting for answers to questions he'll never ask aloud and Barry sees no reason not to tell him now.
"They weren't abusive, necessarily. Not in the same way as your dad. But they treated me like the third rail. Like because I thought my dad was innocent I would up and murder them one day. They wouldn't let me see him ever, but I wrote to him. He says he wrote back, but they never gave me his letters. He figured that out, but he still wrote to me. I know it sounds pathetic, in comparison."
Barry stares at his fingers curled around the glass for too long. Len is waiting still, instinctively knowing Barry has more to say because he understands too well the urge to speak and to not, to defend yourself and to not, to pretend it's okay and to not.
"My whole life after that night, I just felt so alone."
Barry's voice hitches and he blinks rapidly. Len places a strong, steady hand on top of his and squeezes. Barry doesn't think. He stops fiddling with the cardboard coaster and his glass and everything else on the table for distraction, turns his palm up, and links their fingers together.
"Sorry. I don't mean to take away from what you and Lisa went through."
"You're not, Barry." Len says his name slowly, like he's trying it out. It makes Barry feel like the warm afterglow of drinking whiskey. "The scars survivors bear aren't contests. They're bonds."
Barry brushes away the tears escaping his self-control. Len smooths the skin on the back of his hand with a thumb like he's helping Barry wipe away evidence of his buried pain.
"Why, uh, do you think I got placed with a good family?" Barry asks. "Because I'm a doctor? You and Lisa obviously didn't get a good foster family either, but here you are too."
"Because you're light, Barry. You're made of brightness and hope and compassion. I didn't think someone like us could be light."
Len has had too much to drink if he's talking like this so Barry asks the waitress for the bill and helps Len get his credit card out of his wallet. Then he helps Len back to the hospital parking lot and settles him in the passenger seat of his BMW and drives him to the address on Len's driver's license. It's a nice apartment - spacious, furnished with high quality pieces and sophisticated artwork on the walls.
That's all Barry gets to see of it because then Len presses him into the wall and seals their lips together. Len's lips are dry and warm and taste like whiskey. He kisses like he means it, deep and strong like he's trying to tell Barry something important. It's a little sloppy, a reminder that Len is drunk and Barry can't let this go any further. Len pushes their hips together, his hardness pressing into Barry's thigh, and moves his lips down to the column of Barry's throat. Len's cool hands are under his shirt and then gripping his hips, and Barry drops his head back against the wall.
"Len, I can't."
Len moves a thigh between his legs, and a traitorous moan slips from between Barry's lips. It's been so fucking long because despite what he'd let Cisco believe, his fifteen minutes in the on call room with Hartley had been terrible and left him feeling lonelier than ever so he's settled for missing Felicity way too much for it to be healthy and pining over Iris without ever saying anything because he couldn't drag anyone else into that emotional mess.
"Len, you've been drinking. I couldn't take advantage."
"You're not, Barry," Len promises against the skin of his neck. "I want you."
Barry feels his resolve cracking by the second. Each time Len kisses or licks a new patch of skin, every time he shifts his thigh, Barry falls further away from his right mind into the oblivion of desire. He pushes gently against Len's shoulders, putting inches between them.
"I want you too, but I won't use you like this, Len."
Len lets Barry lead him into the master bedroom. It feels scandalous to help Len out of his clothes while he's still hard and Barry is still hard too, but then he pulls the covers up over Len and it seems okay again. He finds some aspirin and fills a glass of water, helps Len take two, then leaves two more and the glass on the nightstand.
Len is already asleep when Barry leaves.
o o o
Barry worries what it'll be like the next time he sees Len, but it's fine. Len is waiting by the elevator on the ground floor instead of in the peds wing. He has a coffee and a smile for Barry. He asks if Barry will be joining him in surgery, and of course he will, but Barry recognizes it as a stab at casual conversation which they've never really tried before. He says 'bye' and 'see you soon' when Barry exits on the third floor to change into his scrubs in the residents' locker room. Barry stands in front of the closed elevator doors feeling dazed.
"Wow. What's got you all twitterpated?" Iris asks.
She's already in scrubs, her hair pulled back into a messy bun. She's been on call all night and probably headed to the locker room to get a shower and some fresh scrubs before rounds.
Barry tries to shrug it off, but he can feel his smile growing stupider by the second. "I think I'm being wooed?"
"Wooed?" Iris looks like it's Christmas morning. She spins around, walking backwards down the hall to have this conversation face-to-face. "Wait. Snart is wooing you?"
"I don't know. Maybe? Iris, don't tell anyone, okay? Because if he's not, I don't want it getting around that I have a crush on an attending. I don't want to be that resident."
"But if he is interested ...?"
Barry didn't know his smile could get stupider, but it does. He can't help that it feels nice thinking that Len wants him when he's not drunk and emotional.
"Okay, I have my answer. So what makes you think he might not be wooing you?"
"Something happened last night."
"Like a sex somthing?"
Barry's mouth works, and Iris perks up too much so he rushes for an answer that will calm her down. "Not exactly."
"Not exactly? Barry, we didn't place bets on an uncertain ending." He groans. He's been hoping they all forgot about the betting pool. "Did you or did you not have sex with Dr. Snart last night?"
"No, we didn't. We both wanted to, but he'd been drinking a lot."
They've reached the resident's locker room and Barry blocks the door because they're not going to continue this conversation inside. There are a lot more people than their friends in there right now.
"But you're going to have sex at some later date, right?"
"I don't know. Maybe." He sends her a wary look. "Why?"
"Personally, I think October 20th would be a fine day for you to sleep with Dr. Snart." She laughs at Barry's eye roll. She alternates between covering her mouth and holding out her hands placatingly. "I'm sorry. Barry, I'm sorry. I'm just teasing."
Barry opens the locker room door and disappears into the crowd of residents. Iris follows, still laughing, but at least looking guilty about it. He's deeply suspicious about the piece of paper she takes out of her locker and makes a note on.
"You guys aren't seriously betting on if I sleep with Len are you?" Barry asks.
Caitlin looks like she's been caught in a lie despite not saying a word. Lisa's head pops around the corner and Barry bangs his head against his locker and prays for a swift and painless death because this certainly won't be either.
"I didn't call Cisco by his first name until after he gave me an orgasm," Lisa says.
"Okay, but that's not even true."
"Actually it is," Cisco says to Barry, then turns to Lisa. "But we should be honest, honey. You didn't know my first name until after." He says to Barry, "She called me Dr. Ramon all night." Barry pulls a face. "Because it was the night before we started our internship and I was so psyched about being a doctor. She didn't tell me she was a doctor too. She just let me be proud and puffed up all night. Isn't she great?"
"This face," Barry says, making a circling motion. "This is not a face asking for details of your first sexual encounter with Lisa."
Barry finishes pulling on his scrubs and heads out. Caitlin chases him, casting a scathing look over her shoulder. Lisa has Cisco pinned against the lockers and they're saying goodbye a little too intimately.
"What is with the Snarts and that move?"
"Barry, please!" Caitlin shouts. She throws her hands up in the air and races off toward the elevators.
o o o
Len gets the call in the middle of surgery. He asks Barry to step away from the table to answer it since whoever is calling isn't giving up until someone picks up. Barry isn't happy about that because they're removing a malignant osteosarcoma and he's never observed one before, but the caller has incredible news.
"Dr. Snart, Metropolis General has a heart and lungs for Devon Connors."
Len's hands still for a moment, then he's back to work on the patient on the table while rattling off instructions. They need to tell Chief Wells to authorize the helicopter so they can fly to Metropolis and contact the attending in Metropolis on the case to get answers to a litany of questions and tell the Connors the news.
"I could just run to Metropolis," Barry whispers to Len.
"I'm going to pretend you didn't suggest subjecting a human heart and pair of lungs to the gravitational force of superspeed," Len whispers back. Louder he says, "Get a pair of gloves on, Dr. Allen. We're not finished here."
Len asks a scrub nurse to find Dr. Palmer, who arrives with a horde of residents and interns trailing him ten minutes later. He agrees to go to Metropolis for the organs since Len can't go himself. When he asks who wants to go with him, every hand goes into the air. When he asks whose 'turn' it is to do something cool, Len loses his a little.
"Can you make these arrangements elsewhere, Raymond?"
"Oh, right! Everyone back out of the OR, please. We'll discuss in the hallway."
Dr. Palmer calls every fifteen minutes with updates. He has Caitlin with him, and he strongly hints that she should be allowed to scrub in on the surgery. Barry tries not to feel too proud and guilty every time Len says, "I already have the best resident. I don't need the B-team" because it's a staggering compliment to Barry, but not so much to Caitlin who is probably actually a better doctor than Barry.
They finish removing the osteosarcoma, scrub out, and meet Devon in the hallway before they wheel him into the OR where Dr. Palmer has the heart and lungs on ice and waiting. Barry has been awake for twenty-one hours and in surgery for ten plus of those. He's starting to feel a little lightheaded so he superspeeds through a couple power bars and is back before anyone notices he's gone.
"My resident and I are hoping you need a couple extra pairs of hands," Dr. Palmer says brightly.
Len grinds his teeth, but nods. Barry starts to move away from his place where the secondary surgeon usually stands, but Len shakes his head. Dr. Palmer accepts being bumped down the chain with aplomb. Caitlin grins at Barry from behind her surgical mask. They haven't shared an OR in months, since Barry picked a specialty and she didn't.
"Caitlin told me she's never observed a heart and lung transplant. This is a great opportunity for her," Dr. Palmer says.
"Who's Caitlin?" Len asks.
"Uh, me. Dr. Snow."
"Right," Len says. "You assisted Dr. Thawne and myself on a ventricular repair your intern year. Dr. Thawne asked you to close."
"Yes, I did. I'm surprised you remember."
"Why?" Len asks, glancing up from the surgery to Caitlin. "Don't you think your surgical skills are worthy of being remembered?" He turns back to the surgery. "I've been trying to teach Barry the same thing about himself. You have to take what you want in this profession. Stake your claim, proclaim your victories. Thawne asked an intern to close. That told me something about you. It should have told you the same thing, Dr. Snow."
Caitlin and Barry exchange a quick look, but don't dare divert their attention from the transplant any more than that. Barry can feel Caitlin standing taller next to him and the approval radiating off her.
"You're on a first name basis with a resident?" Dr. Palmer asks. "Miracles do happen! Next thing we know you'll be asking for a resident and three interns on every case."
"Don't hold your breath. Or better yet, do."
"Dr. Snart likes a quiet OR," Barry says to Dr. Palmer, to soothe the sting of the jab.
They work mostly in silence, except when Len asks Barry a question about the procedure and critiques his method. Twice, when Barry can't answer, Len allows Caitlin the opportunity to speak.
"You two have very good chemistry," Dr. Palmer comments halfway through the surgery. "I can see why you keep Dr. Allen to yourself. Have you done this transplant together before?"
When it's clear Len isn't going to answer, Barry does.
"No, we haven't. If we had, I would be performing the procedure."
Dr. Palmer laughs a little. "No offense, Dr. Allen, but you're a third year resident. No attending would ever let you take the lead on a transplant like this."
"If my teaching style offends you, Raymond, you're free to leave my OR," Len says coldly. "And if you'd like to remain, maybe you'll remember what Barry told you earlier about the kind of OR I prefer to work in."
Dr. Palmer stays quiet the rest of the surgery, except to talk specifically about a relevant portion of the surgery itself. But he steals curious glances at Barry often, as if trying to figure him out.
The rest of the surgery goes smoothly, just the way Len likes to run things. They finish attaching the new heart and lungs and take Devon off bypass. They wait. And wait. But the heart doesn't beat. The lungs don't pink up.
Len calls time of death at 1:23am.
Barry feels like his own heart has stopped beating. He and Caitlin scrub out together in shell-shocked silence. She says goodnight with red-rimmed eyes. Barry didn't cry enough in the shower after scrubbing out. He hides out in an on call room, curls up at the foot of a bed, and cries more.
He's not supposed to feel this way. His dad has warned him about this since he started medical school. He's always saying not to put people on pedestals or too much faith in the impossible. Len performed a perfect transplant surgery. Devon had fought as hard as he could. But in the end, it wasn't enough. Sometimes everything isn't enough. And that breaks Barry's heart.
The door of the on call room opens sometime after Barry runs out of tears, but his throat still feels raw and eyes itchy. He wipes at the tear tracks on his cheeks, but it's too late. Len sits next to him on the bed, knees drawn up so his shoes rest on the edge of the mattress.
"I told Devon's parents the news."
"Oh," Barry says. "God, I'm so sorry, Len. I should have been there. I -"
"Ssh. It's okay, Barry. You've never lost a kid before, have you?" Barry shakes his head. If he had more tears, they would fall again. "It's different than losing other patients. That affects you, but losing a child is like losing hope. You don't get used to it. Ever. But you learn how to survive it. I know you can do that, Barry."
Barry nods. "Yeah, surviving is something I know I can do."
"I wish a nice whiskey could give you an assist."
"But then we'd be in the same position we were last week."
Len reaches out for Barry's hand and draws it between both of his own, turns it over and traces Barry's fingers and brings it up to his mouth and kisses the palm and his wrist.
"We'll always be in that position if one of us doesn't play the bad guy. I'll be that person for you, Barry. I'll be the one to take advantage so you don't have to. I'm your attending. I shouldn't do this, but I'm going to."
"You save lives every day," Barry says. "You've lived through hell and you turned into a man who saves lives. You are good, Len. I see it."
"You don't know everything about me, Barry. Maybe I'm not bad, but I'm not good either. I've been a villain, and I might still be one. I want you and I don't care that I'm not supposed to. I'm going to kiss you and lay you back on this bed and make you forget how sad you are. I know you won't say no to me."
"I won't," Barry promises. "I want you too."
Len kisses him deep and with meaning again, and Barry doesn't quite understand the message yet but he's happy to spend time deciphering it. Barry feels warm everywhere Len's fingers and lips travel and he's too happy to shed his scrub shirt and welcome Len's mouth on his bare collarbones, shoulders, torso. He shifts onto his back when Len guides him, but resists playing the passive role Len seems to expect of him. He rids Len of his shirt and licks and sucks at his neck while his hands blindly explore the warm skin of his back and chest.
"No marks," Len says.
Barry curls his fingers and drags his blunt nails up Len's back. Len moans and his hips grind forward, inspiring a matching sound from Barry. Barry does it again. The sound Len makes is glorious and Barry wants to hear more of it. He shifts his hips, finding better alignment and thrusts up. Len is hard against his thigh, and Barry is too.
"Should I refuse to follow your orders more often?" Barry wonders. "It seems to get you going."
"You get me going."
Len presses his lips to Barry's again, kissing with tongue and teeth. Len likes a quiet, focused OR and Barry thinks he likes the same in bed. The pace of his hips is steady, relentless. He rewards Barry for gasps and moans like they're right answers with whispered words against his lips that send a thrill through him. He falls away from himself more with every 'you feel so good against me, Barry' and 'you're so beautiful, Barry.'
Barry is so close when Len pulls back that he whines in protest, but that only makes Len grin as he loosens the ties on Barry's scrub pants. Barry's fingers fumble the strings on Len's, but he gets it eventually and struggling out of their clothes is a distant memory.
Barry is caught up in the first moment they're naked, burning with desire. He sits up to meet Len for a kiss that turns a little sloppy and needy as Len wraps a hand around Barry's cock. His other hand presses against Barry's lower back, keep him sitting, and Len's straddling Barry's lap and their arms tangle as Barry reaches out to stroke Len's cock. It all feels a little wanton and salacious that they want each other so much they can't even spare the time to lay down again. Barry's right mind might be a million miles away now. He's given over control to his body and what it wants. And what it wants is this. Len.
"Fuck, you have amazing hands," Barry says.
His words are broken by moans that are echoed by Len. They can't kiss now, breath coming too fast, mouths alternately dropped open in bliss and lower lips drawn between teeth. The speed of their hips and strokes hits frenzied and Barry is sure he won't last half a minute more. He presses his forehead to Len's and drowns in the blue depths of his eyes for just a beat before his own eyes slip closed and he comes. It punches down to his core, rips out the lonely isolation he's been harboring for too long, sends him riding a wave of pleasure he hasn't been able to reach with his own hand. He's being loud, probably louder than they should be in an on call room, but he feels so fucking good.
Barry is boneless when he comes back down, but he staves off the desire to fall back onto the mattress and revel in the electric bliss. It doesn't take Len long to follow him, just a few strokes, and it's worth the delay. Len is quiet when he comes, all breathy sounds that might be Barry's name like a chant and clinging so tightly his nails cut crescents into Barry's shoulders.
Len is not boneless after. He's ravenous. His kisses are two, five, ten times more intense. Barry feels consumed by them, transformed by them. He's never felt so wanted and confident as a lover. His post-sex brain understands this isn't the start of something - it can't be with their jobs, it can only be a thing that happened - and it makes him a little sad, but mostly he wants as much of this as he can have, so he kisses back and holds Len close until he's ready to collapse onto the bed and clean up.
"Are you a natural at everything you do?" Len asks.
Barry demurs, "If I'm working with a good teacher."
Len laughs. It's the first time Barry has heard the sound and he loves it. Len rolls onto his side to kiss Barry one last time, then he climbs out of bed to find his clothes. Barry doesn't hide his admiration. There's salt in Len's dark hair and he's a little softer in places Barry is still lean and toned and he's gorgeous. Len doesn't hide his frequent glances down Barry's naked body still spread out on the bed.
"You should go home and sleep," Len says. "You've been here for almost two days straight. Don't think I haven't noticed."
"Oh, I know you notice me."
Barry thinks the boast is justified. Len doesn't contradict him. He places Barry's clothes in a pile at the foot of the bed and sits on the edge. He slides his cool hand along Barry's still flushed thigh. The contrasting temperatures feel amazing. Barry's legs fall apart in invitation.
"I'm stocking the on call rooms with condoms and lube for next time," Len says.
He kisses Barry goodbye and leaves him alone in the on call room, aching for another touch and hopeful that he'll get it, that he was wrong and this doesn't have to be a one-time thing, a thing that happened but they stopped from turning into a mistake. Because that's what it will become if they do it again. But Barry will. He'll run headlong into any mistake that makes him feel this good.
o o o
Things are different after that. Barry makes an effort to arrive at work on time because Len waits for him with a coffee every day he hasn't been called into surgery or for a consult and they ride the elevator up three floors discussing unusual topics for them - How are you today? Did you sleep well? You look nice.
But that's only mornings. The rest of the time they talk about their usual subjects - patients, surgeries, new discoveries and techniques published in medical journals. Len is still not effusive with praise of Barry's work, but more open to saying a simple 'good' after Barry correctly diagnoses a patient or learns a new surgical skill.
And they spend a lot of time fucking in on call rooms.
Len will say something casual like "We have half an hour before we need to scrub in for surgery" or Barry will say "I finished charts early" and there's no question about how they'll spend that extra time. It's illicit and thrilling that they're arranging these trysts in front of everyone - twice even with Dr. Wells within hearing distance - and no one is the wiser.
"That's the third time Iris has paged you," Len says.
Barry ignores his phone on the table because Iris can't page a fellow resident for a consult so she's asking for lunch probably. He's offended Len can form a coherent sentence with Barry's mouth around his cock so he takes him deeper and sucks harder and is rewarded with a delicious groan and a hand tugging at his hair.
Len likes this drawn out. Barry knows that about him now. But he doesn't want to think about Iris while he has Len's pants around his ankles and pressed against the on call room door. He bobs his head faster and vibrates his tongue which drives Len crazy and lets Len's shifting hips fuck deeper into his mouth. Because that's what Len does to Barry. He makes him want to fuck and there's nothing like embracing everything he wants and taking it without thinking about what it'll look like or imply or say about him or whether it's dignified or right.
Every time Len comes, he chants Barry's name like a prayer. It emboldens Barry. And the next time, he takes more. And Len gives more, willingly, eagerly. He lets Barry fuck him into the mattress and thanks him for it with a stream of 'fuck, yes, Barry's and 'you're so good, Barry's and 'don't stop, Barry's. He lets Barry ride him into the mattress too and gazes up at him reverently, tells him how beautiful and perfect and good he is.
Barry's skin feels like a livewire whenever he's around Len, even if they're not naked, even if they're doing rounds or consulting with another department or riding the elevator. He wants to touch, explore, remove every article of clothing and worship Len the way he deserves. He is always ready to fuck, to kiss, to be pressed against the wall, whatever they have time for and Len will give him.
"We have to scrub in," Len says regretfully.
Barry doesn't let go. He leaves his arms looped around Len's neck and face buried into the skin there. Len smells like mint and soap from all the times he's scrubbed today. Barry kisses at the spot that turns Len to jelly. Len's arms tighten around Barry's waist and draw him closer.
"Barry, we can't. We have a patient waiting."
"It's just an endoscopy."
"Dr. West is waiting too."
Barry is forced to admit they can't fuck right now, not even a quick handjob because Dr. West will be suspicious if Len is late to surgery and he doesn't want Dr. West asking questions, especially not of Iris who will hit on the right answer immediately since she's waiting for the day she wins or loses her stupid betting pool. (She loses. They started fucking way before October 20th.)
"I want you," Barry says, no hint of a blush on his cheeks because they're long past that.
"It's our last surgery today. Why don't you come over after?"
The suggestion scares the hell out of Barry. He knows what this is. This is fucking. Scratching an itch that he's ignored for too long. A secret that could cost them their jobs if the wrong person finds out and files a complaint. This is not dating. This is not a relationship. It can't be. Even if he wouldn't mind that.
"But you live like fifteen minutes away. I won't be able to wait that long," he says.
Len shakes his head, but he's smiling. "Sex with a twenty-something is fun, but demanding."
He kisses Barry deeply and sweetly, a promise that Barry can read now. He still doesn't want to let go, doesn't want to separate his body from Len's despite all the layers between them. But he has to, and the kiss is a gentle goodbye-for-now he can handle.
o o o
It's only a matter of time before someone finds out because they fuck a lot. When their bodies aren't fucking, their eyes are. Iris has started getting suspicious because she sees Barry hanging around nurses' stations with his charts and in the medical library less. Also because October 20th has come and gone and she wants to know if she gets to collect.
But, no, it's Cisco who catches them, which is a blessing and a curse, when they inevitably forget to lock an on call room door. It's a blessing because any other resident might have gone screaming to Dr. Wells about special treatment and Barry logging more surgical hours than the rest of them because he's fucking his attending and because an attending might have a real ethical problem with it or question if Barry's surgical talents are the reason Len took him on. But it's a curse because now Lisa will know about it and Lisa will tell all their friends. They can't claim it's a misunderstanding either. They still have their clothes on when Cisco walks in, but Barry has Len on his back, is grinding down on him, and Len is begging him to continue so it's not like they can play it off as conferring about a case in private.
Barry wants to go after Cisco right then and explain, but Len has his heart set on being fucked so Barry obliges and Len makes Barry forget his worry when he takes it so good. Cisco stays up waiting for Barry, though, despite working for twenty hours straight.
"You're fucking Captain Cold!?"
Barry throws himself onto the other end of their old, battered couch. He's exhausted. Len dragged things out and that always leaves Barry bone-tired and ready to fall asleep curled into Len. But he couldn't because he needs to talk to Cisco. Barry scratches the back of his neck.
"Dude, how long has this been happening?"
"I'm not helping you win Iris's stupid bet."
Cisco shakes his head and hands at the same time. "It's not about that. I really just want to know. You hated him, like, actually loathed him. And now ... Jesus, Barry, he's wrapped around your little finger. Or more like your -"
"Don't finish that thought, Cisco. Please." Barry runs a hand over his face. He just wants to sleep, but Cisco won't let this go. He'll call Lisa and speculate if Barry doesn't answer his questions. "About a month, I guess? It started when that psychopath Bivolo whammied all those people. We went out for drinks because we had a really rough case. We talked and kissed and decided to wait until no one was drunk."
"Okay, yeah. We all know about that. Why not tell us you guys decided to get together?"
"We're not together," Barry says quickly. "And because kissing is one thing and there was alcohol involved. This is different."
"Yeah, I saw how different it is firsthand."
Cisco is making a joke, but Barry doesn't think it's funny. This is his career he's putting on the line. Even knowing that, knowing he should call things off before an attending finds out and is obligated to tell Dr. Wells, he won't. He and Len aren't together. But they're something Barry can't let go of.
"Please don't tell Lisa," Barry says. "I know it's not fair of me to ask you that, but please."
Cisco and Lisa have been together almost four years because they don't keep secrets from each other. They casually mention 'when we're married' and 'when we have kids.' There's no question they're committed and it's the most important thing to both of them. Barry feels sick with himself asking Cisco to lie, even by omission.
Cisco looks guilty. "If you'd asked me three hours ago, I would have probably agreed to avoid the subject. But ... I sort of already talked to her?" Barry whimpers and drops his face into a throw pillow. "Sorry, man, but she already knew."
Barry's head pops up. "What?"
"Len told her about you two when it started. Before it started, I think. She said that he talked about you and how much he liked you back in September or something, but that he knew he couldn't ask you on a date with you being his resident. I guess he cracked eventually? She knows you've been sleeping together too. She was really happy someone else knows, and she said Len would be relieved to not, and I quote, 'be Barry's dirty little secret anymore.'"
Barry has no idea what to make of all this except that Len thinks they're something too. And that exhilarates and terrifies Barry.
o o o
Barry and Len don't really talk about who knows about them. It's obvious from the knowing looks Barry's friends give them that Iris, Eddie, Caitlin, and Ronnie hear about it from Cisco or Lisa. To her credit, Iris doesn't bring up the betting pool. She only gives Barry a quick hug and says, "I'm glad you found someone" and that's the end of it. They all silently agree to keep it from Hartley, who they all also silently agree is a vengeful dick.
"You understand why I can't tell many of my friends, right?" Len asks.
They're dressed again in their scrubs, their shoes still somewhere near the door, and lying together under a blanket in the second floor on call room. Barry is holding Len close, giving him the affection he craves after sex.
"I do."
"But Lisa knows. So does Mick."
Dr. Rory is terrifying, but he's Len's best friend. Barry just hopes he doesn't get a shovel talk from him. (He never does. The next time he sees Dr. Rory, he gets an appraising look and a smile, which is unheard of for him.)
What this all means is scarier. People know now. Even if they ever manage to call this off - they have to at some point, right, or they'll both get fired for sexual harassment and fraternization and whatever else the hospital administrators throw at them - people will know it happened. Barry will always be that resident, the one who fucked his attending to get surgeries. That's not who he is and it would hurt to be thought of that way. But who he is is the man who can't let go now, who is in so fucking deep he might as well be drowning in Len, who is falling for a man shouldn't want.
But time passes and the world doesn't shatter around them. There are new patients, risky surgeries, old patients returning for new procedures. Barry and Len share stolen moments in elevators and on call rooms and supply closets. Barry works Thanksgiving because he has no family to spend it with. So do Lisa and Len. The three of them have a turkey lunch together in the cafeteria.
"I told my dad about you when I visited him yesterday," Barry says in the elevator one crisp December morning.
Len's happiness is slow to start, then sudden and brilliant. Barry has learned that Len's happiness looks different than other people's. It's not smiles and giddiness. It's intensity and serenity and only his eyes change. When the ice melts, it transforms into happiness. Len closes the distance between them and kisses Barry. For the first time there's no hidden message in the kiss. It's just a normal kiss. Barry is confused and a little hurt by it. But when they say goodbye and go their separate ways to start their days, Barry feels it - the message Len is always trying to send him. It's living with Barry already, nestled warm and snug in his chest.
o o o
Barry is plaint under Len, body and soul open to him and in rapture. Len pushes into Barry slowly, deeply, rhythmically like they have all the time in the world. They don't. They're already late for afternoon rounds and they have another surgery tonight still. But for once Barry doesn't want Len to pick up the pace. He's so content like this, arms wrapped around Len's neck and thighs around his hips.
"God, you're so beautiful, Len," Barry sighs.
The compliment startles Len, alters his steady rhythm. Barry loves throwing him off, even for a second.
"Don't tease me," Len says.
"How is this teasing?"
Len is forced to admit the truth of it so he dips his head and kisses Barry. He moves slow, but deep, and Barry is all but trembling from want. He kisses back dirty, draws Len closer with tightening thighs, as if they could hold each other any closer than they already are, as if they could feel any closer.
Barry can't deny the truth either. This isn't fucking anymore. It's not frantic sex in on call rooms. It's not lust. It's not hate sex. It's not loneliness seeking solace. Maybe, if this had started before the evening at Saints & Sinners, it would have stayed fucking. But it can't because that's not what it ever was.
They're fucking-but-not-fucking, and that's what Barry has decided to call it until he finds the courage to play the villain for once and ask more of Len than he has the right to. He doesn't have a word for them yet, but he understands them.
They are opposites who are also compliments. They are broken and healed in different ways. They are recklessness and precision, emotion and thought, youth and experience, speed and cold. They are hearts and souls that are tragic, beautiful, indelible, in love.