This is an expansion of my story "Wait for It." Set in the same 'verse as "If I Never." Six short chapters, but they're already done. (It should be completely posted by Thursday. Just in case we all need the fluff!)
Thanks to LarielRomeniel for the beta!
...
Sept. 2018
He stands on the rooftop, eyes closed, and he listens to his city.
There are the usual sounds of traffic: the low thrum of engines, the occasional squeal of tires or the blare of a horn. The indistinct sound of voices, far below, as the people of Central City head out and about on a summer evening, just before sunset.
At a distance, he can pick out the faint sound of a siren. Police, he thinks. Not for him, not this time. Never again? Well…probably. The thought—and the qualifier—make him smile.
"You all right there, Boss?"
"I don't think I've been 'Boss' for a while." He half-turns, smiles again to see Mick looking somewhat uncomfortable in the evening's attire. "You can take that tie off, if you want."
"Haircut will whine. Says I'll mess up the photos." The other man shrugs as he walks over to stand by his friend. "And you'll always be 'Boss.' Unless you're on my ship. Then I'm the captain."
"Right." He fiddles with his own tie for a moment, mind elsewhere. "She is...here, isn't she?"
Mick grunts, a sound of mingled surprise and amusement. "What, you think she might run? After everything you two have been through? Don't be stupid. I'd be more worried about whether Queen takes a shot at you, what Jax is going to play for your first dance, and whether Haircut has a nervous breakdown as self-appointed coordinator of the whole damn thing."
Leonard Snart turns to look out over his city again, thinking about might-have-beens and almost-weren'ts and second chances.
"I don't care about any of that," he says. "Just want to get the important part."
"Almost, Boss. Almost."
Three months ago
It'd started with a heist gone bad.
Oh, it hadn't been his heist. That was the irony of it all. He'd been trying to prevent one, at the credit union not too far from the apartment. He hadn't even been going there, but he'd seen a getaway car idling outside as clear as day to anyone with eyes...and, well, his particular skill set doesn't hurt, either.
So easy to walk on by. But that's not him anymore.
Young, stupid would-be robbers tend to make young, stupid mistakes, the kind that get innocent people killed. So he heaves a sigh, shakes his head, and turns toward the building.
He should have called for backup first. But this team-up thing is still new and strange to him, even a year after he and Sara decided to leave the Waverider and found themselves—to his great bemusement—working with Team Flash and, occasionally, Team Arrow.
So he walks into the credit union alone.
He doesn't walk out.
…
When he wakes up, groggy and with a distant sense of pain, it takes him a moment or two to register "hospital ER." On the heels of that, he does vaguely remember the ambulance ride—insisting vehemently that he doesn't need it even as he's fading in and out-getting a CAT scan and the shallow-but-bloody gouge on his arm tended to, refusing to give his name out of a confused mingling of past and present, worrying about...
Sara.
He turns his head and, yes, she's sitting there in a chair next to the bed, head tilted back. Her eyes are closed, and there are...there are tear tracks on her face, he realizes.
As if she senses he's awake—he wouldn't put it past her—she opens her eyes. Gazes at him. And scowls.
Damn. He's in trouble.
"You. Idiot," she says finally, straightening and slowly pulling her hair out of her face, scraping it back with shaking fingers. "What the hell were you thinking? Why didn't you call Barry? Joe? Me? You just had to waltz in there and right in front of a bullet?"
"Wasn't...a big deal." He sits up a little more, nods to the bandage on his arm. "We've both had worse. And they said the concussion is minor."
"Yes, but..."
But then the doctor is coming in to check on him, and then Joe West is there to get a statement, and the conversation is done...for the moment.
…..
Eventually, they let him go home—with strict instructions to monitor any symptoms and follow up. He rolls his eyes, but Sara promises for him, with yet another glare.
Once back at the apartment, he collapses in bed, and Sara sprawls next to him, then rolls over to bury her face in his chest, his shirt balled up in her fists. He puts his arms around her, but it takes him a just a moment to realize that his shirt is gradually getting sodden.
Sara Lance does not cry over minor injuries. Sara Lance does not cry, so far as he knows, over major injuries. Why she should be falling apart over a concussion and a flesh wound is beyond him.
"Sara," he says quietly, "what aren't you telling me?"
She's quiet a moment, then draws a shaky breath. "You know the security guard was DOA, right?"
He gives her a slow, regretful nod. He'd barely gotten a read on the situation before the kid (stupid amateur) had pulled out his gun...and the plainclothes guard in the credit union had reacted immediately and badly. He hadn't been able to save the guard. But he'd gotten the gun away, albeit with a gouge across his bicep and his skull ringing off the building's flagstone floor when he'd tackled the kid, with no other injuries or loss of life, and he supposes that has to count for sort of a win.
"Well." Sara won't look him in the eye, but when she speaks again, it's like she's rushing to get the words out. "It took me a while to make the connection between what happened at the credit union and why you weren't home yet, but ...they had two men in their early 40s transported to the hospital and one was dead and one was alive, but they didn't have a name for you, because you were half out of it and weren't carrying any ID.
"And they wouldn't tell me anyway: I'm not family. 'Girlfriend' doesn't count for much with no proof or even knowing what alias you'd given them...I spent 15 minutes sitting in the waiting room, not knowing if you were alive or dead, before Joe and Barry showed up and got things straightened out."
So that's it. He lifts a hand, touches her face, hating the pain he hears in her voice and sees in her eyes, knowing that she's thought him dead before and he's seeing the echoes now.
"I'm sorry."
"I know. And you saved lives today, you...you hero, you." She pokes him and gives him a watery smile. "I just...it got me wondering...I hate the idea that, with everything we do, if something happened, that I wouldn't even be able to..." Her voice trails off again, and she sighs.
They lie in silence for a while, but his thoughts are anything but quiet.
He's thought about this. How could he not? But they're anything but traditional. And he'd never wanted to saddle her with more of his baggage than this arrangement they have now. He's always figured, he supposed, that eventually she'd want someone younger, someone with a bit less of a problematic past, a real...hero.
But he supposes he's a fool, because he says it anyway.
"Do you want...do you think we should formalize things, then?" Now it's his turn to rush to get the words out. "In some way? Get married? Will you? I mean, do you want to?"
He's already regretting the words—impulse is so rarely a thing he does-when she stills, then lifts her eyes to his.
"Len," she says slowly. "Did you just propose?"
He considers the matter for a moment. Then, "yes," he says with wonder, reaching up to run a hand through her hair. "Yes, I guess I did."
He hears her intake of breath, closes his eyes, waits for the gentle rejection.
"Yes."
"What?"
"Yes. I accept."
