Warnings: juvie, mental health issues, mental health stigma, self stigmatization, cutting, suicidal tendencies/thoughts – almost exclusively in one section, which has wider spacing around it if you would like to skip it.
This started out as a fluffy response to something I saw redcharade post a while ago about everyone talking about Mick and Len fighting as the possibility of them getting a divorce (which omg, side note, thank you so much for the review you left on my last fic, made my week), and then took a sudden turn into Len and Mick's to so fluffly past together. Hope everyone enjoys.
Jax is working on the Waverider's engine. Kid's good. Has a natural sense for how things work instead of the Professor or Haircut's more theory based tinkering, which always seems to lack that bit of real life application and fucks everything up. There's a few things Mick might touch up himself, but most of the upgrades Mick has been slowly implementing are nicely in place. The Waverider, being a literal antique that had been displayed in the Time Masters museum to themselves (pretentious fuckers) is in pretty desperate need of upgrades.
Considering how lax the security had been it, it had really only been a matter of time (ha!) before some idiot had taken off with it.
It didn't horribly surprise Mick that the idiot had been Hunter.
Jax sneaks a look at Mick again, same as he's been doing every few minutes for the last fucking hour.
"Spit it out, kid."
Jax winces, and puts down his tools. "It's just…I mean. You and Snart, right?"
Mick raises an eyebrow. "Yeah, me and Snart what?"
"You guys have been getting along…better, right? I mean, I know there's a lot of stuff between the two of you, and like, I don't expect that to just go away. But I mean, you have, right?"
Mick crosses his arms. Jax is a good kid, but Mick finds he likes him despite that. The kid is one of the few ones that doesn't get on a high horse about not being a criminal, and he knows how not to fuck over a member of his crew. Mick figures it's probably the last bit, Jax's concern over teammates, that has him sticking his nose where is doesn't belong.
"Not that it's any of your business, kid, but yeah. I suppose we've been working on things."
"So then you're not actually getting a divorce? Right?"
Mick stares at Jax for a while, not quite understanding what he's on about.
Without a word Mick shakes his head, and leaves. Heads back to his room.
Fucking heroes. Mick was never going to understand them.
It's a few days later when Mick and Len are on their way to grab some food when the conversation comes up again.
This time it's Kendra and Stein, neither of which have heard them coming, yapping away in the dining area like no one could possibly over hear.
Seriously, fucking heroes. There was a reason Mick had given Len as much shit about wanting to turn coat as he had.
"I don't know," says Kendra. "History together counts for a lot. When you've been with someone for that long there's no one else that knows you better."
"And there is no one else that knows better how to hurt you, as I'm sure they have both displayed quite well. And solving matters with their fists is hardly a sign of a healthy relationship."
Mick shares a frown with Len, neither of them happy to be the topic of water cooler gossip, but before they can storm in and remind the two goody-two-shoes of who they're talking about Kendra speaks up again.
"Still though, a divorce?" Mick goes still, back rigid, and does not look at Len to see what his reaction is. "I mean, I never would have thought this when we first came on board, but it's just so hard to picture the one without the other. Even When Rory was gone it was like he was all Leonard could talk about."
The professor hums. "An occurrence that makes much more sense with the recent information that came to light. Perhaps though, if they wish to start off fresh a divorce may be a symbolic gesture of renewal, rather than the more common association of separation."
Yeah, they are not dealing with these delusional shit bags.
"I can fly the jump ship now."
Len tilts his head to the side in consideration. "Italian?"
"I was thinking more along the lines of Chinese."
"As long as you don't insist I try to eat with sticks."
"They're called chopsticks Snart, for fucks sake. How the hell did you end up labeled the 'smart one' again?"
Len smirks. "You can eat with sticks. I talk real pretty like."
They're split up on a mission and Len gets his ass handed to him.
Mick is pretty sure it has something to do with Len's new hand freezing up on him (and unfortunately they aren't quite far enough past that to really appreciate the multiple levels of puns in that statement).
"How's he doing?"
"Well," said Sara, "he lost a good bit of blood, and between that and the drugs that Gideon put him on…"
"Heeeeyyyyy, Mick," said Len, taking obvious pleasure in the way each sound rolled off of his tongue. He blinked up at Mick with wide, dilated eyes, a goofy smile on his face. It's rare to see him smile, and Mick has to fight down a smile of his own in response.
"He's a little loopy. Other than that he's all patched up though. Gideon will keep an eye on him for any side effects, but it's nothing he has to stay in the med bay for."
"Mick. Mick. Sara," Len said, lifting up an arm and letting it flop back down to his side in an attempt to grab their attention. "We should go to a bar. Like in the 70s. But with tacos. We should go to a taco bar."
Sara raises an eyebrow. "I don't know if Gideon will go for that, Len."
"The consumption of alcohol is not recommended at this time," said Gideon. "The consumption of tacos, however, is permissible."
Len nods, like Gideon just agreed with him. "Taco bar."
Mick strides over to the med bay, and leans down to carefully wrap one of his arms around Len's shoulder and help him into a standing position. Usually if Len is drugged to the gills like this he's better about excepting touches from people he knows, but it's never fun to set him off when he's not all there. "How about just tacos. And then maybe get you to your bed to sleep the rest of this off."
Len wobbles a bit, and rests his head against Mick's shoulder. He hums in assent and Mick can feel it vibrate through his jacket. Feels goosebumps raise on what used to be scarred skin underneath. "Okay."
Sara has one of her fists pressed against her mouth, stifling her laughter. Mick glares at her. On principle.
The three of them make their way to the kitchen, Len occasionally ping ponging between Sara and Mick in his drug induced stumble.
When they got to the kitchen Ray is already there, freshly showered and eating a large bowl of cereal. Mick isn't sure the kid actually knows how to cook. He has the sneaking suspicion he may actually live off of cereal, instead.
It's sad when these people continually make Mick seem like a functioning adult in comparison.
Ray perks up when he sees them, like one of those pointer dogs. "Oh, hey! How are you all doing? I heard one of you had to go to the med bay."
Mick guides Len over to where Raymond is sitting, and swipes the cereal from in front of him.
"Hey! I was eating—what in the?"
Ray's complaints are cut off when Len props himself up on Ray's body, crossing his arms over Ray's head and using them as a pillow. One hand trails down and pets down the side of Ray's face. "Shhhhhhh. Quiet Raymond. We're having tacos."
Sara manages to hold her laughter in until she sits down across from Ray, and is pinned by his wide frightful eyes.
Mick raids the fridge for taco ingredients, glad that someone convinced Rip that they can't all live off of Gideon's fabricated shit. If nothing else it gives him an excuse to cook. Not as good as barbequing as far as scratching his itch for fire, but better than the nothing he had that week before the pirates, while they whittled away in the time void.
Mick starts in on the prep work, seasoning things as he goes.
"So, uh, I guess things are going good then?"
He spares Ray a quick glance over his shoulder, confirming that Mick is still the target of conversation. "What, Len being doped up out of his head?" Len, opting to ignore the situation, seems to have taken a close interest in Ray's hair. Is he braiding cornrows? Ray, wisely, for once, seems to have decided the best course of action is to pretend nothing is happening. Mick suppresses the urge to let his lip twitch up at the sight. "I can't say it's not entertaining."
Ray smiles. "That's great! I mean, not that Len is doped up, just that you seemed to kind of hate each other for a bit there, and it's nice to see you enjoying each other's company again. And I'd hate to be part of you having irreparable differences. So I'm glad that maybe they aren't? Irreparable, I mean?"
Mick is getting a little annoyed at people on this ship deciding that Len and he are the newest daytime drama. "It's none of your business, is what it is." End of fucking discussion.
By the time Mick finishes cooking the tacos half of Ray's hair was braided into zig-zags of cornrows against his head, the occasional tuff of hair standing straight up from the confines of the braid where it had proven too short or Len's hands too drugged to do a proper job. He looked damn ridiculous.
Sara, sitting across from Ray, was currently undergoing Len's styling. From the smug look on her face she had nabbed him for the job on purpose, rather than Len stumbling over on his own. As Mick watched Len finished off a nice looking fishtail braid, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a hair tie to secure the bottom.
Len pets Sara's head, smoothing down a few tuffs of hair. "K, Lise, time for school."
Mick glares at Sara, who's eating up the attention like a brat, increasing her resemblance Lisa, who'd had her brother braid her hair in that style all throughout middle school.
"No school today," says Mick. "Just tacos."
Len's been wearing a ring on his pinky for a while now. Mick can't pin point the exact timing that it came into play. Just knows that the first few times he sees it there's an itch in the back of his head, but no real recognition of what it means.
It's only when Sara comes up to them, cheeky and obviously playing to the rest of the crew gathered away, but conveniently in ear shot, and asks. "So you two officially back together, then?"
They both frown at her, sensing a set up a mile away. It's not like she's trying to hide it, after all. "And why do you say that?" asks Len, replacing the hesitancy that Mick can read in the set of his shoulders with a disinterested drawl.
She smiles, triumphant, and gestures to Len's hand where he's spinning the ring around on his pinky. "Well, that is your guy's wedding ring, isn't it?"
Len flinches, barely noticeable, but Mick can see Sara pick it up in the concerned furrow of her brow and the way her lips turn down from a smile. And Mick suddenly remembers exactly what the ring means, memories cascading one onto another in a rush that almost makes Mick puke.
Remembers Len, the punk kid in Juvie that almost got himself killed on the first day. Remembers more than just the story as Len tells it, wrapped from his own sense of self at the time and years of telling it as a way to introduce Mick as Len's enforcer, to imply that Mick's been knocking heads together as long as he's been alive. To grow upon the carefully cultivated persona that made juvie survivable.
Mick, fourteen years old, and in juvie for arson. Shuttled off to talk to psych doctors almost every day, going from one med to another in the search for the right one – the one that will cure his itch for fire and turn him into something fit for polite company, that will dull the world around him until he doesn't feel anything and he walks through it like a zombie.
He's coming down from one med, he doesn't even remember which one, if they even told him, but it had almost worked the way the docs wanted. He had been docile, sitting rocking in a corner of his cell for days on end. Prodded by the guards into going to chow at least once a day, and into the showers about once a week, no one taking much notice that he's barely if ever sleeping until every rock in his little corner ends with the thud of his head hitting the wall. Until a guard comes in and he screams and yells and scratches and bites. Until somewhere along the way to solitary he pisses himself, and gets an extra seventy two hours in the hole for getting his blood and piss all over the two guards who hauled him in.
So Mick's fourteen, and not particularly impressive. Weak from not eating or sleeping right, average size for is age, and doesn't know the first thing about throwing a punch.
But he's got a reputation. Little Match Boy. The Jaycat on the ward. The kind of crazy no one wants to deal with. The kind that makes you wish they still gave out lobotomies.
And then Len comes in, fourteen but the tiniest kid on the block. An ex-cop's kid that got caught along with half the crew of some mafia job, and his disdain for all their juvie crimes and violent boasting is palpable. Too used to having to hold his own, one way or another, against established criminals, to respect the mimicry of children.
So they beat into him the respect of brute force and numbers, and when Mick sees one of them pull a shiv out, a toothbrush with the end filed to a point and a grip added with toothpaste paper mache, Mick steps forward.
And all he has to do it light a match. They scatter like startled deer.
Mick expects it to be a short lived thing, Len's gratitude, if there ever is any, disappearing as he realizes Mick is just some crazy person. For him to dismiss all Mick's actions as involuntary, since everyone knows he has no control over what he does.
Instead Len tilts his head to the side, and asks question after question until he's somehow pulled everything out of Mick, laid him bare for Len to make judgement on. And with everything at his fingertips Len makes a plan.
Len teaches him a few tricks, slight of hands so that he can start skipping the meds they give him that put him in a fog. And for the next week they walk around with magazines stuck in the top of their pants.
Len talks shit, and listens more than anyone realizes. Mick makes sure he has at least one match saved for when everything goes down.
And just like Len planned the shiv comes back into play, in some dark corner of juvie where the guards pretend they can't see.
Mick looks down at where the other boy has stabbed him in the stomach with his toothbrush shiv, feeling the punch of impact through the magazine, and the rush of adrenaline, but no pointy bits stirring up his insides. Len comes up behind the kid on thief silent feet, and starts whispering. Half things he's heard on the yard, and half from what he calls cold reading - spinning stories, and watching the kids face loose an ounce more blood every time he hits on something right.
In the meantime, using Len's distraction to cover his still amateurish sleight of hand, Mick pulls a match from up his sleeve, and lights it on a book cover hidden against his palm. Holds the flame in the kids face so he turns around and faces Mick one more time. Tears his eyes away from the hypnotic pull of the flame just long enough to meet the kid's terrified eyes with his own manic gleam.
By the end of the day half the yard is convinced that Mick is some indestructible super human, and the other half thinks that Len is either psychic, or can talk to dead people, who are apparently all horrible snitches.
No one messes with either of them after that. From that point on they can pretty much do whatever they like, picking and choosing when they want to interact with any of the other inmates – removed from the pecking order but still distinctly on top.
So Mick remembers saving some punk kid in juvie – but he remembers that kid saving him back.
Remembers the part of him that couldn't let go of anyone that didn't treat him like a time bomb, or a mindless animal.
He remembers that Len didn't know how to fight either, for all that he could take a beating. Remembers that at fourteen Len was deadly outside of juvie walls anyway, growing up with guns in his house since he was a little kid, picking up tricks from an ex-sniper during one of the stake outs before a job.
Remembers that Len's first few kills were lessons from his father, and how Mick had carefully never found out how old Len was when those took place.
Remembers that when Mick first met Len he'd been unable to let him go, but absolutely terrified of the kid all the same.
Remembers that back then Len's sole reason for living was getting Lisa to eighteen, how it seemed at times like Len would simply cease to exist the moment that goal was met. Remembers finding Len slitting his thighs, and the bland look in Len's eyes when he assured him he wasn't trying to kill himself, Lisa wasn't old enough for him to die yet. Remembers the look in his eyes that sent chills down Mick's spine, like Len was longing for the day when that wasn't true.
Remembers that Len's crazy is the kind that hides itself as normal, and the only reason Mick knows it so well is because at fourteen Len's normal was ridiculously fucked up.
Remembers Lisa stuck around until she was twenty two, before she went off somewhere to stretch her wings away from her brother's careful watch.
Remembers seeing something in Len's head switch off with her absence, and dragging Len out of their next job with a bruising grip on his arm, Len following just as docile as he'd been with a fucking gun to his head.
Remembers Len looking down at a razor in his hands and asking Mick what's to stop him now from slicing that little bit more, that little bit deeper. Remembers the dead look in Len's eye after Mick had hauled him in by his shirt and kissed him, biting Len's lip and growling that he was there to stop it, damn it. Remembered Len's quite agreement, and his own sudden dread, because how the fuck was he supposed to do that? Len was the one who made plans. Len was the one who got shit done. From the very beginning Len had been the one to take care of the two of them, regardless of what Len thought.
Remembers the curling disgust he'd felt later, knowing that Len wouldn't have done anything one way or another if Mick had pushed that kiss into something more. Remembers promising himself that if anything happened between the two of them it would be because Len initiated it. That Mick was sure it was something Len really wanted and not something that he just went along with, the way he seemed to do everything back then.
Remembers going to the Library, at his wit's end, and looking up half remembered things his doctors had told him. Remembers doing his best to try and mold any of it to apply to Len. And the one random ass bit that had mostly stuck, channeling Len's habit of cutting himself into worrying away at bits of jewelry like they were worry stones. Not a cure all together, but an early warning sign to Mick that the inside of Len's head is getting to be too much for him to handle.
Remembers the string of fires he lit that summer, staring into the flames and knowing that if Len went he wouldn't be too far behind.
They'd come out of that year, broken and raw, better and worse than when they went into it all at once. But with Len no longer alive solely for Lisa's benefit, softer without the edge of desperation that use to give him, but not the man that could have easily starved himself to death for all the effort he put into staying alive.
Remembers it all in a moment. All the ways he's seen Len in the past that don't line up with the stories he told himself as Kronos to either keep himself sane or drive himself crazy. Looking at the results, probably a bit of both.
Still can't remember how long Len has been wearing the ring for.
Finds himself in front of Sara, blocking her view of Len, before he even has time to think about it. "What the fuck are you talking about, Lance?"
Sara is taken aback. Clearly not getting the results that she had expected, but just as clearly not intimidated by Mick's girth, or anger.
Clear to Mick at least. It seems like the others didn't get the memo, eavesdropping on their conversation from the other side of the room.
"Hey now!" cries Ray. "She was just asking a question."
Mick turns his glare on Haircut. "Yeah? And what the fuck kind of question was that?"
It's Jax that answers. "We just – we don't think that you guys should get a divorce." He crosses his arm after he says it, setting his feet like he's prepared to fight for his point of view.
Looking back at Mick knows that all the signs were there, and that, in typical hero fashion, none of the other crew members (besides Sara) could do even a shit job at subterfuge anyway. Especially in such close quarters.
But the concept is so strange, in this setting, with these people, where Len and he have stopped playing most the cons they put up between themselves and other people. Mick honestly doesn't not understand what the fuck they think they're talking about.
This does have the unintended side effect of surprising most of the anger out of him, replacing it with befuddled confusion. "What?"
Len stands up behind him, and places a guiding hand on his shoulder. "Mick." Their eyes meet for a second, and Len pushes Mick back, so he stands to the side and slightly behind Len, then leans back slightly so his shoulder presses against Mick's arm, offering his touch as a grounding measure.
Len casts an assessing gaze over the assembled crew, the majority of whom shift under it like kids in the principal's office. "Explain."
Mick has to give Jax credit for bravery. He meets Len's gaze head on. "We don't think the two of you should get a divorce."
Len tilts his head to the side, and hums. "And where exactly did you all get the idea that Mick and I were married, exactly?"
Yeah, that still makes no sense to Mick.
"Your sister, before we had to put her back after the whole thing with the Pilgrim."
"That fucking brat." Shit was starting to make sense.
Jax, rather than being deterred by Mick's outburst, seemed to take it as confirmation. "We know you can't have it on your real id's, because your wanted or whatever, but she told us all about how you guys got married under a bunch of aliases."
Len's got his arms crossed, and is holding the bridge of his nose in one hand. "Gideon," he asks, "how many of mine and Mr. Rory's known aliases are married."
"There are seventeen known aliases of yourself and Mr. Rory that are on record as married. The wedding dates appears to be on anniversaries of your first day in juvenile detention, Mr. Snart."
"And how many of those appear on record before we dropped my sister back off in 2016?"
A moment of silence. "None."
"So you're not married?" asks Ray.
"No," says Len.
"Are you at least together?" asks Kendra.
"No," they say in tandem.
There's a bit of shuffling, and then the Professor speaks up, voice puzzled. "Well, why ever not?"
Mick can feel Len stiffen through the point of contact on his arm. He fights back the instinctive urge to place a comforting hand on Len's back.
Len shakes his head. "What part of this are you not getting, Grey?"
"I'm kind of curious too now," says Kendra. "It made a lot of sense when your sister said the two of you were together. I mean, did you ever try being together like that?"
Mick looks at them, aghast. They are two scary mother fuckers. They are not the kind of people you start…whatever the hell of this is with.
Sara waves the others off. "Come on guys, leave them alone. Lisa probably just did it to punish them for leaving her behind." She has a glint in her eye as she says it though, and Mick finds himself wondering when Lisa had a chance to talk to everyone on board. Particularly Sara.
"That does sound remarkably like my sister," says Len, stiff and uncomfortable, so he's extra heavy on the drawl. "Now, if you'll excuse me."
Len leaves, going down the hall that leads to his room. With one last glare at the others, still watching them like a day time drama, Mick grunts and follows after him.
Mick steps into Len's room without waiting for permission, letting the door slide shut behind him. Len's sitting on his bed, back wedged into the corner next to the fake window showing clouds rolling across a mountain range. His chest does something funny when he recognizes the crater of volcano among the peaks.
Len has one knee drawn up to his chest and his gaze is lost somewhere in the distance, purposefully not looking at Mick. "There was that one time," says Len. "I almost thought…" He looks up then, studies Mick's shoulder instead of meeting his eyes. "Do you remember?"
Mick sits down on the bed, far enough to give Len his own space but close enough that he can reach out and touch. He grabs hold of Len's hand, and brings it close to his own chest. Lets his fingers play with the ring on Len's pinky. "I remember. Remembering a lot of things, recently. Remembered what this meant, when Blondie asked about it."
He can hear Len's sharp intake of breath, but neither of them make a move, content to stay the way they are for the moment.
"I forgot," Mick pauses, not sure how to explain what it was that he forgot. "I forgot all the things that happened some other way than how we'd tell it. Forgot the things we didn't talk about."
"That's a lot, with us."
Mick grunts. Ain't that the truth. He squeezes Len's hand once. "You gonna talk about this?" he asks.
Mick can feel the movement of Len's shrug through his hold. "Nothing new." He takes a moment, and Mick can see him tilting his head to the side in his mind's eye, even though his back is to Len from where he's sitting. "Nothing surprising," Len corrects.
The Kronos crap, at least, is new. Even if it is wrapped up in thirty odd years of old shit.
The moment stretches out, and Mick starts to get uncomfortable. Or maybe starts to get uncomfortable how much he isn't uncomfortable with it. He lets go of Len's hand, and kicks off his boots, shuffling back into the fake window.
Len looks over at him, and there's something about his face, the way he is studying Mick, that makes his stomach flip.
"Do you remember why?"
"Why what?" asks Mick.
"Why it only happened that once." Len licks his lips, his eyes darting away and then back to Mick. "The kiss."
Mick thinks about it. Not because he doesn't know why, but because he isn't sure how much he should say. "You were pretty messed up, at the time."
Len nods, accepting that as fact.
"After the first kiss I knew you'd let me do anything to you. Whether it was something you actually wanted or not. I wasn't going to do that."
"And later, when I wasn't as messed up?"
Mick shrugs, defensive. "Why? It's not like you ever kissed me back."
Len folds himself onto his knees, so he's closer to Mick, looking down at him from the few inches his new position affords him. "Is that what you were waiting for? For me to make the first move?"
Mick shrugs. Feels like he's been shrugging a lot lately. "Wasn't exactly holding my breath for it, but yeah, I suppose so." He takes a deep breath in through his nose, and meets Len's eyes, head tilted back a bit to look at him. "If anything was ever going to happen you'd have to be the one to start it."
Len licks his lips again, and Mick's eyes follow the motion. He can feel the air move between them with Len's breathing, heavier than normal. Len reaches out his hand, slowly, until it cups the side of Mick's face, the silver of his ring a cool brand where it rests against Mick's temple. Len throws one leg over Mick's so that he's straddling him, and rests his weight so that he is sitting in Mick's lap. Mick's hand rests automatically against Len's hip, holding his partner steady. His thumb slips underneath Len's sweater, traveling over a tiny patch of skin, and Mick can feel the responding shiver that travels up Len's spine.
Fuck, was this actually happening? Thirty some odd years since they first met, almost fifteen years since the first time Mick had kissed him, desperate not to lose Len to himself.
Len moved forward, slowly, like he was the glacier his nickname would have you believe, and Mick feels his eyes flutter shut. The feeling of Len's breathe mingling with his.
And finally the moist pressure of Len's lips against his own. The shock of connection through Mick's spine. The feel of Len's hip under one hand, and the scratch of his hair under the other where he brings it up to rest against the curve of Len's neck. Len's second hand against Mick's chest, pressing against him in time with the searching of Len's tongue.
Mick moans, pulling Len closer against him, and doing his best to map out the inside of Len's mouth like he's planning a heist.
Mick's not sure how long they sit there, macking like teenagers with the occasional delicious roll of hips, when Len pulls back.
They're both a little out of breath, and Mick isn't sure how much farther this can go without them talking about it, much as they are both loathe to admit it. They've got too much shit between them to dive in at full speed, to do much more than baby steps while they figure out how this fits in with everything else they are to each other. Know each other too well not to expect there to be issues as they move forward.
Mick moans again, a distinctly unhappy one this time, and berries his head in the crook of Len's neck.
Len rubs his hand over the stubble of Mick's hair, a motion that goes straight to Mick's cock, and for a moment he reconsiders his thoughts of going slow. "What is it?" asks Len.
"Your sister is going to be unbearable about this."
Len makes a noise of agreement. He pulls Mick's head back up, leading him with a grip on the back of his neck, and takes a long, lingering look at Mick. One that Mick can feel traveling over his skin like the best of burns.
Len smiles. All teeth and predatory intent, but one hundred present genuine. "Worth it."
Mick takes in Len in turn. Sweater slightly ruffled, skin flushed, eyes blazing. He lifts one hand from Len's hip and grabs hold of Len's hand, twining their fingers together. Feels the warming cool of Len's ring against his skin.
It doesn't magically solve everything between them, or fix whatever it is that's going on in Len's head, but yeah.
Definitely worth it.
