Leonard Snart had a problem.
Technically, he always had, but over thirty years of learning how to control it had meant that most of the desires had become background noise, something ignorable. Until he found himself on that damned ship.
It wasn't bad to begin with, just a new space to become familiar with (easy, since he found the blueprint files on Gideon's mainframe a few nights into their adventure) and unfamiliar faces to study (slightly harder, but no one seemed to bother locking bedroom doors…). But then Leonard realized where his plan to plunder across time was flawed when Rip asked they remain on the ship as much as possible.
Like anyone with a problem, he developed, well... he refused to call them "coping mechanisms". They were just thing that he used or did to help him better control the urges, the most important precautions being his sharing of a room with Mick and always being in close proximity to his cold gun. Before that, it was Lisa and a revolver, knife, book, or whatever he could lay his hands on. He need to be occupied. More specifically, his hands need to be occupied.
They weren't the only offenders, no, sometimes it was a nudging elbow or a space encroaching foot, but they were by far the worst. They would wander mindlessly, curious, trying to touch.
Because that was his problem. Leonard Snart was tactile.
His sister and, later, his partner had long been desensitized to it, his tendency to stroll around, grabbing their random objects only to spin them once or twice in his hands before placing them back exactly where he had found them. He used to do it to others, too, though much less openly, until his father started to use Leonard as his own personal electrical engineer and the touching had to stop because prints, even those of a kid, could mean getting caught.
The first time he was contained for a crime, juvenile hall as a teen, was also the first time anyone outside of his family noticed, but with half a dozen years at developing the skill of avoiding the issue of tactility through his introversion, the counselors fell on the wrong side of the fence, believing him to be physically restrained due to dislike of sensation. They attempted to appeal to him, no doubt hoping that it would support a less criminally inclined lifestyle if they succeeded. But, in true Leonard fashion, he shut them out, while making a great show of slowly 'acclimating' to the things they exposed him to.
Thieves are generally tactile, coveting the idea of holding this, that, or whatever as long as it belongs to someone else, but when he works Leonard shuts down, refusing to so much as brush his very adamant fingertips against anything but the score or something directly related to retrieving it, because once he starts, he will pick up anything of even remote interest. Weapons became a mechanism when he realized that he could get away with keeping them in hand without much suspicion amongst his peers, knowing criminals always want to be the first to draw should the need arise. The cold gun- with its ridiculous size, thigh holster, and it's undeniable danger- had recently become the perfect side arm, always providing an acceptable hand hold in sensory combustive situations.
Throughout his life, Leonard always found prison difficult, though not for the typical reasons. He had no problems with schedules, he usually preferred them, and guards and other inmates made fantastic practice marks. No, his particular problem with mass incarceration was all of the grandiose egos and protectiveness over mundane objects, making finding items to hold his attention for whatever brief amount of time he was inside testing, but again, books and decks of cards were invaluable, keeping him present enough to follow through with the next scheme. To compensate for his senses perceived deprivation, Leonard, somewhat incidentally, trained himself to act as a constant, passive observer, taking in all that he could about his surroundings and the people in them.
Whenever Leonard took a break from the criminal element, home meant the indiscriminate handling of whatever was closest to him. Once, Lisa had come in to find him tossing her shampoo bottle up into the air and catching it, again and again, simply enjoying the feeling of the contents resettling. Another time, when he was sharing with Mick, he sent half an hour rapping his knuckles on various surfaces in the kitchen until the arsonist in the next room decided that he too should give into his stranger compulsions and lit his (Leonard's, that is) bedroom on fire.
His sister had always been a lifeline. When she was still small enough, which was quite a while considering their relative ages, he would convince her to hold his hand in public for the double purpose of keeping her from wandering off -she was quite the adventurer- and to keep him from brushing up against other people's clothes. As they got older, between times that he was thieving and serving time, she would slyly return any wallets he had deftly and needlessly picked or shove a glass or mug into his hands when they visited friends. The former was a preventative action that had seemed ideal, but more often than not led to him being rather heavily intoxicated by the end of whatever public social interaction they were pursuing. In private, Lisa was constantly the victim of countless shoulder massages and hair styling attempts when he need a break from heist planning, both of which built towards their already rather seamless siblinghood and lead to her sporting incredibly intricate braids on a nearly daily basis in her teens and twenties.
Very few others in his life had bothered to learn about his specific inclinations, a lover here or there perhaps, but mostly he went about his life stealing from people and creating a persona that profited from his forced distance. When the particle gun and all that it offered fell into his lap, and the 'Cold' identity came into its own, Leonard had felt secure for the first time in decades, but a half dozen metahumans later he found himself the farthest from his element he had ever been: on a flying time machine with a number of decisively observant strangers.
RIP:
As any proper captain should, Rip Hunter read up on all of his possible recruits. After having Gideon synthesize all relevant information into encrypted documents, he studied everyone from top to bottom, taking special care in the cases of Sara Lance, Ray Palmer, and Leonard Snart.
Rip quickly discovered that Snart was a manipulator of analysis. Due to his multiple arrests and incarcerations -thought it is notable that he had never served a full sentence after he turn 18- there were several corresponding interviews and psychological evaluations, but while each continued in a similar vein of that of the last, everyone drew different conclusions. And each of those played directly to Snart's favor at a later date. Once, he was deemed mentally unstable but benign and was sent to a low security ward, only to escape within a month; another time, he exhibited the opposite traits, highly dangerous and abrasive, which sent him into a high security facility where his stay ended nearly a year later in an explosion and a newly liberated Snart and newly retrieved Mr. Rory. Rip knew the man he was recruiting, but there was next to no hope of understanding him. That is, until he found a piece of a prison med wing video of a heavily medicated, post-surgery Snart where he not only decided to aggressively compliment the attending's physique but also to launch into a somewhat slurred and very expressive story about taking his little sister to a car show that ended with her destruction of a 'borrowed' Thunderbird and disapproving Snart dragging her to a hospital.
Up until seeing the video, Rip had been unsure of Snart's, and by default his partner's, inclusion on the team to stop Savage, fearful that he would be every bit as unsound as the arsonist, but the video ended up being the deciding factor, proving that along with his intelligence, survivor's mentality, and proclivity towards illegal actions, there was a protective and even caring side to his nature.
As for Snart's other tendencies, Rip first noticed them about a week into their mission. He, like most career time travelers, had trouble keeping a regular sleeping schedule. Apparently, the same can be said for career criminals. To nights in a row, the pair spent several hours in separate parts of the common area. The first night Rip had the study and Snart the kitchen, but on the second there seemed to be an unspoken agreement to switch.
Rip's boredom had peaked sometime around 3 a.m. Ship Standard Time, having only limited access to Gideon's systems in the outer rooms, and returned to his study. However, the vantage point for the far doorway allowed him to catch Snart in the act of random touching without fear that the thief could sense eyes on him, due in no small part to his attention being held by his committed exploration. Captain Hunter watched as the older man moved almost systematically around the cluttered area, picking up this and stroking that as he moved. A book sat abandoned on an armrest of the chair that he had seen Snart occupying at the beginning of the night and judging by the page-divide it had held the rouge's attention sufficiently for several hours. Rip was about to knock on the doorframe when he heard muffled footsteps coming down the corridor towards him and turned to see Mr. Rory approach. Mick, obviously curious as to what Rip had been doing, peered past him into the study while Rip waited for his response. And it was not one he expected. The arsonist took two steps back and gestured for Rip to follow him before heading for the weapons room around the corner.
"Look, British," Mick started as the door slide closed behind them, "it's best if you pretend you didn't see that." He settled against a crate, waiting for a remark from Rip.
"Why would it matter? Everyone on board has free reign over the common areas, the study included. I was only watching for my own curiosity ." Rip crossed his arms, sighing, and regretting his apparently unwelcome observation.
"It's just something he does -has the entire time I've known him. Just don't call attention to it, okay? He doesn't like it." Mick ended firmly, hoping that the request would be enough to save his partner any embarrassment.
"Doesn't like what, the attention or the habit?"
"It's not a habit, British, it's- just let him be. He'll get it out of his system pretty soon, and maybe he'll actually go to sleep tonight." Mick paused before adding, "He hasn't, you know. Slept yet, on this boat-"
"Ship or vessel, please." Rip interjected.
Rory scoffed. "I'll call it what I wanna. But, he hasn't. Been nearly a week and I don't think he's slept more than a couple hours in all."
Rip swore that he heard something akin to concern in the firebug's voice, but he nodded saying chalking it up to his own tiredness, "Most people take a while to get fully acclimated to living like this, though I had honestly thought he was the frontrunner for adaptation, giving he doesn't lose his lunch or forget how to walk every time we travel."
Mick let out a tightlipped smile at the reference to his own short coming as well as his partner's praise.
"You're not really getting this, Cap, the travels not why he can't sleep, let's just leave it at that. And know that if you let on that you saw him, I'll know, and you'll regret it."
Rip's eyes narrowed.
"It's not my intention to. But you, Mr. Rory, should know not to threaten a man on his own ship."
Mick stood and walked to the door, turning to Rip as the panel shifted open.
"That wasn't a threat. Get some sleep, Hunter."
