Principles of Internal Medicine

by arainymonday

The past seven months have been the calm before the storm at Central City General Hospital for Dr. Barry Allen and Dr. Leonard Snart. Then one wintry night, two ambulances arrive from Iron Heights Prison. Some storms blow over in minutes. Others change the landscape forever. Coldflash!Doctors AU. Sequel to Atlas of Human Anatomy.

Title: Principles of Internal Medicine
Rating: Mature
Warnings: child abuse, domestic violence, medical trauma, surgery
Relationships: 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 would appreciate your comments if you did. 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.) You'll notice that I've aged up Barry. Twenty-six is awfully young for a fourth year resident, and maybe thirty is too, but Lexie started her residency on Grey's Anatomy at twenty-five so Barry could have too. Len is still his same age, which is forty-three until canon tells us otherwise. The next story in the series is a crossover with the doctors of Star City General Hospital, which I am super excited to write!

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Principles of Internal Medicine
by arainymonday

Barry sits under the harsh fluorescent lights that make stars pop in his tired eyes and stares at his blurry reflection in the Plexiglass. It's nine in the morning, and he hasn't slept yet. It's his turn for night rotations. The hospital is mostly quiet at night, except the ER, and they only page Barry if there's a peds patient coming in. There had been a whole bus load of them last night - a girls' soccer team on their way back from a game in Keystone.

A voice calling his name startles Barry awake. He blinks and shakes his head to clear away the sleep that has descended on him. He grins ear-to-ear at his dad through the Plexiglass, raises his hand in thanks to the prison guard who roused him, and picks up the phone.

"Hey, slugger. You're on night rotation again, huh?"

"Dad." The word is relief rushing out of him. "Yeah, night six of ten. I'm sorry I didn't come yesterday. There was a -"

Henry shakes his head. "Don't worry about it, Barry. You've been a surgical resident for four years now. I know that your time isn't your own to control. I'm just glad to see you today. How are you?"

Barry stifles a yawn. "The new Chief Resident is a micromanaging monster. We all miss how Lisa ran things. At least she's on our side and is making his life hell as much as she can now that she's a fellow."

Henry listens while Barry complains about the punishing schedule, constant stream of memos, and newly required daily check-in with Dr. Hall whose superiority complex is out of control. He listens while Barry tells him about a piggyback transplant Barry had watched Eddie and Len perform. He listens while Barry tells him about how his possessions are slowly migrating to Len's apartment and Lisa's possessions are migrating to Cisco and Barry's apartment and how exciting and scary that is. And he smiles. He smiles like he's not an innocent man imprisoned for a crime he didn't - wouldn't, couldn't ever - commit.

"What does Len think about the slow migration?" Henry asks.

Barry laughs shyly, rubs the back of his neck. "He suggested hiring a moving truck the next time we both have the day off."

"And are you going to do that?"

Barry hedges, but eventually shakes his head. "Not yet. It doesn't feel right yet. It almost does, but not quite?"

Now it's Henry's turn to hesitate. Barry prompts him to go ahead and say whatever is on his mind with a pointed look and arched eyebrow. They've communicated through Plexiglass for so long they're experts on each other's faces.

"You've been with Len for about a year now, right?"

Barry nods even though that's not quite true. They've been together longer, but he doesn't want to explain their months of meeting in on call rooms to his dad. They've been together officially for about a year. It's close enough to the truth.

"You haven't really told me too much about him. I know that you love him and that he treats you well, which I am very happy about. I know that he's a great surgeon and excellent teacher. But everything else I've had to piece together. Why is that, Barry?"

Barry shifts uneasily. He's been very careful about what he tells his dad regarding Len. Lewis Snart is imprisoned in Iron Heights too and these conversations are not private. The guards, other visitors, they hear everything. Whether they listen or not, Barry doesn't know, and he's not taking chances. He doesn't want Lewis to have any reason to notice his dad. And Len and Lisa have avoided all contact with their father for almost thirty years. The last thing he wants is some off-the-cuff remark changing that. He hasn't even mentioned Lisa's name aloud. He only calls Len by his name because Lewis used to call him Leo so Barry figures it's safe enough, probably.

When Barry doesn't answer quickly enough, Henry gets to his point.

"I just want to make it clear, Barry, that I'm not uncomfortable with you being in a relationship with a man. And I'm not uncomfortable with him being older either. All I care about is your happiness. So if you're taking things slow because you think you should, then that's the right choice. But if you're taking things slow because you think I won't approve, you don't have to worry about that."

"It's not that, dad. I know you're okay with my sexuality."

"Okay," Henry says. "Good. It's important to me that you know that. But I'm still curious about him. How about we start with his full name?"

This is the kind of information Barry doesn't want to share in visitation. He doesn't trust anyone in this prison except his dad. Not the other prisoners, the guards, the warden. They're all part of the system that failed his family. He fishes out his pen from his breast pocket, writes Leonard Snart on his palm, and holds it up to the Plexiglass.

"As in ...?" Henry asks. Barry nods sharply. "I think I understand why you've been reluctant with details now. He's one mean son of a bitch."

Barry makes a disapproving sound. "Yeah, Len's told me all about that."

Henry's eyes are bright and sharp as a razor's edge when they say goodbye a few minutes later. Barry's vision is still blurry from fatigue. He runs home, wolfs down some breakfast, and collapses onto his bed where he sleeps like the dead until he has to wake up for his next night rotation.

o o o

The one good thing about night rotation is that Barry can almost always leave on time in the morning. There are so many doctors coming into work between four and seven in the morning that there's no reason for him to stay unless he's in surgery or waiting on labs. He races out of the hospital at superspeed, stands impatiently in line at Jitters, and runs to Len's apartment. He juggles the two coffee cups while he lets himself in. He hears Len in the kitchen making breakfast.

"Good morning," Barry calls.

Len pauses slicing strawberries. "Two pleasant surprises in one morning. You're here. And you're using your key finally."

Barry dodges that conversation by holding up the Jitters cups. "Three pleasant surprises."

He hangs his coat up on the rack by the door and brushes the snow out of his hair, then kisses Len good morning. He's a menace in the kitchen, he knows. He crowds in close to Len, hugs him from behind, and steals strawberries as Len slices off their tops. He moves on to eating the blueberries draining in the sink when Len turns his attention to the toaster.

"So you brought me my coffee, but I'm still going to have to stop at Jitters for breakfast," Len says.

"No, no, no. I'll make you breakfast."

"Oh, good. Burnt toast and a banana. What better way to start my day?"

Barry hates himself a little for passing up the opportunity. They haven't seen each other in two days, haven't spent the night together in five. Barry is dying for it, but he's tired and Len has an early surgery and no resident while Barry is working nights.

"I'm not going to burn the toast this time," Barry protests.

"I'll believe that when I see it."

Len sits at the island counter and finishes off the few berries still on the cutting board and in the colander while Barry hovers over the toaster, determined to make toast correctly this morning.

"I saw my dad yesterday morning. We had a nice talk about you and me being with you. I haven't told him a lot about you, and I guess he thought that's because I didn't think he would be supportive. But he is."

Len gaze is intensely curious, brimming with questions he's not likely to ask. Barry feels drawn to Len's side, to pull him into a hug and stroke his short hair and press their foreheads together. "Hey, I told him the important things. Like how much I love you and how loved I feel with you."

A smile - no, a smirk - ticks up the corner of Len's mouth and his blue, blue eyes dance with some light that steals Barry's breath. The look is ... triumphant, like Len's pulled off some scheme that's impressive, dangerous, bad. Barry feels hot and shaky under the force of that look.

"Keep looking at me like that and you'll be late to work."

Len's kiss is searing, deep, sexy, brief. "Hold that thought."

"The only thing I'm holding is my own cock if you leave right now."

Len chuckles darkly, kisses Barry again, retreats to the coat rack. He pulls on his dark blue coat, grabs his coffee from the kitchen and briefcase from by the door. He kisses Barry goodbye one more time.

"Think of me," he whispers in Barry's ear.

The ghost of his breath sends shivers down Barry's spine. Then Len goes, leaving Barry alone with an aching erection and the scent of smoke wafting from the toaster.

He gets his revenge by calling Len while he's jerking off and moaning his name and feels satisfied by how wrecked Len's voice is when he says, "Fuck, Barry." Barry imagines Len pressing his palm into his lap and breathing deeply, trying to calm himself down before walking into the attendings lounge, patient's room, OR, and a spike of pleasure courses through him.

"Too bad your morning is so busy, hmm?" Barry asks.

Len growls over the phone. "You're going to pay for this next time I have you in my bed."

"What are you going to do to me, Lenny?" Barry purrs.

He can feel his climax building and strokes himself faster while he waits eagerly for the answer. There's a thump on the other end of the line, like Len has dropped his head back on the seat.

"This is indecent. I'm in the parking lot of our workplace. Our co-workers are waving good morning to me."

"Are you waving back? Or are you being naughty? You have your phone in one hand. I'll bet the other one is your cock."

Len's breath hitches. "Next time, I'm going to bend you over and press you down into the mattress and fuck you so hard you see stars and so good you beg me to never stop. I'm going to make you come again and again until your legs are shaking and your voice is -"

Barry arches up off the bed and cries out his release. Len's breath is harsh and ragged in his ear, but he's muttering frustrated 'fuck's and Barry imagines his palm is pushing down painfully now and his cheeks are flushed with heat.

"I love you," Barry pants.

Len doesn't answer for a minute. His voice is strained when he does. "Fucking tease." Barry laughs. "I love you too."

o o o

"Aw, domestic bliss," Hartley says. "I didn't realize you two were so serious about each other."

Barry glares at Hartley who is standing in front of the gurney where Barry and Cisco have made their night rotation hideout. It's close enough to the elevator they can get to the ER and their patients fast enough, but near the radiology lab which is quiet at this early hour. Cisco is asleep on Barry's shoulder, which he doesn't mind because Cisco literally fell asleep mid-sentence and toppled onto Barry.

"What do you want, Hartley?" Barry asks.

"Your other shoulder, of course." Barry rolls his eyes, so he relents and says what he came down here to say. "Iris sent me to find you. She threatened me with bodily harm if I didn't come get you personally rather than just paging you. I'm supposed to tell you that you're needed in the ER because there are two ambulances on their way from Iron Heights."

Barry's blood runs cold. He runs for the elevator, too fast apparently because he's pushing the call button and Hartley is still staring at the place Barry had been sitting. He ignores Hartley's "What the hell?" and Cisco's groggy wakeup when he falls face first onto the gurney without Barry's shoulder to hold him up because the elevator doors slide open. It takes forever to go up two levels - he should have taken the stairs, goddamnit - but he's outside with the frigid winter wind blowing through his cotton scrubs before the ambulances arrive. Iris is there in a trauma gown with gloves on.

"Iris! What's going on?"

Sympathy wells in Iris' eyes when she answers him. "We don't know much. They each have a guard with them in the ambulance. From what they're saying, your dad and Lewis Snart -" There's a question in her eyes, but she doesn't ask it " - had an altercation and they were both injured."

"In the middle of the night?" Barry asks skeptically.

Iris doesn't have an explanation for him, though. She looks apologetic, but anxious. Barry balls his hands into fists so he doesn't start vibrating with nervous energy. He doesn't need answers from prison guards or EMTs. He already knows what happened and that it's all his fault.

"Wait. One of the prisoners is your dad?" Hartley asks. Barry doesn't spare him an answer because Iris has more to tell him.

"Barry," she says quietly. "The EMTs with your dad ... they ... it's bad, Barry. They strongly suggested we have a neurosurgeon waiting."

Barry finally glances over his shoulder to where Hartley and Cisco are putting on yellow trauma gowns. "I've already called Stein," Hartley says. He's lost the condescension that usually twists his expression when he looks at Barry. He looks as nervous as Cisco. "He's on his way in."

"Barry, you should go inside," Iris says kindly. When Barry doesn't budge, she gives up and turns to the residents and interns crowding around her to do her actual job - running the ER, not saying pointless things to Barry. "We have two prisoners from Iron Heights coming in. They'll be accompanied by guards everywhere. Handcuffs stay on at all times. Keep them isolated. Use trauma rooms, curtains, whatever. One prisoner needs a physical exam and evaluation - interns, you're with me on that - the other prisoner is going straight to imaging with Dr. Ramon and Dr. Rathaway."

The sirens taunt Barry for two minutes before the ambulances appear. Iris rushes forward to meet the EMTs as they climb down from the rig. Barry forces himself to hang back, to not get in the way and because he doesn't know if his dad or Lewis Snart is in the first ambulance. They lift down the gurney. The patient is a mean-looking man with little resemblance to Len or Lisa. He's breathing through a mask and scowling at the world as they wheel him inside. Iris and the interns rush inside with him.

Cisco and Hartley stand on either side of Barry while they wait for the second ambulance. Cisco squeezes Barry's shoulder in silent support.

"Stein will be here soon. We'll keep him stable until then."

Barry hardly recognizes the patient on the gurney when they lower him from the ambulance. One side of his face is broken and swollen, blood staining his hair red. There's a neck brace, an oxygen mask, an EMT holding pressure to his abdomen, defibrillator pads on his exposed chest. Barry feels sick as he runs after the gurney disappearing into the hospital.

Cisco and Hartley are shouting at each other, not in argument for once, but in agreement. First an MRI to check the head trauma, then the abdominal wound. The stab wound. Barry paces in the booth while they wait for the MRI to show a picture of what's happening inside his dad's head. Cisco and Hartley both glance at him nervously, and at each other, wondering if the other is going to force Barry to sit in the waiting room. Neither of them send him away, and he sees the massive brain bleed when it comes up on the screen. He stumbles into a chair, dizzy and vision edging to black.

"Shit," Hartley whispers. He turns to Cisco and says what they all know is true. "We can't wait for Stein."

Cisco looks like he might protest. Fourth year residents can do a lot alone, but they absolutely should not remove a three-inch diameter portion of a patient's skull and tie off a brain bleed. Except if they don't, Barry's dad is going to die. Cisco nods once, tersely. Barry tries to follow them into the scrub room, but Hartley stops him with a hand on his chest.

"It's not just that you can't be in here, Barry," he says. He sounds almost kind, soft. "You don't want to be here for this. Go to the waiting room. We'll keep you updated."

But Barry doesn't go to the waiting room. He goes up to the gallery and watches his best friend and ... he doesn't know what to call Hartley. They hate each other, but he's going to try and save his dad's life. They're not exactly enemies after this.

Cisco and Hartley aren't operating yet. They're talking. "Come on, come on," Barry chants. But then he realizes that they're arguing over who will do the surgery, not because they're in the middle of a desperate competition for more surgical hours, but because neither wants to be responsible for killing Barry's dad. Eventually, Hartley picks up the drill. His eyes flick up to the gallery, like he knows that's where Barry will be, then he looks down and starts drilling.

Barry feels sick and hazy watching Hartley hand the circular skull bone to Cisco, who cuts an incision into Henry's stomach and sews it in to keep it viable. Stein comes into the OR as Cisco is moving onto examining the stab wound still bleeding through lap pads an intern is using to apply pressure. Stein asks some questions, observes Hartley's work, then Cisco's. He doesn't take over for either, but directs their work from where he stands over Henry's chest.

He knows anything could go wrong at any second, but with an attending - Stein, no less - in the OR he can turn his attention away from the surgery for a minute. He fumbles for his phone in his pocket, dials Len, doesn't think about it being three-thirty in the morning. He needs Len. He's going to fall apart soon. He needs Len to hold him together.

"What's wrong?"

Len sounds wide awake. It's a surgeon's instinct, ready to rush into an OR at a moment's notice to save a patient the second they're paged even if they've only had three hours of sleep and even if they haven't eaten for ten hours. Barry starts crying halfway through his explanation. In between his sobs, he hears rustling, jingling, a car turning over.

"I'll be there in ten minutes. Keep talking to me, Barry."

Barry can't talk about the surgery happening down in the OR anymore so he says the only other important thing.

"When you get here, whatever you do, do not come in through the ER entrance."

o o o

A stream of attendings visits Henry's room in the ICU the next morning. Each of them, save Mick, are confused by Len's presence at Barry's side, but they keep their comments confined to medicine.

Stein has been at the hospital since three-thirty, so he comes in with Cisco and Hartley first.

"I've reviewed all the images and observed your father's surgery performed by Dr. Rathaway. I believe he has a very promising prognosis. I don't anticipate any complications or deficits. We'll know for sure once he wakes up. Dr. Rathaway will keep you updated."

"Not you?" Hartley asks.

Stein looks surprised by the question. "Certainly not, Dr. Rathaway. Mr. Allen is your patient, not mine. I'm here to give an assessment for your performance, not to steal your patient from you."

"Dr. Allen," Len says. "Barry's father is a physician. He's a doctor, not a murderer."

Stein looks like he might argue the point that a prisoner of nineteen years must have had his license revoked, but Barry has noticed that Stein defers to Len on occasion when the stakes aren't too high or about neurosurgery. There must be a story there, and Barry wants to hear it one day. Today, he's happy just to have Len beside him, fighting battles he's too exhausted to manage.

"Barry," Hartley says. He glances between Barry and Stein. "Are you okay with that?"

Barry offers a tight smile, the only kind he can summon up right now. "Yeah, of course I am, Hartley. You did great last night. You saved his life."

For Barry's part, their feud is over. Whatever happened in the past, it's staying there. Hartley gave him and his dad a future.

Dr. West comes next to tell Barry about the abdominal stab wound. Cisco accompanies him because he performed that surgery, and Iris follows them into the room. She's already halfway across the room to give Barry a hug or hold his hand when she sees Len sitting beside Barry looking equally tired and somewhat rumpled because he dressed quickly when Barry called. She blinks in surprise, and they'll have to talk about her opinion of Len later because it's wrong and the constant suspicion of Len is upsetting to Barry.

"The shiv didn't puncture any vital organs, but he did lose a lot of blood so we're going to monitor his hematocrit levels and see if he needs another blood transfusion. Dr. Ramon stitched up the muscle well, so with some rest he'll have a hell of a scar, but no other long-term problems from the wound," Dr. West says.

He's using his judgemental voice, as Iris calls it. Barry doesn't know him well, but he knows that voice from his rotation in general surgery and Iris' many, many rants about being on the receiving end of it. From Iris, Barry knows that Joe West is a good father, but a discerning man who must hate that his daughter is friends with a murderer's child.

"Um, Dr. Snart," Iris says. "Would you like an update on your father?"

Barry cringes as Len starts. He wishes they had had this conversation before, but every time Barry tried, Len told him to sleep while he could, because in a few hours residents and interns would start pre-rounds, then attendings would do rounds, then there would be follow-up tests.

"My father?"

Iris casts Barry an alarmed look, but gathers her composure like the professional she is. "Your father was brought in last night as well. I treated him for a facial laceration and two broken fingers. He's already been discharged -"

"Good," Len says firmly. He doesn't encourage Iris to give any more details, so she goes quiet. "Cisco, please go find Lisa. Immediately."

Cisco doesn't need to be asked twice. He bolts from the room. Barry almost reaches over for Len's hand, but remembers that Dr. West is still in the room and that the ICU doors are glass. He can't even give Len permission to leave because Dr. West will find that too suspicious. It hurts Barry to know what turmoil Len must be going through and unable to help him.

"So ... Snart's dad did this to Allen's dad?" Dr. West asks.

Barry doesn't care if he's an attending and Iris's father, he shoots a dark look at Dr. West. "Thank you for taking over my father's case, Dr. West," he says tightly, "so Cisco can focus on his brain injuries."

Dr. West understands the dismissal, and he's not impressed by it. Barry is beyond caring. He just wants him out of the room so he can talk to Len and comfort him. Iris hangs back a step, opens her mouth to say something, but closes it when Barry crawls out of his chair and kneels next to Len and twines their fingers together.

"I was trying to tell you last night. I should have tried harder, though. Having him sprung on you like that ... I'm so sorry."

Len's eyes are stormy, but he leans into Barry, presses their foreheads together. Barry hears the message in the silence, tilts his head back and kisses Len softly. It's a risk in a room with glass doors, but Barry can't stand letting Len suffer alone anymore.

"I hate him," Len says. He sits back in the uncomfortable chair, looks up at the ceiling instead of Barry when he says, "I had the chance to kill him once, before he went to prison for the last time. I had a gun and he was right in front of me. I wish I'd done it."

Barry's hands close compulsively around Len's. "No, you don't. And if my dad were awake right now, he'd say the same thing. Avoiding this, as much as I wish we could have, it's not worth the toll taking a life would have on you."

Len runs his fingers through Barry's hair. He looks so sad it hurts Barry's heart. "You're an incredible man, Barry. I'm lucky to have you."

Barry feels his cheeks warm. It's hardly the most embarrassing thing Len has ever said to him, but it touches him deeply today when he's already so raw. "You're the one who came to me in the middle of the night and sat with me while we waited for news. You're still here too. Don't you have patients and surgeries?"

"I pushed the surgeries while you were sleeping. Jax is rounding for me. He said he'll bring updates when he's finished. Ray is doing my one critical surgery this morning. He complained, but I reminded him I was his chief."

"You didn't really say that?" That's a little heavy-handed and not Len's style.

"No, I didn't really say that. He was happy to help out after I told him I had a family emergency."

Barry's chest feels tight. His heart is beating too fast, even for him. Barry lifts their joined hands and presses a kiss to the soft skin on the back of Len's hand and rubs the ghost of the kiss with his thumb.

Over the past year, Barry has slowly - sometimes very painfully - become aware that Len can hide his affection well, but not his fear. Affection is a thing he controls tightly, but fear bursts viciously off of his sharp tongue. If Len speaks loving words, he means them to his core and he's already been acting on them. He gave Barry a key to his apartment, an open invitation to move in, took the day off work to sit in a hospital room. They've been family without Barry realizing.

"I'm a lucky guy to be part of your family," Barry says.

They don't have a lot of stolen moments. Too many nurses are in and out of the room to check Henry's vitals and make notes in his chart. Mick comes by after lunch to talk about the X-Rays of Henry's swollen cheek.

"I don't know what happened here," Mick says honestly. "A fist couldn't have done this much damage. It's like he got punched in the face by a girder. No wonder he had a brain bleed. I have a lot of work to do." He shows Barry and Len the X-Rays of Henry's shattered cheekbone and eye socket. Then he walks them through the reconstructive surgery on the computer. "Rathaway is taking him back into surgery tomorrow to replace the skull fragment he cut out since his ICP is normal again. I'll go in at the same time to harvest bone for the grafts. My biggest concern is the eye socket. I'll need to get some more detailed images to find out if there's any damage to his eye or optic nerves."

Barry feels like he almost had his emotions under control before, but now he's losing the pieces of his composure again. Len pulls him into a hug and Barry hides his face in Len's shoulder. He hears the slide of metal-on-metal as Mick pulls the privacy curtain closed.

"I'm so sorry, Barry," Len says.

"Kid," Mick starts. "Barry, we don't know anything yet. The eye might be fine." His next words are directed at Len. "What the hell are you thinking saying things like that to him?"

A large, heavy hand touches Barry's shoulder. Mick is standing a full arm's length away, almost like he's pushing Barry away, but he grips his shoulder in a comforting gesture. He doesn't look at Barry when he talks.

"My old man, he put my mom in a hospital bed a few times. A piece of advice for you. Let all that out now so you can hold it together when he wakes up. Just don't listen to Snart's doom and gloom shit. I'm gonna take care of your dad. The only part of this beating left when I'm finished will be the memory."

Barry looks at Mick in sympathy. He's never really understood plastic surgeons before. He doesn't understand devoting one's life to tummy tucks and breast enhancements. But now he gets it, the importance of surgeons who can erase everything but the memory of trauma.

"I know something about memories that scar," Barry says. "I can help him with that part."

Mick squeezes Barry's shoulder almost too hard, and he knows that Mick understands, not because Len told him about Barry's foster parents - Len would never do that - but because their scars are bonds, as Len says. Mick clears his throat uncomfortably, still won't look at Barry as he turns to leave.

"I'll check in before surgery tomorrow."

Barry is exhausted and it's not even two o'clock in the afternoon. He wants to sleep and stay awake for his dad, crawl into bed to hide from the world and sit vigil at his dad's bedside. He wraps his arms around Len's waist and hides in his shoulder again.

"For the record, I was saying I'm sorry my father did this, not because I think your dad is going to lose his eye. He's not, okay? Mick is the best plastic surgeon at CCGH. And if there is damage, we have a team of surgical ophthalmologists in the hospital."

"You don't have to apologize for him, Len. I don't blame you or hold it against you. Or Lisa, for that matter. It's my fault this happened."

"How do you figure that?"

Barry's words are muffled by Len's shirt. "The reason I haven't told my dad much about you is because someone might be listening in at visitation. But the other day, I finally told him your last name and he made the connection right away because Lewis is pretty infamous in Iron Heights, I guess. And I think I might have said something without meaning to that implied he hurt you and Lisa. It can't be a coincidence that they've been in Iron Heights together for nineteen years and yesterday is the day Lewis notices my dad."

"Please tell me someone overheard and that's why this happened. Please tell me your dad wouldn't do something stupid like try to avenge something that happened thirty years ago."

"Avenge might be a strong word, but ... His chance to raise me was stolen from him. He doesn't think much of parents who don't appreciate their children."

"Jesus Christ," Len mutters. "Now I have to worry about both of the Allen men."

Their last visitor of the day is Lisa, who bursts into the ICU still in a scrub cap. She rushes over to Barry and throws her arms around his neck.

"Cisco told me everything. Are you okay, Barry?"

"Yeah, I'm doing okay," Barry says. "Len's been here with me all day. How about you? You didn't see Lewis before they discharged him, did you?"

"No, Iris got him out of here as fast as possible. Good riddance."

She stays with Barry and sends Len on a much needed break. He's barely left all day except to get Barry food from the cafeteria. Lisa and Barry team up to bully him into finding Ray to ask about the surgery he took over and check in with Jax about his patients instead of just grabbing coffee.

"He'll be okay," Lisa says. "He's stable. I know it's scary that he hasn't woken up, but it's for the best. He would be in pain if he was awake."

Barry nods. "I'm just exhausted from all of this, and I hate that he's handcuffed to a bed and there's a guard outside his door all the time. He didn't do anything wrong his whole life. It's so unfair."

Lisa glances at the guard sitting in a chair by the door. Then she pulls a bobby pin from her hair.

"No way," Barry says, sitting up straighter, excited. "You're not!"

"Oh, I am," Lisa promises.

It takes her less than thirty seconds and the handcuffs are dangling uselessly from the arm of the bed. Lisa tucks the empty cuff under the mattress and drapes the blanket to hide what she's done.

It doesn't change anything, but the weight on Barry's shoulders feels a little lighter. He really is lucky to have this family on his side.

o o o

Barry goes back to work two days later. His dad is conscious, but on so much morphine he's barely lucid even when he's awake. He's still on night rotation so he spends most of his shift sitting in his dad's room with Cisco and Iris. Caitlin comes to see them when she scrubs out of her final surgery of the day, and euchre is her idea. It's a good one too because it gives Barry's mind a break from medicine without removing him from his dad's room.

"So it's official," Caitlin says. "I've chosen my specialty. I'm going to be a general surgeon."

"Caitlin, that's great!" Iris says. "And I'm not just saying that because my dad is going to be thrilled he has a senior resident to mentor."

Cisco doesn't say anything, just stares at his cards. It's not like Cisco, and come to think of it, he's been strangely quiet for several days. Barry tries to catch his attention, but his best friend is resolutely keeping his eyes on his hands.

"I sincerely hope he does mentor me," Caitlin says. "Having the chief of my specialty teaching me would be an incredible opportunity."

"And it would mean one of us is finally on equal footing with Barry," Iris says. "As your friend, I'm thrilled for you that Snart is giving you all of his knowledge. But as your fellow resident, I am beyond jealous. But I guess if I wanted a shortcut I should have gone into cardio with Eddie."

"His name is Len," Barry snaps, finally looking away from Cisco. "And what the hell is that supposed to mean, Iris?"

"Nothing," Iris says, but she looks away like there's something very pointed she's implying. "Okay, fine. I'll just say it. You have it easier than the rest of us and it's really unfair that the Chief goes around saying you're the best resident in our class when that's the case."

"Iris," Caitlin says quietly, nervously. "All four of us are in relationships with attendings or fellows."

"Yeah, but we're not in the same departments."

White hot anger flares in Barry's chest. Caitlin and Cisco are both resolutely staring at their cards now.

"Len would never let me off easy or give me anything I haven't earned. He cares about his patients too much. He cares about my education too much."

"Okay," Iris says, but not placating, like she's gearing up for a fight. "You say that, but I don't know that."

"Maybe if you'd ever had a conversation with Len, you would. Why haven't you, by the way, Iris? Cisco talks to Len, and okay, he's dating Lisa so he might anyway, but so does Caitlin, and she's not dating a Snart sibling."

Iris lays down her cards and holds up both of her palms like Barry is the one in the wrong here. "Let me turn that around on you, Barry. Why hasn't he ever talked to me?"

"Because you spent the first week he and I were officially together glaring at him every time you saw him. And why is that? Because you were our biggest supporter when everything between he and I started."

"Yeah, when I thought you were finally rebounding from Felicity. But then it got serious, and we all know his reputation, Barry. He's not committment material. I just don't want him to hurt you anymore than he already has, and he's in the perfect position to ruin everything for you. Your heart and your career."

Barry can't believe what he's hearing. And from Iris, of all people. It makes no sense. "I've hurt him too and we worked through it and we're stronger now. Len isn't going to 'ruin' anything, and if you want us to stay friends, you'll stop saying shit like that."

"Barry," Caitlin whispers.

"No, I'm sorry, but I mean that. I can't believe you encouraged me to pursue him, but you've been silently judging me for it. I stood by you, Iris, when almost all the other interns implied that you only got into this program because of your dad. I won the first solo surgery of our class and I picked you to scrub in so you could prove yourself. And now you're sitting here telling me that I'm not actually a good surgeon and I'm sleeping my way through my residency?"

"I don't think that's what Iris -" Caitlin starts.

"That's exactly what Iris is saying," Barry snaps. "If you don't mind, Iris, I'd like to keep my dad's visitors to family and actual friends."

Iris storms out the room with tears shining in her eyes. Barry tells himself he doesn't care, but he does. He cares that he's fighting with Iris now, that they've said things to hurt each other, that she thinks less of him for falling in love.

"She's worried about you," Caitlin says tentatively. "There's been some ... gossip about why Len took the day off to sit with you and your dad." Barry's attention snaps to her. "Ronnie overheard Joe talking to Wells. Apparently, Joe has a real problem with all of the internal relationships. He says it compromises the integrity of the program. How close you and Len are came up in the conversation."

Barry drops his head into his hands. "Great. That's exactly what we need right now."

"For what it's worth," Caitlin says, "I think you and Len are perfect for each other."

"Yeah, we totally ship it," Cisco says.

Cisco's voice sounds dull, strained in ways Barry's never heard before. Whatever is going on in Barry's head, he can put it aside for a few minutes.

"What's up, Cisco?"

Cisco blows out a deep breath when Caitlin wraps an arm around his shoulder. "I ... choked the other night. I was standing there in the operating room with your dad, and I knew how to save him, but ... I didn't think I could. Barry, I'm so sorry. If Hartley hadn't been there ..."

"You would have operated," Barry says. "You would taken a breath and operated, Cisco. You sewed the skull bone into his abdomen and stitched up the stab wound perfectly. Dr. West said so."

"That's what Hartley said too," Cisco mumbles. "I hate it when that guy is right."

Barry and Caitlin chuckle softly and move to wrap Cisco up in a group hug. They haven't done that in a long time, not since their second resident year when it was still their thing that separated them from their intense, serious cohort who became victims of the attrition inherent in surgical residency programs. Only Hartley is left of that group, and Barry isn't sure he's as intense and serious anymore. He's not sure he and Caitlin and Cisco are as carefree and happy as they used to be either.

o o o

A presence in the on call room brings Barry out of a deep sleep. He's grown accustomed to other doctors coming in throughout the night and taking the other bed, so he drifts back into sleep for a few seconds, but he's roused again when the newcomer climbs into bed with him.

"Mm, Lenny," Barry mumbles.

Barry turns over, presses his back to Len's chest, and falls asleep to the feeling of Len's fingers carding through his hair. He wakes several hours later in the same position, but Len's hand is only resting in his hair. Len is still asleep, breath steady against the back of Barry's neck. Barry doesn't move. He lays still and savors the quiet moment and the pre-dawn light painting the curtains with fiery hues. If only they could have slept and woken up in their own bed.

Well, Len's bed. No, their bed. Barry likes the sound of that better. He turns his face and smiles into the pillow like he's a giddy teenager after his first kiss all over again. The movement is enough to wake Len, who always starts awake like there's an emergency. Or danger. Barry flips onto his back and soothes Len's worry with a smile and a good morning.

"Sorry I woke you. I was having a moment," Barry says.

Len's muscles relax and he lays down on his back next to Barry. He scrubs his face with his hands.

"No, it's okay. I just had a long night in surgery. Car accident came in just as I was leaving. What was your moment about?"

"Why didn't Iris page me?"

"I told her not to. It's a miracle you slept in here instead of your dad's room."

"Len."

"What was your moment about?"

It's nice to be taken care of sometimes. Barry has had a lot of neglect at the hands of his foster parents and social workers. But sometimes it's frustrating too. He lets it go because this isn't a big thing and he's enjoying waking up beside Len too much to let anything spoil it.

"Our bed," Barry says playfully.

"Oh, a moment."

Barry laughs brightly. "No. I mean, we could have a moment. But I was actually thinking that after my dad is better, when I have a day off, we should hire those movers."

"Really?" Len looks so hopeful that Barry regrets ever dodging the subject. He's been working on that, but he's not perfect. "We don't have to, Barry. I'll always come for you at three am and you'll always be my family even if we don't."

"I know that. And I still want to."

Len kisses Barry slow and sweet, and it might have turned into a moment if Barry's phone hadn't gone off summoning him to Dr. Hall's office.

"Can I ignore the Chief Resident?" Barry asks.

"Dr. Hall isn't as popular as my baby sister, hmm?"

Barry shakes his head. "We might have respected him if he didn't act like he knows so much more than us. We're fourth year residents, he's a fifth year. He can't have that much more experience than us."

"Want me to assign him to the pit for a week straight?"

Barry considers that, but shakes his head. "As appealing as you putting him in his place sounds, I don't want to abuse your power. I'm already getting enough grief for that without actually doing it."

"What now?"

"It's nothing. I'll tell you about it later. This was my last night rotation, so I'll see you at home tonight?"

"I like the sound of that."

o o o

Barry is in a bad mood all day. Dr. Hall made sure of that with his pointed comments about Barry missing his daily check in emails, not sending read receipts of memos, and two different insinuations about 'inappropriate relationships' which means Caitlin is right and there's gossip about him and Len. He spends all day at his dad's bedside in his street clothes so he's not mistaken for being on call and dragged away.

"Hey, slugger," Henry slurs. The morphine is still at a high dose and will be until after his surgery today when Mick will take out the bone fragments under his swollen cheek and begin reconstruction.

"Hey, dad. How are you feeling?"

"Like I'm high. S'hat a morphine drip?" He points directly at the morphine drip, and that's somehow hilarious to him because he almost giggles in delight.

This is how all of Barry's conversations with his dad have gone for the last couple days. He's really looking forward to the day when the pain meds can be reduced, for his father's sake of course, but also so they can really talk.

It's almost a relief when two interns and a nurse come prep Henry for surgery and wheel him away. They're that much closer to his surgeries being done and his recovery starting. Barry follows them to the operating wing and races up the stairs to the gallery where he's sat and watched all of his dad's surgeries. When Mick walks into the OR, he pauses and looks up at the gallery, nods at Barry, says something to a scrub nurse. Five minutes later, Len is at Barry's side so probably Mick asked a nurse to page him because Barry has stopped doing that.

"People are talking," Barry says.

"Let them talk," Len replies.

That does something to Barry's heart, but he can't sort through the jolt to decide if it's good or bad when his dad is under anesthesia on the operating table so Mick can cut open his face and build him a new cheekbone.

Unfortunately, Len can't stay in the gallery long. One of their patients is a little boy with Tay Sachs. It's always fatal in children. There's nothing else they can do for him or his parents except be there to let them know when it's time to say goodbye. And Len has to go do that.

"Go," Barry says. "I'm doing fine."

"You sure?"

"Yeah, definitely. I'm a surgeon too, remember? I know that sometimes we have to give up time with our family because other families need us more right then."

Len's gaze is intense and full of words he would never say outside of their bedroom and never louder than a whisper in Barry's ear. He says goodbye the same way, and Barry's eyes are compelled to follow his exit. He's almost smiling when he turns his attention back to the operation. He can't see well because of where surgeons and nurses are standing, but he can keep an eye on the monitors.

Barry doesn't stay in the gallery alone for long. Surgeons and med students are always coming and going from galleries, but someone with authority - probably Len - has put the word out that the gallery is closed on all of his dad's surgeries. He's surprised to see Hartley here.

"I saw Dr. Snart headed up to peds," Hartley says. "I thought you might want some company, but if you'd rather not ..."

Hartley gestures to the door, but Barry shakes his head so he takes a seat next to Barry. Once, a long time ago, they had all been friends. Then Barry had fallen to pieces when he and Felicity ended things and Barry and Hartley had fucked up all their friendships by spending an hour in an on call room together. They should have known better.

"I know something about being separated from your parents," Hartley says. "Different circumstances entirely, but I know what it's like."

"Your parents are -"

"Homophobes."

"I'm sorry, Hartley," Barry says sincerely. "It's their loss."

Hartley laughs cruelly. "Thanks, but I know you don't mean that. You hate me. Maybe you have good reason to."

"I don't hate you. We just ... let things get between us."

Barry is struck with the sickening feeling that his silence came between them. His shame at what he'd done - he'd used a friend - had created the space between them. Then Hartley had turned nasty, his words once soft as petals now thorns. Same song, different verse.

"And I'm sorry for that, Hartley."

Hartley's eyes widen behind his glasses and his lips part in surprise, as if he never thought he would get the apology he deserves from Barry.

"I know that I seem okay with my whole happy nerd thing, but I'm not okay. Not always."

Hartley blinks, then turns back to the surgery, directing his words at the glass windows instead of Barry. "That's two things we have in common then." He pauses, then says, "I knew you weren't over Felicity, but I hoped we could be something anyway."

"We could have been," Barry admits. "I didn't realize it until literally a minute ago, but we could have been, because apparently I have a type. Damaged, but good. Hurting, but kind."

"You think I'm good? And kind?"

From the corner of his eye, he can see Hartley looking at him again. "Yeah, I do. After everything, you're still sitting here because you don't think I should watch this alone." A smile breaks across Hartley's lips, and it reminds Barry of the way things used to be. "I know you've given up on making friends so you can focus on surgeries, but if you ever decide to reverse that decision ..."

Barry thinks they'll leave it at that because there's too much history between them for anything else. But similar as Hartley and Len might sound like, there's no doubt they're very different people. Hartley doesn't need time and space and a slow thaw. Forgiveness is on the tip of his tongue and it probably has been since things first went to shit.

"I'm quitting neuro," Hartley says. He says it in a rush, like it's a relief to get it off his chest. To share it with a friend.

Barry does a double take. "But you're amazing at neuro."

Hartley shrugs. "Functionally good, maybe. But my heart isn't in it. The whole time I operated on your dad when he first came in and yesterday, all I could think about was how much I wish I'd gone into otolaryngology."

"For real? I mean, I think you'd be a great ENT. I've learned in peds that the best surgeons understand what their patients are going through. Everyone else is just ... functionally good."

Hartley doesn't say anything for a long moment. Barry's eyes watch the monitors in the OR, noting the steady heart rate and blood pressure, instead of the complicated surgery happening around the table.

"My hearing changed after the particle accelerator exploded," Hartley says.

Barry doesn't register the word changed for a moment. When he does, he freezes up. Damaged, impaired. Those are the words doctors use to describe hearing loss. Not changed. Changed sounds a lot like it's a synonym for enhanced. Holy shit.

"I've known I wanted to become an ENT after I designed these hearing aids and the pain disappeared, but I lost track of that for awhile. I'm just waiting for Dr. Rory's decision on whether or not I can be on his service for ENT cases. If not, I'll have to rematch. There aren't many really good ENTs at CCGH, hence me researching and curing my own hearing problem."

Barry feels a little crazy thinking about Hartley designing hearing aids to take away the pain of supersonic hearing, but then he remembers figuring out why he kept passing out the first few weeks after the particle accelerator exploded and calculating how many extra calories he needs to eat a day. He doesn't know what to say about that to Hartley.

"Mick will say yes," Barry says. "He pretends like he hates residents, but he doesn't. I'm sure he's really happy to get a request from someone who wants to study otolaryngology instead of learning to nip and tuck."

"I guess you would know."

Hartley's tone is neutral, but the words set Barry on edge. He hasn't spoken to Iris since their fight. And if Hartley really does have enhanced hearing, he might know things no one else is meant to know. It's unfair to think he's listened in on private conversations because not every metahuman abuses their power - Barry could superspeed into places he doesn't belong anytime and take whatever he wants, but he doesn't - but Barry has secrets to keep.

o o o

" ... meet you."

The voice is deep and far away. Barry can feel it on the edge of consciousness more than hear it. It's followed by an even deeper voice that's quiet, like Barry should ignore it and continue sleeping.

"Are you in any discomfort?"

"A little more than I'd expect."

There's a rhythmic sound that Barry doesn't place as footsteps until after they stop. Three beeps. That Barry recognizes immediately - a drip machine - his brain finally rousing, kicking into surgeon mode, and telling him he has a job to do. He opens his eyes and sees his dad is awake and Len is standing by the monitors, entering information into Henry's patient file on his tablet.

"I've increased your morphine for tonight, but they'll want to start bringing it down again tomorrow. You've been on a high dose for almost a week."

"I appreciate the brief reprieve anyway."

"You're awake," Barry says. His voice sounds groggy. He wonders how long he slept. It's dark outside now, but it might be eight pm or three am for all he knows.

"I am," Henry says. "And I've had the pleasure of meeting your boyfriend. I like him. He gave me drugs."

Barry laughs with him. Most of his dad's head and face is bandaged from his many surgeries. Mick says that he has more to come, but cosmetic rather than reconstructive. They'll be easier, the recovery quicker. Barry reaches over and takes his dad's hand. His eyes flick to the door, but the guard stationed outside isn't watching. He's been none the wiser since Lisa removed the cuffs thanks to several surgeons forgetting to mention it to him.

"Dad, I'm so sorry I -"

"Stop right there," Henry says. He looks over at Len, as if he knows he's also blaming himself. "The blame doesn't lay with anyone in this room. You two hear me? No one in this room."

He looks like he has more to say, and Barry desperately wants to ask what happened that night, but Henry is struggling to keep his eyes open since Len increased the morphine dose. He squeezes Barry's hand, demanding an answer.

"Yeah, Dad. We know."

"Good. Now I think visiting hours are over so why don't you two get some dinner and a good night's sleep?"

"We don't have to abide by visiting hours," Barry says.

"Barry Allen, that is not how I raised you to think. In this room, you're not a doctor, you're my son. Using your authority as a doctor in a situation when you're not one is an abuse of power. It's not fair to the nurses or other patients who can't have their families here all night."

Barry gapes at his dad, but Henry points to the door. "Dad!"

Barry doesn't respect rules. Sometimes he doesn't even respect laws. Ever since the jury handed down a guilty verdict and he realized that rules and laws are flawed, he's followed his conscious instead. But he has to admit, his dad has a point. Sufficiently chastised, he says his goodbyes and leaves with Len.

o o o

They call for take out - one entree for Len, four for Barry because he's missed a couple meals while he slept the day away - while they drive home and it's sitting outside the door already when they make it through traffic. During dinner, Barry notices Len's muscles are tense - particularly his right shoulder, which he keeps rolling - so after they clear away the plates, he takes Len into their bedroom and undresses him and tells him to lay down. He straddles Len's waist and drips some massage oils onto his palms.

"I didn't think you had surgery today."

"No, I didn't." Len lets out a pained moan when Barry finds the knot in his shoulder, then sighs in relief. "The parents wanted some time alone to talk to their rabbi, so I stayed with Danielle. I laid on my shoulder wrong for too long."

Barry's heart hurts when his mind conjures up the image of Len laying in a hospital bed with a little girl struggling to breathe. She's probably gone now, and Len had stayed with the family until the end so he could call time of death and turn off the machines and give them comfort at the end.

"I'm sorry," Barry says.

"It was tragic," Len replies, "but peaceful. She died surrounded by people who love her. The whole family came. Grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins. Not everyone has that. It was tragic, but not sad."

Barry moves on to other parts of Len's back, finding new spots of tension to ease. His fingers ghost over familiar jagged, stretched scars. They're evidence of an absence of love and a life spent struggling to accept love when it's given, and he understands why Len doesn't see today as sad.

"So you met my dad," Barry says.

Len doesn't answer. His breathing is deep and even. Barry wants to be offended that his massage doesn't get a happy ending. Not that kind of happy ending, anyway. But it's hard to be annoyed when Len is sleeping so deeply and there's no sign of stress or pain or concern on his face.

Barry clears away the oils, wipes the excess off his hands, slips under the covers, and curls up next to Len. He doesn't expect a response when he says, "Goodnight, Lenny. I love you." But he does get one, in the morning, when Len wakes him with kisses to his jaw and, "Good morning, Barry. I love you," whispered in his ear.

"Mmm. This is a good morning," Barry says. He shifts onto his back, welcomes Len's weight on top of him, tilts his chin up to give Len room to kiss his neck. "I've missed saying good morning to you."

"Why do you think I'm taking full advantage of the hour?"

It's still mostly dark outside, the sky awash with dark winter dawn hues and snowflakes drifting from the darkness where snow clouds will hang all day. They forgot to close the curtains last night, and they'll give their neighbors across the street quite a show if this continues, but Barry doesn't particularly care as long as he gets to feel Len's kisses and strong hands traveling his body and hardness pressing into his hip.

"God, I've missed you," Barry says. "I know I saw you almost every day these past two weeks, but I've missed you."

Len kisses him deep and dirty, all tongue and breathy moans, but he reneges on his promise when he climbs off Barry and disappears into the bathroom. The shower turns on and Barry is done being patient.

"Hey!" Barry calls. "Get back in here. We haven't gotten dirty enough for a shower yet."

Len appears in the jamb. He looks glorious in just his underwear. He's hard and leaking, but he's also holding a toothbrush and Barry is baffled. He doesn't quite meet Barry's eye.

"Maybe we shouldn't this morning."

Barry props himself up on his elbows and studies Len's expression, or what he can see of it, and tries to figure out what he's thinking but not saying. It's frustrating and impossible when they're both mostly naked and completely hard.

"Help me out here, Len. If you're not in the mood, you wouldn't have woken me up like that and your hard on would be gone by now. So what are you thinking?"

Len turns and tosses his toothbrush onto the counter. "I'm trying to be respectful of your emotional state. I know you're worried about your dad. I don't want you to feel like you have to give me sex right now."

Barry shakes his head, flops back onto his pillow, laughs at how awkwardly sensitive Len can be. "Turn off the shower and get in this bed immediately." The shower cuts off and Len joins him under the covers half a minute later. "For the record, I'm relieved this has nothing to do with my impending birthday. I'd hate to think the sex is less interesting with a thirty-year-old."

Len huffs out a laugh. "I feel pretty confident the sex will always be interesting with you."

Mischief flits across Barry's face. Len sucks in a breath when it registers that he's issued a challenge, and he's been Barry's attending long enough to know he rises to every challenge. Barry flips them over, traps Len between his body and the mattress, pushes his thigh between Len's legs. It's difficult to control the vibrations in his thigh. Barry's never tried that before. He's good at vibrating his hand and tongue and whole body, but vibrating just one part of his leg is a complicated process.

Len's reaction is worth the effort. He moans loudly - their apartment is a corner and they don't share bedroom walls, but their upstairs and downstairs neighbors might pause in the middle of their morning routines - and arches up into Barry. He turns his face into the pillow and bunches up the sheets in his fists and moans so deliciously Barry feels his own finish rushing toward him.

"Don't come yet," Barry says, breathy and teasing. "I'm not done with you."

Vibrating just his thigh is difficult, but vibrating it at different speeds is even trickier. It feels sloppy to Barry, but Len is loving it. His hips buck up and draw away without rhythm and he can't form words between his moans except Barry's name and please. Len's voice does things to Barry, and he gives up vibrating just his thigh and lets his whole body go, and Len cries out as he comes. Barry drops his forehead onto Len's sweaty shoulder when he follows.

Barry doesn't move for awhile. His arms shake with the effort of holding himself up, but the rest of his body is locked in place. The bliss travels through every nerve like lightning, and Len must feel it too because he makes a desperate sound that Barry knows means too much so Barry summons the strength to roll off of Len and gasps for air.

"You missed me." Len chuckles darkly. His voice is low and wrecked.

Barry shudders pleasantly at the sound of it close to his ear. He turns to Len and claims a messy kiss. He thinks about trying for round two, but for once he's sated with one orgasm. Challenges wear him out, apparently.

They would normally stay in bed longer, but Barry - and probably Len too - feels sticky and gross from coming in his underwear. They strip down and jump in the shower and spend too much time adjusting the water temperature and kissing and leave for the hospital late.

Barry pretends everything is back to normal all morning. He knows it's not. His dad is still in the hospital with a slate of surgeries still to come. Iris isn't speaking to him. His coworkers are gossiping about him fucking his way through the program behind his back. But he gets a few hours reprieve with Len at home and it's what he needs to get him through the day. The next week. The next month.

o o o

Barry is thankful to be back on his regular schedule even if his days are longer than during night rotations. He gets to see more patients in the peds ward instead of the emergency room, gets to scrub in on more surgeries with Len, gets to enjoy the sunlight. Short breaks that he used to spend camped out wherever he could fall over and sleep are now spent in his dad's room, and since Henry is healing by the day, they can talk - really talk - the way they haven't since Barry was a kid. There are no listening ears if Barry shuts the door on the guard, who doesn't blanche because they still think Henry is handcuffed to the bed. They can sit next to each other with no Plexiglass between them, can share a hug every time Barry enters and leaves the room.

"I know Lewis's gang did this to teach me a lesson," Henry says - and Barry will definitely follow up on that statement when he doesn't have a surgery scheduled - "but it's the best thing that's happened to me since you showed up in visitation when you were fourteen and declared nothing was going to keep you away ever again."

Barry isn't happy this happened to his dad, but he doesn't stop himself from enjoying every moment they have together.

Henry's room becomes a popular location for other residents, much to his amusement. Barry isn't sold on the idea of his friends bothering his dad at all hours of the day and night, but he's never seen his dad in such high spirits.

"They all believe I'm innocent," he says one day. Barry can convince all of his friends that his dad isn't a murderer, but he's never been able to convince the people who could do something to help - the police and lawyers. He hasn't done enough for his dad, but he also doesn't know what else he can do.

"Barry!" Jax calls from down the hallway. He races through the lobby to catch up with Barry, who is headed to the cafeteria for a quick snack before afternoon rounds. "Does your dad have surgery tonight?"

"No, not until tomorrow. Why?"

Jax glances around nervously, then steps closer and whispers. "I need to learn how to do a running lock stitch before tomorrow morning or Hall is going to be all over my ass. I hate that guy. He threatened to suspend me because I don't know the stitch yet. But your dad taught me how to do a lazy excision stitch, so I figure if I could catch him and bribe him with more Big Belly Burger, he might be able to teach me that one."

Henry had been a physician, not a surgeon, but he knows his stitches and medical terminology enough to critique their work and charts.

Barry's grin is bright. "Firstly, Carter Hall can't suspend you. Only Wells can do that and he won't because you're the superstar in your class. Secondly, yeah, we all hate him. And, finally, I'm sure my dad would teach you. You wouldn't even need the Big Belly Burger, but I'd appreciate if you brought him some anyway."

"Definitely, man."

The rotating guards outside his dad's room don't seem to pick up on the fact that not only is he not handcuffed, but that surgical residents are routinely bringing needles and scalpels into the room to practice their techniques while they talk to Henry or to be taught by him. No wonder they're corrections officers and not cops.

o o o

"Afternoon, Dr. Allen," Mick says.

He stops short when he finds himself in a packed room. Henry is sitting in a chair - clad in jeans Barry bought him because he said he misses denim and a t-shirt - and bent over a banana riddled with sutures and describing how Caitlin should loosen up her wrist to stitch faster. Cisco and Lisa are laying in the bed, asleep. Hartley is in the other chair eating his lunch. Barry is perched on the end of the bed with an apple and four vending machine packs of cookies waiting for him to consume yet, but Mick isn't looking at Barry.

"I've told you, it's just Mr. Allen now," Henry says. "And Henry is fine too."

Mick glances over his shoulder, then slides the door closed. "I wondered why the privacy curtains have been mostly closed every time I walk by here." The residents wait for a reprimand that doesn't come. "Nice setup. But you all have to go now so I can examine my patient. If you wouldn't mind, Dr. Allen."

Mick motions Henry into the bed. Barry gently wakes up Lisa and Cisco and sends them on their way to an on call room or gurney in a hallway until their next page or surgery. Barry and Hartley both stay behind because Barry is family and Hartley is one of Henry's doctors and Mick's resident now.

They take off the last of the bandages - one on his cheek covering ugly, but impeccable stitches and the wrap around his head wound - and declare everything is healing nicely. Barry dreads what happens now. It's hospital policy that prisoners are seen, treated, and shipped back to Iron Heights for their recovery. So he's a little confused when Mick doesn't mention discharge papers.

"We'll leave the bandages off tonight and see how things look tomorrow."

"I'm sorry, but what do you think might go wrong over night?" Henry asks.

"Sometimes infections can develop spontaneously when bandages come off," Mick says. There's silence while they stare at Mick in complete confusion because that is absolutely not true and they're all doctors and know it. Mick stares them down. "You'll need to stay here at least one more night. Do you understand?"

Barry curbs his urge to give Mick a hug.

o o o

La Bella Notte is full to overflowing on Valentine's Day, but Len made these reservations weeks ago so they don't have to wait in the chilly lobby and they're at a good table. The sommelier recognizes Barry, rolls his eyes, and brings them a Moscato. Then they're left in peace while they wait for their meals. Or they would have been if Barry didn't get paged back to the hospital.

"I'm so sorry," Barry says. "So, so sorry."

"It's fine, Barry. I'll ask them to box everything up and see you at home later."

Barry kisses him goodbye, runs back to the hospital, and changes into his scrubs at superspeed so no one even knows that he left for dinner, which on call residents are absolutely not supposed to do, but Barry has superspeed on his side so he figures the reason behind the rule doesn't apply to him.

He spends the next four hours in the ER with Ronnie trying to stop an eight-year-old girl from seizing every twenty minutes. Eventually, they get her stabilized, order an MRI, admit her to the peds ward with her terrified babysitter who still can't reach the girl's parents, and start a loading dose of anti-seizure meds. Barry assigns an intern to sit with her. Dr. Saunders answers all of his questions about seizures correctly and swears on her life she won't leave the girl unattended for any reason.

"So much for Valentine's Day," Ronnie says. "Cait and I haven't celebrated together even once."

"Dinner was interrupted," Barry says, "but we celebrated this morning."

"I didn't need to know that," Ronnie says, but he's laughing. "Hey, before we head home and try to salvage the -" he checks his watch "- fifty-two minutes of Valentine's Day we have left, I'd like to take a look at your dad's chart, if you don't mind."

"Uh, no. Why?"

They take vacant chairs at the nurse's station and Ronnie pulls up Henry's chart on the computer. He clicks through a couple screens, including the initial MRI and Hartley's notes on the surgery and post-op.

"I'm going to order another MRI and a CT. Just to be sure. Hartley is a good surgeon, but since he's a resident and left neuro right after treating your dad, we have to do our due diligence."

"Hartley didn't make a mistake," Barry says, suspicious.

"I'm sure that's what the scans will show, but we should still do them." Ronnie clicks through a couple more screens, this time the scheduling software. "Ah, the MRI is all booked tomorrow." There are at least seven open blocks on the schedule, plus the times spaced between appointments in case of emergencies pushing the schedule back. "That's okay. We'll do it the day after tomorrow."

"Ronnie ..."

Ronnie shakes his head quickly. "Ask me no questions."

It doesn't end with Mick and Ronnie. A week later, after his dad's MRI and CT come back clear, - several 'mix-ups' happen in radiology to delay the results - Eddie shows up in his hospital room. That's surprising because his dad isn't a cardio patient, hasn't complained of chest pains, and Barry has barely seen Eddie or Iris in weeks. But Eddie is all smiles, asking how Henry is feeling and leading questions about chest pains and shortness of breath.

"You know what, Dr. Allen," Eddie says. "I'm going to go ahead and schedule these tests anyway. You're getting close to sixty, and there are a lot of people that age who look and act perfectly healthy, but have clogged arteries. So let's do this while we have you here. I'll get an intern to schedule everything, but in the meantime, I think the best medicine is to get some fresh air and stretch your legs. I'll have someone bring a coat and gloves to your room, and then maybe Barry could show you our courtyard."

Henry is trying his best not to smile by the end of Eddie's sunny spiel. Barry follows Eddie out of the room.

"Eddie, what's going on? I mean, thank you. But what's going on?"

"Ask me no questions," Eddie says, repeating Ronnie's words.

"Okay, fine." Barry says that, but his curiosity is too strong. He follows Eddie to the stairwell and up to the cardiothoracic wing. "Look, I don't know if there's a memo floating around to all of the attendings and fellows and you're all jumping on board or if someone is requesting or bullying you into it, but ... Can you let whoever is the ringleader know that I'm grateful? I know it can't last forever, but every day he's here is another day I really have with him."

Eddie smiles his too bright smile. "I'll make sure that gets around." He starts to walk away, but doubles back and says quietly, "Maybe this can last longer than you think. There's one more marker to call in. I don't know if it can be done, but it's in progress as we speak."

o o o

Barry sees his dad all over the hospital for the next week. He's doing rounds with Len one day, and his dad walks past the open door with Jax and Ronnie. He's getting lunch from the cafeteria, and there's his dad sitting with Hartley and Lisa. He's riding the elevator down to the basement, and his dad, Cisco, and Caitlin join him. One time, he finds his dad reviewing a kid's X-Rays with Len in radiology. He's accompanied by a corrections officer everywhere he goes, so he has to be handcuffed to the IV stand. Lisa shows everyone how to pick the lock and he's never handcuffed to the bed when Barry comes to visit.

"Your friends are really something," Henry says when they pass Cisco in the hallway.

He doesn't elaborate because they're coming back to his room after a short walk outside - the brisk March wind drove them inside earlier than they'd planned - and the guard is with them. Barry stands back while the guard transfers the handcuffs from the IV stand to the bed and then resumes his post outside. Barry finds the bobby pin Lisa hid on the bottom of the privacy curtain and unlocks the cuffs.

"It can't last much longer," Barry says, "but I really hope they can make it last a few more days at least."

"I haven't been to a birthday party for you since you turned eleven," Henry says. His eyes are misty, but he blinks it away. "It sure would be nice."

Barry isn't holding out much hope. His birthday is five days away. His dad has been in the hospital well over a month already. Someone at the prison is bound to get suspicious soon and start asking questions.

Barry hears Wells before he sees the Chief. His motorized wheelchair sounds louder than normal in the mostly quiet corridor outside the room.

"Good evening, Dr. Allen," Wells says to Henry. "How are you feeling today?"

Henry equivocates. "A little worried. The results of my echo aren't back yet."

"Ah, well, we will hope for good results," Wells says. "If I may, I need to borrow your son for few minutes. Dr. Allen, please accompany me to my office."

Barry has only been in the Chief's office once before, when Len pretended to want to fire him to test his integrity. He doesn't imagine this conversation will be any more pleasant. Whether it's about the rumors swirling regarding him and Len or the attendings' shell game, he's right in the crosshairs of it all.

"Please, have a seat," Wells says when they get to his office.

Barry sits in the comfortable armchair in front of the Chief's desk. Wells parks his wheelchair beside the desk, willingly giving up the authoritative stance of being behind the impressive mahogany surface. It doesn't assuage any of Barry's fears.

"I have to admit, Dr. Allen, I'm surprised to discover that you're so close to your father all things considered."

Barry has said 'My father is innocent' more times in his life than he's said anything else. He's tired of it, but he also welcomes the chance to say the words again, to try and convince another person that his dad is a good person wronged by the justice system and circumstance.

"My father didn't kill my mother, Dr. Wells. The jury convicted him because no one, including myself, could make sense of what I saw that night. But I do know that he never hurt her."

Dr. Wells considers Barry in silence for several moments. "What did you see that night?"

"Lightning in the living room. And a man in yellow."

Barry is transported back to that night he tries not to relive too much. He sees it all from a new perspective now. The red lightning, the man who is a yellow blur. Finally, he knows what happened. He knows where the lightning came from, why the man in yellow is a blur, why they never found a murder weapon. That last point, it makes his stomach clench, but it's also his father's saving grace, the reason he went to prison for life instead of to death row. Barry feels cold all over. He doesn't realize until Wells touches his shoulder how distant he feels from himself.

"Barry, I'm sorry," Wells says. "I shouldn't have asked you about it. Are you okay? You don't look well."

"Yeah, I - I'm ... fine. I'm fine."

Wells looks dubious, but lets it go. "Still, I'm sorry. It's none of my business, and it's not why I asked you here."

"What can I help you with, Dr. Wells?" Barry asks.

He's still trying to shake off the chills and distraction threatening to pull his mind down dark and dangerous paths. He can't go back there. He'd lived there as a child and it had almost consumed him, twisted him, trapped him.

"It seems your father's presence in this hospital has my attendings hearing hoofbeats and looking for zebras."

Barry decides that saying nothing is the best policy here. If he confirms it, everyone will get in trouble. If he denies it, everyone will get in trouble and the Chief will know him as a liar. It's better to let Wells think Barry asked for special treatment without having any proof of it.

"I find that I must impress upon you that performing medical tests on patients who don't need them deprives other patients in need of the doctors, nurses, and technicians who run those tests, not to mention how precious time in labs is at a level one trauma center. Also, that the taxpayers foot the bill for prisoners, including their hospital expenses."

Barry is furious and grateful. Furious because the argument is such bullshit. Grateful because he can stop thinking about his mother's murder and argue his father's innocence separately.

"I wouldn't worry too much about the tax payers, Dr. Wells. They're already being taken for a ride. They've paid to keep an innocent man in prison for almost two decades. If he hadn't been wrongly convicted, he'd still be a physician in a respected practice and paying taxes to keep actual criminals behind bars."

"Yes, that is a valid point," Dr. Wells says. "It is such a shame that a fine physician couldn't benefit society. Or raise his son. Be that as it may, Barry, I have a call scheduled with the Department of Corrections tomorrow morning."

Barry's shoulders slump, and he stares at the carpet pattern between his shoes and wills the disappointment not to build up into blurry vision. He hears Wells tapping on the screen of the tablet attached to his wheelchair.

"I have no choice but to tell them we will be discharging your father in ..." Wells hesitates, then taps his tablet once more. "... in a week." Barry's head snaps up, shock written on his face. "It's not the earliest I can schedule a non-emergency psych consult, but I believe it's the most convenient schedule for everyone."

"Psych?" Barry asks hesitantly. Doing stress tests and MRIs, that's one thing. But psych, that's an uncomfortable excuse. Especially for Barry, who has been a patient of psychologists off-and-on for most of his life.

"Your father was viciously attacked, Barry. Half of his face was crushed. But for Dr. Rathaway's quick action, he would have died the night he came in. He's been through half a dozen surgeries since. I am ... concerned that not a single surgeon considered this. I am concerned about what nineteen years of incarceration has done to an innocent man who cannot afford to show weakness in front of other inmates. Or in front of his son."

Barry can't name his shifting, muddled emotions. His mouth moves in aborted attempts to respond, reassure. But he can't because Dr. Wells isn't wrong. Barry is a master at suffering in silence. Deep down, he knows his dad is the same. Because they've always been the same.

"I promise you, Barry, I am not playing my attendings' game. I don't blame them for helping a friend regain some stolen time with his father, but as Chief, I can't indulge in the same luxury." Wells takes off his glasses, rubs his tired eyes, doesn't meet Barry's gaze when he continues. "I know something about unfairly losing your former life. About imprisonment. About appearing strong when you're not. Not in the same way as your father, but I know. And I am concerned."

Barry nods. He can't find any words so he just keeps nodding.

"Thank you for your time, Dr. Allen," Wells says. "And for understanding that we can't keep your father here indefinitely."

"Dr. Wells," Barry starts, but he doesn't know what to say next.

"As the Chief, all I can do for you and your father is play with a schedule. I cannot in good conscious do anything else for you. I hope you know that doesn't mean I don't like you or like you less than other residents. I assure you, Barry, everyone in this hospital is really very fond of you."

Barry knows in that moment he can't lie to Dr. Wells anymore. When Barry tells Len about their conversation, he agrees. It's time to love each other in front of the world, come what may.

o o o

The fallout of Barry and Len's conversation with Wells the next morning is a wildfire. The rumor mill churns overtime. Everything from the truth - "Dr. Allen and Dr. Snart are dating" - to slight embellishments - "And they told Dr. Wells because they're engaged" - to the scandalous - "Dr. Snart seduced Dr. Allen, who wasn't even into men before" - to the vitriolic - "Allen can't perform an appendectomy, but as long as he gets on his knees for Snart he gets a pass." Barry ignores it all. He keeps both ears open, but doesn't let the whispers settle in his mind. It's good to know what they're saying, bad to take it to heart.

The other consequence is that Wells enforces an old hospital policy everyone has overlooked for the last several years. His secretary brings around forms that anyone in a relationship with someone who works at the hospital has to fill out. They're affidavits saying their relationship is consensual and that their romantic relationship has no impact on their professional relationship. That last part is a hard pill for some people to swallow, particularly in the case of Len and Barry who work side-by-side every day.

"Ignore the homophobes," Hartley says loudly, while staring down a group of interns who erupt into whispers when they see Barry. He takes Barry's arm and hauls him through the lobby faster.

"It's not homophobia." Hartley looks skeptical. "Well, at least not completely. More like they either think I'm a quack who shouldn't be allowed near patients or Len is the embodiment of sexual harassment and shouldn't be allowed near any of his coworkers."

Cisco catches up with Barry and Hartley. He gives Hartley a look, then asks Barry, "We're really friends with him again?"

"He's being supportive," Barry says.

Cisco doesn't look convinced. "So Lisa and I turned in our form. We were the first ones to fill them out. We're being supportive too."

Hartley rolls his eyes. "Everyone has to fill them out. You and Lisa, Caitlin and Ronnie, Iris and Eddie. Stein had to declare himself married to Clarissa for forty years because she's on the board. I heard even Hall had to turn one in, which I think is hilarious because he berates us for breaking his made up rules and goes and breaks an actual hospital rule."

"So ... everyone except you," Cisco says unkindly.

"Actually, I did turn one in. But, please, continue being a jerk for your own amusement."

Barry nudges Hartley with his elbow. "You didn't say anything about having a boyfriend."

"Well, neither did you."

Hartley tells them his boyfriend is a psych intern, which Cisco can't help but laugh about because psych interns are the B-team, and Hartley won't answer anymore questions about him. Cisco does not look at all apologetic when Barry sends him a sharp frown.

o o o

The big difference between being the center of a scandal this time is that Barry is an adult now. Before, everyone had felt sorry for him, the traumatized kid who had to fabricate a story to make sense of what he'd seen. Now he's being accused of something untoward. The glances are suspicious, whispers harsh, sympathy non-existent. It's unpleasant living in a fishbowl and everyone thinking they know all his darkest secrets.

He takes refuge in the one place he won't be judged. The playroom is full of kids healthy enough to be out of their beds. It's quieter than daycare - all the kids are sick, or their siblings are sick - and there are fluids bags and cannulas and wheelchairs, but they're kids and they're playing and it does Barry good to see their strength and resilience.

"Dr. Allen!"

Several small voices shout his name in unison. A little girl called Priya rushes across the room, her black curls bouncing, and throws her arms around Barry's legs. He picks her up because she's a heart patient and not supposed to run, but kids forget that kind of thing, and carries her back to the table where she's coloring with her sister, Amiya, and a boy called Davis who is Dr. Palmer's patient.

Amiya, always in charge, places a coloring page of a giraffe in front of Barry and assigns him a yellow, brown, and purple crayon. "Their tongues are purple," she explains to Barry. Priya decides she wants to stay on Barry's lap, so he lets her perch there and bends his arms awkwardly so they can both color at the same time.

"Dr. Snart!"

A host of children perk up when they see their favorite doctor, and not all of them can run to him like they want to, so Len makes a circuit of the room. He knows exactly which kids to spend a few extra minutes with, like he can sense the fading hope in them because none of them look anxious or broken until they think he might ignore them, and then he's right there complimenting their macaroni necklaces and stick figure drawings and Lego creations. Two kids won't - or can't, because sometimes it's a compulsion - let go of him, Len carries two little boys over to the table. Oscar is on his left hip, Eli on his right.

It strikes Barry suddenly how lucky their children will be to have Len as a father. The thought makes his breath catch and heart flip. He's been so reluctant their whole relationship, so afraid of getting his heart broken again or breaking Len's heart, and just when everything could fall apart and do him the most damage, he thinks this. It's so typically Barry Allen he wants to laugh and scream at himself.

"How are you?" Len asks quietly.

Oscar and Eli are quickly handed coloring pages and crayons by Amiya. Eli is content to lean against Len's side and color his tiger the shade of orange Amiya thinks they should be, but Oscar is eyeing fire engine red for his horse and waiting for the second Amiya looks away to claim it from the box.

"I'm doing okay," Barry says. Len doesn't look like he buys it and his concern makes Barry smile. "Really, I'm fine. This isn't my first time being the source of gossip. I can handle it."

Len's brow furrows, but he nods and it strikes Barry as a foreign expression. He knows the answer before he asks. "How are you?"

"Not fine," Len mumbles.

Barry rubs comforting circles onto Len's back. He can do that now that everyone knows they're together, and despite all the whispers and stares and accusations, it feels amazing to not hold back his affection.

"It will pass," Barry assures him. "Eventually, they'll see that we're not a scandal, that we're a couple like everybody else. We won't be fun to gossip about anymore."

Len doesn't say anything for a moment. Eli wants him to keep coloring, so he does that long enough to placate the little boy.

"It's a staring contest. Whoever blinks first loses," Len says. "It's childish."

"It doesn't change anything, does it?"

Len's eyes flick up to Barry's. "Of course not," he says fiercely. "I'm not worried about us. I'm worried about you. What they're saying about you -"

"They're saying things about you too."

"I'm used to it."

"So am I."

They leave the kids to their coloring after a little while for evening rounds. Len takes savage pleasure in dismissing an intern who makes an obscene gesture when he thinks Len and Barry aren't looking - that's one doctor who will never forget Captain Cold's reputation - but he allows Dr. Saunders to join them.

"It sucks that you have to deal with that," Dr. Saunders says. "But on the bright side, at least you're actually together and one of you isn't delusional and goes ahead and publicly declares you a couple when the other one of you isn't at all interested."

Len and Barry both stare at her.

"Who needs to be reported for actual sexual harassment?" Len asks. She tries to backpedal, but Len isn't having it. "Kendra, I'm an attending and chief of peds and while I really have no idea why you're on my service because you're an intern and I still don't allow that -" He fixes Barry with a pointed look because Barry has been hand-picking competent interns and inviting them onto his service, ergo Len's service, as a gentle introduction to a better way of teaching. "- I'm obligated to report something like that."

Dr. Saunders sighs deeply. "Dr. Hall."

Barry feels like Christmas came early.

"Except you can't report it," Dr. Saunders says, "because if you do, it will look like obfuscation. So ... I'll talk to Dr. Wells today."

Barry flashes a shit-eating grin at Len and he doesn't care how bad it is to feel so happy about telling his boyfriend 'I told you so.' "See? She's a good intern. We like her. Right?"

"We like her," Len agrees grudgingly. "But you'd better watch her like a hawk."

For some reason, that makes Kendra burst into hysterical laughter.

o o o

Barry has just sat down in his dad's room for dinner when his phone interrupts. It's a code blue on one of Barry's patients. He checks his urge to superspeed down the hallway and runs as fast as he thinks any non-speedster could. The code team rattles off everything he needs to know the second he's in the room. He doesn't have to think about his next step. The pulse, weak breath sounds, and blue lips guide him to the right answer. He's almost done with the tracheotomy when Iris runs into the room. As the admitting doctor, she would have gotten a page too.

"What happened?"

"Not sure. His airway is obstructed by something. Let's get an ultrasound in here."

Iris finds the obstruction on the ultrasound machine. Whatever the kid swallowed, it's large and caught on his epiglottis. Kids are always swallowing things they shouldn't. Iris looks baffled and disturbed, but this is routine for Barry.

"Call for an OR," Barry tells a nurse. "I'll need a scope and laparoscopic tray." She's on the phone as they wheel the boy's bed out of the room.

Barry could do this surgery in his sleep. The hardest part is maneuvering the laparoscopic forceps without damaging the patient's throat, but he's had a lot of practice and he manipulates the instrument with confidence.

"What is that?" Iris asks, watching the video feed from the scope. "Cotton balls?"

"About eight of them," Barry says. He clamps down on the first cotton ball, removes it, and reinserts the forceps.

"That's so wrong."

"That's not even the weirdest thing I've seen kids eat."

"Do I even want to know?"

"If you're disturbed by a kid eating cotton balls, no. Definitely not." Iris pulls a face behind her scrub mask. "Welcome to peds."

The OR door bursts open, but Barry doesn't look up from the screen showing him the surgical area.

"What's going in here?" Dr. West asks.

There's accusation in his voice, and if he's honest, Barry knew this would happen sometime. Someone would take issue with him performing solo surgery, but he didn't expect it from Dr. West. Apparently none of the Wests are happy about Barry and Len being together.

"The patient has an airway obstruction," Barry says, because he's answerable to any and all attendings. "I'm removing the obstruction now, and when I'm finished, I'll undo the tracheotomy I performed bedside."

Dr. West approaches the table, which he shouldn't do without having scrubbed in, but he stops before he's close enough that Barry has to tell him to back off. "You trached him?"

"When I arrived in his room, he had weak breath sounds in both lungs, precluding a collapsed lung, and cyanosis of the lips. I performed a tracheotomy to allow oxygen to pass through the airway, then called for an ultrasound to find the obstruction. I've chosen to remove the obstruction, in this case cotton balls, laparoscopically."

Barry removes the forceps with another cotton ball, which he drops into the tray offered by a scrub nurse.

"My real question is why you two are in here performing surgery alone," Dr. West says. "You're residents."

"We're senior residents," Iris says. Barry hears a vein of fire in her voice and so does her dad, who arches his eyebrows. "We know how to clear airway obstructions laparoscopically. And this is my patient and Barry's patient."

"Who taught you this procedure, Dr. Allen?" Dr. West challenges.

Barry grinds his teeth, but focuses on the scope and forceps instead of his anger. The patient needs him to stay calm. "Dr. Snart."

"Uh huh. Step away from the table, Dr. Allen."

"Dad, Barry knows what he's doing," Iris says.

Barry pauses for a minute and breathes, then returns to his surgery. "I will not stop performing surgery on my patient, Dr. West," he says. His voice is a riot of emotion - nerves and anger - but his hands are steady.

"Step away from the table, Dr. Allen," Dr. West says, louder and firmer this time.

"Dad!" Iris hisses.

"Stay out of this, Iris. Barry is your friend and you're not seeing this situation for what it really is. He is sleeping with his boss. His boss who evaluates his skill as a surgeon. Don't tell me you don't see a problem there."

Iris does see a problem, and she's let Barry know it in no uncertain terms. Regardless, this is Barry's patient and Barry's surgery and even if the whole extended West family crowded into the OR to shout him down, he's finishing this surgery.

"Oh, I see a problem all right," Iris says. Her voice is iron, her eyes daggers. "I see a whole lot of hypocrisy standing right in front of me."

"Excuse me?" Dr. West demands.

"You asked Barry who taught him this procedure. Now ask me the same question." Dr. West refuses to actually ask the question, but Iris answers anyway. "You, Dad. You taught me this procedure when I was on your service two years ago. You taught me a dozen procedures. You decided that I was good enough to perform those procedures on patients. Me, your daughter. And to their credit, no one questioned your morals or my skill."

"It's different, Iris. You're my daughter, yes, but I give you criticism on all kinds of things. It doesn't change our relationship because we're father and daughter, and that is completely different than when you're dating someone."

The surgical team is staring resolutely at the patient. Barry has to request the tray from a scrub nurse so he can drop another cotton ball into it. He's struggling to keep his mind firmly on the surgery. Not a lot of people have fought for him in his life. To hear Iris taking verbal swings - at her father, no less - for him when she doesn't approve of his decision touches him more deeply than he can consider right now with a patient on the table.

"It's no different, dad," Iris insists. "Love of any kind is love and it changes how we think about and act towards another person."

"I have my reasons for thinking this is different. I watched Dr. Allen kill a child during a procedure Dr. Snart taught him and cleared him to perform solo."

Barry's blood runs cold. He thinks about that patient every day. Every time he picks up a scalpel, he imagines the devastation on the faces of the boy's parents. The shame, the regret, they never leave him in peace. They insist he become a better surgeon - more thorough, diligent, skilled - so it never happens again.

"That's all of the cotton balls," Barry says. He hands the scope and forceps to the scrub nurse. He turns his attention to the tracheotomy.

"I can't believe you said that," Iris says. "There is not a surgeon alive who has never made a mistake. Using that as an argument right now, it just proves that you know you're on the wrong side of this."

Barry finishes the sutures and snips the thread. He sets aside the instruments, takes a breath. "We're ready to move the patient into recovery."

Movement in the gallery catches his eye and he can't stop a smile forming behind his scrub mask. Dr. West follows Barry's gaze up to the gallery where Dr. Palmer is giving him two thumbs up.

Dr. Palmer presses the intercom button and says cheerfully, "Excellent technique with the scope, Dr. Allen. I'll see you tomorrow for our surgery. I'm excited to see how much you've learned since we last shared an OR."

Dr. West makes a disbelieving sound. "So you're not even on Snart's service anymore?"

"Oh, no," Dr. Palmer says through the intercom, still sounding too excited - some of it must be forced, his idea of solitarity among peds surgeons. "I wouldn't dream of trying to steal Dr. Allen onto my service. No, we're separating conjoined twins. It's an all-hands-on-deck surgery. The whole peds department is scrubbing in, and Dr. Allen is a valuable member of our team."

"Then what are you doing sitting up there watching a laparoscopic surgery?" Dr. West asks sharply.

"Do you not watch residents' surgeries, Dr. West? Huh. It must be a peds thing. We all watch each other's residents from time-to-time. Dr. Snart says it helps keep our teaching skills fresh. And, of course, we would all know then if one of our residents was falling behind or getting preferential treatment. You know, maybe if every department chief was that diligent the whole hospital wouldn't be freaking out over nothing."

Ray Palmer has moved several spots higher on Barry's list of favorite people.

o o o

Iris starts laughing the second they're in the scrub room. "Oh my God. I have never, not even once, seen my father speechless my entire life. And you, Barry, you have mastered the art of self-defense. Say nothing and be so likable that other people come to your defense. Amazing."

Barry stares at the soap bubbles on his hands and forearms. Tonight is an anomaly. His silence is never self-defense. It's survival. Barely.

"Iris ... thank you. I know you have a problem with me and Len, but you defended us anyway, so ... thank you."

"I do have a problem with you two being together and working together," Iris admits. "But, as it turns out, when other people have a problem with it, I have a problem with them."

Barry's brow furrows and he shakes his head. "I don't understand."

"Me either. I don't know, Barry. It feels like I'm allowed to say things about you that no one else is."

"Isn't that normally reserved for siblings?"

Iris shrugs. "Some of the best family is chosen, not born into. When we started our residency, Wells told us that the people standing on our right and left wouldn't make it through the program. They would transfer to easier programs or drop out or be asked to leave. You were on one side of me and Caitlin was on the other. Cisco was on your other side and Hartley was beside him. And we're all still here because we've stuck together. Even when we all hated Hartley, he still ended up hanging out with us most of the time. Maybe we are a kind of family. We won't let each other off easy or quit or fail."

Barry nods because she's right. They are a family. "Len is my family too. Whatever you or anyone else thinks about that - why you think what you do - he's my family."

"Then he's my family too," Iris says. "Just like Lisa and Ronnie and Eddie. I'll try harder, Barry. I promise."

They don't keep the scrub room to themselves for long. The whole surgical team needs to scrub out. They leave to make room for others and part in the lobby - Iris to go home, Barry to go see his dad - with a hug, like normal. The rest of the hospital can keep gossiping. He doesn't care. The people who matter are on his side.

o o o

Barry is so wound up from the surgery to separate the conjoined twins that he has to go for a run. A superspeed run. He likes the rush of being the fastest man alive (as far as he knows - he still hasn't processed the fact that there's a murderous speedster out there somewhere), but he rarely has no other way to release his energy. Standing in one spot for the twenty hour surgery proves too much for him though.

He decides to run to Coast City for pizza. His family ate at a little pizzeria on the boardwalk during a family vacation once and his dad declared it the best pizza he'd ever tasted. Barry orders four pizzas - he's going to eat at least two by himself, maybe three because he's that hungry - and races back to Central City. The pizza is still piping hot when he stops running just outside the peds ward. He doesn't entirely understand that because it's cold enough out that the pizzas should have cooled given how much air passed over the boxes on the run. There's some interesting physics there, probably, and he'd explore it if he knew any physicists.

"Guilt?" Henry asks. His voice drifts out the open door, and Barry draws up short. He doesn't like hearing that word on his dad's lips.

"I suppose so, yes," Len says. "If I was anyone else, he wouldn't have to deal with ... all of this."

"I've thought a lot about how different his life would have been if I could have saved Nora."

Barry barges into the room, lips set tight and anger burning. "Good thing I brought pizza. What's a party without it?" They both look surprised to see him. "Oh, or are we not having a pity Barry party right now?"

Their reactions are eerily similar. Half rolling eyes, a neutral but unimpressed expression. Barry is all indignation.

"Don't look at me like that! And don't try to pretend you weren't sitting here pretending you had any control over how hard my life has been. And, by the way, I'm not saying it's been a cakewalk, because all three of us know it hasn't, but obviously it wasn't so bad that I couldn't overcome it and make a good life for myself.

"Dad, you are not even a tiny bit responsible for what happened to us. Us, because it happened to you too even though you try to act like it didn't. And I get that that's how you get through the day, so I'm not blaming you. I'm just saying, you have zero reasons to feel guilty. You were handed this horrible lot in life that you didn't deserve, and look what you've done with it. Cisco's dad demeans him and Hartley's dad disowned him. You love me better from a distance than either of them. And, yeah, my life would have been easier if I'd agreed with all the cops and psychologists that I'd made my story up and you're a murder. But why would I do that when I am so lucky to have you?

"And you, Len, I choose to love you. Everyday, I choose you. I know what that means. I know everything that it means for us, and I still make that choice. Because I love you. But also because I want to love you. Because you're good and kind and strong, even if you don't always see that in yourself. I want to spend my life loving you and being loved by you. And I seriously do not care what anyone thinks about you being my attending because that just has absolutely nothing to do with what I want for us.

"So, both of you, stop treating me like I'm fragile. Like I'm a victim you've inflicted yourselves on. I'm not a victim. I'm a survivor. I'm a healthy survivor, and I've made my choice to stand by the two men who stand by me."

Barry feels shaky with emotion after his speech. Len rallies before Henry, and he answers exactly as Barry would expect him to do when they're not alone in the dark. Barry wants to smack him and kiss him.

"It would be a privilege to spend my life being put in my place by you," he drawls.

Neither of them actually agree to stop feeling guilty, and he supposes that's not something they can promise. Guilt doesn't vanish because it's unwelcome. Some guilt can never be purged. Surgeons know that very well. Survivors know it even better.

"I should give you two some time alone," Len says, standing and pulling on his coat. Barry starts to say he should stay and they have plenty of pizza, but Len kisses him and says, "I'll see you at home," and whispers, "I love you." And he understands that Len can't stay because what Barry said makes him feel things he can't let himself feel right here, right now.

"I won't be too long," he promises.

Barry asks his dad about how the psych consult went and if it helped him prepare for going back to prison - "Good. And it did. Please thank Dr. Wells for the suggestion." - and then they talk about how nice this month has been and how much Henry likes Barry's hospital family.

"The best part about being here is seeing with my own eyes how well you're taken care of," Henry says. "When you were a kid, it killed me every day not knowing how you were doing. This was meant as punishment for daring to imply Lewis is scum, but it's been a gift that I will always cherish."

They'll see each other tomorrow morning when the prisoner transport van arrives, but those goodbyes will be said in front of guards so they say their private words tonight and hug without handcuffs and shackles in the way.

Then Barry keeps his promise to Len even though he wants to sit by his dad's bedside all night. It hurts to leave, but it feels good to go to Len. This - leaving home to forge his own path - it's been denied to them before now. Not taking advantage of the only opportunity they'll ever have, painful as it is, would be wrong. So Barry leaves the hospital room that's been home for a month and goes to the new home he's making with Len.

o o o

"Will you be okay tomorrow?" Len asks.

His breath is a ghost against the shell of Barry's ear. They're lying in bed, propped up by pillows, Barry leaning against Len's chest and secure in his arms. Their legs tangle together under the comforter. Barry refuses to wear socks to bed, but he buries his feet under the soft cotton of Len's pajamas for extra warmth. Neither of them have paid much attention to the medical drama - soap opera thinly veiled as a medical drama, perhaps - they watch every Thursday night.

"Yeah," Barry says softly, but without conviction. "Thank you."

"For?"

"For making sure we had a few extra weeks together."

"That's wasn't me," Len says. "I hate to admit it, but it wasn't my idea."

Barry shifts to peer at Len. He isn't sure he believes him, but there's no trace of untruth on his face. "Then who?"

"Ask me no questions."

Barry narrows his eyes. That answer is clearly part of their instructions. If not Len, then it must have been Lisa. He thinks about sending her a text, but he decides he'll thank her when he sees her tomorrow. For right now, he wants to lay here with Len and not watch television.

"Your whole life?" Len asks.

Barry doesn't have to ask for clarification. He remembers every word of his speech tonight. "If you'll let me."

Len draws in a breath that Barry feels against his back. "Yes."

Barry touches Len's hands where they lay on his chest and stomach, tracing fingers with fingertips. "Would you like to wear an engagement ring?"

Len's breath hitches, a smile appears in the corner of his mouth. Barry doesn't see any of this. He feels it, can imagine it perfectly. He would do this the way most people do - on one knee - if they were most people. But they're not. They share love through skin and breath and half words. It's who they are.

"Yes, I would. You?"

"Yes."

"A winter wedding is non-negotiable."

"So is a big wedding."

"And a house with an honest-to-God white picket fence, like the one you grew up in. Someday."

"And at least two kids, so they always have someone, no matter what, like you and Lisa. Someday."

"This isn't too fast for you?"

"I'm all out of excuses for going slow," Barry says.

Barry turns then, presses his lips to Len's and opens his mouth for the tongue seeking entrance. Len's hand slides down his stomach, under the waistband of his pajamas pants, and Barry moans into their kiss and opens his thighs for Len. His touch is slow, light, promising like their kiss, and for once, Barry doesn't mind, thinks it's perfect.

"I love you," Len mumbles into his lips, and Barry's answer is a gasp and shudder, and Len says, "I love you" again so Barry will fall apart for him. And he does. Will always. Forever.

o o o

Barry and Len walk into the hospital holding hands. If there are glances and whispers today, Barry doesn't notice them. He's full of contradiction. Happiness and sorrow, hope and despair. The future is bright, but the shadow that is the past will never stop haunting him. He thinks Len feels the same. His eyes are pools of rainwater reflecting thunderclouds.

"I told my dad we'd meet him in his room," Barry says, so Len knows to take them to the sixth floor.

"There's been a change of plans."

He presses the button to take them to the basement. Barry is filled with dread. The basement is the surgical wing, the operating rooms. All their cries of wolf, and maybe karma decided to throw a real surgical case at his dad. There's no guard standing outside the door of the OR. They've conceded that a prisoner under anesthesia can't escape or harm anyone and take welcome breaks from doing nothing during surgeries. Len goes in without a scrub mask so Barry skips taking one too and follows him inside.

"Happy Birthday!"

Barry's breath catches. There's a banner hanging on the gallery windows, red balloons tied to a heart-lung machine, platters of muffins and a fruit tray sitting on a gurney, rainbow-hued wrapped gifts on the operating table. All their friends are there. Cisco, Caitlin, Iris, Lisa, Hartley, Ronnie, Jax, Eddie, Mick, Kendra. Ray and his wife Anna, an obstetric-gynecologic surgeon Barry hasn't worked with yet. Dr. Stein and his wife Clarissa, who Barry's only seen in passing. Dr. Wells looking half-disapproving of all this, but present nonetheless. And in the middle of the room, Henry dressed in blue jeans and a flannel button down, like any other dad on his son's birthday.

Barry laughs off his shock. "I forgot it was my birthday!"

Len wouldn't have forgotten, especially not with all of this planned, but he hadn't given so much as a tiny hint that today is anything special and Barry has been preoccupied with thinking about saying goodbye to his dad and, if he's honest, some wistful wedding planning.

There are hugs all around, even from the people Barry doesn't know well because he tends to invite affection, even from strangers. It's what Len thinks makes him a good peds surgeon. There's something trustworthy and endearing in his face that kids respond to.

"How did you pull this off?" Barry asks his dad. "There's no guard."

"He fell asleep on duty," Lisa says.

"Did you help him fall asleep?" Barry asks.

"Ask me no questions."

"On that note, thank you. For everything."

Lisa shakes her head. "I'll accept your thanks for helping the guard drink a crushed up sleeping pill, but that's all I did."

"But then who?"

"Ask me no questions," Lisa says again, but her eyes cut sideways to Iris.

Barry interrupts her conversation with Anna to wrap her in a hug. "Thank you, Iris," he murmurs. "For always being on my side when it counts."

"Dr. Ramon," Dr. Wells says sharply. "I believe you and I discussed this thoroughly already." Barry turns to see Cisco standing on the operating table/gifts table. He's tying a pinata to the surgical lights. "We are not blindfolding ourselves and aiming blows at anything in an operating room full of very expensive state-of-the-art equipment."

Cisco sighs, shoulders sagging, and jumps down from the table. He tucks the pinata under his arm. "It's okay. We'll whack it open at home tonight and send your dad the pictures."

"Yeah, about the apartment," Barry says. "I'm moving in with Len, so ..."

"Yeah, you are!" Cisco says. He slaps Barry on the back. "Next thing you know we'll all be Snarts."

Barry's mouth works silently, his smile making words impossible. They haven't talked about making this announcement, but it's too late for careful decision-making because Lisa shouts, "Lenny! You're getting married!?" and there are more hugs - Len isn't too impressed with being part of this round of affection - and Stein raises his coffee cup and says, "Mazel Tov, Dr. Snart, Dr. Allen."

"Mazel Tov," Clarissa Stein says. "I've hoped for Lenny to find the right person for a long time. I'm so happy for both of you."

"Uh, thank you, Dr. Stein," Barry stammers.

"I don't know if he's told you, but I've known Lenny since he was a young man. And then I was his mentor during his residency. He's very special to me. Martin and I never had children, but I have Lenny."

There's a story here that Barry intends to ask about. Len isn't one to turn his back on anyone he considers family, and his mentor, who apparently thinks of him as a son, can't be an exception. But he hasn't mentioned any of this to Barry. There has to be a reason.

"I hope you'll come for dinner sometime so we can get to know each other," Clarissa says.

"Of course," Barry says. He hopes Len doesn't object to these plans, but Clarissa Stein has the trustworthy, endearing thing going on too, apparently.

Next are presents, and Barry is happy that most of them are gag gifts or small items - a scrub cap that actually matches his blue surgical scrubs, a box of surgical gloves stolen from a supply closet, a bag of chocolates - because he's embarrassed his friends went to the trouble and expense of buying him anything at all. Len's gift is extravagant, but meaningful as a milestone for them so Barry accepts it gladly.

"The destination wouldn't have been my first choice," Len says, "but your dad insisted someone take you."

"Have you been?"

Len arches an eyebrow. "What do you know about my family to suggest we ever went to Disney World?"

"How much effort you put into making sure Lisa had everything other kids did."

Len's eyes go soft and he looks away to hide it from everyone who isn't Barry or Lisa. Cisco and Lisa are whispering frantically to each other, and Cisco draws attention away from Len by proclaiming he and Lisa are going to Disney World on their honeymoon.

"Of course you are, Cisco," Caitlin says affectionately. "You have one more present, Barry."

The gift is from his dad and it makes Barry cry. It's a baseball mitt, too small for Barry's adult hand, and perfectly worn in with a scuffed up baseball resting in the palm. There's a name written on the glove in black marker, but he can't make out the letters. Beside him, Len tenses up like maybe he can read the name and looks sharply at someone standing to his left - Iris, Mick, Lisa, Ray, Wells.

"I never got to give you a real mitt, slugger," Henry says. "It won't do you too much good now."

"No, it does," Barry is quick to say. "It really does, dad. Where ...?"

"Like I said, your friends are really something."

They give Barry and Henry space after that. Ray organizes the cleanup that has to happen soon because they all have to go do rounds and start their surgeries so it's easy for them to slip out the door into the empty and almost soundproof scrub room. They don't say much, just lean against the sinks with their backs to the OR and enjoy their last few minutes - maybe ever - of being side-by-side with no Plexiglass between them.

"It's 6:54," Len says, entering the scrub room. He looks apologetic.

"Then I'd better get back to my room and put the cuffs back on or you'll all be in serious trouble," Henry says.

Barry can't blink away his tears and neither can his dad. They hug so tightly Barry can't breathe. He never wants to breathe again if it means they can't have this. It's his dad who pulls back, pats his shoulder, moves toward the door.

"I can get you out," Len says. He's speaking too fast, completely unlike himself. He's nervous, Barry realizes, saying things he hasn't planned and doesn't want to think about. "I know people from the old days. They can forge papers, find a safe place for you to lay low, move you around if they have to. They're good with moving targets. It can happen today."

Barry and Henry stare at him. He knows that Len has a past. He spent his teenage years in and out of juvie, Lewis brought him on heists. He might even have an adult criminal record - nothing too serious or his medical license would have been revoked - but Barry hasn't asked. What matters to him is who Len is now. And he's not a criminal. Good as his intentions are, he's not this person.

It's the same reason Barry has never used his speed to get his dad out of prison. He could, but he couldn't. He doesn't have it in him to cross the line that far.

Henry looks at Barry sadly, and for a moment he thinks it's because any father would wonder what kind of man his son is marrying after a statement like that, but that's not giving his dad enough credit.

"I would never ask you to put yourself at risk like that, Len. But even if I was the kind of man who would, I couldn't accept your offer. A life on the run is the last thing I want. If the cost of freedom is never seeing my son again, then I don't want it."

Things happen too quickly after that. They take the elevator to his dad's room. Len tightens the handcuffs around Henry's wrists so Barry doesn't have to. Then they wait, for too short a time, until the corrections officers arrive with legs shackles and threats. But also the news that Lewis is in solitary, has been all month, will be for awhile yet. Maybe it will cool his temper, maybe not, but it's something, a small glimmer of hope. Same for Tony Woodward - and, wow, Barry hasn't heard that name in a long time - who is Lewis' enforcer. They leave through the loading dock to avoid a scene. The guards don't let Barry hug his dad goodbye.

Barry doesn't cry when the van pulls away, but his throat is tight and raw. The sun rises fully before Barry is ready to go inside and start rounds. They're late. He's always making Len late for something. He'll probably be late for their wedding.

"Whatever put that smile on your face," Len says, "keep thinking about it all day."

"Should be easy to do since I was thinking about you and we have surgery and consults together all day."

The lobby is buzzing with activity now that the shift change is finished and the elevators are packed. Everyone is weary from the night shift or from waking up early for day shift. Everyone but Barry and Len.

"Let's push the neuroblastoma until tomorrow," Len says. "We should try cardioversion on Allison Parker."

Barry arches an eyebrow to ask if Len is sure. Oscar is almost certainly going to pull through his neuroblastoma. Cardioversion might kill Allison. But then he understands, his expression clears, he nods.

Their morning has been tempered by love and loss. Most surgeons have to wait until the end of their day for perspective. Today, they're blessed with foresight. Today, they're going to save lives. Today, they're going to turn their shadows into light the only way they know how.