A/N: Warnings for angst, sexual content, mention of a bruise that needs stitches, ants and leeches, and a crazy lubricant that makes Leonard Snart's dick glow like a night light (his words, not mine).
"Hey!" Len hisses, grimacing so he won't flinch and get impaled in the eye. "Watch it!"
"I don't have to patch you up, you know," Caitlin spits back, spitefully putting more pressure than necessary behind the gauze she's holding against a gash on Leonard Snart's forehead. "We can just drop you off down at Central City General. Of course, the officers stationed outside might have a few questions for you." Caitlin tosses the soiled gauze in the trash, then picks up a sterile square with her forceps to dab at a new injury.
"Yeah, like how come it looks like you've been chewed on?" Cisco asks, assessing the extent of Snart's injuries. They all appear superficial – a handful of deep gashes but mostly abrasions, bites both insect…and otherwise. Leonard Snart walked into S.T.A.R. Labs with Barry's help, but on his own two feet, so Cisco doesn't suspect anything's broken. Len scowls when Cisco gets too close to a splotchy, purple bruise on his neck (one that resembles a hickey). That's when Cisco decides to take a break until Caitlin is done, and moves to examine Barry's grime-covered uniform. "What the…?" Cisco grabs a pair of tweezers and pulls something organic off of Barry's collar. "Is that…an ant?" He pokes at something else that makes his entire face scrunch. "And this looks like…a leech? Did you guys go rolling around in the mud or something?"
"You might say that," Len groans as Caitlin starts suturing. Caitlin fixes Barry with steely eyes and a raised brow, demanding an explanation.
"I kicked his ass," Barry says. Unconvinced with that explanation, Caitlin's eyebrow rises higher. "And…there was mud. I kicked his ass in the mud."
"Yeah, keep dreaming, kid," Len scoffs. "That'll be the day."
"Then why don't you tell us what really happened, Snart?" Caitlin suggests. "From start to finish."
"Uh…" Barry looks over at Len.
Len looks at Barry, but only from the corner of his eye. "I ain't sayin' nothin'."
"You guys know that we can check the footage on the body camera in Barry's suit," Caitlin reminds them.
Len's head snaps so quickly to his right to glare at Barry that he pulls the needle out of Caitlin's hand. Even though he's not her favorite person in the world, she winces.
"Your suit has a camera?" he grinds between locked teeth.
"Uh…yeah." Barry chuckles nervously. "I forgot." When Len's look of rage doesn't soften, Barry turns his attention to Caitlin. "If we swear to tell you guys the truth, do you promise not to look at the footage? Just…destroy it without taking a peek?"
"I think we can manage that," Caitlin says, throwing a glance at Cisco, "if we're convinced by what we hear."
"Yeah. You've got to tell us the whole truth and nothing but," Cisco pipes in, in awe of Caitlin's powers of manipulation. That camera went offline when Barry switched off his headset – a glitch that Cisco had been meaning to troubleshoot before Barry took off after Len and his gang. They didn't record a single thing after Barry picked Len up and ran into the woods. Caitlin knows that.
But Barry doesn't.
And Cisco thinks to himself, Caitlin's going to be a scary mom someday.
"Okay," Barry agrees with a heavy sigh. "The truth…"
Three hours earlier…
"Barry?" Caitlin calls, her eyes glued to her computer screen. "CCPD just put an alert out on three armed assailants in pursuit of an armored truck along the frontage road leading to West 7th. From the information I'm seeing…" She leans in and squints, trying to catch the intercepted transmission as it scrolls rapidly across the top of her screen while GPS monitoring switches on, bouncing through street maps to isolate a location, "two motorcycles, one with a sidecar."
"Two motorcycles and a sidecar?" Barry stops his current task to peek over Caitlin's shoulder. Two motorcycles and a sidecar in pursuit of an armored vehicle ignites a spark of déjà vu for Barry. Without confirmation of his suspicions, his heart speeds. "Cisco, can you get a visual?"
"Can I get a visual?" Cisco scoffs, bringing auxiliary traffic cameras online and pulling their feed. But Cisco's sarcastic muttering peters out as he zooms in and sharpens the image of three figures in black, one wearing a signature parka. "Is that…" Cisco doesn't finish before the discharge of gold from one weapon hits the back door of the truck.
"Lisa Snart," Caitlin fills in, not sounding surprised. "She's in the sidecar. So the guy driving the motorcycle has to be…"
"Snart," Barry finishes, out of his khaki pants and S.T.A.R. Labs t-shirt, and into his Flash suit in the blink of an eye.
"What the hell are they doing back?" Cisco asks distractedly as he watches Lisa fire again, blowing the lock on the back of the truck to smithereens. A goofy smile slips onto Cisco's lips when she kisses the barrel of her weapon and laughs wickedly.
"I don't know," Barry says. "I told him to leave town and stay gone."
"Right. And as we all know, Snart is so good at following orders."
"Maybe he came back for you," Caitlin adds sympathetically. She's not looking to tear open wounds, but she needs Barry to realize that that might be a possibility…to remind him to keep emotion out of this. She sees Barry's jaw go tight and knows he's already considered the same thing.
Len and Barry's relationship lasted over two years, and in that amount of time, Len tried to change. Sincerely tried. Even Cisco and Caitlin had to hand him that. But Len couldn't do it, no matter how much he loved Barry and wanted them to work.
He couldn't go against his instincts, and a lifetime of conditioning.
And Barry couldn't forgive himself for failing him.
"Yeah, well, if that's the case, he's wasting his time." Barry streaks out the lab door in a red bolt, leaving a cascade of papers behind. Caitlin has stopped rushing to collect them before they hit the ground anymore. All she does is vaguely scold herself for forgetting to buy that cement paperweight she found on Amazon, and keeps her eyes on the screen.
Caitlin and Cisco watch as Barry scoops Len out of his motorcycle seat and carries him off, leaving a startled Lisa to drop her gun and leap into the driver's seat. But as soon as Barry zips down the highway and into the trees, the sound cuts off. Then the feed on Caitlin's screen goes static-y and blinks out. "I lost him," she sighs, leaning back in her chair. "Do you have anything?"
"Nope." Cisco tries to re-route the signal a few times before he gives up. He knew it wouldn't work, but it was worth a shot. An intermittent fault had cropped up in Barry's body camera recently where it interacts with his headset. Now Barry is out in the middle of the woods with a dangerous criminal (lethal considering said criminal is Barry's former lover), and Cisco and Caitlin have been left in the dark.
Caitlin taps her blank screen with her finger, but the image doesn't return. "$50 says they both end up back here in about two hours, half-naked and with some kind of rash."
Cisco laughs. "Why would they…" He shakes his head as he catches on. "Oh, no."
"Oh, yes."
"Barry's a smart guy. He was burned by Snart once. He won't put himself in that position again."
Caitlin turns her chair to face him. "So…does that mean we have a bet?"
Cisco grins, already feeling victorious. He knows Barry. Barry's his bro. He may not be over Leonard Snart, but he's above grabbing a quickie in the woods, not after the way he had his heart broken. Right now Barry is racing Len down to CCPD. In fact, he should be back any second…
Yup…any second…
"Well, since you seem so eager to give me $50…" Cisco rolls his chair over to bump hers, "then yes. We have a bet." Cisco holds out his hand sideways and Caitlin shakes it.
"Great," Caitlin says, thinking about what on the menu at Stellian's she intends to spend Cisco's money on. It's been so long since she's had an evening out.
"Let…go…of me…Barry!" Len groans in his throat since Barry's breakneck speed doesn't really allow for conversation.
"Fine." Barry stops short, the abrupt switch in velocity causing Len to go tumbling to the ground.
Len rolls to a stop several feet away. Jarred by the sudden swift relocation, he focuses on finding his bearings. He jumps to his feet and gets his cold gun in his hand in the space of thirty seconds. He does his best to come across as both suave and menacing…even though he's distinctly aware of the presence of a large, wet leaf stuck to the side of his head.
"Well, well, well," he says, training his weapon on Barry but with an eye on the murky black forest around them, "doesn't this look familiar?"
"What do you want, Len?" Barry asks, circling his ex the way he would a fugitive metahuman, waiting for an opportunity to swoop in and make his move. But then, Barry could have taken Len straight to CCPD. He probably should have, all things considered. He knows he'll get an earful from Caitlin later. He could have just dropped Len in lock up and saved himself the lecture. He might have even been heading that way. But at the last minute, Barry cut into the tree line. He needed to give Len a chance to redeem himself. Barry keeps offering, always hoping that Len will take it. "And cut to the chase. I checked the load on that armored truck you guys were chasing. It's barely anything worth your time."
"You never know," Len says, smoothly flicking the wet leaf away when the passing wind fails to dislodge it. "I might have a buyer in the market for Almas Caviar. After all, it is the most expensive caviar in the world. Fish egg aficionados call it white gold."
"If you were someone else, I might believe that, but I'm smelling bull crap all over that excuse. So out with it."
"Meh…" Len rests his gun over his shoulder and shrugs. "Things were gettin' dull, so I thought I'd pop into town and mess with you."
"I told you never to come back here," Barry says, removing his hood.
"And you really thought I was gonna listen?" Len takes a determined step forward, seeing if Barry will engage.
"I was hoping you would for once, Cold." Barry puts his hands on his hips, exhaling his frustration with a fog of condensation in the cold air.
"I told you already, Central City's my home." Len takes another swaggering step, and a second when Barry doesn't move away, coming close enough to take up half of Barry's personal space. "You that eager to be rid of me…Flash?"
Barry opens his mouth, prepared to say, "Yes. I want you to go. I need you to go and never come back. It's too hard seeing you again." But Barry drops his head, completely defeated by his own complicated feelings. "No, Len. I…"
If there's an end to that statement, Len doesn't hear it, and Barry doesn't remember it the second Len's lips attack his.
It should make Barry combative, but instead, he surrenders to it. It's a thrill to be kissed by Len again, especially after so damn long.
"Did you really think you were going to keep me away just by telling me to go?" Len mumbles. "You and I both know damned well that I can't…and we both know that that's not what you want."
"Maybe it is," Barry counters, but with no real sincerity, especially when his hands start relieving Len of his parka. "It's what I said, so maybe that's what I want."
"You don't know what it's been like," Len carries on, moving to Barry's neck while he tries to rid Barry of his suit, "spending all these months without you. Wanting to have you and not being able to get to you…"
Barry doesn't admit that he knows exactly what that's like, how many nights he spent at S.T.A.R. Labs because he couldn't sleep in bed without Len beside him.
How many times he combed police resources across counties, hunting down any news of Len or his whereabouts.
"Getting sentimental in your old age, aren't you?"
"I need you, Barry," Len growls in his ear, letting his snarky remark slide. "I need you now."
There's something desperate in Len's commanding voice that makes Barry want to obey. It's only there in moments like these, when Len makes himself vulnerable for Barry, shows Barry that part of him that Barry could have if the world was a different place…and Len had been raised by a different man.
"We only have about twenty minutes before Caitlin and Cisco come out here in the van looking for me," Barry says, hands urgently reaching for Len's belt.
"That's more time than I need…and I know that's way more time than you need, Flash."
"Ha…ha…"
"Do you have any lube on you?" Len breathes into the goosebumps on Barry's neck.
"What? No, I…" Barry pats down his suit while Len trails hickeys down Barry's throat, feeling free to make them as dark as he wants since he knows they'll disappear in an instant. Barry checks front and back around his waist, smiling when his hand comes in contact with a hard, oblong object. "It seems like I do."
Len grins at their luck, but in a second, it becomes a sneer. "That's convenient. You steppin' out on me, Barry?"
"How can I step out on you?" Barry asks, working his fingers into the pocket to remove the bottle. "We're not even a thing. But…" Barry is quick to cover, not wanting to ruin the moment. Lord knows when he'll get another one. He should take Len to the station after this, but he doesn't know what he's going to do – "It must have been from…you know…before. The last time…in your cell at Iron Heights before you broke out."
"Oh yeah…"
"I didn't take it out after you left."
"Oh, well, guess I can't be too upset about that," Len mutters. "Seeing how much you missed me and all."
"I did," Barry admits. "I missed you more than you know."
"Well, I ain't missin' any calls from you. Last time I checked, you haven't rung me. Not once since I've been gone."
"Did you think I would?"
"I kinda hoped."
"How on Earth do you think that's possible when ow!"
Len throws his hands off Barry, wondering where he touched that caused that reaction. "Ow?"
"Yeah, ow! Something…ow! I think something's ouch! biting me!" Barry starts slapping his arms, torso, and legs in a comical fashion. Len snickers until he starts to feel it, too – tiny invaders digging razor sharp jaws into his flesh.
"Yeah," Len says, starting the slap-dance alongside Barry. "They got me, too. What are they?"
"I think they're…" Barry holds a hand up to his face in the inky black when he feels them swarm his skin, "ants! Red ants! They're red ants!" Barry vibrates, sending the intrusive beasts flying.
Len doesn't have such a convenient skill, so he needs to stop the onslaught at its source. He looks down at their feet, and with a sliver of moonlight as his guide, sees the problem. He and Barry had stopped dead in the center of an ant hill…and had subsequently started making out there.
"Here." Len pulls Barry aside. Barry's vibrating travels through Len's body, sending Len's ants airborne. Len unholsters his gun and fires, freezing the encroaching trail of ants all the way to their nest.
"Uh…I think that might be ecologically unsound," Barry comments, no less thankful.
"Nah. You ever try to kill red ants? Nasty motherfuckers. Indestructible. It ain't gonna kill them. Just chill 'em out for a while." He turns back to Barry brushing the last few stragglers off his sleeves. "Now, where were we?"
Barry's mouth tugs slyly up in the corner. "I don't know. I don't think I remember."
"Really?" Len puts his arms around Barry's waist, tossing down his weapon when holstering it seems too time consuming. "Because I think you were saying something about missing me."
"Was I?"
"A-ha…" Len goes back to peeling off Barry's suit. "Which is why I'm gonna take the lead this time" – He smacks Barry's ass to make himself clear - "so you don't miss."
Barry rolls his eyes. "You know, that could be a line in a really bad porno."
"They're all bad pornos, especially if you're in them," Len grumbles, wrestling with Barry's skintight suit while Barry offers no help. Barry likes watching Len struggle. For all the trouble Len gives him, including making Barry banish him from Central City, it's a small price for Len to pay.
I's also a reminder that Barry Allen doesn't give in easily, not even for Len.
"Does that mean I should be looking to unearth an amateur porn video starring one Leonard Snart?"
"Not necessarily…and not amateur. But if you do find one, let me know. There's someone I'll have to pummel into the ground if that thing's still around…"
"You do realize that's a yes?"
"I was a wild and crazy kid once, too, you know," Len says as he finally gets the suit to Barry's waist, wondering what he'd have to do to convince Barry to get his team to put a butt flap in this God dammed thing. "Haven't you ever done anything ill-advised?"
"You mean, besides fucking a criminal in the middle of a forest?" Barry asks as his suit makes it past his ass. By this point, Len's had enough. He spins Barry around and shoves him to his knees.
"Yeah, like that." But before Barry can answer, Len amends, "And not counting hacking into any CIA and the FBI databases."
Barry hears Len's zip lower and he grins. He can't believe he's actually going to do this…here of all places. But he's too excited to care. "Well…"
"You do realize that's a no, right?"
Barry turns his head as Len drops to his knees behind him. He hands over the bottle of lube. "Shut up and kiss me, Snart."
"Of course, my innocent little Bare-Bare…"
Unable to find any kind of flip top to the bottle Barry handed him, Len unscrews the lid and pours the contents onto his erection. They had stopped using condoms a long time ago. Len's pretty certain he doesn't have anything, and he knows that Barry doesn't. Besides, anything that Len could transfer to Barry, Barry's super healing would repel…he thinks. He's not entirely sure how that works. Lubed up and ready to rock, Len enters Barry's body, and sparks fly. Barry drops to his hands in the muck when he feels the head of Len's cock breach his body.
"Fuck…" Barry sighs. Thank God he disabled his headset. He'd never live it down if Cisco or Caitlin heard any of this.
"God," Len moans, a tingle creeping up his spine as a wash of heat from the lube powers through his body, "I missed this."
"Yeah," Barry agrees, lowering his head to his arms, careful not to go too far down and get a face full of dank mud, "me, too."
"Jesus Christ," Len exclaims so obscenely loud that the forest goes quiet, prey animals scurrying away to safety. "You feel so damn good. You're so fucking hot…"
"Yeah…so fucking hot…" Barry echoes, but he doesn't sound turned on. He sounds…confused. Barry shifts on his hands and knees, pushing back, and then pulling forward in an experimental way, trying to pinpoint what he's feeling. Whatever it is, it's not normal. "Too hot…"
"Yeah…" Len says dreamily, picking up the pace. "So damn hot."
"No, Len," Barry says, squirming to free himself from the lock Len has on his hips. "I mean…something's wrong! This stuff is getting too hot."
Len stops moving to see for himself, and gets hit with a wave of panic.
"I feel it, too," he says, pain lighting him up now that he's stopped. "What the…? What the fuck!? Oh God!"
Len pulls out of Barry, his cock physically glowing red. He scrabbles on his tailbone along the ground, searching for traction amidst the slime-covered rocks so he can stand, the burning sensation so intense it almost keeps him on his knees. "What the fuck is in that lube!?"
"I…I don't know," Barry groans, feeling around for the bottle that Len abandoned in his haste. His hand comes down on it in the indent from Len's knee, and Barry digs it out of the moist mud with his nails. He lets his body's faster-than-normal healing deal with the lava-level heat shooting up his rectum while he wipes the bottle clean, trying to find a label on it. Where's that damn moonlight? Oh yeah. It's over by the fire ants. "It's…it's…it's not lube." Barry stares at the bottle in horror. "Well, not this kind of lube."
"Then what the fuck is it?" Len screams through teeth clenched so hard they're about to spring from his skull. He squeezes his cock to stem the unbearable pain.
"It's this…this new serum Caitlin developed to reduce friction between me and my suit. Ironically, between my thighs," Barry explains, vibrating to wear the obnoxiously speed-resistant lube away. He had to hand it to Caitlin. It may have been a mess otherwise, but the stuff had some staying power. "But we couldn't use it because…" Barry's sentence, as well as his vibrating, skids to a foreboding stop.
"Because…" Len needs Barry to drop the other shoe so he can deal with the fallout.
Barry swallows hard, trying not to vomit. "It combusts spontaneously."
Len's hands fly off his cock. If he has an explosive substance on his penis that reacts to friction, best not to be holding it. "Fuck!"
"We've got to find water! That was part of the mishap. The active ingredients are water soluble."
Both men scan their surroundings to find some way to wash the lubricant - burning steadily, especially when the breeze touched it - off. The only option Barry can see is rolling around in the mud, but he's not sure that would be 100% effective.
"There!" Len points to an obscured body of water, no bigger than a fishing hole, and they make a break for it.
"Why the fuck are you carrying that explosive shit around!?" Len screeches as he battles the mud in his combat boots.
"Because I was putting it in quarantine when you showed up, genius!" Barry hits the water first, directing a spray Len's way. It's an attempt to help, but the spray ends up in Len's face, slowing him down. "I guess it slipped my mind!"
Len barrels in after, the swampy water too thick to splash Barry back. They slog their way in until the water reaches chest deep, and find a spot where they don't sink into the slop. They stop, breathing heavy relief as the cool water soothes burning flesh.
Len looks at Barry, his face steaked with dirty bog water, eyes wide, looking much younger than his twenty-something years, so much more innocent than a superhero should, in Len's opinion. Barry deserves better than the life he's been given, and Len wants to give Barry that life, more than anything. But if there's one thing that Barry Allen doesn't deserve, it's being saddled with a man like him.
A criminal, who can't even change his ways to be with the man he loves.
Barry looks at Len, calmer in the face of catastrophe than anyone Barry knows. He's still so damn handsome, and he still knows all the right things to say, everything that Barry wants to hear. If it were only that simple, if that were all that mattered, then Barry might consider enjoying a lifetime of sweet talk from Leonard Snart, regardless of the strings attached. But Barry had responsibilities bigger than himself. Leonard Snart came with addendums, things that Barry can't overlook.
He can't pretend they don't exist. He can't turn a blind eye.
They couldn't find a way to meet in the middle. And just like this ten feet of black water between them, it kept them apart.
But while Barry muses over what he can do, how can he build a bridge between them, how can he make this work, a bird in a nearby tree takes to the air. An unexpected streak of white falls from the sky…landing square on Leonard Snart's head. Len raises a hand to wipe at the mess, and immediately goes ballistic.
"What the…are you shitting me!?" he bellows, looking up towards the sky, then at his gun on shore, lying impotently in the distance.
Barry sputters. "I would have to say…yes?"
Len, furiously cleaning bird crap off his shaved head, glares, but he can't help himself, not when Barry's eyes crinkle at the corners and he's laughing so hard he can hardly breathe. Len follows, and before both men can stop, they're laughing out loud.
"Oh my God!" Barry snorts. "You should have seen your face!"
"My face? Did you happen to notice my crank glowing like a fucking night light? Are you sure that Caitlin wasn't playing some kind of trick on you with that shit?"
"Is it awful to say that I'm dying to tell her about that?"
"Don't you dare…" Len gulps, his gaze stuck on the hand wiping his head, but his eyes becoming distant. The expression on his face is one of such utter shock, that Barry becomes afraid.
What in the world could put that look in Leonard Snart's eyes?
"Len? Len, what's…what's wrong? Len, talk to me." The color seeps from Len's face as he concentrates on the hand in front of his eyes. Barry thinks he sees it, too, but there are too many shadows, and Len is too far away.
When Len opens his mouth to speak, his voice sounds thin…and nauseous.
"Are there…leeches in this water?"
"So…" Caitlin says, bringing the attention of the glassy-eyed men staring at one another back to the yet-to-be explained damage on their bodies. She fights hard not to laugh as Cisco continues to find dead ants in Barry's suit, and engorged leeches paving a path down Snart's body. Soon Cisco's forceps will be exploring past the man's waistband. There's really only a handful of explanations as to how leeches would have gotten into Len's pants, but she's got $50 riding on only one…and that includes Barry riding Len. "Out with it, gentlemen."
Snart waits for his brilliant paramour to come up with something, anything that two of his best friends might buy. But Barry looks like he's been called into the principal's office, and he's been threatened with the unthinkable – a black mark on his permanent record.
Serves Len right for dating a man half his age.
"He kicked my ass," Snart recants wryly.
"Sure did," Barry pipes in. "Kicked his ass…good."
Barry randomly becomes interested in a ceiling panel off to his right. Len lowers his eyes to his hands, littered with cuts and bruises, waiting for their turn to be tended to.
"Uh-huh," Caitlin says, unimpressed, while behind her, Cisco slips two twenties and a ten into her hand.