When Barry discovers something dangerous hidden underneath their daughter's bed, he jumps to conclusions that prove the trust Len broke between them hasn't entirely healed.

Notes: Written for the Coldflashweeks Bingo card prompt 'Father Len'.

"Did you have a good time at the museum today, Bug?" Len asks, fishing a ring of keys out of his pocket.

"Yup!" Lisa chirps, beaming at her father as if today, Friday April 12th, were Christmas. "Loads!"

"Really? It's only what? The fifty-six hundredth time you've been there?"

"True, but I rarely get to go there with you." She takes his arm and hugs it tight. "Thanks so much for agreeing to chaperone this time."

Len stops messing with the front door and drops a kiss on the top of her head. "Any time. The Central City Museum happens to hold a special place in my heart. I'm sorry that I was nabbed by security for clearance before I could go in. I hope that wasn't too embarrassing for you."

"Nuh-uh! That was awesome! Watching you get interrogated by CCPD like some undercover super spy, knowing they were going to let you go the second they called Dad! But it wasn't entirely fair, either."

"Why's that?"

"Well, you got marked for being an ex-criminal. But there are a bunch of kids in my class whose parents actually are criminals. Like every day."

Len arches an eyebrow. "Like who?"

"Donna Bright's dad is insider trading. Liam's mom prints counterfeit coupons and sells them on the Internet. And pretty much every single one of Patty Roster's older brothers are selling drugs."

"You don't say …" Len files that information away, making a mental note to do a background check on the parents of everyone else in Lisa's grade. "That's good to know."

He finally gets his key in the lock and the door open. The second they do, they're greeted by a sizzle of red and a pair of fiery eyes.

"What is this!?" Barry demands, holding his hands open for Len and Lisa to see.

"What's what, Daddy?" Lisa asks, looking at her father strangely.

"Yeah. Don't play the pronoun game with us, Red. We just walked through the door."

"This!" Barry looks at his hands, but there's nothing in them. He rolls his eyes, zips back upstairs, and returns, holding something that looks suspiciously like a gun up to Len's face.

"Oh, that." Len grins. "That's …"

"… a cold gun! I know! I found it in Lisa's room! And it's child sized! I mean, where would you even get something like this? Actually, don't tell me! I'm sure you have all sorts of connections in the seedy black underworld of Central City …"

Len snickers. "Seedy black underworld? And you say I talk like a comic book villain."

"… and if you tell me about them," Barry rants on, "I'm going to have to run out and round everyone up! You included!"

"Daddy?" Len feels Lisa grab his hand and squeeze, genuine fear vibrating through her whole body.

"Now hold on, Red. Don't start jumping to any conclusions."

"How can I not when I find things like this hidden underneath Lisa's bed?"

"Why don't you ask me what that is before you start talking about dragging me off to Iron Heights … in front of our daughter?"

"I'm sorry, Lisa," Barry says to his frightened little girl. "I really am. But this is serious, Len! I know you like to play around with her, break into STAR Labs and Queen Tower, and we all indulge you. But there has to be a line! This isn't a toy and it isn't a game! This can have a very real effect on her life! We talked about that!"

"Yeah, we talked about it," Len says. "That's why I didn't give her a cold gun!"

"Oh yeah? Then how did she get this?"

"I built it!" Lisa interjects. "Mommy helped me!"

"I find it hard to believe that your mother would help you build a cold gun!"

"It's not a cold gun!"

"What is it then?"

"It's a polarizing deflector," Len declares, though not entirely square on what those words mean. The gun in Barry's hands is heavy and expensive – that he knows. "Otherwise known as a digital beam steering device. Lisa designed it for the school science fair, and Felicity had Cisco build it. Lisa asked him to make it look like my cold gun because she thought it'd be cool."

"But I don't like the color," Lisa admits. "So I'm going to re-paint it. Pink, I think."

"Why didn't you tell me?" Barry asks.

"Because I wanted it to be a surprise! That's why I hid it under my bed. I didn't think you'd look there!"

"If you'd stop hiding Brussel sprouts under your bed, I wouldn't have to look under there!" Barry runs a hand through his hair and goes quiet. He's thinking, but he doesn't lift his eyes to look at them, and the expression on his face, Len can't read. It's a mixture of anger and confusion, sadness and defeat. It breaks Len's heart because he never intended this discussion to end this way – not with Barry looking like he's lost some huge battle when there wasn't one.

"Hey, Lisa?" Len puts a hand on his daughter's shoulder and steers her toward the kitchen. "Why don't you go grab yourself a snack while I have a little one-on-one with your father?"

"Yeah, okay," she says, taking her science project out of her father's hand along the way. "I'll need to give this a once over. Make sure it wasn't wrecked or anything."

After that remark, Barry's expression goes from defeated to downright fractured.

Len waits until Lisa rounds the corner to the next room before he speaks. "What's up with you, Red? You've been seriously on edge the past couple of days."

"I have not."

"Whatever. I know you weren't too thrilled about missing the field trip today."

Barry shrugs, but he still doesn't look at his husband. "I always go on the field trips. I've been going on them for years. But she wanted to take you this time around. No harm, no foul."

"I'm not buying that and you know it."

Barry shakes his head. Len puts a hand to his husband's chin, turning his face so he can see his eyes.

"Talk to me, Bare. Tell me what's bothering you."

Barry sighs. "I don't want to hurt your feelings. You don't deserve it."

"I'm a big boy. I think I can take it."

"It's just … when Felicity had Lisa and we brought her home, I had so many dreams, so many visions of how she'd grow up. How she'd turn out. When you took off, it was just me alone with our little girl, and for a while, she was my mini me. But she's growing up to be like you more and more every day. And that scares me a little."

"I wasn't always a criminal, Red. Once upon a time, I was a little kid like Lisa who wanted to grow up and become something other than my dad. Someone worth knowing. But I lost my way. I'm trying to go back to that. Marrying you, having Lisa, those were all steps in that direction. And I messed up. I know I did. But I'm back on the right track." Len tilts his head, looking at Barry through narrowed eyelids. "Would it be so bad if our daughter turned out more like me than you?"

"No, it wouldn't," Barry says quickly, genuinely. "I think I'm a little jealous that somehow you became the fun parent, and I ended up the strict parent."

"Oh, Red." Len wraps his arms around his husband's waist. "To be honest, I don't think either of us is the strict parent. I think you're better at making sure she eats her vegetables and gets to school on time. Otherwise, we're pretty much the same. A regular bowl of fun."

Barry shoots Len a confused look. "I don't know if I should take that as a compliment or not."

"You should." Len pulls him close, kisses him softly on the lips. "And along the vein of being fun parents, I recommend blowing off the rabbit food for tonight and ordering in. Pizza, chicken wings, something deep fried and dipped in chocolate ..."

Barry chuckles. "Not that fun. You're having a salad with that."

"As long as it's a taco salad, it's all good."

"You know there's no such thing as a taco salad."

"There's no such thing as a Rocky Mountain Oyster, either, but you don't see that putting a dent in that industry."

"Ugh!" Barry pulls a face in disgust. "Fine. But you can order dinner. I don't have it in me to voluntarily order that much cholesterol."

"I remember a time when you'd eat that for breakfast."

"That's before we had Lisa." Barry shrugs. "Priorities change. People change."

"Yes, they do. Please try to remember that more often, will ya?"

Barry nods, then zips away upstairs to finish clearing out rotting food stuffs from under his daughter's bed before dinner time.

With her father gone, Lisa returns to the living room, apple in one hand, her science project in the other. Barry is right, Len thinks. She's gone from straight-laced future forensic scientist to Rogue-in-training in a few short years, and Len does feel guilty about that. But he feels a tremendous sense of pride, too. Lisa has positive influences out the ying-yang – Barry, Felicity, Oliver, Cisco, Dr. Snow, Kara Zor-El, all the heavy hitters. A few of them even have their own trading cards. She's being raised by a community of the smartest, most law abiding and compassionate people on the planet, and it shows. She's the smartest in her class, and well on her way to skipping enough grades that she might graduate college before she turns eleven.

But somewhere in that exceptional young girl, along with the bright and shining future as a hero and the potential for a Nobel Prize, there's room for him, too.

She's the most perfect human that's ever entered his life. She's never judged him for being low brow or for his past.

Or for the company he keeps.

She's the coolest person he's ever met in the whole damned universe, and he gets the privilege of calling her his daughter.

Len gives his daughter a side-eyed smirk when she shoulders her gun. "Well, then … should we tell Daddy about the matching parkas we bought?"

"No way! Did you see that vein throbbing in his neck?" she says, taking a bite of her apple. "I'm not sure he can handle that right now."