Team ColdFlash joins Team Arrow in Starling to help with the problem of Damien Darhk and his Ghosts, but the real enemy for Len and Oliver turns out to be each other.
"Look, Felicity said she got in touch with this woman, and that she knows someone who can help us. He's a freaking sorcerer, Oliver!"
"When I agreed to let your boyfriend's Rogues help out with Darhk and the Ghosts, that didn't include inviting even more strangers into the Arrow Cave."
"You really should call this place The Quiver," Cisco said absentmindedly from behind Felicity. "Way cooler than 'Arrow Cave'."
"Oliver," Barry tried again, "Hartley said—"
"I don't care what one of your villains discovered about this Zatanna person," Oliver cut him off, right in his face with a scowl Barry hadn't seen since they first met and Oliver nearly choked him to death, "or that Felicity already tracked her down to send some sorcerer to Starling to help. We don't need more bodies. We need a plan."
"This is the plan," Barry insisted, just as defiantly in Oliver's face, mere inches between them, with a smattering of Team Arrow and Team ColdFlash all around them.
"So what's his name?" Oliver stepped back, flippant and mocking in the way Barry most hated when Oliver underestimated him. "What's his ETA? Can we trust him to not be worse than Darhk once it's all over? You don't think these things through, Barry. You rush in, head first, which is exactly how people get killed. You don't get to come in here and pull something like this behind my back—"
"I told him not to tell you," Len spoke up. And shit, no, that's what Barry had been trying to avoid.
"Len—"
"What?" Oliver turned to Len with the veins in his neck bulging, stance stiff, fists clenched even tighter than before.
Len, who had been sitting back through all of this, leaning against Felicity's desk with his arms crossed, didn't even change positions. Just shrugged, completely nonchalant. "I knew you wouldn't trust intel from Hartley if we discussed things first, so I told Barry not to inform you until after contact had been made. Now the real help we need is on its way: John Constantine. ETA 48 hours. And considering that between Hart, Felicity, and Cisco, we now know everything we could ever want to know about Zatanna or Constantine, I can safely tell you that yes, he'll help, he'll ask to get paid if we're willing, and then he'll leave before the smoke clears. Don't worry about the funds, Oliver. The Rogues can cover this one if you're short on cash."
Damn it, Len, Barry thought, even though he enjoyed the way the vein in Oliver's forehead made its expected appearance, Oliver's anger bubbling but the steam blown right out of his sails as he staggered back from Len's blow.
They had been getting along so well too.
"Uhh…" Felicity attempted, since she was currently behind her desk, by Len, and could see the way Oliver was glaring at the former (and occasionally current) thief.
"Maybe I find it difficult to trust your team, Snart, because they're criminals." Oliver took a step closer to Len, prompting Barry to move with him, ready to intervene, desperately trying to think of how to diffuse the palpable tension brewing.
"Some of them are working toward rehabilitation," Len said.
"And some of them are murderers."
Len pushed from the desk, arms dropping to his sides as he moved to meet Oliver halfway. "Which, once again, puts them right in line with you."
Oliver's fists tightened, and Barry recognized the split second he had to react before someone threw a punch. Luckily, a second was all he needed. "Both of you stop! Just stop!" he called, hands outstretched as he flashed between them.
Barry hated having this large an audience, but there wasn't anything to be done about that. Lisa and Hartley were listening in remotely from S.T.A.R. Labs with Caitlin, Ronnie, and Stein, but Mick was present and accounted for physically. He'd actually been getting along surprisingly well—or maybe not that surprisingly—with Thea and Laurel, and stood near them, arms crossed more resolutely than Len's had been, while Diggle stood on the opposite side of the room with Cisco and Felicity.
"This isn't helping," Barry said, looking to Len first, silently begging him to back off, before he focused on Oliver. "What's done is done. Okay, Oliver? Constantine is on his way. I know it's not as soon as you'd like to go after Darhk directly, but in the meantime we can still pull the job you were planning for tonight, take on the outpost we discovered where several of the Ghosts are lying low, without any recent sightings of Darhk for us to worry about anything mystical. We'll take care of that tonight, and then have a night off before Constantine arrives to help us with the rest. In the meantime, maybe Cisco and the others can figure something out on the science side to counteract magic if things go sour."
Cisco brightened at that, exchanging an excited, contemplative look with Felicity, their genius minds already working.
"I might have some ideas on that," Hartley's voice sounded from the computer.
Cisco frowned at the machine with clear disdain.
"Pull the job," Oliver muttered, shaking his head at Barry, though the slump to his posture proved he was backing down, for now. "It's a mission, Barry, not a job. You even talk like him." The last was bitten out so that only Barry and Len heard, but it was enough that Barry saw Len's fists clench and start to tremble.
"It's fine," Barry said after Oliver walked away, squeezing Len's arm and then drifting his hand down until Len's fingers unclenched and laced with his. "We made the right call. Oliver will come around."
"I don't like the way he talks to you," Len hissed beneath his breath.
"He's just concerned. He feels responsible for me."
"I'm responsible for you."
Barry raised an eyebrow at Len, but humorously, waiting for Len's words to catch up with him. "Oh really?"
"You know what I mean." Len relaxed, his shoulders unstiffening, as a small smile tugged at his lips and he squeezed Barry's hand before letting go.
"So," Felicity called out, reminding them that they were not alone in the room. "Are we good to plan out tonight's mission without any more blow-ups? Other than some Ghosts possibly…blowing up." She waved a hand, spreading her fingers out to mime a small BOOM, then wrinkled her nose at the ensuing quiet.
Oliver hadn't left the room, just stood over by his sister eyeing Mick with distrust.
"Okay," Barry said, grabbing everyone's attention. "Let's try this again. From the beginning."
As tense as everything was at first, talking through how the teams would work together that night, Barry felt confident, sure that once they were in the field, working side by side, Oliver would be able to set aside his concerns, see how well Team ColdFlash operated, even with Hartley recently added to the group, and everything between him and Len would smooth over.
He was so wrong.
Even from Central City, those at S.T.A.R. Labs still aided their efforts over the coms. With Hartley's help—since Cisco had to admit that this particular moment of genius did belong to him—they were able to reprogram several sets of extra coms with combined technology from Hartley's Sonic Gloves and his special hearing aids. Basically, when activated, a frequency would be emitted powerful enough to effect the nervous system of anyone nearby, their team members immune with a counter-frequency emitted through their coms.
"Can't cast magic if we cast Silence first," Barry overheard Hartley say, which actually prompted a snicker from Cisco, and a confused look from Felicity, until Cisco explained that Silence was a spell in a lot of roll playing games to disrupt magic.
"Oh, like Magic the Gathering."
"See, she knows."
"And since this is actually a whole sound frequency thing…" Cisco said, shrugging, though Barry could tell he got a kick out of it.
"They don't call me Pied Piper for nothing," Hartley said.
"Hey, you cheated by naming yourself," Cisco said as his smile dropped, "I do the names around here."
"You think you could come up with something better? You don't even have a codename."
"I…" Cisco sputtered, glaring harder at the computer screen, which projected Hartley's image now since the three tech geeks had been working together so closely. "Shut up. You're lucky RPG references buys you a free pass right now, because you have a long way to go to endear yourself to me, man."
"Clearly, my life-long goal," Hartley sniped.
"Okay, boys, play nice," Felicity jumped in. "Besides, Pied Piper is a pretty clever name." She immediately mouthed 'sorry' to Cisco when he looked at her, all betrayed.
Hartley laughed, and somehow, despite Cisco ranting a bit longer over the issue, the tension seemed to have shifted. There wasn't the same biting tension Barry remembered from Cisco and Hartley's conversations before today. Felicity definitely played a role in that, as Hartley had taken to her right away, admiring her intelligence, her skills, her classy style, and her accidental knack for sexual innuendo.
"You could learn from Miss Smoak, Cisco."
"I hate you so much, Hart."
Hart—Barry smirked to himself. It was a start.
And then the mission began.
The edge of the warehouse district—why was it always the warehouse district?—had blipped with Ghost movement after every encounter elsewhere in the city. Finally, after weeks of tracking these guys and foiling their plans whenever they could, Team Arrow knew that a majority of Darhk's forces holed up there, in three separate, close-knit buildings.
With Cisco and Felicity running coms at the Arrow Cave, Lisa and Hartley listening in from S.T.A.R. Labs, while Caitlin separately kept tabs on Firestorm doing normal patrols in Central City with Joe and Eddie, the rest of the crew was split between three teams, one for each building.
Oliver insisted on partnering with Len, not needing to say that his reasoning was to keep an eye on him, that was implied, while Barry was with Mick, since they were better used to working together, and Laurel, Thea, and Diggle were together for the same reason. The plan was to hit the three buildings all at once, hoping to draw equal forces so no single team got overwhelmed.
Unfortunately, the Ghosts weren't in on the plan. Their forces were uneven from the start, Barry and Mick's building proving to house only a handful of occupants that they took down and secured in a matter of minutes.
"Flash, join our team. Heat Wave, rendezvous with Canary," Oliver ordered over the coms.
"Scratch that," Len called, just as Barry and Mick nodded to each other and made to part at the building's exit. "Other way around. Mick and I can take out more with fire and ice tactics. Box them in."
Barry hesitated, skidded a little as he halted his run, and looked back at Mick. They shared a shrug and moved to swap directions.
"We're more outnumbered, Snart," Oliver shot back, "and Flash can take out numerous enemies more quickly. Stick to my original orders."
Barry held back a groan as he once again stuttered out of the beginnings of a run.
"But Canary's group of Ghosts is better armed," Len argued. "Mick's less affective against bullets then Barry dodging them and disarming these guys. Queen doesn't know what he's talking about."
"Guys…" Felicity's voice sounded warningly over the coms.
Barry gestured to Mick, who looked annoyed, snarl on his lips as he held his gun at the ready. Rather than choose sides verbally, Barry motioned for Mick to head to Canary's building. Len would be pissed when he saw that Barry had chosen Oliver's directions, but he wasn't going after them because he thought Oliver's plan was sounder. To be honest, both of them made good points, but someone had to get in there and stop these two from distracting each other with senseless arguments, and Mick wasn't exactly the best at diffusing tension.
"Where are you two?" Barry called after he'd flashed to the farthest building. There were several floors, including more than one basement level.
"Don't come to us, Barry!" Len snarled, just as Barry had feared. "You should—"
"I think I've been at this a little longer than you, Snart, to know how to best utilize my people."
"Barry isn't part of your team, Queen, he's part of mine. And unless you were shooting arrows while you were in diapers, you have not been at this longer than me."
"I'm not talking about pulling heists."
"Because vigilantism is so different? It's still about careful planning, timing, knowing how to exploit your resources—"
"Oh my god!" Barry cried out, coming to a stop inside the first floor of their building and punching a stray Ghost who dropped immediately unconscious from the slightly more speedy hit than Barry had intended. He dashed up the stairs to the second floor. "Where are you two?!"
"Barry, we're getting some weird signal from that building," Cisco informed him.
"Weird how?" He zipped into every room he came across, but couldn't see any sign of Len and Oliver, other than a few unconscious or iced bodies. They must have started from the top and worked their way down.
"Thermal signature," Hartley said.
"As in extra bodies? A hidden compliment of Ghosts in the basement? What?" He no longer heard arguments from Len and Oliver, but he could hear the zip of arrows through the air, the sound of Len's gun. They must have encountered more enemies.
"More like…" Felicity started, and then as she trailed, she, Cisco, and Hartley all came to the same conclusion.
"Bomb!"
"I so did not mean it like this when I mentioned exploding Ghosts earlier!" Felicity lamented.
"Lenny, did you hear that?!" Lisa called out. "It's a trap!"
"Len, Oliver, where are you?!" Barry tried again, finishing surveying what he'd skipped before of the first floor, and zipping down the stairs to the first level basement.
Barry heard a grunt—Oliver—then Len's gun again. They were too engaged to answer, maybe hadn't heard, maybe had no idea there was a bomb. Shit.
Then just as the ambient noise cleared and Barry was about to call to them again, finding more and more evidence that they had been where he was checking but weren't there now, Oliver growled, "Pay attention, Snart! We're cornered because you were distracted!"
"Me? First you think you can order Barry around, now you want to order me? What makes you think your style is so superior?"
"Evidence. Successes. The men and women I've put away."
"Why don't we add body count? You definitely have me beat there."
Barry took a breath so he could break in, stop them, and thought he heard a few muffled additional voices over the coms attempting the same, but Len and Oliver barreled ahead.
"Barry values my advice for a reason, Snart. He had zero combat experience before I—"
"Before your shoddy excuse for training? It doesn't work if it's less than a week's time with no follow up or routine. I spar with Barry every—"
"Spar," Oliver scoffed. "You think play time is useful for Barry? Going easy on him? He can't learn with his head in the bedroom."
Another blast of Len's gun, and for a second, Barry feared his boyfriend had actually iced Oliver. He'd cleared the first level basement. They had to be on the next floor. Barry flashed down the stairs where at last he encountered some living, breathing Ghosts again. Damn it.
"You undermine Barry every chance you get," Len snarled when his voice came back over the coms. "We know how to work together, how to protect each other to get the job done."
"You mean like you protected him from getting shot a month ago?"
Barry's stomach flipped as he skidded to a stop—he couldn't believe Oliver would use that against Len when he had told him about that in confidence—then summoned his reserves to zip around the remaining Ghosts that had to be the ones pinning Len and Oliver in, though Barry still couldn't see them.
He pulled out one of Hartley's Silencers and activated it in the middle of the Ghosts. It was a one-time blast but it worked on non-magic users just fine. They all grabbed their heads and convulsed to the floor. The way was clear.
Len's voice was ice when he spoke again, "So we're back to square one, Oliver, where I'm not good enough for Barry? No one knows that better than me. But then don't try to pretend like you're any better, or that you're good enough to spend the rest of your life with Felicity."
"Oh my god, someone stop them. Stop them now," Felicity pleaded over the coms.
Len had confessed to him that Hartley had dug a little deeper than allocated into the Arrow Cave, tried to hack into Felicity's expert job of firewalling their system, and while he hadn't been completely successful, he had stumbled upon a side bank account that seemed separate, that seemed like something Felicity might not know about. Because it had activity at a jewelry store for resizing an engagement ring.
Oliver was planning on proposing to Felicity soon, and now Hartley, Len, and Barry all knew. Barry had made them promise not to say anything to anyone else, had reprimanded Hartley for going so far—"Her system was so beautiful, I couldn't resist," had been his excuse—and they'd left it alone. For Len to bring it up now, however vague, when Felicity could overhear…
Barry was so done with both of them.
"The bomb!" Hartley reminded them.
"Bomb?!" Len and Oliver finally answered.
Barry didn't know which one was worse. "Oliver, Len, where the hell—?" he finally yelled—outright yelled—ready to fly around what he hoped was the final corner separating him from his companions.
"Barry!" Cisco called. "The heat signature—!" But whatever he had been about to say was drowned out by the blast.
Barry flew into the wall from the outward impact, ceiling and wall crumbling around him before he could get a handle on what was happening. The bomb had blown, and Len and Oliver had been too distracted by their pissing contest to pay attention.
Only the second Barry's anger flared, fueled by the pain of being assaulted by debris, panic set in as he realized that the explosion had originated from the very hallway he'd been heading toward, the last possible location in the whole damn building Len and Oliver could possibly be.
"No!" Barry cried with dread in his voice now, throwing wreckage off of him as he zipped toward the smoldering flames trying to take the building down around him. "Len! Oliver!"
A chorus of like cries sounded over the coms. It was too much; Barry had to turn them off. He flashed around the corner he hadn't made it to in time, seeing only carnage, flames and charred remains. The whole building was starting to come down; he didn't have enough time.
He found the blast radius, easy to determine, setup in the wall to take out the support beams, which was the only reason Barry hadn't been fully engulfed in the blast. But if Len and Oliver had been closer, they had to have been closer, they might have been vaporized.
No…no…there would be blood, some sort of remains, some sort of sign if that had happened. Barry pushed on, tossing pieces of concrete and plaster out of his path, and finally, finally came upon the most beautiful sight he'd ever seen: a wall of ice.
"Len!" Barry pounded on it. There were additional blast marks on the floor projecting out from the ice wall, toward the real blast behind Barry. Oliver must have used one of his explosive arrows to counter the explosion, while Len iced them in to shield them from the fire. Finally, when their lives had depended on it, they'd managed to work in harmonious tandem.
Barry pressed his hands to the ice and let them vibrate, shaking at a frequency that rumbled and risked caving in more of the floor above down on their heads, but it eventually cracked...and then shattered out in a spray of cold.
On the other side, huddled into the corner, was Len and Oliver, singed but conscious, not even appearing like they had any significant bruises let alone any breaks or serious injuries. They blinked at him mutely.
Barry flicked on his coms. "They're alive. But not for long because I am going to kill them both when we get out of here." He turned the coms off again before his eardrums could blow out from the chorus of cheers and loudly shouted questions.
He snatched Len's gun out of his hands and aimed it straight up, icing the already unsteady and failing ceiling above. He kept it in his grasp as he sped back down the way he had come from for momentum, returning to scoop both men up—Len over his shoulder, Oliver under one arm—while he aimed the cold gun with the other, running right up the wall to crash up through the frozen ceiling, and firing again to do the same with the next obstacle in his way.
When they got to the main floor, the damage wasn't as extensive, the bomb likely more of an out for the Ghosts, like their cyanide capsules, rather than an actual trap. Barry threw Len and Oliver away from him, tossed the cold gun into Len's lap, and turned his coms on again.
"Everyone, back to the Arrow Cave. Now."
Maybe it was his tone, or how he'd cut them all off several times without explanation, but the responding voices were softer, simple grunts and words of acknowledgment.
"Barry—" Len started, but faltered when Barry looked at him with blind rage.
"I don't want to hear one word from either of you until we get back," Barry seethed.
Oliver tried anyway. "But Barry—"
"Not one fucking word!"
Both of them snapped their mouths shut. As soon as Len clipped his cold gun back into his parka, Barry scooped them up again at lightning speed, zipping them out of the building and not stopping until they arrived at the Arrow Cave.
He smacked Len's arm where it started to smoke, threatening to start on fire, not as resistant to moving at that speed for that far like the material of Oliver's suit. He might have hit a little harder than necessary giving the way Len winced.
"Make sure they're both okay," Barry ordered Felicity, who had already dashed to Oliver's side, and began to check him, while Len removed his parka and hissed as though he was at least a little banged up. Good. That much they both deserved.
Barry sat back against Felicity's desk with his arms folded, glaring at them, as Felicity inspected them, discovering only a smattering of cuts at most, while Cisco relayed things to the S.T.A.R. Labs team, to which Lisa sounded equally relieved and pissed off.
Diggle radioed in that he'd cart off a few Ghosts they'd managed to nab, who didn't succeed in activing their cyanide pills, to the police department, while Mick, Laurel, and Thea headed back to base.
Oliver insisted to Felicity that he was fine, Len doing the same to Lisa over the coms. Barry remained in the same spot, cowl pushed back, arms crossed, while they peeled themselves out of their costumes, until both were down to the basics of just top, pants, and boots.
The first thing he said to them after things quieted down came out low and more threatening than he thought he could sound. "You know what that explosion reminded me of, when I realized you'd both been caught in it?"
They glanced at each other before turning to him, only the length of the table they were piling their gear onto separating them.
"That day a building came down on your head trying to protect me, Len, and you almost died. How about every time you've tried to face an enemy alone, Oliver, to keep someone you love safe? You wanna know the difference tonight? No one needed you to save them! You were selfish and immature, and nearly got yourselves and me killed because you couldn't take two fucking seconds to pay attention to what was going on!"
"Barry..."
"I am not finished yet!" Barry flashed up in Oliver's face, making him flinch, and glared just as readily at Len when he got closer. "I don't need either of you second guessing everything I do, getting in my way, acting like you're the only ones who know what's best for me. I am an adult. Neither of you is my father—thank god, two of those are enough."
He looked to Len, "I need a partner," then to Oliver, "and a friend. Not babysitters. I can take care of myself. Everyone in this room can take care of themselves!" He gestured widely to encompass the room as Mick, Thea, and Laurel arrived and looked on in mute shock at Barry's yelling.
"And if the both of you could just realize that for two seconds," Barry rounded on them, snarling in each of their faces, "especially you, Oliver, but lately, Len, you have been just as bad…it would be that much easier for all of us to protect each other. Because we're a team. This isn't The Arrow show, or all about Captain Cold."
"So ColdFlarrow can be a thing?" Cisco asked tentatively.
Barry whirled a finger toward him with a streak of lightning following it. "ColdFlarrow is not a thing, Cisco, don't interrupt me. But ColdFlash and Arrow team ups could be," he turned back to Len and Oliver as Cisco deflated. "The teams themselves are amazing and like clockwork in how efficient we can be. But only when everyone gets their heads out of their asses, and right now the only ones having that problem are the two of you! So you better figure out how you're going to grow up and work together like mature adults, because I am done with your shit."
Barry stepped back, nearly stumbling as the adrenaline that had been fueling eased away with the release of all that pent up anger.
A static, stifling silence blanketed the room, the coms all quiet, everyone barely breathing. Len and Oliver both avoided looking at Barry, but the moment they glanced up, whether seeking some assistance from the others or about to offer an apology, the joined teams jumped on the bandwagon.
"Thank you!"
"About damn time."
"Oliver is such a hypocrite about these things, I swear."
Even a "You tell 'em, Barry!" from the computer.
And a jumble of other things that Barry could tell made Len and Oliver both feel about as low as dirt. All he could think again was—good. Anything to keep them from throwing themselves into danger like that again, when Barry had enough to worry about when he dealt with each of them alone; together they were a nightmare.
He shook in his adrenaline crash, fists tight, heartrate thumping, lump in his throat threatening to make him choke, and sniffle, and—nope. Absolutely not. He would not cry right now, even if he was beyond relieved that they were both actually okay when things easily could have turned out differently.
Len beneath a pile of rubble had been their beginning; it was not allowed to be their end.
Barry wanted to hug them both now that his rage was dwindling, but no, he couldn't do that either, not yet. They needed to wallow in this for a while before they deserved his forgiveness. They needed to beg for it; he would not offer it lightly, not this time.
Eventually, when the tension dropped and everyone's eyes were no longer centered on Len and Oliver, Mick came over, pressed his gun to Oliver's chest, and said, "You don't mention the Zapper again, got me?"
Len stepped in before things could escalate. "And I don't mention anything about Felicity," he said, eyeing Oliver in sympathy, finally realizing just what kind of baggage he had waved in Oliver's face. They shared a tense but companionable exchange and Oliver nodded. Mick walked away without another word.
It was something, but when they tried to approach Barry, he turned and headed to the other side of the room to change. That night, while the rest of Team ColdFlash currently in Starling stayed there for the evening, Barry flashed home to Central to sleep in his own bed—alone.
He left early in the morning, not wanting to get noticed or stopped by Joe, and arrived at the Arrow Cave to go over everything they possible could before Constantine arrived the next night. He probably could have stayed in Central, done some work, even though he had secured these days off from the CCPD, but he didn't feel it was fair to abandon Mick and Cisco just because he was mad at Len. He didn't want to stay mad at Len anyway, or Oliver, but it was hard to know how to react to them after he had blown up like that.
Which was why it surprised him to return and discover the group all enjoying bagels and coffee while Len and Oliver were off in the corner together, talking. They each offered an apologetic smile to Barry and a brief nod when he came in before returning to their conversation.
"How long have they been like that?" Barry asked in a near whisper to the others.
"I was first in this morning, and they were already here," Diggle said. "With breakfast and coffee ready."
"Didn't they sleep?" Barry looked to Felicity, Cisco, and Mick.
"The kid and I stayed with Smoak," Mick said, taking a bite of what Barry had seen was his second cinnamon and sugar bagel. "Think they bunked here."
Barry gaped at the gathered group. "Len and Oliver had a sleepover at the Arrow Cave?"
"There are cots," Laurel shrugged.
"We've slept here almost more than at our apartment," Thea added.
"Yeah, but…" Barry trailed as Len and Oliver moved from their powwow to finally join the rest of them, sporting empty coffee cups of their own. Barry straightened, not wanting to appear too friendly just yet.
"We've been talking," Oliver said, offering that tight, masked smile Barry was so used to. "Working through some…issues. It's been productive."
"Educational," Len supplied.
"And we feel it might be in our best interest to relax tonight. As a team. Both teams. Everyone who's willing to come. We actually put in a call to Central earlier to get some of our missing members on the train this morning."
"Lisa?" Cisco perked up.
"Everyone," Len smiled. "Well, Joe and Martin volunteered to make the sacrifice of keeping an eye on the city for the night, but Eddie got the night off. If anything blows up or goes awry, we figure Barry can be on call to whisk Ronnie back to town so The Flash and Firestorm can handle things. We're hoping that won't be an issue. Assuming of course you're willing to spend any time with us at the moment."
He caught Barry's eye more intensely than he had since before the mission yesterday and held it, watery and crystal clear blue. Barry melted under that stare despite his best efforts.
"We're truly sorry for how we acted, Barry," Len said, then nodded to the others, "Everyone. We got caught up in our own hang-ups and made some bad calls. It won't happen again. Not like that."
"So if you're willing to forgive us," Oliver jumped in, his smile perking up just the slightest bit more genuine, "we have an idea. A terrible…" He glanced at Len.
"Embarrassing," Len picked up from him with a wider smile of his own.
"We'll clearly regret this in the morning…idea," Oliver finished.
"Sounds like my kinda party," Lisa said, bringing all of their attentions to the entrance where she, Caitlin, Ronnie, Iris, Eddie, and Hartley all stood with bags to stay the night—or possibly two.
Barry stood up straighter and gaped at the sheer mass of them all together. "What kind of idea?"
TBC...