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robininthelabyrinth · 5 years

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Fic: An Internal Affair - Chapter 14 (Ao3 link)

Fandom: The Flash Pairing: Leonard Snart/Barry Allen

Summary: Leonard Snart, the CCPD Captain of Internal Affairs, is known as Captain Cold for a very good reason: He hates corrupt cops with a merciless vengeance, and once you’re on his list, you’re in serious trouble.

His next target?

A CCPD lab tech named Barry Allen who’s developed a suspicious habit of disappearing at random intervals.

—————————————————————————————————

What.

What?

What?!

Barry feels like his thoughts are simultaneously moving a million miles a second while also experiencing total blue screen of death crash, which is a weird experience. It's like he's thinking every single thought he could possibly think all at once, except each and every thought can best be described as "?!"

Captain Cold is Leonard Snart.

Leonard Snart -

Leonard -

Len.

Barry's Len.

Len is a cop.

Len is a cop in internal affairs.

Len is Captain Cold the might-be supervillain.

What?!

It's not that Barry hasn't mostly dropped the whole supervillain angle - Iris is vouching for Captain Snart, after all, and despite his original belief that she was being very effectively manipulated by him, Barry knows and relies on her good judgment of people. If she's been able to work with Captain Cold for days, even weeks, and still think he's well-intentioned, then he probably is.

Having that little revelation where he realized that certain things could look extremely suspicious from the perspective of a third party that didn't know about metahumans and the Reverse Flash had also helped.

So, really, when you think about it, you know, he sort of knew, right?

No.

No, he didn't.

He had no idea.

He’d barely even accepted the not-a-supervillain thing.

Sort of.

Okay, sure, Barry and Cisco got into a huge fight over the whole "is he a supervillain or not" thing when they got the message about Iris being kidnapped, with Barry insisting there had to be another explanation and Cisco insisting that they were clearly right all along. And that whole thing basically descended into Barry accusing Cisco of wanting Iris to be in danger just to prove he was right and Cisco calling Barry a delusional optimist that risked people getting hurt and Barry threatening to just leave without getting Cisco's help and Cisco telling Barry that he could find his suit anywhere even with the comms turned off and then Wells'd made everything worse by jumping in and Barry was still so pissed about everything and -

Barry's starting to think that maybe running at speed through the power plant on his way to the showdown in order to burn out all the comms through a makeshift EMP might, in retrospect, have been a mistake, because he could really use some third-party confirmation that what he's seeing is really what he's seeing.

Which he's pretty sure it is.

But -

Len?!

His boyfriend Len?

(Okay, not exactly full on boyfriends, they'd promised each other that they'd go slow, but they were definitely heading in that direction, or certainly enough in that direction to explain why Barry maybe-kind of-sorta-actually-definitely has been doodling Len Allen on some of the spare sheets in STAR Labs. Which is a totally reasonable thing for a grown man to do, really.)

But still: what?

How had the fact that Len was a freaking cop never come up? Much less a police captain! They work in the same precinct!

Well, okay, it's not that implausible that they've never run into each other. Barry works up in the attic in his on-site lab, while Captain Cold works in the mostly deserted offices on the far distant side of the building, presumably in the hope that he doesn't get into as many fights with the regular cops as would otherwise be likely given the nature of his job.

Well, given the nature of his job, it probably wouldn't be fights, just glares and not-so-muffled whispers and maybe some light sabotage when they thought they could get away with it.

The precinct sometimes reminds Barry unpleasantly of middle school.

Still! The second Barry mentioned that he was a CSI affiliated with the CCPD, Len could have brought it up; why didn't he?

You didn't bring up the Flash thing either, a little voice in his head reminds him.

It's not the same, though!

Sorta is.

Is not!

...great, now Barry's arguing with himself like an idiot.

But, like, it wasn’t like there were signs or anything! Len uses crutches, and Captain Cold –

Okay, Captain Cold was always either sitting down or – the few times Barry saw him walking anywhere – he was usually limping, and Len did say that his doctor gave him some new leg braces that he hates like hell because they make him all stiff and stuff, and which he could only use for a few hours a day so he limited it to when he was going out on work business –

There was no way for Barry to have put that together, though!

And, wait, didn't Captain Singh say that Captain Snart was investigating Barry? Was the whole dating thing just part of some sting plan? Surely not - that seems like it’s horrifically unethical, right? - but then again, Singh also pointed out that Snart has a history of undercover work, and Barry knows he has no staff to go do things for him, so maybe he just thought that they could get to know each other -

Oh, man, if it really was just all an investigation, Barry will just have to go throw himself off a skyscraper or something -

"- better not be evil," Snart (Len?!) is saying.

"Uh, what?"

"I said, you'd better not turn out to be evil," Len (Barry can't help but think of him as Len, not when he has Len's face and Len's eyes and is Len) repeats. "I really don't want to have to explain to my boyfriend that I teamed up with the guy who killed his mom."

Aww, Len thinks of them as boyfriends, too!

Wait.

Killed his mom -

"Ohhhh," Barry says, because holy crap, that actually kind of makes sense in a weird, weird sort of way. If you know that the Flash exists and don't know about the Reverse Flash, and someone told you that their mom got killed by a guy running faster than lightning -

Yeah, okay.

Reasonable deduction.

Hilariously wrong deduction, but, like, reasonable. Kind of.

No wonder Captain Cold seemed to have a grudge against the Flash!

Awww, Len was carrying a grudge on Barry's behalf. No one but Iris has ever been angry on Barry's behalf before.

(Len thinks they're boyfriends!)

"What, exactly, does 'ohhhh' mean in this context?" Len asks dryly. “Kind of a weird reaction to someone accusing you of murder.”

Oops, yeah, that was weird.

"Uh, oh, no, definitely not. I’ve never killed anyone's mom." Barry says quickly. "I mean, I’ve never killed anyone! Well, there was this one guy who was falling off a balcony and I tried to save him, but he shoved my arm away and jumped, that was really traumatic. Plus there was this other guy with lightning powers that, like, thought it made him immune to electrocution and it apparently, uh, didn't, and - yeah, that was awful, too. But I didn't actually kill anyone -"

"Please stop talking," Len says, but his eyes are doing that adorable crinkle thing around the edges that he does when he thinks something is funny and kind of cute.

Heh, Len thinks Barry's cute even when he's the Flash.

(Len! Thinks! They're! Boyfriends!)

"We are trying to be sneaky here," Len continues.

Right.

Families.

Mortal peril.

(Boyfriends!)

"Right," Barry says. "Uh - I could run us inside really quick, if that would help?"

Len considers it. "Do you leave behind sparks every time you run?"

"...yes?"

"Hm. Not that subtle."

"Right. Er. I could go up the side of the building instead?"

Len looks intrigued by that. "Really? At once, or do you need some sort of running start..?"

"Running start," Barry tells him, secretly pleased all over again by the fact that his boyfriend (boyfriend!) is a bit of a nerd. Sure, possibly also a bit of a liar and maybe working as undercover cop, but - boyfriend! Yes, Barry's aware that his prioritization system is probably pretty screwed up, but...boyfriend! "It's just speed, not, like, sticky feet or anything."

"I was thinking gravity or friction manipulation, but that's fair," Len replies. "Okay, take us up, and get us up high - the old joke about bad guys never looking up is surprisingly accurate."

Barry grins. His boyfriend was an undercover cop! That's so cool!

...okay, he was-slash-is also maybe investigating Barry, which is a real downer if Barry thinks about it too long, but they'll deal with that later.

(Boyfriend!...okay, he'll stop now. Maybe. Sort of...nah. Boyfriends!)

Barry runs them up to the second floor in a split second.

Len looks around once they stop, then frowns. "No, we need to be higher; at least another floor up."

Barry complies, but once they're up on the (rather rickety) steel scaffolding that makes up most of the third floor, he asks, "Why's that? If they don't look up..."

Len's shaking his head. "They don't," he says. "But I was trapped in one of those things -"

He jabs a finger at one of the steel vats.

" - remember? They'll go up to the second floor to look into them to see if I'm there." He makes a face, half disgust and half the remnants of a recent fear, which makes Barry really want to hug him except for the fact that he's currently the Flash and Len doesn't know he's the Flash and it would be really weird for a random superhero to just hug you, right? Probably right. "Hate things like that - like a modern day oubliette, where you leave someone and forget about 'em. Monstrous. But yeah, that's the issue. Now, settle down, we don't want them to spot us...why red, if you don’t mind me asking?"

"What?"

"Your costume. Why red? Ain't exactly subtle."

"I have no idea," Barry confesses. "I think it was the only color available in this fabric at first - I need it to deal with the friction when I run or else my clothing lights on fire."

Though he’s really happy that Cisco eventually managed to find a friction-proofing agent he could use on the rest of his clothing. Barry uses his powers way too much – if he hadn’t found a way to stop the fires, he’d have ended up naked at the office at least a dozen times by now.

Len smirks at that, then his expression fades into something more wistful. "I know someone who'd get a kick outta seeing that."

Barry can't help but smile a little - that must be Mick, Len's pyromaniac friend, the one in the coma.

Len’s smile fades a second later, replaced by a serious expression that is, somehow, just as ridiculously attractive. "They're coming. Don't move."

Right, right, Family bad guys.

Two Families.

Which - what the hell? The Darbinyans and the Santinis hate each other. Most of the time, when they meet even by accident, they go to war. Barry's talking Montague and Capulet levels of "I hate you and will fight you wherever" sort of war, the sort that gets both sides in trouble because they're too busy fighting to pay attention to anyone or anything else.

And, like, yeah, they both hate traitorous rats who turn out to be undercover cops, but still...

"Which one did you spy on, anyway?" Barry whispers.

"Both," Len hisses back. "I was a freelance thief. Now be still!"

Barry sits tight.

His boyfriend is so cool.

...his boyfriend might not be his boyfriend after Barry reveals that he's lied about the whole Flash thing.

Crap.

Not good.

Maybe Len'll be more inclined to be lenient because he's also been omitting information?

Assuming this whole thing wasn't about spying on Barry in the first place.

But if it was, why would he describe Barry as his boyfriend when he doesn't know that Barry's the one listening?

Maybe he was describing some other -

Get a grip on yourself, Barry; the likelihood of there being two people with mothers killed by speedsters in Central City seems like it would be extremely low. He was clearly describing you.

Maybe it's some sort of clever fake-out - but if it's a fake-out, wouldn't that require that he already know that Barry is the Flash? There's no way he could know that.

Is there?

How would Barry know, after all? If someone who knew about him decided to fake ignorance and -

An elbow drives into Barry's side the same second a hand slaps over his mouth, muffling his automatic yelp of surprise.

"Real bad at this whole sitting still thing, ain't you?" Len hisses in Barry's ear. "Whatever line of thought has you buzzing - and I mean that very literally in your case - stop thinking it."

Oops.

"Nod if you understand me."

Barry nods.

Len lets him go.

Barry focuses on staying still and listening to the people below them. Most of them are on the ground level, but as Len predicted, two climbed up to the second floor to look through the various steel vats, presumably searching for Len.

"Nothing," one of them finally shouts down. "They must've gotten cold feet."

"Doesn't matter," one of the ones on the ground floor - Giuseppe Condutti, Barry recognizes him from his mug shot that's hung up on the wall to be used as a dartboard back in the precinct, the guy's basically untouchable but everyone hates him - calls back. "Getting Snart woulda just been icing on the cake, after all –”

“Some pretty damn nice icing,” one of the other guys says loudly. “Fucking snitch.”

“– the important thing,” Condutti says, ignoring him, “is that we’ve got these guys by the short hairs just for dealing with us. And just in time, too."

Another guy, one of the Darbinyans, scoffs. "Yeah, right. What’s it matter? If they got cold feet, then Snart's gonna kill 'em -"

"Ice them," Barry and Len mutter under their breaths in accidental unison, then flash momentary grins at each other.

(Heh. Flash grins.)

"- and that makes 'em useless. Unless you wanna have another cop on the payroll kicking up their heels in Iron Heights?"

"Hey, that means they ain't on the payroll no more, huh?"

Laughter.

"What I never understood about corruption," Len murmurs, scowling down at the mobsters milling about below. "How do you sell your soul to someone who'll sell you up the river in a heartbeat..?"

He sounds disgusted and a little murderous.

Barry wants to give him a hug.

He says, “Shhhh!” instead, because he’s stupid like that.

Len rolls his eyes.

"What's the difference in having two more pigs on the hook, anyway?" one of the guys asks as the two on the ladder climb down. "Just another two ain't gonna affect the big day."

...big day? That sounds ominous.

"You never know," Condutti says with a shrug. "There's always some more strings that might need to get tugged. Lotta stuff happening all at once, lotta coordination -"

"And the Santinis insisting on having one of their men at every location is making that so much smoother," one of the Darbyinians – Barry’s pretty sure this one is Darius Petrosyan, again judging by what he remembers of the man’s mugshot – sneers.

"Like your bosses don't want the same," Condutti snaps back. "The only reason you lot're so paranoid about being stabbed in the back is because you're always plotting to do it to someone else and you assume everybody's like you!"

"Hey, hey, let's not get heated here, all right?" one of the other guys says, stepping forward with his hands up. He's a big guy, with a sleepy expression - but according to what Barry recalls of his files, he's Rizzo Hovsepian, the head of the Darbiniyan's most efficient disposal unit.

And Barry isn't talking about garbage.

"Remember," Hovsepian continues. "We might hate your Santini guts, and you might think nothing of ours, but we're all agreed on one thing."

"What?" Condutti asks skeptically.

"The Ranskahovs are worse."

That gets a laugh all around.

"Yeah, no kidding," Condutti says. "Penny-pinching Ruskie slobs - they keep trying to reduce security, you know that? Says it cuts into profits too much."

"Let ‘em try. The bosses'll never agree, not for a minute, not for something this important –"

"The Ranskahovs are involved, too?" Barry breathes.

"What on earth could get not just two, but three separate Families to do anything together?" Len murmurs, agreeing, glancing at Barry with a disturbed expression that Barry's pretty sure is mirrored on his own face.

“–doesn’t matter if these two go down for it,” Condutti is saying. “So what? We’ll get Snart after the big day.”

“Everyone’s always talking about how great things’ll be after the big day,” Petrosyan says, snorting. “The bosses are all sure of it; this’ll happen and that’ll happen and the green will be fucking greener and the trees’ll start raining money and it’ll be just like the good ol’ days again before the crackdowns and the paranoia and shit.”

“You don’t think so?”

“Old days are just that,” Petrosyan says. “Old. We don’t need this. We’re strong enough without it.”

“Sure you are,” Condutti replies, rolling his eyes. “Declining profits, snitches everywhere, Feds at our backs every way you look – things are fucking rosy. Don’t talk out your ass. The bosses know what they’re doing.”

“’course they do,” Petrosyan says, though he sounds...doubtful. “Still, we’re the lieutenants. It’s our job to plan for the worst.”

“Ain’t no planning for the worst this time,” the other Santini, Boccaccio, laughs. “It goes well and we get it all, or it blows up and we’re all fucked. That much happening, all at one time? We go down, we all go down.”

“There’ll be security up the ass,” Hovsepian says dismissively. “Now c’mon, if Snart’s not here, there’s no reason to stick around.”

“Damn,” Len murmurs.

Barry agrees. If only they would give more details...!

The thugs start filing out, still talking amongst themselves – split into two groups, Santinis on one side, Darbiniyans on the other, and only Condutti and Hovsepian still talking together, half-glaring at each other even as they pretend to smile.

“– best whore in the Twin Cities –”

“– so much fucking work still to be done –”

“– always knew he was a pig, that Snart guy, I’m telling you, he had a vibe –”

“–coming up soon. Running around like a goddamn maniac to get it all ready–”

“–mouth like a Hoover–”

“–can’t wait till we get ‘im, back-stabbing bastard–”

“–all the coordination, y’know? So many parties all together with half the city already running around–”

The door shuts behind them.

Barry shifts a little, figuring he can run them out now.

Len’s hand shoots out, grabs his arm. “Not yet. Not till they’re gone.”

Right.

Barry waits, trying to keep still and quiet even though he’s practically vibrating with the need to talk over what, if anything, they’ve uncovered.

Recalling Len’s earlier comment, though, he tries not to do that, either.

After about three minutes, he whispers, "Is that enough time?"

"I have no idea," Len whispers back. "I'm just guessing."

Barry frowns and straightens up. "What do you mean you're ‘just guessing’?” he demands at normal volume. “You're the undercover guy!"

"Yeah," Len says, also returning to normal volume – which for him is the lazy nasal drawl that Barry’s already become embarrassingly fond of. "Undercover. Meaning that I'm not usually up here eavesdropping from the shadows; I'm down there, hanging out with everyone and asking questions to find out more that I then turn over later. This method’s a lot less convenient."

"Oh," Barry says. That makes sense. "Then how do you know...?"

"Childhood interest in spy movies."

"...what."

Len did not just risk them being discovered by evil Family thugs based on spy movies, did he?

...no, actually, that sounds just like something Len would do.

"Oh, relax. Been testing out certain tropes since I was a tot," Len says, smirking at Barry's dismay. "Just for fun. Most of ‘em are trash, but people really don't ever look up without a good reason, even criminals."

Barry's boyfriend is such a troll.

Luckily Barry knew that already.

Though of course, finding out about the whole Len-is-Captain-Cold thing clearly shows that Barry doesn't know everything about him...like, say, about whether and why Len was (is?) investigating him...

Hmm. Maybe Barry can do some undercover digging of his own.

"You're a cop now, though, right?" Barry says casually.

"For all intents and purposes, I always was," Len says dryly. "Ever since I graduated from the academy. But yeah, sure, now it's officially known that I am."

"No, I mean – well. Now that you’re, y’know, official, do you still do investigations?"

Len gestures wordlessly to their surroundings, giving Barry a highly skeptical look.

“No, I didn’t mean – these are clearly unique circumstances!”

“I’ll give you that,” Len allows. “And, yeah, sure, sometimes. Not often; most people I meet know what I do now.”

“But if someone didn’t know, would you –”

“Are you stalking me or something?”

“What? No!”

“Then stop asking about me and focus back on the Families,” Len says. “But first, can you get us out of here?”

Barry flushes red, mumbles something in the affirmative, and runs them both out of there. He just takes them back down to the alley he originally rescued Len to –

Man, is Barry glad he listened to Iris and came looking! A dozen minutes later and the Families would’ve had Len in their grasp – and Barry would never have learned what happened to Len.

Or, worse, he would have - but while on the job.

Barry should always listen to Iris, basically, that’s the lesson he’s getting out of this. He’d hesitated, when she’d first started worrying – he’d been a little insulted by their whole “rescue the damsel in distress” tactic when Iris’d oh-so-casually revealed it once he’d “rescued” her, so he’d initially dismissed her concerns with the suggestion that Len’d just ditched or something, but she’d smacked Barry on the shoulder and told him that Len was a professional.

And, well, even to Barry it seemed a little unlikely that Captain Cold would go to all this trouble and then not follow up.

Then Eddie ran up in a panic, too, so Barry figured there was no harm in running a circuit to see where they’d gone. When he saw the cop car in the slum districts…

Yeah, Barry can put two and two together.

“Thanks,” Len says after a few minutes of leaning against the wall, breathing hard and clutching at his side. Barry’s been pretending it’s not happening, since Len generally prefers it that way when they’re on a date and there’s no reason to think he doesn’t now, too, even though he’s not using the crutches. Barry can even see a bit of his leg braces flashing through the gap between his boots and his pants, now that he’s looking for it.

Wait, hold up, Len’s little work-related accident that made him retire! Captain Singh had said that Len – well, that Captain Snart – got tortured and shot when they found out about his undercover work…crap, and Barry’d thought it was some sort of criminal job gone wrong, inspiring Len to go straight.

Was he ever wrong about that.

And yet, despite all that, here Len is, seconds after nearly being thrown back to the nonexistent mercies of the Families, turning right around and going right back into Family investigative work.

Just – wow.

He really is fearless.

After all, look at how casually he unmasked himself in front of Barry!

Okay, he didn’t know it was Barry.

He certainly wasn’t afraid to let the Flash know his identity, anyway.

...Barry really should do the same.

Yeah.

He should

He will.

Any minute now.

Really!

Any minute now...

“Okay,” Len says after another moment in which Barry mentally kicks himself for not doing or saying anything. “That was instructive.”

“Was it?” Barry asks, a little skeptically. “They didn’t really say anything.”

“We know they’re working together, at least three Families, maybe more. We know the rank-and-file are not necessarily happy about it,” Len points out. “And most of all, we know that there’s a ‘big day’ coming up at some point soon that they’re all working towards.” He frowns. “Something on a day when half the city’s already running around. Don’t know what that’d be, though; nothing gets this city moving.”

“Sad, but true,” Barry agrees. “If Gotham’s the city that never sleeps, Central’s the city that never goes above a mild stroll, no matter how urgent the situation.”

“No kidding. Like when there’s a tornado actually visible on the horizon heading your way, and everyone just sort of stands there and gawks –”

“I...may have done that a few times.”

More than a few.

“No, I know, me too,” Len says. “It’s a Central City thing. It’s still dumb.”

Barry has to agree to that.

“Thanks again for your help today,” Len adds. “I still want to ask you some questions about what you're up to – I don’t let anyone off the hook that easy – but this Family stuff has to take priority. They're poison.”

“I get that,” Barry says. That’s probably his cue to leave, but he lingers, shifting from one foot to the other.

He knows that he should really unmask himself, now that he knows who Len is. Before now, it was just a matter of omission, of not mentioning everything about his life to Len, but if he leaves without saying anything, then he’s making a deliberate choice to lie to Len – to not tell him when he could –

It’s a good moment for it, too; Len’s clearly focused on the Family thing, not his Flash hunt, and he’s definitely not thinking of Barry Allen, even if he does seem to think of Barry as his boyfriend – man, Barry wishes Len was a little less clever and let Barry unobtrusively ask some questions about his investigation of Barry, but noooooo, Len's too sharp for that to work.

He wants to think the best of Len, really – or, hell, Barry’s enough of a sappy romantic that he’d be totally happy with a story that went with Len starting to investigate him and then falling in love and regretting it, that would be awesome, best get-together story to tell at dinner parties ever, right? – but either way he really desperately wants to know.

The best way to know would be to ask.

The only way to justify asking would be to unmask.

But at the same time, all the reasons he hasn’t already told Len about the whole Flash thing still apply – he didn’t tell him at the start because he didn’t know him that well, and once he did know him, he knew about Len’s hatred of any perceived betrayal, not to mention the risk of one of his enemies figuring out who Len is and what he means and using him against Barry, putting him in danger because of Barry, and really, in the end, it was just easier not to tell him.

But now...

God, Barry can't decide. Should he say or not? Is he being smart about it, or is he just being a coward? How will he ever get the answers he wants if he doesn't unmask? Which approach is more likely to get him what he wants (Len not angry at him and still dating him) and which one would result in -

“Hey, hold up, don’t move for a second,” Len says suddenly, interrupting Barry's train of thought as he takes a few steps forward towards Barry. “You’ve got something on the back of your cowl, spider or something – must’ve gotten on you while we were in that warehouse – lemme just get it –”

He reaches over and puts his hand on the back of Barry’s cowl.

Then he yanks it down.

“Hey!” Barry yowls.

“Barry?!” Len exclaims.

Oh shit.

“Uh,” Barry says. “I can – explain –”

“You really can’t,” Len says.

Barry’s shoulders droop. “I - can’t?”

“No, you can’t! I can’t believe that trick actually worked! Jeez, Allen, have a bit more spatial awareness, okay? What if I’d had a knife or something?”

“If you had a knife, you wouldn’t have been going for my cowl –” Barry pauses. “Wait. That’s what I can’t explain? The fact that you just pulled off my cowl? That's the part of this you're having trouble with?!”

“I literally learned that trick in third grade,” Len says. “Literally. Come on!”

“That’s what you’re getting out of this?!”

“Oh, I already figured out it was you,” Len says. “Only about ten minutes ago, sure, but still, it gave me the chance to get over my surprise – no, don’t look at me like that, I did! While we were up there, eavesdropping, you kept forgetting to keep doing that thing to disguise your voice. Vibrating your vocal cords, I’m guessing?”

“Uh, yeah,” Barry says, bewildered. “You – recognized my voice?”

Len gives him a look.

“Oh, right. Undercover guy; you’ve got to be good with voices.”

“There’s that,” Len says dryly. “Plus there’s the fact that you’ve had your tongue near my tonsils a few times; I think I have your voice pretty much memorized by now.”

Barry blushes. “Yeah, that too,” he says, unable to keep himself from smiling a little. He's a dork, okay, he's not shy to admit it. “It makes sense you’d recognize your boyfriend’s voice – I mean, I don’t mean to presume, but you said earlier –”

“Oh, we’re definitely boyfriends, Allen,” Len says, and there's a little hint of a smile tugging at his lips. “Don’t you dare back out on me now.”

Now Barry’s full-on grinning and he doesn't care who sees it. “I wasn’t sure, you know, we’ve done all that talking about going slow –”

“Going slow,” Len interrupts, groaning. “Going slow. Now I get it. That’s why it’s ironic – we’re going slow, and you have super-speed powers that make you usually go really fast –”

“Yes, exactly!” Barry exclaims. He knew Len would like those. Honestly, this whole revelation thing is going so much better than Barry thought this was going to go!

“I’m going to have so many puns about this.”

“You have no idea how hard it’s been not to break them out,” Barry confesses.

“I can imagine,” Len says, looking mildly aggravated – almost certainly by the missed punning opportunity. The man’s a pun fiend. Barry's never been so grateful. “Lemme guess, you didn’t want to tell me because you weren’t sure whether I was trustworthy?”

“At least in the beginning,” Barry agrees. “I don’t mean it as an insult or anything, of course –”

“No, I’m glad you have at least some self-preservation instincts,” Len says. “You’re too trusting; I’m amazed you haven’t gone streaking down Main Street yelling it out.”

“‘Streaking’ down Main Street? Really?”

Len smirks.

“What about you, though?” Barry asks curiously. “Captain Singh said you were investigating me –”

“I told him not to do that,” Len sighs. “Guess he couldn’t resist. And yeah, I was; I thought you were corrupt.”

“Wait, what? Me or the Flash?”

“Both,” Len says wryly. “Given that I didn’t know you were one person. I'm going to go out on a limb and say I was probably wrong.”

“Listen, I can see why you’d suspect the Flash, what with the disappearances,” Barry says, choosing to ignore that 'probably'. Len's already admitted to being paranoid beyond all reason; there's no way to get rid of that last hint of doubt other than to keep proving himself. “But me as in Barry Allen? I don't even have any parking tickets!" Almost certainly because he doesn't own a car, but whatever. "Why in the world would you think I was corrupt?”

“Well, you disappearing for nine months like that –”

“I was in a coma!”

“You were?” Len says blankly, as if that's the most surprising thing that's come up in the entire conversation.

“Well, yeah. What did you think I was doing?” Barry asks, equally blank.

“Literally anything else,” Len says. “Going off and joining a Family, investigating what’s going on with the Flash...anything! A guy doesn’t get out of a nine-month coma and jump out of bed, back into his job and with a new and improved set of abs!”

Barry can feel his face going red. “Yeah, those were kind of a shock,” he admits. “And – hey, when did you see my abs?!”

They’ve totally not gone that far. Barry would remember!

“Surveillance photos,” Len says. “Don’t ask; it’ll just make you paranoid.”

“...I’m becoming more paranoid already,” Barry says, and then it suddenly hits him what’s really going on. He knows Len. He knows Len, and what matters to him, and it's all so clear why Len would bother going after such a small fry matter personally. “It’s Mick, isn’t it? You assumed I had to be up to something during those nine months, because if I actually was in a coma and managed to get that much better...”

Len makes a face. He probably intends for it to be a rueful expression of distaste, but it comes across more like someone just ripped his heart out of his chest. “Yeah. I can’t keep hoping for another miracle that I know ain’t gonna happen.” He grimaces. “They’re saying he might not – this month – if he doesn’t wake up, we’re gonna have to start talking end-of-life options.”

“Oh, shit,” Barry says, shocked. He’d known things weren’t good, of course, but...somehow he’d been assuming this whole time that Mick would eventually wake up and he’d get to meet him one day. But of course not all comas were like his, with a happy ending. “Damn, Len, I’m so sorry.”

Len shrugs. “So you actually were in a coma?” he says, obviously not wanting to talk about it further. “For real?”

“It wasn’t a regular coma,” Barry assures him. “My heart was moving so quick the doctors couldn’t identify it on a monitor, but there was nothing physically wrong with me – well, once the other signs of being hit by lightning healed up. I have super-fast healing now, so it was pretty quick.”

Len frowns. “Has your heart slowed down?”

“No; why?”

“What’re you going to do for the mandatory yearly CCPD physical?”

“...panic,” Barry says. He’d forgotten about that particular requirement for being part of the CCPD, one that not even CSIs are exempt from. And it has to be a physical with a CCPD-approved physician, so he can’t just have Caitlin fake him a doctor’s note.

“Say you have a medical condition,” Len suggests.

“A medical condition of not having a heartbeat?”

“Why not?” Len says, shrugging. “Your buddies at STAR Labs are scientists, right? They must’ve published something about your condition, however anonymized, and it would’ve been on your insurance forms – you did submit insurance forms, right?”

Barry blinks. “I...don’t know? I mean, I assume so? I know Joe did at first, for sure; he’s still complaining-not-complaining about the medical debt and his new premiums being so high. I don’t know what happened after that, though.”

Len’s eyebrows go way up. “Wells didn’t charge you? Or, well, charge the insurance companies on your behalf?”

“I don't think so?” Barry says, shrugging. “He said it was charity, given his involvement in the Accelerator explosion...” He trails off, looking at the expression on Len’s face. “What?”

“Part of the reason I was so suspicious of you,” Len says slowly, “was because you were Dr. Wells’ only patient.”

“I – what? The only one? That can't be right. I thought I was just, you know, the only one left -”

“No, you were the only one at all,” Len confirms. “For months after the Accelerator explosion, Wells didn’t do anything else: he didn’t set up care clinics, he didn’t donate to rebuilding charities, nothing. Even fired most of the staff that wouldn’t quit, with only one or two exceptions, and then suddenly he takes you in – you, and no one else. It was so obviously fake that I assumed it had to be some sort of Family front.”

Barry swallows, his mouth suddenly dry.

“After we found out the connection between STAR Labs and the Flash, I assumed you were in on it, and then, when I learned more about you, that you were involved just to investigate it,” Len continues. “But the disappearances, the other speedster, that stuff – it all revolves around STAR Labs. All of it.”

Barry can’t move.

The hints of bribery that Terri found to enable STAR Labs’ creation.

Hartley Rathaway’s accusations that the Accelerator explosion had been intentional.

The Accelerator’s creation of metahumans, including Barry.

Dr. Wells’ increasingly bizarre focus on Barry increasing his speed.

The lack of any scientific method to their ‘tests’ meant to increase that speed. The lack of any publication, of any control tests, of anything that even vaguely resembled proper science.

The way Wells got so angry when Barry skipped speed training to focus on any anything else, like his job.

His lack of surprise when Barry’d broken the time barrier.

Barry travelled through time – the biggest breakthrough in modern science! – and yet, no reaction, nothing but more encouragement to focus on going faster, faster, faster.

As if time travel was an expected result.

How could Dr. Wells have known about the possibility time travel?

How – unless, of course, Barry wasn’t the first speedster he’d met.

Now that Barry thinks about it, the very same day Barry started skipping training in favor of his job, the Man in Yellow appeared – and suddenly Barry was fully focused on training again.

The way Wells keeps mentioning Barry’s mom ever since then, like a goad to make Barry keep trying to get faster.

The way Wells seems to care less about Barry actually saving people and more about – more about the result.

The result, of course, being that Barry gets faster every time he fights a bad guy.

“Has Dr. Wells ever acted strangely in regards to you?” Len asks intently. He's clearly putting two and two together himself, getting the right number this time. He reaches out and puts a hand on Barry’s shoulder. “Does he ever seem like he’s keeping secrets? Like he has some sort of goal for you that might not be the goal he told you about?”

Barry nods mutely, his lips pressed together tight.

“Tell me,” Len urges. “Tell me everything. We’ll deal with this – with him – we’ll take him down. Together.”

Barry puts his hand on Len’s.

Together.

That sounds good.

#coldflash #leonard snart #barry allen #eobard thawne #Harrison wells #my fic #an internal affair

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