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robininthelabyrinth · 7 years

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Hole in the Fence (Coldwave with goats) - 2

Fic: Hole in the Fence (ao3 link) - chapter 2/4 Fandom: Flash, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow Pairing: Mick Rory/Leonard Snart

Summary: Mick Rory’s life was changed forever by the fire he didn’t escape.

(in which Mick Rory retires, raises goats, and saves the world more than a few times)

WARNINGS: medical procedures, hospitalization, detailed description of injury recovery, emotional trauma, hurt/comfort

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Mick stares.

The goat, perched delicately on Mick’s belly, stares back down.

It is a very small goat. It’s pale white and speckled dove grey all over, except for a darker blotch on its eyes and again right above its tail.

The goat bleats.

It’s a little trilling sound.

Mick blinks.

“Hello to you, too,” he says.

The goat bleats a bit more and headbutts Mick’s face very lightly.

“Oh my god,” a voice says, and a woman rushes in. “I am so sorry.”

Mick blinks. He’s pretty sure he hasn’t seen this woman before. “Sorry?” he asks.

She points at the goat. “I have no idea how he got out again,” she confesses. “I mean, I know, goats, right? If there’s a hole in the fence, a goat will find it, that’s the saying, but I swear we’ve blocked up all the holes and he’s still managing to end up god only knows where every day.”

“Why is there a goat?” Mick asks. That seems like an important question.

The woman blinks at him. “Oh,” she says. “I’m sorry. My name’s Maple Dzvorak. Please call me Mab. I run the farm.”

“The…farm.”

“Yes,” Mab says. “The farm? Downstairs?” When Mick continues to look blankly at her, she clarifies, “The fully functional dairy farm attached to the land?”

“I did not know that,” Mick says. It does explain the bird noises early in the morning and the grunting animal noises later on; he’d assumed that was some sort of noise machine or local wildlife. “We’re on a farm?”

Mab grins. “Yeah,” she says. “You are. No offense, but I don’t think your Mr. Snart was thinking very rationally when he bought the place. He literally ran in one day, looked at the house and offered us cash for it; I’m pretty sure he was just totally panicking the entire time. Had a wild sort of look in his eyes. Not that I object, of course; I get to keep doing what I do best, which right now is raising goats. We – well, my colleagues, Juanita and Rashid, anyway – sell the milk and the cheese at some of the local farmer’s markets. Any leftovers we’ve got we give to Pre down by old armory, she runs a clinic and knows all the non-corrupt food distribution places.”

“Really?” Mick asks. Mab nods. “That’s cool.”

“Want to come see?” she asks. “I know you’re still convalescing, but if you’d like to help me bring back Houdini here, I’d be happy to show you around, you being half-owner and all.”

Mick transfers himself to his wheelchair and the goat leaps straight into his lap and settles down, regal-like, as if he had been waiting for Mick to get with the program.

Mick snorts.

Arrogant little snot. Reminds him of Len.

“He’s normally more standoffish than that,” Mab observes. “He’s kind of an introvert, except when he’s playing pranks on the other goats.

“Do you actually call him Houdini?” Mick asks her.

“Nah,” she says. “This is the newest batch of kids. We haven’t named ‘em yet. I just thought it fit because he’s always breaking in and out of places where he doesn’t belong, and making stupid jumps from one place to another and somehow making them. You have something in mind?”

“Yeah,” Mick says. “I’m calling this one Boss.”

Mab arches her eyebrows.

“It fits, trust me,” Mick assures her.

“You’re the –” she pauses, making Mick smirk because he knows she was about to say ‘boss’. “– owner.”

“What does that mean, anyway?” Mick asks. He has no idea what someone who owns a farm actually does. His parents were farmers, but it's been a long time since he was eleven.

“Well, we weren’t exactly doing that well financially,” Mab says wryly. “Still aren’t. The family before you bought this place to make it into a farm because they thought it was ‘cute’, but it turned out they didn’t like it all that much. Too much dirt, not enough cute. And that was bad, because we’re not self-sustaining yet, so losing their support would mean we lose the farm. We looked for someone else to rent out the place to – the rent being how we planned to keep the farm running for a little longer.”

“And we’re the renters?”

“No,” Mab says patiently. “Mr. Snart showed up one day, asked about wheelchair accessibility, and bought the whole place – house, farm, everything – in a glorious, glorious amounts of cash, then told me to just keep doing what I’m doing. Is he likely to keep up with that, do you think?”

“Yeah, he doesn’t care,” Mick says. “Carry on and so on.”

Mab wheels him down to the porch.

Mick wonders for a moment if this is a very well-thought-out kidnapping, but no. The goat is just too weird to be anything other than real.

Sure enough, there are goats outside.

Actual goats.

A good number of them, too.

Mick is impressed, right up until one of little ones – even littler than the one sitting on his lap – barrels up the porch stairs and head-butts his shin.

Hard.

“If you were any bigger, that might have hurt,” Mick tells the goat. It’s even smaller than Boss.

The goat just headbutts him again. Then headbutts Mab and the door, too, for good measure.

“This one’s the runt,” Mab says, trying to hide a smile. “Makes up for it by being willing to fight literally anything at any time.”

“Good goat,” Mick says, smiling a little. He likes headbutting people, too.

Boss jumps down and nuzzles the little goat, which headbutts him, but lightly, and then nuzzles back. Then they go prancing off, Boss in the lead and the littler goat happily leaping from side to side in Boss’ wake.

“Fights anything, you say?” Mick says, watching them.

“Anything, everything, everyone,” Mab confirms. “Especially anyone who gets in, ah, Boss’ way. They’re inseparable.”

“I’m calling that one Mick,” Mick decides. “Or Mickey, anyway, till he’s grown.”

Mab shakes her head. “She. And don’t you dare name all of them,” she warns. “Some are for selling as breeding stock, not milk.”

“I’ll keep it limited,” Mick lies.

“Mick,” Shlomit calls, coming out through the porch door. “I didn’t know you were coming outside.”

Little Mickey turns on a heel and zips back up the stairs to headbutt her, too.

“Nice,” Mick says approvingly. “Go, Mickey.”

Mickey bleats proudly, then goes to rejoin Boss in the field.

“Did you just attack me with a goat?” Shlomit asks, looking amused. “You have attack goats, now?”

“Mickey’s a good little fighter,” Mick says.

“'Mickey' is a girl,” Mab says.

“So?”

Mab considers for a moment, then shrugs. “Have it your way,” she says. “Shlomit, can he stay out? I wanted to show him the farm.”

“Only if we put sunscreen on first,” Shlomit says firmly, but in the end Mick gets his tour.

They have a fair sized herd of goats. They get fed and graze and after a bit of watching, Mick asks Mab, “Doesn’t the food affect how their cheese tastes?”

“Yeah,” Mab says. “I’m hoping to experiment when we have a bit more money – maybe partitioning them off or something? – but we’re not quite there yet. Here, let me introduce you to our crew – they help with the milking and the cheese process –”

Len comes back that evening.

“I just got headbutted by a goat,” he says, looking bemused.

“Did you now?” Mick asks innocently.

“I wouldn’t have commented on it, except that I’m informed that they’re your, uh, attack goats now.”

“Yep,” Mick says, lacing his fingers together and leaning back in his wheelchair with a satisfied smirk.

Len looks him dead in the eye. “Mick,” he says, sounding serious.

Mick’s smirk disappears. “What?”

“Next time, you need to tell me before you adopt any kids.”

It takes a few seconds for the pun to hit and then Mick groans and puts his head in his hands while Len laughs his goddamn ass off.

“You’re a dick,” Mick grouses as Len wipes the tears out of his eyes. “It wasn’t even that funny.”

“Your face was that funny.”

“Fuck you. I thought you wanted to say something serious!”

Len sits down, still sniggering.

Boss noses his way into the room, closely followed by Mickey. Mickey immediately goes straight to Len, who immediately scoops her up to sit on his lap.

She noses around his lap a little and then makes herself at home, while Boss starts casing the room.

“I like this one,” Len says, petting Mickey. “Good goat. Fierce goat. Yes you are.”

“She is, that,” Mick says. “Fights anything she sees. Headbutts anything and everyone.”

“I like her,” Len declares. “This one’s my favorite.”

Mick hides a smile.

“I like that, too,” Len says.

“Like what?”

“You seem – happier. Today. You’ve been down recently.”

Mick arches his eyebrows. “We actually talking about this? Thought we didn’t do feelings.”

“Ji-hyun threatened to light me on fire if we didn’t,” Len admits cheerfully. “And she says you’ve taught her everything she knows about arson.”

“Aww,” Mick says. “She remembers all that? Best shrink ever.”

“She’s pretty tough.”

“You should see her.”

Len makes a face.

“I’m telling you,” Mick says. This is an old argument. “Going a few times won’t hurt anyone.”

“I’ll think about it,” Len says, instead of his usual ‘it hurts me’ rebuttal.

Mick arches his eyebrows.

Len shrugs. “I’ve had some issues recently,” he says. “Recurring and inconveniently timed panic attacks. Maybe seeing a shrink isn’t the end of the world.”

“No, it definitely is,” Mick says. “Leonard Snart agreeing to go see a shrink? Definitely a sign of the apocalypse.”

“Fuck off,” Len says, but pleasant and friendly-like. “So what’s going on? Ji-hyun says you barely talk to her about anything, Shlomit is about ten seconds away from suggesting even more pills, and you’ve been acting –” He hesitates.

“Like a dick?” Mick offers.

“Like you’ve finally figured out that you don’t want me around anymore,” Len says. His knuckles are white, Mick notices, wrapped around the edges of the chair; little Mickey is nosing at his wrist anxiously.

It takes a few seconds for Len’s words to sink in.

“Wait,” Mick says, because what even, “me not want you around anymore?!”

Len nods stiffly. He’s as tense as a tightly wound spring.

“Why?”

“It was my idea,” Len bursts out. “That stupid fucking job in Shreveport – I was the one who wanted to go, I was the one who should’ve cased the place better –”

“Are you still beating yourself up about that?” Mick asks, amazed. “Jesus, Len. It’s not your fault. It’s mine.”

“You got burned,” Len says, and his eyes aren’t focusing right. He’s looking at a memory, not at Mick. “You burned, Mick – you were screaming –”

Mick feels a stab of regret. “You always knew I wanted to burn in the end,” he says gruffly, trying to cover it up.

“I always thought I’d be there by your side,” Len says. “Not watching.”

He closes his eyes, takes a deep, shuddering breath.

Mick frowns, watching him. This whole thing, it hit Len bad; much worse than Mick had noticed. This isn’t like Len, who hates his emotions and tries to avoid them when possible.

This isn’t Len trying to cut things off. This is Len off-balance, unsteady, making stupid decisions and sticking with them out of stubbornness, shaking and hurting and Mick’s only ever seen him like this when –

“Is Lisa okay?” Mick asks.

Len gives him a look. “She’s fine,” he says. “Where’d that even come from?”

Mick didn’t really doubt it, but it makes him feel funny inside, that Len can be knocked off his feet so bad by something happening to Mick in the same way as with Lisa. Mick would’ve said that Lisa was the only person Len really loved, before today.

Today he thinks – really believes, for the first time – that maybe Lisa’s not the only one Len loves.

“You’re not planning on ditching me,” he says softly. Len doesn’t give up on people he loves, not ever; that’s why he loves so few of them.

“Ditching you?” Len exclaims, opening his eyes and looking offended. “Why the fuck would I do that?”

“I’m no use to you now, am I?” Mick points out gently. “Shlomit says my recovery could take – it’s not months, Lenny. It’s years. Between my beat-up lungs and my beat-up arms, I don’t know how long it’ll be before I can stand by your side again, if ever.”

“So what?” Len says challengingly. “I don’t give a damn about that.”

“You don’t carry dead weight.”

“No, I don’t. I don’t just use you for your muscle, Mick; you’re my partner. You do so much more than that.”

Mick scowls.

“You do,” Len insists. “You keep an eye on the crew –”

“They’d stab you in the back otherwise,” Mick grumbles. “You have terrible judgment of people. Remember Charlie?”

“– you keep me from doing anything too dumb –”

“As much as possible.”

“– and you keep me from going over the line,” Len finishes. He rubs at his eyes. He looks so tired, suddenly, the bags under his eyes coming into clear relief. Mick doesn’t know what Len does all day, but he bets it has something to do with how Len’s been spending money like it grows on trees. Len’s stash isn’t endless. “It’s not the way it was before, without you. I’ve worked without you before, when we split up, but I was always angry, then. I knew I’d get you back eventually and I worked every job thinking I’ll show him the whole damn time. But this time I know exactly where you are, and why you’re not with me, and it’s my goddamn fault.”

“It ain’t your fault, Len,” Mick says again. “You saw the flames and ran out; I didn’t.”

“It’s my job,” Len says firmly. “My job, my crew; it’s on me to get everyone out. I know about you and fire, Mick; me better than anyone else in the world, except maybe Ji-hyun. I should’ve prioritized getting you out of there. I should’ve figured out ahead of time that that warehouse would go up so quick.”

“You can’t plan for everything.”

“I should’ve run in to get you out,” Len says.

Mick frowns. “You did,” he says. He remembers that. Len had dragged him out, half the way, ditching only when he saw the ambulances coming.

“Not soon enough,” Len says. “Third degree burns could’ve been two. The smoke that fucked over your lungs – you wouldn’t have breathed so much in, if I hadn’t run out after some pointless yelling. I should’ve realized I needed to get you out some other way.”

“It’s not your fault,” Mick says. “I’m serious. I don’t blame you.”

Len smiles humorlessly. “You should.”

“I don’t, and I’m not gonna,” Mick says firmly. “You don’t get to pick who I blame.”

Len shakes his head a little. “Fine,” he says. “Then you don’t get to get rid of me, either, even if you think it’s for my own good.”

Len’s always been a perceptive little shit.

“Fine,” Mick says. “But what am I gonna do now? I've got nothing except being an arsonist and some crew's muscle, other than being your partner. What do I do?”

Len shrugs helplessly. “I don’t know,” he says. “I’ll start planning my jobs here again, if you want to tell me I’m dumb during the planning stages.”

“You’d better plan them here,” Mick says, alarmed by the idea that Len has been planning some of his more ridiculous stupid-ass stunts without him.

“I don’t know what else.” Len frowns. “What about the kitchen?”

Mick frowns in return. “What about the kitchen?”

“Well, you like cooking, don’t you?” Len says, like he hasn’t voraciously devoured everything Mick’s ever made him (except for the greens) for nearly two decades.

“What’ve you been eating?” Mick asks, suddenly suspicious. The answer had better not be ‘fast food’.

“Hospital cafeteria meals, mostly.”

That’s worse.

“Fine,” Mick says. “I’ll cook for you again.”

“We’ll need to renovate the kitchen,” Len says. “Adaptive stuff.”

“More ovens,” Mick says automatically. He’s always wanted to renovate a kitchen to his liking. He has feelings about appliances.

“You ain't even seen the kitchen!”

“You always need more ovens.”

“Fine,” Len says. “More ovens. I’ll call a guy. But this is coming out of your stash.”

Mick smiles.

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“Is there any reason not to try roses?” Mick asks, picking Bumblebee, the newest runt in the litter and Mickey’s newest playmate, off the floor before she eats the rug. “They eat the neighbor’s patch all the goddamn time whether we want them too or not.”

“I mean, I guess,” Mab says, frowning thoughtfully. “It wouldn’t be that hard to keep track of the ones that eat nowhere else and segregate their cheese…okay, I have to know. I know you well enough by this point. What recipe are you thinking?”

“Taillevent mentioned a rose-tinted pottage...”

“Hah! I knew you had a reason!”

“Yeah, yeah. Anyway, I was also thinking we could vary the type of rennet we use,” Mick says. He lays out the plan he’s been working on - done up like Len's blueprints - and points to the various boxes he’s created. “See, I don’t know if it’ll have any effect, but I was listening to a book that said that vegetable or animal-based makes a difference in the –”

“Can we go back to stealing stuff?” Len bitches from where he’s lying face-down on the couch.

“No,” Mick says. “Also, you’re reading me the next two chapters of that book tonight, so don’t smother yourself before then.”

“Uuuuuuugh.”

“He’s just bitter that his last job just finished and he’s bored again already,” Mick tells Mab. Len enforces the lying low part of a job as strictly as he does the rest, but what he’d never let on to his crews is that he really, really hates it, too.

Mick’s happy, though; it means Len will be spending the next few weeks here.

“I’m just happy you’re not Family affiliated criminals,” Mab says dryly. “It’s Central: I’ll accept criminals, but a girl has got to draw the line somewhere.”

“Speaking of lines,” Mick asks, putting Bumblebee down. She prances over to Len. They all love Len, every one of them. “How are Billy and Nanny T. Goat settling in?”

Mab groans.

Len sniggers into his couch cushion.

“This is your fault,” Mick informs him.

“Yeah, I know,” Len says. “But I couldn’t just leave them there!”

Mick rolls his eyes. “You didn’t have to drop them off and run away without explanation.”

“There was no explanation!” Len protests.

“No,” Mab says tartly. “There is no explanation for giving a goat farm a gift in the form of two baby alpacas.”

“They were malnourished and sad,” Len says firmly. “That wealthy idiot wanted them as pets, but just shoved them in a room and basically forgot about them. They were baaing softly in sadness. I regret nothing.”

Mab sighs. “Well,” she says, “they were babies and babies bounce back pretty well. That being said, they’re being raised by the goats, so they definitely think they’re goats now. Those names didn’t help.”

“Boss adopted ‘em,” Mick says with satisfaction.

Len grumbles. He’s still never entirely forgiven Mick for naming the goat after him, especially when Mick points out that Boss’s tendency to run jail-breaks from just about anywhere and also the fact that he’s more or less taken over the flock despite being only a couple of years old are really quite similar to their namesake’s own actions.

The fact that Mickey never grew all that big and ended up being the smallest, fiercest goat in the entire herd has only mollified that annoyance slightly.

“That’s going to be interesting in a few years,” Mab sighs. “But sure, let’s talk rennet.”

“You know what,” Len says, sitting up. “I’m going to go steal a diamond.”

“You’re doing no such thing.”

“I am too! There’s one coming in to Central City museum. I saw a flyer earlier today.”

“Do you have a reason to steal a diamond?”

“Yeah,” Len says. “Not being here to discuss rennet. I know what that’s made of.”

Mick snorts and wheels over to the couch just to smack Len.

He doesn’t need the wheelchair all the time anymore, just on days like today, when his joints start acting up and everything is sore. Shlomit has returned to her day job, though she checks in once a week to run him through his PT and OT exercises because she doesn’t trust him. Mick’s pretty sure Len pays her for doing it, though he doesn’t think there’s an official contract or anything.

Mick still needs the massages and the lotion on a daily basis, which Len manages with the fierce regularity of the drill sergeant that secretly lives in his head even if his hands are always gentle; and Mick slathers on sunscreen like a dying man before going out for a regular day out on the farm. Mab and the rest of the workers have strict orders to watch him to make sure that he doesn’t overdo it, because he has collapsed from heatstroke from exercising too hard – turns out the body’s ability to sweat is really quite crucial to things like exercise or even sitting around, if the day is hot enough. He’s got some gait issues left over, which he’s usually fine with, though some days call for a cane and others for crutches or the chair; his legs have never quite uncurled the full way out, though Disha has looked him over and declared that it’s as good as modern surgery can get him.

The carbon monoxide poisoning did come back to kick his ass with a pneumonia infection that recurs every year, but on the other hand, the damage that happened to his kidneys – Disha uses cheerful terms like ‘tubular necrosis’ and ‘acute renal failure’ which make Len go white-lipped and distant – has basically gone away for good.

The brief relapse he had into what Disha called ‘burn delirium’ is best never discussed. He never gets back most of the memories he had of the weeks leading up to the job that went wrong, but Len informs him they were pretty boring anyway – typical job lead-up.

Len is in fact seeing a therapist at long last, one that Ji-hyun recommended after her initial session with him. Apparently, Len does as well with tough old Jewish ladies as Mick does with equally tough old Korean ladies.

They apparently spend about 10 minutes criticizing each other’s family at the start of each session, just to get into the mood.

All in all, Mick isn’t actually unhappy with his life right now. Sure, he misses the game - the local biker gang is happy to indulge him in bar fights, which helps with the excitement and violence even if he suspects they're not going all in, and Len has established a tough-as-nails reputation that is starting to be scarily bloodthirsty but at least keeps him safe – but he likes what he’s doing now, too.

The dairy farm is doing well, he’s named every single one of the goats, and he goes into Central three times a week to sell at the farmer’s markets, with Juanita and Rashid taking the opportunity to search out new markets further afield like they’ve always wanted to.

He cooks for Len, who comes home every day he can, and Lisa whenever she’s in the area. Mab, Shlomit, and Disha are all regular invitees, and the goats – led by Boss, as always – make regular incursions into the household to try to eat some of Mick’s cooking. Len’s trickier than the goats, though, so he’s set up a system of sweet-smelling boxes for the goats to find that makes them feel like they’ve accomplished something while maintaining Mick’s strict diets for each of them.

Life is pretty good.

Of course, Mick would be a disgrace to his Irish heritage if he wasn’t inherently suspicious of such things.

So when he flicks on the TV not a month after Len’s decision to go steal a diamond and finds Len fighting a bolt of lightning, he’s almost not surprised.

The news starts by reporting a scuffle on the transit, people with liquid nitrogen; that sounds like Len. They mention a Streak – helpfully, they give a short summary of what’s known about it, which is literally nothing but conspiracy theories – and the next thing they report is a fight in a movie theater.

There are pictures – crappy, cell-phone recordings – of Len using some sort of futuristic gun that freezes anything it touches.

And then –

Well.

He waits until Len gets home – a train! He jumped off a train! What the fuck?! – to say anything.

Len slinks into the house like a man with a guilty conscience, and he jumps near a foot in the air when Mick clears his throat from where he’s sitting on the couch, his arms crossed, his eyes narrowed in a glare.

“I thought you’d be asleep,” Len says.

“You mean you hoped.”

“…you saw the news.”

“I saw the news.”

“I got you a present?” Len offers.

Mick arches his eyebrows. “If it’s a diamond, I told you years ago, I don’t want one. I’m not that type of floozy.”

Len snorts. “Yeah, no. It’s this.”

‘This’ turns out to be a gun. A gun that works on principles of heat, everything from a flamethrower to a tight laser of heat so hot it melts metal.

Mick loves it on sight.

“You want me by your side?” he asks, examining it. He’ll take it apart, later; he’ll figure out how it works. He’ll know every inch of it, backwards and forwards, soon enough. He’ll do the same for Len’s cold gun – he’s always been the more mechanically minded of the two of them. He might not read the way Len does, he might not talk the way Len does, but he can make a machine sing under his hands.

“No,” Len says, and it doesn’t even hurt anymore when he says it, because Mick might not be able to stand by Len when he goes on crazy missions anymore, but Mick’s the one Len comes home to every day when he can, and he’s the one Len defers to on the craziness of a given mission. Len doesn’t trust himself, not all the way, not since the fire; Mick is his reminder not to let the ice in his veins freeze him solid.

“Then what’s it for?”

Len’s smile quirks up. “It’s a bribe,” he says. “For helping me plan out how to beat a superhero.”

“So it’s a hero, then?”

“Just a man,” Len confirms. “With a bleeding heart.”

Mick grins. “My favorite.”

#dccoldwave #mick rory #leonard snart #my fic

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